Learn about cannabis history and the issues around its legalization. Includes full-color photos of marijuana varieties.

    In the six years since her first enormously successful vegetarian cookbook was published, there has been a huge increase in the number of people who choose not to eat meat. Linda's Kitchen, which contains over 200 delicious and inspiring new recipes, offers a blueprint for a vegetarian way of life but is also perfect for the thousands of people who are simply cutting down on meat for health reasons.The recipes have evolved from the kind of good food Linda cooks for her family and friends. They are simple to prepare and wonderful to eat. The dishes are healthy too: nutritionally well balanced and low in saturated fats. Many are suitable for vegans.For the newcomer to vegetarianism the seasonal menu-planning section, packed with ideas for different sorts of occasions - from family suppers to teenagers' parties, summer barbecues to a warming Sunday lunch - will show how easy it is to put together a vegetarian feast. The great recipes for Italian, Indian, Chinese and Mexican meals prove beyond a doubt that non-meat-eaters don't have to miss out on the fun of modern food.This is the cookbook for the way we are today!

    What the Twilight Says collects these pieces to form a volume of remarkable elegance, concision, and brilliance. It includes Walcott's moving and insightful examinations of the paradoxes of Caribbean culture, his Nobel lecture, and his reckoning of the work and significance of such poets as Robert Lowell, Joseph Brodsky, Robert Frost, Les Murray, and Ted Hughes, and of prose writers such as V. S. Naipaul and Patrick Chamoiseau. On every subject he takes up, Walcott the essayist brings to bear the lyric power and syncretic intelligence that have made him one of the major poetic voices of our time.

    M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel, How Fiction Works is a scintillating study of the magic of fiction--an analysis of its main elements and a celebration of its lasting power. Here one of the most prominent and stylish critics of our time looks into the machinery of storytelling to ask some fundamental questions: What do we mean when we say we "know" a fictional character? What constitutes a telling detail? When is a metaphor successful? Is Realism realistic? Why do some literary conventions become dated while others stay fresh?James Wood ranges widely, from Homer to Make Way for Ducklings, from the Bible to John le Carré, and his book is both a study of the techniques of fiction-making and an alternative history of the novel. Playful and profound, How Fiction Works will be enlightening to writers, readers, and anyone else interested in what happens on the page.

    HP demonstrates: * What is the best approach to take when creating book covers* How to optimize your book's description page* Choosing the category of your book* The question of pricing your book* The importance of Social Media and, more specifically, Facebook, Twitter and Blogging* How to get reviews including interviews with leading Review websites such as Dear Author* What to feature on your website* The importance of Search Engine Optimization* A Q&A with the people from Pubit!, the self publishing platform of Barnes and Noble* The seven steps of self publishing success from the owner of Smashwords, one of the largest and most well known self-publishing platforms* Tips and tidbits from Goodreads, the world's largest online book club website* And so much more!

    Some celebrated, while many others questioned the choice.  How could the world’s most prestigious book prize be awarded to a famously cantankerous singer-songwriter who wouldn’t even deign to attend the medal ceremony?In Why Bob Dylan Matters, Harvard Professor Richard F. Thomas answers this question with magisterial erudition. A world expert on Classical poetry, Thomas was initially ridiculed by his colleagues for teaching a course on Bob Dylan alongside his traditional seminars on Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. Dylan’s Nobel Prize brought him vindication, and he immediately found himself thrust into the spotlight as a leading academic voice in all matters Dylanological. Today, through his wildly popular Dylan seminar—affectionately dubbed "Dylan 101"—Thomas is introducing a new generation of fans and scholars to the revered bard’s work.This witty, personal volume is a distillation of Thomas’s famous course, and makes a compelling case for moving Dylan out of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and into the pantheon of Classical poets. Asking us to reflect on the question, "What makes a classic?", Thomas offers an eloquent argument for Dylan’s modern relevance, while interpreting and decoding Dylan’s lyrics for readers. The most original and compelling volume on Dylan in decades, Why Bob Dylan Matters will illuminate Dylan’s work for the Dylan neophyte and the seasoned fanatic alike. You’ll never think about Bob Dylan in the same way again.

    His slow descent into semi-madness is chronicled here, in The Office, The Scripts volume 2. Following on from the phenomenal success of series 1 voted Comedy of the Year at the British Comedy Awards the second series averaged over 4 million viewers, with a 25% audience share. This book features the scripts from all six episodes and contains over 500 picture screengrabs taken from the broadcast masters and available exclusively in this BBC publication. Original and accurate and painfully funny: it will have every office in the country twitching with spasms of recognition This is a gem. The Times

    In December 2012, millions will be introduced or reintroduced to J.R.R. Tolkien's classic with the arrival of the first of two film adaptations by acclaimed director Peter Jackson. Exploring The Hobbit is a fun, thoughtful, and insightful companion volume, designed to bring a thorough and original new reading of this great work to a general audience. Professor Corey Olsen (also known as the Tolkien Professor) will take readers on an in-depth journey through The Hobbit chapter by chapter, revealing the stories within the story: the dark desires of dwarves and the sublime laughter of elves, the nature of evil and its hopelessness, the mystery of divine providence and human choice, and, most of all, the revolutions within the life of Bilbo Baggins. Exploring The Hobbit is a book that will make The Hobbit come alive for readers as never before.

    The result is an extraordinary, complex portrait of "white girls," as Als dubs them—an expansive but precise category that encompasses figures as diverse as Truman Capote and Louise Brooks, Malcolm X and Flannery O’Connor. In pieces that hairpin between critique and meditation, fiction and nonfiction, high culture and low, the theoretical and the deeply personal, Als presents a stunning portrait of a writer by way of his subjects, and an invaluable guide to the culture of our time.

    H. Auden once wrote that “art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.” In his brilliant and compulsively readable new treatise, Breaking Bread with the Dead, Alan Jacobs shows us that engaging with the strange and wonderful writings of the past might help us live less anxiously in the present—and increase what Thomas Pynchon once called our “personal density.”Today we are battling too much information in a society changing at lightning speed, with algorithms aimed at shaping our every thought—plus a sense that history offers no resources, only impediments to overcome or ignore. The modern solution to our problems is to surround ourselves only with what we know and what brings us instant comfort. Jacobs’s answer is the opposite: to be in conversation with, and challenged by, those from the past who can tell us what we never thought we needed to know.What can Homer teach us about force? How does Frederick Douglass deal with the massive blind spots of America’s Founding Fathers? And what can we learn from modern authors who engage passionately and profoundly with the past? How can Ursula K. Le Guin show us truths about Virgil’s female characters that Virgil himself could never have seen? In Breaking Bread with the Dead, a gifted scholar draws us into close and sympathetic engagement with texts from across the ages, including the work of Anita Desai, Henrik Ibsen, Jean Rhys, Simone Weil, Edith Wharton, Amitav Ghosh, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Italo Calvino, and many more.By hearing the voices of the past, we can expand our consciousness, our sympathies, and our wisdom far beyond what our present moment can offer.

    However, most books focus on the introduction of techniques themselves, and contain very little or no discussion on application in actual combat situations. This seizing art has thus been confined to stage performances instead of real combat use.Although Dr. Yang has published other Chin Na books, both fundamental and advanced texts, he believes this work is necessary in order to make this art more complete and alive. Therefore, in addition to introducing many new techniques, this book is also laid out according to actual combat scenarios - for example, application of Chin Na when your opponent punches, grabs, kicks or attacks with a knife.

    He enjoins educators to stop offering up literature as facile entertainment and instead teach students to read in a way that can change their lives for the better. At once controversial and inspiring, this is a groundbreaking book written with the elegance and power to change the way we teach and read. Praise for Why Read?: "Edmundson is dead on target."-Washington Post Book World "Edmundson's an engaging teacher, earnest, knowledgeable, witty."-Boston Globe "Why Read? makes passionate arguments for literature's soul-making potential."-Raleigh News and Observer "An engaging blend of social criticism, self-improvement wisdom, and appeal to fellow humanities professors...Edmundson writes with a rare combination of force and humility."-Willamette Weekly Mark Edmundson is NEH/Daniels Family Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Virginia. A prizewinning scholar, he is the author of Literature Against Philosophy, Plato to Derrida, and the widely praised memoir, Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference. He has written for the New Republic, the New York Times Magazine, the Nation, and Harper's, where he is a contributing editor. Featured on Brian Lamb's final Booknotes Also available: HC 1-58234-425-6 ISBN 13: 978-158234-425- $21.95

    Think of films such as Casablanca and The English Patient, of novels such as Wuthering Heights and Rebecca. Think of romantic, obsessive love, the hot bed of passion we fall into, the emotion we call true love. This is the subject of Rosemary Sullivan's provocative and fascinating book. Beginning with her own telling of a fictional love story, she then, chapter by chapter, deconstructs it, skillfully pushing back the layers of meaning to look at what is really happening. Using literature, mythology, film, and personal anecdote; with graceful writing and an intimate knowledge of the subject, Rosemary Sullivan has written an exploration of our desire for romantic love.

    There’s a famous piece of writing advice—offered by Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, and myriad writers in between—not to use -ly adverbs like “quickly” or “fitfully.” It sounds like solid advice, but can we actually test it? If we were to count all the -ly adverbs these authors used in their careers, do they follow their own advice compared to other celebrated authors? What’s more, do great books in general—the classics and the bestsellers—share this trait?In Nabokov’s Favorite Word Is Mauve, statistician and journalist Ben Blatt brings big data to the literary canon, exploring the wealth of fun findings that remain hidden in the works of the world’s greatest writers. He assembles a database of thousands of books and hundreds of millions of words, and starts asking the questions that have intrigued curious word nerds and book lovers for generations: What are our favorite authors’ favorite words? Do men and women write differently? Are bestsellers getting dumber over time? Which bestselling writer uses the most clichés? What makes a great opening sentence? How can we judge a book by its cover? And which writerly advice is worth following or ignoring?

    Topics range from ruminations on why Charles Dickens was among the best of writers and the worst of men to the haunting science fiction of J.G. Ballard; from the enduring legacies of Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell to the persistent agonies of anti-Semitism and jihad. Hitchens even looks at the recent financial crisis and argues for the enduring relevance of Karl Marx. The book forms a bridge between the two parallel enterprises of culture and politics. It reveals how politics justifies itself by culture, and how the latter prompts the former. In this fashion, Arguably burnishes Christopher Hitchens' credentials as (to quote Christopher Buckley) our "greatest living essayist in the English language."