It is a drink that is a profound and important part of Scottish life and culture but, unlike other countries and their national libations, it has hardly been used in food. Rachel McCormack is going to change that with this book. Limiting whisky to a drink, she believes, is similar to the traditional Presbyterian attitude to sex; it should only be done with the lights off and in the missionary position. Rachel believes that there is an entire Karma Sutraof whisky use out there and she has put it in this book. Interspersing an engaging mix of anecdotes, history and information on distillers and recipes, this book will appeal to everyone from the cooking whisky connoisseur, to the novice whisky learner looking for some guidance on what to eat and cook. Rachel travels the length and breadth of Scotland, discovering a myriad of unique and interesting people and facts about this remarkable drink, with interviews with the key people who create it around the country, as she visits the famous distilleries of her country, as well as the more home-grown variety.

    The book presented a new and urgent poetry of dream-life, mystery and music, sexual obsession and the consolations of drink - all delivered with great formal skill and imaginative daring.'One of the finest first books of poems I've read for ages.' Paul Muldoon'If you are wondering whether great poems are still being written, you ought to read Don Paterson's.' Charles Simic'One of the most ferociously talented of all British poets.' Catherine Lockerbie

    Great literature increases knowledge of and desire for the good life by showing readers what virtue looks like and where vice leads. It is not just what one reads but how one reads that cultivates virtue. Reading good literature well requires one to practice numerous virtues, such as patience, diligence, and prudence. And learning to judge wisely a character in a book, in turn, forms the reader's own character.Acclaimed author Karen Swallow Prior takes readers on a guided tour through works of great literature both ancient and modern, exploring twelve virtues that philosophers and theologians throughout history have identified as most essential for good character and the good life. In reintroducing ancient virtues that are as relevant and essential today as ever, Prior draws on the best classical and Christian thinkers, including Aristotle, Aquinas, and Augustine. Covering authors from Henry Fielding to Cormac McCarthy, Jane Austen to George Saunders, and Flannery O'Connor to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Prior explores some of the most compelling universal themes found in the pages of classic books, helping readers learn to love life, literature, and God through their encounter with great writing.In examining works by these authors and more, Prior shows why virtues such as prudence, temperance, humility, and patience are still necessary for human flourishing and civil society. The book includes end-of-chapter reflection questions geared toward book club discussions, features original artwork throughout, and includes a foreword from Leland Ryken.

    Joined by his trusty traveling companion-cum-domestic appliance, he made his way from Dublin to Donegal, from Sligo through Mayo, Galway, Clare, Kerry, Cork, Wexford, Wicklow--and back again to Dublin. In their month of madness, Tony and his fridge met a real prince, a bogus king, and the fridge got christened. They surfed together, entered a bachelor festival, and one of them had sex without the other knowing. And unexpectedly, the fridge itself became a momentary focus for the people of Ireland.An international bestseller, Round Ireland with a Fridge is a classic travel adventure in the tradition of Bill Bryson with a dash of Dave Barry.

    Now, in the book PASSION & PURPOSE: Believing the Church Can Still Change the World (Clear Day Publishing), Jimmy Seibert, Senior Pastor of Antioch Community Church and Founder & President of Antioch Ministries International, tells the firsthand account of a church that is cultivating a global impact. With an intentional focus on intimacy with Jesus, discipleship, church planting and evangelism, Antioch Ministries International has become one of the fastest growing evangelical movements in the country as well as a common case study among students of church planting and mission work. Based out of the Antioch Community Church of Waco, TX, the Antioch Ministries International movement is spearheaded by Seibert. After deciding to follow Jesus at any cost, Seibert started Antioch Community Church in one of poorest, most crime-ridden and drug-infested part of Waco. Along with a small group of likeminded believers, Seibert embarked on a journey to simply say "yes" to the next thing God was doing. The result has been an astounding adventure of walking with the Holy Spirit, building intimate community, and living with radical intentionality. "God has called us to be a people who passionately pursue Him with all our hearts and are deeply committed to His purposes. Nothing more. Nothing less. Now after 26 years, we feel like we can tell our story with integrity," explains Seibert, when asked about the timing of this book about Antioch and his personal journey. Seibert speaks with humility. A leader who has purposefully avoided the spotlight, Seibert prefers the role of teacher who seeks to encourage and motivate the church. "We have a heart for the body of Christ to believe in the church again, and to know that Jesus is enough." The once small gathering has turned into a network of 78 churches around the world in 24 nations, with 30 churches in the United Stated alone. At the original Waco, Texas home base, more than 3,000 people now attend regularly, with 170 Lifegroups meeting in members' homes across the city. Since its infancy, the church has focused on growing in relational and spiritual depth at home, and sending the message of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. The movement has inspired hundreds of Antioch members to leave their lives of comfort to proclaim the Gospel around the world, often in remote and even hostile environments. Currently, Antioch has more than 200 long-term missionaries who are active around the globe. In 2001, two of Antioch's missionaries who were in Afghanistan, Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry, were arrested and held prisoner by the Taliban. The captivity-and the missionaries' miraculous rescue-became a major international news story after the 9/11 attacks, bringing Antioch's evangelical intentionality into the international conversation. PASSION & PURPOSE: Believing the Church Can Still Change the World chronicles the movement's humble beginnings, shares testimonies of powerful encounters with God along the way, and inspires with its rock-solid belief that the local church is God's "Plan A" for reaching the corners of the earth with the good news of Jesus Christ. The book explains Antioch's vision to be a people with "a passion for Jesus and His purposes in the earth." Early responses to PASSION & PURPOSE have begun pouring in. The book foreword is written by Max Lucado who has been acquainted with Seibert and the vision for Antioch Community Church for many years., In the foreword, Lucado states, "To visit Antioch Community Church is to visit the book of Acts; To hear their passion is to hear the heart of God; To listen to their stories of global impact makes you realize...it can happen today!"

    Written for Americans, but equally amusing to anyone visiting the shores of the Great Southern Land, this book examines the relationship between Australia and the U.S., including how Australians view their American cousins. The author has plenty of experience of working and dealing with Americans. He is married to an American nurse and has lived his life within the massive cultural influence that America has shared with Australia since the Second World War. The author’s stories are brimming with empathy and jokes for his American audience. The book is written from the opinion of an Aussie Bloke and the easy-to-digest chapters are just long enough to leave the reader smiling and well informed.Topics include Blokes and Sheilas, Bloody Foster’s, Dangerous Creatures, Talking to Dogs, The GAFA, Speaking Strail-yun and Working for the Queen. Confused? You won’t be after reading this book!

    Simultaneously channeling the gonzo energy of Hunter S. Thompson and the wit and insight of Joan Didion, Sullivan shows us—with a laidback, erudite Southern charm that’s all his own—how we really (no, really) live now. In his native Kentucky, Sullivan introduces us to Constantine Rafinesque, a nineteenth-century polymath genius who concocted a dense, fantastical prehistory of the New World. Back in modern times, Sullivan takes us to the Ozarks for a Christian rock festival; to Florida to meet the alumni and straggling refugees of MTV’s Real World, who’ve generated their own self-perpetuating economy of minor celebrity; and all across the South on the trail of the blues. He takes us to Indiana to investigate the formative years of Michael Jackson and Axl Rose and then to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Katrina—and back again as its residents confront the BP oil spill. Gradually, a unifying narrative emerges, a story about this country that we’ve never heard told this way. It’s like a fun-house hall-of-mirrors tour: Sullivan shows us who we are in ways we’ve never imagined to be true. Of course we don’t know whether to laugh or cry when faced with this reflection—it’s our inevitable sob-guffaws that attest to the power of Sullivan’s work.

    barrio to Hollywood is as close as a short drive on the 101 freeway, but the cultural divide is enormous. Born to Mexican-born and American-naturalized parents, Alicia Armendariz migrated a few miles west to participate in the free-range birth of the 1970s punk movement. Alicia adopted the punk name Alice Bag, and became lead singer for The Bags, early punk visionaries who starred in Penelope Spheeris' documentary The Decline of Western Civilization.Here is a life of many crossed boundaries, from East L.A.'s musica ranchera to Hollywood's punk rock; from a violent male-dominated family to female-dominated transgressive rock bands. Alice's feminist sympathies can be understood by the name of her satiric all-girl early Goth band Castration Squad.Violence Girl takes us from a violent upbringing to an aggressive punk sensibility; this time a difficult coming-of-age memoir culminates with a satisfying conclusion, complete with a happy marriage and children. Nearly a hundred excellent photographs energize the text in remarkable ways.Alice Bag's work and influence can be seen this year in the traveling Smithsonian exhibition "American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music."

    And they are dangerous." In The Truth About Stories, Native novelist and scholar Thomas King explores how stories shape who we are and how we understand and interact with other people. From creation stories to personal experiences, historical anecdotes to social injustices, racist propaganda to works of contemporary Native literature, King probes Native culture's deep ties to storytelling. With wry humor, King deftly weaves events from his own life as a child in California, an academic in Canada, and a Native North American with a wide-ranging discussion of stories told by and about Indians. So many stories have been told about Indians, King comments, that "there is no reason for the Indian to be real. The Indian simply has to exist in our imaginations." That imaginative Indian that North Americans hold dear has been challenged by Native writers - N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louis Owens, Sherman Alexie, and others - who provide alternative narratives of the Native experience that question, create a present, and imagine a future. King reminds the reader, Native and non-Native, that storytelling carries with it social and moral responsibilties. "Don't say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story. You've heard it now."

    In old Doc's books, they recognize a man who knew horses and cattle to the bone and could tell about them with honest prose and a sly cowboy sense of humor. I've read them all, as have most of the cowboys I know."-John R. Erickson, rancher and author of the Hank the Cowdog series. Ben K. Green takes us back to the deep Southwest and the never-a-dull-moment years he spent as a practicing horse doctor along the Pecos and the Rio Grande. With precious little formal schooling but a perfect corral-side manner and plenty of natural wit, Green became the first to hang up a shingle in the trans-Pecos territory. Hear him tell the tales of his struggles with mean stockmen, yellowweed fever, banditos, poison hay, and "drouth." His canny mix of science and horse sense when treating animals "that ain't house pets" is 100-proof old time pleasure. A veterinarian in the far Southwest for much of his life, Ben K. Green retired to ranch in Texas until his death in 1974.

    "By reading my book, you can become happier without ever having to leave the comfort and security of your own private hell," she writes. In How to Be Hap-Hap-Happy Like Me, Merrill Markoe has undertaken the arduous task of actually carrying out the best "how to be happy" suggestions from the wisest of all possible sources of advice, the "365 Days to a Happier Life" Desk Calendar. So abandon the pursuit of happiness, sit back, and "extend a social invitation to someone you've always been afraid to approach," and share Merrill's unforgettable dinner with Fabio; "take the time to improve your knowledge of another period of history," while dining with Merrill at the Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament Restaurant franchise ("where the year is 1093 A.D. and you are the guests of the royal castle"); "plan a party and invite the people you care about," in which you watch Merrill answer the door in her pajamas and pretend the party was yesterday; "enroll in a class or lecture that interests you," accompanying Merrill to a session of Dominatrix 101 at the Learning Annex. Where else can you discover the beauty secrets of someone who is not so genetically perfect that her advice is completely useless, or "How to Please a Man Every Time and Have Him Okay Maybe Not Beg for More but at Least Not Demand a Whole Lot Less"? Markoe is that rare soul who will unselfishly share with you these and many other secrets of how to live a not-totally-nightmarish life. And even if you don't learn anything, this book will make you laugh, which is more happiness than you can get from most desk calendars.

    He died in 1965 virtually unrecognized, yet in the following years his work and thought have attracted and intrigued an international audience. Now this comprehensive biography gives a pivotal poet his due. Based on interviews with scores of Spicer's contemporaries, Poet Be Like God details the most intimate aspects of Spicer's life-his family, his friends, his lovers-illuminating not only the man but also many of his poems. Such illumination extends also to the works of others whom Spicer came to know, including the writers Frank O'Hara, Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, Helen Adam, Robin Blaser, Charles Olson, Philip K. Dick, Richard Brautigan, and Marianne Moore and the painters Jess, Fran Herndon, and Jay DeFeo. The resulting narrative, an engaging chronicle of the San Francisco Renaissance and the emergence of the North Beach gay scene during the 50s and 60s, will be indispensable reading for students of American literature and gay studies.

    "An intellectually dazzling view of our past and future."--Time magazineContents1. How humans have repeatedly lost hope, and how new encounters, and a new pair of spectacles, revive them2. How men and women have slowly learned to have interesting conversations3. How people searching for their roots are only beginning to look far and deep enough4. How some people have acquired an immunity to loneliness5. How new forms of love have been invented6. Why there has been more progress in cooking than in sex7. How the desire that men feel for women, and for other men, has altered through the centuries8. How respect has become more desirable than power9. How those who want neither to give orders nor to receive them can become intermediaries10. How people have freed themselves from fear by finding new fears11. How curiosity has become the key to freedom12. Why it has become increasingly difficult to destroy one’s enemies13. How the art of escaping from one’s troubles has developed, but not the art of knowing where to escape to14. Why compassion has flowered even in stony ground15. Why toleration has never been enough16. Why even the privileged are often somewhat gloomy about life, even when they can have anything the consumer society offers, and even after sexual liberation17. How travellers are becoming the largest nation in the world, and how they have learned not to see only what they are looking for18. Why friendship between men and women has been so fragile19. How even astrologers resist their destiny20. Why people have not been able to find the time to lead several lives21. Why fathers and their children are changing their minds about what they want from each other22. Why the crisis in the family is only one stage in the evolution of generosity23. How people choose a way of life, and how it does not wholly satisfy them24. How humans become hospitable to each other25. What becomes possible when soul-mates meet

    It is a story that, like its subject, reflects the tidal ebbs and flows of American history in the twentieth century. To his fans, he was the ultimate hipster; to his detractors, he was temperamental, eccentric, taciturn, or childlike. His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the birth of “bebop” and establishing Monk as one of America’s greatest com­posers. Elegantly written and rich with humor and pathos, Thelonious Monk is the definitive work on modern jazz’s most original composer.

    Karen King, a star professor at Harvard Divinity School, announced a blockbuster discovery at a scholarly conference just steps from the Vatican: She had found an ancient fragment of papyrus in which Jesus calls Mary Magdalene "my wife." The tattered manuscript made international headlines. If early Christians believed Jesus was married, it would upend the 2,000-year history of the world's predominant faith, threatening not just the celibate, all-male priesthood but sacred teachings on marriage, sex and women's leadership. Biblical scholars were in an uproar, but King had impeccable credentials as a world-renowned authority on female figures in the lost Christian texts from Egypt known as the Gnostic gospels. "The Gospel of Jesus's Wife"--as she provocatively titled her discovery--was both a crowning career achievement and powerful proof for her arguments that Christianity from its start embraced alternative, and far more inclusive, voices.As debates over the manuscript's authenticity raged, award-winning journalist Ariel Sabar set out to investigate a baffling mystery: where did this tiny scrap of papyrus come from? His search for answers is an international detective story--leading from the factory districts of Berlin to the former headquarters of the East German Stasi before winding up in rural Florida, where he discovered an internet pornographer with a prophetess wife, a fascination with the Pharaohs and a tortured relationship with the Catholic Church.