'If you crave insight into the wacky, zany, madcap--albeit very serious--business of advertising, this is a great place to begin.'--Miami Herald A witty and frank look at the ad biz from one of its most respected voices Advertising has become an endless stream of clichés, cheesy productions, miscast celebrities, and gratuitous sex--and take-no-prisoners Advertising Age columnist Bob Garfield has had enough. In the often hilarious, always dead-on And Now a Few Words from Me, Garfield looks at the best and the worst in today's advertising as he tells advertising pros that it's time to swallow their own egos, return clients' rights to the forefront, and--once and for all--eliminate bad advertising from the face of the earth.

The Ancient Rain: Poems 1956-1978 is San Francisco poet Bob Kaufman's third collection and his first to be published since the late 1960s. One of the original Beat poets (the coinage "beatnik" is his), Kaufman's work has always been essentially improvisational, often done to jazz accompaniment. And he became something of a legendary figure at the poetry readings in the early days of the San Francisco renaissance of the 1950s. With his extemporaneous technique, akin in many ways to Surrealist automatic writing, he has produced a body of work ranging from a visionary lyricism infused with satirical, almost Dadaistic elements to a prophetic poetry of political and social protest. Born in New Orleans of mixed Black and Jewish parentage, Kaufman was one of fourteen children. During twenty years in the Merchant Marine, he cultivated an intense taste for literature on his long sea voyages. Settling in California, in the '50s, he became active in the burgeoning West Coast literary scene. Disappointment, drugs, and imprisonment led him to take a ten-year vow of complete silence that lasted until 1973. The present volume includes previously uncollected poems written prior to his pledge and newer work composed in the years 1973-1978, before the poet once again lapsed into silence.

CBS News correspondent Bob Simon recounts his captivity in Iraq during the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

Bob Woolf, named one of the 100 most powerful and influential attorneys in America by the National Law Review, has negotiated more than 2,000 big-money sports, entertainment, and business contracts. Now he shares his business expertise with more than 100 tactics, techniques and strategies for winning.

Compiling some of the best scholarship and theory in lesbian studies since the publication of Lesbian Studies in 1982, The New Lesbian Studies: Into the Twenty-First Century considers the history, present, and future of the field. By celebrating the differences among lesbian scholars and attending to the ways in which the field has been shaped by shifting policies and the emergence of queer studies, this collection challenges the limits of lesbian studies while affirming its value. With 40 essays arranged in six parts, The New Lesbian Studies explores the history of lesbian studies as well as its current impact on conceptions of identity and community, teaching, academic, disciplines, university practices, and the development of feminist and queer theories. This collection offers stirring personal testimony; muliticultural and international perspectives and established and new voices; strategies for integrating lesbian studies into the curriculum; and contributions from lesbians working in libraries, athletic departments, and student services. Throughout, the contributors address the ways in which lesbian studies has transformed and will continue to transform traditional disciplines, practices, and thought. With its mulitcultural, multidisciplinary breadth and its unique emphasis on theory, practice, and activism, The New Lesbian Studies speaks to a broad audience of students, activists, and scholars: -Kath Weston on being an "insider" doing gay fieldwork; -Yolanda Chavez Leyva on creating a Latina lesbian history; -Leila Rupp on uncovering same-sex love and sexuality in history; -Vivien Ng on reconstructing the lives of "lesbians" in Chinese history, despite the prevailing opinion that lesbianism is a Western category; -Evelyn Blackwood on the pitfalls-and importance-of cross-cultural studies; -Ellen Broidy on "cyberdykes" networking globally and publicly; -Susan Cahn on the deep-seated homophobia in women's collegiate sports; -Sharon P. Holland on Audre Lorde and Sappho, and on the essential contributions of black lesbians; -Judith Halberstam on the possibility of queer lesbian studies.

Boots Riley is best known as the lyricist and frontman for Oakland's underground hip hop group, The Coup, as well as for The Street Sweeper Social Club which he founded with guitarist Tom Morello. For two decades, Riley's lyrical style has combined politically-charged dissidence with radical sensibility and sardonic humour to create what can only be described at sheer hip hop poetics. Now his lyrics are available in full, right down to the last word. Boots Riley also includes unreleased lyrics, photos and backstories.

Medieval authors placed fantastic creatures in the borders of manuscripts, since they mark the boundaries of our understanding. Tales throughout the world generally place fabulous beasts in marginal locations. According to apocalyptic visions of the Bible, they will also proliferate as we approach the end of time. Because they challenge our conceptual powers, fantastic creatures also seem to exist at the limits of language. Legends tell us that imaginary animals belong to a primordial time, before we had encompassed the world in names, categories and elaborate conceptual frameworks. This richly illustrated book shows how, despite their liminal role, dog-men, mermaids, and many other imaginary creatures are socially constructed through the same complex play of sensuality and imagination as "real" ones. It traces the history of imaginary animals from Palaeolithic art to the Harry Potter stories. These figures help us psychologically by giving form to our amorphous fears as "monsters", as well as embodying our hopes as "wonders." Yet their greatest service may be to continually challenge our imaginations, directing us beyond the limitations of our conventional beliefs and expectations--From book jacket

In this book, on 15th March 1878 Lord Littleby, an English eccentric and collector is found murdered in his Paris house together with nine members of his staff. A gold whale in the victim's hand leads Erast Fandorin to board the Leviathan, the world's largest steamship, as the murderer is one of the 142 first class passengers. Commissioner Gauche of the French police has narrowed down the suspects to ten, and they are forced to eat together at every meal time in the ship's Windsor Suite until 'the Crime of the Century' is solved. But is the murderer really at the table, and can Erast Fandorin discover his or her identity before Gauche? As more passengers are murdered and the Leviathan heads towards Calcutta, Fandorin needs all his investigative skills to find the truth.

Just as the dust from the case of the White Bulldog begins to settle in the small Russian town of Zavolzhsk, it is shaken up once again by the arrival of a stranger: this time, a desperately frightened monk from the island monastery of New Ararat, who seeks the help of the bishop, Mitrofanii.The monks have been troubled by visions of a dark, hooded figure: a figure that appears to walk on the waters of the vast Blue Lake surrounding their monastery. Sceptical of ghost stories and dismissive of rural superstitions, Mitrofanii dispatches Alexei Lentochkin, his clever young ward, to investigate the mystery, only for Lentochkin himself to appear to fall victim to the phantom. With sightings of the Black Monk occurring with disturbing frequency, and rumours of suspicious deaths reaching his ears, the Bishop decides to send two more of his most trusted advisors, in turn, to New Ararat, but they too meet with unexpected fates.Finally, Sister Pelagia takes matters into her own hands, and, adopting a number of ingenious disguises, she ventures across the Blue Lake in search of answers, and in pursuit of the Black Monk. But as she delves deeper into the layers of secrecy that cloak the island and its strange population, and as the body count continues to rise, Pelagia begins to realise that an encounter with a ghost may be the least of her problems...

In the dying days of the Nineteenth Century, the small Russian town of Zavolzhsk is shaken out of its sleepy rural existence by the arrival from St Petersburg of a Synodical Inspector with a hidden agenda and a dangerously persuasive manner.Meanwhile, in the nearby country estate of Drozdovka, one of the prized white Bulldogs - prized because of its one brown ear, and its propensity to drool - belonging to the cantankerous lady of the house has been poisoned. The old widow has taken to her bed, sick with fear that her two remaining dogs may face a similar fate, and the many potential beneficiaries of her will wait fretfully to see whether or not she will recover.Sister Pelagia: bespectacled, freckled, woefully clumsy and astonishingly resourceful is summoned by the Bishop of Zavolzhsk to investigate the bulldog's death. But her investigation soon takes a far more sinister turn when two headless bodies are pulled out of the river on the edge of the estate.

When their adopted eight-year-old son Max suddenly turns feral, Maya Shulman convinces her husband, Alex, to embark on a cross-country trip to Montana to track down Max's birth parents, which results in unexpected consequences and life-altering changes.

"Award-winning, New York Times Notable author of A Replacement Life-"a born storyteller with a tremendous gift for language" (San Francisco Chronicle)- delivers a fierce and staggering new page-turner full of cruelty, tenderness, and heroism, about a young girl and her parents fleeing civil war and the brutal dictatorship that has targeted their family"--

In hilarious verse, Boris Johnson casts a satirical eye over the phenomena of 'pushy parents', and shows that if you push your children far enough they might just push back!

The awarding of the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature to Boris Pasternak and the subsequent calumny of his fellow citizens in Soviet Russia focused unusual attention on Pasternak's great novel, Dr. Zhivago, and the small body of his other work. At the time, the latter was only available (in any language, as far as is known) in New Directions' Selected Writings of Pasternak, first published in 1949. The 1958 edition was issued with a new introduction by Babette Deutsch under the title of the book's main component, Pasternak's autobiography. Written when he was forty, Safe Conduct puzzled many readers in Russia and when it appeared in English, because its isolated sharp impressions and juxtapositions seem to deny chronology, but at least one critic recognized it as "the most original of autobiographies, employing a new technique of great important." Also included is a group of remarkable short stories, translated by Robert Payne, dealing with the mysteries of life and art, and a selection of the poems that have made Pasternak known, to the few at last, as the "outstanding Russian poet of the century." these are translated by the British Critic and poet C. M. Bowra, and by Miss Deutsch.

Conflict is an opportunity to learn and grow–and often to grow closer to one another. Brad Hirschfield knows what it means to be a fanatic; he was one. A former activist in the West Bank, he was committed to reconstructing the Jewish state within its biblical borders. Now he is devoted to teaching inclusiveness, celebrating diversity, and delivering a message of acceptance. In You Don’t Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right , Rabbi Hirschfield uses his own spiritual journey to help people of all faiths find acceptance and tolerance, as well as a path to peace, understanding, and hope that will appeal to the common wisdom of all religions.

Jesus the Jewish Theologian establishes Jesus firmly within the context of first-century Judaism and shows how understanding Jesus' Jewishness is crucial for interpreting the New Testament and for understanding the nature of Christian faith. Insights from Jewish literature, archeology, and tradition help modern readers place Jesus within his original context. Particular attention is given to the Jewish roots of Jesus' teaching concerning the kingdom of God.