by John Grogan · Morrow
The story of a family in the making and the wondrously neurotic dog who taught them what really matters in life. Is it possible for humans to discover the key to happiness through a bigger-than-life, bad-boy dog? Just ask the Grogans.--From publisher description.
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner · Morrow
The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling over four million copies in thirty-five languages and changing the way we look at the world. Now, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with SuperFreakonomics, and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first. Four years in the making, SuperFreakonomics asks not only the tough questions, but the unexpected ones: What's more dangerous, driving drunk or walking drunk? Why is chemotherapy prescribed so often if it's so ineffective? Can a sex change boost your salary? SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as: How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa? Why are doctors so bad at washing their hands? How much good do car seats do? What's the best way to catch a terrorist? Did TV cause a rise in crime? What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common? Are people hard-wired for altruism or selfishness? Can eating kangaroo save the planet? Which adds more value: a pimp or a Realtor? Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling like no one else, whether investigating a solution to global warming or explaining why the price of oral sex has fallen so drastically. By examining how people respond to incentives, they show the world for what it really is – good, bad, ugly, and, in the final analysis, super freaky. Freakonomics has been imitated many times over – but only now, with SuperFreakonomics, has it met its match.
by Sharon Rocha · Crown
Laci Rocha Peterson, 8 months pregnant, was last seen by her sister, Amy, in the late afternoon of December 23, 2002. She spoke to her mother, Sharon Rocha, at 8:30 p.m. that night. This would be the last time anyone from her immediate family ever spoke to her. A search began which lasted an agonizing four months. Sadly, Laci Peterson and her son Conner were found dead on the shores of San Francisco Bay on April 18, 2003. Her husband, Scott, was eventually arrested and charged with the murder of Laci and Connor. After a sensational, media-saturated trial, Peterson was found guilty of capital murder and was sentenced to death on March 16, 2005. This book deals with the story in three separate sections: first, Sharon describes the ordinary, loving life her daughter led, including fond memories of her childhood and adolescence. Second, it covers her marriage, disappearance, the community's moving search for her, and her and Connor's eventual recovery from San Francisco Bay. Third, it tells the story of the trial in detail not before revealed. Sharon will also talk about victim's rights, a subject on which she now campaigns regularly.
by Deborah Tannen · Random House
Deborah Tannen's #1 New York Times bestseller You Just Don’t Understand revolutionized communication between women and men. Now, in her most provocative and engaging book to date, she takes on what is potentially the most fraught and passionate connection of women’s lives: the mother-daughter relationship. It was Tannen who first showed us that men and women speak different languages. Mothers and daughters speak the same language–but still often misunderstand each other, as they struggle to find the right balance between closeness and independence. Both mothers and daughters want to be seen for who they are, but tend to see the other as falling short of who she should be. Each overestimates the other’s power and underestimates her own. Why do daughters complain that their mothers always criticize, while mothers feel hurt that their daughters shut them out? Why do mothers and daughters critique each other on the Big Three–hair, clothes, and weight–while longing for approval and understanding? And why do they scrutinize each other for reflections of themselves? Deborah Tannen answers these and many other questions as she explains why a remark that would be harmless coming from anyone else can cause an explosion when it comes from your mother or your daughter. She examines every aspect of this complex dynamic, from the dark side that can shadow a woman throughout her life, to the new technologies like e-mail and instant messaging that are transforming mother-daughter communication. Most important, she helps mothers and daughters understand each other, the key to improving their relationship. With groundbreaking insights, pitch-perfect dialogues, and deeply moving memories of her own mother, Tannen untangles the knots daughters and mothers can get tied up in. Readers will appreciate Tannen’s humor as they see themselves on every page and come away with real hope for breaking down barriers and opening new lines of communication. Eye-opening and heartfelt, You’re Wearing That? illuminates and enriches one of the most important relationships in our lives. “Tannen analyzes and decodes scores of conversations between moms and daughters. These exchanges are so real they can make you squirm as you relive the last fraught conversation you had with your own mother or daughter. But Tannen doesn't just point out the pitfalls of the mother-daughter relationship, she also provides guidance for changing the conversations (or the way that we feel about the conversations) before they degenerate into what Tannen calls a mutually aggravating spiral, a "self-perpetuating cycle of escalating responses that become provocations." – The San Francisco Chronicle
by Jimmy Carter · Simon & Schuster
Jimmy Carter has written importantly about his spiritual life and faith. Now he describes quite personally his own involvement and reactions to disturbing societal trends involving both the religious and political worlds as they become intertwined.
by Frank McCourt · Scribner
Available at last in paperback is Frank McCourt's critically acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller about how his 30-year teaching career in the public schools of New York City shaped his second act as a writer.
by Karrine Steffans · Amistad/ HarperCollins
Part tell-all, part cautionary tale, this emotionally charged memoir from a former video vixen nicknamed 'Superhead' goes beyond the glamour of celebrity to reveal the inner workings of the hip-hop dancer industry—from the physical and emotional abuse that's rampant in the industry, and which marked her own life—to the excessive use of drugs, sex and bling. Once the sought-after video girl, this sexy siren has helped multi-platinum artists, such as Jay-Z, R. Kelly and LL Cool J, sell millions of albums with her sensual dancing. In a word, Karrine was H-O-T. So hot that she made as much as $2500 a day in videos and was selected by well-known film director F. Gary Gray to co-star in his film, A Man Apart, starring Vin Diesel. But the film and music video sets, swanky Hollywood and New York restaurants and trysts with the celebrities featured in the pages of People and In Touch magazines only touches the surface of Karrine Steffans' life. Her journey is filled with physical abuse, rape, drug and alcohol abuse, homelessness and single motherhood—all by the age of 26. By sharing her story, Steffans hopes to shed light on an otherwise romanticised industry and help young women avoid the same pitfalls she encountered. If they're already in danger, she hopes to inspire them to find a way to dig themselves out of what she knows first-hand to be a cycle of hopelessness and despair.
by Norah Vincent · Viking Press
A journalist’s provocative and spellbinding account of her eighteen months spent disguised as a man. Norah Vincent became an instant media sensation with the publication of Self-Made Man, her take on just how hard it is to be a man, even in a man’s world. Following in the tradition of John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me), Vincent spent a year and a half disguised as her male alter ego, Ned, exploring what men are like when women aren’t around. As Ned, she joined a bowling team, took a high-octane sales job, went on dates with women (and men), visited strip clubs, and even managed to infiltrate a monastery and a men’s therapy group. At once thought-provoking and pure fun to read, Self-Made Man is a sympathetic and thrilling tour de force of immersion journalism.
by Malcolm Gladwell · Little, Brown
Kennen Sie die kurzen Momente, in denen wir blitzartige Entscheidungen treffen - Momente, in denen wir denken, ohne zu denken?
by Doris Kearns Goodwin · Simon & Schuster
Presents an overview of the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, explaining the genius of his political savvy, and describes the context in which he assigned a cadre of his fiercest rivals as his closest cabinet advisors.
by Bernard-Henri Lévy · Random House
Depuis la deuxième guerre d'Irak - et même bien avant... - les Etats-Unis occupent, dans l'imaginaire mondial, une place symbolique qui dépasse largement les notions de puissance, de politique, de géographie. L'Amérique, en vérité, est devenue un concept, une « région de l'âme », une matrice de passions et de phobies dont le déploiement contradictoire n'en finit pas d'infuser nos propres débats. C'est, précisément, cette réalité ontologiquement diverse que Bernard-Henri Lévy a voulu cerner, observer, penser, dans ce livre où le reportage se mêle à la réflexion, et où le pittoresque emprunte à la philosophie de l'histoire. A l'origine, ce livre est né d'une « commande » de l'influent magazine « Atlantic Monthly » : demander à un célèbre intellectuel français de visiter l'Amérique et de donner sens à ce pays-continent en refaisant - en plus vaste - le fameux voyage qu'Alexis Tocqueville avait entrepris au début du XIXème siècle, à partir duquel il avait écrit son désormais classique « De la démocratie en Amérique ». Pendant une année, B.-H. Lévy a ainsi sillonné les Etats-Unis. Plus de vingt mille kilomètres d'est en ouest et du nord au sud, la plupart du temps par la route : de Rikers Island à Chicago, des communautés islamiques de Detroit à une enclave Amish de l'Iowa, l'auteur interroge la nature du patriotisme américain, la coexistence de la liberté comme de la religion, le système pénitenciaire, la « tyrannie de la majorité », le retour en force de l'idéologie... B.-H.L. a rencontré tous les visages de l'Amérique : les illustres, les anonymes, ceux du désert ou des mégapoles. De Sharon Stone à une veuve de mineur du Wisconsin, d'un milliardaire philantrope à Norman Mailer, de Woody Allen à un « homeless » de Californie, d'Hillary Clinton à un contestataire turbulent, de Barack Ohama, la star montante de la politique, à la pensionnaire d'un bordel du Nevada, il écrit la comédie humaine de ce pays-continent. D'où la vitalité prodigieuse de ce « reportage philosophique » qu'on dévore, page après page, avec un enthousiasme qui ne se dément jamais. Un oeil de romancier, et une profondeur de penseur. Les conclusions de ce voyage ? B.-H.L. les tire en chemin, et elles sont souvent contradictoires. A l'heure où la « démocratie en Amérique » est de plus en plus contestée, ce livre atteste, au contraire, de sa prodigieuse vitalité. A cet égard, l'épilogue substantiel de ce livre (une centaine de pages) permet au « philosophe » de reprendre le pas sur le « journaliste » et le final de cet ouvrage conduit son lecteur au coeur des grands débats - des thèses de Fukuyama ou Huntington aux arrières-pensées des « Néo-conservateurs » - dont la complexité, bien souvent, gouverne le destin du monde.
Historical bestseller data sourced from the New York Times Book Review, archived by Hawes Publications.
