Original.

    Shedding light onto the darkest and most enduring of stories, this book is a compelling encyclopedic overview of 300 individuals, organizations, and events where official claims and standard explanations of actions and events remain clouded in mystery.

     Did his greedy eyes shine silver like a coyote’s? Did he make you feel like prey?  You can’t remember now.   You just saw the founder of the Suicide Motor Club. Be grateful his brake lights never flashed. Be grateful his car was already full.   They roam America, littering the highways with smashed cars and bled-out bodies, a gruesome reflection of the unsettled sixties. But to anyone unlucky enough to meet them in the lonely hours of the night, they’re just a blurry memory.   That is—to all but one...   Two years ago, they left a witness in the mangled wreck of her family car, her husband dead, her son taken. She remembers their awful faces, despite their tricks and glamours. And she’s coming for them—her thirst for vengeance even more powerful than their hunger for blood.   On the deserted highways of America, the hunters are about to become the hunted...

    The following year Ford, Edison, and tire maker Harvey Firestone joined together on a summer camping trip and decided to call themselves the Vagabonds. They would continue their summer road trips until 1925, when they announced that their fame made it too difficult for them to carry on. Although the Vagabonds traveled with an entourage of chefs, butlers, and others, this elite fraternity also had a serious purpose: to examine the conditions of America’s roadways and improve the practicality of automobile travel. Cars were unreliable and the roads were even worse. But newspaper coverage of these trips was extensive, and as cars and roads improved, the summer trip by automobile soon became a desired element of American life. The Vagabonds is “a portrait of America’s burgeoning love affair with the automobile” (NPR) but it also sheds light on the important relationship between the older Edison and the younger Ford, who once worked for the famous inventor. The road trips made the automobile ubiquitous and magnified Ford’s reputation, even as Edison’s diminished. The automobile would transform the American landscape, the American economy, and the American way of life and Guinn brings this seminal moment in history to vivid life.

    Now, with classic titles such as Economist on Wall Street, A Primer on Money, Banking, and Gold, and The Price of Prosperity--which have forewords by financial luminaries and new introductions by the author--you can enjoy some of the best of Bernstein in his earlier Wall Street days. With the proliferation of financial instruments, new areas of instability, and innovative capital market strategies, many economists and investors have lost sight of the fundamentals of the financial system--its strengths as well as its weaknesses. A Primer on Money, Banking, and Gold takes you back to the beginning and sorts out all the pieces.Peter Bernstein skillfully addresses how and why commercial banks lend and invest, where money comes from, how it moves from hand to hand, and the critical role of interest rates. He explores the Federal Reserve System and the consequences of the Fed's actions on the overall economy. But this book is not just about the past. Bernstein's novel perspective on gold and the dollar is critical for today's decision makers, as he provides extensive views on the future of money, banking, and gold in the world economy.This illuminating story about the heart of our economic system is essential reading at a time when developments in finance are more important than ever.

    From table settings to party favors, floral arrangements to nursery décor, there is no project her creativity and a glue gun can’t tackle. But dating? That’s a whole ’nother story. Case in point: Mike Everett. He’s a gorgeous mechanic and known car-whisperer, a man who can work with auto parts like nobody’s business. And he has thrown a monkey wrench into Anne’s carefully-crafted life...When you can do it together?One look at Anne is enough for Mike to know that she’s no fixer-upper. She’s perfect just the way she is—and the chemistry between them works like a charm. Mike’s always been a no-strings kind of guy, but Anne’s impressive self-reliance—and gorgeous exterior—gives him pause. This time, a fast joyride just doesn’t seem like enough. But first he has to convince Anne that he means to take her all the way...

    Ten years ago, the United States housed sixty-nine craft distillers; today, there are more than four hundred. Exports of Scotch whisky grew 12 percent just last year. Sales are skyrocketing, and specialty bars are popping up around the country, from New York City to Chicago to Houston. Yet whiskey drinkers—especially novices—are more confused than ever. Over the past decade, whiskey expert Heather Greene has been bombarded with thousands of questions, including: Can I have ice in my whiskey? Why is it sometimes spelled "whisky"? What makes bourbon different? As New York City’s first female whiskey sommelier, Greene introduces audiences to the spirit’s charms and challenges the boys' club sensibilities that have made whiskey seem inaccessible, with surprising new research that shows the crucial importance of "nosing" whiskey. Through lively tastings, speaking engagements, and classes such as the popular "Whiskey as an Aphrodisiac," Greene has been demystifying whiskey the way Andrea Immer did wine a decade ago. In this lively and authoritative guide, Greene uses bright visuals, an easy-to-read format, and the familiar vocabulary of wine to teach readers about whiskey and encourage them to make their own evaluations. Peppered with wry anecdotes drawn from her unusual life—and including recipes for delicious cocktails by some of today’s most celebrated mixologists—Whiskey Distilled will be enthusiastically greeted by the whiskey curious as well as by journeymen whiskey drinkers thirsty to learn more about their beloved tipple.

    Their Mafia higher-ups came to know, use, and ultimately fear them as the Murder Machine. They killed for profit and for pleasure, following cold-blooded plans and wild whims, from the mean streets of New York to the Florida Gold Coast, and from coast to coast.Now complete with personal revelations of one of the key players, this is the savage story that leaves no corpse unturned in its terrifying telling.INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS

    Curt Wilcox knew old cars, and he knew immediately that this one was...wrong, just wrong. A few hours later, when Rafferty vanished, Wilcox and his fellow troopers knew the car was worse than dangerous -- and that it would be better if John Q. Public never found out about it.Curt's avid curiosity taking the lead, they investigated as best they could, as much as they dared. Over the years the troop absorbed the mystery as part of the background to their work, the Buick 8 sitting out there like a still life painting that breathes -- inhaling a little bit of this world, exhaling a little bit of whatever world it came from.In the fall of 2001, a few months after Curt Wilcox is killed in a gruesome auto accident, his 18-year-old boy Ned starts coming by the barracks, mowing the lawn, washing windows, shoveling snow. Sandy Dearborn, Sergeant Commanding, knows it's the boy's way of holding onto his father, and Ned is allowed to become part of the Troop D family. One day he looks in the window of Shed B and discovers the family secret. Like his father, Ned wants answers, and the secret begins to stir, not only in the minds and hearts of the veteran troopers who surround him, but in Shed B as well....From a Buick 8 is a novel about our fascination with deadly things, about our insistence on answers when there are none, about terror and courage in the face of the unknowable.

    He and his friend Mickey take the car out and cruise the strip. When they challenge another driver to a street race, a disastrous chain reaction causes an accident. Jake and Mickey leave the scene, trying to convince themselves they were not involved. Jake finds he cannot pretend it didn't happen and struggles with deciding on the right thing to do. Should he pretend he was not involved? Or should he go to the police?

    His reputation for mistakes was the making of Walker. He was the fan who happened to be given the keys to the commentary box—and never wanted to give them back. His high-octane delivery kept viewers on the edge of their seats, while his passion for talking about the sport he loved was matched by an all-encompassing knowledge gained through hours of painstaking research before every race.

    Michael Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt Jr. were running one-two. Junior's legendary dad, the driver race fans called "The Intimidator," was close behind in third, blocking anyone who might try to pass. Waltrip couldn't stop thinking about all the times he'd struggled to stay ahead -- and the 462 NASCAR Cup races he'd lost without a single win. He'd been a race-car driver all his adult life, following in the footsteps of his brother Darrell, a three-time NASCAR champion. And his losing streak was getting more painful every race. But this day, he knew, could be different. He was driving for Dale Earnhardt now, racing as a team with his close friend and mentor. Yet as his car roared toward the finish line, ending that losing streak once and for all, Waltrip had no clue that the greatest triumph of his life could get mired in terrible tragedy. This is the story of that fateful afternoon in Daytona, a day whose echoes are still heard today. But the story begins years earlier in a small town in Kentucky, with a boy who dreamed of racing cars, a boy who was determined to go from go-karts to the highest levels of NASCAR. For the first time ever, Michael Waltrip tells the full, revealing story of how he got to Daytona, what happened there, and the huge impact it had on so many in the racing world. He reveals for the first time how his own life changed as he dealt with guilt, faced his grief, and searched for the fortitude to climb into a race car again. It's an inspiring and powerful story, told with Michael's trademark humor, honesty, and irreverence. It's a story of family, fulfillment, and redemption -- and well-earned victory in the end.

    Ad campaigns promote them as safer and greener than ordinary cars and easy to handle in bad weather. But very little about the SUV's image is accurate. They poorly protect occupants and inflict horrific damage in crashes, they guzzle gasoline and they are hard to control. Keith Bradsher has been at the forefront in reporting the calamitous safety and environmental record of SUVs, including the notorious Ford-Firestone rollover controversy. In this book he traces the checkered history of SUVs, showing how they came to be classified not as passenger cars but as light trucks, which are subject to less strict regulations on safety, gas mileage and air pollution. He makes a powerful case that these vehicles are even worse than we suspect - for their occupants, for other motorists, for pedestrians and for the planet itself. In the tradition of Unsafe at Any Speed and Fast Food Nation, Bradsher's book is a damning expose of an industry that puts us all at risk, whether we recognize it or not.

    The authors write: "Oil is the problem. Cars are the solution." We are living in the midst of a Great Awakening in which environmentalists, entrepreneurs, and political leaders are forming new alliances to end our addiction to oil and create new technologies. The days of Big Oil and Big Auto are numbered, according to the authors, who show how we are in the midst of a major transformation from carbon-based energy sources to new fuels and technologies.ZOOM traces the history of the linked industries of oil and automobiles, and how the two have shaped domestic capitalism and the international landscape, creating both progress and peril. They explain how Toyota vanquished American competitors to become the world's largest automobile manufacturer and, more importantly, a leader in hybrid cars using electric power. They take us into the boardrooms of oil executives and show how some are boldly exploring new energy sources while others deny the dangers posed by oil and risk extinction. With wide-ranging analysis and a keen view of the key players in the intersecting worlds of energy and automobiles, authors Iain Carson and Vijay Vaitheeswaran tell the story of what may be the most important challenge facing the industrial world: How to make the transition from the Age of Petroleum to a cleaner and better future.

    Charlie and Linda Bloom, psychotherapists with fifty-five years of combined experience in relationship counseling, are acutely aware of this. For the last fifteen years the Blooms have been leading seminars on improving life relationships through their organization, The Empowerment Network. They’ve helped thousands of couples improve their most cherished relationships.Each lesson is presented as a simple, one-line thought followed by an explanation using real life examples, from Charlie and Linda’s personal experiences and the experiences of other couples. The Blooms share a wealth of experience with their readers. They demonstrate the universality of relationship issues and how anyone can find ways out of the pain that can engulf a relationship. By working through these ordeals, couples will enrich their relationships. The book makes it clear that, regardless of past experience, anyone can develop the basic strengths, skills and capacities needed for a great relationship.