Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud is an innovative comic book that provides a detailed look at the history, meaning, and art of comics and cartooning. It traces the 3,000-year history of storytelling through pictures and discusses the language and images used in the unique medium of comics.

This work is celebrated throughout the cartoon industry and is essential reading for anyone interested in the intricate and fascinating world of comics.

Experience one of the greatest adventure stories of the modern age in this New York Times bestseller: the harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole. In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance and set sail for Antarctica, where he planned to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. In January 1915, after battling its way through a thousand miles of pack ice and only a day's sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization. With an introduction by Nathaniel Philbrick, Endurance is the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip. Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the gripping and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age.

Why would a talented young woman enter into a torrid affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Through five lengthy hospital stays, endless therapy, and the loss of family, friends, jobs, and all sense of what it means to be "normal," Marya Hornbacher lovingly embraced her anorexia and bulimia—until a particularly horrifying bout with the disease in college put the romance of wasting away to rest forever. A vivid, honest, and emotionally wrenching memoir, Wasted is the story of one woman's travels to reality's darker side—and her decision to find her way back on her own terms.

The extraordinary gifts for evocation and insight and the stunning talent for storytelling that earned Rick Bragg a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1996 are here brought to bear on the wrenching story of his own family's life. It is the story of a violent, war-haunted, alcoholic father and a strong-willed, loving mother who struggled to protect her three sons from the effects of poverty and ignorance that had tainted her own life. It is the story of the life Bragg was able to carve out for himself on the strength of his mother's encouragement and belief.

This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times. At the center of this soaring memoir is Bragg's mother, who went eighteen years without a new dress so that her sons could have school clothes and picked other people's cotton so that her children wouldn't have to live on welfare alone. Evoking these lives—and the country that shaped and nourished them—with artistry, honesty, and compassion, Rick Bragg brings home the love and suffering that lie at the heart of every family. The result is unforgettable.

A landmark volume in science writing by one of the great minds of our time, Stephen Hawking’s book explores such profound questions as: How did the universe begin—and what made its start possible? Does time always flow forward? Is the universe unending—or are there boundaries? Are there other dimensions in space? What will happen when it all ends?

Told in language we all can understand, A Brief History of Time plunges into the exotic realms of black holes and quarks, of antimatter and “arrows of time,” of the big bang and a bigger God—where the possibilities are wondrous and unexpected. With exciting images and profound imagination, Stephen Hawking brings us closer to the ultimate secrets at the very heart of creation.

‘Locked-in syndrome: paralysed from head to toe, the patient, his mind intact, is imprisoned inside his own body, unable to speak or move. In my case, blinking my left eyelid is my only means of communication.’

In December 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of French ‘Elle’ and the father of two young children, suffered a massive stroke and found himself paralysed and speechless, but entirely conscious, trapped by what doctors call ‘locked-in syndrome’. Using his only functioning muscle – his left eyelid – he began dictating this remarkable story, painstakingly spelling it out letter by letter.

His book offers a haunting, harrowing look inside the cruel prison of locked-in syndrome, but it is also a triumph of the human spirit.

A new selection of post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gough's letters, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh put a human face on one of the most haunting figures in modern Western culture. In this Penguin Classics edition, the letters are selected and edited by Ronald de Leeuw, and translated by Arnold Pomerans in Penguin Classics.

Few artists' letters are as self-revelatory as Vincent van Gogh's, and this selection, spanning his artistic career, sheds light on every facet of the life and work of this complex and tortured man. Engaging candidly and movingly with his religious struggles, his ill-fated search for love, his attacks of mental illness and his relation with his brother Theo, the letters contradict the popular myth of van Gogh as an anti-social madman and a martyr to art, showing instead a man of great emotional and spiritual depths. Above all, they stand as an intense personal narrative of artistic development and a unique account of the process of creation.

The letters are linked by explanatory biographical passages, revealing van Gogh's inner journey as well as the outer facts of his life. This edition also includes the drawings that originally illustrated the letters.

Vincent Willem van Gogh (1853-1890) was born in Holland. In 1885 he painted his first masterpiece, The Potato Eaters, a haunting scene of domestic poverty. A year later he began studying in Paris, where he met Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Seurat, who became very important influences on his work. In 1888 he left Paris for the Provencal landscape at Arles, the subject of many of his best works, including Sunflowers.

In this exuberantly praised book — a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner — David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction, including the bestselling Infinite Jest.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, by James C. Scott, is an essential work that delves into the reasons behind the failure of states to execute large-scale social planning successfully. It presents an analysis of various disasters, from Russia to Tanzania, probing why such efforts often result in calamity.

The book argues that disasters occur when states impose oversimplified visions on complex realities that they cannot fully comprehend. Scott emphasizes the importance of recognizing local, practical knowledge alongside formal, systematic knowledge. He critiques 'development theory' and state planning that ignores the values and wishes of the people it affects. This persuasive narrative identifies four conditions common to all planning disasters: the state's administrative ordering of nature and society; a 'high-modernist ideology' that overestimates the role of science in improving human life; the use of authoritarian power to implement broad interventions; and the inability of a weakened civil society to resist such plans.

Written with clarity, Seeing Like a State brings to light the intricate nature of the world we inhabit and serves as a cautionary tale about the limits of grand societal engineering.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down explores the clash between a small county hospital in California and a refugee family from Laos over the care of Lia Lee, a Hmong child diagnosed with severe epilepsy. Lia's parents and her doctors both wanted what was best for Lia, but the lack of understanding between them led to tragedy. Anne Fadiman's compassionate account of this cultural impasse is literary journalism at its finest.

Lia Lee was born in 1982 to a family of recent Hmong immigrants, and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy. By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, over-medication, and culture clash: What the doctors viewed as clinical efficiency the Hmong viewed as frosty arrogance. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, written with the deepest of human feeling.

'Tuesdays with Morrie' is a poignant memoir by Mitch Albom that recounts the time spent with his former sociology professor, Morrie Schwartz, during the final stages of Schwartz's battle with ALS. This book captures the essence of their weekly meetings, every Tuesday, where Morrie imparted wisdom on various aspects of life.

Albom presents Morrie's insights on the importance of love, the value of forgiveness, and the significance of forging one's own culture against the societal currents. These lessons are presented as a final 'class' from Morrie, offering guidance on how to live a meaningful life.

The author delves into the profound impact of these conversations on his life, as Morrie's teachings helped him understand the virtues of aging and the necessity to embrace vulnerability. Mitch Albom shares these invaluable lessons with readers, allowing them to benefit from Morrie's wisdom and the transformative power of their Tuesdays together.

A bank of clouds was assembling on the not-so-distant horizon, but journalist-mountaineer Jon Krakauer, standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, saw nothing that suggested that a murderous storm was bearing down. He was wrong. The storm, which claimed five lives and left countless more--including Krakauer's--in guilt-ridden disarray, would also provide the impetus for Into Thin Air, Krakauer's epic account of the May 1996 disaster.

In April 1992, a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. After donating $25,000 in savings to charity, he abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter.

Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest akin to those of his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert, he left his car, removed its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He adopted the name Alexander Supertramp and, without money and belongings, he set off to experience nature in its purest form. Disregarding maps, McCandless sought a blank spot on the map to truly vanish into the wild.

Author Jon Krakauer constructs a narrative that examines the stirring facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an interest that borders on obsession, Krakauer searches for the clues to the drives and desires that propelled McCandless into the wilderness. Krakauer reveals the allure of the American wilderness, the thrill of high-risk activities to certain young men, and the complex relationships between fathers and sons. When McCandless's innocent mistakes prove fatal, he becomes the center of media scrutiny. Krakauer brings McCandless's intense journey out of the shadows with deep understanding, devoid of sentimentality, and illuminates the provocative questions McCandless's story raises about nature, adventure, and the human spirit.

In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose by Truman Capote that delves into the chilling true story of the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. On November 15, 1959, the Clutters were brutally killed, with no apparent motive and scant clues left behind. Capote's reconstruction of the crime, the ensuing investigation, and the eventual capture, trial, and execution of the killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, is both suspenseful and empathetically narrated.

The narrative draws a vivid and humanizing portrait of the killers, depicting them as reprehensible yet frighteningly human. Through Capote's skilled journalistic approach combined with a powerfully evocative narrative, readers are offered a gripping and poignant insight into the nature of violence in America.

The Complete Maus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel by Art Spiegelman, is a profound narrative that recounts the chilling experiences of the author's father, Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe. This volume includes both Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II, presenting the complete story.

Through the unique medium of cartoons—with Nazis depicted as cats and Jews as mice—Spiegelman captures the everyday reality of fear and survival during the Holocaust. This artistic choice not only shocks readers out of any sense of familiarity but also draws them closer to the harrowing heart of the Holocaust.

More than just a tale of survival, Maus is also an exploration of the author's complex relationship with his father. The narrative weaves together Vladek's harrowing story with the author's own struggles, framing a life of small arguments and unhappy visits against the backdrop of a larger historical atrocity. It is a story that extends beyond Vladek to all the children who bear the legacy of their parents' traumas.

Maus is not only a personal account of survival but also a broader examination of the impact of history on subsequent generations. It is an essential work that studies the traces of history and its enduring significance.

Angela's Ashes begins with a stark reflection: "When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

Thus starts the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, struggles to provide for her children as Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and his wages usually end up at the pub.

Despite Malachy's flaws—his exasperating nature and irresponsibility—he instills in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can offer: a story. Frank becomes enthralled with his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.

Enduring poverty, near-starvation, and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors, Frank's narrative is one of resilience and survival, told with eloquence, exuberance, and a remarkable capacity for forgiveness. His story is one that touches on the universal truths of the human spirit, underscored by a persistent sense of humor and compassion.

Salvation on Sand Mountain offers a haunting exploration of faith, delving into the mysterious and captivating world of holiness snake handling in Southern Appalachia. The book begins with a journalistic assignment that quickly transforms into a profound journey.

Dennis Covington, a New York Times reporter, initially covers the trial of an Alabama pastor convicted of attempting to murder his wife with poisonous snakes. However, this assignment leads him deep into the heart of a world characterized by unshakable faith, where participants handle deadly snakes, drink strychnine, and perform acts of healing and resurrection.

Set against the backdrop of Appalachia, this narrative is not only a chilling account of religious extremity but also an introspective journey, as Covington finds himself drawn into the practices he set out to observe.

After years of soul-searching, Jeanne Safer made the conscious decision not to have children. In this book, Safer and women across the country share insights that dispel the myth of childless women as emotionally barren or incomplete, and encourage all women to honestly confront their needs—whether they choose motherhood or not.

Dave Pelzer's remarkable journey from a child who lived in terror of his unstable, violently unpredictable mother's every move, to his emergence as an inspiration the world over is a remarkable tale of survival and the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.

Dave Pelzer's three volumes of memoirs - A Child Called 'It', The Lost Boy and A Man Named Dave - brought this story of courage and triumph against all odds to the world, becoming global bestsellers.

My Story brings these volumes together, following Dave from a childhood spent in fear, his tempestuous teenage years haunted by the spectre of his mother, through to his adulthood, and his great achievement of not only understanding and reconciling the story of his own life, but his dedication to helping others overcome similar adversity.

It is a remarkable story of courage and survival, already embraced by millions and destined to inspire millions more.

Amazing Grace is Jonathan Kozol’s classic book on life and death in the South Bronx—the poorest urban neighborhood of the United States. He brings us into overcrowded schools, dysfunctional hospitals, and rat-infested homes where families have been ravaged by depression and anxiety, drug-related violence, and the spread of AIDS.

But he also introduces us to devoted and unselfish teachers, dedicated ministers, and—at the heart and center of the book—courageous and delightful children. The children we come to meet through the friendships they have formed with Jonathan defy the stereotypes of urban youth too frequently presented by the media. Tender, generous, and often religiously devout, they speak with eloquence and honesty about the poverty and racial isolation that have wounded but not hardened them.

Amidst all of the despair, it is the very young whose luminous capacity for love and transcendent sense of faith in human decency give reason for hope.

Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality.

The foster son of a Thembu chief, Mandela was raised in the traditional, tribal culture of his ancestors, but at an early age learned the modern, inescapable reality of what came to be called apartheid, one of the most powerful and effective systems of oppression ever conceived. In classically elegant and engrossing prose, he tells of his early years as an impoverished student and law clerk in a Jewish firm in Johannesburg, of his slow political awakening, and of his pivotal role in the rebirth of a stagnant ANC and the formation of its Youth League in the 1950s. He describes the struggle to reconcile his political activity with his devotion to his family, the anguished breakup of his first marriage, and the painful separations from his children. He brings vividly to life the escalating political warfare in the fifties between the ANC and the government, culminating in his dramatic escapades as an underground leader and the notorious Rivonia Trial of 1964, at which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Herecounts the surprisingly eventful twenty-seven years in prison and the complex, delicate negotiations that led both to his freedom and to the beginning of the end of apartheid. Finally he provides the ultimate inside account.

A Child Called "It" is a memoir by Dave Pelzer that recounts the harrowing details of his childhood, marked by extreme abuse at the hands of his alcoholic mother. The story is a testament to one child's resilience in the face of unimaginable adversity. Dave's mother subjected him to a series of tortuous and unpredictable games that almost cost him his life. Stripped of his identity, he was regarded not as her son, but as a slave, and he was referred to as an "it" rather than a boy.

With his bed being an old army cot in the basement and his clothes nothing but tattered rags, Dave's existence was a living nightmare. Food was a luxury, often just spoiled scraps that even dogs would refuse. Isolated and alone, Dave's dreams and determination to find a loving family kept him alive. This memoir is not just a tale of suffering, but also a story about the power of hope and the will to survive.

Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self Esteem, and the Confidence Gap is a groundbreaking book by Peggy Orenstein that explores the decline in confidence among young girls as they reach adolescence.

Inspired by an American Association of University Women survey, Orenstein investigates the obstacles girls face in school, at home, and within our culture. Through months of observation and interviews with eighth-graders from diverse communities, she uncovers the causes behind traditional patterns of self-censorship and self-doubt.

Orenstein brings to life the struggles of real young women dealing with eating disorders, sexual harassment, and declining academic achievement. She skillfully highlights the adolescent roots of issues that remain significant throughout the lives of American women.

This book challenges us to rethink how we raise and educate girls, making it a must-read for anyone interested in empowerment and social change.

How We Die offers a profound meditation and portrait of the experience of dying. It elucidates the decisions that can be made to allow each person an understanding of death, as well as their own choice of death.

This definitive resource on perhaps the single most universal human concern—death—addresses contemporary issues in end-of-life care. It includes an all-embracing and incisive afterword that examines the current state of health care and our relationship with life as it approaches its terminus.

Sherwin Nuland's masterful work is even more relevant today, discussing how we can take control of our own final days and those of our loved ones.

An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales by Oliver Sacks is a fascinating exploration of the human mind through seven detailed and captivating portraits of neurological patients.

Oliver Sacks, renowned for his blend of scientific rigor and human compassion, takes us into the uncanny worlds of his subjects. These include a surgeon consumed by the compulsive tics of Tourette's syndrome unless he is operating, and an artist who loses all sense of color in a car accident but finds new creative power in black and white.

Among the stories is an autistic professor with a Ph.D. in animal science, who finds the complexity of human emotion so bewildering that she feels "like an anthropologist on Mars."

Through these extraordinary individuals, Sacks explores what it is to feel, to sense, to remember, and to be a coherent self in the world. This book is not just an observation of interesting cases but a profound insight into the nature of human identity and resilience.

Join Oliver Sacks on a journey that challenges our understanding of the human condition and reveals the infinite complexities of the human mind.

The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth, celebrated by The Washington Post as “not just a book but a spontaneous act of generosity.” Perhaps no book in this generation has had a more profound impact on our intellectual and spiritual lives than The Road Less Traveled. With sales of more than seven million copies in the United States and Canada, and translations into more than twenty-three languages, it has made publishing history, with more than ten years on the New York Times bestseller list.

Written in a voice that is timeless in its message of understanding, The Road Less Traveled continues to help us explore the very nature of loving relationships and leads us toward a new serenity and fullness of life. It helps us learn how to distinguish dependency from love; how to become a more sensitive parent; and ultimately how to become one’s own true self. Recognizing that, as in the famous opening line of his book, “Life is difficult” and that the journey to spiritual growth is a long one, Dr. Peck never bullies his readers, but rather guides them gently through the hard and often painful process of change toward a higher level of self-understanding.

In the summer of 1969, in Los Angeles, a series of brutal, seemingly random murders captured headlines across America. A famous actress (and her unborn child), an heiress to a coffee fortune, a supermarket owner and his wife were among the seven victims. A thin trail of circumstances eventually tied the Tate-LeBianca murders to Charles Manson, a would-be pop singer of small talent living in the desert with his "family" of devoted young women and men. What was his hold over them? And what was the motivation behind such savagery?

In the public imagination, over time, the case assumed the proportions of myth. The murders marked the end of the sixties and became an immediate symbol of the dark underside of that era. Vincent Bugliosi was the prosecuting attorney in the Manson trial, and this book is his enthralling account of how he built his case from what a defense attorney dismissed as only "two fingerprints and Vince Bugliosi." The meticulous detective work with which the story begins, the prosecutor's view of a complex murder trial, the reconstruction of the philosophy Manson inculcated in his fervent followers…these elements make for a true crime classic. Helter Skelter is not merely a spellbinding murder case and courtroom drama but also, in the words of The New Republic, a "social document of rare importance."

Cool. The concept has distinctly American qualities and it permeates almost every aspect of contemporary American culture. From Kool cigarettes and the Peanuts cartoon's Joe Cool to West Side Story ("Keep cool, boy.") and urban slang ("Be cool. Chill out."), the idea of cool, in its many manifestations, has seized a central place in our vocabulary.

Where did this preoccupation with cool come from? How was Victorian culture, seemingly so ensconced, replaced with the current emotional status quo? From whence came American Cool?

These are the questions Peter Stearns seeks to answer in this timely and engaging volume. American Cool focuses extensively on the transition decades, from the erosion of Victorianism in the 1920s to the solidification of a cool culture in the 1960s. Beyond describing the characteristics of the new directions and how they altered or amended earlier standards, the book seeks to explain why the change occurred. It then assesses some of the outcomes and longer-range consequences of this transformation.

Mohandas K. Gandhi is one of the most inspiring figures of our time. In his classic autobiography he recounts the story of his life and how he developed his concept of active nonviolent resistance, which propelled the Indian struggle for independence and countless other nonviolent struggles of the twentieth century.

In a new foreword, noted peace expert and teacher Sissela Bok urges us to adopt Gandhi's attitude of experimenting, of testing what will and will not bear close scrutiny, what can and cannot be adapted to new circumstances, in order to bring about change in our own lives and communities.

All royalties earned on this book are paid to the Navajivan Trust, founded by Gandhi, for use in carrying on his work.

Michel de Montaigne was one of the most influential figures of the Renaissance, singlehandedly responsible for popularising the essay as a literary form. This Penguin Classics edition of The Complete Essays is translated from the French and edited with an introduction and notes by M.A. Screech.

In 1572, Montaigne retired to his estates in order to devote himself to leisure, reading, and reflection. There, he wrote his constantly expanding 'assays', inspired by the ideas he found in books contained in his library and from his own experience. He discusses subjects as diverse as war-horses and cannibals, poetry and politics, sex and religion, love and friendship, ecstasy and experience. But, above all, Montaigne studied himself as a way of drawing out his own inner nature and that of men and women in general. The Essays are among the most idiosyncratic and personal works in all literature and provide an engaging insight into a wise Renaissance mind, continuing to give pleasure and enlightenment to modern readers.

With its extensive introduction and notes, M.A. Screech's edition of Montaigne is widely regarded as the most distinguished of recent times.

Wake up and take control of your life! From the bestselling author of Inner Strength, Unlimited Power, and MONEY Master the Game, Anthony Robbins, the nation's leader in the science of peak performance, shows you his most effective strategies and techniques for mastering your emotions, your body, your relationships, your finances, and your life.

The acknowledged expert in the psychology of change, Anthony Robbins provides a step-by-step program teaching the fundamental lessons of self-mastery that will enable you to discover your true purpose, take control of your life, and harness the forces that shape your destiny.

Out of Africa is Isak Dinesen's memoir of her years in Africa, from 1914 to 1931, on a four-thousand-acre coffee plantation in the hills near Nairobi. She had come to Kenya from Denmark with her husband, and when they separated she stayed on to manage the farm by herself, visited frequently by her lover, the big-game hunter Denys Finch-Hatton, for whom she would make up stories like Scheherazade. In Africa, "I learned how to tell tales," she recalled many years later. "The natives have an ear still. I told stories constantly to them, all kinds." Her account of her African adventures, written after she had lost her beloved farm and returned to Denmark, is that of a master storyteller, a woman whom John Updike called "one of the most picturesque and flamboyant literary personalities of the century."

The vast majority of Americans have, at one point or another, gotten drunk, smoked, dabbled with drugs, gambled, sworn, or engaged in adultery. During the 1800s, "respectable" people struggled to control these behaviors, labeling them "bad" and the people who indulged in them unrespectable. In the twentieth century, these minor vices were transformed into a societal complex of enormous and pervasive influence. Yet the general belief persists that these activities remain merely harmless "bad habits," individual transgressions more than social problems. Not so, argues distinguished historian John C. Burnham in this pioneering study.

In Bad Habits, Burnham traces the growth of a veritable minor vice-industrial complex. As it grew, activities that might have been harmless, natural, and sociable fun resulted in fundamental social change. When Burnham set out to explore the influence of these bad habits on American society, he sought to discover why so many "good" people engaged in activities that many, including themselves, considered "bad." What he found, however, was a coalition of economic and social interests in which the single-minded quest for profit allied with the values of the Victorian saloon underworld and bohemian rebelliousness. This combination radically inverted common American standards of personal conduct.

Bad Habits, then, describes, in words and pictures, how more and more Americans learned to value hedonism and self-gratification—to smoke and swear during World War I, to admire cabaret night life, and to reject schoolmarmish standards in the age of Prohibition. Tracing the evolution of each of the bad habits, Burnham tells how liquor control boards encouraged the consumption of alcohol; how alcoholic beverage producers got their workers deferred from the draft during World War II; how convenience stores and accounting firms pursued profits by pushing legalized gambling; how "swinging" Playboy bankrolled a drug advocacy group; how advertising and television made the Marlboro Man a national hero; how drug paraphernalia was promoted by national advertisers; how a practical joker/drug addict caused a shortage of kitty litter on Long Island; and how the evolution of an entire sex therapy industry helped turn sexual experience into a new kind of commodity. Altogether, a lot of people made a lot of money. But what, the author asks, did these changes cost American society?

This illustrated tour de force by one of the most distinctive and important voices in social history reveals John C. Burnham at his provocative and controversial best.

When lives are dominated by hunger, what becomes of love? When assaulted by daily acts of violence and untimely death, what happens to trust? Set in the lands of Northeast Brazil, this is an account of the everyday experience of scarcity, sickness, and death that centres on the lives of the women and children of a hillside favela. Bringing her readers to the impoverished slopes above the modern plantation town of Bom Jesus de Mata, where she has worked on and off for 25 years, Nancy Scheper-Hughes follows three generations of shantytown women as they struggle to survive through hard work, cunning and triage.

It is a story of class relations told at the most basic level of bodies, emotions, desires and needs. Most disturbing – and controversial – is her finding that mother love, as conventionally understood, is something of a bourgeois myth, a luxury for those who can reasonably expect, as these women cannot, that their infants will live.

Darkness Visible tells the story of William Styron's recovery, laying bare the harrowing realities of clinical depression and chronicling his triumph over the disease that had claimed so many great writers before him. In the summer of 1985, Styron became numbed by disaffection, apathy, and despair, unable to speak or walk while caught in the grip of advanced depression. His struggle with the disease culminated in a wave of obsession that nearly drove him to suicide, leading him to seek hospitalization before the dark tide engulfed him.

His final words are a call for hope to all who suffer from mental illness that it is possible to emerge from even the deepest abyss of despair and “once again behold the stars.”

A Natural History of the Senses is a vibrant celebration of our ability to smell, taste, hear, touch, and see. Poet, pilot, naturalist, journalist, essayist, and explorer, Diane Ackerman weaves together scientific fact with lore, history, and voluptuous description. The resulting work is a startling and enchanting account of how human beings experience and savor the world.

This book is at once an ingenious exploration of the physical processes underlying our perceptions and an eloquent ode to life—a rare combination of science and poetry. Ackerman's lusciously written grand tour of the realm of the senses includes conversations with an iceberg in Antarctica and a professional nose in New York, along with dissertations on kisses and tattoos, sadistic cuisine, and the music played by the planet Earth.

Join Ackerman in this delightful journey that gives the reader the richest possible feeling of the worlds the senses take in.

Diet for a Small Planet is the extraordinary book that taught America the social and personal significance of a new way of eating. It remains a complete guide for eating well in the twenty-first century.

Sharing her personal evolution and how this groundbreaking book changed her own life, world-renowned food expert Frances Moore Lappé offers an all-new, even more fascinating philosophy on changing yourself—and the world—by changing the way you eat.

The Diet for a Small Planet features:

• Simple rules for a healthy diet
• Streamlined, easy-to-use format
• Food combinations that make delicious, protein-rich meals without meat
• Indispensable kitchen hints—a comprehensive reference guide for planning and preparing meals and snacks
• Hundreds of wonderful recipes

City at the Point provides an insightful overview of scholarly research on the history of Pittsburgh, a city often used as a case study for measuring social change. This book synthesizes both published and previously unpublished literature, offering a comprehensive look at how this knowledge relates to broader understandings of urbanization and urbanism.

This work is especially useful for undergraduate and graduate courses on environmental politics and policy making. It can also serve as a valuable supplement for courses on public policy making in general.

In August 1984, Michigan housewife Betty Mahmoody accompanied her husband to his native Iran for a two-week vacation. To her horror, she found herself and her four-year-old daughter, Mahtob, virtual prisoners of a man rededicated to his Shiite Moslem faith, in a land where women are near-slaves and Americans are despised. Their only hope for escape lay in a dangerous underground that would not take her child.

Now the true story of this courageous woman and her breathtaking odyssey bursts upon the screen in the Pathe Entertainment production starring Academy Award-winner Sally Field Not Without My Daughter is a Literary Guild Alternate Selection.

When she was 19 months old, Helen Keller (1880–1968) suffered a severe illness that left her blind and deaf. Not long after, she also became mute. Her tenacious struggle to overcome these handicaps-with the help of her inspired teacher, Anne Sullivan-is one of the great stories of human courage and dedication. In this classic autobiography, first published in 1903, Miss Keller recounts the first 22 years of her life, including the magical moment at the water pump when, recognizing the connection between the word "water" and the cold liquid flowing over her hand, she realized that objects had names. Subsequent experiences were equally noteworthy: her joy at eventually learning to speak, her friendships with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edward Everett Hale and other notables, her education at Radcliffe (from which she graduated cum laude), and-underlying all-her extraordinary relationship with Miss Sullivan, who showed a remarkable genius for communicating with her eager and quick-to-learn pupil.

A woman diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder reveals her harrowing journey from abuse to recovery in this #1 New York Times bestselling autobiography written by her own multiple personalities.

Successful, happily married Truddi Chase began therapy hoping to find the reasons behind her extreme anxiety, mood swings, and periodic blackouts. What emerged from her sessions was terrifying: Truddi’s mind and body were inhabited by the Troops—ninety-two individual voices that emerged to shield her from her traumatizing childhood.

For years the Troops created a world where she could hide from the pain of the ritualized sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her own stepfather—abuse that began when she was only two years old. It was a past that Truddi didn’t even know existed, until she and her therapist took a journey to where the nightmare began...

Written by the Troops themselves, When Rabbit Howls is told by the very alter-egos who stayed with Truddi Chase, watched over her, and protected her. What they reveal is a spellbinding descent into a personal hell—and an ultimate, triumphant deliverance for the woman they became.

Desert Solitaire is one of Edward Abbey’s most critically acclaimed works and marks his first foray into the world of nonfiction writing. Written while Abbey was working as a ranger at Arches National Park outside of Moab, Utah, Desert Solitaire is a rare view of one man’s quest to experience nature in its purest form.

Through prose that is by turns passionate and poetic, Abbey reflects on the condition of our remaining wilderness and the future of a civilization that cannot reconcile itself to living in the natural world as well as his own internal struggle with morality. As the world continues its rapid development, Abbey’s cry to maintain the natural beauty of the West remains just as relevant today as when this book was written.

Legendary psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's famous investigations of "optimal experience" have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life.

In this new edition of his groundbreaking classic work, Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience teaches how, by ordering the information that enters our consciousness, we can discover true happiness, unlock our potential, and greatly improve the quality of our lives.

Tao Te Ching, traditionally attributed to the legendary Old Master, Lao Tzu, is a cornerstone of spiritual literature and philosophy. More than a mere religious text, this work is a guide to living in harmony with the natural flow of existence, known as the Way or Tao.

John C. H. Wu's translation captures the enigmatic beauty of the original text, presenting it in English while preserving its timeless wisdom. Wu, a jurist and scholar, brings to life the essence of Lao Tzu's teachings, which are as relevant today as they were over two thousand years ago.

The Tao Te Ching emphasizes the virtues of humility, spontaneity, and generosity, encouraging readers to embody the qualities of the enlightened sage in all aspects of life. Whether it is in leadership, business, politics, or personal growth, the insights found within these pages are invaluable for anyone seeking balance and harmony.

Part of the Shambhala Pocket Library series, this edition is designed to be a portable and accessible entry point for those new to Lao Tzu's work, as well as a treasured companion for those who already embrace the wisdom of the Tao.

Here is the unbelievable yet true story of Sybil Dorsett, a survivor of terrible childhood abuse who as an adult was a victim of sudden and mysterious blackouts. What happened during those blackouts has made Sybil's experience one of the most famous psychological cases in the world.

In the spring of 1957, when he was eighty-one years old, Carl Gustav Jung undertook the telling of his life story. Memories, Dreams, Reflections is that book, composed of conversations with his colleague and friend Aniela Jaffé, as well as chapters written in his own hand, and other materials. Jung continued to work on the final stages of the manuscript until shortly before his death on June 6, 1961, making this a uniquely comprehensive reflection on a remarkable life.

Fully corrected, this edition also includes Jung's VII Sermones ad Mortuos.

Hiroshima is the story of six people—a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon, and a German Catholic priest—who lived through the greatest single manmade disaster in history. In vivid and indelible prose, Pulitzer Prize–winner John Hersey traces the stories of these half-dozen individuals from 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city, through the hours and days that followed.

Almost four decades after the original publication of this celebrated book, Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search of the people whose stories he had told, and his account of what he discovered about them is now the eloquent and moving final chapter of Hiroshima.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, a Monarch Notes edition, provides a comprehensive guide to understanding one of literature's great novels. This study guide includes detailed analyses of characters, themes, and the narrative structure, along with a deep dive into Dostoyevsky's literary techniques. Whether you're a student preparing for exams or a literature enthusiast eager to gain a deeper understanding of Dostoyevsky's work, this guide is an invaluable resource.