A powerful, poignant and often hilarious play, The Waverly Gallery follows the final years of a grandmother's battle against Alzheimer's disease. The play explores her fight to retain her independence and the subsequent effect of her decline on her family, especially her grandson. Inspired by Lonergan's own grandmother, it's an ode to an extraordinary woman, and to the humor and strength of a family in crisis.Kenneth Lonergan once again shows himself to have one of the keenest ears of any working playwright. Also the screenwirter of the deeply funny Analyze This, he's known for his incisive humor and brilliant knack for capturing the heart and soul of human interaction.

Kenneth M. Pollack, formerly a Persian Gulf military analyst at the CIA and Director for Persian Gulf Affairs at the National Security Council, describes and analyzes theømilitary history of the six key Arab states?Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Syria?during the post?World War II era. He shows in detail how each Arab military grew and learned from its own experiences in response to the specific objectives set for it and within often constrained political, economic, and social circumstances. This first-ever overview of the modern Arab approach to warfare provides a better understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the Arab militaries, some of which are the United States? most likely adversaries, and some of which are our most important allies.

"Our Dollar, Your Problem argues that America's currency might not have reached today's lofty pinnacle without a certain amount of good luck. Drawing in part on his own experiences, including with policymakers and world leaders, Kenneth Rogoff animates the remarkable postwar run of the dollar-how it beat out the Japanese yen, the Soviet ruble, and the euro-and the challenges it faces today from crypto and the Chinese yuan, the end of reliably low inflation and inter-est rates, political instability, and the fracturing of the dollar bloc. Americans cannot take for granted that the Pax Dollar era will last indefinitely, not only because many countries are deeply frus-trated with the system, but also because overconfidence and arrogance can lead to unforced errors. Rogoff shows how America's outsized power and exorbitant privilege can spur financial instability-not just abroad but also at home"--Book jacket.

The early American Congregational minister and author Cotton Mather (1663-1728), remembered mainly for his participation in the Salem witch trials, is perhaps the greatest and most misunderstood figure in pre-revolutionary American history. Mather believed his main purpose in life was to do good and he devoted his life to praying, preaching, and writing, eventually publishing more than 400 works.

With the simple power and astonishing candor that made his 1988 autobiography, The Ragman's Son, a number one international bestseller, Kirk Douglas now shares his quest for spirituality and Jewish identity -- and his heroic fight to overcome crippling injuries and a devastating stroke. On February 13, 1991, at the age of seventy-four, Kirk Douglas, star of such major motion-picture classics as Champion, Spartacus, and Paths of Glory, was in a helicopter crash, in which two people died and he himself sustained severe back injuries. As he lay in the hospital recovering, he kept wondering: Why had two younger men died while he, who had already lived his life fully, survived? The question drove this son of a Russian-Jewish ragman to a search for his roots and on a long journey of self-discovery -- a quest not only for the meaning of life and his own relationship with God, but for his own identity as a Jew. Through the study of the Bible, Kirk Douglas found a new spirituality and purpose. His newfound faith deeply enriched his relationship with his own children and taught him -- a man who had always been famously demanding and impatient -- to listen to others and, above all, to hear his own inner voice. Told with warmth, wit, much humor, and deep passion, Climbing the Mountain is inspirational in the very best sense of the word.

This text is a harrowing eye-witness account of the horrors of possibly the world's worst-ever concentration and extermination camp. It tells of the humiliation of the inmates, the ruthless SS guards, and one woman's struggle for survival.

"The Threepenny Opera" is Bertolt Brecht's savage satire on the bourgeois Weimar Republic, and his most performed and studied play. Edited and translated by Ralph Manheim and John Willett, this student edition contains commentary, analysis and context, as well as the full text of the play. One of the major dramatists of the twentieth century, Bertolt Brecht's plays include "The Life of Galileo," "Mother Courage and her Children" and "The Caucasian Chalk Circle," He died in 1956.

"Kilmer Watts makes his living teaching piano lessons, but when automatic pianos arrive in town, he realizes he's out of a job. He spots a "Help Wanted" sign at the poem factory and decides to investigate -- he's always been curious about how poems are made. The foreman explains that machines and assembly lines are used for poetry these days. So Kilmer learns how to operate the "meter meter" and empty the "cliché bins." He assembles a poem by picking out a rhyme scheme, sprinkling in some similes and adding alliteration. But one day the machines malfunction, and there is a dramatic explosion at the poem factory. How will poetry ever survive? Kyle Lukoff's funny story, rich in wordplay, is complemented by Mark Hoffmann's lively, quirky art. The backmatter includes definitions of poetic feet, types of poems (with illustrated examples) and a glossary of other terms."--

"A child discovers that there is no single right thing to do when someone is sad or grieving"--

A life Worth Living A life Worth Living

A leading political damage-control specialist--a former special counsel to President Clinton--shares the secrets of coping with scandal and for making bad news better, going behind the scenes of the Clinton adminstration to reveal how the White House managed and mismanaged political crises. 50,000 first printing.

In a return to the short story, the form in which she made her debut with "There Are Jews in My House," Vapnyar presents a delightful new collection about the abiding, overlapping appetites for food and love.

Draws on personal accounts and interviews to present a profile of John Lennon, examining his life, relationships, and involvement in the peace movement of the 1970s; and contains a DVD of the author's 1968 interview with Lennon and Paul McCartney.

"The long-awaited magnum opus of America's master playwright and activist Forty years in the making, The American People sets forth Larry Kramer's vision of his homeland. As the founder of ACT UP and the author of Faggots and The Normal Heart, Kramer has decisively affected American lives and letters. Here he reimagines our history. This is the story of one nation under a plague, contaminated by greed, hate, and disease and host to transcendent acts of courage and kindness. In this first volume, which runs up to the 1950s, we meet prehistoric monkeys who spread a peculiar virus; a Native American shaman whose sexual explorations mutate into occult visions; and early English settlers who establish loving same-sex couples only to fall prey to the forces of bigotry. George Washington and Alexander Hamilton revel in unexpected intimacies, and John Wilkes Booth's motives for assassinating Abraham Lincoln are thoroughly revised. In the twentieth century, the nightmare of history deepens as a religious sect conspires with eugenicists, McCarthyites, and Ivy Leaguers to exterminate homosexuals and the AIDS virus begins to spread. Against all this, Kramer sets the intimate heartfelt story of a middle-class family outside Washington, D.C., trying to cope with the darkest of times. The American People is a work of ribald satire, prophetic outrage, and dazzling imagination. It is an encyclopedic indictment, written with outrageous love"--

A unique, adaptable model for meditation practice that ties together elements of the various Buddhist traditions The deceptively simple three-phase method presented in Three Steps to Awakening is a meditation practice that can be worked with for a lifetime. Larry Rosenberg looks to Zen, Insight Meditation, and the teachings of J. Krishnamurti to find three kinds of meditation that anyone can do and that complement each other in a wonderful way: (1) breath awareness, (2) breath as anchor, and (3) choiceless awareness. Having the three methods in one’s repertoire gives one meditation resources for any life situation. In a time of stress, for example, one might use breath awareness exclusively. Or on an extended retreat, one might find choiceless awareness more appropriate. The three-step method has been taught to Larry’s students at the Cambridge Meditation Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for many years. After teaching the three-step method, Larry goes on to show how to bring the awareness gained in meditation to the world off the cushion, into relationships and into all areas of daily life.