"Wow, Ron Levy's book is AMAZING! Wonderful reading, entertaining, fun, educational and, well, AMAZING!" - Norman Darwen - Blues Matters! - UK "I want everyone to know, Ron Levy is one of the very best musicians I've ever played and worked with. Now, he's even written a great book! I'm so proud of my 'son'." B.B. King 4/13/13 "Ron Levy endures as an ingenious Blues keyboardist -- touring most notably with B.B. King for 7 years -- and he was there when B.B. played Muhammad Ali's private parties, as well as stadium shows in Africa and throughout the world. He was the ultimate road warrior, also tickling the ivories for Albert King, Roomful of Blues and his own Ron Levy's Wild Kingdom, while meeting everyone from Elvis Presley to Nina Simone. He distills it all in his lively, remarkably honest book (NOW IN PAPERBACK), 'Tales of a Road Dog.' Nearly everything is unique in these gritty and humorous stories of survival with some of music's great pioneers and the musicians who powered them on stage. If you thought you knew about music history, trust me that you'll know even more when you delve into Levy's rich and colorful text. This guy can write as well as he can play." - STEVE MORSE - Boston Globe, Billboard and Rolling Stone. A download link to Levy's critically acclaimed album "FUNKY FIESTA!" is included. - Also available as a Web-book & eBook!

In February of 1945, 350 American POWs, selected because they were Jews, thought to resemble Jews or simply by malicious caprice, were transported by cattle car to Berga, a concentration camp in eastern Germany. Here, the soldiers were worked to death, starved and brutalized; more than twenty percent died from this horrific treatment.This is one of the last untold stories of World War II, and Roger Cohen re-creates it in all its blistering detail. Ground down by the crumbling Nazi war machine, the men prayed for salvation from the Allied troops, yet even after their liberation, their story was nearly forgotten. There was no aggressive prosecution of the commandants of the camp and the POWs received no particular recognition for their sacrifices. Cohen tells their story at last, in a stirring tale of bravery and depredation that is essential for any reader of World War II history --

"Robert Zubrin is a true engineering genius like the heroic engineers of the past." -- Frederick Turner, American Enterprise Using nuts-and-bolts engineering and a unique grasp of human history, Robert Zubrin takes us to the not-very-distant future, when our global society will branch out into the universe. From the current-day prospect of lunar bases and Mars settlements to the outer reaches of other galaxies, Zubrin delivers the most important and forward-looking work on space and the true possibilities of human exploration since Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Sagan himself said of Zubrin's humans-to-Mars plan, " Bob Zubrin really, nearly alone, changed our thinking on this issue." With Entering Space , he takes us further, into the prospect of human expansion to the outer planets of our own solar system--and beyond.

"A comprehensive, sweeping history of America's rise to global superpower--a follow up to the author's acclaimed first volume, from our nation's earliest days to the dawn of the twentieth century"--

In today's food system, farm workers face difficult and hazardous conditions, low-income neighborhoods lack supermarkets but abound in fast-food restaurants and liquor stores, food products emphasize convenience rather than wholesomeness, and the international reach of American fast-food franchises has been a major contributor to an epidemic of "globesity." To combat these inequities and excesses, a movement for food justice has emerged in recent years seeking to transform the food system from seed to table. In Food Justice , Robert Gottlieb and Anupama Joshi tell the story of this emerging movement. A food justice framework ensures that the benefits and risks of how food is grown and processed, transported, distributed, and consumed are shared equitably. Gottlieb and Joshi recount the history of food injustices and describe current efforts to change the system, including community gardens and farmer training in Holyoke, Massachusetts, youth empowerment through the Rethinkers in New Orleans, farm-to-school programs across the country, and the Los Angeles school system's elimination of sugary soft drinks from its cafeterias. And they tell how food activism has succeeded at the highest level: advocates waged a grassroots campaign that convinced the Obama White House to plant a vegetable garden. The first comprehensive inquiry into this emerging movement, Food Justice addresses the increasing disconnect between food and culture that has resulted from our highly industrialized food system.

With American foreign policy playing an increasingly dominant role in world events of the past century, the international diplomatic community and even Americans themselves have staged heated debates centering on the charge that our government often misreads international crises.Responding to the controversy, Robert Dallek's groundbreaking book argues that the pressures generated by unresolved political and social domestic problems have shaped American foreign policy. In an illuminating examination of each significant period--from the expansionism of the Spanish-American War and the American entrance into World War I, to American-Soviet relations during World War II, the Cold War period that followed, and American involvement in Korea and Vietnam--Dallek reveals why we have acted as we have, often in the face of logic and with costly consequences.Providing a wealth of new insights, he presents American foreign policies in the twentieth century as symbolic extensions of domestic hopes and fears. Reaching beyond traditional explanations of why and how these policies reflect U.S. concerns at home more than realities abroad, this important and provocative analysis challenges thinking Americans to confront the whole fascinating history of American foreign affairs in the twentieth century.

Locked in the Cabinet is a close-up view of the way things work, and often don't work, at the highest levels of government--and a uniquely personal account by the man whose ideas inspired and animated much of the Clinton campaign of 1992 and who became the cabinet officer in charge of helping ordinary Americans get better jobs. Robert B. Reich, writer, teacher, social critic--and a friend of the Clintons since they were all in their twenties--came to be known as the "conscience of the Clinton administration and one of the most successful Labor Secretaries in history. Here is his sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant chronicle of trying to put ideas and ideals into practice. With wit, passion, and dead-aim honesty, Reich writes of those in Washington who possess hard heads and soft hearts, and those with exactly the opposite attributes. He introduces us to the career bureaucrats who make Washington run and the politicians who, on occasion, make it stop; to business tycoons and labor leaders who clash by day and party together by night; to a president who wants to change America and his opponents (on both the left and the right) who want to keep it as it is or return it to where it used to be. Reich guides us to the pinnacles of power and pretension, as bills are passed or stalled, reputations built or destroyed, secrets leaked, numbers fudged, egos bruised, news stories spun, hypocrisies exposed, and good intentions occasionally derailed. And to the places across America where those who are the objects of this drama are simply trying to get by--assembly lines, sweatshops, union halls, the main streets of small towns and the tough streets of central cities. Locked in the Cabinetis an intimate odyssey involving a memorable cast--a friend who is elected President of the United States, only to discover the limits of power; Alan Greenspan, who is the most powerful man in America; and Newt Gingrich, who tries to be. Plus a host of others: White House staffers and cabinet members who can't find "the loop; political consultant Dick Morris, who becomes "the loop; baseball players and owners who can't agree on how to divide up $2 billion a year; a union leader who accuses Reich of not knowing what a screwdriver looks like; a heretofore invisible civil servant deep in the Labor Department whose brainchild becomes the law of the land; and a wondrous collection of senators, foreign ministers, cabinet officers, and television celebrities. And it is also an odyssey for Reich's wife and two young sons, who learn to tolerate their own cabinet member but not to abide Washington. Here is Reich--determined to work for a more just society, laboring in a capital obsessed with exorcising the deficit and keeping Wall Street happy--learning that Washington is not only altogether different from the world of ordinary citizens but ultimately, and more importantly, exactly like it: a world in which Murphy's Law reigns alongside the powerful and the privileged, but where hope amazingly persists. There are triumphs here to fill a lifetime, and frustrations to fill two more. Never has this world been revealed with such richness of evidence, humor, and warmhearted candor.

Nearly forty years after researchers first sought to determine the effects, if any, on children adopted by families whose racial or ethnic background differed from their own, the debate over transracial adoption continues. In this collection of interviews conducted with black and biracial young adults who were adopted by white parents, the authors present the personal stories of two dozen individuals who hail from a wide range of religious, economic, political, and professional backgrounds. How does the experience affect their racial and social identities, their choice of friends and marital partners, and their lifestyles? In addition to interviews, the book includes overviews of both the history and current legal status of transracial adoption.

A magician himself, the author offers a history of magicians and other performers, including animals trained to do arithmetic and limbless people able to play musical instruments.

From the beloved Richard Lederer comes another kind of trivia book-Presidential Trivia. In it you'll find all the details about the lives of the United States presidents. It answers such questions as: who was the first president to be assassinated; who was the first president to be born an American citizen; and, who was the first to be impeached. It also answers less important but certainly interesting questions such as: who was our fattest president; our tallest; who played golf; and, who played poker. Filled with games, anagrams, poems, speeches, and an abundance of tidbits, details, and fascinating facts, this book is perfect for the novice to the history buff. From politics and policy to presidential nicknames and White House pets, ''Presidential Trivia'' has everything you ever wanted to know about our presidents, and then some.

Football fans are tired of lame memoirs or technical fantasy football books. Rich Eisen is going to give them what they want—a chance to share in his world of a never-ending football season. It's about eating, living, and breathing the most popular sport in the history of America. The passion. The pageantry. The pigskin. Thanks to his role as host of NFL Total Access, Eisen gets to go to virtually every event on the NFL calendar—the Super Bowl, the Pro Bowl, the Scouting Combine, the NFL Draft, and the Hall of Fame Weekend. You name it, Eisen is there. And thanks to this book, you can go along for the ride with him—in front of the camera interviewing league MVPs or behind the scenes with some of the game's all-time greats. Total Access is the ultimate football book for fans everywhere.

Would it be possible to provide people with a basic income as a right? The idea has a long history. This book draws on two pilot schemes conducted in the Indian State of Madhya Pradesh, in which thousands of men, women and children were provided with an unconditional monthly cash payment. In a context in which the Indian government at national and state levels spends a vast amount on subsidies and selective schemes that are chronically expensive, inefficient, inequitable and subject to extensive corruption, there is scope for switching at least some of the spending to a modest basic income. This book explores what would be likely to happen if this were done. The book draws on a series of evaluation surveys conducted over the course of the eighteen months in which the main pilot was in operation, supplemented with detailed case studies of individuals and families. It looks at the impact on health and nutrition, on schooling, on economic activity, women's agency and the welfare of those with disabilities. Above all, the book considers whether or not a basic income could be transformative, in not only improving individual and family welfare but in promoting economic growth and development, as well as having an emancipatory effect for people long mired in conditions of poverty and economic insecurity.

Work and Authority in Industry analyzes how the entrepreneurial class responded to the challenge of creating, and later managing, an industrial work force in widely differing types of industrial societies: the United States, England, and Russia. Bendix's penetrating re-examination of an aspect of economic history largely taken for granted was first published in 1965. It has become a classic. His central notion, that the behavior of the capitalist class may be more important than the behavior of the working class in determining the course of events, is now widely accepted. The book explores industrialization, management, and ideological appeals; entrepreneurial ideologies in England's early phase of industrialization; entrepreneurial ideologies in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russia; the bureaucratization of economic enterprises; and the American experience with -industrialization. This essential text will interest those in the fields of political science, industrial relations, management studies, as well as comparative sociologists and historians.

Dean Reed was an American and the biggest rock star in the history of the Soviet Union. He was so famous his icons were sold alongside those of Josef Stalin. Reggie Nadelson first saw him in 1986 on a TV chat show. Few people in the West had ever heard of him. Six weeks later Reed was found dead in a lake in East Berlin.

Human beings have practiced the art of divination for millenia. In some cultures, diviners studied patterns in nature - the flight of birds, the forms of clouds, or the arrangement of the stars in the night sky. In others, they created elaborate divinatory systems such as the I Ching and the Tarot. Drawing from the legacy of 50,000 years of human encounters with the Divine, renowned Tarot scholar Rachel Pollack has created the Shining Tribe Tarot , a revised and expanded version of the popular Shining Woman Tarot . The Shining Tribe Tarot is steeped in symbolism drawn from culturally diverse systems including Neolithic rock art, Native American and African shamanism, Aboriginal art, the Kabbalah, Jungian psychology, and the traditional Tarot. The name Shining Tribe has a special meaning, says Ms. Pollack: "All of us who work with Tarot form a kind of tribe, one whose roots go back many thousands of years before the actual appearance of Tarot cards. This is the tribe of diviners, those special magicians, shamans, psychics, and visionaries who use cards, or sticks, or trees, or stones, or shells to communicate with the Gods." The accompanying book includes detailed descriptions of the origin and history of the symbols depicted on each card of this unique deck, as well as explanations of their meanings in divinatory spreads. In addition, you will also learn how to read the cards for a variety of purposes, including divination, advice, and guidance along your own personal sacred journey. Learn how to gain insights into the nightly messages from your subconscious mind with dream readings, and how to activate a card to bring its qualities into your everyday life. Rachel Pollack invites you to join the shining tribe of diviners and visionaries. As you continue along the sacred journey of self-discovery, let the Shining Tribe Tarot cards shine a path for you.

Demonstrates the most popular ways of telling fortunes, briefly traces the history of divination, and explains the finer points of interpretation.

The 1990s saw the best economic performance in the United States in three decades. Strong economic growth and falling unemployment were accompanied by low inflation and rising budget surpluses. Although personal bankruptcies climbed, the personal saving rate fell, and the trade deficit expanded, overall, U.S. economic performance during the 1990s was outstanding. This book is a unique attempt to write the first history of the making of American economic policy during the 1990s. One way to view it is as a "debriefing" of those who made the decisions. Each chapter is devoted to a particular area of economic policy and consists of a background paper written by leading academic economists together with short essays by prominent policymakers, many of whom served in the Clinton administration or previous administrations, and by independent observers. The questions asked about each policy area include: What were the pros and cons of alternative options under consideration? What decision was made? What were the relevant economic arguments for that decision, and what political interests were served? Were other options missing from consideration? Is it possible to judge whether the decision was the right one? Are there lessons for the future?

A celebration of subversives: the first one-volume history of the greatest cultural movement since the Enlightenment. Peter Gay's most ambitious endeavor since Freud explores the shocking modernist rebellion that, beginning in the 1840s, transformed art, literature, music, and film with its assault on traditional forms. Beginning his epic study with Baudelaire, whose lurid poetry scandalized French stalwarts, Gay traces the revolutionary path of modernism from its Parisian origins to its emergence as the dominant cultural movement in world capitals such as Berlin and New York. A work unique in its breadth and brilliance, Modernism presents a thrilling pageant of heretics that includes (among others) Oscar Wilde, Pablo Picasso, and D. W. Griffiths; James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and T. S. Eliot; Walter Gropius, Arnold Schoenberg, and (of course!) Andy Warhol. Finally, Gay examines the hostility of totalitarian regimes to modernist freedom and the role of Pop Art in sounding the death knell of a movement that dominated Western culture for 120 years. Lavishly illustrated, Modernism is a superlative achievement by one of our greatest historians.

This encyclopedia provides the first standard reference work on the lives, history and activities of Jewish women in the United States. Covering a period which extends from the arrival of the first Jewish women in North America in 1654 to the present, this two-volume set presents the most comprehensive and detailed portrait of American Jewish women ever published, and brings together for the first time the wealth of recent scholarship on this subject. Includes: * Biographical entries on over 800 individual women. * 128 topical articles on organizations such as Hadassah, the National Council of Jewish Women, Mizrachi, and the Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. * Major essays on Jewish women's participation in the movement for women's suffrage, social reform, civil rights, and the recent women's movement. * The activities of Jewish women in politics, business, education, the arts, and religion. * A readable, inviting format with over 500 large photographs. * Bibliographies at the end of each entry which include overviews of major scholarship in the field, complete citations of more general works and citations of additional bibliographical and reference sources. * The comprehensive index includes citations to every substantive discussion in the entries as well as all proper names appearing in the text, such as organizations, book, song and film titles, schools, and individuals. The "Encyclopedia" provides information on American Jewish women in all fields of endeavor, and pays special attention to the work of women in the arts, academics, law, the labor movement, education, science, medicine, journalism and publishing, and on the lives of ordinary Jewish women during all time periods and in all regions of the United States.

No one has more authority to call the shots the way they really are than Paul Krugman, whose provocative New York Times columns are keenly followed by millions. One of the world's most respected economists, Krugman has been named America's most important columnist by the Washington Monthly and columnist of the year by Editor and Publisher magazine. In this long-awaited work containing Krugman's most influential columns along with new commentary, he chronicles how the boom economy unraveled: how exuberance gave way to pessimism, how the age of corporate heroes gave way to corporate scandals, how fiscal responsibility collapsed. From his account of the secret history of the California energy crisis to his devastating dissections of dishonesty in the Bush administration, Krugman tells the uncomfortable truth about how the United States lost its way. And he gives us the road map we will need to follow if we are to get the country back on track.