First time in paperback, with a new Introduction and final chapter World affairs expert and intrepid travel journalist Robert D. Kaplan braved the dangers of war-ravaged Afghanistan in the 1980s, living among the mujahidin—the “soldiers of god”—whose unwavering devotion to Islam fueled their mission to oust the formidable Soviet invaders. In Soldiers of God we follow Kaplan’s extraordinary journey and learn how the thwarted Soviet invasion gave rise to the ruthless Taliban and the defining international conflagration of the twenty-first century. Kaplan returns a decade later and brings to life a lawless frontier. What he reveals is astonishing: teeming refugee camps on the deeply contentious Pakistan-Afghanistan border; a war front that combines primitive fighters with the most technologically advanced weapons known to man; rigorous Islamic indoctrination academies; a land of minefields plagued by drought, fierce tribalism, insurmountable ethnic and religious divisions, an abysmal literacy rate, and legions of war orphans who seek stability in military brotherhood. Traveling alongside Islamic guerrilla fighters, sharing their food, observing their piety in the face of deprivation, and witnessing their determination, Kaplan offers a unique opportunity to increase our understanding of a people and a country that are at the center of world events.

This candid autobiography, the last work by renowned psychologist Albert Ellis, is a tour de force of stimulating ideas, colorful descriptions of memorable people and events, and straightforward, no-nonsense talk. Ellis, the creator of one of the most successful forms of psychotherapy―Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)―recounts the memorable episodes of his life; discusses how he coped with emotional problems at different stages of life; describes his love life; and subjects his own self-description to a ruthlessly honest critique. The heart of Ellis's book is his analysis of the psychological leitmotifs that have appeared again and again throughout his life. He describes the aim of this autobiography as follows: "As far as I can, I shall present my bad and good, stupid and intelligent, weak and strong points. Why? Because, following H. G. Wells's recommendation, I want to go as all-out as I can. I want to acknowledge my idiocies―and use REBT to feel sorry about but unashamed of them. I want to make the point―again a central tenet of REBT―that all humans are fabulously fallible―including, of course, me. We have no real choice about this, but we can unconditionally accept ourselves―our so-called essence or being―with our fallibility. That will momentously help us, probably encourage us to acquire unconditional self-acceptance (USA) and possibly inspire other people to give it to themselves, too." With a concluding chapter by Ellis's widow, Debbie Joffe Ellis, describing the final years of his life, this is the definitive summation of the life and work of one of psychology's most successful thinkers and practitioners.

"What happened to the books that were too valuable to burn? Alice Urbach had her own cooking school in Vienna, but in 1938 she was forced to flee to England, like so many others. Her younger son was imprisoned in Dachau, and her older son, having emigrated to the United States, became an intelligence officer in the struggle against the Nazis. Returning to the ruins of Vienna in the late 1940s, she discovers that her bestselling cookbook has been published under someone else's name. Now, eighty years later, the historian Karina Urbach - Alice's granddaughter - sets out to uncover the truth behind the stolen cookbook, and tells the story of a family torn apart by the Nazi regime, of a woman who, with her unwavering passion for cooking, survived the horror and losses of the Holocaust to begin a new life in America. Impeccably researched and incredibly moving, Alice's Book sheds light on an untold chapter in the history of Nazi crimes against Jewish authors"--Publisher's description.

Mel Tormé is one of the world's great jazz vocalists, a veteran of radio, movies, television, recordings, night clubs, and concert halls. He is also a highly respected arranger and composer, the co-author of one of the enduring seasonal classics, "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)." And were that not enough, he is also an accomplished writer, having penned, among other books, a moving biography of his close friend, drummer Buddy Rich, Traps, the Drum Wonder; and an unblinking portrait of Judy Garland late in her career, The Other Side of the Rainbow. Now, in My Singing Teachers, Tormé sums up his vast experience in a tour of American music that is spiced with insightful commentary, vivid anecdotes, and Tormé's own take on the art of the song. Here is a pantheon of popular music and jazz, a sweeping look at American song from the perspective of one of its great practitioners. Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, Jerome Kern and Johnny Mercer, Ethel Waters and Nat "King" Cole, and many many more--all in one way or another helped Tormé shape his inimitable style. Tormé has drawn inspiration from virtually every corner of the entertainment world, so the book has an enormous range--covering jazz, big band singers (such as Helen Forrest or Bob Eberly), Hollywood musical singers (such as Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin), even cowboy singers (Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, among others), not to mention lyricists, composers, and arrangers. It brims with personal anecdotes and astute observations about the greats of American music, and reveals how they have influenced his craft. For instance, Tormé recounts how, at age five, he first saw Bessie Smith in a one-reeler "The St Louis Blues" and how she still influences his blues singing. He reveals how playing at the Paramount with Ella Fitzgerald converted him from bobby-sox music to jazz. And most surprisingly, he shows how listening to instrumentalists such as Ben Webster on tenor sax and Roy Eldridge on trumpet shaped his scat singing--even more than listening to the great scat singers. Tormé also pays homage to many lesser known figures, such as composer Harry Warren--whose songs include "I Only Have Eyes for You," "The More I See You," "We're in the Money," and "Down Argentine Way"--and singer Connee Boswell, who was an important model for Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Torme himself. Perhaps most important, Tormé concludes with a chapter that captures his thoughts on singing, a section that every singer will find invaluable. American popular music has been graced with many talented men and women whose wit, intellect, ingenuity, and craftsmanship have made this music immortal. My Music Teachers pays homage to these remarkable people as it celebrates the glories of the American song. All fans of pop or jazz, and especially all fans of Mel Tormé, will find this book a treasure.

Mosaic: Memoirs, Lincoln Kirstein's long-awaited autobiography, is a compelling, often highly subjective evocation of his astonishing youth. The book's scenes move from the old mansions of Brahmin Boston to the waterfront bars of Brooklyn, George Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at Fontainebleau, and the brothels of Marrakesh. It culminates with thrilling suspense in 1933, when Kirstein visits Paris, hoping to lure George Balanchine to the United States. Kirstein shapes his numinous memories into the story of a young man's quest to fuse his various roles into a unified self. Mosaic is the epic history of his ultimately triumphant search for a vocation. As a chapter in the growth of modernism, and as a contribution to cultural history - and the history of assimilation - this superbly written, humorous, and candid book is unique and invaluable.

A giant in the history of American entertainment, Eddie Cantor (1892-1964) won over the American public time and time again, first on stage, bowling audiences over in the Ziegfeld Follies, then in films, on the radio, and on television. His career ran from Vaudeville to video making all stops in between. A tireless person even when not on the stage, Cantor helped found the March of Dimes, and was the first national president of the Screen Actor's Guild (SAG), the American Federation of Radio Artists (later AFTRA), and the Jewish Theatrical Guild. Yet another medium in which Cantor succeeded was print. He authored and co-authored several books that upheld his standing as one of America's leading comedians. My Life Is In Your Hands & Take My Life combines for the first time in a single volume two memoirs written in 1928 and 1957, in which Eddie remembers his beginnings as an orphan on the Lower East Side and his hard-won climb from poverty to the bright lights of Broadway. The book also contains a lost chapter in which Eddie recalls his reactions to the stock market crash of 1929, along with a new complete index, discography, and filmography. In My Life Is In Your Hands & Take My Life, Cantor's humor is as sharp as ever and his sentiment is 100% genuine. While not at all modest about his decades of public adoration, Cantor shows a willingness to laugh at his blunders (such as his second film, "Special Delivery"), and to praise the many talented people with whom he collaborated. Along with telling the story of show business in the first half of the 20th century, Cantor also lets readers in on fond stories of his friends, from Jimmy Durante (who worked as a pianist in the Coney Island restaurant where Cantor was a singing waiter), to Ziegfeld alumni Will Rogers and W. C. Fields, to fellow entertainers Clara Bow and Fanny Brice.

So, just how was Tarzan created? Eager to know the inside story about the legendary John Carter and the amazing cities and peoples of Barsoom? Perhaps your taste is more suited to David Innes and the fantastic lost world at the Earth?s core? Or maybe wrong-way Napier and the bizarre civilizations of cloud-enshrouded Venus are more to your liking? These pages contain all that you will ever want to know about the wondrous worlds and unforgettable characters penned by the master storyteller Edgar Rice Burroughs. ø Richard A. Lupoff, the respected critic and writer who helped spark a Burroughs revival in the 1960s, reveals fascinating details about the stories written by the creator of Tarzan. Featured here are outlines of all of Burroughs?s major novels, with descriptions of how they were each written and their respective sources of inspiration. This Bison Books edition includes a new foreword by fantasy writer Michael Moorcock, a new introduction by the author, a final chapter by Phillip R. Burger, as well as corrected text and an updated bibliography.

'Alasdair Gray was not always the rapidly ageing, fat Glasgow pedestrian he likes to describe on the inside leaf of his books. There was once a time when he was young. A time when he was really rather thin. Many years when he went unpublished and unrecognised. This book aims to document, as faithfully as possible, that journey from son of a box-maker, encouraged to paint, write and do whatever made him feel good, to septuagenarian "little grey deity" (as Will Self has called him). For the first time in his life, Alasdair claims to be completely satisfied and well-paid (he lived in debt until 1990), and now lives a settled, happy day-to-day existence with Morag, painting his mural at the Oran Mor arts centre five minutes walk from his home most days, while (at the time of writing) taking occasional periods off for writing several books. Aside from work, Gray's pleasures include daytime whisky, giving money away, reading books by people he doesn't have to meet and "having my way". This book will look in depth at the people, events, books, paintings, plays, poems and circumstances that conspired to make the man as he is today.' RODGE GLASS Suiting form to subject, Rodge Glass has brought the inventive techniques of Gray's fiction to bear on the biographer's role. Mixing a chronological narrative of his subject's life (at the rate of one chapter per decade) with his own diaries of meeting, getting to know and working with the artist, writer and campaigner, narrative and diaries eventually dovetail in a riotous final chapter on the publication of Alasdair Gray's latest novel, Old Men in Love, in October 2007.

This candidly written autobiography of Sir Michael Kerr chronicles the life of one of Britains most prominent judges of the 70s and 80s from his Continental childhood up to his career in the Court of Appeal and beyond. In the first part of his memoir,the author traces his family history and Germanic roots. His father, Alfred Kerr, was a well-known dramatic critic and essayist, whose writings were widely known throughout Germany from the turn of the century and have recently seen a resurrection, 50 years after his death, as related in the last chapter of the book. But because of the fame of his anti-Nazi writings and broadcasts, the Kerrs were forced to flee from Berlin as early as 3 March 1933, when Hitler came to power. The author and his sister Judith, later to become a famous author of childrens books, had a relatively happy cosmopolitan childhood in Zurich, Paris, Nice and ultimately England. But their parents lives remained on the edge of poverty and sometimes despair and there was never again a family home. The memoirs then tell of his years at Aldenham School and the beginnings of Cambridge, and of his assimilation into the English way of life. They relate the story of his internment as an enemy alien in 1940 and of his subsequent release and service as a pilot in the Royal Air Force until the end of World War II. The author then returned to Cambridge to finish his law degree and was urged to go the Bar. The later chapters of this autobiography are mainly devoted to the law. They recount the authors career as a leading commercial Junior and then a Silk, his initial hesitations about the Bench, but ultimately culminating in his appointment as a Lord Justice of Appeal. He describes the Bar of the post-war decades and is frank about the frustrations and disappointments of his career. He also provides insights into the oddities of the English legal system, but maintaining throughout his firm belief in the importance of an independent Bar.