Celebrate all the holidays–and then some–with renowned storyteller Kevin Kling, whose sense of the ridiculous never gets in the way of his appreciation for human nature.

    Quoting from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, Lindqvist muses on what bodybuilding's increasing popularity says about contemporary society. "Bench Press" is an intoxicating blend of philosophical and political insight, emotional candor, and forgotten annals of the history of exertion.

    In a myriad of commonplace activities, he finds the presence of the divine, and he elegantly describes these persons, events, and observations, nimbly transporting readers into these realities. With his masterly crafted prose, Buechner edifies, inspires, and offers a timeless model for approaching our human experience.

    Zumba! Created by celebrity fitness trainer Beto Perez, Zumba combines fun, easy-to-follow dance steps with hot Latin beats to help you shed pounds and inches fast. Now the DVD and classes that have hooked millions are available in book format, with a complete workout program, fat-burning diet, as well as a DVD with a 5-minute instructional demo that shows the basic moves you'll need to learn plus 60 minutes worth of music to help you Zumba your way to the perfect body. Using the principles of interval and resistance training, the simple dance and sculpting moves (inspired by the traditional cumbia, salsa, samba, and merengue) tone and shape your body. And because it burns 600 to 1,000 calories per hour, you don't have to restrict your meals to boring or bland-tasting diet foods. The Zumba diet begins with a 5-Day Express Diet to jump start weight loss (lose up to 9 lbs in 5 days) and then offers 14-day meal plans and recipes that target weight loss in the stomach and thighs. You'll find: Hot moves that make you feel like you're on the dance floor-not on the elliptical machine! Recipes for mouthwatering meals that boost your metabolism Dozens of workout combinations so you never get bored An exclusive jump-start program to get you ready for that big event next weekend An easy plan to help you keep up your progress and maintain the weight loss So start moving, grooving and losing with Zumba today!

    Season of the Witch is the first book to fully capture the dark magic of San Francisco in this breathtaking period, when the city radically changed itself & then revolutionized the world. The cool gray city of love was the epicenter of the 60s cultural revolution. But by the early 70s, San Francisco’s ecstatic experiment came crashing down from its starry heights. The city was rocked by savage murder sprees, mysterious terror campaigns, political assassinations, street riots & finally a terrifying sexual epidemic. No other city endured so many calamities in such a short time span. Talbot goes deep into the riveting story of his city’s ascent, decline & heroic recovery. He draws intimate portraits of San Francisco’s legendary demons & saviors: Charles Manson, Patty Hearst & the Symbionese Liberation Army, Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, Bill Graham, Herb Caen, the Cockettes, Harvey Milk, Jim Jones & the Peoples Temple, Joe Montana & the Super Bowl 49ers. He reveals how the city emerged from the trials of this period with a new brand of “San Francisco values,” including gay marriage, medical marijuana, immigration sanctuary, universal health care, recycling, renewable energy, consumer safety & a living wage mandate. Considered radical when they were first introduced, these ideas have become the bedrock of decent society in many parts of the country & exemplify the ways that the city now inspires a live-and-let-live tolerance, a shared sense of humanity & an openness to change. As a new generation of activists & dreamers seeks its own path to a more enlightened future, Season of the Witch—with its epic tale of the wild & bloody birth of San Francisco values—offers both inspiration & cautionary wisdom.

    Now a single volume brings together the full range of his work: monologues from A Prairie Home Companion, stories from The New Yorker and The Atlantic, excerpts from novels, newspaper columns. With an extensive introduction and headnotes, photographs, and memorabilia, The Keillor Reader also presents pieces never before published, including the essays “Cheerfulness” and “What We Have Learned So Far.”   Keillor is the founder and host of A Prairie Home Companion, celebrating its fortieth anniversary in 2014. He is the author of nineteen books of fiction and humor, the editor of the Good Poems collections, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

    Though officially unsolved, Jane’s murder was apparently the third in a series of seven brutal rape-murders in the area. Nelson was born a few years after Jane’s death, and the narrative is suffused with the long shadow her murder cast over both the family and her psyche.Jane explores the nature of this haunting incident via a collage of poetry, prose, and documentary sources, including newspapers, related "true crime" books, and fragments from Jane’s own diaries written. Each piece in Jane has its own form that serves as an important fissure, disrupting the tabloid, "page-turner" quality of the story, and eventually returning the reader to deeper questions about girlhood, empathy, identification, and the essentially unknowable aspects of another’s life and death. Part elegy, part memoir, detective story, part meditation on violence, and part conversation between the living and the dead, Jane’s powerful and disturbing subject matter, combined with its innovations in genre, expands the notion of what poetry can do—what kind of stories it can tell, and how it can tell them.

    Olson brings to his writing a native’s perception of the north country and the happy gift of making readers participate in his appreciation of trees and plants and animals." Atlantic Monthly

    This is a communal effort by the Pushcart Press staff, contributing editors, and hundreds of small presses. For this edition distinguished poets Julie Sheehan and Tom Sleigh served as poetry editors. The result is an introduction to a literary world that few readers have access to, where much of today's important new writing is published, far from the commercial influence of the conglomerates. In reviewing last year's edition, Donna Seaman of Booklist commented: "A brimming, vibrant anthology-the perfect introduction to new writers and adventurous new work by established writers . . . extraordinary in its range of voices and subjects. Here is literature to have and to hold." The Pushcart Prize has been chosen for the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement recognition by the National Book Critics Circle and the Writers for Writers award from Poets Writers / Barnes Noble.

    Told in her own inimitable style, this book transcends genres and categories: guidebook, memoir, poetry, and pure delight.Here in short spellbinding essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that led Angelou to an exalted place in American letters and taught her lessons in compassion and fortitude: how she was brought up by her indomitable grandmother in segregated Arkansas, taken in at thirteen by her more worldly and less religious mother, and grew to be an awkward, six-foot-tall teenager whose first experience of loveless sex paradoxically left her with her greatest gift, a son.Whether she is recalling such lost friends as Coretta Scott King and Ossie Davis, extolling honesty, decrying vulgarity, explaining why becoming a Christian is a “lifelong endeavor,” or simply singing the praises of a meal of red rice–Maya Angelou writes from the heart to millions of women she considers her extended family. Like the rest of her remarkable work, Letter to My Daughter entertains and teaches; it is a book to cherish, savor, re-read, and share.“I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.”–from Letter to My Daughter

    Her best friend paused before saying, “Well, you do say “f***” a lot.” Welcome to the interesting quagmire Lucinda Holdforth finds herself in. She believes that manners are essential to civilization. Yet according to the knife-and-fork snobs, or exclusive bores, her modern-day attitude might not scream manners. And in this age of global warming and warfare, aren’t manners frivolous? Do manners really matter? Yes! she passionately exclaims. Citing everyone from Tocqueville to Proust to Borat, Holdforth shows how manners, —which many of us might think are inconsequential, —are actually the cornerstone of civilization. Incredibly smart, the book illustrates how the philosophies of the greatest thinkers are relevant to our very modern lives.

    It is a remoteness that both perplexes and enthralls him.    Through dazzling sleight of hand in which the public becomes private and the private becomes public, the entire book—clicking from confession to family-album photograph to family chronicle to sexual fantasy to pseudo-scholarly footnote to reportage to personal essay to stand-up comedy to cultural criticism to literary criticism to film criticism to prose-poem to litany to outtake —becomes both an anatomy of American culture and a searing self-portrait.    David Shields reads his own life—reads our life—as if it were an allegory about remoteness and finds persuasive, hilarious, heartbreaking evidence wherever he goes.Winner of the PEN / Revson Award?

    Provides glimpses into the origins of Charles Simic's poetry

    All of your favorite artists are represented in these pages—from Bon Jovi and Green Day to Miley Cyrus, Beyoncé, and beyond. Already a smash sensation on the Internet—the Tumblr page has 20,000+ followers—Pop Sonnets has been featured by the A.V. Club, BuzzFeed, and Vanity Fair, among many others. More than half of these pop sonnets are exclusive to this collection and have never been published in any form.

    To be published on the first anniversary of Kurt Vonnegut's death, Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of twelve new and unpublished writings on war and peace, imbued with Vonnegut's trademark rueful humor.