Why young people participate in violent gang behavior The effects of gang violence are witnessed every day on the streets, in the news, and on the movie screen. In all these forums, gangs of young adults are associated with drugs and violence. Yet what is it that prompts young people to participate in violent behavior? And what can be done to extract adolescents from the gangster world of crime, death, and incarceration once they have become involved? In Gangsters: 50 Years of Madness, Drugs, and Death on the Streets of America , Lewis Yablonsky provides answers to the most baffling and crucial questions regarding gangs. Using information gathered from over forty years of experience working with gang members and based on hundreds of personal interviews, many conducted in prisons and in gang neighborhoods, Yablonsky explores the pathology of the gangsters' apparent addiction to incarceration and death. Gangsters is divided into four parts, including a brief history of gangs, the characteristics of gangs, successful approaches for treating gangsters in prison and the community, and concluding with a review and analysis of notable behavioral and social scientific theories of gangs. While condemning their violent behavior in no uncertain terms, Yablonsky offers hope through his belief that, given a chance in an effective treatment program, youths trapped in violent behavior can change their lives in positive ways and, in turn, facilitate positive change in their communities and society at large.

Every year, one in four American adults suffers from a diagnosable mental health disorder. In these true stories, writers and their loved ones struggle as their worlds are upended. What do you do when your father kills himself, or your mother is committed to a psych ward, or your daughter starts hearing voices telling her to harm herself--or when you yourself hear such voices? Addressing bipolar disorder, OCD, trichillomania, self-harm, PTSD, and other diagnoses, these stories vividly depict the difficulties and sorrows--and sometimes, too, the unexpected and surprising rewards--of living with mental illness.

Providing an intimate look at Kathie Lee and Cody Gifford at home, a collection of charming vignettes shares their discussions on the nature of heaven, where babies come from, how baby sisters should be treated, and other topics.

"In this follow-up work to Jacob the Liar, Becker tells the story of a man named Aron Blank, tracing his life from his release from a concentration camp in the summer of 1945 through the next twenty or so years. Living in a ghetto at the start of the war, Aron had lost his wife who one day was arrested by the Nazis. In desperation, he turned over his two-year-old son, Mark, for safe-keeping to a neighbor just before he was deported. Now, having survived the war, Aron sets out, with the help of an American relief organization, to find his son."--Jacket.

How to describe Faigele? A recent immigrant from Russia, the wife of an immigrant fur worker, a mother, a housewife, a greenhorn - and an enchantress of such striking beauty that she had the Bronx at her feet. The local postmaster consoled her with hot tea in his office every morning when she came with "Baby" Jerome, hoping for a letter from her brother in war-torn Russia. An admirer enlisted five-year-old Baby to help him produce a forged letter to ease her worry. But it was her dentist, a blackmarketer on the side, who introduced her to the circle of Bronx politicians who made her the dealer of their weekly poker game. Beautiful, passionate, worlds above words like "naive or sophisticated," Faigele has been blessed by her son, a rarely gifted writer who vividly recaptures this astonishing woman in her turbulent setting.

Brief text and black and white photographs explain how Jenny is different from other children and why she needs more love and understanding.

" Myths and Mysteries of Same-Sex Love makes a powerful statement about the realities of gay and lesbian psyche. A gay and lesbian psychic perspective may at first be startling, but once examined, it proves to be unforgettable." - The Advocate

A comic and heartwarming memoir about childhood's second act from Real Simple journalist Catherine Newman. Much is written about a child's infancy and toddler years, which is good since children will never remember it themselves. It is ages 4-14 that make up the second act, as Catherine Newman puts it in this delightfully candid, outlandishly funny new memoir about the years that "your children will remember as childhood." Following Newman's son and daughter as they blossom from preschoolers into teenagers, CATASTROPHIC HAPPINESS is about the bittersweet joy of raising children--and the ever-evolving landscape of issues parents traverse. In a laugh out-loud, heart-wrenching, relatable voice, Newman narrates events as momentous as grief and as quietly moving as the moonlit face of a sleeping child. From tantrums and friendship to fear and even sex, Newman's fresh take will appeal to any parent riding this same roller coaster of laughter and heartbreak.

Rabbi Avigdor Miller's unique insights on the subjects of marriage and the Jewish home are collected in this volume. His words of encouragement create the blueprint for us to follow when building the our spiritual home. His timeless advice, and simple yet practical applications, bring the ability to grow to an attainable level.

Obsessive and confessional, sifting over every action and thought, Contempt is a tale about the precarious nature of love and integrity; a study of the limits of our subjective nature and of storytelling itself. It was adapted for the screen by Jean-Luc Godard in 1963.

If you feel like you are on a runaway emotional roller coaster with your partner at the controls, this book is for you! It can save you years of torment, tumult, and tears.

"Providing a religious lens on the topic, this book directly addresses the problem of spousal abuse in the Jewish community. Rabbi Twerski's book was one of the first titles to break open the issue, and this new edition relates the recognition of abuse, the warning signs, and how to respond. With new preface"--

Fleeing the chaos of World War I and the terror of the Soviet Revolution, practical, sensible Pearl Kahn and her lovestruck, impulsive younger sibling Frieda sail for America to join their sister in New York. But discriminatory new immigration laws bar their entry, and the young women are turned back at Ellis Island. With few options, Pearl and Frieda head for Havana, Cuba, convinced they will find a way to overcome this setback. At first, life in big-city Prohibition-era Havana is overwhelming, like nothing Pearl and Frieda have ever experienced--or could have ever imagined in the rural shtetl where they grew up. As the sisters begin to adjust, their plans for going to America together become complicated. Frieda falls for the not-so-dreamy man of her dreams while Pearl's life opens up unexpectedly, offering her a taste of freedom and heady romance, and an opportunity to build a future on her own terms. Though to do so, she must confront her past and the shame she has long carried. A heartbreaking, epic family story, Hotel Cuba explores the profound courage of two women displaced from their home who strive to create a new future in an enticing and dangerous world far different from anything they have ever known.

We are living in an open sea, caught up in a continuous wave, with no fixed point and no instrument to measure distance and the direction of travel. Nothing appears to be in its place any more, and a great deal appears to have no place at all. The principles that have given substance to the democratic ethos, the system of rules that has guided the relationships of authority and the ways in which they are legitimized, the shared values and their hierarchy, our behaviour and our life styles, must be radically revised because they no longer seem suited to our experience and understanding of a world in flux, a world that has become both increasingly interconnected and prone to severe and persistent crises. We are living in the interregnum between what is no longer and what is not yet. None of the political movements that helped undermine the old world are ready to inherit it, and there is no new ideology, no consistent vision, promising to give shape to new institutions for the new world. It is like the Babylon referred to by Borges, the country of randomness and uncertainty in which ‘no decision is final; all branch into others’. Out of the world that had promised us modernity, what Jean Paul Sartre had summarized with sublime formula ‘le choix que je suis’ (‘the choice that I am’), we inhabit that flattened, mobile and dematerialized space, where as never before the principle of the heterogenesis of purposes is sovereign. This is Babel.

'My nature', wrote Queen Victoria, 'is too passionate, my emotions too fervent, and I am a person who has to cling to someone in order to find peace and comfort.' To Queen Victoria, the love, attention and protection of a man was all but indispensable. During her long life, there were six men with whom her emotions were romantically involved: her first prime minister, the urbane Lord Melbourne; her husband, the idealistic Prince Albert; her fellow sovereign, the fascinating Napoleon III; her ghillie, the rough-hewn John Brown; another prime minister, the silver-tongued Disraeli; and her Indian servant, the exotic Munshi. The main appeal to Queen Victoria of these six apparently disparate characters was that they were men of distinctive personality: there was something exceptional about each of them. And they all treated her as a woman first, a queen second. By focusing on the Queen's romantic associations and making full use of recently revealed material, Theo Aronson has painted a fresh, intriguing and startlingly different portrait of Queen Victoria. With his talent for narrative and characterization, he has produced one of the most incisive and readable of his many royal biographies. Praise for Heart of a Queen: ’Theo Aronson always writes very thoughtfully and thoroughly. This book gave great insight into the relationships Queen Victoria had with the men in her life’ - Amazon review ‘Interesting angle on Queen Victoria who it seems could be amused! An intriguing read … Makes the Queen seem far less remote than some other portrayals’ - Amazon review Theo Aronson (1929–2003) was a South African-born writer who specialised in biographies of royal and other dynastic or celebrated figures. His warm and relaxed manner made him popular with the subjects of his works and their connections, many of whom granted him personal interviews, while C. P. Snow described his work as ‘bright with intelligence and human wisdom’.

In this fascinating and pathbreaking work, Susan Starr Sered uncovers, describes, and analyzes religions, scattered throughout the world, in which women are both the majority of leaders and the majority of participants. How are these women's religions different from those dominated by men? What can we learn from them about the ways in which women experience and interpret the supernatural? How do women construct religion? Looking for common threads linking groups as diverse as the Sande secret societies of West Africa, matrilineal spirit cults of northern Thailand, Christian Science, and the Feminist Spirituality movement, Sered asks whether there is anything particularly "womanly" about women's religions. She finds that women's concerns and identity as mothers play a vital role in these female-dominated groups. Nurturing and concern for others are at the center, as are healing arts and ways of dealing with illness and the death of children. Religion not only enables women to find sacred meaning in their daily lives, from the preparation of food to caring for their families, but can offer intense and personal relationships with deities and spirits - often through ecstatic possession trance. These religions provide women with opportunities to celebrate and mourn with other women, as well as forums for advancing women's social and economic rights and security. In all of these religions, women priestesses, shamans or ritual experts embody the spiritual power available to women. By examining the shared experiences of women across great cultural divides, Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister offers a new understanding of the role gender plays in determining how individuals grapple with the ultimate questions of existence. In the process, it not only highlights the profound differences between men and women, but the equally important ways in which we are all alike.

In a crowd of beautiful ballet dancers, how can one girl stand out? As a dancer with the ultra-prestigious Manhattan Ballet company, nineteen-year-old Hannah Ward juggles intense rehearsals, dazzling performances, and complicated backstage relationships. But when she meets a spontaneous and irresistibly cute musician named Jacob, her universe begins to change. Until now, Hannah has happily followed the company's unofficial mantra, "Don't think, just dance." But as Jacob opens her eyes to the world beyond the theater, Hannah must decide whether to compete against the other "bunheads" for a star soloist spot or to strike out on her own.

A National Jewish Honor Book composed of seven short stories from the author of The Mind-Body Problem. A mathematician studies the geometry of soap bubbles and responds to the rapture of infatuation by reciting Shakespeare in Yiddish. A group of Olympian intellects is made childlike by the appearance of a double rainbow. Becky Sharp steps out of the pages of Vanity Fair to confound a pretentious philosopher. These are just some of the marvelous and unlikely things that happen in Strange Attractors—a collection of stories that explores the interactions of thought and feeling, mind and heart, to reveal the deep, mysterious ties between seemingly unrelated lives. “A wonderful collection . . . A picture of remarkable depth and complexity.”—Los Angeles Times “Electric and compelling . . . Rebecca Goldstein brings a keen and specially informed vision to our world.”—Newsday “Rebecca Goldstein again probes the relationships between female intellect and emotion—this time in a sparkling, erudite collection in which brilliant women’s minds dictate their romantic attachments while their gender continues to dictate their fate.”—Kirkus Reviews

In 1992, Peter Ochs and a few Christian and Muslim colleagues began to gather small groups, in and outside the classroom, to practice close and attentive reading of the sacred Scriptures of the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian traditions. The hope was that members of different religions could hear one another through the patient, respectful reading of each other's Scripture. Hearing each other, participants might enter into interreligious relationships that might point a way to the peaceful engagement of religions--especially those who, after September 11, 2001, too often found themselves at each other's throats. It was a hope for religion without violence. In Religion without Violence, Ochs reflects on the practical and philosophic lessons he has learned from hosting hundreds of Scriptural Reasoning engagements. He introduces the "scriptural pragmatism" of Scriptural Reasoning." He painstakingly recounts instances of successful scriptural reasoning and warns where and how it might fail. He provides guidance on how to introduce and facilitate Scriptural Reasoning in the classroom. He shows how reading out of the "hearth" of a faith can contribute to peace building across religions. And, drawing on the resources of rabbinic tradition, Augustine, and Charles Peirce, he moves beyond practice to reflect on the implications of Scriptural Reasoning for discerning what kinds of "reasoning" best address and help repair societal crises like religion-related violent conflict. --

This critical biography analyzes Tennyson's poetic development and his place in literature. It describes his influences, both classical and personal, and illuminates his working methods, for example: a constant revision of earlier material and an emphasis on oral rather than written poetry. Levi gives detailed textual criticism of some poems, but also shows acute psychological understanding of, for example, how Tennyson's famous friendship with Arthur Hallam affected his poetry over a long lifetime. Tennyson's relationships, often stormy but also affectionate, with other important figures of the Victorian era such as Gladstone, Carlyle and Queen Victoria herself, are vividly described, as are his attitudes towards other poets such as Wordsworth, whom he succeeded as Poet Laureate in 1850, and the same year that he married Emily Sellwood after an extraordinary 17-year engagement.