'Daring, learned and humane... A revelatory restoration of wonder' Stephen Greenblatt. We no longer think, like the ancient Chinese did, that the world was hatched from an egg, or, like the Maori, that it came from the tearing-apart of a love embrace. The Greeks told of a tempestuous Hera and a cunning Zeus, but we now use genes and natural selection to explain fear and desire, and physics to demystify the workings of the universe. Science is an astounding achievement, but are we really any wiser than the ancients? Has science revealed the secrets of fate and immortality? Has it provided protection from jealousy or love? There are those who believe that science has replaced faith, but must it also be a death knell for mythology? Evolutions brings to life the latest scientific thinking on the birth of the universe and the solar system, the journey from a single cell all the way to our human minds. Reawakening our sense of wonder and terror at the world around us and within us, Oren Harman uses modern science to create new and original mythologies. Here are the Earth and the Moon presenting a cosmological view of motherhood, a panicking Mitochondrion introducing sex and death to the world, the loneliness of consciousness emerging from the memory of an octopus, and the birth of language in evolution summoning humankind's struggle with truth. Science may not solve our existential puzzles, but like the age-old legends, its magical discoveries can help us continue the never-ending search.

Is heterosexual sex inherently damaging to women? Is it possible for women to enjoy sensuality and pleasure with men that does not increase male power? Lynne Segal's unflinching examination of feminist thinking on sexuality over the past twenty-five years tackles these questions head on. Straightforward and challenging, she invites an exploration of sex in our culture--an exploration that could reverse the traditional male gaze and phallic construction of the heterosexual woman.Only two decades ago, politically aware women often declared themselves both sexual liberationists and feminists--their right to sexual fulfillment symbolized their right to selfhood. However, the most positive women's writing on female sexuality in recent years has come primarily from the lesbian community. Segal addresses the silence of heterosexual feminists on questions of sex and love and notes the shift toward sexual conservatism. She looks at the trends that followed Sixties sex as a subversive activity, the "liberated orgasm," sex advice literature, gender uncertainties, Queer politics, antipornography campaigns, the rise of the moral right.The hidden anxieties of male sexuality are also discussed. For both men and women, says Segal, our wildest dreams and worst fears are often projected onto sex. She urges an understanding of how our personal pleasures and pains remain public issues, and how a rethinking of sexual liberation could inspire a truly progressive politics for our time."It is always another whom we try to reach when we experience desire, it is their physical contact we want--sometimes, any sort of contact will suffice . . . and by whom we yearn to feel ourselves desired. It is the very greatest of joys, as I experience it . . . simply to know that we are able to desire, maybe even able to love, some other human adult." --from the book

"Nearly every family has a skeleton in its closet, an ancestor who "sins" against custom and tradition and pays a double price. Karen Tintori refused to allow the truth to remain forgotten. This is a book for anyone who shares the conviction that all history, in the end, is family history."--Frank Viviano, author of Blood Washes Blood and Dispatches from the Pacific Century "Many books are called ‘page-turners' by reviewers, but this one will truly have you glued to the turning pages for hours."-- Comunes of Italy Magazine " Unto the Daughters reads like a nonfiction version of the film Godfather II--if it had been told from the point of view of a female Corleone."--Eleni N. Gage, author of North of Ithaka Karen Tintori thought she knew her family tree. Her grandmother Josie had immigrated from Sicily with her parents at the turn of the century. They settled in Detroit, and with Josie's eight siblings, worked to create a home for themselves away from the poverty and servitude of the old country. Their descendants were proud Italian-Americans. But Josie had a sister that nobody spoke of. Her name was Frances, and at age sixteen, she fell in love with a young barber. Her father wanted her to marry an older don in the neighborhood mafia--a marriage that would give his sons a leg up in the mob. But Frances eloped with her barber. And when she returned a married woman, her father and brothers killed her for it. Her family then erased her from its collective memory. Even 80 years and two generations later, Frances and her death were not spoken of, her name was erased from the family genealogy, her pictures burned, and her memory suppressed. Unto the Daughters is a historical mystery and family story that unwraps the many layers of family, honor, memory, and fear to find an honor killing in turn of the century Detroit. "Many books are called ‘page-turners' by reviewers, but this one will truly have you glued to the turning pages for hours. It's a must read for anyone researching their Italian ancestry."-- Comunes of Italy Magazine KAREN TINTORI is a writer and journalist who lives in Michigan with her family. Karen's books include Trapped, a 2002 Chicago Tribune favorite book, and The Book of Names (co-author), among others. Visit her website at: www. karentintori .com

It was 1994: post-Liz Phair, mid-Courtney Love, just shy of Alanis Morissette. After seven years of slogging it out in the Boston music scene, Jen Trynin took a hard look at herself and gave "making it" one last shot. It worked. Suddenly Trynin became the spark that set off one of the most heated bidding wars of the year. Major labels vied for her, to the tune of millions of dollars in deals. Lawyers, managers, and booking agents clamored for her attention. Billboard put her on the cover. Everyone knew she was the Next Big Thing. But then she wasn't. In a series of dizzying, hilarious, heartbreaking snapshots, Trynin captures what it's like to be catapulted to the edge of rock stardom, only to plummet back down to earth. Everything I'm Cracked Up to Be is the story of a girl who got what she wished for--and lived happily ever after anyway.

'A . . . tender love story . . . This book is alive. It pulses with warmth and intelligence' The Times A wickedly observed novel about falling in love at the end of your life, by the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question. At the age of ninety-something, Beryl Dusinbery is forgetting everything - including her own children. She spends her days stitching morbid samplers and tormenting her two carers with tangled tales of her husbands and affairs. Shimi Carmelli can do up his own buttons, walks without a frame and speaks without spitting. Among the widows of North London, he's whispered about as the last of the eligible bachelors. He forgets nothing -especially not the shame of a childhood incident that has long hung over him. There's very little left remaining for either of them. . . But perhaps just enough to heal some of the hurt inflicted along the way, and find new meaning in what's left. * SHORTLISTED FOR THE WINGATE LITERARY PRIZE 2020*

A New York Times “Books for Summer Reading” selection Winner of the 2003 National Jewish Book Award for History By the time he died in 1993 at the age of 73, Irving Howe was one of the twentieth century’s most important public thinkers. Deeply passionate, committed to social reform and secular Jewishness, ardently devoted to fiction and poetry, in love with baseball, music, and ballet, Howe wrote with such eloquence and lived with such conviction that his extraordinary work is now part of the canon of American social thought. In the first comprehensive biography of Howe’s life, historian Gerald Sorin brings us close to this man who rose from Jewish immigrant poverty in the 1930s to become one of the most provocative intellectuals of our time. Known most widely for his award-winning book World of Our Fathers, a rich portrayal of the East European Jewish experience in New York, Howe also won acclaim for his prodigious output of illuminating essays on American culture and as an indefatigable promoter of democratic socialism as can be seen in the pages of Dissent, the journal he edited for nearly forty years. Deeply devoted to the ideal of democratic radicalism and true equality, Howe was constantly engaged in a struggle for decency and basic fairness in the face of social injustice. In the century of Auschwitz, the Gulag, and global inter-ethnic mass murder, it was difficult to sustain political certainties and take pride in one's humanity. To have lived a life of conviction and engagement in that era was a notable achievement. Irving Howe lived such a life and Gerald Sorin has done a masterful job of guiding us through it in all its passion and complexity.

In this lively book, Pulitzer prize-winning historian Boorstin, author of the widely acclaimed trilogy The Americans, illuminates our everyday concerns with his reflections on the new meaning of technology for America and of America for technology. He gives us a bold new view of the two kinds of revolution - the political and technological - and shows us how and why they are different, and why technological revolutions are irreversible. We are a center from which radiate forces that converge human experience everywhere. Though people around the world may not love one another any more than they did, yet their ways of life tend to become more and more alike. These same overwhelming forces of technology that homogenize the culture of the human race have disrupted the international community of nations; large and small nations become "equal," but each day the word "nation" grows more meaningless. Ideology, tribalism, nationalism, the crusading spirit in religion, bigotry, censorship, racism, persecution, immigration and emigration restriction, tariffs, and chauvinism do interpose barriers. For reasons which we are only beginning to discover, and which Boorstin explores in this controversial book, these barriers will only be temporary. The converging powers of technology will eventually triumph.

Even in our supposedly feminist society, women have found it difficult to achieve true independence -- they continue to struggle with dependency issues in their relationships with their mothers, their lovers, and themselves. Now, with a new introduction. Luise Eichenbaum and Susie Orbach offer compelling portraits and insightful case histories that explore dependency as a basic human need rather than a sign of weakness. Their conclusions will radically change women's lives and relationships for the better -- and offer a more insightful, inclusive vision of intimacy for the next millennium.

More than three decades have passed since Robert Kennedy was assassinated seeking the Democratic nomination for the presidency. During that time, a powerful legend has grown around him, decreeing that he would have quickly ended the Vietnam War, violence in the cities, and racial and social injustice across the land. Millions of Americans continue to believe that legend. Drawing on his striking interpretation of RFK's character, award-winning historian Ronald Steel examines the life against the legend that Kennedy consciously helped create.

In 1984, Phillip Lopate sat down with his mother, Frances, to listen to her life story. A strong, resilient, indomitable woman who lived through the major events of the twentieth century, she was orphaned in childhood, ran away and married young, and then reinvented herself as a mother, war factory worker, candy store owner, community organizer, clerk, actress, and singer. But paired with exciting anecdotes are the criticisms of the husband who couldn't satisfy her, the details of numerous affairs and sexual encounters, and, though she succeeded at many of her roles, accounts of how she always felt mistreated, taken advantage of. After the interviews, at a loss for what to do with the tapes, Lopate put them away. But thirty years later, after his mother had passed away, Lopate found himself drawn back to the recordings of this conversation. Thus begins a three-way conversation between a mother, his younger self, and the person he is today. Trying to break open the family myths, rationalizations, and self-deceptions, A Mother's Tale is about family members who love each other but who can't seem to overcome their mutual mistrust. Though Phillip is sympathizing to a point, he cannot join her in her operatic displays of self-pity and how she blames his father for everything that went wrong. His detached, ironic character has been formed partly in response to her melodramatic one. The climax is an argument in which he tries to persuade her--using logic, of all things--that he really does love her, but is only partially successful, of course. A Mother's Tale is about something primal and universal: the relationship between a mother and her child, the parent disappointed with the payback, the child, now fully grown, judgmental. The humor is in the details.

"Learn how to live and you'll know how to die; learn how to die, and you'll know how to live." In these remarkable pages are the profound, life-affirming words of Morrie Schwartz as he faced his own imminent death. In 1994, at the age of seventy-seven, Schwartz learned he had ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Undaunted, the former professor embraced his illness, choosing to live passionately and calmly until the end. He also embarked on his greatest teaching adventure: sharing his evolving knowledge of living while dying. With warmth, wisdom, and humor, Morrie reveals how to: -- live fully in the moment -- tap into the powers of the mind to transcend physical limitations -- grieve for your losses -- reach out to family and friends -- develop an inner space for meditation and spiritual connection. It's never too late to become the kind of person you'd like to be. Morrie shows the way in his magnificent legacy of love, forgiveness, transcendence, and redemption, a guide to living fully to the end of your days. Morrie's willingness to talk about his illness made him an inspiration. In 1995 Nightline ran three interviews in which Ted Koppel spoke to Morrie about life, death and the disease that was afflicting his body. In Morrie: In His Own Words, Morrie combined inspiring lessons with practical advice to help those who have chronic or terminal sickness and to help those close to them maintain healthy emotions and loving relationships. As life-affirming as it is life-releasing, Morrie: In His Own Words will have a profound effect on generations of readers.

"A fantastic social history" from the author of Salt and Cod ( USA Today ) In the Dominican Republic town of San Pedro de Macorís, baseball is often seen as the only way to a better life. For those who make it, the million-dollar paychecks from Major League Baseball mean that not only they, but their entire families as well, have been saved from grinding poverty. The successful few set an example that dazzles the neighbors they left behind. But for the majority, this dream is illusory. In The Eastern Stars, New York Times bestselling author Mark Kurlansky reveals the connection between two countries' love affair with a sport, and the remarkable journey of impoverished San Pedro and its baseball players-including Rico Carty, Albert Pujols, Robinson Canó, Sammy Sosa, and Alfonso Soriano-who have sought freedom from poverty through playing ball.

Take a step back in time with some of the best writers with disabilities as they recount their first adventure, their first heartbreak, and the first time the unexpected treaded into their life. From body transformations to societal setbacks, to love a airs and family trauma, Firsts collects the most thought-provoking and exciting stories of our time by people with disabilities. Contributors include Nigel David Kelly, Kimberly Gerry-Tucker, Caitlin Hernandez, Andrew Gurza, and David-Elijah Nahmod.

In the Kalwa slum in Mumbai, India, where harsh conditions make is difficult for some children to study, an amazing group of women is working to make sure that kids go to school. Meet the Masala Mamas, 16 women who live in the Kalwa slum who are dedicating their lives to providing hot meals for kids in school. Every morning, they cook hundreds of meals -- hot, nutritious meals from fresh, local ingredients and aromatic spices. They cook with extra special love, care, and dedication because their customers are the most important people in the world: children.

The author of the now-classic Permanent Partners presents a helpful, compassionate, and wise guide for lesbian and gay couples as their relationships mature.When Permanent Partners appeared in 1988, it was widely hailed as the first significant book aimed at helping lesbian and gay couples build fulfilling partnerships. Now, drawing on additional insights she has gained in the intervening years, Betty Berzon provides specific advice for those in long-term relationships (three years and longer) who are coping with the inevitable surprises, complications, and concerns about identities merging, sex waning, or the inability to resolve conflicts. Since gay and lesbian partners have few models to guide them, couples too often opt for ending the relationship rather than learning to work through their problems.Weaving in the story of her own twenty-two year relationship, Dr. Berzon addresses these issues along with failures of communication, competing career demands, illnesses, substance-abuse problems, and mid-life crises. She also deals with the issue of monogamy, and though she discourages non-monogamy, she provides strategies for how best to deal with an open relationship when that is what a couple decides to do.As the leading authority on strengthening gay and lesbian partnerships, Dr. Berzon provides the soundest and most realistic advice for any couple interested in a stable and rewarding life together.

Would the small gay boy you once were look up to the gay man you've become?This is the question Dr. Joe Kort explores in 10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Improve Their Lives (completely revised and updated edition) as he guides readers through the complex journey of becoming a fully self-actualized gay man. Learn the five biggest mistakes gay men make when seeking a relationship. Understand how to deal with loved ones who disapprove of your being gay. Overcome damaging patterns that are holding you back from enjoying a healthy sex life. Learn how to identify your own internalized homophobia, a chronic issue that prevents many gay men from leading satisfying lives and keeps them from having healthy relationships.This updated and revised edition is more sex positive than the first edition and includes a new chapter on exploring erotic turn ons and sexual interests. Out-of-Control Sexual Behavior (OCSB) is also addressed for those struggling with sexual issues.After coming out, a gay man will typically feel better at first, but often the good feelings don't last. This is because "coming out" is only part of the beginning of the journey. This book provides a map for navigating the whole long passage of becoming the gay man you want to be.

In 1975, a new group of Peace Corps volunteers landed on the island nation of Tonga. Among them was Deborah Gardner -- a beautiful twenty-three-year-old who, in the following year, would be stabbed twenty-two times and left for dead inside her hut. Another volunteer turned himself in to the Tongan police, and many of the other Americans were sure he had committed the crime. But with the aid of the State Department, he returned home a free man. Although the story was kept quiet in the United States, Deb Gardner's death and the outlandish aftermath took on legendary proportions in Tonga. Now journalist Philip Weiss "shines daylight on the facts of this ugly case with the fervor of an avenging angel" (Chicago Tribune), exposing a gripping tale of love, violence, and clashing ideals. With bravura reporting and vivid, novelistic prose, Weiss transforms a Polynesian legend into a singular artifact of American history and a profoundly moving human story.

In Another Way of Seeing , Peter Gabel argues that our most fundamental spiritual need as human beings is the desire for authentic mutual recognition. Because we live in a world in which this desire is systematically denied due to the legacy of fear of the other that has been passed on from generation to generation, we exist as what he calls "withdrawn selves," perceiving the other as a threat rather than as the source of our completion as social beings. Calling for a new kind of "spiritual activism" that speaks to this universal interpersonal longing, Gabel shows how we can transform law, politics, public policy, and culture so as to build a new social movement through which we become more fully present to each other - creating a new "parallel universe" existing alongside our socially separated world and reaffirming the social bond that inherently unites us. Addressing subjects as diverse as "The Spiritual Dimension of Social Justice," "Spiritualizing Foreign Policy," and "Patriotism at the Ballpark," this book beautifully illuminates how the blockage of social desire creates and reproduces so much of the harm and suffering in the world - and how recovering our capacity to fully see one another will help us to create a more humane, just, and loving future. "Peter Gabel is one of the grand prophetic voices in our day. He also is a long-distance runner in the struggle for justice. Don't miss this book " - Cornel West, The Class of 1943 Professor, Princeton University, and Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice, Union Theological Seminary "Peter Gabel has delivered a set of unmatched phenomenological analyses of the profound alienation that pervades everyday life in America in the early 21st century. His insightful descriptions of the way things really are challenge us to open our eyes, minds and hearts to our own and one another's deepest longings, and together, to bring one another back home.... Like a pick axe thrown ahead to anchor us all, to paraphrase one of his most evocative images, Gabel's polemic teaches and inspires us to 'think with our hearts, ' to genuinely and confidently love ourselves and our brothers and sisters on this very planet Earth, to lift ourselves and one another on the strength of our authentic Presence, and to move things forward together. Now." - Rhonda V. Magee, Professor of Law, University of San Francisco "Peter Gabel's essays on law, politics, and foreign and domestic policy urge us to take a step back from our deeply alienated habits of seeing, living and feeling--habits that threaten the destruction of the planet as well as of our social, national and global communal bonds--and to forge a new politics grounded in a recognition of our longing for a genuinely loving and spiritual connection with each other ...to use law as a way to inscribe and act on our responsibilities to care for each other as well as ourselves, politics as a vehicle through which to express our deepest social and spiritual commitments and foreign and domestic policy both as expressions of a forgotten or suppressed, but still realizable, beloved community." - Robin West, Frederick Haas Professor of Law and Philosophy, Georgetown University Law Center "Replete with wise insights that reward readers with Another Way of Seeing toward their pursuit of compassion, community, and a better world, law professor, activist and philosopher Peter Gabel's excellent essay collection elaborates upon the meaning of Martin Luther King Jr.'s expression 'Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.' No matter what your expertise, Gabel's thoughts are pertinent to fulfillment of your human possibilities." - Ralph Nader, Washington, DC

In his first book of non-fiction, originally published in 1962, Herbert Gold explores some not-so-happy problems confronting people in an age of "mass destruction, mass inertia, mass everything." While acknowledging that we live in a time of utmost global significance-war on an enormous scale was a reality of the twentieth century and continues to threaten, unadulterated evil has exhibited itself in grandiose proportions-Gold tackles issues and problems which are very much of significance to the individual: teaching, writing, love, marriage, divorce, and death. In The Age of Happy Problems, Gold takes the reader through a journey of eclectic characters, situations, and locales. Part I is a selection of essays entitled "American Events." In "The Age of Happy Problems" we are presented with an analysis of the problems facing people in the middle of their lives and careers. "How to Be an Artist's Wife" explores the prospect of being married, and remaining married, to a temperamental and egotistical artist. "Divorce as a Moral Act" describes the termination of marriage as a means for renewal and the chance to start over again the search for love. "The Bachelor's Dilemma" evokes the decisions confronting the male of the "big city." And "A Dog in Brooklyn, A Girl in Detroit: A L"ife Among the Humanities" is a memoir on the paradoxes of teaching in a university. Part II is entitled "American Places." The author examines in this section various American lifestyles. In "Paris: Notes from La Vie de Boheme," Gold describes Americans abroad, why they decide to become expatriates, and how they adapt to their new surroundings. In "Greenwich Village: The Changing Village" he writes about the importance of New York City's symbol of change, experiment and nonconformity. Finally, the author meditates on "Death in Miami Beach," offering a moving account of the relationship between death and the popular Florida city. Gold writes: "How can I total it up? What is the map of the map? Well, to begin with, Plato was wrong. The life of contemplation is not sufficient...and for another thing, Plato was right. He knew that men must learn to come together in the practice of intelligence and moral privilege." Gold's essays, stemming from the author's own humanity, are just as poignant and relevant today as they were when they were first published. The Age of Happy Problems is sure to captivate, but perhaps most of all, make the reader contemplate the importance of these issues for his or her own life.

Show business junkies, magic fans and lovers of the variety arts, put your hands on your wallets and read on. Cutting Up Touches is the first book ever written on the history of exhibition pickpocketing. This specialty act features dynamic performers who deftly steal watches and wallets - even neckties and belts from unsuspecting volunteers. F.D.R., J. Edgar Hoover, Pierce Brosnan and Michael Douglas are some of the many celebrities and political figures who've found their pockets emptied by these light-fingered showmen. David Avadon, one of the smoothest pickpockets in the country, unveils the rich history of this fascinating entertainment from its music hall beginnings to the largest showrooms in the world. He explores the powerful subliminal emotions touched by each act of theatrical theivery. This street crime turned performance art is unique among all entertainments. It is the human-to-human activity which most closely resembles bull fighting. Avadon puts the reader wise to the wires, dips and cannons of the street corner variety then, in elegant prose, limns the masters of stealing on stage: Dr. Giovanni, Borra, Dominique and many, many more. Illustrated with photos, playbills and posters, many published here for the first time.