More than half the world's population now lives in cities, and for travelers they hold an endless fascination.

    The four chapbooks collected in A PECULIAR FEELING OF RESTLESSNESS, three of them finalists and one of them the winner of the Rose Metal Press first annual short short chapbook contest, all revel in the succinctness of their form, the underlying tension anchored beneath each story of 1,000 words or less. These stories are peculiar; they resonate with restlessness. They are deft, they are gritty, and they are lyrical. Laughter, Applause. Laughter, Music, Applause by Kathy Fish, Wanting by Amy L. Clark, Sixteen Miles Outside of Phoenix by Elizabeth Ellen, and The Sky Is a Well by Claudia Smith combine four multi-layered portrayals of beautiful uneasiness into a collection rich with wit, grace, and originality.

    The result: a highly-effective way to teach anything to anybody!Available as an illustrated how-to book that bridges the gap between theory and practice and that covers today's hottest topics, like multiple intelligences, this book provides specific, easy-to-follow guidelines for creating more-effective learning environments, better ways to design curricula, and more interesting ways to deliver content and facilitate the learning process. Designed and written as an interactive tool, Quantum Teaching includes lesson planning guidelines to help teachers cover all the bases, without having to culminate different theories or refer to different source materials. A reproducible lesson planning guide makes it easy to start implementing new strategies immediately.

    A Dance Book Club main selection, this guide offers a general explanation of anatomy, kinesiology, and technique for ballet dancers, students, and teachers.

    This work reveals the growth of an artist who saw no artificial boundary between art and the paying job and who succeeded in putting her indelible stamp on the visual imagination.

    Norman Shapiro's superb translations display Verlaine's ability to transform into timeless verse the essence of everyday life and make evident the reasons for his renown in France and throughout the Western world.

    Laugh and cry over the most poignant love story of them all--about a young enchantress with a short time to live and a lifetime of courage to give.

    In this book Bira Almeida--or Mestre Acordeon as he is respectfully called in capoeira circles--documents his own tradition with both the panoramic eye of the historian and the passionate heart of the capoeirista. He transports the reader from the damn of New World history in Brazil to the streets of twentieth-century Bahia (the spiritual home of capoeira) to the giant urban centers of North America (wher capoeira is now spreading in new lineages from the old masters). This book is valuable for anyone interested in ethnocultural traditions, martial arts, and music, as well as for those who want to listen to the words of an actual mestre dedicated to preserving his Afro-Brazilian legacy.

    Do Angels Need Haircuts? is an extraordinary snapshot of this turning point in Reed’s career. Gathering poems, photographs and ephemera from this era (including previously unreleased audio of the 1971 St. Mark’s Church reading), and featuring a new foreword by Anne Waldman and an afterword by Laurie Anderson, this book provides a window to a little-known chapter in the life of one of the most singular and uncompromising voices in American popular culture.

    Since the Boston police are investigating the death of one of their own, Bogie believes his trip will be a short condolence visit and a chance to meet his secret love child. Although Bogie wants to contact his ex-lover, Bailey Hampfield, he’s reluctant to do so since Bailey dumped him four years earlier. Knowing that Bailey had his child after she cut him loose, Bogie thinks it’s time to establish a relationship with the three year old daughter he’s never met. While he considers his options, Bailey gets in touch with him and asks for protection. Someone is trying to kill her. Bogie doesn’t want to get involved in the BPD investigation into his brother’s death, but he continues to be drawn into it while trying to discover who is attempting to kill Bailey Hampfield. The investigations seem to parallel each other, then intersect and become intertwined. As the story develops, Isabella, a precocious child obsessed with martial arts, slowly becomes the focus. The underlying theme of this fast-paced mystery is lies. Everyone seems to be runing on lies and half truths. The only true character is The Girl in White Pajamas.

    By all accounts, Ernie was a phenomenon, selling an estimated 100,000 copies. Photographer Tony Mendoza had captured the mercurial character of that irascible, self-possessed, utterly lovable cat, telling the curiously moving story of their relationship in the voices of both himself and Ernie. Our beautifully produced hardcover edition of this classic tale is poised to charm legions of new readers. Featuring never-before-published pictures, and a few more private thoughts from Ernie himself, Ernie is sure to steal hearts all over again.

    The response was immediate and overwhelming—readers almost instantly began asking when the second volume of Royko columns would appear. With more than a hundred vintage Royko columns and a foreword by Roger Ebert, For the Love of Mike was the answer.Royko, a nationally syndicated Pulitzer Prize winner, wrote for three major Chicago newspapers in the course of his 34 years as a daily columnist. Chosen from more than 7,000 columns, For the Love of Mike brings back more than a hundred vintage Royko pieces-most of which have not appeared since their initial publication-for readers across the country to enjoy. This second collection includes Royko's riffs on the consequences of accepting a White House dinner invitation (not surprisingly, he turned it down); his explanation of the notorious Ex-Cub Factor in World Series play; and his befuddlement at a private screening of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, to which he was invited by his pal Ebert, the screenplay's author. The new collection also illuminates Royko's favorite themes, topics he returned to again and again: his skewering of cultural trends, his love of Chicago, and his rage against injustice. By turns acerbic, hilarious, and deeply moving, Royko remains a writer of wit and passion who represents the best of urban journalism. "To read these columns again is to have Mike back again, nudging, chuckling, wincing, deflating pomposity, sticking up for the little guy, defending good ideas against small-minded people," writes Roger Ebert in his foreword to the book. For the Love of Mike does indeed bring Mike back again, and until a Chicago newspaper takes up Ebert's suggestion that it begin reprinting each of Royko's columns, one a day, this collection will more than satisfy Royko's loyal readers.

    For over three decades, on both sides of the Atlantic, Tynan was at the hot center of the theater and film worlds. He knew everybody, and everybody wanted to know him. His diaries-so resplendent with griefs and gossip-bear superb witness to the fame he courted and the price he paid for it.

    George Oppen's New Collected Poems gathers in one volume all of the poems published in books during his lifetime (1908-84), as well as previously uncollected poems and also a selection of his unpublished work. Oppen, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969, has long been acknowledged as one of America's foremost modernists. A member of the Objectivist group that flourished in the 1930s (which also included William Carlos Williams, Charles Reznikoff, Carl Rakosi, and Louis Zukofsky), he was hailed by Ezra Pound as "a serious craftsman, a sensibility which is not every man's sensibility and which has not been got out of any other man's book." Oppen's New Collected Poems (which replaces New Direction's earlier, smaller Collected Poems of 1975) is edited by Michael Davidson of the University of California at San Diego, who also writes an introduction to the poet's life and work and supplies generous notes that will give interested readers an understanding of the background of the individual books as well as references in the poems.

    This fully-illustrated book traces the system's evolution from a spiritual self-development system to a direct hands-on practice. The journey moves from Japan to the USA, out to the world, and back to Japan. Focussing on the basic elements in their historical context, this guide contains beautifully grounded information that captures a unique sense of the system's traditional Japanese roots. The clarity and accessibility of the teachings in the book redefine and strengthen the concept of Reiki as it is practised today.