Running steadily through the book is Vivian Gornick's exchange of more than twenty years with Leonard, a gay man who is sophisticated about his own unhappiness, whose friendship has "shed more light on the mysterious nature of ordinary human relations than has any other intimacy" she has known. The exchange between Gornick and Leonard acts as a Greek chorus to the main action of the narrator's continual engagement on the street with grocers, derelicts, and doormen; people on the bus, cross-dressers on the corner, and acquaintances by the handful. In Leonard she sees herself reflected plain; out on the street she makes sense of what she sees.Written as a narrative collage that includes meditative pieces on the making of a modern feminist, the role of the flaneur in urban literature, and the evolution of friendship over the past two centuries, The Odd Woman and the City beautifully bookends Gornick's acclaimed Fierce Attachments, in which we first encountered her rich relationship with the ultimate metropolis.

    It chronicles the back-story of Greenwich Village in the early days of the folk music explosion, when Dylan was honing his skills and she was in the ring with him.A shy girl from Queens, Suze Rotolo was the daughter of Italian working-class Communists. Growing up at the start of the Cold War and during McCarthyism, she inevitably became an outsider in her neighborhood and at school. Her childhood was turbulent, but Suze found solace in poetry, art, and music. In Washington Square Park, in Greenwich Village, she encountered like-minded friends who were also politically active. Then one hot day in July 1961, Suze met Bob Dylan, a rising young musician, at a folk concert at Riverside Church. She was seventeen, he was twenty; they were young, curious, and inseparable. During the years they were together, Dylan was transformed from an obscure folk singer into an uneasy spokesperson for a generation.Suze Rotolo’s story is rich in character and setting, filled with vivid memories of those tumultuous years of dramatic change and poignantly rising expectations when art, culture, and politics all seemed to be conspiring to bring our country a better, freer, richer, and more equitable life. She writes of her involvement with the civil rights movement and describes the sometimes frustrating experience of being a woman in a male-dominated culture, before women’s liberation changed the rules for the better. And she tells the wonderfully romantic story of her sweet but sometimes wrenching love affair and its eventual collapse under the pressures of growing fame.A Freewheelin’ Time is a vibrant, moving memoir of a hopeful time and place and of a vital subculture at its most creative. It communicates the excitement of youth, the heartbreak of young love, and the struggles for a brighter future.

    This oral history of the famed hotel peers behind the iconic façade and delves into the mayhem, madness, and brilliance that stemmed from the hotel in the 1980s and 1990s. Providing a window into the late Bohemia of New York during that time, countless interviews and firsthand accounts adorn this social history of one of the most celebrated and culturally significant landmarks in New York City.

    

    It was the street your mother warned you about—even if you lived in San Francisco. Long associated with skid row, saloons, freak shows, violence, and vice, the Bowery often showed the worst New York City had to offer. Yet there were times when it showed its best as well.The Bowery is New York’s oldest street and Manhattan’s broadest boulevard. Like the city itself, it has continually reinvented itself over the centuries. Named for the Dutch farms, or bouweries, of the area, the path’s lurid character was established early when it became the site of New Amsterdam’s first murder. A natural spring near the Five Points neighborhood led to breweries and taverns that became home to the gangs of New York—the “Bowery B’hoys,” “Plug Uglies,” and “Dead Rabbits.” In the Gaslight Era, teenaged streetwalkers swallowed poison in McGurk’s Suicide Hall. A brighter side to the street was reflected in places of amusement and culture over the years. A young P.T. Barnum got his start there, and Harry Houdini learned showmanship playing the music halls and dime museums. Poets, singers, hobos, gangsters, soldiers, travelers, preachers, storytellers, con-men, and reformers all gathered there. Its colorful cast of characters includes Peter Stuyvesant, Steve Brodie, Carry Nation, Stephen Foster, Stephen Crane, and even Abraham Lincoln.The Bowery: The Strange History of New York’s Oldest Street traces the full story of this once notorious thoroughfare from its pre-colonial origins to the present day.

    We'll guide guests as they choose a Disney cruise ship and potentially pair a sailing with a stay at a Walt Disney World resort: the ultimate Disney land-and-sea adventure! And as always, since ours is the only guidebook that's official, this book includes the most accurate information on prices, changes, and new attractions for 2015: • A Walt Disney World visit requires more advance preparation than ever. Our Getting Ready to Go chapter offers insight into Disney's new MagicBand program and will help guests plan their vacation like a pro.• The 2015 Birnbaum Guide features bigger and bolder charts and maps, and lots of color photos-making the Birnbaum vacation planner a solid souvenir.• Thorough descriptions of all theme park shows and attractions will help vacationers get the most bang for their buck. And money-saving tips will help stretch those precious vacation dollars.• As Disney and The Force join forces, we've got the scoop on new rides, shows, and character greetings from the Star Wars realm.• We deliver the details on the newest shows and attractions throughout Walt Disney World, including the new Seven Dwarfs Mine Train coaster and other newcomers in the Magic Kingdom's Fantasyland.• Our expanded Good Meals, Great Times chapter includes coverage of WDW restaurants, lounges, the Disney Dining Plan, Epcot Food & Wine Festival, special dining opportunities, and more.• The handy new Trip Tracker is the perfect place to jot down Disney Dining confirmation numbers, Fastpass assignments, and other important info.• Downtown Disney is morphing into the massive and immersive Disney Springs. We'll share the scoop as this dining, shopping, and entertainment enclave more than doubles in size.• There are Hidden Mickeys all over Walt Disney World. We will direct guests to some of our theme park favorites.• More hot tips and valuable coupons than ever before!

    Now, in their first-ever book, the duo gives you an exclusive personal tour through New York’s old cobblestone streets and gas-lit back alleyways. Featuring fascinating guides to:• Hell's Kitchen and Columbus Circle• The Bowery and Astor Place• Tribeca and Foley Square• Chinatown and Little Italy• and all the rest of New York!

    Michelle Browning is 33, drunk and a former beauty queen who nears death after six years of homelessness. Judith Glynn is divorced with grown children and struggles to support herself in her adopted city. After their first hello, neither woman is the same as they embark on a remarkable journey for two years. This memoir is a raw yet enlightening read that graphically depicts the homeless subculture. But as Judith sets out all alone to rescue Michelle is her fixation worth the sacrifice? At stake is whether Michelle will choose possible death in a gutter over Judith's guiding light back into society. Enrolled in Kindle Book Lending that allows users to lend their book after purchasing to their friends and family for a duration of 14 days. For full details, review the Kindle Book Lending Program.

    One apartment had 37 rooms, 14 bathrooms, 43 closets, 11 working fireplaces, a private elevator, and his-and-hers saunas; another at one time had a live-in service staff of 16. To this day, it is steeped in the purest luxury, the kind most of us could only imagine, until now. The last great building to go up along New York’s Gold Coast, construction on 740 Park finished in 1930. Since then, 740 has been home to an ever-evolving cadre of our wealthiest and most powerful families, some of America’s (and the world’s) oldest money—the kind attached to names like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Bouvier, Chrysler, Niarchos, Houghton, and Harkness—and some whose names evoke the excesses of today’s monied elite: Kravis, Koch, Bronfman, Perelman, Steinberg, and Schwarzman. All along, the building has housed titans of industry, political power brokers, international royalty, fabulous scam-artists, and even the lowest scoundrels.The book begins with the tumultuous story of the building’s construction. Conceived in the bubbling financial, artistic, and social cauldron of 1920’s Manhattan, 740 Park rose to its dizzying heights as the stock market plunged in 1929—the building was in dire financial straits before the first apartments were sold. The builders include the architectural genius Rosario Candela, the scheming businessman James T. Lee (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s grandfather), and a raft of financiers, many of whom were little more than white-collar crooks and grand-scale hustlers. Once finished, 740 became a magnet for the richest, oldest families in the country: the Brewsters, descendents of the leader of the Plymouth Colony; the socially-registered Bordens, Hoppins, Scovilles, Thornes, and Schermerhorns; and top executives of the Chase Bank, American Express, and U.S. Rubber. Outside the walls of 740 Park, these were the people shaping America culturally and economically. Within those walls, they were indulging in all of the Seven Deadly Sins. As the social climate evolved throughout the last century, so did 740 Park: after World War II, the building’s rulers eased their more restrictive policies and began allowing Jews (though not to this day African Americans) to reside within their hallowed walls. Nowadays, it is full to bursting with new money, people whose fortunes, though freshly-made, are large enough to buy their way in. At its core this book is a social history of the American rich, and how the locus of power and influence has shifted haltingly from old bloodlines to new money. But it’s also much more than that: filled with meaty, startling, often tragic stories of the people who lived behind 740’s walls, the book gives us an unprecedented access to worlds of wealth, privilege, and extraordinary folly that are usually hidden behind a scrim of money and influence. This is, truly, how the other half—or at least the other one hundredth of one percent—lives.

    What happens to me when my physical body dies? Is there an afterlife? If so, where do I go? Do my loved ones meet me? Will they usher me to the next plane of existence? In Diary of a Death Doula, psychic medium, and near-death experience researcher Debra Diamond presents the story of life as a hospice 'Death Doula', revealing 25 critical life lessons from those at the threshold of the afterlife, and those who have already crossed over, ultimately revealing a new way of understanding death.

    Through many delightful anecdotes, he demonstrates the majestic yet fragile reality which is Africa. Documenting his observations and often humorous interactions with his Zulu cohorts, Connell transports the reader to the timelessness of the tawny land he is so passionate about. Set in a time and a place of racial tension, the characters are united by a common goal and respect for each other.Having embarked on the road less travelled, Connell eloquently and enthusiastically describes his adventures in breath taking detail. His tales of the animal kingdom are wonderfully entertaining and informative. A must read for Africans and non-Africans alike, Msomi and Me will delight, amuse and inform from the beginning of the dream to the poignant ending.

    They were unaware that Washington Irving had invented the man entirely and placed the ads himself. Knickerbocker's purported manuscript, A History of New York, was Irving's own. Told from Knickerbocker's point of view, A History of New York is a chronicle of New York's fifty years under Dutch rule in the 1600s that plays fast and loose with the facts, to uproarious effect. A History of New York propelled Irving to the heights of literary stardom.

    It's a still a mystery, and a much debated topic, among theater enthusiasts as to why "Merrily We Roll Along" flopped, especially since Sondheim's other productions, which include "Into the Woods," "Follies," "Sweeney Todd," and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," have been so endearing and extraordinarily successful. In this Kindle Single, Pogrebin muses on why the show didn't get off the ground at the same time that she takes the reader on passionate, introspective journey, examining the importance of this very special moment in her life.Abigail Pogrebin is the author of Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish (Broadway Books 2007), and One And The Same: My Life as an Identical Twin and What I've Learned About Everyone's Struggle to Be Singular (Doubleday 2009). Pogrebin has written for many national publications, and has produced for Mike Wallace at "60 Minutes." She lives in New York City with her husband and two children.

    In Brooklyn: The Once and Future City, Thomas J. Campanella unearths long-lost threads of the urban past, telling the rich history of the rise, fall, and reinvention of one of the world's most resurgent cities.Spanning centuries and neighborhoods, Brooklyn-born Campanella recounts the creation of places familiar and long forgotten, both built and never realized, bringing to life the individuals whose dreams, visions, rackets, and schemes forged the city we know today. He takes us through Brooklyn's history as homeland of the Leni Lenape and its transformation by Dutch colonists into a dense slaveholding region. We learn about English �migr� Deborah Moody, whose town of Gravesend was the first founded by a woman in America. We see how wanderlusting Yale dropout Frederick Law Olmsted used Prospect Park to anchor an open space system that was to reach back to Manhattan. And we witness Brooklyn's emergence as a playland of racetracks and amusement parks celebrated around the world.Campanella also describes Brooklyn's outsized failures, from Samuel Friede's bid to erect the world's tallest building to the long struggle to make Jamaica Bay the world's largest deepwater seaport, and the star-crossed urban renewal, public housing, and highway projects that battered the borough in the postwar era. Campanella reveals how this immigrant Promised Land drew millions, fell victim to its own social anxieties, and yet proved resilient enough to reawaken as a multicultural powerhouse and global symbol of urban vitality.

    Goldman covers all of the major developments: • The rise and decline of the city’s downtown and ethnic neighborhoods • The impact of racial change and suburbanization• The role and function of the arts in the life of the community• Urban politics, urban design, and city planningWhile describing the changes that so drastically altered the form, function, and character of the city, Goldman, through detailed descriptions of special people and special places, gives a sense of intimacy and immediacy to these otherwise impersonal historical forces. City on the Edge unflinchingly documents and describes how Buffalo has been battered by the tides of history. But it also describes the unique characteristics that have encouraged an innovative cultural climate, including Buffalo’s dynamic survival instinct that continues to lead to a surprisingly and inspiringly high quality of community life. Finally, it offers a road map, which—if followed—could point the way to a new and exciting future for this long-troubled city.