This text features essays on the advances made in anthropology, archaeology, astronomy and linguistics, stories of the Anasazi, the old ones of the southwestern desert and tales of the great explorers, eccentrics, dreamers, scientists, cranks and geniuses.

    Of endless weekdays, working weekends, making presentations, working with complicated Excel sheets, handling a boss with time-management issues and the general politics of the workplace. Sigh! After eight years of this life, her only personal insight is that she's terribly unambitious and constantly struggling to be an average performer in the competitive corporate world. When a colleague flashes the glint of a golden sabbatical she catapults into it headfirst. After all, one has to find one's calling at some point in one's life. So will the sabbatical miraculously change her life forever? Or will she go rushing back to her pocket money-generating job?

    The embarrassment is palatable, but perseverance is the most touching part of these stories. These awful things that happened don't interrupt the dream. The dream of performing and stardom. The dream of connecting with an audience. No Encore! is a glimpse into the analog past; a trip to a distant world when artists made albums and suites of songs you listened in order." —Bret Easton Ellis   “They hated us and started throwing cups, bottles, change, chairs, and anything that wasn’t nailed down.” —Dean Ween This hilarious, sometimes horrifying, collection spans four decades and chronicles the craziest, druggiest, and most embarrassing concert moments in music history—direct from the artists who survived them.  “In the midst of my insanity, I thought it would be a very romantic gesture to go into Fiona Apple’s dressing room and write a message on her wall in my own blood.” —Dave Navarro From wardrobe malfunctions to equipment failures, from bad decisions to even worse choices, this is a riveting look into what happens when things go wrong onstage and off. “Ozzy had a sixty-inch teleprompter with the song lyrics, and that got stolen, along with microphones, snare drums and cymbals. Our drummer at the time was stabbing people in the neck with his drumstick.” —Zakk Wylde No Encore! is an unflinchingly honest account of the shows that tested the dedication to a dream—from Alice Cooper’s python having a violent, gastric malfunction on stage to Lou Barlow’s disastrous attempt to sober up at Glastonbury, from Shirley Manson’s desperate search for a bathroom to the extraordinary effort made to awaken Al Jourgenson as Ministry was taking the stage. As Hunter S. Thompson famously wrote, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”  “I go to exit the venue, and there’s 25 people marching towards us. It’s about 3:00 AM, and they weren’t there to be nice. They were carrying bats, boards, chains, hammers, and they were coming for us.” —Dee Snider

    Anne Purdy, author of bestselling book Tisha, tells the story surrounding the lives of the Eagle Village Indians. She describes the end of the Gold Rush era changes that took place in the early part of the twentieth century, painting a vivid picture of life’s struggles here and of a woman who reaches out to those in desperate need of love and care.A tale of joy and sadness, with a final twist.

    Great poetry is a catalyst for change: a change of mind, a change of heart, a change of life- and yes, over and over, again and again, with each new reading, and each new phase of our journey.That’s why poetry is dangerous. It gives voice to our unspoken dreams; it is a mirror to our own deepest joys, desires, and sorrows. It can tip us over into a new life, into a new way of seeing and being, that a moment ago we might even have had no words for.In this new volume of his Ten Poems series, Roger Housden takes ten great poems and in personal, intimate essays shows how they led him, and can also lead us, into a more deeply lived and examined life. Housden says, “Every one of the poems in this book has struck me a blow, a direct hit, each of them, into the heart of hearts. Every one of them, in its own way, has opened a door for me to go deeper into my own experience, my own longings, my own sorrows and joys, and into the silence that surrounds all of this, all of us, always.”

     From somewhat classic queries: * What do I wear to a job interview/felony trial/jacuzzi? * Where does the soup spoon/seafood fork/butter knife go? To comments on truly modern phenomena: * Call waiting is like a child screaming for attention * Leaky earphones are the equivalent of humming To strictly personal do's and don'ts: * Don't communicate everything in a marriage ("I had the wildest dream about a man at my office...") * Do continue the ancient custom of mealtimes, that is, breakfast, lunch, and dinner And professional guidelines: * Don't start grabbing company property after being fired * If a candy dish is on the visitor's side of a receptionist's desk, it is for visitors... Miss Manners offers consistently sound, sage advice to her Gentle Readers. With a tipping guide (including coat checks and pizza deliveries), sections devoted to both traditional and nontraditional households, details on protocol for ceremonies and celebrations, invitations and disinvitations, insights on courtship and romance, and much more, this is the comprehensive guide to a kinder, gentler, more civilized society.

    Rockefeller is held to be one of the wealthiest men who ever lived; he is also one of the most controversial figures in American history. Born of the unlikely union between a strict Baptist matriarch and her husband, a bigamist, alleged rapist, and snake-oil salesman, Rockefeller’s early childhood was spent learning how to shoulder an adult’s responsibility for his family and turn a deaf ear to the gossip that followed wherever his father went. This book contains highlights from the extraordinarily long life of a man many believed to be little better than a criminal, preying on small business owners to establish the supremacy of the Standard Oil Trust. John D. Rockefeller crushed his competitors and sparked massive public outrage against his businesses. Yet he also saved thousands of lives and helped establish respect for evidence-based medicine in the United States. From his teen years as a bookkeeper in a small commodities trading firm, to his imperial rule over the oil industry, to his early retirement and the decades he spent establishing philanthropic trusts in the fields of education and medicine, you will learn that there is no simple way to pass judgment on John D. Rockefeller’s life.

    

    But when she loses her job, gets dumped and is made homeless within the space of a fortnight, Alex reluctantly returns to her home town – a place she thought she’d left for good 10 years earlier. With barely a penny to her name… Alex is surprised to find there are some advantages to moving back: reconnecting with old friends who had been such a big part of her teenage years. Although being back brings up old feelings Alex thought she had buried for good, feelings that should be well and truly left in the past – especially when it came to her old high school boyfriend, Lewis Ashworth. Desperate to return to her London lifestyle, Alex takes advice from her old school friend Cody McKenzie, who suggests she only has to “fake it till she makes it” How hard can that be? After all, hadn’t she been doing that for years? Whether reluctantly trying to drive her nan’s mobility scooter, putting bullying bosses in their place or looking for creative ways to avoid her mum’s increasingly weird cooking, follow Alex’s laugh-out-loud journey to “making it”

    Conceived as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students, this timeless book presents Albers’s unique ideas of color experimentation in a way that is valuable to specialists as well as to a larger audience.Originally published by Yale University Press in 1963 as a limited silkscreen edition with 150 color plates, Interaction of Color first appeared in paperback in 1971, featuring ten representative color studies chosen by Albers. The paperback has remained in print ever since and is one of the most influential resources on color for countless readers.This new paperback edition presents a significantly expanded selection of more than thirty color studies alongside Albers’s original unabridged text, demonstrating such principles as color relativity, intensity, and temperature; vibrating and vanishing boundaries; and the illusions of transparency and reversed grounds. Now available in a larger format and with enhanced production values, this expanded edition celebrates the unique authority of Albers’s contribution to color theory and brings the artist’s iconic study to an eager new generation of readers.

    Star of BBC's Supersizers and hugely popular Times columnist's works through his anger about everything from dogs to cycle helmets.

    This guide includes suggestions on how to prepare a campaign, running each session, dealing with problem players, how to create memorable NPCs and more.Please note that this is not a basic how-to for role-playing and is not affiliated with any particular gaming system or company.Table of ContentsForeword, by Erica LindquistChapter 1: On StorytellingChapter 2: Before Your GameChapter 3: Building Your StoryChapter 4: Running Your GameChapter 5: Players Player CharactersChapter 6: ProblemsChapter 7: Rules MechanicsChapter 8: Setting NPCsChapter 9: The EndPlease note that this is not a basic how-to for role-playing and it is not affiliated with any particular gaming company.

    Told in eloquent, honest prose, Art’s Cello is a story about coming to terms with the past and letting go of the failures we allow to define us — and, in the process, honoring the lives of those we’ve lost. Jim McKean is an international award-winning violinmaker, author, and corresponding editor of Strings Magazine. He is a graduate of the first violinmaking school in America and the former president of the American Federation of Violin and Bow Makers. His novel, Quattrocento, was published in 2002. Cover design by Evan Twohy.

    

    Richard Boleslavsky's Acting: The First Six Lessons is a treasure-box of wise observation about the art of acting, all wrapped up in six charming dialogues between a teacher and a student. Generations of actors have been enriched by Boleslavsky's witty and acute picture of the actor's craft. These six "lessons" — miniature dramas about concentration, memory of emotion, dramatic action, characterization, observation, and rhythm — distill the challenge facing every actor. For this reissue the text has been entirely reset and the book jacketed in a contemporary design. An essential work on the short shelf of any acting student.