Peculiar Questions and Practical Answers: A Little Book of Whimsy and Wisdom from the Files of the New York Public Library


New York Public Library - 2019
    Have you've ever wondered if you can keep an octopus in a private home? Do you spend your time thinking about how much Napoleon's brain weighed? If so, Peculiar Questions and Practical Answers is the book for you. The New York Public Library has been fielding questions like these ever since it was founded in 1895. Of course, some of the questions have left the librarians scratching their heads..."In what occupations may one be barefooted?""What time does a bluebird sing?""What does it mean when you're being chased by an elephant?""What kind of apple did Eve eat?""How many neurotic people are there in the U.S.?"In Peculiar Questions and Practical Answers, the staff of the NYPL has dug through the archives to find thoughtful and often witty answers to over one hundred of the oddest, funniest, and most whimsical questions the library has received since it began record-keeping over seventy-five years ago. One of The New Yorker's best-known and beloved illustrators, Barry Blitt, has created watercolors that bring many of the questions hilariously to life in a book that answers, among others, the question "Does anyone have a copyright on the Bible?"

Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise


Ruth Reichl - 2005
    She also knows that as the most important food critic in the country, you need to be anonymous when reviewing some of the most high-profile establishments in the biggest restaurant town in the world--a charge she took very seriously, taking on the guise of a series of eccentric personalities. In Garlic and Sapphires, Reichl reveals the comic absurdity, artifice, and excellence to be found in the sumptuously appointed stages of the epicurean world and gives us--along with some of her favorite recipes and reviews--her remarkable reflections on how one's outer appearance can influence one's inner character, expectations, and appetites, not to mention the quality of service one receives.

Catch 22: My Battles, in Hockey and Life


Rick Vaive - 2020
    He did it three years in a row (only two others have scored 50 since) before being unceremoniously stripped of his captaincy and traded out of town, and he did it for a promising team that was nonetheless largely stuck at the bottom of the standings. So why isn't his number 22 hanging from the rafters of the Leafs' rink and his name as revered in Leafs lore as Gilmour, Sundin and Clark?You could blame it on a team that lost far more than it won. You could blame Harold Ballard and his erratic ownership. You could blame the fans, the media...Rick Vaive doesn't blame anybody. Sometimes, life just doesn't go your way. He'd know. Growing up in a household plagued by alcoholism, the gifted young hockey player took shelter in the company of his grandmother and a blind and severely disabled uncle. Rick learned quickly that there are more valuable things in life than hockey. Even after his promising coaching career stopped dead when it ran into Don Cherry in Mississauga--one of the worst seasons in Ontario junior hockey history--he still doesn't point fingers. Life is too sweet for regrets, but learning that lesson can be one hell of a ride.

M Train


Patti Smith - 2015
    Through prose that shifts fluidly between dreams and reality, past and present, we travel to Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul in Mexico; to the fertile moon terrain of Iceland; to a ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York's Far Rockaway that Smith acquires just before Hurricane Sandy hits; to the West 4th Street subway station, filled with the sounds of the Velvet Underground after the death of Lou Reed; and to the graves of Genet, Plath, Rimbaud, and Mishima.Woven throughout are reflections on the writer's craft and on artistic creation. Here, too, are singular memories of Smith's life in Michigan and the irremediable loss of her husband, Fred Sonic Smith.Braiding despair with hope and consolation, illustrated with her signature Polaroids, M Train is a meditation on travel, detective shows, literature, and coffee. It is a powerful, deeply moving book by one of the most remarkable multiplatform artists at work today.

Intern


Sandeep Jauhar - 2007
    Residency--and especially the first year, called internship--is legendary for its brutality. Working eighty hours or more per week, most new doctors spend their first year asking themselves why they wanted to be doctors in the first place.Jauhar's internship was even more harrowing than most: he switched from physics to medicine in order to follow a more humane calling--only to find that medicine put patients' concerns last. He struggled to find a place among squadrons of cocky residents and doctors. He challenged the practices of the internship in The New York Times, attracting the suspicions of the medical bureaucracy. Then, suddenly stricken, he became a patient himself--and came to see that today's high-tech, high-pressure medicine can be a humane science after all.Now a thriving cardiologist, Jauhar has all the qualities you'd want in your own doctor: expertise, insight, a feel for the human factor, a sense of humor, and a keen awareness of the worries that we all have in common. His beautifully written memoir explains the inner workings of modern medicine with rare candor and insight. "In Jauhar's wise memoir of his two-year ordeal of doubt and sleep deprivation at a New York hospital, he takes readers to the heart of every young physician's hardest test: to become a doctor yet remain a human being." ― Time

Single But Dating: A Field Guide to Dating in the Digital Age


Nikki Goldstein - 2017
    Nikki Goldstein's fresh and fun approach to dating and relationships will instill readers with a new level of confidence, positivity and excitement as they traverse the modern dating landscape.The intersection of real world and digital world situations experienced by today's dater can be confusing and overwhelming. In Single But Dating, Australia's most in-demand sexologist and relationship expert, Dr. Nikki Goldstein, dispenses invaluable advice on how to tackle a broad variety of relevant topics like how to let go of outdated beliefs around what it means to be single, how to become technosexually savvy, how to know if you are overtexting, when to enact a man-ban and how to deal with new dating phenomena like ghosting.Statistics show that women are staying single longer than ever before, prioritizing their professional and financial power over their domestic and reproductive power. That's what makes Single But Dating so timely - it is a crucial guide book for any woman navigating the (sometimes frustrating) dating world full of new rules and distractions. With a surprising mix of some time-tested oldies but goodies, thought-provoking exercises and fresh, forward-looking advice, Dr. Nikki equips single-but-dating women with the tools they need to learn to love both themselves and the wild ride of 21st century dating.

Life Lessons from Bob Ross


Bob Ross - 2020
    Chapters range from Blank Canvas: It's Your World, which illuminates how to approach each day, to Bravery Tests: Challenging Yourself, which draws upon your inner strength, to Happy Little Accidents: Creating Success from Failure, which affirms the power of positive thinking.Bob Ross's lessons gently encourage everyone to live their best Bob Ross life--an aspiration more important now than ever before.

Preserving Patients: Anecdotes of a Junior Doctor


Tom Parsons - 2017
    From being the saviour of a man’s anus to being mistaken for the milkman, Tom describes the complexity and absurdity of today’s medical practice with humour and aplomb. Tom is a junior doctor working in the National Health Service. Tom Parsons is a pseudonym. * Amazon/Kindle/Fiction/Medical, March 2018

Il Dottore: The Double Life of a Mafia Doctor


Ron Felber - 2004
    Felber (a doctoral candidate at Drew U.) recounts the doctor's early ties to criminals during his childhood in the Bronx, his participation in a

Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London


Lauren Elkin - 2015
    Feminine form of flâneur [flanne-euhr], an idler, a dawdling observer, usually found in cities.That is an imaginary definition.'If the word flâneur conjures up visions of Baudelaire, boulevards and bohemia – then what exactly is a flâneuse?In this gloriously provocative and celebratory book, Lauren Elkin defines her as ‘a determined resourceful woman keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city, and the liberating possibilities of a good walk’. Part cultural meander, part memoir, Flâneuse traces the relationship between the city and creativity through a journey that begins in New York and moves us to Paris, via Venice, Tokyo and London, exploring along the way the paths taken by the flâneuses who have lived and walked in those cities.From nineteenth-century novelist George Sand to artist Sophie Calle, from war correspondent Martha Gellhorn to film-maker Agnes Varda, Flâneuse considers what is at stake when a certain kind of light-footed woman encounters the city and changes her life, one step at a time.

Committed: Confessions of a Fantasy Football Junkie


Mark St. Amant - 2004
     As seen on ESPN's Cold Pizza Fantasy football -- one of America's most popular, and profitable, virtual pastimes -- became a way of life for sports humorist and author Mark St. Amant. Utterly fed up with never having won his league championship, St. Amant abandoned a successful advertising career to make fantasy football his full-time job, embarking on a sprawling reconnaissance mission to discover what really makes this game, and its 20 million players, tick. Committed is the result of St. Amant's ranting, relentless, and strategic pursuit of his own obsession. In this wickedly funny and deeply informative work, St. Amant offers readers an all-access sideline pass to his wild, unprecedented fantasy football season, and to the hobby itself. From its humble beginnings in a New York hotel in 1962 to a multibillion-dollar business today, from local and online leagues to high-stakes, cutthroat Las Vegas competitions, St. Amant lays bare the facts, figures, and fanaticism of fantasy football in all its multidimensional glory.

Anatomy of a Secret Life: The Psychology of Living a Lie


Gail Saltz - 2006
    But we can never know for certain, because what really goes on inside another’s head and heart is essentially a secret. How do you know if that secret is something that will hurt you? Your husband turns to face you in bed. Is he thinking about you or your closest friend? Your boss shows up in another new outfit. Did she get a raise or is she a compulsive shopper who is stealing money from the company? Your teenaged daughter is upstairs in her bedroom. Is she doing her homework or chatting online with a man twice her age? Anatomy of A Secret Life will take you inside the minds of secret-keepers and show you how secrets start, how they’re kept, and how they exact their devastating emotional and social toll. Using contemporary case studies and historical examples, Dr. Gail Saltz shows you how to spot—through subtle behaviors and clues—and safely stop the potentially dangerous secrets that someone, even you, might be concealing from the world.

How May We Hate You?: Notes from the Concierge Desk


Anna Drezen - 2016
      Find out what really goes on in the world of hospitality with this hilarious book full of funny and absurd stories, anecdotes told in dialogue, factoids, and hoax pop quizzes by two veteran concierges who paid their way while working at a combined 50 hotels in and around Times Square. They are very pleased to help you learn the following: ·         The Truth About Bed Bugs ·         The Mythology of “Loyalty Programs” ·         The 411 on Hotel Residents ·         And so much more   Filled with photographs and infographics, How May We Hate You? is both romp and commentary on the hospitality industry and life behind the nametag.

Police, Lies and Alibis: The True Story of a Front Line Officer


John Donoghue - 2013
    It is the follow-up book to Police, Crime & 999, a book which still remains hugely popular today, with over 250 5-star Amazon reviews, and which garnered positive feedback from a number of national publications:‘Everything is included in this warts-and-all account. Very funny’ The Sun‘A treasure trove of a book – a wonderfully informative and addictive read, full of belly laughs’ The Non-Fiction Book ClubWARNING: Contains Humour & Traces of Nuts

Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway


Michael Riedel - 2015
    In the mid-1970s Times Square was the seedy symbol of New York’s economic decline. Its once shining star, the renowned Shubert Organization, was losing theaters to make way for parking lots. Bernard Jacobs and Jerry Schoenfeld, two ambitious board members, saw the crumbling company was ripe for takeover and staged a coup amidst corporate intrigue, personal betrayals, and criminal investigations. Once Jacobs and Schoenfeld solidified their power, they turned a collapsed theater-owning holding company into one of the most successful entertainment empires in the world, ultimately backing many of Broadway’s biggest hits, including A Chorus Line, Cats, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, and Mamma Mia! They also sparked the revitalization of Broadway and the renewal of Times Square. Now Michael Riedel tells the stories of the Shubert Organization and the shows that re-built a city in grand style, revealing the backstage drama that often rivaled what transpired onstage, exposing bitter rivalries, unlikely alliances, and—of course—scintillating gossip. This is a great story, told with wit and passion.