Michael Rapaport, actor, Top 50 podcaster, award-winning film maker, and sports fanatic, is here to set the world straight on the greatest and downright worst athletes, players, teams, and jerseys—while refusing to mention statistics, analytics, or anything else that isn’t pure hustle. In 1979, nine-year-old Michael Rapaport decided he was going to do whatever it took to be a pro baller. He practiced and practiced, but by the time he was fifteen, he realized there was no place for a slow, white Jewish kid in the NBA. So he found another way to channel his obsession with sports: talking trash. In This Book Has Balls , Rapaport uses his signature smack-talk style and in-your-face humor to discuss everything from why LeBron will never be like Mike, that Tiger needs the ladies to get his golf game back, and how he once thought Mary Lou Retton was his true love. And, of course, why next year will be the year the New York Knicks win the championship. This book is a series of rants—some controversial, some affectionate, but all incredibly hilarious.

In The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, master anthologist John Gross brings together a delectable smorgasbord of literary tales, offering striking new insight into some of the most important writers in history. Many of the anecdotes here are funny, others are touching, outrageous, sinister, inspiring, or downright weird. They show writers from Chaucer to Bob Dylan acting both unpredictably and deeply in character. The range is wide--this is a book which finds room for Milton and Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, Kurt Vonnegut and P. G. Wodehouse, Chinua Achebe and Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin and Tom Wolfe. It is also a book in which you can find out which great historian's face was once mistaken for a baby's bottom, which film star experienced a haunting encounter with Virginia Woolf not long before her death, and what Agatha Christie really thought of her popular character Hercule Poirot. It is in short an unrivalled collection of literary gossip offering intimate glimpses into the lives of authors ranging from Shakespeare to Philip Roth--a book not just for lovers of literature, but for anyone with a taste for the curiosities of human nature.

"Anyone who knows Jay Horwitz knows he loves stories and has a wealth of them to share. As the beloved, longtime PR director for the New York Mets, he has witnessed and quietly shaped some of the most memorable moments in team history, becoming a trusted friend and mentor to generations of players, from Darryl Strawberry to Jacob deGrom. In this fascinating memoir, Horwitz tells the unlikely story of a childhood dream come true, offering an unparalleled insider's perspective on four dynamic and unpredictable decades of Mets baseball. Featuring reflections and anecdotes only Horwitz can tell, on subjects ranging from clubhouse hijinks to the chaotic New York media scene to navigating moments of greatness and defeat, Mr. Met is a remarkable behind-the-scenes ride that fans will not want to miss"--

"The passion for gardening and the passion for words come together in this inspired anthology, a collection of essays and poems on topics as diverse as beans and roses, by writers who garden and gardeners who write"--

A marvelous anthology from the editors of Las Christmas —the bestselling author of When I Was Puerto Rican and the founder of L.A. Weekly —in which our most acclaimed Latino authors share unforgettable memories of their mothers. The women lovingly portrayed in Las Mamis represent a cross section of Latino life and culture. They come from rich families in the big cities of Latin America, from rural immigrant families, and from the worlds in between—and they share an extraordinary inner strength, often maintained against incredible odds. Pressed by conflicting cultural expectations, circumstance, and religion, they have managed the challenges of motherhood, leaving enduring legacies for their children. Now, in these vivid, poignant, and sometimes hilarious reminiscences—all of them infused with distinct sabor latino— Las Mamis celebrates the universality of family love and the special bond between mothers and children. Contributors include: Esmeralda Santiago, Piri Thomas, Marjorie Agosin, Junot Diaz, Alba Ambert, Liz Balmaseda, Mandalit del Barco, Gioconda Belli, Maria Escandon, Dagoberto Gilb, Francisco Goldman, Jaime Manrique, Gustavo Perez-Firmat, Ilan Stavans.

Eighteen holes worth of laughs from one of America's favorite joke collectors. Wilde captures the between-putt yuks and long-drive laughs in this hilarious joke book that will be appreciated by anyone who's ever played the game.

In this engaging memoir, Elissa Altman, author of the popular Poor Man's Feast blog, chronicles her lifelong relationship with all things culinary, and the transformation she experiences -- from culinary trend-aholic to a champion of simplicity -- when she finally finds love. Short chapters sprinkled with recipes show that living and eating well are much simpler than we might think --

A celebration of the relationships that bring us strength, purpose, and joy Ties That Bind honors the people who nourish and strengthen us. StoryCorps founder Dave Isay draws from ten years of the revolutionary oral history project’s rich archives, collecting conversations that celebrate the power of the human bond and capture the moment at which individuals become family. Between blood relations, friends, coworkers, and neighbors, in the most trying circumstances and in the unlikeliest of places, enduring connections are formed and lives are forever changed. The stories shared in Ties That Bind reveal our need to reach out, to support, and to share life’s burdens and joys. We meet two brothers, separately cast out by their parents, who reconnect and rebuild a new family around each other. We encounter unexpected joy: A gay woman reveals to her beloved granddaughter that she grew up believing that family was a happiness she would never be able to experience. We witness lifechanging friendship: An Iraq war veteran recalls his wartime bond with two local children and how his relationship with his wife helped him overcome the trauma of losing them. Against unspeakable odds, at their most desperate moments, the individuals we meet in Ties That Bind find their way to one another, discovering hope and healing. Commemorating ten years of StoryCorps, the conversations collected in Ties That Bind are testament to the transformational power of listening.

This collection of 101 stories of love and sacrifice provides emotional and practical resources to sustain the family caregiver. These revealing stories from people of all ages who take care of family members, at home or in outside facilities, are filled with emotional support and practical advice. You’ll be inspired and feel appreciated as you read all 101 of these personal glimpses into the lives of other family caregivers, including: How Joan Lunden manages the care of her mother at the same time she is raising young children, as part of the Sandwich Generation. How Jill Eikenberry and Michael Tucker moved Jill’s elderly mother in next door—they eat family meals together, prepared by their daughter. How Leeza Gibbons’ mother planned for her Alzheimer’s disease, and Leeza’s tips on how to accept and manage the diagnosis and care. How Gail Sheehy navigated the caregiving maze during her husband’s battle with cancer, and the 9 emotional stages of the family caregiver. How Dr. Alexis Abramson became her grandmother’s full-time caregiver at age 22, a real-life experience that led to a Ph.D. in Gerontology.

"Here is the story of how two people most influenced Feynman's early years-his father, who taught him to think, and his first wife Arlene who taught him to love, even as she lay dying in an Albuquerque hospital while Feynman worked nearby, on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. And here are lighter moments, some told through letters, as Feynman reports from Geneva, Trinidad, Greece, and Japan on the effects this curious character has had on the locals. The second half of the book...is Feynman's behind-the-scenes account of the investigation that followed the space shuttle Challenger's explosion in January 1986"--Jacket.

"Anyone who has ever fallen hopelessly in love with a dog will know they have the capacity to love us back unconditionally, welcome us home with unbridled excitement, forgive us endlessly for our impatience, comfort us when we're feeling low, then play games with wholehearted contentment - bringing endless joy to our lives .The sheer zest for embracing life in all its fullness is something at which we humans can only marvel. But can our dogs teach us to approach life in this full, technicolour way too? How to love and care for one another with unconditional acceptance, about being fully present in each other's company, more mindful of the beauty of the natural world around us, how to comfort each other in grief or fear, and how to let excitement and joy bubble over in our hearts. All these things dogs do instinctively and more naturally than their human friends - yet they love us just the same. And in this charming and entertaining story of his beloved canine companion, Jonathan Wittenberg shares with dog lovers everwhere his inability to resist the big, brown-eyed look which says, 'I'll melt your heart if you even think of going out without me', to the security he feels on a twenty-mile trek across the bleak Scottish Highlands with not a soul for a friend but his collie - and everything else he's learned along the way."--Publisher's description.

"Do intellectuals love genocide? Is assassination pleasurable? What links Hugo Chávez, Vladimir Putin and Ken Saro-Wiwa? Should 12-year-olds be allowed sex change operations? Now that IVF makes it possible, might 70-year-old women make excellent mothers? These are just a few of the social, political and philosophical questions addressed in Anything Goes, the latest collection of Theodore Dalrymple's essays. From political correctness among doctors to the ruinous failures of the World Health Organisation, from rioting youths in Paris to drug addiction in Georgia, and from the end of free speech to the strange fury of evangelical atheists, Dalrymple's beautiful writing is food for the mind." -- from publisher description.

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.

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.

20 Writers Play Ball in 17 New Essays and 3 Classics. Stefan Fatsis sends his ?stunningly perfect, consummately perfect, why-would-anyone-use-anything-else? perfect” glove to be restored by the Glove Designer at Rawlings; Susan Perabo considers retiring from her imaginary career in the majors and assesses the likelihood of women finding actual careers on the baseball field; Sean Wilentz imagines a Cooperstown Fans’ Hall of Fame, with its cowbells, frying pans, bedsheet banners, and more. And in one of the three previously published, now-classic pieces in the collection, George Plimpton reflects on the slow demotion of aging or slumping players from pitcher to first base, to the outfield. United by the authors’ fervent love of the game, these essays remind us of the unique role baseball plays in our national history and collective imagination.

For two decades Npr commentator Andrei Codrescu has been living in and writing about his adopted city, where, as he puts it, the official language is dreams. How apt that a refugee born in Transylvania found his home in a place where vampires roam the streets and voodoo queens live around the corner; where cemeteries are the most popular picnic spots, the ghosts of poets, prostitutes, and pirates are palpable, and in the French Quarter, no one ever sleeps. Codrescu's essays have been called "satirical gems," "subversive," "sardonic and stunning," "funny," "gonzo," "wittily poignant," and "perverse"-here is a writer who perfectly mirrors the wild, voluptuous, bohemian character of New Orleans itself. This retrospective follows him from newcomer to near native: first seduced by the lush banana trees in his backyard and the sensual aroma of coffee at the café down the block, Codrescu soon becomes a Window Gang regular at the infamous bar Molly's on Decatur, does a stint as King of Krewe de Vieux Carré at Mardi Gras, befriends artists, musicians, and eccentrics, and exposes the city's underbelly of corruption, warning presciently about the lack of planning for floods in a city high on its own insouciance. Alas, as we all now know, Paradise is lost.New Orleans, Mon Amour is an epic love song, a clear-eyed elegy, a cultural celebration, and a thank-you note to New Orleans in its Golden Age.

"In these 23 original stories, mothers and fathers from all walks of life - straight, gay, single, surrogate, biological, adoptive - explore the challenges and rewards of parenthood. Here, among other adventures, parents fall hopelessly in love with newborns, secretly fear having made huge mistakes, race to finish birthing at home before the paramedics arrive, struggle with the bureaucracy of international adoption, despair of ever getting a one-year-old to nap, are nearly broken by colic, encounter other judgy parents in birthing class, learn how to parent children with special needs, and more. Together, these thoughtful, searing, often hilarious essays map the grand (and sometimes terrifying) journey that begins with each new life."--Page 4 of cover.

The very real but unlikely story of a Jewish kid from Brooklyn who—through a truly unusual series of events—became a Latin music legend. His is an unlikely story. A musical story. A New York story. A spiritual story. An amazing improbable journey that crosses cultural borders. The story of Larry Harlow, “El Judio Maravilloso,” (The Marvelous Jew) who grew up in one world—a Yiddish-speaking Jewish household in Brooklyn—and ventured into another, far different one, pre-Castro Cuba. Born Lawrence Ira Kahn, Harlow comes from a family of musicians. His mother was an opera singer; his grandfather played piano for silent films and in the Yiddish theater; and his father was a vaudevillian and orchestra leader who used the stage name Buddy Harlowe, and for many years led the house band at the Latin Quarter nightclub. It was summering at Jewish camps in the Catskills as a young boy where Harlow first acquired a taste for clave. He enrolled at Brooklyn College to study music, but his love for Latin culture and sound eventually led him to pre-Castro Havana, where he attended music classes by day and hung out in clubs and dance halls at night. When dangerous circumstances forced Harlow to leave Havana, he took with him a treasure trove of tapes and a deeper understanding of music with African roots and spiritual rhythms. He returned to a New York of John Coltrane, Bob Dylan, and Allen Ginsberg, bringing with him the sounds and music that no one else was playing. He was signed by Fania Records, a fledgling label that would become the Motown of Latin music, in large measure due to Larry’s role as its creative architect. There, as both a recording artist and record producer, he combined his strong classical and jazz background with his love of Cuban music, and became one of the creators of a unique New York sound that would captivate the world, and become known as salsa. With his groundbreaking salsa opera Hommy , Harlow helped rejuvenate the career of Celia Cruz. His influence, however, did not stop there. He has inspired successful Cuban musicians including Gloria Estefan, Arturo Sandoval, Buena Vista Social Club, and many, many more. This is, simply put, the unlikely tale of how a Jewish kid from Brooklyn grew up to become a Latin music legend.

Dear Former Campers, Do you recall your glory days at summer camp as some of the best months of your life? Was your camp experience *OK *fun *bunktastic! When you think about camp, what are your best memories? *singing "If I Had a Hammer" around the campfire *winning color war two years in a row *getting to third base with your camp crush Open Camp Camp and head back to the one place on earth where appropriated Native American terminology, competitive sports, social heirarchy, and libido-soaked nights lived in wholesome harmony. Here is your trip down memory lane, a trip so beautifully illustrated and fully remembered that you can almost smell the pine of the cabins when you open the pages. Camp Camp is a love letter to camp, a chance to relive every Champion sweatshirt-wearing, accidental-bed-wetting, sky-hook-wedgie-receiving, tie-dye-making golden moment via hundreds of photographs and stories straight from the source, including tall tales from AJ Jacobs, Rachel Sklar, Paul Feig, David Wain, Jamie Denbo, and Rodney Rothman. Do you miss... *camp friendships *camp freedom *camp fun If so, then Camp Camp is your one-way ticket back to this magical world in which Fantasy Island met Lord of the Flies.

The man can't help it. Self-parody, sending up other peoples' expectations, a love of the absurd...Gough's still going strong. To mark another birthday, this book brings together Life With Gough and the best of Whitlam to Winston with some additional Gough stories to present a bumper edition of The Complete (almost!) Gough. So, once again, here's a larger-than-life Australian, infuriatingly high-falutin' and bizarrely prurient, inflating himself above politics, enjoying himself hugely at the expense of the mean-spirited, the pompous, the ingratiating, the serious and the dull.