"Writing with wit and charm, Gregor Piatigorsky gives a warm and fascinating account of his brilliant musical career, his personal life, and his many friends. Long a ranking figure among prominent professional musicians, Mr. Piatigorsky numbers among his friends and has played under the baton of the century's greatest conductors. He has been guest soloist with all the major orchestras here and abroad, has toured the Far East under the auspices of the State Department, and has introduced many compositions for the cello, written for him by important contemporary composers."--Dust jacket.

A charming and funny memoir about experiences Gina Gershon has had with cats throughout her life that are analogous to her relationships with men and her ongoing search for true love. Film and television icon Gina Gershon may be best known for her movie roles in "Bound "and "Showgirls" and television appearances on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "How to Make" "It in America," but deep down she is a self-described cat lady. "In Search of Cleo "follows Gina s desperation and despair when her assistant loses her beloved cat, Cleo. Gina spends two months roaming the back streets of Los Angeles at all hours of the night, searching for Cleo and meeting several quirky and outrageous characters who help or hinder her in different ways, including Ellen DeGeneres, who searches with Gina and recommends her pet psychic, Sonia; Arthur, the newspaper delivery man who gives her advice; and the mysterious fortune-teller, who appears from the shadows to give her a statue of Saint Gertrude, the protector of cats everywhere. Gina soon finds herself enmeshed in L.A. s strangest subcultures, doing everything she can to bring Cleo home, including chanting with a bunch of crystal-wielding hippies and being slapped with a chicken by a Santeria priest. Along the way, she reflects on the various cats that have been a part of her life and shares her travails as a single girl in search of both her cat and some sanity. "In Search of Cleo "will delight pet lovers and singletons alike as it introduces Cleo to the celebrated pantheon of literary cats that includes Dewey, Homer, and Oscar."

"The 1990s was a decade of extreme change. Shifts in culture, politics, and technology radically altered the way Americans did business, expressed themselves, and thought about their role in the world. At the center of it all was Bill Clinton, the charismatic and flawed baby boomer president, along with his polarizing but increasingly popular wife, Hillary. Although it was in many ways a Democratic Gilded Age, the 1990s was also a time of great anxiety. The Cold War was over. America was stable and prosperous. Yet Americans felt more unmoored and isolated. This was the era of glitz and grunge, when we relished living in the Republic of Everything even as we feared it might degenerate into the Republic of Nothing. Bill Clinton dominated this era, but his complex legacy has yet to be clearly defined. Historian Gil Troy examines Clinton's presidency alongside the decade's cultural changes. Taking the '90s year by year, Troy shows how the culture of the day shaped the Clintons even as the Clintons shaped it, offering answers to two enduring questions about Bill Clinton's legacy: How did such a talented politician leave Americans thinking he accomplished so little when he actually accomplished so much? And to what extent was Clinton responsible for the catastrophes of the following decade, specifically 9/11 and the collapse of the housing market? Even more relevant as we head toward the 2016 election, The Age of Clinton will appeal to readers on both sides of the aisle as it chronicles the wild, transformative decade and the president at its center"--

During my half a century in public life, my image and reputation have had more ups and downs than the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island. I have been called savior and sinner, fool and wise man, crusader and exploiter, hothead and dope. I am routinely scorned, admired, beloved, and belittled—which one is usually based on when the viewer tuned in. Were you around for my early days as a crusading local newsman? Did you waste an evening with me inside Al Capone's empty vault? Were you watching when the bombs dropped in Afghanistan or Iraq, or did you tune in to the raucous talk show when my nose was broken in the best television studio brawl ever caught on tape? Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, and my employment by the conservative rabble-rousers of Fox News—and, more recently, with the coming of the Age of Trump—my professional life has been even more difficult to define. How could a sincerely progressive native-born Jew-Rican New Yorker like me ever work for an outfit better suited to the vibes of Orange County, California, the Dixie, Appalachia, or the Mountain West? How could I not condemn and obstruct a wrecking ball like Donald Trump? Over five decades, I have met most of the era's good and bad guys, from Ronald Reagan to Charles Manson, Fidel Castro to Yasser Arafat, Muhammad Ali to John Lennon, and Elvis Presley to Michael Jackson. Two figure heavily in this book, both longtime friends: Roger Ailes, the disgraced yet undeniably brilliant creator of Fox News; and Donald Trump, once a flamboyant playboy, billionaire businessman, and now 45th President of the United States. At the vigorous twilight of a long and largely improvised life lived in plain sight, I have little left to prove. Faced with a series of random chances, for better and worse, what I made of my life is what I made of those chances. Time has enlightened and humbled me. Sincerely, Geraldo Rivera

George Soros has done more for open societies than any other private citizen in the world. In Underwriting Democracy he describes his experiences helping to bring about democratic change in Eastern Europe—experiences that are especially relevant now that our country has begun to intervene (though in an entirely different way than Soros) to create functioning democracies. Throughout the 1980s George Soros worked to identify and fund the growing political movements that caused the downfall of Eastern Europe's Communist governments. He established foundations, first in his native Hungary, and then in eight other countries, and used them to finance everything from the installation of previously forbidden copying machines in public libraries to the creation of experimental schools, clubs, and workshops for the support of dissidents. This unprecedented, and brilliant, financial and logistical support helped to bring down the communist regimes in peaceful revolutions across the continent. These are thrilling stories about facing down—and getting past—the Communist party powers in order to change these nations from the inside out .

The fifth edition of Classical Sociological Theory by George Ritzer, one of the foremost authorities on sociological theory, gives readers a comprehensive overview of the major classical theorists and schools of sociological thought. Key theories are integrated with biographical sketches of theorists, and theories are placed in their historical and intellectual context. This helps students to better understand the original works of classical authors as well as to compare and contrast classical theories.

An inspiring memoir about love, race, identity, and contested narratives told with unflinching mettle. Through her childhood spent in 1940s New York being raised by two mothers, her work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Civil Rights Movement, and raising her own children in the coalfields of West Virginia, Faith S. Holsaert has been defined by the intertwined forces of race, activism, and family. As a young woman on the front line of the Civil Rights Movement, she learned the power of contested narratives and came to understand her whiteness, her queer identity, and her stakes in overturning racism. Later in life, she confronted sexual abuse and mental illness across three generations of women in her family to find that these painful histories have played a significant role in the development of her identity as a woman, activist, and mother. Through a lifetime laid bare in prose and poetry, Holsaert beautifully quilts memoir, social history, and historic events into a gripping and inspirational narrative. This powerful and structurally innovative work lends new categories of meaning to those who would strive to find their place, hope, and sense of belonging in efforts to fight against systemic racism and lead lives characterized by openness and love.

A controversial look at the headline-making story of the last Western prisoner at Guantanamo Bay and the larger implications to national security, justice, and international relations. Omar Khadr is the last Western prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, and has been held at the American naval base since October 2002, accused of killing a U.S. sergeant in Afghanistan. Levant takes a provocative look at the definition of "child soldier," life at Guantanamo Bay, the media coverage of the case, and the Canadian government's plan for Omar Khadr's rehabilitation upon his return to Canada.

Signed by author.

Before there was a Woodstock Concert, there was Elliot Tiber working to make a go of his parents' hotel, the El Monaco. It wasn't easy. The Jewish clientele who had returned to the Catskills year after year had discovered Florida, and the hotel business was dying. To save his family's livelihood, Elliot put on plays, musicals and local festivals. In the process, Elliot became the area's official i[Bokinfo]

"The definitive memoir of one of Israel's most influential soldier-statesmen and one-time Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, with insights into forging peace in the Middle East. In the summer of 2000, the most decorated soldier in Israel's history--Ehud Barak--set himself a challenge as daunting as any he had faced on the battlefield: to secure a final peace with the Palestinians. He would propose two states for two peoples, with a shared capital in Jerusalem. He knew the risks of failure. But he also knew the risks of not trying: letting slip perhaps the last chance for a generation to secure genuine peace. It was a moment of truth. It was one of many in a life intertwined, from the start, with that of Israel. Born on a kibbutz, Barak became commander of Israel's elite special forces, then army Chief of Staff, and ultimately, Prime Minister. My Country, My Life tells the unvarnished story of his--and his country's--first seven decades; of its major successes, but also its setbacks and misjudgments. He offers candid assessments of his fellow Israeli politicians, of the American administrations with which he worked, and of himself. Drawing on his experiences as a military and political leader, he sounds a powerful warning: Israel is at a crossroads, threatened by events beyond its borders and by divisions within. The two-state solution is more urgent than ever, not just for the Palestinians, but for the existential interests of Israel itself. Only by rediscovering the twin pillars on which it was built--military strength and moral purpose--can Israel thrive"--

Donald Keene shares more than half a century of his adventures as a student of Japan. Keene begins with an account of his bittersweet childhood in New York; then he describes his initial encounters with Asia and Europe and the way in which World War II complicated that experience. He captures the sights, scents, and sounds of Japan as they first enveloped him, and talks of the unique travels and well-known intellectuals who later shaped the contours of his academic career. --from publisher description.

In tracing the life of Golda Meir, Deborah E. Lipstadt explores the history of the Yishuv and Jewish state from the 1920s through the 1973 Yom Kippur War, all while highlighting the contradictions and complexities of a person who was only the third woman to serve as a head of state in the twentieth century.

Readers know from his now classic Lenin's Tomb that Remnick is a superb portraitist who can bring his subjects to life and reveal them in such surprising ways as to justify comparison to Dickens, Balzac, or Proust. In this collection, Remnick's gift for character is sharper than ever, whether he writes about Gary Hart stumbling through life after Donna Rice or Mario Cuomo, who now presides over a Saturday morning radio talk show, fielding questions from crackpots, or about Michael Jordan's awesome return to the Chicago Bulls -- or Reggie Jackson's last times at bat. Remnick's portraits of such disparate characters as Alger Hiss and Ralph Ellison, Richard Nixon and Elaine Pagels, Gerry Adams and Marion Barry are unified by this extraordinary ability to create a living character, so that the pieces in this book, taken together, constitute a splendid pageant of the representative characters of our time.

"Mortality and Faith is the second half of an autobiography of David Horowitz whose first installment, Radical Son, was published more than twenty years ago. It completes the account of his life from where the first book left off to his seventy-eighth year."--Amazon.com.

A bombing victim examines the benefits to society of acknowledging the Unabomber's evil, and shares the ways in which religion and family have helped him to heal from his experience

"What is Holocaust literature? When does it begin and how is it changing? Is there an essential core of diaries, eyewitness accounts of the concentration camps, tales of individual survival in hiding? Is it the same everywhere: in the West as in the East, in Australia as in the Americas, in poetry as in prose? Is this literature sacred and sui generis, or can it be studied in the light of other literatures? What of the perpetrators and bystanders, the hidden children, the children of Holocaust survivors: Do they speak with the same authority? What works of Holocaust literature will be read a hundred years from now--and why? Here, for the first time and told from beginning to end, is an historical survey of Holocaust literature in all genres, countries, and major languages. Beginning in wartime, it proceeds from the literature of mobilization and mourning in the Free World to the vast and varied literature produced in the Nazi-occupied ghettos, the bunkers and places of hiding, the transit and concentrations camps. Within weeks of the liberation, in displaced persons camps, a new memorial and testamentary literature begins to take shape. Moving from Europe to Israel, the U.S., and beyond, the authors situate the writings by real and proxy witnesses within three distinct postwar periods: a period of "communal memory," still internal and internecine; a period of "provisional memory" in the '60s and '70s that witnesses the birth of a self-conscious Holocaust genre; to the period of "authorized memory" in which we live today, following the collapse of the Soviet Union (1989-91), and the opening of the US Holocaust Museum (1993). Twenty book covers - first editions in their original languages - and an eminently readable guide to the "first hundred books" together show the multilingual scope, historical depth, the moral and artistic range of this extraordinary body of writing."--Publisher's website.

Kidnapping, attempted assassination, espionage âe¦ not the answers youâe(tm)d expect to the question âe~what happens when you become a linguist?âe(tm) But now, reflecting on a long and hugely successful career at the forefront of the field of English Language and Linguistics, David Crystal answers this question and offers us a special look behind the scenes at the adventures, rewards, challenges and pitfalls of his life in language. Both an autobiography and a highly accessible introduction to the field of linguistics, Just a Phrase Iâe(tm)m Going Through illuminates and entertains us with its many insights into the ever-fascinating subject of language. David Crystal is synonymous with language, both as a great populariser and linguistic pioneer, and his contribution to the field is unparalleled. This is a book not just for students and teachers but for all lovers of language. For more about David Crystal at Routledge, visit: www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415485746.

Along with Satre, Camus and Orwell, Arthur Koestler helped to shape the ideas of today. Once a communist, he saw through Marxism and led the intellectual counter-attack that culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall. His writings on science introduced millions to cutting-edge theories of evolution and the workings of the human mind. His speculations on human nature and the future of mankind in the atomic age stamped a generation that grew up in the shadow of the Bomb. As restless in his personal relationships as he was in politics, his violent affairs with women were legendary. His fascinating study is t he first to make use of Koestler's private papers and draws on previously secret documents held by the KGB and the FBI, exposing the depth of his involvement in the Communist Party and, later, his relations with the CIA. It also reveals the darker side to his nature, which led to the tragic dual suicide with his third wife, Cynthia, in 1983. David Cesarani has ensured Koestler's place in the pantheon of intellectual giants of the twentieth century as surely as the 'warts and all' approach is guaranteed to perpetuate the controversy that swirled around Koestler in his life and death.

Kindred spirits despite their profound differences in position, Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman shared a vision of the democratic character. They had read or listened to each other’s words at crucial turning points in their lives, and both were utterly transformed by the tragedy of the Civil War. In this radiant book, poet and biographer Daniel Mark Epstein tracks the parallel lives of these two titans from the day that Lincoln first read Leaves of Grass to the elegy Whitman composed after Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. Drawing on a rich trove of personal and newspaper accounts and diary records, Epstein shows how the influence and reverence flowed between these two men–and brings to life the many friends and contacts they shared. Epstein has written a masterful portrait of two great American figures and the era they shaped through words and deeds.