More than fifty years ago, Willie Nelson's beloved Christmas song Pretty Paper first hit the airwaves. And for all these years, Willie has wondered about the real-life Texas street vendor, selling wrappings and ribbons, who inspired his song. Who was this poor soul? What did his painful trials say about our loves, our hopes, our dreams in this holiday season and in the rest of our lives?It s the early sixties and Willie Nelson is down and out, barely eking out a living as a singer-songwriter. The week before Christmas, he spots a legless man on a cart, selling wares in front of Leonard's Department Store in Fort Worth, Texas. The humble figure, by the name of Vernon Clay, piques Willie's curiosity, but Vernon is stubbornly private and despite Willie's charming queries has no interest in telling his story. Willie is tenacious, though, and he eventually learns that Vernon is a fellow musician, a fine guitarist and singer. When Vernon disappears, he leaves behind only a diary, which tells an epic tale of life-altering tragedies, broken hearts, and crooked record men, not to mention backroad honky-tonks, down-home cooking, and country songwriting genius. Deeply moved and spurred on by Vernon's pages, Willie aims to give the man one last shot at redemption and a chance to embody the holiday spirit."

     KPOP BTS QUIZ BOOK covers various quiz questions about each member of the group, as well as many interesting facts as a group, such as... "On the November 22, BTS was announced to be officially recognized by THIS organization as a musical group with the most Twitter engagement." "On the very first Episode of American Hustle Life, BTS travels to THIS CITY to learn Hip Hop." "THIS member was an underground rapper in Daegu." "J-Hope said that the kind of super power he would like to have is...?" "When Jimin was asked to describe and compare Rap Monster to something other than a human, he said Rap Monster is like..." "When V celebrated his Birthday (2013.12.30 at MBC Gayo Daejun), he shared birthday with THIS famous singer. He said to V “Hey, is it your Birthday today? It’s mine too! Let’s blow the candle together.” "True or False...? Jungkook's dream when he was little is to become a badminton player, but changed his mind after listening to..." Can you answer the questions? If you can't, that's totally fine cause that's the best way of getting to know your favorite BTS oppa's!

    She is the envy of millions with her drop dead gorgeous husband, their two beautiful sons and her new mansion in Henley. Her celebrity PA days are over. But desperate to keep up with her rock star husband, Johnny Jefferson, she uproots her perfect family and moves back to LA. Meg has to learn to live with her new celebrity status and the insecurities of her old life, which keep reappearing. Under the paparazzi flash of an A-List party, complete with red carpet, champagne and canapés, Johnny's rock star past catches up with him and Meg's worst nightmare becomes a reality…

    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.

    It is a simple, affecting tale of young Indian boys midway between two cultures, reluctant to abandon the ways of their fathers, and puzzled and uncomfortable in their new roles of "make-believe white men." The ambition of the Indian parents for their children, the struggle of the teachers to acquaint their charges with a new world of learning, and especially the problems met by both parents and teachers in controlling and directing schoolboy exuberance contribute to the authen-ticity of this portrait of the "Universal Boy," to whom La Flesche dedicated his book. Regarded by anthropologists as a classic of Native American literature, it is one of those rare books that are valued by the specialist as authentic sources of information about Indian culture and yet can be recommended wholeheartedly to the general reader, especially to young people in high school and the upper grades, as a useful corrective to the often distorted picture of Indian life seen in movies, comics, and television.

    These two set forth from the lodges of the Blackfeet, in company with an older Indian who acts as their guide, philosopher, and friend, on a far quest to the salt water to find the medicine-animal that is called "fish-dog" because it lives only in the water, swimming like a fish, yet has the face of a dog and barks like a dog. One of the boys, being of white parentage, knew from books in the little library at home that this strange animal, which we recognize at once as some sort of a seal, frequented the waters of the Pacific Ocean and adjacent rivers. This boy was, in fact, J. W. Schultz, whose first book, "My Life as an Indian," was published some years ago. As a boy and young man he lived with the Indians on the upper Missouri in the days before the white man had penetrated the far West, and his writings about the Indians are based upon an intimate knowledge of their native life.

    A great reading experience for those who like serious and innovative poetry." --Library JournalDrawing upon Navajo history and enduring tradition, Sherwin Bitsui leads us on a treacherous, otherworldly passage through the American Southwest. Fluidly shape-shifting and captured by language that functions like a moving camera, Dissolve is urban and rural, past and present in the haze of the reservation. Bitsui proves himself to be one of this century's most haunting, raw, and uncompromising voices.From "(Untitled)" . . . Jeweled with houseflies, leather rattles, foil-wrapped, ferment in beaked masks on the shores of evaporating lakes.This plot, now a hotel garden, its fountain gushing forth--the slashed wrists of the Colorado River.Sherwin Bitsui was raised in White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation. He is the author of two other books of poetry, among them Flood Song, which won an American Book Award. He currently lives in Arizona where he has serves on the faculty of the Institute of American Indian Arts.

    When John Lingan first traveled there, it was to seek out Jim McCoy: local honky-tonk owner and the DJ who first gave airtime to a brassy-voiced singer known as Patsy Cline, setting her on a course for fame that outlasted her tragically short life. What Lingan found was a town in the midst of an identity crisis.   As the U.S. economy and American culture have transformed in recent decades, the ground under centuries-old social codes has shifted, throwing old folkways into chaos. Homeplace teases apart the tangle of class, race, and family origin that still defines the town, and illuminates questions that now dominate our national conversation—about how we move into the future without pretending our past doesn't exist, about what we salvage and what we leave behind. Lingan writes in “penetrating, soulful ways about the intersection between place and personality, individual and collective, spirit and song.”*   * Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams

     When her wagon train was 8 miles from Fort Laramie, Wyoming, a Sioux Oglalas war party, in war-paint, suddenly appeared and began to encircle their wagons, pretending to be most friendly and asking for presents. The Indians urged the emigrants on, and offered to accompany them, so that they pushed on in company for a short time, until it was saw that they were approaching a ravine where his party would be at a disadvantage, and he insisted on camping outside of it. The Indians, after some hesitation, agreed, and the travellers began to make preparations for supper, when suddenly the Indians fired a volley at them. Some of those who escaped the attack succeeded in hiding in the brushwood, but Mrs. Kelly and her adopted daughter, Mary, as well as Mrs. Larimer and her children, became the prisoners of the Indians. After the second night of capture, Larimer and her son Frank managed to escape and were later reunited with her husband at Camp Collins, Colorado Territory. Larimer wrote of her harrowing captivity and escape in her 1871 book "The Capture and Escape: Life Among the Sioux." In describing dangers encountered during their escape from the Indians, Larimer noted: "The horrors of our situation were harassing to contemplate. The wolves seemed congregated upon the highlands, and, awaking from their night’s repose, their wailing cries echoed back from the distant hills with terrific clearness. These prowling creatures abound in that country, where some species attain a great size. Even the buffalo, which does not fear them in the herd, knows his danger when overtaken alone; and the solitary bull, secreted from its hunter, succumbs before the united force of a gang of wolves." Sarah Luse Larimer (1836-1913) was born in Pennsylvania, headed west in 1859 with her husband, living for a while in Allen County, Kansas, where she operated a photographic gallery. In 1864, along with her husband and son the family set out for the mines of Idaho Territory, when their plans were disrupted by Oglalas on the warpath. John Bratt in his 1921 book "Trails of Yesterday" writes of Larimer: "At Sherman Station I became well acquainted with Mrs. Larimer and her son, who kept a general store there, bought and sold ties and cord wood, while her husband had a star route mail contract from Point of Rocks north. There was also a Mrs. Kelly living near the station. These two women and Mrs. Larimer's son had been captured by the Sioux Indians near Fort Laramie. Mrs. Larimer and her son, after two weeks' captivity in the lodge of the chief, stole away one night and though the Indians hunted them day and night, they succeeded in eluding them and got back to the fort, after suffering unmentionable cruelties. Mrs. Kelly, not so fortunate, was taken by the Indians up on the Missouri River and kept with the band over six months." In describing the moment of rescue by a passing wagon train, Larimer writes that "as we sat in this shelter, which proved to be the last, a most joyful and welcome sound greeted our ears —one in which there was no mistake—our own language, spoken by some boys who passed, driving cattle."

    But what had been largely an Ivy League phenomenon has, in the past fifteen years, exploded. And it's not what you think. There are now more than 1,200 a cappella groups at colleges across the country. The very best of these collegiate groups square off in the annual International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella showdown marked by wrenching close calls and exhilarating triumphs. And, really, where else can you hear Michael Jackson's Bad in four-part harmony? In Pitch Perfect, GQ editor Mickey Rapkin follows a season in a cappella through all its twists and turns, covering the breathtaking displays of vocal talent, the groupies (yes, a cappella singers have groupies), the rockstar partying (and run-ins with the law), and all the bitter rivalries. Along the way are encounters with boldfaced names such as President George W. Bush, Prince, David Letterman, Barack Obama, Barbra Streisand, Hillary Clinton, Marisa Tomei, Amanda Bynes, Nick Lachey, Merv Griffin, Jim Carrey, Microsoft's Paul Allen, John Legend, and Jessica Biel. At the heart of the narrative are three a cappella groups whose interactions are anything but harmonious: the historic Tufts Beelzebubs, founded more than forty years ago with 40,000 albums sold since, and struggling to record a new album that lives up to the hype; Divisi of the University of Oregon, a relatively new, all-female group attempting to overcome a loss in the 2005 championship; and the University of Virginia Hullabahoos, the so-called bad boys of collegiate a cappella, who will attempt to compete on a higher level this year while retaining their casual soul. Bringing a lively new twist to America's fascination with talent showdowns and peerless performers, Pitch Perfect is sure to strike a chord with readers.

    Born mute to a drunken mother and a demented father, tortured Euchrid Eucrow finds more compassion in the family mule than in his fellow men. But he alone will grasp the cruel fate of Cosey Mo, the beautiful young prostitute in the pink caravan on Hooper’s Hill. And it is Euchrid, spiraling ever deeper into his mad angelic vision, who will ultimately redeem both the town and its people. “Surprising, remarkable.” — The Atlanta Journal

    Utley interprets this conflict from a dual perspective: re-creating events from the Indian viewpoint while also providing an objective appraisal of why the nineteenth-century white man acted as he did. This even-handed approach to a tragic period of American history results in a memorable study of impressive scope and penetrating insight.

    Tracey's music career was just beginning, while Lindy, drummer for The Go-Betweens, was ten years her senior. They became confidantes, comrades and best friends, a relationship cemented by gossip and feminism, books and gigs and rock 'n' roll love affairs.Morrison - a headstrong heroine blazing her way through a male-dominated industry - came to be a kind of mentor to Thorn. They shared the joy and the struggle of being women in a band, trying to outwit and face down a chauvinist music media.In My Rock 'n' Roll Friend Thorn takes stock of thirty-seven years of friendship, teasing out the details of connection and affection between two women who seem to be either complete opposites or mirror images of each other. This important book asks what people see, who does the looking, and ultimately who writes women out of - and back into - history.

    And yet, while his music has retained the steadfast devotion of modern listeners, much remains unknown about the man who penned and played these timeless tunes. Few people alive today actually remember what Johnson was really like, and those who do have largely upheld their silence-until now.In Brother Robert, nonagenarian Annye Anderson sheds new light on a real-life figure largely obscured by his own legend: her kind and incredibly talented stepbrother, Robert Johnson. This book chronicles Johnson's unconventional path to stardom-from the harrowing story behind his illegitimate birth, to his first strum of the guitar on Anderson's father's knee, to the genre-defining recordings that would one day secure his legacy. Along the way, readers are gifted not only with Anderson's personal anecdotes, but with colorful recollections passed down to Anderson by members of their family-the people who knew Johnson best. Readers also learn about the contours of his working life in Memphis, never-before-disclosed details about his romantic history, and all of Johnson's favorite things, from foods and entertainers to brands of tobacco and pomade. Together, these stories don't just bring the mythologized Johnson back down to earth; they preserve both his memory and his integrity.For decades, Anderson and her family have ignored the tall tales of Johnson "selling his soul to the devil" and the speculative to fictionalized accounts of his life that passed for biography. Brother Robert is here to set the record straight. Featuring a foreword by Elijah Wald and a Q&A with Anderson, Lauterbach, Wald, and Peter Guralnick, this book paints a vivid portrait of an elusive figure who forever changed the musical landscape as we know it.

    In addition to describing the customs, manners, and traditions of the Teton Sioux, Standing Bear also offered general comments about the importance of Native cultures and values and the status of Indian peoples in American society. With the assistance of Melvin R. Gilmore, curator of ethnology at the University of Michigan, and Warcaziwin, Standing Bear’s niece and secretary, Standing Bear sought to tell the white man “just how” they “lived as Lakotans.” Land of the Spotted Eagle is generously interspersed with personal reminiscences and anecdotes, including chapters on child rearing, social and political organization, family, religion, and manhood. Standing Bear's views on Indian affairs and his suggestions for the improvement of white-Indian relations are presented in the two closing chapters.