-Titulo Original : Dark Matter: A Novel-Fabricante : Crow...

-Titulo Original : Quiet: The Power Of Introverts In A World That Cant Stop Talking-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: BESTSELLER • Experience the book that started the Quiet Movement • • • • • At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society.   In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts—from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves...

-Titulo Original : Becoming-Fabricante : Crow...

-Titulo Original : Recursion: A Novel-Fabricante : Crow...

-Titulo Original : The Lost Causes Of Bleak Creek: A Novel-Fabricante : Crow...

-Titulo Original : A Promised Land-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making—from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times • NPR • The Guardian • Marie Claire In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil. Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation’s highest office. Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune’s Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden. A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective—the story of one man’s bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of “hope and change,” and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible. This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama’s conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day...

-Titulo Original : Greenlights-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Over one million copies sold! From the Academy Award®–winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE GUARDIAN “Unflinchingly honest and remarkably candid, Matthew McConaughey’s book invites us to grapple with the lessons of his life as he did—and to see that the point was never to win, but to understand.”—Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck I’ve been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me. Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life’s challenges—how to get relative with the inevitable—you can enjoy a state of success I call “catching greenlights.” So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops. Hopefully, it’s medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot’s license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears. It’s a love letter. To life. It’s also a guide to catching more greenlights—and to realizing that the yellows and reds eventually turn green too. Good luck. The short dust jacket included with this hardcover edition is an intentional design choice...

-Titulo Original : Forgetting: The Benefits Of Not Remembering-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: Product Description Fascinating and useful . . . The distinguished memory researcher Scott A. Small explains why forgetfulness is not only normal but also beneficial. Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of The Code Breaker and Leonardo da Vinci Who wouldn t want a better memory? Dr. Scott Small has dedicated his career to understanding why memory forsakes us. As director of the Alzheimer s Disease Research Center at Columbia University, he focuses largely on patients who experience pathological forgetting, and it is in contrast to their suffering that normal forgetting, which we experience every day, appears in sharp relief. Until recently, most everyone memory scientists included believed that forgetting served no purpose. But new research in psychology, neurobiology, medicine, and computer science tells a different story. Forgetting is not a failure of our minds. It s not even a benign glitch. It is, in fact, good for us and, alongside memory, it is a required function for our minds to work best. Forgetting benefits our cognitive and creative abilities, emotional well-being, and even our personal and societal health. As frustrating as a typical lapse can be, it s precisely what opens up our minds to making better decisions, experiencing joy and relationships, and flourishing artistically. From studies of bonobos in the wild to visits with the iconic painter Jasper Johns and the renowned decision-making expert Daniel Kahneman, Small looks across disciplines to put new scientific findings into illuminating context while also revealing groundbreaking developments about Alzheimer s disease. The next time you forget where you left your keys, remember that a little forgetting does a lot of good. Review Upbeat . . . Dr. Small is convincing on the value of forgetting (and also of sleep). The Wall Street Journal Eye-opening . . . accessible with an easygoing prose. Publishers Weekly In his clear-worded and compassionate book, Scott Small translates the current science of memory for the general reader and explains why the onset of forgetting may be benign or even helpful rather than the beginning of a tragedy. Forgetting is a welcome addition to the literature on human memory at a time of both solitude and hope. Antonio Damasio, author of The Strange Order of Things Scott Small has written a book that will calm the fears of anyone who has mislaid a pair of glasses or couldn t remember the name of an acquaintance and worried they were suffering from incipient memory loss. Forgetting is the work of an accomplished neuroscientist who follows in the tradition of Oliver Sacks, illuminating the mysteries of the brain with personal stories and lively, accessible writing as he makes the case that not remembering is a crucial biological function rather than the inevitable prelude to dementia. Sue Halpern, author of A Dog Walks into a Nursing HomeThis book is both fascinating and useful. The distinguished memory researcher Scott Small explains why forgetfulness is not just normal but beneficial. By allowing us to see the forest as well as the trees, forgetting promotes creativity and pattern recognition. This readable book will help you understand how the right mix of forgetting and memory allows you and our whole society to be emotionally healthy.­­ Walter Isaacson, bestselling author of Leonardo Da Vinci and Steve Jobs About the Author Scott A. Small is a physician specializing in aging and dementia and a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University, where he is the director of the Alzheimer s Disease Research Center. He has run a National Institutes of Health–funded laboratory for over twenty years and has published more than 140 studies on memory function and malfunction, research that has been covered by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Time. His insight into Alzheimer s disease recently led to the formation of Retromer Therapeutics, a new biotechnology compan...

-Titulo Original : The Whiteness Of Wealth: How The Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans--and How We Can Fix It-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: Mañana en la batalla piensa en mi nos habla sobre el ocultamiento y el olvido, y sobre el engaño, que quiza ;es nuestra condicion natural;Victor Frances, un escritor frustrado que presta su pluma a otros, es invitado a cenar a casa de Marta Tellez, una hermosa mujer casada a la que apenas conoce y cuyo marido esta de viaje en Londres. La noche promete pero, antes de poder consumar el adulterio, Marta comienza a sentirse mal y muere. Victor huye entonces de esa casa ajena, dejando a un niño de dos años durmiendo en una de las habitaciones y a una mujer muerta. Su reaccion y esa infidelidad no consumada lo obsesionaran. En un Madrid invernal y nocturno, el narrador se convertira desde ese momento en una sombra que finge ser quien no es, que disimula sus intenciones, que no quiere ni busca nada pero sin embargo encuentra. Y entretanto una maldicion va resonando: Mañana en la batalla piensa en mi, y ca Review Deslumbrante... Javier Marias escribe con elegancia, con ingenio y con suspense magistral. - The Times Literary Supplement About the Author Javier Marias nacio en Madrid en 1951. Es autor de las novelas Los dominios del lobo, Travesia del horizonte, El monarca del tiempo, El siglo, El hombre sentimental, Todas las almas, Corazon tan blanco, Mañana en la batalla piensa en mi, Negra espalda del tiempo, Tu rostro mañana: Fiebre y lanza y Tu rostro mañana: Baile y sueño, entre otros muchos relatos, ensayos, antologias y traducciones. Ha recibido numerosos premios, entre los que cabe destacar el Premio Internazionale Ennio Flaiano, el IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, el Premio Internacional Romulo Gallegos, el Premio de la Critica y el Prix Femina Étranger. Fue profesor en la Universidad de Oxford y en la Complutense de Madrid. Sus obras se han traducido a treinta y cuatro lenguas y se han publicado en cuarenta y cuatro paises. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Nadie piensa nunca que pueda ir a encontrarse con una muerta entre los brazos y que ya no vera mas su rostro cuyo nombre recuerda. Nadie piensa nunca que nadie vaya a morir en el momento mas inadecuado a pesar de que eso sucede todo el tiempo, y creemos que nadie que no este previsto habra de morir junto a nosotros. Muchas veces se ocultan los hechos o las circunstancias: a los vivos y al que se muere -si tiene tiempo de darse cuenta- les averguenza a menudo la forma de la muerte posible y sus apariencias, tambien la causa. Una indigestion de marisco, un cigarrillo encendido al entrar en el sueño que prende las sabanas, o aun peor, la lana de una manta; un resbalon en la ducha -la nuca- y el pestillo echado del cuarto de baño, un rayo que parte un arbol en una gran avenida y ese arbol que al caer aplasta o siega la cabeza de un transeunte, quiza un extranjero; morir en calcetines, o en la peluqueria con un gran babero, en un prostibulo o en el dentista; o comiendo pescado y atravesado por una espina, morir atragantado como los niños cuya madre no esta para meterles un dedo y salvarlos; morir a medio afeitar, con una mejilla llena de espuma y la barba ya desigual hasta el fin de los tiempos si nadie repara en ello y por piedad estetica termina el trabajo; por no mencionar los momentos mas innobles de la existencia, los mas reconditos, de los que nunca se habla fuera de la adolescencia porque fuera de ella no hay pretexto, aunque tambien hay quienes los airean por hacer una gracia que jamas tiene gracia. Pero esa es una muerte horrible, se dice de algunas muertes; pero esa es una muerte ridicula, se dice tambien, entre carcajadas. Las carcajadas vienen porque se habla de un enemigo por fin extinto o de alguien remoto, alguien que nos hizo afrenta o que habita en el pasado desde hace mucho, un emperador romano, un tatarabuelo, o bien alguien poderoso en cuya muerte grotesca se ve solo la justicia aun vital, aun humana, que en el fondo deseariamos para todo el mundo, incluidos nosotros. Como ...

-Titulo Original : Stolen Focus Why You Cant Pay Attention--and How To Think Deeply Again-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: Our ability to pay attention is collapsing. From the New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections comes a groundbreaking examination of why this is happening-and how to get our attention back.“The book the world needs in order to win the war on distraction.”-Adam Grant, author of Think Again “Read this book to save your mind.”-Susan Cain, author of Quiet In the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions-even abandoning his phone for three months-but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention-and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong. We think our inability to focus is a personal failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces that have left us uniquely vulnerable to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit. Hari found that there are twelve deep causes of this crisis, from the decline of mind-wandering to rising pollution, all of which have robbed some of our attention. In Stolen Focus, he introduces readers to Silicon Valley dissidents who learned to hack human attention, and veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD. He explores a favela in Rio de Janeiro where everyone lost their attention in a particularly surreal way, and an office in New Zealand that discovered a remarkable technique to restore workers’ productivity. Crucially, Hari learned how we can reclaim our focus-as individuals, and as a society-if we are determined to fight for it. Stolen Focus will transform the debate about attention and finally show us how to get it back. Review “A gripping analysis of why we’ve lost the capacity to concentrate, and how we might find it again. Stolen Focus won’t just capture your attention-it will keep you thinking and rethinking long after you’ve finished it. Johann Hari is one of the most insightful critics of our modern malaise, and he’s written the book the world needs in order to win the war on distraction.” -Adam Grant “Johann Hari writes like a dream. He’s both a lyricist and a storyteller-but also an indefatigable investigator of one of the world’s greatest problems: the systematic destruction of our attention. Read this book to save your mind.” -Susan Cain “I don’t know anyone thinking more deeply, or more holistically, about the crisis of our collective attention than Johann Hari. This book could not be more vital. Please sit with it, and focus.” -Naomi Klein “Superb . . . Stolen Focus is a beautifully researched and argued exploration of the breakdown of humankind’s ability to pay attention, told with the pace, sparkle, and energy of the best kind of thriller.” -Stephen Fry “If you want to get your attention and focus back, you need to read this remarkable book. Johann Hari has cracked the code of why we’re in this crisis, and how to get out of it. We all need to hear this message.” -Arianna Huffington “In his unique voice, Johann Hari tackles the profound dangers facing humanity from information technology and rings the alarm bell for what all of us must do to protect ourselves, our children, and our democracies.” -Hillary Clinton “A visionary, systemic, revolutionary, and practical guide for creating the new world . . . Through his tireless research and genius insight, Johann Hari certainly snapped me to attention. This is a life-changing book.” -Eve Ensler “A necessary book, a miracle of clarity and depth, and a resonant, deeply researched warning followed by a truly inspiring clarion call to action . . . Read it and weep, then...

-Titulo Original : Countdown To Zero Day Stuxnet And The Launch Of The Worlds First Digital Weapon-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: A top cybersecurity journalist tells the story behind the virus that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear efforts and shows how its existence has ushered in a new age of warfare-one in which a digital attack can have the same destructive capability as a megaton bomb. “Immensely enjoyable . . . Zetter turns a complicated and technical cyber story into an engrossing whodunit.”-The Washington Post The virus now known as Stuxnet was unlike any other piece of malware built before: Rather than simply hijacking targeted computers or stealing information from them, it proved that a piece of code could escape the digital realm and wreak actual, physical destruction-in this case, on an Iranian nuclear facility. In these pages, journalist Kim Zetter tells the whole story behind the world’s first cyberweapon, covering its genesis in the corridors of the White House and its effects in Iran-and telling the spectacular, unlikely tale of the security geeks who managed to unravel a top secret sabotage campaign years in the making. But Countdown to Zero Day also ranges beyond Stuxnet itself, exploring the history of cyberwarfare and its future, showing us what might happen should our infrastructure be targeted by a Stuxnet-style attack, and ultimately, providing a portrait of a world at the edge of a new kind of war. Review “An authoritative account of Stuxnet’s spread and discovery . . . [delivers] a sobering message about the vulnerability of the systems-train lines, water-treatment plants, electricity grids-that make modern life possible.” -Economist “Exhaustively researched . . . Zetter gives a full account of this ‘hack of the century,’ as the operation has been called, [but] the book goes well beyond its ostensible subject to offer a hair-raising introduction to the age of cyber warfare.” -The Wall Street Journal “Part detective story, part scary-brilliant treatise on the future of warfare . . . an ambitious, comprehensive, and engrossing book that should be required reading for anyone who cares about the threats that America-and the world-are sure to be facing over the coming years.” -Kevin Mitnick, New York Times bestselling author of Ghost in the Wires and The Art of Intrusion “Unpacks this complex issue with the panache of a spy thriller . . . even readers who can’t tell a PLC from an iPad will learn much from Zetter’s accessible, expertly crafted account.” -Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A true techno-whodunit [that] offers a sharp account of past mischief and a glimpse of things to come . . . Zetter writes lucidly about mind-numbingly technical matters, reveling in the geekery of malware and espionage, and she takes the narrative down some dark electronic corridors. . . . Governments, hackers and parties unknown are launching ticking computer time bombs every day, all coming to a laptop near you.” -Kirkus Reviews “An exciting and readable story of the worlds first cyberweapon. Zetter not only explains the weapon and chronicles its discovery, but explains the motives and mechanics behind the attack-and makes a powerful argument why this story matters.” -Bruce Schneier, author of Secrets and Lies and Schneier on Security About the Author Kim Zetter is an award-winning journalist who covers cybercrime, civil liberties, privacy, and security for Wired. She was among the first journalists to cover Stuxnet after its discovery and has authored many of the most comprehensive articles about it. She has also broken numerous stories over the years about WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning, NSA surveillance, and the hacker underground. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. CHAPTER 1 EARLY WARNING Sergey Ulasen is not the sort of person you’d expect to find at the center of an international incident. The thirty-one-year-old Belarusian has close-cropped blond hair, a lean boyish frame, and the open face and affable demeanor of someone who goes through life attract...

-Titulo Original : The Ultimate History Of Video Games From Pong To Pokemon--the Story Behind The Craze That Touched Our Lives And Changed The World-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: The definitive behind-the-scenes history of the dawn of video games and their rise into a multibillion-dollar business “For industry insiders and game players alike, this book is a must-have.”-Mark Turmell, designer for Midway Games and creator of NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, and WrestleMania With all the whiz, bang, pop, and shimmer of a glowing arcade, volume 1 of The Ultimate History of Video Games reveals everything you ever wanted to know and more about the unforgettable games that changed the world, the visionaries who made them, and the fanatics who played them. Starting in arcades then moving to televisions and handheld devices, the video game invasion has entranced kids and the young at heart for nearly fifty years. And gaming historian Steven L. Kent has been there to record the craze from the very beginning. The Ultimate History: Volume 1 tells the incredible tale of how this backroom novelty transformed into a cultural phenomenon. Through meticulous research and personal interviews with hundreds of industry luminaries, Kent chronicles firsthand accounts of how yesterday’s games like Space Invaders, Centipede, and Pac-Man helped create an arcade culture that defined a generation, and how today’s empires like Sony, Nintendo, and Electronic Arts have galvanized a multibillion-dollar industry and a new generation of games. Inside, you’ll discover * the video game that saved Nintendo from bankruptcy * the serendipitous story of Pac-Man’s design * the misstep that helped topple Atari’s $2-billion-a-year empire * the coin shortage caused by Space Invaders * the fascinating reasons behind the rise, fall, and rebirth of Sega * and much more! Entertaining, addictive, and as mesmerizing as the games it chronicles, this book is a must-have for anyone who’s ever touched a joystick. From Publishers Weekly In this rollicking, mammoth history of video games from pinball to Pong to Playstation II Kent, a technology journalist and self-professed video game addict, covers almost every conceivable aspect of the industry, from the technological leaps that made the games possible to the corporate power struggles that won (and lost) billions of dollars. Anecdotes are legion. Readers learn that early Atari, for example, had the corporate climate of a dot-com startup, with rampant drug use and meetings staged in outdoor hot tubs. The original name for Pac-Man turns out to be Puck-Man; its creators changed the name after worrying that vandals in arcades would replace the P with an F. In 1978, there were so many people playing Space Invaders in Japan that the game caused a national coin shortage. Kent meticulously documents the rise of home video games and the console wars of the past decade, when Sega, Nintendo, Sony and others raced to produce the fastest, most powerful game system. Also addressed is the public backlash of the 80s, when video games were thought to distract students from homework, and the 90s, when Doom and other violent games were linked to the massacre at Columbine High School. Along the way, Kent interviews virtually every key player in the industry. At times, Kents comprehensiveness is exhausting 500-plus pages on video games may be a bit much, even for their most ardent admirers. But most often Kents infectious enthusiasm is enough to carry the reader along. Equal parts oral history, engineering study, business memoir, game catalogue and Gen-X nostalgia trip, Kents book is a loving tribute to one of the most dynamic (and profitable) industries in the world today. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From the Back Cover Inside the Games You Grew Up with but Never Forgot With all the whiz, bang, pop, and shimmer of a glowing arcade. The Ultimate History of Video Games reveals everything you ever wanted to know and more about the unforgettable games that changed the world, the visionaries who made them, and the fanatics who played them. From the arc...

-Titulo Original : The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * “The story of modern medicine and bioethics-and, indeed, race relations-is refracted beautifully, and movingly.”-Entertainment Weekly NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM HBO® STARRING OPRAH WINFREY AND ROSE BYRNE * ONE OF THE “MOST INFLUENTIAL” (CNN), “DEFINING” (LITHUB), AND “BEST” (THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER) BOOKS OF THE DECADE * ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS * WINNER OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE HEARTLAND PRIZE FOR NONFICTION NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review * Entertainment Weekly * O: The Oprah Magazine * NPR * Financial Times * New York * Independent (U.K.) * Times (U.K.) * Publishers Weekly * Library Journal * Kirkus Reviews * Booklist * Globe and Mail Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells-taken without her knowledge-became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family-past and present-is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of. Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family-especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah. Deborah was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Had they killed her to harvest her cells? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance? Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences. Review : From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive--even thrive--in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henriettas family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution--and her cells strange survival--left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust o...

-Titulo Original : The Spy And The Traitor The Greatest Espionage Story Of The Cold War-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The celebrated author of Double Cross and Rogue Heroes returns with his greatest spy story yet, a thrilling Americans-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the end of the Cold War.“The best true spy story I have ever read.”-JOHN LE CARRÉNamed a Best Book of the Year by The Economist * Shortlisted for the Bailie Giffords Prize in Nonfiction If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nations communism as both criminal and philistine. He took his first posting for Russian intelligence in 1968 and eventually became the Soviet Unions top man in London, but from 1973 on he was secretly working for MI6. For nearly a decade, as the Cold War reached its twilight, Gordievsky helped the West turn the tables on the KGB, exposing Russian spies and helping to foil countless intelligence plots, as the Soviet leadership grew increasingly paranoid at the United Statess nuclear first-strike capabilities and brought the world closer to the brink of war. Desperate to keep the circle of trust close, MI6 never revealed Gordievskys name to its counterparts in the CIA, which in turn grew obsessed with figuring out the identity of Britains obviously top-level source. Their obsession ultimately doomed Gordievsky: the CIA officer assigned to identify him was none other than Aldrich Ames, the man who would become infamous for secretly spying for the Soviets. Unfolding the delicious three-way gamesmanship between America, Britain, and the Soviet Union, and culminating in the gripping cinematic beat-by-beat of Gordievskys nail-biting escape from Moscow in 1985, Ben Macintyres latest may be his best yet. Like the greatest novels of John le Carre, it brings readers deep into a world of treachery and betrayal, where the lines bleed between the personal and the professional, and one mans hatred of communism had the power to change the future of nations. Review “Every bit as exciting as my favorite spy novels.” -Bill Gates, GatesNotes “Readers seeking a page-turning spy story, look no further. The author of A Spy Among Friends and Agent Zigzag, among others, does it again, this time delivering a Cold War espionage story for the ages… another can’t miss account of intrigue and intelligence.” -Boston Globe “The subtitle of Macintyre’s latest real-life spy thriller calls it ‘The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War.’ Like pretty much everything in this fine book, the description is accurate… Macintyre is fastidious about tradecraft details… [he] has become the preeminent popular chronicler of British intelligence history because he understands the essence of the business.” -Washington Post“ The Spy and the Traitor [is] a fast-paced and fascinating biography of Russian-spy-turned-British-asset Oleg Gordievsky… It’s nonfiction, but it reads like the best of thrillers… The toll spying takes on Gordievsky’s personal life is enthralling, and the details of how deep the effects of one KGB agent’s deception can go are, in these days of Russian election meddling, quite frightening.” -San Francisco Chronicle “Who was the most important spy of the Cold War era? Ben Macintyre convincingly nominates Oleg Gordievsky… Readers should rejoice in a very readable book by a skilled story-teller. Although an intelligence outsider, Mr. Macintyre enjoys the trust of MI6… Mr. Macintyre’s account of how the officer known as Bromhead recruited Mr. Gordievsky as a spy is a textbook study of intelligence reality; indeed, these pages alone are worth the price of the book… In terms of suspense, the flight through Russia is of thriller-quality.” -Washington Times“Oleg Gordievsky was the most significant British agent of the cold war… The result is a dazzling non-fict...

-Titulo Original : 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About African American History-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: A comprehensive andengaging account of the most significant events, individuals, terms, ideas, and social movements that make up the dazzling canvas of African American history-from the National Book Award­-winning author of The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke “An indispensable aid for the study of Black American History.”-Clarence E. Walker, professor of history, University of California, Davis Distinguished historian and National Book Award winner Jeffrey C. Steward illuminates the famous and the obscure, people like Estevanico, the first African explorer in America, and Sojourner Truth, one of the few Black women to participate in both the abolitionist and women’s rights movements. He tells us how the former slave Peter Salem dispatched the hated British major at the battle of Bunker Hill, and how Colin Powell earned his medals in Vietnam. And he reminds us of the artistic contributions of filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, dancer Katherine Dunham, and actor Ira Aldridge. Here is a fact-filled trip through five hundred years of African American history, divided into six broad sections: Great Migrations; Civil Rights and Politics; Science, Inventions and Medicine; Sports; Military; Culture and Religion. So if you want to know who invented the gas mask or dominated college lacrosse in the mid 1950s, or became the first Black cowboy to write his own autobiography, or even who invented the disc jockey technique of “scratching” you’re sure to find it in 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About African American History. From the Publisher Where can one go to get a comprehensive and entertaining account of the most significant events, individuals and social processes of African-American history? Fear not, because 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About African-American History is history at your fingertips-in a concise, accessible, easily-read format.Jeffrey C. Stewart, Associate Professor of History at George Mason University, takes the reader on an all-encompassing journey through the entirety of African-American history that is pithy, provocative, and encyclopedic in scope. Here are all the people, terms, ideas, events, and social processes that make African-American history such a fascinating and inspiring subject. 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About African-American History covers all the significant information in six broad sections: Great Migrations; Civil Rights and Politics; Science, Inventions and Medicine; Sports; Military; Culture and Religion. It will entertain as well as instruct, and it can be read from beginning to end as well as opened at random and read at any length without confusion.A necessary addition to every familys library, 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About African-American History presents African American history in a fun, engaging and intelligent way. From the Inside Flap e go to get a comprehensive and entertaining account of the most significant events, individuals and social processes of African-American history? Fear not, because 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About African-American History is history at your fingertips-in a concise, accessible, easily-read format.Jeffrey C. Stewart, Associate Professor of History at George Mason University, takes the reader on an all-encompassing journey through the entirety of African-American history that is pithy, provocative, and encyclopedic in scope. Here are all the people, terms, ideas, events, and social processes that make African-American history such a fascinating and inspiring subject. 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About African-American History covers all the significant information in six broad sections: Great Migrations; Civil Rights and Politics; Science, Inventions and Medicine; Sports; Military; Culture and Religion. It will entertain as well as instruct From the Back Cover Where can one go to get a comprehensive and entertaining account of the most significant events, individuals and s...

-Titulo Original : 100 Things Weve Lost To The Internet-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: The acclaimed editor of The New York Times Book Review takes readers on a nostalgic tour of the pre-Internet age, offering powerful insights into both the profound and the seemingly trivial things weve lost.NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY CHICAGO TRIBUNE AND THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS * “A deft blend of nostalgia, humor and devastating insights.”-PeopleRemember all those ingrained habits, cherished ideas, beloved objects, and stubborn preferences from the pre-Internet age? They’re gone.To some of those things we can say good riddance. But many we miss terribly. Whatever our emotional response to this departed realm, we are faced with the fact that nearly every aspect of modern life now takes place in filtered, isolated corners of cyberspace-a space that has slowly subsumed our physical habitats, replacing or transforming the office, our local library, a favorite bar, the movie theater, and the coffee shop where people met one another’s gaze from across the room. Even as we’ve gained the ability to gather without leaving our house, many of the fundamentally human experiences that have sustained us have disappeared.In one hundred glimpses of that pre-Internet world, Pamela Paul, editor of The New York Times Book Review, presents a captivating record, enlivened with illustrations, of the world before cyberspace-from voicemails to blind dates to punctuation to civility. There are the small losses: postcards, the blessings of an adolescence largely spared of documentation, the Rolodex, and the genuine surprises at high school reunions. But there are larger repercussions, too: weaker memories, the inability to entertain oneself, and the utter demolition of privacy.100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet is at once an evocative swan song for a disappearing era and, perhaps, a guide to reclaiming just a little bit more of the world IRL. Review “[A] rare feat of exploring what technology has done to us without succumbing to doom and panic . . . Poignant, thought-provoking.”-The Guardian“An accomplished solo act . . . Readers who remember the dawning of the internet era will find plenty to commiserate with in this mostly lighthearted lament.”-Publishers Weekly About the Author Pamela Paul is the editor of The New York Times Book Review and oversees book coverage at the Times, where she hosts the weekly Book Review podcast. She is the author of eight books, including My Life with Bob; How to Raise a Reader; By the Book; Parenting, Inc.; Pornified; The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony; and Rectangle Time, a book for children. Prior to joining The New York Times, she was a contributor to Time and The Economist, and her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Vogue. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. BoredomRemember boredom? The way it would hang over you when you were stuck in traffic and there was nothing decent on the radio and time dripped by? You’d be trapped in line at the supermarket, your eyes glazed after having read each headline on every tabloid wilting by the Doublemint gum, twice. You’d be waiting for your roommate to show up for dinner, having plotted your meal from hors d’oeuvres to dessert twenty minutes ago, or languishing at the doctor’s office with nothing but mottled old copies of Reader’s Digest on offer. Boredom was available just about everywhere. Nothing to do, nothing to divert or distract you during what should have been precious free moments amid the frantic hours of so much else to get done. You realize you could have brought a book, and why the hell didn’t you?But we have solved this because there is no more boredom. There are no empty moments and the mere thought of it-and who has time to think about it?-seems absurd. Not so long ago, Motorola coined the term “micro-boredom” to describe those scattered, small moments that might bedevil us but could be solved in an instant by the smartphone-no...

-Titulo Original : Let The Lord Sort Them The Rise And Fall Of The Death Penalty-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE * A deeply reported, searingly honest portrait of the death penalty in Texas-and what it tells us about crime and punishment in America“If you’re one of those people who despair that nothing changes, and dream that something can, this is a story of how it does.”-Anand Giridharadas, The New York Times Book ReviewWINNER OF THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS AWARDIn 1972, the United States Supreme Court made a surprising ruling: the country’s death penalty system violated the Constitution. The backlash was swift, especially in Texas, where executions were considered part of the cultural fabric, and a dark history of lynching was masked by gauzy visions of a tough-on-crime frontier. When executions resumed, Texas quickly became the nationwide leader in carrying out the punishment. Then, amid a larger wave of criminal justice reform, came the death penalty’s decline, a trend so durable that even in Texas the punishment appears again close to extinction. In Let the Lord Sort Them, Maurice Chammah charts the rise and fall of capital punishment through the eyes of those it touched. We meet Elsa Alcala, the orphaned daughter of a Mexican American family who found her calling as a prosecutor in the nation’s death penalty capital, before becoming a judge on the state’s highest court. We meet Danalynn Recer, a lawyer who became obsessively devoted to unearthing the life stories of men who committed terrible crimes, and fought for mercy in courtrooms across the state. We meet death row prisoners-many of them once-famous figures like Henry Lee Lucas, Gary Graham, and Karla Faye Tucker-along with their families and the families of their victims. And we meet the executioners, who struggle openly with what society has asked them to do. In tracing these interconnected lives against the rise of mass incarceration in Texas and the country as a whole, Chammah explores what the persistence of the death penalty tells us about forgiveness and retribution, fairness and justice, history and myth.Written with intimacy and grace, Let the Lord Sort Them is the definitive portrait of a particularly American institution. Review “Maurice Chammah’s book comes at an important time. . . . Chammah embeds well-wrought cultural analysis within the ins and outs of historical narrative. . . . Chammah zeroes in on one detail at a time, but his intent to provide both texture and breadth is evident. . . . The accumulation of moments and personalities in the story of the death penalty in America is exactly what makes Chammah’s account so compelling.”­­­­­­-The Christian Century“A searing history of the rise and fall of capital punishment . . . Let the Lord Sort Them urges readers to reckon with the ugliest aspects of Texas history, and with how the political debate over the death penalty has elided the long-lasting trauma that executions inflict on everyone involved.”-Texas Monthly“It’s a book pitched straight into the gulf between universal theory and individual experience.”-Josephine Livingstone, The New Republic“Maurice Chammah has given us an indispensable history of how the debate over capital punishment has taken shape in our courts. And by centering the book deep in the heart of Texas, ‘the epicenter of the death penalty,’ he lays bare the human experience of litigating these heartrending cases through remarkably intimate, fair-minded, and trustworthy reporting on the people arguing over the fate of human life.”-Robert Kolker, New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family“When we arrogate to ourselves the prerogatives of the gods, the inconsistencies and stupidities of our behaviors become more glaring and more disturbing. In this magisterial study, Maurice Chammah is here to tell us about our failures, and how we can do better.”-Errol Morris, director of The Thin Blue Line“An extraordinarily hopeful glimpse of a future in which we are finally beginning to imagin...

-Titulo Original : 101 Things I Learned® In Urban Design School-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: Providing unique, accessible lessons on urban design, this title in the bestselling 101 Things I Learned® series is a perfect resource for students, recent graduates, general readers, and even seasoned professionals. Students of urban design often find themselves lost between books that are either highly academic or overly formulaic, leaving them with few tangible tools to use in their design projects. 101 Things I Learned® in Urban Design School fills this void with provocative, practical lessons on urban space, street types, pedestrian experience, managing the design process, the psychological, social, cultural, and economic ramifications of physical design decisions, and more. Written by two experienced practitioners and instructors, this informative book will appeal not only to students, but to seasoned professionals, planners, city administrators, and ordinary citizens who wish to better understand their built world. Review “At moments the book evokes Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language; at other times, it reads like aphorisms from a TED Talk; and yet at other times, it is reminiscent of desk crits in school….The authors use jargon-free language [to] demystify urban design…a good reminder that much of what we, as designers, take as self-evident can be new to those not steeped in urban design and that complex concepts can be communicated in a clear, concise way. -Architecture Boston About the Author Matthew Frederick is an architect, urban designer, instructor of design and writing, the author of the bestselling 101 Things I Learned® in Architecture School, and the creator of the acclaimed 101 Things I Learned® series. He lives in New Yorks Hudson Valley. Vikas Mehta, Ph.D. is the Ohio Eminent Scholar of Urban/Environmental Design and Associate Professor of Urbanism at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of Public Space and The Street: A Quintessential Social Public Space, which received the Book Award from the Environmental Design Research Association...

-Titulo Original : North To The Night A Spiritual Odyssey In The Arctic-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: In June 1994 Alvah Simon and his wife, Diana, set off in their 36-foot sailboat to explore the hauntingly beautiful world of icebergs, tundra, and fjords lying high above the Arctic Circle. Four months later, unexpected events would trap Simon alone on his boat, frozen in ice 100 miles from the nearest settlement, with the long polar night stretching into darkness for months to come.With his world circumscribed by screaming blizzards and marauding polar bears and his only companion a kitten named Halifax, Simon withstands months of crushing loneliness, sudden blindness, and private demons. Trapped in a boat buried beneath the drifting snow, he struggles through the perpetual darkness toward a spiritual awakening and an understanding of the forces that conspired to bring him there. He emerges five months later a transformed man.Simons powerful, triumphant story combines the suspense of Into Thin Air with a crystalline, lyrical prose to explore the hypnotic draw of one of earths deepest and most dangerous wildernesses. Review This is truly an adventure story--an intense and gripping exploration of the extreme reaches of the outer and inner world. It reminds me of Jon Krakauers work with its blend of suspense and analysis and its sheer ability to communicate why and how people do extraordinary things. Though set in the dark, long Arctic winter, North to the Night is filled with illumination.-- Bill McKibben, author of The End of NatureA grand adventure on a vast and awesome scale, wrought onto paper by a writer with a true gift.--The Washington TimesThe flair of a storyteller and the outlook of a philosopher . . . --The Buffalo News From the Inside Flap In June 1994 Alvah Simon and his wife, Diana, set off in their 36-foot sailboat to explore the hauntingly beautiful world of icebergs, tundra, and fjords lying high above the Arctic Circle. Four months later, unexpected events would trap Simon alone on his boat, frozen in ice 100 miles from the nearest settlement, with the long polar night stretching into darkness for months to come. With his world circumscribed by screaming blizzards and marauding polar bears and his only companion a kitten named Halifax, Simon withstands months of crushing loneliness, sudden blindness, and private demons. Trapped in a boat buried beneath the drifting snow, he struggles through the perpetual darkness toward a spiritual awakening and an understanding of the forces that conspired to bring him there. He emerges five months later a transformed man. Simons powerful, triumphant story combines the suspense of Into Thin Air with a crystalline, lyrical prose to explore the hypnotic draw of one of earths deepest and most dangerous wildernesses. From the Back Cover In June 1994 Alvah Simon and his wife, Diana, set off in their 36-foot sailboat to explore the hauntingly beautiful world of icebergs, tundra, and fjords lying high above the Arctic Circle. Four months later, unexpected events would trap Simon alone on his boat, frozen in ice 100 miles from the nearest settlement, with the long polar night stretching into darkness for months to come. With his world circumscribed by screaming blizzards and marauding polar bears and his only companion a kitten named Halifax, Simon withstands months of crushing loneliness, sudden blindness, and private demons. Trapped in a boat buried beneath the drifting snow, he struggles through the perpetual darkness toward a spiritual awakening and an understanding of the forces that conspired to bring him there. He emerges five months later a transformed man. Simons powerful, triumphant story combines the suspense of Into Thin Air with a crystalline, lyrical prose to explore the hypnotic draw of one of earths deepest and most dangerous wildernesses. About the Author Alvah Simon spent thirteen years sailing the world, finding adventure in Borneos jungles, Africas deserts, and Cape Horns ship grave...

-Titulo Original : Cant Buy Me Love The Beatles, Britain, And America-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: That the Beatles were an unprecedented phenomenon is a given. In Can’t Buy Me Love, Jonathan Gould explains why, placing the Fab Four in the broad and tumultuous panorama of their time and place, rooting their story in the social context that girded both their rise and their demise. Nearly twenty years in the making, Can’t Buy Me Love is a masterful work of group biography, cultural history, and musical criticism. Beginning with their adolescence in Liverpool, Gould describes the seminal influences--from Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry to The Goon Show and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland--that shaped the Beatles both as individuals and as a group. In addition to chronicling their growth as singers, songwriters, and instrumentalists, he highlights the advances in recording technology that made their sound both possible and unique, as well as the developments in television and radio that lent an explosive force to their popular success. With a musician’s ear, Gould sensitively evokes the timeless appeal of the Lennon-McCartney collaboration and their emergence as one of the most creative and significant songwriting teams in history. Behind the scenes Gould explores the pivotal roles played by manager Brian Epstein and producer George Martin, credits the influence on the Beatles’ music of contemporaries like Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, and Ravi Shankar, and traces the gradual escalation of the fractious internal rivalries that led to the group’s breakup after their final masterpiece, Abbey Road. Most significantly, by chronicling their revolutionary impact on popular culture during the 1960s, Can’t Buy Me Love illuminates the Beatles as a charismatic phenomenon of international proportions, whose anarchic energy and unexpected import was derived from the historic shifts in fortune that transformed the relationship between Britain and America in the decades after World War II. From the Beats in America and the Angry Young Men in England to the shadow of the Profumo Affair and JFK’s assassination, Gould captures the pulse of a time that made the Beatles possible-and even necessary. As seen through the prism of the Beatles and their music, an entire generation’s experience comes astonishingly to life. Beautifully written, consistently insightful, and utterly original, Can’ t Buy Me Love is a landmark work about the Beatles, Britain, and America. Review ‘Gould has written a scrupulous, witty and, at times, appropriately skeptical study… As a clever person once said… “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” Gould, it turns out, is an astute and sensitive choreographer... If I had the space I’d cite dozens more examples of Gould’s graceful unfolding of various Beatle tunes. At his best, he lets you hear with keener ears the way a great novelist lets you feel with keener emotions. He even made me want to listen to “Eleanor Rigby” again. I can’t think of higher praise.’ -Bruce Handy, New York Times Book Review Gould, a former musician, has written an engrossing book, both fluid and economical (aside from one overlong section on the concept of charisma). Page after page, you can hear the music; Goulds deft hand makes the book sing. This is music writing at its best. - Publishers Weekly, starred, signature review What separates writer and musician Goulds first book from the multitudinous others is his threefold focus; Gould deftly mixes biography with social commentary and musical and lyrical analysis, illustrating how the band crafted its groundbreaking songs and how its achievements impacted, and were impacted by, the tumultuous 1960s. Highly recommended for all academic, public, and music libraries. - Library JournalGoulds combination group biography, cultural history, and musical criticism artfully places the Beatles in their time and social context while examining with great skill how they became an international phenomenon comparable only to themselves. ... Setting Go...

-Titulo Original : My Lucky Life In And Out Of Show Business A Memoir-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: A heartfelt memoir from one of Hollywoods greatest icons Dick Van Dyke, indisputably one of the greats of the golden age of television, is admired and beloved by audiences the world over for his beaming smile, his physical dexterity, his impeccable comic timing, his ridiculous stunts, and his unforgettable screen roles. His trailblazing television program, The Dick Van Dyke Show (produced by Carl Reiner, who has written the foreword to this memoir), was one of the most popular sitcoms of the 1960s and introduced another major television star, Mary Tyler Moore. But Dick Van Dyke was also an enormously engaging movie star whose films, including Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, have been discovered by a new generation of fans and are as beloved today as they were when they first appeared. A colorful, loving, richly detailed look at the decades of a multilayered life, My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business, will enthrall every generation of reader, from baby-boomers who recall when Rob Petrie became a household name, to all those still enchanted by Bert’s “Chim Chim Cher-ee.” This is a lively, heartwarming memoir of a performer who still thinks of himself as a “simple song-and-dance man,” but who is, in every sense of the word, a classic entertainer. Review “In my opinion, ‘Luck’ has little to do with Dick Van Dyke’s life. It is, rather, his innate kindness and talent that have had an extraordinary effect in shaping the man. And what a fascinating self-portrait he’s given us in this book.” -Mary Tyler Moore “From the time I worked with Dick on the movie Bye Bye Birdie, I have admired his many talents, not the least of which is the joy and enthusiasm he shares with audiences. I’m a big fan of his . . . and his book.” -Ann-Margret “Van Dyke tells a wonderful story about himself and his times. And-in an often surprsingly relevant manner-our times. We’ve always liked the performer-it’s hard not to like Dick Van Dyke-but this will will make you admire him.” - Playbill About the Author DICK VAN DYKE was born in West Plains, Missouri, in 1925. He is an internationally recognized and accomplished performer, and has been a recipient of the Theatre World Award, a Tony, a Grammy, and four Emmy awards. He lives in California. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter 1 STEP IN TIME It was nighttime, February 1943, and I was standing next to my mother, thinking about the war in Europe. I had a very good relationship with my mother, so theres no need for any psychoanalysis about why I was thinking of the war. The fact was, we had finished dinner and she was washing the dishes and I was drying them, as was our routine. My father, a traveling salesman, was on the road, and my younger brother, Jerry, had run off to play. We lived in Danville, Illinois, which was about as far away from the war as you could get. Danville was a small town in the heartland of America, and it felt very much like the heartland. It was quiet and neighborly, a place where there was a rich side of town and a poor side, but not a bad side. The streets were brick. The homes were built in the early 1900s. Everybody had a backyard; most were small but none had fences. People left their doors open and their lights on, even when they went out. Occasionally someone down on their luck would knock on the back door and my mother would give him something to eat. Sometimes she would give him an odd job to do, too. I had things on my mind that night. You could tell from the way I looked out the kitchen window as I did my part of the dishes. I stood six feet one inch and weighed 130 pounds, if that. I was a tall drink of water, as my grandmother said. Im going to be eighteen in March, I said. That means Ill be up for the draft. I really dont want to go-and I really dont want to be in the infantry. So Im thinking that I ought to join now and ...

-Titulo Original : Sweet Judy Blue Eyes My Life In Music-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: A vivid, highly evocative memoir of one of the reigning icons of folk music, highlighting the decade of the ’60s, when hits like “Both Sides Now” catapulted her to international fame. Sweet Judy Blue Eyes is the deeply personal, honest, and revealing memoir of folk legend and relentlessly creative spirit Judy Collins. In it, she talks about her alcoholism, her lasting love affair with Stephen Stills, her friendships with Joan Baez, Richard and Mimi Fariña, David Crosby, and Leonard Cohen and, above all, the music that helped define a decade and a generation’s sound track. Sweet Judy Blue Eyes invites the reader into the parties that peppered Laurel Canyon and into the recording studio so we see how cuts evolved take after take, while it sets an array of amazing musical talent against the backdrop of one of the most turbulent decades of twentieth-century America. Beautifully written, richly textured, and sharply insightful, Sweet Judy Blue Eyes is an unforgettable chronicle of the folk renaissance in America. Review “…a fascinating and even harrowing musical and personal reflection.” --Kirkus “Collin’s improbable and utterly charming tale of assuming iconic status as a popular music star from the early 1960’s onward also proves a tremendously valuable chronicle of the early folk music scene…[A] forthright, radiant work.” - Publisher’s Weekly (Starred Review) About the Author JUDY COLLINS has recorded more than forty albums over her illustrious career. With several top-ten hits, Grammy nominations, and gold- and platinum-selling albums to her credit, she has also written several books and has her own music label, Wildflower Records. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter One Ruby-Throated Sparrow I am yours, you are mine, you are what you are. --Stephen Stills, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” Nineteen sixty-eight, the year I met and fell in love with Stephen Stills, was a leap year. In the Chinese calendar, it was the year of the monkey, a year destined to explode with creativity, social upheaval, and tragedy. The U.S. involvement in Vietnam had escalated into all-out warfare and was tearing the country apart. Martin Luther King Jr., in whom we invested so much hope, had been murdered in Memphis on April 4. The day after King’s assassination, Robert F. Kennedy made one of the last speeches of his life at a political gathering in Indianapolis originally intended as a rally for his run for president, reminding the weeping audience of black and white mourners that he, too, had lost a brother to a white man with a gun and urging them, as the Greeks had put it, to “tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.” Many young people were marching against the war, and music captured our conflicting feelings of disenchantment and romantic idealism, from the traditional folk songs of the Weavers, “Wasn’t That a Time” and “Rock Island Line,” to the powerful laments of singer-songwriters, Dylan singing “A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall,” Phil Ochs singing “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” and Joan Baez singing “Silver Dagger” in her haunting soprano. This incredible music was everywhere, playing on Top 40 and FM radio mixed in with the Beatles’ “Lovely Rita” and “Eleanor Rigby,” the Byrds sparkling with Jim McGuinn’s twelve-string guitar on “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and the Mamas and the Papas urging us to leave cold New York and dream of sunny California. “I’d be safe and warm, if I was in L.A.,” they sang, their heartbreaking harmonies draping the airwaves with longing. There was the angst-filled psychedelia of the Doors with Jim Morrison begging us to light his fire, and Grace Slick, singing with Jefferson Airplane, her seductive voice drifting on the silky sound of her band: “One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small.” All these songs were hitting the radio waves side by side with the reports of casualties in Indochina....

-Titulo Original : Patti Lupone A Memoir-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: The legendary Patti LuPone is one of the theatre’s most beloved leading ladies. Now she lays it all bare, sharing the intimate story of her life both onstage and off--through the dizzying highs and darkest lows--with the humor and outspokenness that have become her trademarks.With nearly 100 photographs, including an 8-page four-color insert, and illuminating details about the life of a working actor, from inspired costars and demanding directors to her distinct perspective on how she developed and honed her Tony Award-winning performances, Patti LuPone: A Memoir is as inspirational as it is entertaining. And though the title might say “a memoir,” this is ultimately a love letter to the theatre by a unique American artist.Raised on Long Island’s North Shore, Patti discovered her calling at the age of four and knew that she was destined for the stage. A prodigiously gifted child, she was one of only 36 young actors chosen for the inaugural class of The Juilliard School’s Drama Division, where she fought near-constant criticism from her instructors, and here describes those early years with disarming frankness. From the heady days of her early twenties-crisscrossing the country as a founding member of the classical repertory theatre ensemble, The Acting Company--to her early success on Broadway, her four-year stint as Libby Thacher on the television series Life Goes On, her loving marriage to Matt Johnston, and much, much more, Patti chronicles her professional and personal life with inimitable candor and wit. With its insightful retrospective of her career-defining turns, both on Broadway and abroad, in Evita, Les Miserables, Anything Goes, Sunset Boulevard, Sweeney Todd, and Gypsy, Patti LuPone: A Memoir reveals the artist’s deeply felt passion for music and the theatre and is, in the end, the compelling and quintessential tale of an exceptional life well lived. “I have been incredibly fortunate over the course of my career to have been associated with some extraordinary dramatic and musical productions, and also some rather spectacular disasters. Looking back, I can find gifts and life lessons in every one.” Review Patti’s story had me from the moment I turned to page one of the prologue until the absolutely triumphant final chapter....She tells it like it is, warts and all. And by the time I finished reading the last chapter, I found myself giving Patti a standing ovation in the privacy of my very own living room. -Carol Burnett In her autobiography, LuPone, with characteristic wit and theatrical humor, recounts her life story, both when she was feeling like Les Miserables and when everything was coming up roses. - Entertainment Weekly Every aspiring actor needs to read Patti LuPones saga...In this book, she is hard-hitting, funny, candid, truthful and she bursts off the page as the same dynamo we often see onstage. -Liz Smith, The Women on the Web Though personal and professional battles are charted, the tone is, like LuPones conversational style, more chatty than catty, littered with earthy, often self-effacing humor...[A] mix of frankness and warmth. - USA Today Patti LuPone, with honesty and humor, gives a brave and candid account of an astonishingly unique and brilliant performer’s journey to reach Broadway stardom. -Angela Lansbury “1. Opening night on Broadway, of a play of mine, I looked backstage, at half hour, for Patti - to wish her well. I found her in costume, onstage, asleep on the set, on a kitchen table. She woke up and explained that she was having a ‘Sicilian Anxiety Attack.’ 2. Doing a play Off-Broadway, the actress playing a smallish role had to leave the cast unexpectedly. I called Patti for condolence and she said ‘I finish EVITA tonight, get me the script and Ill go on tomorrow.’ 3. Similar stories of whatever it is which surpasses excellence and perfection of friendship abound, but you get the idea. I love her. And I love her book.” -David Ma...

-Titulo Original : Rat Pack Confidential Frank, Dean, Sammy, Peter, Joey And The Last Great Show Biz Party-Fabricante : Crown-Descripcion Original: For the first time, the full story of what happened when Frank brought his best pals to party in a land called VegasJanuary 1960. Las Vegas is at its smooth, cool peak. The Strip is a jet-age theme park, and the greatest singer in the history of American popular music summons a group of friends there to make a movie. One is an insouciant singer of Italian songs, ex-partner to the most popular film comedian of the day. One is a short, black, Jewish, one-eyed, singing, dancing wonder. One is an upper-crust British pretty boy turned degenerate B-movie star actor, brother-in-law to an ascendant politician. And one is a stiff-shouldered comic with the quintessential Borscht Belt emcee’s knack for needling one-liners. The architectonically sleek marquee of the Sands Hotel announces their presence simply by listing their names: FRANK SINATRA. DEAN MARTIN. SAMMY DAVIS, JR. PETER LAWFORD. JOEY BISHOP. Around them an entire cast gathers: actors, comics, singers, songwriters, gangsters, politicians, and women, as well as thousands of starstruck everyday folks who fork over pocketfuls of money for the privilege of basking in their presence. They call themselves The Clan. But to an awed world, they are known as The Rat Pack. They had it all. Fame. Gorgeous women. A fabulouse playground of a city and all the money in the world. The backing of fearsome crime lords and the blessing of the President of the United States. But the dark side-over the thin line between pleasure and debauchery, between swinging self-confidence and brutal arrogance-took its toll. In four years, their great ride was over, and showbiz was never the same. Acclaimed Jerry Lewis biographer Shawn Levy has written a dazzling portrait of a time when neon brightness cast sordid shadows. It was Frank’s World, and we just lived in it. Review Acclaim for Shawn Levys King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis: Superb....Levys ambitious (and entirely successful) biography is a model of what a celebrity bio ought to be--smart, knowing, insightful, often funny, full of fascinating insiders stories, always respectful but never worshipful. --Los Angeles Times Book Review Among the finest, most show business-savvy screen biographies ever written. --Boston Phoenix One of the great, clear-eyed showbiz biographies of our time--a book worthy of comparison to the genre masterpiece, John Lahrs Notes on a Cowardly Lion. --Boxoffice From the Inside Flap e first time, the full story of what happened when Frank brought his best pals to party in a land called Vegas January 1960. Las Vegas is at its smooth, cool peak. The Strip is a jet-age theme park, and the greatest singer in the history of American popular music summons a group of friends there to make a movie. One is an insouciant singer of Italian songs, ex-partner to the most popular film comedian of the day. One is a short, black, Jewish, one-eyed, singing, dancing wonder. One is an upper-crust British pretty boy turned degenerate B-movie star actor, brother-in-law to an ascendant politician. And one is a stiff-shouldered comic with the quintessential Borscht Belt emcee s knack for needling one-liners. The architectonically sleek marquee of the Sands Hotel announces their presence simply by listing their names: FRANK SINATRA. DEAN MARTIN. SAMMY DAVIS, JR. PETER LAWFORD. JOEY BISHOP. Around them an entire cast gathers: actors, comics, singers, songwriters, g From the Back Cover For the first time, the full story of what happened when Frank brought his best pals to party in a land called Vegas January 1960. Las Vegas is at its smooth, cool peak. The Strip is a jet-age theme park, and the greatest singer in the history of American popular music summons a group of friends there to make a movie. One is an insouciant singer of Italian songs, ex-partner to the most popular film comedian of the day. One is a short, black, Jewish, one-eyed, singing, dancing wond...