As a movie actress Lucille Ball was, in her own words, “queenof the B-pluses.” But on the small screen she was asuperstar–arguably the funniest and most enduring in the history ofTV. In this exemplary biography, Stefan Kanfer explores the rootsof Lucy’s genius and places it in the context of her conflicted andsometimes bitter personal life. Ball of Fire gives us Lucy in all her contradictions. Here is thebeauty who became a master of knock-down slapstick; the controlfreak whose comic alter ego thrived on chaos, the worshipful TVhousewife whose real marriage ended in public disaster. Here, too,is an intimate view of the dawn of television and of the Americathat embraced it. Charming, informative, touching. andlaugh-out-loud funny, this is the book Lucy’s fans have beenwaiting for.
Each woman has a special spiritual destiny, as unique andinalienable as the rhythms that govern her life. Maria Harristeaches women how to dance to the music of their own souls anddiscover the spiritual steps that can transform their lives.
The Ultimate Guide to Surviving and Thriving in the Dorm Dorm life offers you a great chance to meet new people and trynew things. But leaving the comforts of home for the first time toenter the roommate-having, small-room-sharing,possibly-coed-bathroom-using world of the dorms can be overwhelmingand intimidating. The College Dorm Survival Guide offers expert advice and theinside scoop on: ? Choosing the right residence hall for you ? Getting along with your roommate (and handling conflict) ? Bathroom, laundry, and dining hall survival ? Dealing with stress, depression, and safety issues From avoiding the dreaded Freshman 15 to decorating your space,this informative and funny guide gives experts' advice oneverything you need to know to enjoy dorm living to thefullest.
UPDATED, WITH NEW MATERIAL BY THE AUTHOR"WOMEN WHO RUN WITHTHE WOLVES isn t just another book. It is a gift of profoundinsight, wisdom, and love. An oracle from one who knows."--AliceWalkerWithin every woman there lives a powerful force, filled withgood instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. She isthe Wild Woman, who represents the instinctual nature of women. Butshe is an endangered species. In WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES, Dr.Estés unfolds rich intercultural myths, fairy tales, and stories,many from her own family, in order to help women reconnect with thefierce, healthy, visionary attributes of this instinctual nature.Through the stories and commentaries in this remarkable book, weretrieve, examine, love, and understand the Wild Woman and hold heragainst our deep psyches as one who is both magic and medicine. Dr.Estés has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche.Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truestsense, a knowing of the soul."This volum
Does assigning fifty math problems accomplish any more thanassigning five? Is memorizing word lists the best way to increasevocabulary—especially when it takes away from reading time? Andwhat is the real purpose behind those devilish dioramas? The time our children spend doing homework has skyrocketed inrecent years. Parents spend countless hours cajoling their kids tocomplete such assignments—often without considering whether or notthey serve any worthwhile purpose. Even many teachers are in thedark: Only one of the hundreds the authors interviewed and surveyedhad ever taken a course specifically on homework duringtraining. The truth, according to Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish, is thatthere is almost no evidence that homework helps elementary schoolstudents achieve academic success and little evidence that it helpsolder students. Yet the nightly burden is taking a serious toll onAmerica’s families. It robs children of the sleep, play, andexercise time they need for prop
Suddenly they go from striving for A’s to barely passing, fromfretting about cooties to obsessing for hours about crushes. Formerchatterboxes answer in monosyllables; freethinkers mimic everythingfrom clothes to opinions. Their bodies and psyches morph throughthe most radical changes since infancy. They are kids in themiddle-school years, the age every adult remembers well enough todread. Here at last is an up-to-date anthropology of this criticallyformative period. Prize-winning education reporter Linda Perlsteinspent a year immersed in the lunchroom, classrooms, hearts, andminds of a group of suburban Maryland middle schoolers and emergedwith this pathbreaking account. Perlstein reveals what’s reallygoing on under kids’ don’t-touch-me facade while they grapple withschoolwork, puberty, romance, and identity. A must-read for parentsand educators, Not Much Just Chillin’ offers a trail map to thebaffling no-man’s-land between child and teen.
Fingernail Moon,the true story of a mother and daughter’scourageous journey. An inspiring story of Janie Webster’s daringquest to save her daughter’s life. When Webster discovered that her husband had sexually abusedtheir daughter, her seemingly content life changed forever. Shebegan divorce proceedings, but the court allowed unsupervisedvisits between father and daughter. Then her husband was diagnosedwith AIDS. Terrified that he could further abuse and even infecttheir daughter, Janie Webster knew that she had to flee. Mother and daughter embarked on a five-year journey around theworld. Although often discouraged, they found within their physicaljourney a deep spiritual meaning. With God’s guidance, theyestablished and reestablished new lives in the countries where theystayed, finding people they could trust who provided them withfriendship and assistance. Despite the threat of deportation andimprisonment hanging over them, they sensed the hand of Godengineering their safe passage
A riveting and beautiful memoir of tragedy and hope–by a womannamed to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people inthe world Born in a village deep in the Cambodian forest, Somaly Mam wassold into sexual slavery by her grandfather when she was twelveyears old. For the next decade she was shuttled through thebrothels that make up the sprawling sex trade of Southeast Asia.She suffered unspeakable acts of brutality and witnessed horrorsthat would haunt her for the rest of her life–until, in her earlytwenties, she managed to escape. Unable to forget the girls sheleft behind, Mam became a tenacious and brave leader in the fightagainst human trafficking, rescuing sex workers–some as young asfive and six–offering them shelter, rehabilitation, healing, andlove and leading them into new life. Written in exquisite, spare, unflinching prose, The Road of LostInnocenceis a memoir that will leave you awestruck by the courageand strength of this extraordinary woman and will renew y
In the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ ofLatter-day Saints (FLDS), girls can become valuable property asplural wives, but boys are expendable, even a liability. In thispowerful and heartbreaking account, former FLDS member Brent Jeffsreveals?0?2both the terror and the love he experienced growing upon his prophet’s compound—and the harsh exile existence that somany boys?0?2face once they have been expelled by the sect. Brent Jeffs is the nephew of Warren Jeffs, the imprisoned leaderof the FLDS. The son of a prominent family in the church, Brentcould have grown up to have multiple wives of his own andsignificant power in the 10,000-strong community. But he knew thatbehind the group’s pious public image—women in chaste dressescarrying babies on their hips—lay a much darker reality. So hewalked away, and was the first to file a sexual-abuse lawsuitagainst his uncle. Now Brent shares his courageous story and thatof many other young men who have become “lost boys” when th
Finally! A concise set of practical, ignore-at-your-own risk guidelines that married couples and about-to-be-marrieds can consult for the definitive word on matrimonial relations. Rules for Husbands and Rules for Wives lay down the law in a way that's both hilarious and so close to the truth it hurts. James Dale covers it all, from "an appliance is not a gift" to "let him hold the TV remote; it makes him feel like he's in control of something." A gift for all occasions, or just to say "I love you" with a laugh. 作者简介： Jim Dale is the mastermind behind the Too-Bad-It's-Your-Birthday books, the Two of Us series, Stepwise: A Parent-Child Guide to Family Mergers, and The Joys of Motherhood humor book. His highly successful humor greeting cards, "The Dales," have sold millions worldwide.
Since she first burst onto the international music scene,Melissa Etheridge has released seven albums that have sold morethan 25 million copies worldwide, garnering not only publicadoration for her uncompromising honesty but numerous criticalawards, including two Grammys and the prestigious ASCAP Songwriterof the Year award. The Truth Is . . . is a highly chargedautobiography—a bold and unflinching account of an extraordinarylife that Melissa describes as only she can: from her Kansas roots,through her early love of music, to her brilliant rise tosuperstardom in a male-dominated rock world. Melissa openlydiscusses the massive impact of her publicly coming out, arevelation that only increased her popularity, making her a highlyvisible spokesperson for the gay and lesbian community. TheTruth Is . . . shares Melissa Etheridge’s fascinating storywith unprecedented candor and insight.
For William Ayers, noted educator and activist, "the allure ofteaching, that ineffable magic drawing me back to the classroomagain and again, issues from an ideal that lies directly at itsheart: Teaching, at its best, is an enterprise that helps humanbeings reach the full measure of their humanity." In Teaching Toward Freedom, Ayers illuminates the hope as well asthe conflict that characterize the entire project of education: howit can be used in authoritarian and dehumanizing ways in theservice of the state, the church, or a restrictive existing socialorder-an idea he abhors-or, as he envisions it, as an undertakingto help students become more fully human, more engaged, moreparticipatory, more free. Drawing on his own classroom experiencesand those of his many colleagues, as well as on popular culture,film, poetry, and novels, Ayers redraws the lines concerning how weteach and why, and the surprising things we uncover when we allowstudents to become visible, vocal authors of their own texts andcreators of
From the woman who became chairman of the flagship office ofthe largest advertising agency network in the world comes a wryreality check on how to get ahead and thrive in thetestosterone-driven business arena. Nina DiSesa is a master communicator, a ceiling crasher, and oneof the most successful women in the corporate world. She is also abig-time realist who has figured out that S M-seduction andmanipulation-is the secret to winning over (and surpassing) the bigguys. In Seducing the Boys Club, DiSesa shows that you can, infact, leave your male colleagues in the dust-but not by followingthe rules you learned in business school. By playing the roles of den mother, fraternity brother, littlesister, and hard-nosed boss, DiSesa navigated the choppy,macho-minded waters of the workplace. All the "bad boys" in herlife-and there are many-have provided a wealth of devilishlyamusing stories and cautionary tales that DiSesa is only too happyto pass on. Ah, revenge can be sweet, but the truth is that sh
Zarafa was a gentle 19th-century giraffe, a simple animalwhose life was dictated by the tumultuous times around her. Fromthe African savanna where she was caught and tamed as an infant,Zarafa was shipped down the Nile--along with the meat of her motherand several hundred human slaves--to the shores of theMediterranean Sea. From there she sailed on to France, a gift fromMuhammad Ali, the "Renaissance Barbarian" viceroy of Egypt,intended to distract King Charles X while Egyptian forces invadedGreece. As political ploy, it didn't work. But as ambassador froman exotic land, this odd animal captivated the French people foralmost two decades, as she lived out her life as part of the royalmenagerie. Michael Allin intertwines natural history with a brutal chapterin the history of civilization, augmenting the clarity of both.This story of one docile animal contrasts sharply with those of thehuman profiteers, warmongers, and interlopers who ultimately decideher fate. But Zarafa's otherworldly charm also he
YA. Despite impoverishing his family because of his alcoholism, McCourt's father passed on to his son a gift for superb storytelling. He told him about the great Irish heroes, the old days in Ireland, the people in their Limerick neighborhood, and the world beyond their shores. McCourt writes in the voice of the child?with no self-pity or review of events?and just retells the tales. He recounts his desperately poor early years, living on public assistance and losing three siblings, but manages to make the book funny and uplifting. Stories of trying on his parents' false teeth and his adventures as a post-office delivery boy will have readers laughing out loud. Young people will recognize the truth in these compelling tales; the emotions expressed; the de*ions of teachers, relatives, neighbors; and the casual cruelty adults show toward children. Readers will enjoy the humor and the music in the language. A vivid, wonderfully readable memoir.?Patricia Noonan, Prince William Public Library, VA Copyright 19
