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Very Recent History
Very Recent History
Sicha, Choire
¥84.16
What will the future make of usIn one of the greatest cities in the world, the richest man in town is the Mayor. Billionaires shed apartments like last season's fashion trends, even as the country's economy turns inside out and workers are expelled from the City's glass towers. The young and careless go on as they always have, getting laid and getting laid off, falling in and falling out of love, and trying to navigate the strange world they traffic in: the Internet, complex financial markets, credit cards, pop stars, microplane cheese graters, and sex apps.A true-life fable of money, sex, and politics, Very Recent History follows a man named John and his circle of friends, lovers, and enemies. It is a book that pieces together our every day, as if it were already forgotten.
America by Heart
America by Heart
Palin, Sarah
¥84.16
In the fall of 2009, with the publication of her #1 national bestselling memoir, Sarah Palin had the privilege of meeting thousands of everyday Americans on her extraordinary 35-city book tour. Inspired by these encounters, her new book, America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag, celebrates the enduring strengths and virtues that have made this country great.Framed by her strong belief in the importance of family, faith, and patriotism, the book ranges widely over American history, culture, and current affairs, and reflects on the key values both national and spiritual-that have been such a profound part of Governor Palin's life and continue to inform her vision of America's future. Written in her own refreshingly candid voice, America By Heart will include selections from classic and contemporary readings that have moved her-from the nation's founding documents to great speeches, sermons, letters, literature and poetry, biography, and even some of her favorite songs and movies. Here, too, are portraits of some of the extraordinary men and women she admires and who embody her deep love of country, her strong rootedness in faith, and her profound love and appreciation of family. She will also draw from personal experience to amplify these timely (and timeless) themes themes that are sure to inspire her numerous fans and readers all across the country.
Condor
Condor
Nielsen, John
¥84.16
The California condor has been described as a bird "with one wing in the grave."Flying on wings nearly ten feet wide from tip to tip, these birds thrived on the carcasses of animals like woolly mammoths. Then, as humans began dramatically reshaping North America, the continent's largest flying land bird started disappearing. By the beginning of the twentieth century, extinction seemed inevitable.But small groups of passionate individuals refused to allow the condor to fade away, even as they fought over how and why the bird was to be saved. Scientists, farmers, developers, bird lovers, and government bureaucrats argued bitterly and often, in the process injuring one another and the species they were trying to save. In the late 1980s, the federal government made a wrenching decision -- the last remaining wild condors would be caught and taken to a pair of zoos, where they would be encouraged to breed with other captive condors. Livid critics called the plan a recipe for extinction. After the zoo-based populations soared, the condors were released in the mountains of south-central California, and then into the Grand Canyon, Big Sur, and Baja California. Today the giant birds are nowhere near extinct.The giant bird with "one wing in the grave" appears to be recovering, even as the wildlands it needs keep disappearing. But the story of this bird is more than the story of a vulture with a giant wingspan -- it is also the story of a wild and giant state that has become crowded and small, and of the behind-the-scenes dramas that have shaped the environmental movement. As told by John Nielsen, an environmental journalist and a native Californian, this is a fascinating tale of survival.
Executive Intelligence
Executive Intelligence
Menkes, Justin
¥84.16
The final word on what traits make for highly successful managers and a detailed explanation of how to identify potential standout performers. Executive Intelligence is about the substance behind great leadership. Inspired by the work of Peter Drucker and Jim Collins, Justin Menkes set out to isolate the qualities that make for the 'right' people. Drawing on his background in psychology and bolstered by interviews with accomplished CEOs, Menkes paints the portrait of the ideal executive.In a sense, Menkes's work reveals an executive IQ the cognitive skills necessary in order to excel in senior management positions. Star leaders readily differentiate primary priorities from secondary concerns; they identify flawed assumptions; they anticipate the different needs of various stakeholders and how they might conflict with one another; and they recognise the underlying agendas of individuals in complex exchanges.Weaving together research, interviews and the results of his own proprietary testing, Menkes exposes one of the great fallacies of corporate life, that hiring and promotion are conducted on a systematic or scientific basis that allows the most accomplished to rise to their levels of optimal responsibility. Finally, Menkes is a passionate advocate for finding and employing the most talented people, especially those who may have been held back by external assumptions.
Dirty
Dirty
Maran, Meredith
¥84.16
Venturing into uncharted territory, mother and award-winning journalist Meredith Maran takes us inside teenagers' hearts, minds, and central nervous systems to explore the causes and consequences of our nation's drug crisis. In these pages we get to know the kids, the parents, the therapists, and the drug treatment programs at their best and worst. We're face-to-face with seventeen-year-old Mike, whose life revolves around selling, smoking, and snorting speed; fifteen-year-old Tristan -- the boy next door -- who can't get enough pot, pills, or vodka; and sixteen-year-old Zalika, a runaway, crack dealer, and prostitute since the age of twelve. Combining powerful on-the-street reporting and groundbreaking research, Dirty is essential reading for every parent and professional who works with or cares about children or teenagers.
Too Good For Her Own Good
Too Good For Her Own Good
Bepko, Claudia
¥84.16
In the bestselling tradition of The Dance of Anger, a compassionate and insightful guide that shows women how they can learn to feel good about who they are and what they do.
Villa Air-Bel
Villa Air-Bel
Sullivan, Rosemary
¥84.16
France, 1940. The once glittering boulevards of Paris teem with spies, collaborators, and the Gestapo now that France has fallen to Hitler's Wermacht. For André Breton, Max Ernst, Victor Serge, Marc Chagall, Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry, Remedios Varo, Benjamin Péret, and scores of other cultural elite denounced as enemies of the Third Reich, fear and uncertainty define daily life. One wrong glance, one misplaced confidence, could mean arrest, deportation, and death. Their only salvation is the Villa Air-Bel, a ch?teau outside Marseille where a group of young people will go to extraordinary lengths to keep them alive. Financed by the Emergency Rescue Committee, a private American relief organization, unlikely heroes—feisty graduate student Miriam Davenport, Harvard-educated classical scholar Varian Fry, beautiful and compelling heiress Mary Jayne Gold, and brilliant young Socialist and survivor of the Battle of Dunkerque Danny Bénédite and his British wife, Theo—cajole, outwit, and use every means possible to stave off the Nazis and newly installed Vichy government officials circling closer with each passing day. The ch?teau was a vibrant artistic salon, home to lively debates and clandestine affairs, to Sunday art auctions and subversive surrealist games. Relationships within the house were tense and arguments were common, but the will to survive kept the covert operation under wraps. Beyond the ch?teau's luscious fa?ade war raged, yet hope reverberated within its halls. With the aid of their young rescuers, this diverse intelligentsia—intense, brilliant, and utterly terrified—was able to survive one of the darkest chapters of the twentieth century. Villa Air-Bel is a powerfully told, meticulously researched true story. Rosemary Sullivan explores the diaries, memoirs, and letters of the individuals involved while uncovering their private worlds and the web of relationships they developed. Filled with suspense, drama, and intrigue, Villa Air-Bel is an excellent work of narrative nonfiction that delves into a fascinating albeit hidden saga in our recent history.
Alfred and Emily
Alfred and Emily
Lessing, Doris
¥84.16
I think my father's rage at the trenches took me over, when I was very young, and has never left me. Do children feel their parents' emotionsYes, we do, and it is a legacy I could have done without. What is the use of itIt is as if that old war is in my own memory, my own consciousness.In this extraordinary book, the 2007 Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing explores the lives of her parents, each irrevocably damaged by the Great War. Her father wanted the simple life of an English farmer, but shrapnel almost killed him in the trenches, and thereafter he had to wear a wooden leg. Her mother, Emily, spent the war nursing the wounded in the Royal Free Hospital after her great love, a doctor, drowned in the Channel.In the fictional first half of Alfred and Emily, Doris Lessing imagines the happier lives her parents might have made for themselves had there been no war; a story that begins with their meeting at a village cricket match outside Colchester. This is followed by a piercing examination of their relationship as it actually was in the shadow of the Great War, of the family's move to Africa, and of the impact of her parents' marriage on a young woman growing up in a strange land."Here I still am," says Doris Lessing, "trying to get out from under that monstrous legacy, trying to get free." Triumphantly, with the publication of Alfred and Emily, she has done just that.
Why the Best Man for the Job Is a Woman
Why the Best Man for the Job Is a Woman
Wachs Book, Esther
¥84.16
Playing With The Big Boys -- And Beating Them At Their Own Game! From Meg Whitman of eBay to Marcy Carsey of Carsey-Warner and Oxygen Media, today's leading businesswomen show how to make it in the notorious boys' club of corporate America.Gone are the days when men called the shots. More and more women have replaced men or excelled over rivals in male-dominated industries because they possess the qualities of leadership that top firms are seeking today. Esther Wachs Book introduces the new Female Leader and reveals the seven key, and uniquely female, qualities of leadership that are turning the world around -- and allowing more women to achieve success.Filled with compelling insights gleaned from the country's highest-ranking businesswomen, Why the Best Man for the Job Is a Woman reveals how these exceptional women have soared to the top and captures their strategies for success.
Wish You Were Here
Wish You Were Here
Simon, Leslie
¥84.16
A snarky, fact-filled look at the people and places that made the indie/punk scene what it is today The American underground music scene is exploding everywhere not just in New York City and L.A. (although we've got those cities covered too!): In Washington, D.C. . . . Ian MacKaye and Fugazi inspired the straightedge culture, which had kids everywhere drawing black X's on their hands in magic marker. In Omaha, Nebraska . . . A young Conor Oberst, aka Bright Eyes, started writing and performing gut-wrenching love songs at the tender age of thirteen.On Long Island, New York . . . Taking Back Sunday and Brand New battled for emo supremacy and the fragile hearts of a million teenage girls.From the coauthor of the cult-worthy Everybody Hurts: An Essential Guide to Emo Culture comes Wish You Were Here a combination travel guide and tortured history covering everything from what constitutes proper rock critic etiquette in Minneapolis to why pop-punk bands in Chicago have so much suburban angst, to how freegans in the Bay Area can feed themselves on a budget that would make frugal Rachael Ray's face blush.
Bicycles
Bicycles
Giovanni, Nikki
¥84.16
In a career that has earned her accolades, honorary degrees, and awards from both fellow poets and everyday poetry lovers, Nikki Giovanni has established herself as a writer who can entertain and challenge, inform and inspire. Sometimes controversial, sometimes ethereal, but always beautiful, her poems move readers of all hues and generations. With Bicycles, she's collected poems that serve as a companion to her 1997 Love Poems. An instant classic, that book romantic, bold, and erotic expressed notions of love in ways that were delightfully unexpected. In the years that followed, Giovanni experienced losses both public and private. A mother's passing, a sister's, too. A massacre on the campus at which she teaches. And just when it seemed life was spinning out of control, Giovanni redis-covered love what she calls the antidote. Here romantic love and all its manifestations, the physical touch, the emotional pull, the hungry heart is distilled as never before by one of our most talented poets.
Becoming a Tiger
Becoming a Tiger
McCarthy, Susan
¥84.16
From the co author of the New York Times bestseller When Elephants Weep comes a book that uses true stories backed by scientific research to explore the way young animals discover their worlds and learn how to survive. How does a baby animal figure out how to get around in the worldHow much of what animals know is instinctive, and how much must they learnIn Becoming a Tiger, bestselling author Susan McCarthy addresses these intriguing matters, presenting fascinating and funny examples of animal behaviour in the laboratory and in the wild. McCarthy shows us how baby animals transform themselves from clueless kittens, clumsy cubs, or scrawny chicks into efficient predators, successful foragers, or deft nest builders. From geese to mice, dolphins to orang utans, bats to (of course) tigers, McCarthy's warm, amusing, and insightful examinations of animal life and developments provides a surprising window into the mental worlds of our fine fuzzy, furred, finned, and feathered friends. oReaders will be fascinated by a close look at animal intelligence, learning, and family life.
The Kitchen Readings
The Kitchen Readings
Cleverly, Michael
¥84.16
Warning!* This book contains the following:Unsafe use of powerful firearms in combination with explosivesCultivation of illegal crops Impressionable minors being exposed to illicit activitiesPiloting of automobiles under impaired conditionsTransporting large sums of cash across national borders *Stunts performed in this book were undertaken by professionals. Do not attempt them at home.
Out of Bounds
Out of Bounds
Benedict, Jeff
¥84.16
Out of Bounds: Inside the NBA's Culture of Rape, Violence, and Crime is a searing indictment of professional basketball players who live in a world where criminal laws and social norms don't exist, a world where they are given license to act above the law.On the court, they dazzle us with their spectacular physical feats. They generate millions of dollars of revenue for the NBA and their teams. They inspire adulation. But underneath all the glitz, the money, and alley-oops is a seamy underbelly, a rash of lawlessness that is gripping the NBA.Based on a first-of-its-kind investigation into the criminal histories of 177 NBA players from the 2001,2002 season, Out of Bounds shows that an alarming four out of every ten NBA players have a police record involving a serious crime. They are All-Stars and they are journeymen, involved in crimes ranging from armed robbery to domestic violence to gun possession to rape.Out of Bounds takes a hard look at shocking cases, with graphic accounts of physical and sexual violence and other outrageous conduct by players. In all, more than 250 people are named, including many prominent NBA players. It exposes the environment and culture that encourages such criminal behavior. It also explains the unique challenges these cases pose for law-enforcement agencies and prosecutors. And Out of Bounds takes readers inside the hidden yet critically vital role that lawyers, agents, and fame play in insulating criminally accused players from accountability.Author Jeff Benedict, an expert on athletes and crime, draws his conclusions from exhaustive research. In addition to his criminal-background checks, the author retrieved documents from law-enforcement agencies, courts, and private attorneys. He conducted more than 400 interviews with police officers, prosecutors, defense lawyers, players, agents, victims, witnesses, and coaches. What emerges is a disturbing and appalling picture of men who live above the law. A seminal and important work, Out of Bounds will forever change how we look at the NBA and its stars' lives of excess and privilege.
Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day
Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day
Scarborough, Joe
¥84.16
Here's the Real Deal! The same Washington politicians who took control of Congress by promising to balance the federal budget are now bankrupting America by launching the biggest spending spree in the history of the United States.With big-spending Democrats at their side, President George Bush and his "conservative" Republican Congress have controlled the government's checkbook while the national debt has skyrocketed past seven trillion dollars. That's right, $7,000,000,000,000. How has the party of Reagan become the party of big- government spending?Now former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough delivers a scathing indictment of Republicans and Democrats alike in the same informed, hard-hitting, and entertaining style fans of Scarborough Country have come to admire. Having had a ringside seat during his four terms in the House of Representatives, Scarborough gives the inside scoop on how Washington really works and on the spending orgy the Republicans have fueled the last ten years.The story begins with Newt Gingrich's Contract with America and the Republicans promising to balance the budget and reform Washington. It culminates with a Republican president continually rubber-stamping pork-filled appropriations bills that squander taxpayer dollars. That is, unless you think it's necessary to spend millions of dollars on research into "alternative salmon products" in Alaska, or the study of crickets in Utah, or of sea turtles in Hawaii.Sadly, these instances merely hint at the gross spending by Congress.
Second Acts
Second Acts
Pollan, Stephen M.
¥84.16
Second Acts is a guide to reinventing your life. Whether you wish to change careers, move to a more desirable part of the country, start a business, write a novel, or drop everything to pursue a life dream, Stephen Pollan offers a powerful message ofhope and guidance that has benefited his own clients.Through a series of exercises, you will develop a comprehensive "*" for your second act a step-by-step action plan that will lead you to the life you've always wanted.
What Mama Couldn't Tell Us About Love
What Mama Couldn't Tell Us About Love
Richardson, Brenda
¥84.16
"Mama," writes Brenda Richardson, "you taught me how a black woman could survive and prevail in this world...but because you never learned yourself, you couldn't tell me how to make love work...I don't mean any disrespect, Mama, but...now I have children of my own. And in a loud revolutionary voice, I declare to the universe: the pain stops here." Clinical psychologist Dr. Brenda Wade and coauthor Brenda Richardson ask their African American sisters to consider this question: "What lessons about love and intimacy were passed down from your foremothers to you?" In this provocative rethinking of the African American woman's experience, the authors suggest that African American women share an emotional legacy that began when their ancestors were dragged in chains to the "New" World and continued as their descendants suffered through the violence and humiliation of the Jim Crow period and later racism. Indeed, they argue, the long shadow cast by these historical events impacts romantic practice, lives can be transformed once there is a true understanding of the power of inherited beliefs. What Mama Couldn't Tell Us About Love shows how important it is to grieve and make peace with this brutal history. As you will see in this remarkable uplifting book, it is possible to use the positive messages inherent in the African American experience to create a better life. Learn from the "Sisters Spirits"--well-known African Americans whose stories enliven these pages--as you move toward emotional freedom. Listen to the words of the spirituals interspersed in the text, enhance the coping skills and strengths your forebears harnessed to help them survive and prevail, and believe that emotional emancipation is your birthright. Mama may not have told you all this in so many words--but there is no doubt that she would want to see you take these last steps toward freedom and abundant love.
What's Next: The Experts' Guide
What's Next: The Experts' Guide
Buckingham, Jane
¥84.16
The author of The Modern Girl's Guide to Life asks fifty experts, artists, business leaders, trendsetters, doctors, athletes, environmentalists, and intellectualsWhat will the next decade look likeWhere are we headedThat is the question professional trendspotter Jane Buckingham posed to fifty influential leaders in a wide variety of fields and their responses are surprising, provocative, compelling, and important. The result of her conversations with some of the most fascinating men and women in America today, What's Next is an essential collection of highly individual perspectives on tomorrow's world, including: Our world is changing faster than ever. The essential insights offered in What's Next can help us keep up and stay ahead.Acclaimed writer Reza Aslan's belief that American Islam may become the model for Islam throughout the rest of the worldAttorney Alan Dershowitz's views on the very scientific future of criminal defense lawCampaign adviser Joe Trippi's thoughts on how politics will be turned upside down . . . and more Our world is changing faster than ever. The essential insights offered in What's Next can help us keep up and stay ahead.
Growing Up Chicana/o
Growing Up Chicana/o
Adler, Bill
¥84.16
What Does It Mean To Grow Up Chicana/o?When I was growing up, I never read anything in school by anyone who had a "Z" in their last name. This anthology is, in many ways, a public gift to that child who was always searching for herself whithin the pages of a book.from the Introduction by Tiffany Ana LopezLouie The Foot Gonzalez tells of an eighty-nine-year-old woman with only one tooth who did strange and magical healings...Her name was Dona Tona and she was never taken seriously until someone got sick and sent for her. She'd always show up, even if she had to drag herself, and she stayed as long as needed. Dona Tona didn't seem to mind that after she had helped them, they ridiculed her ways.Rosa Elena Yzquierdo remembers when homemade tortillas and homespun wisdom went hand-in-hand...As children we watched our abuelas lovingly make tortillas. In my own grandmother's kitchen, it was an opportunity for me to ask questions within the safety of that warm room...and the conversation carried resonance far beyond the kitchen...Sandra Cisneros remembers growing up in Chicago...Teachers thought if you were poor and Mexican you didn't have anything to say. Now I know, "We've got to tell our own history...making communication happen between cultures."
The Weight of a Mustard Seed
The Weight of a Mustard Seed
Steavenson, Wendell
¥84.16
General Kamel Sachet was a favorite of Saddam Hussein's, a hero of the Iran-Iraq war, head of the army in Kuwait City during Desert Storm, governor of the province of Maysan, and father of nine children. When author Wendell Steavenson became intrigued by his story, she began with a few questions about Sachet and his fellow Baathist loyalists: "Why had they served such a regimeHow had they accommodated their own moralityHow had they livedHow had they lived with themselves?" Her journey to find these answers took five years, and an accumulation of facts, opinions, fears, confessions and suspicions from Sachet's family, friends, and enemies. The result is not just a gripping account of one man's rise and fall, but a vivid and compassionate portrayal of the Iraqi people.As Sachet rose from policeman to Special Forces officer and then General, he made more and more sacrifices to remain in Saddam's good favor. Steadfast in his loyalty to God and his President, Sachet attended military executions and endured his own imprisonment as Saddam's behavior took increasingly paranoiac and power-crazy turns. But when it came time for Sachet's sons to do their military service, he refused to let them join the "criminal" organization to which he had given his life. Kamel Sachet realized, too late, that he'd become a participant in the terror regime that had strangled his county and destroyed its people. Through his story and the stories of those around him, Wendell Steavenson shows the choices Iraqis have had to make between exile and collaboration, God and jihad. Here are the Iraqis behind the headlines and the tragedy begotten of unintended consequences. And here is the first full-length narrative from an immensely talented journalist who has already been compared by critics to Bruce Chatwin and Ryszard Kapucinksi.
My Fathers' Houses
My Fathers' Houses
Roberts, Steven V.
¥84.16
From Steven V. Roberts comes My Fathers' Houses, a memoir of growing up in Bayonne, New Jersey, an immigrant community in the shadow of the Statue if Liberty, and the story of how his father and his grandfather's dreams and their own passion for writing and ideas influenced Steven's future, and inspired him to seek his fortune in New York City, the media capital of the world. This is a story of a town and a time and a boy who grew up there, a boy who became a New York Times correspondent, TV and radio personality, and best selling author. The town was Bayonne, New Jersey, a European village so close to New York that Steve could see the Statue of Liberty from his bedroom window. The time was the forties and fifties, when children of immigrants were striving to become American and find a place in a booming post war world. The core of Steve's world was one block, where he lived in a house his grandfather, Harry Schanbam, had built with his own hands. But the story starts back in Russia, where the family business of writing and ideas began. Steve's other grandfather, Abraham Rogowsky, stole money to become a Zionist pioneer in Palestine before moving to America. The tale continues through the Depression, when Steve's parents lived one block apart in Bayonne, wrote letters to each other and married in secret. During the war years, Steve's father wrote children's books and based one of his best sellers on outings he took with his twin sons to the local train station. As his byline, he used his boys' middle names Jeffrey Victor so Steve got his first writing credit before he was two. The story concludes with the boy leaving Bayonne, going on to Harvard, meeting the Catholic girl who became his wife, and starting work at the New York Times across the river, and worlds away, from where he began. Now a grandfather of five, Steve Roberts looks in the mirror and sees his own father and grandfather looking back at him–a family chain that started in 19th century Russia and thrives today in 21st century America.