Divorced, alone, and unexpectedly unemployed, Sylvia Landsman flees to Italy, where she meets Henry, a wistful, married, middle-aged expatriate. Taking off on a grand tour of Europe bankrolled with his wife's money, Henry and Sylvia follow a circuitous route around the continent—as Sylvia entertains Henry with stories of her peculiar family and her damaged friends, of dead ducks and Alma Mahler. Her narrative is a tapestry of remembrances and regrets...and her secret shame: a small, cowardly sin of omission. Yet when the opportunity arises for Sylvia and Henry to do something small but brave, the refrain "if only" returns to haunt her, leaving Sylvia with one more story of love lived and lost.

One of the most admired and honored of our contemporary literary artists, author John Crowley now brilliantly re-creates a time in America when ordinary people were asked to sacrifice their comforts and uproot their lives for the cause of freedom.In the early years of the 1940s, as the nation's young men ship off to war, the call goes out for builders of the machinery necessary to defeat the enemy. To this purpose, a city has sprung up seemingly overnight in the windswept fields of Oklahoma: the Van Damme airplane factory, a gargantuan complex dedicated to the construction of the B-30 Pax, the largest bomber ever built. Laborers—some men, but mostly women, many of whom have never operated a rivet gun or held a screwdriver—flock to this place, eager to earn, to grow, to do their part. Many are away from home for the very first time, enticed by the opportunity to be something more than wife and homemaker. In the middle of nowhere they will live, work, and earn their own money, fearing for the safety of their absent fighting men as the world around them changes forever.Vi, with her gun of a pitching arm, finds Van Damme after fleeing a dying ranch and a stubborn, broken father to chase a future built on something stronger than poison earth. Connie, once fragile and helpless, follows an unfaithful husband here with their little boy in tow—and inadvertently discovers who she is and what she's capable of achieving. Before Diane can enter the factory's gates, the restless young woman must leave behind the hot music and soldier boys she followed, taking a sudden, bold, and dangerous step in pursuit of something different, adult, and real.Their journeys will be liberating in ways they couldn't imagine, and will lead each of them to Prosper Olander. Disabled, an artist, a forger, a friend—a surprising lover and compassionate listener—Prosper has followed unlikely opportunity down a painfully twisting path to take his place as the true heart and soul of a temporary city. And before the B-30 Pax takes flight, he will change the lives of four women in profound and unexpected ways.Destined to stand tall among his previous acclaimed fiction—including Little, Big; The ?gypt Cycle; The Translator; and Lord Byron's Novel—John Crowley's Four Freedoms is perhaps his most heartfelt and compelling novel to date. It is a moving, evocative, and unforgettable saga of wives, mothers, and lovers—of strangers, outcasts, and damaged Quixotes—who, unmoored by conflict's unpredictable tides, find community, purpose, identity, independence . . . and one remarkable man who will touch them all.

There are times when a tree can no longer withstand the pain inflicted on it, and the wind will take pity on that tree and topple it over in a mighty storm. All the other trees who witnessed the evil look down upon the fallen tree with envy. They pray for the day when a wind will end their suffering. I pray for the day when God will end mine. In a time and place without moral conscience, fourteen-year-old Ansel knows what is right and what is true. But it is dangerous to choose honesty, and so he chooses silence. Now an innocent man is dead, and Ansel feels the burden of his decision. He must also bear the pain of losing a friend, his family, and the love of a lifetime. Coretta Scott King Award winner and Newbery Honoree Julius Lester delivers a haunting and poignant novel about what happens when one group of people takes away the humanity of another.

From Roger Rosenblatt, author of the bestsellers Making Toast and Unless It Moves the Human Heart, comes a moving meditation on the passages of grief, the solace of solitude, and the redemptive power of love In Making Toast, Roger Rosenblatt shared the story of his family in the days and months after the death of his thirty-eight-year-old daughter, Amy. Now, in Kayak Morning, he offers a personal meditation on grief itself. “Everybody grieves,” he writes. From that terse, melancholy observation emerges a work of art that addresses the universal experience of loss. On a quiet Sunday morning, two and a half years after Amy’s death, Roger heads out in his kayak. He observes,“You can’t always make your way in the world by moving up. Or down, for that matter. Boats move laterally on water, which levels everything. It is one of the two great levelers.” Part elegy, part quest, Kayak Morning explores Roger’s years as a journalist, the comforts of literature, and the value of solitude, poignantly reminding us that grief is not apart from life but encompasses it. In recalling to us what we have lost, grief by necessity resurrects what we have had.

On the morning of William Howard Taft's inauguration, Nellie Taft publicly expressed that theirs would be a joint presidency by shattering precedent and demanding that she ride alongside her husband down Pennsylvania Avenue, a tradition previously held for the outgoing president. In an era before Eleanor Roosevelt, this progressive First Lady was an advocate for higher education and partial suffrage for women, and initiated legislation to improve working conditions for federal employees. She smoked, drank, and gambled without regard to societal judgment, and she freely broke racial and class boundaries.Drawing from previously unpublished diaries, a lifetime of love letters between Will and Nellie, and detailed family correspondence and recollections, critically acclaimed presidential family historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony develops a riveting portrait of Nellie Taft as one of the strongest links in the series of women -- from Abigail Adams to Hillary Rodham Clinton -- often critically declared "copresidents."

Sad music moves us like nothing else, and despite its gloomy nature it also has the curious power to make us happy. In This Will End in Tears: The Miserabilist Guide to Music, author Adam Brent Houghtaling explains why, while offering up a compendium of history's masters of melancholy and the greatest sad songs of all time, featuring artists across genres and through time from torch songs to country weepers to emo classics. Loaded with recommended playlists and insights into our favorite sob songs, This Will End in Tears is a fascinating immersion into the "miserabilist" genre, a musical marker with increasing resonance.

Finally, a book that takes on the actual root cause of all failure: the hippie inside us all. In this delightfully sarcastic self-help book, Frank J. Fleming reveals that you don't achieve true improvement through slogans or positive thinking; you achieve it only by punching your inner hippie as hard and as often as possible. Fleming helps you understand the enemy inside you and explains that hippies didn't arise just in the '60s but have been ruining civilizations since the dawn of time, as they will do to the United States if they are not stopped. He reveals the symptoms of hippie-ism laziness, dependence, whining, and protesting so you can gauge the strength of your own inner hippie. And, most important, he explains that there is but one way to deal with that annoying loser who keeps each of us from realizing our full potential: a punch right to his stupid face.Do you doubt this is possibleThat's your inner hippie talking. It's time to shut him up.

From an inside peek at the inner workings of Hollywood to the backstage drama of Broadway, from a poignant look at the black upper class to an honest look at the WASP elite, this elegantly wrought memoir of an extraordinary family has something for everyone.Growing up with a black Auntie Mame-like mother (who performed with the likes of Lena Horne) and an Anglo sea-faring father, Susan Fales-Hill moved seamlessly between many worlds. But it was from her mother -- a woman who was dressed by Givenchy and sculpted by Alexander Calder, yet rejected by many a casting agent for her "dark," unconventional looks -- that Susan drew inspiration, particularly when she faced challenges in her own career as a television writer in Hollywood, a town that wasn't always receptive to positive images of people of color. As a result the two developed a bond that mothers and daughters everywhere will find inspiring. Both a universally touching mother-daughter story and a portrait of a dazzling American family, Always Wear Joy is a memoir readers won't soon forget.

The extraordinary personal journey of a man who, against all odds, rose to become one of America’s most surprising and promising new political figures Scott Brown's greatest win did not occur on a cold January election night in 2010 when he came from behind to capture the U.S. Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy for nearly fifty years. It began when he survived a savage beating at the drunken, dirty-fingernail hands of a stepfather when he was barely six years old, while trying to protect his mother.In this gripping memoir of resilience and redemption, Brown tells the story of his difficult, often nomadic childhood, shunted from house to apartment, and town to town, seventeen times over his first eighteen years. He somehow thrived despite a largely absent father, who married four separate times. So did his mother, in relationships frequently stained with alcohol, anger, and even violence. For nearly two decades' growing up, Brown endured innumerable hardships and challenges, even stealing food to eat. He was periodically sent off to live with relatives, his possessions wrapped in a few old blankets. Saved by basketball, he was the boy who shoveled snow from the public courts to shoot hoops alone in the frozen cold.With clear-eyed conviction and unflinching can-dor, Brown tells the story of his own bad-boy days, of the coaches who mentored him, and of how he found a way out of familial chaos through the swish of a ball in the net, winning a starting slot on the Tufts varsity basketball team as a freshman player and becoming the tenth-highest scorer to graduate in the school's history. His rise from there was even more improbable: a first-year law student and member of the Massachusetts National Guard, he was picked as Cosmopolitan magazine's "America's Sexiest Man" and was vaulted into the glamorous world of New York modeling at the height of the 1980s. But the man who was once ushered into the backrooms of Studio 54 returned to Massachusetts to continue with his military and legal training, settle down, raise a family, and soon found an unlikely path that would lead him to national political stardom. Here, too, are the secrets from the unprecedented Senate race that captured the country's imagination and how Scott Brown won his remarkable victory.Poignant, heartfelt, humorous, and profound, this is the story of one man's dream and his determination to fight for a better future.

Acclaimed historian and award-winning author Simon Schama offers an essential historical perspective on the crucial 2008 presidential election and its importance for reclaiming America's original ideal. It's not business as usual. Cultural hostilities more irreconcilable than any since the Civil War have divided America in two. In November 2008, the American people elected a new president, feeling more anxious about the future of the nation than at any time since Watergate. Our omnipotent military, the cornucopia of material comforts available, the security of our borders, and the global economy can no longer be taken for granted.In The American Future, historian Simon Schama takes a long look at the multiple crises besetting the United States and asks how these problems look in the mirror of time. In four crucial debates on wars, religion, race and immigration, and the relationship between natural resources and prosperity Schama looks back to see more clearly into the future. Full of lost insights, The American Future showcases Schama's acclaimed gift for storytelling, ensuring these voices will be heard again.

The acclaimed and wildly outlandish inside account of England’s most notorious music club, The Hacienda, from Peter Hook, the New York Times bestselling author of Unknown Pleasures and co-founder of Joy Division and New Order—a story of music, gangsters, drugs, and violence, available for the first time in the United States. During the 1980s, The Hacienda would become one of the most famous venues in the history of clubbing—a celebrated cultural watershed alongside Studio 54, CBGBS, and The Whiskey—until its tragic demise. Founded by New Order and Factory Records, The Hacienda hosted gigs by such legendary acts as the Stone Roses, the Smiths, Bauhaus, Grandmaster Flash, Run DMC, Kurtis Blow, and Happy Mondays; gave birth to the “Madchester” scene; became the cathedral for acid house; and laid the tracks for rave culture and today’s electronic dance music. But over the course of its fifteen-year run, “Madchester” descended into “Gunchester” as gangs, drugs, greed, and a hostile police force decimated the dream. Told in Hook’s uproarious and uncompromising voice, The Hacienda is a funny, horrifying, and outlandish story of success, idealism, na?veté, and greed—of an incredible time and place that would change the face and sound of modern music. The Hacienda includes 32 photographs in 16-page four-color insert.

For many, Kim Gordon, vocalist, bassist and founding member of Sonic Youth, has always been the epitome of cool. Sonic Youth is one of the most influential and successful bands to emerge from the post-punk New York scene, and their legacy continues to loom large over the landscape of indie rock and American pop culture. Almost as celebrated as the band's defiantly dissonant sound was the marriage between Gordon and her husband, fellow Sonic Youth founder and lead guitarist Thurston Moore. So when Matador Records released a statement in the fall of 2011 announcing that after twenty-seven years the two were splitting, fans were devastated. In the middle of a crazy world, they'd seemed so solid. What did this meanWhat comes nextWhat came before?In Girl in a Band, the famously reserved superstar speaks candidly about her past and the future. From her childhood in the sunbaked suburbs of Southern California, growing up with a mentally ill sibling who often sapped her family of emotional capital, to New York's downtown art and music scene in the eighties and nineties and the birth of a band that would pave the way for acts like Nirvana, as well as help inspire the Riot Grrl generation, here is an edgy and evocative portrait of a life in art. Exploring the artists, musicians, and writers who influenced Gordon, and the relationship that defined her life for so long, Girl in a Band is filled with the sights and sounds of a pre-Internet world and is a deeply personal portrait of a woman who has become an icon.

Every place has its history. But what is it about New Orleans that makes it more than just the sum of the events that have happened thereWhat is it about the spirit of the people who live there that could produce a music, a cuisine, an architecture, a total environment, the mere mention of which can bring a smile to the face of someone who has never even set foot there?What is the meaning of a place like that, and what is lost if it is lostThe winds of Hurricane Katrina, and the national disaster that followed, brought with them a moment of shared cultural awareness: Thousands were killed and many more displaced; promises were made, forgotten, and renewed; the city of New Orleans was engulfed by floodwaters of biblical proportions all in a wrenching drama that captured international attention. Yet the passing of that moment has left too many questions.What will become of New Orleans in the months and years to comeWhat of its people, who fled the city on a rising tide of panic, trading all they knew and loved for a dim hope of shelter and restAnd, ultimately, what do those people and their city mean to America and the world?In Why New Orleans Matters, award-winning author and New Orleans resident Tom Piazza illuminates the storied culture and uncertain future of this great and most neglected of American cities. With wisdom and affection, he explores the hidden contours of familiar traditions like Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest, and evokes the sensory rapture of the city that gave us jazz music and Creole cooking. He writes, too, of the city's deep undercurrents of corruption, racism, and injustice, and of how its people endure and transcend those conditions. And, perhaps most important, he asks us all to consider the spirit of this place and all the things it has shared with the world grace and beauty, resilience and soul. "That spirit is in terrible jeopardy right now," he writes. "If it dies, something precious and profound will go out of the world forever."Why New Orleans Matters is a gift from one of our most talented writers to the beloved and important city he calls home and to a nation to whom that city's survival has been entrusted.

What is the most polarizing and important youth movement since Hip-HopTweeWhat?!Artisanal chocolate. Mustaches. Locally sourced vegetables. Etsy. Birds.Flea markets. Cult films. Horn-rimmed glasses.What do all of these icons have in commonThey are signifiers that author Marc Spitz groups as falling under the umbrella of Twee, a powerful, expansive youth movement that has colored popular culture in surprising ways.In the same way that Douglas Coupland branded Generation X with his groundbreaking novel, Spitz gives name to a sensibility that prizes kindness over irony, encourages obsessive fandom and collection culture, supports a hunger for purity of craft, and, most important, strives for the preservation of the innocence of childhood. As a result, Twee is divisive, and Spitz shows that there is a tribe of people who fiercely self-identify while others simply cringe.Twee features exclusive interviews plus in-depth research on Twee touchstones past and present, including Walt Disney, James Dean, J. D. Salinger, Sylvia Plath, Dr. Seuss, Truman Capote, Maurice Sendak, Edward Gorey, Jean Seberg, the Kinks, Judy Blume, Nick Drake, Jonathan Richman, Beat Happening, the Smiths, They Might Be Giants, Nirvana, Belle and Sebastian, Wes Anderson, Pitchfork, This American Life, McSweeney's, mumblecore, Vampire Weekend, Sufjan Stevens, Miranda July, Tavi Gevinson, Lena Dunham, Portlandia, and Zooey Deschanel.Expansive, engaging, and festooned with more than enough kittens, this is the first definitive history of Twee.

It is the richest, most influential, most powerful university in the world, but at the beginning of 2001, Harvard was in crisis. Students complained that a Harvard education had grown mediocre. Professors charged that the university cared more about money than about learning. Harvard may have possessed a $19 billion endowment, but had it lost its soul?The members of Harvard's governing board knew that they had to act. And so they made a bold pick for Harvard's twenty-seventh president: former Treasury Secretary and intellectual prodigy economist Lawrence Summers.Although famously brilliant, Summers was a high-stakes gamble. In the 1990s he had crafted American policies to stabilize the global economy, quietly becoming one of the world's most powerful men. But while many admired Summers, his critics called him elitist, imperialist, and arrogant beyond measure.Today Larry Summers sits atop a university in a state of upheaval, unsure of what it stands for and where it is going. At stake is not just the future of Harvard University but also the way in which Harvard students see the world -- and the manner in which they lead it. Written despite the university's official opposition, Harvard Rules uncovers what really goes on behind Harvard's storied walls -- the politics, sex, ambition, infighting, and intrigue that run rampant within the world's most important university.

The unflinching true account of a teenage girl's descent into society's underbelly -- and her mother's desperate and ultimately successful attempts to bring her back.How does an honor student at one of Los Angeles's finest prep schools -- a bright, beautiful girl from a loving home -- trade school uniforms and afternoons at the beach for shooting up in the back of a van in rural IndianaHow does her devoted mother emerge from the shock of finding that her daughter has not only disappeared but had been living a secret life for more than a year?Mother and daughter tell their parallel stories in mesmerizing first-person accounts. Claire Fontaine's story is a parent's worst nightmare, a cautionary tale chronicling her daughter Mia's drug-fueled manipulation of everyone around her as she sought refuge in the seedy underworld of criminals and heroin addicts, the painful childhood secrets that led up to it, and the healing that followed. Her search for Mia was brutal for both mother and daughter, a dizzying series of dead ends, incredible coincidences and, at times, miracles. Ultimately, Mia was forced into harsh-but-loving boot camp schools on two continents while Claire entered a painful but life-changing program of her own. Mia's story includes the jarring culture shock of the extreme and controversial behavior modification school she was in for nearly two years, which helped her overcome depression and self-hatred to emerge a powerful young woman with self-esteem and courage. An unforgettable story of love and transformation, Come Back is a heart-wrenching and humorous portrayal of the primal bond between mother and daughter that will resonate with women everywhere.

Joan Crawford was one of the most incandescent film stars of all time, yet she was also one of the most misunderstood. In this brilliantlyresearched, thoughtful, and intimate biography, bestselling author Donald Spoto goes beyond the popular caricature the abusive, unstable mother portrayed in her adopted daughter Christina Crawford's memoir, Mommie Dearest to give us a three-dimensional portrait of a very human woman, her dazzling career, and her extraordinarily dramatic life and times.Based on new archival information and exclusive interviews, and written with Spoto's keen eye for detail, Possessed offers a fascinating portrait of a courageous, highly sexed, and ambitious womanwhose strength and drive made her a forerunner in the fledgling film business. From her hardscrabble childhood in Texas to her early days as a dancer in post World War I New York to her rise to stardom,Spoto traces Crawford's fifty years of memorable performances in classics like Rain, The Women, Mildred Pierce, and Sudden Fear, which are as startling and vivid today as when they were filmed.In Possessed, Spoto goes behind the myths to examine the rise and fall of the studio system; Crawford's four marriages; her passionate thirty year, on-and-off-again affair with Clark Gable; her friendships and rivalries with other stars; her powerful desire to become a mother; the truth behind the scathing stories in her daughter Christina's memoir; and her final years as a widow battling cancer. Spoto explores Crawford's achievements as an actress, her work with Hollywood's great directors (Frank Borzage, George Cukor, Otto Preminger) and actors (Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Spencer Tracy, John Barrymore), and later, her role as a highly effective executive on the board of directors of Pepsi-Cola.Illuminating and entertaining, Possessed is the definitive biography of this remarkable woman and true legend of film.

He is the biggest pay-per-view attraction in the world. He is "the Baddest Dude on the Planet." He is Brock Lesnar.For countless fans of professional wrestling and mixed martial arts, Brock Lesnar has long been known for his freakish athleticism, mind-blowing speed, and meteoric rise to the top. Yet despite the fame and fortune that have come with his enormous success, Brock has shunned the media, choosing instead to remain intensely private about his life and his accomplishments. Now, for the first time, he tells his remarkable story in his own words, describing the journey from his South Dakota farmboy roots to becoming the most popular pay-per-view attraction in the world. From the small-town amateur wrestling where he honed his skills to taking on The Rock at SummerSlam, Brock discusses how his natural athletic talent combined with the dark side of the wrestling business to make him the youngest-ever WWE World Champion. Epic as it was, Brock's overnight rise to fame came with a price, as he saw firsthand the toll that life on the road and in the ring could take on a pro wrestler's body and mind. Weary of the punishing lifestyle and backstabbing politics, he chose to do the unthinkable: walk away from professional wrestling at the peak of his career and break all ties with the organization that made him a star on the global stage. It was a move that stunned WWE executives and fans alike, and one that Brock himself has never fully explained until now.Not one to stay quiet for long, Brock was soon back in the spotlight: this time in the UFC home of the most dangerous mixed martial arts fighters in the world. Here he offers a behind-the-scenes look at his shocking decision to leave the wrestling entertainment business for a legitimate combat sport. From training to be a real fighter, to immediately being thrown into the Octagon against the UFC's best heavyweights, to the psychology behind his legendary trash-talking, Brock opens up about what it takes not only to succeed in the world's fastest-growing sport but to become the Undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the World. He also speaks candidly about the illness that nearly killed him, how it changed him as a fighter and a man, and how it shaped his will to survive. In the end, Brock holds nothing back. A revealing, raw, and ultimately redemptive tale of Brock's determination and domination, DeathClutch is the untold true story of becoming one of life's true champions.

Fans of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass will love Anne Nesbet’s middle-grade fantasy A Box of Gargoyles.?In this sequel to The Cabinet of Earths, twelve-year-old Maya is feeling more at home in Paris, a city filled with old magic. Her little brother, James, is safe, and the terrible man with purple eyes is gone. At least Maya believed he was until a person-sized column of dust and leaves with hints of purple where its eyes should be begins following her.?Maya suspects the strange, shadowy column is what’s left of the purple-eyed man, and that it—he—is behind the eerie changes in Paris, including the appearance of flying, talking stone gargoyles. She’s right. Worse, he has bound Maya to make him whole again, even if it kills her.

Readers of Kate DiCamillo and Sheila Turnage will love Moonpenny Island, a middle grade novel of friendship and secrets by the beloved and acclaimed Tricia Springstubb.Moonpenny is a tiny island in a great lake. When the summer people leave and the ferries stop running, just the tried-and-true islanders are left behind. Flor and her best, her perfect friend, Sylvie, are the only eleven-year-olds for miles and miles—and Flor couldn't be happier. But come the end of summer, unthinkable things begin to happen. Sylvie is suddenly, mysteriously, whisked away to school on the mainland. Flor's mother leaves to take care of Flor's sick grandmother and doesn't come back. Her big sister has a secret, and Flor fears it's a dangerous one.Meanwhile, a geologist and his peculiar daughter arrive to excavate prehistoric trilobites, one of the first creatures to develop sight. Soon Flor is helping them. As her own ability to see her life on this little lump of limestone evolves, she faces truths about those she loves—and about herself—she never imagined.

Maisie Holt. This is her book.It's an old house, one her family plans to stay in for only a short while; but for Hannah Price, secrets soon come creeping out of every corner of Cowleigh Lodge.First there's the old and dusty book of children's fairy tales that belonged to a young girl named Maisie. Hannah learns that the girl died mysteriously at age eleven in this very house nearly 140 years ago.Then, when Hannah draws a portrait of Maisie, things begin to fall apart. The house seems to be reverting to its nineteenth-century form, and Hannah's not sure whether it or Maisie herself is sending her messages. Hannah must solve the mystery of Maisie's death, because if she doesn't help her, Maisie may never leave Hannah alone. . . . Rebecca Wade has created a haunting story that will capture readers' imaginations until the very last page.