One of the most illuminating books ever on a sports subculture, Learning to Breathe Fire combines vivid sports writing with a thoughtful meditation on what it means to be human. In the book, veteran journalist J.C. Herz explains the science of maximum effort, why the modern gym fails an obese society, and the psychic rewards of ending up on the floor feeling as though you're about to die.  The story traces CrossFit’s rise, from a single underground gym in Santa Cruz to its adoption as the workout of choice for elite special forces, firefighters and cops, to its popularity as the go-to fitness routine for regular Joes and Janes. Especially riveting is Herz’s description of The CrossFit Games, which begin as an informal throw-down on a California ranch and evolve into a televised global proving ground for the fittest men and women on Earth, as well as hundreds of thousands of lesser mortals.  In her portrayal of the sport's star athletes, its passionate coaches and its “chief armorer,” Rogue Fitness, Herz powerfully evokes the uniqueness of a fitness culture that  cultivates primal fierceness in average people. And in the shared ordeal of an all-consuming workout, she unearths the ritual intensity that's been with us since humans invented sports, showing us how, on a deep level, we're all tribal hunters and first responders, waiting for the signal to go all-out. From the Hardcover edition.

    All proceeds of this unique venture will be going to Save the Children Tsunami Relief Fund. Authors participating are: Alexander McCall Smith chapter from Sunday Philosophy Club #2: Friends, Lovers, Chocolates coming 9/05 from Pantheon Ian McEwan chapter from Saturday coming 3/05 from Doubleday Maeve Binchy short story Georgia Hall – as yet unscheduled Margaret Atwood excerpt from the Tree coming in 06 from Doubleday Marian Keyes chapter from If You Were Me Mark Haddon chapter from Blood and Scissors Nicholas Evans chapter from the Divide Nick Hornby chapter from A Long Way Down coming 6/05 from Riverhead Paulo Coelho chapter from the Zahir Scott Turow chapter from the Law of War coming 10/05 from FSG Stephen King short story: Lisey and the Madman from McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories published 11/04 Tracy Chevalier untitled novel excerpt, as yet unscheduled for publication Vikram Seth poem, "Earth and Sky" as yet unscheduled Helen Fielding - introduction Harlan Coben chapter from the Innocent coming 4/05 from Dutton Joanna Trollope chapter from Second Honeymoon coming 2/06 from Bloomsbury JM Coetzee chapter from Slow Man coming 10/05 from Viking This is an extraordinary collection of superb pieces from the world’s most celebrated writers. All of this is being made available to consumers in advance of publication and in aid of Tsunami victims. Your generous and enthusiastic support of this project will enable Save the Children to continue their important work in the wake of the Tsunami devastation.

    

    Unfortunately, while some styles are appropriate in some situations, others are not—and consistently using an inappropriate style is a sure way to find yourself saddled with a huge anger problem.This book examines the eleven most common styles of anger expression and helps you learn how to communicate your anger in healthy ways. Learn which anger styles work for different situations—and which ones lead to certain disaster. Find out how to become more flexible and creative at expressing your anger. Once you understand the whole range of anger styles, you'll be able to better manage angry feelings and use your anger as a positive force for building a better life.

       They all need to master such ground-breaking concepts as the hassle map (and the secrets of fixing it); the curse of the incomplete product (and how to avoid it); why very good ≠ magnetic; how what you don’t see can make or break a product; the art of transforming fence sitters into customers; why there’s no such thing as an average customer; and why real demand comes from a 45-degree angle of improvement (rather than the five degrees most organizations manage).From the Hardcover edition.

    For the past ten years he has been attempting to decode the numerical pattern beneath the ultimate system of ordered chaos-the stock market. As Max verges on a solution, chaos is swallowing the world around him. He is pursued by an aggressive Wall Street firm set on financial domination as well as by a Kabbalah sect intent on unlocking the secrets behind its ancient holy texts. Max races to crack the code, hoping to defy the madness that looms before him. In succeeding, he uncovers a secret everyone is willing to kill for.Also included with the screenplay is a full journal of how Darren Aronofsky made this award-winning film on a minuscule budget of $60,000, providing practical advice and inspiration to film students and offering film buffs rare insight into how an independent film is made.

    J. Barnes shows you how to maximize your martial arts speed using his exclusive Speed Loop training system. Based on proven concepts of martial arts masters, such as Bruce Lee, Speed Training for Martial Arts contains advanced training methods to help you develop superior speed and reflexes for competition and self-defense. Your martial arts training should emphasize the complete and total development of the Speed Loop if you want world-class speed and reflexes. Speed Training for Martial Arts will show you how to isolate, transform, maximize, and integrate every component of the Speed Loop including: Visual Reflexes; Tactile Reflexes; Auditory Reflexes; Adaptation Speed; Initiation Speed; Movement Speed; Alteration Speed; and Hampering Speed.

    They include muscles of the face head, and neck; the trunk; the shoulder and upper arm; the forearm and hand; the hip and thigh; and the leg and foot. Each of the groups is given a distinctive color to make it easy to identify, and each muscle is shown in its relationship to the skeleton. Each gets a complete profile, including origin/insertion, action of the muscle, which nerve controls it, movements that use it, and exercises and stretches that strengthen it. The Concise Book of Muscles shows students exactly how to locate and identify specific muscles, highlighting those that are heavily used and therefore subject to injury in a variety of sports and activities. This expanded edition of a leading anatomy reference book includes 20 muscles not previously covered, adding greater depth to the original edition while remaining accessible and affordable.

    Emotionally scarred by having never known her mother, Katie escapes to London and immerses herself in a seedy world of drugs, drink, and sex, chasing happiness in the bars and clubs, and snorting cocaine in private members' bars with her rich clients. Finding herself in a cycle of prostitution and unable to break free, she turns to drug smuggling and becomes embroiled in a bigamous marriage in an attempt to secure some emotional stability. From this dark emotional pit, Katie starts her painful journey back to "wellness" and attempts to rid herself of her addictions for good. This is a graphic tale of what life as a prostitute is really like and what can happen when people search for happiness outside of themselves.

    In this beautiful book, we hear the full story of the meteoric rise of Heston Blumenthal and The Fat Duck, birthplace of snail porridge and bacon-and-egg ice cream, and encounter the passion, perfection and weird science behind the man and the restaurant.

    When boats break down, wreck or call for help, Seychelle and her tug Gorda are on the scene. Accidents do happen, but in South Florida, when somebody dies at sea, all too often it is murder. The Seychelle Collection Boxed Set Books #1-4 brings readers the opportunity to buy the entire Seychelle Sullivan series at one low price.Book #1 SURFACE TENSION On a steamy Florida morning Seychelle is answering a Mayday call launched from the five-million-dollar Broward yacht called Top Ten. Seychelle has a personal stake in this rescue: her former lover, Neal Garrett, is the yacht’s hired skipper. But being the first to reach Top Ten leads to a bloody payday. A beautiful woman has been stabbed to death onboard. And Garrett is nowhere to be found. T o find out what really happened to Neal Garrett, Seychelle must retrace his last steps, through two murders and a horrific crime wave, to a final confrontation with someone who may want to kill her . . . or be her salvation.Book #2 CROSS CURRENTFor Seychelle Sullivan, life is all about making a living, making love, and keeping her eye on the beauty that still remains in her beloved Florida. Then her life takes a turn when her tug intercepts with a swamped fishing boat in the Gulf Stream. Inside the boat are a murdered woman and a little girl in a white dress.Seychelle returns to shore with a traumatized Haitian girl named Solange. Determined to protect Solange, and somehow keep her from being sent back to Haiti, Seychelle becomes obsessed with the forces that nearly killed the girl. To get the answers she needs, Seychelle must return to where it all started: in the waters of the Gulf Stream, where people died for their dreams of freedom– and a man with a machete did the work of the devil himself.Book #3 BITTER ENDThe third book in the Seychelle Collection is loosely based on the real South Florida murder of Greek immigrant tycoon Gus Boolis, once the owner of South Florida's Sun Cruz Casino Gambling boats. Seychelle didn’t see the sniper who picked Nick Pontus off at the helm of his yacht, but she knows that there are plenty of people in South Florida who wanted to see the gambling-boat tycoon dead: the Russian mobsters looking for a piece of his casino action, the Indian gamers who resent his competition, and the ecological activists fighting his plans to develop Fort Lauderdale’s waterfront. But it’s Molly, Seychelle’s former childhood best friend and Nick’s ex-wife whom the cops zero in on. And despite her bitter feelings and against her better judgment, when her back-from-the-blue friend asks for help, Seychelle can’t just weigh anchor and cruise. She’s got to dive in.Book #4 WRECKERS’ KEYIn the 1800s, Key West was built by wrecking skippers who in feats of derring-do raced to shipping disasters to save valuable cargos from the ocean depths. Today, as too many boats chase too few wrecks, salvage has turned into a cutthroat corporate enterprise. And when a friend is killed, Seychelle begins to suspect a chilling scenario: that modern-day wreckers are causing yachts to crash onto the reefs–and killing off whoever gets in the way.Nestor Frias was piloting a billionaire’s luxury power yacht on its maiden voyage when it ran aground. A few days later, Frias was dead. His eight-months-pregnant widow is distraught, and a host of questions surround both Frias’s death and the ship’s accident. When another man dies while asking questions, Seychelle navigates the dangerous shoals and channels of the case and her life, unaware that a greater danger is looming: a murderous human storm designed perfectly for her.About the AuthorChristine Kling is the author of five nautical thrillers and one anthology of short stories. She lives aboard her 33-foot sailboat Talespinner and travels wherever the wind and

    Clete and I developed a plan for me . . . a plan that would work all that summer and beyond. Even after I left the mountain, it stuck.Robert Boswell's extraordinary range is on full display in this crackling new collection. Set mainly in small, gritty American cities no farther east than Chicago and as far west as El Paso, each of these stories is a world unto itself.Two marriages end, one by death, the other by divorce, and the two wives, lifelong friends, become strangers to each other. A young man's obsession with visiting a fortune-teller leaves him nearly homeless. And in the unforgettable title story, a man dubbed Keen recounts the summer he spent on a mountain with his best friend, Clete, and a loose band of slackers, living in a borrowed house, abstaining from all drugs (other than mushrooms and beer)—and ultimately asking just what kind of harm we can do to one another.

    Released in 1958, Hitchcock's masterpiece is a pinnacle of the cinema. Yet in it Hitchcock abandoned his trademark suspense, allowing the central mystery to be solved halfway through. What remained was a study in sexual obsession, as James Stewart's Scottie pursues Madeleine/Judy (Kim Novak) to her death in a remote Californian mission. Novak is ice-cool but vulnerable, Stewart - in the darkest role of his career - genial on the surface but damaged within.

    . . yes, every last word that appeared in The Onion between mid-October 2003 and mid-November 2004. And this is the biggest book yet in the series. That’s right—Embedded in America includes eight additional weeks of award-winning coverage from The Onion, including two extra weeks of post-presidential election coverage.Here they are at last: all the issues of The Onion that you missed because you had a life to live. And each page takes 0.0 seconds to load!Embedded in America is Volume 16 in the popular and bestselling Onion series. Look for a new volume every year.

    Herds of wild animals crossing acacia-dotted plains, remote cultures that time seems to have forgotten, the monumental vestiges of crumbled empires, as well ast he dire realities of war, disease and famine - Africa is all this and much more. From Cape Town's gleaming shopping arcades to the remote tribal settlements on Lake Turkana's shores, The Africa Book draws together a definitive collection of the sights, sounds and tastes of this spellbinding continent.Here's how to start - open at any page and begin your own journey. Float down the Nile in a felucca, visit the mountain gorillas of Rwanda, catch mbalax fever on Dakar's glittering dance floors, relax under the palms on Zanzibar's powdery white beaches. Let Lonely Planet's photographers, authors and travelers lead you through five regions, 54 countries and inspire you to embark on the journey of your life.