"Behind all the noise and the numbers, we shouldn't forget that no one gets this big without amazing natural storytelling talent--which is what James Patterson has, in spades. The Alex Cross series proves it."--Lee Child
"It's no mystery why James Patterson is the world's most popular thriller writer: his uncanny skill in creating living, breathing characters we truly feel for and seamless, lightning-fast plots. I do this for a living, and he still manages to keep me guessing from the first to last page. Simply put: Nobody does it better."--Jeffery Deaver ―
"James Patterson is The Boss. End of."--Ian Rankin
James Patterson received the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community as the 2015 National Book Awards. Patterson holds the Guinness World Record for the most #1 New York Times bestsellers. His books have sold more than 325 million copies worldwide.
"Misdirection and plot twists abound. Timely and relevant. Another strong entry from the always-reliable Deaver."―Booklist
PRAISE FOR THE STEEL KISS:
"Deaver is a genius when it comes to manipulation and deception. Stellar plot twists are in full abundance in THE STEEL KISS, and the story line veers in several unpredictable directions."―Associated Press
"Deaver doesn't disappoint. With an unmatched ability to create the perfect characters...Deaver takes fans to the edge in this one and dangles them over the cliff...One of the best books of 2016."―Suspense Magazine
"Darkly witty...unsettling."―New York Times Book Review
"Fiendishly inventive...all the usual thrills, which are worth every breathless minute."―Kirkus Reviews
"Clever...entertaining...Convincing characters and an unexpected closing twist will remind readers why Deaver is one of today's top thriller writers."―Publishers Weekly
"[THE STEEL KISS is] like a master class in how to perfectly balance plot and character....A terrific novel."―Connecticut News
Jeffery Deaver is the #1 international bestselling author of more than thirty novels, three collections of short stories, and a nonfiction law book. His books are sold in 150 countries and translated into 25 languages. He's received or been shortlisted for a number of awards around the world. A former journalist, folksinger, and attorney, he was born outside of Chicago and has a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Missouri and a law degree from Fordham University. You can visit his website at www.JefferyDeaver.com.
'provide jargon-free, no-nonsense, practical tips... these books are ideal for people who live busy lives who want easy-to-follow, accessible advice.' The Jewish Vegetarian ' a series of 50 things you can do today to manage... And there are 10 topics to date. They are fascinating books and I reckon there should be enough in there for me to banish my woes. So by my reckoning that is 500 things I can do to sort myself out.' -- Paul Watson The Hartlepool Mail
Wendy Green is a health project coordinator and health promoter.
Sandy C. Newbigging is the creator and award-winning trainer of Mind Calm Meditation, Body Calm Meditation, and the Mind Detox Method, and the bestselling author of six books. Sandy runs residential retreats internationally and trains coaches through his CALM Academy. www.sandynewbigging.com
Marie Bostwick is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of novels about family, relationships, and women’s friendships. She was born and raised in the northwest, but in the three decades since her marriage, Marie and her family have lived in 8 different states at 18 different addresses. These experiences have given Marie a unique perspective that enables her to write about people from all walks of life and corners of the country with insight and authenticity. Marie currently resides in Oregon, where she enjoys writing, spending time with family, gardening, collecting fabric, and stitching quilts. Visit her at mariebostwick.com.
"Steel pulls out all the emotional stops….She delivers!" --Publishers Weekly
"Steel is one of the best!" --LA Times
"What counts for the reader is the ring of authenticity." --San Francisco Chronicle
Danielle Steel has been hailed as one of the world’s most popular authors, with over 650 million copies of her novels sold. Her many international bestsellers include Dangerous Games, The Mistress,The Award, Rushing Waters, Magic, The Apartment, Property of a Noblewoman, and other highly acclaimed novels. She is also the author of His Bright Light, the story of her son Nick Traina’s life and death; A Gift of Hope, a memoir of her work with the homeless; Pure Joy, about the dogs she and her family have loved; and the children’s books Pretty Minnie in Paris and Pretty Minnie in Hollywood.
The Digestive Health Solution - Expanded & Updated 2nd Edition: Your personalized five-step plan for inside-out digestive wellness Livre pdf gratuit
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"The talented Ben Brown has taken the reader through the trenches of the digestive terrain in a way that is multi-faceted, personalised, and most of all, solves the problem!" - Deanna Minich, PhD, functional nutritionist, author, and founder of Food & Spirit
"The Digestive Health Solution offers a proven, practical, step-by-step approach to understanding, controlling and reversing Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Ben Brown has combined all the best natural approaches into a logical, easy-to-follow program." - Leo Galland, MD, F.A.C.P., F.A.C.N., Author of The Fat Resistance Diet, Director of The Foundation for Integrated Medicine
"The Digestive Health Solution is an outstanding synthesis of cutting edge research, a timely book that stands apart from the hype and pop nutritional fads. Ben Brown has established himself as a trusted authority, a researcher and clinician dedicated to sound nutritional pproaches in complex cases. Ben captures the reader immediately with raw honesty as he describes his own experiences; he then proceeds to expertly navigate difficult discussions in a beautifully written, crystal clear manner - a reader-friendly resource, providing guidance that matters." - Alan C. Logan, ND, co-Author, Your Brain on Nature
"One of the biggest issues in the world today is poor gut health - it's at the root of just about every chronic health condition. The talented Ben Brown has taken the reader through the trenches of the digestive terrain in a way that is multi-faceted, personalized, and most of all, solves the problem! A must read for all." - Deanna Minich, PhD, functional nutritionist, author, and founder of Food & Spirit
Benjamin Brown is a naturopath, science writer and speaker. He is a lecturer and on the advisory boards at the UK College of Nutrition and Health (BCNH) and guest lectures at various educational institutions and in university settings. Ben regularly speaks at major conferences and delivers continuing professional development courses on integrative medicine.
Written in a succinct format, this book presents a variety of pain conditions seen in acute or sub-acute rehabilitation hospitals and in outpatient clinical settings. Bio-medical and bio-psychosocial perspectives, as well as theory, clinical practice, and practical aspects of managing pain are offered throughout this volume. Chapters are organized by sections, beginning with an introduction to pain as well use of the multi-disciplinary treatment approach. Additional sections cover headache management, pain diagnostics, medication management, rehabilitation, injections and procedures, behavioral management, complementary and alternative medicine, neuromoduation, neuroablation, surgical management of pain, and novel techniques. Business and legal perspectives of pain medicine are also addressed.
Comprehensive Pain Management in the Rehabilitation Patient is a handy resource for any medical, interventional, surgical, rehabilitative, behavioral, or allied health provider who treats pain across the rehabilitation continuum.
Alexios Carayannopoulos, DO, MPH Clinical Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery Director, Comprehensive Spine Center Division Director, Rehabilitation, Pain Medicine Department of Neurosurgery Warren Alpert School of Medicine, Brown University Rhode Island Hospital Providence, RI, 02903 Alexios Carayannopoulos, DO, MPH, is an osteopathic physician who is board certified in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation as well as Pain Medicine. He is the medical director of Lahey Hospital & Medical Center's Spine Center, which specializes in comprehensive spine care including surgical and non-surgical approaches. He completed his residency at Harvard Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and Mass General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. He completed his fellowship in the Department of Anesthesia at Dartmouth Medical School and Mary Hitchcock Hospital in Hanover, New Hampshire. Additionally, Dr. Carayannopoulos is a Harvard trained medical acupuncturist and US Navy trained specialist in Diving and Undersea Medicine. He is a 12 year veteran of the US Navy Medical Corps. Dr. Carayannopoulos is proficient in Greek, French, Spanish, and Italian.
An Amazon Best Book of May 2016: The premise of Louise Erdrich’s stunning La Rose is provocative. A man goes deer hunting and accidentally shoots and kills his neighbor’s son; so consumed by guilt and sorrow, the man and his wife agree to give their son LaRose to the distraught neighbor to raise. It was their penance, as both Catholics and Ojibwe. From this shocking and painful beginning, Louise Erdrich spins an amazing, complex tale of love, family, obligation; the book moves among generations and eras (La Rose is a family name that has been used by both males and females), arriving at a present day conclusion that is both thoroughly modern and rooted in indigenous culture. This is Erdrich at her best, weaving together Native American and white culture, the strands of America. But what makes this book particularly strong – and what even those of us who love Erdrich’s books can sometimes forget – is what a beautiful writer she is. One character is “a branchy woman, lovely in her angularity.” She also can be wryly observant – “suddenly it seemed everyone was saying it is what it is…as though this was a wise saying.” And her depiction of a kind of practical joke two kids play with a school bus is equal parts joyful and terrifying. If you haven’t read Erdrich before, LaRose is a good a place to start; if you have, you won’t want to skip this lovely, smart addition to the canon. --Sara Nelson
Erdrich spins a powerful, resonant story with masterly finesse. As in The Round House, she explores the quest for justice and the thirst for retribution. Again, the setting—a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation and a nearby town—adds complexity to the plot. Landreaux Iron, an Ojibwe man, accidentally shoots and kills the five-year-old son of his best friend, farmer Peter Ravich, who is not a member of the tribe. After a wrenching session with his Catholic priest, Father Travis, and a soul-searching prayer in a sweat lodge, Landreaux gives his own five-year-old son, LaRose, to grieving Peter and his wife, Nola, who is half-sister to Landreaux's own wife, Emmaline. In the years that follow, LaRose becomes a bridge between his two families. He also accesses powers that have distinguished his namesakes in previous generations, when LaRose was "a name both innocent and powerful, and had belonged to the family's healers." Erdrich introduces this mystical element seamlessly, in the same way that LaRose and other Ojibwes recognize and communicate with "the active presence of the spirit world." The magical aspects are lightened by scenes of everyday life: old ladies in an assisted-living home squabble about sex; teenage girls create their own homemade beauty spa. Erdrich raises suspense by introducing another, related act of retribution, culminating in a memorable and satisfying ending. (May)\n
“A masterly tale of grief and love…Erdrich never missteps…The recurring miracle of Erdrich’s fiction is that nothing feels miraculous in her novels. She gently insists that there are abiding spirits in this land and alternative ways of living and forgiving that have somehow survived the West’s best efforts to snuff them out.” (Washington Post)
“The rewards of LAROSE lie in the quick unraveling and the slow reconstruction of these lives to a moment when animosities resolve, like shards of glass in a kaleidoscope, into clarity and understanding...Told with constraint and conviction...” (Los Angeles Times)
“You’re going to want to take your time with this book, so lavish in its generational scope, its fierce torrent of wrongs and its luxurious heart. Anyway, you may have no choice, as you fall under the spell of a master… Like Toni Morrison, like Tolstoy, like Steinbeck, Erdrich writes her characters with a helpless love and witnesses them with a supreme absence of judgment…[a] beautiful novel.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
“Remarkable…As the novel draws to a conclusion, the suspense is ratcheted up, but never at the expense of Erdrich’s reflective power or meditative lyricism…One of Erdrich’s finest achievements.” (Boston Globe)
“Incandescent…Erdrich has always been fascinated by the relationship between revenge and justice, but…LaRose comes down firmly on the side of forgiveness. Can a person do the worst possible thing and still be loved? Erdrich’s answer is a resounding yes.” (New York Times Book Review, front page review)
“...a magnificent, sorrowful tale of justice, retribution, and love.” (Vanity Fair)
“[Erdrich] has laid out one of the most arresting visions of America in one of its most neglected corners, a tableaux on par with Faulkner, a place both perilous and haunted, cursed and blessed.” (Chicago Tribune)
“…[a] sad, wise, funny novel, in which [Erdrich] takes the native storytelling tradition that informs her work and remakes it for the modern world, stitching its tattered remnants into a vibrant living fabric.” (Minneapolis Star Tribune)
“…[a] superb new novel…[Erdrich immerses] us in this remarkable world so thoroughly, so satisfyingly…” (Miami Herald)
“Erdrich’s richly layered tale brings a host of fascinating characters to life as it builds to its haunting resolution.” (People)
“Breathtaking…[LaRose] may be her most graceful creation…The recurring miracle of Erdrich’s fiction is that nothing feels miraculous in her novels. She gently insists there are abiding spirits in this land and alternative ways of living and forgiving that have somehow survived the West’s best efforts to snuff them out.” (Denver Post)
“Told with aching understanding…This timeless 15th novel stands as one of Erdrich’s best: comprehending and comprehensive, full of cascading, resonant details punctuated with spiky humor.” (Kansas City Star)
“Erdrich’s created an entire world, a realm bristling with a sense of place, where plots unwind and surprise, the spirit world suffuses everyday existence, and the past is as much a part of the present as breathing…magnificent…It is Erdrich at the top of her form.” (Providence Journal)
“A powerful evocation of two families’ struggle to overcome misfortune..” (Houston Chronicle)
“…a brutal, ultimately buoyant dramatization of the way unexpected kinships heal us.” (O, the Oprah Magazine)
“Mesmerizing… Throughout her body of work, Erdrich has woven complex narratives with rich character detail and the cultural traditions of her Native American background. In LaRose, her greatest strengths are on display as all these strands come together under her masterful control.” (Chapter 16)
“Erdrich suffuses the book with her particular sort of magic-an ability to treat each character with singular care, weaving their separate journeys flawlessly throughout the larger narrative, and making each person’s pain feel achingly real. All the while, she adds new depth to timeless concepts of revenge, culture, and family.” (Entertainment Weekly)
“A complex tapestry of retribution and acceptance…Ever the master of emotions, Erdrich…incorporates elements of guilt, justice and atonement.” (Bookreporter.com)
“In someone else’s hands, this might turn out to be a stark morality tale or a pure tearjerker. In Louise Erdrich’s, it’s something else altogether… a novel more generous and less predictable than might be expected, where revenge and human planning in general take second place to life working itself out in ways that no one human can predict or control.” (The Columbus Dispatch)
“Louise Erdrich’s latest novel LAROSE is, as usual, a gift to treasure… Erdrich writes about reconnection and reconciliation with such purity and precision, she’ll crack your heart right open, then mend it with care and leave your whole soul singing with joy.” (Buzzfeed)
“A fiercely resonant exploration of love, loss, and the tangled ties that bind.” (Entertainment Weekly, "Best Books of 2016 so far...")
“Electrifying...Louise Erdrich’s...most brilliant novel. (The Twin Cities Pioneer Press)
“A stunning novel…A heartbreaking tale of love, family, and obligation that spans generations.” (Real Simple)
“…[a] meditative, profoundly humane story…Electric, nimble, and perceptive, this novel is about ‘the phosphorous of grief’ but also, more essentially, about the emotions men need, but rarely get, from one another.” (Kirkus Reviews (starred review))
“The radiance of this many-faceted novel is generated by Erdrich’s tenderness for her characters…magnificent…a brilliantly imagined and constructed saga of empathy, elegy, spirituality, resilience, wit, wonder, and hope that will stand as a defining master work of American literature for generations to come.” (Booklist (starred review))
“Erdrich spins a powerful, resonant story with masterly finesse…memorable and satisfying.” (Publishers Weekly Starred Pick of the Week)
“Backman is a masterful writer, his characters familiar yet distinct, flawed yet heroic. . . There are scenes that bring tears, scenes of gut-wrenching despair, and moments of sly humor. . .Like Friday Night Lights, this is about more than youth sports; it's part coming-of-age novel, part study of moral failure, and finally a chronicle of groupthink in which an unlikely hero steps forward to save more than one person from self-destruction. A thoroughly empathetic examination of the fragile human spirit, Backman's latest will resonate a long time.” (Kirkus Reviews)
“[It's] Backman’s rich characters that steal the show, and his deft handling of tragedy and its effects on an insular town. While the story is dark at times, love, sacrifice, and the bonds of friendship and family shine through ultimately offering hope and even redemption.” (Publishers Weekly)
Fredrik Backman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, as well as a novella, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer. His books are published in more than thirty-five countries. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden, with his wife and two children. His new novel, Beartown, will be published in April 2017.
Lang Leav is an international best-selling author and social media sensation. She is the winner of a Qantas Spirit of Youth Award and coveted Churchill Fellowship. Her books continue to top bestseller charts in bookstores worldwide and Lullabies, was the 2014 winner of the Goodreads Choice award for poetry.
Lang has been featured in various publications including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Straits Times, The Guardian and The New York Times. She currently resides in New Zealand with her partner and fellow author Michael Faudet.
Praise for Elizabeth Strout’s My Name Is Lucy Barton
“There is not a scintilla of sentimentality in this exquisite novel. Instead, in its careful words and vibrating silences, My Name Is Lucy Barton offers us a rare wealth of emotion, from darkest suffering to . . . simple joy.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Spectacular . . . My Name Is Lucy Barton is smart and cagey in every way. It is both a book of withholdings and a book of great openness and wisdom. . . . [Strout] is in supreme and magnificent command of this novel at all times.”—The Washington Post
“My Name Is Lucy Barton is a short novel about love, particularly the complicated love between mothers and daughters, but also simpler, more sudden bonds. . . . It evokes these connections in a style so spare, so pure and so profound the book almost seems to be a kind of scripture or sutra, if a very down-to-earth and unpretentious one.”—Newsday
“A quiet, sublimely merciful contemporary novel about love, yearning, and resilience in a family damaged beyond words.”—The Boston Globe
“Sensitive, deceptively simple . . . It is Lucy’s gentle honesty, complex relationship with her husband, and nuanced response to her mother’s shortcomings that make this novel so subtly powerful. . . . My Name Is Lucy Barton—like all of Strout’s fiction—is more complex than it first appears, and all the more emotionally persuasive for it.”—San Francisco Chronicle
Elizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Olive Kitteridge; the #1 New York Times bestseller My Name Is Lucy Barton;The Burgess Boys, a New York Times bestseller; Abide with Me, a national bestseller and Book Sense pick; and Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in England. Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker and O: The Oprah Magazine. Elizabeth Strout lives in New York City.
LISA SWERLING and RALPH LAZAR are famed illustrators, authors of the New York Times bestseller Me Without You, and the creators of the internationally beloved brand Happiness Is . . . . They live in Marin County, California.
Anja Reich-Osang, a Berlin native, has written for Die Zeit, Die Welt and Berliner Zeitung. She was awarded the German Reporter Award in 2012 and is currently working as senior editor at Berliner Zeitung.
Imogen Taylor is a freelance translator and academic based in Berlin. She recently translated Sascha Arango’s The Truth and Other Lies, and Melanie Raabe’s The Trap.
Konosuba: God's Blessing on This Wonderful World!, Vol. 2 (light novel): Love, Witches & Other Delusions! (Konosuba (light novel)) Ebook complet
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Natsume Akatsuki is the author of Konosuba: God's Blessing on This Wonderful World!
Kurone Mishima is the artist behind The Devil Is a Part-Timer! High School!--the high school manga spin-off of the hit light novel series The Devil is a Part-Timer!
"Richard Paul Evans has proven to be one of America’s most precious gifts... an inspirational writer who has the ability to read our very souls and heal broken hearts... His books are the ones you can’t wait to finish, but when you do, you wish you hadn’t. I suggest readers accompany Evans on The Walk." —New York Journal of Books
"Hoda and I both thoroughly enjoyed this book... The Walk is beautifully written." —Kathie Lee Gifford
Praise for THE ROAD TO GRACE
***A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER***
"There's no doubt Evans knows how to keep the pages turning. A cliff-hanger ending ups the stakes, putting Alan's journey in jeopardy and ensuring readers will come back for the fourth outing. There's no stopping now." —Booklist
"A fast and pleasurable read with plenty of local color and enough sentiment to evoke a tear or two." —Kirkus
"Though written with a religious tone, The Road to Grace is for people of all beliefs. It is an intriguing story that is simply enjoyable to read." —Deseret Morning News
Praise for WALKING ON WATER
***A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER***
"Evans moves events along at a rapid-fire pace. . . . Christoffersen's unconventional road trip travels a path of self-discovery and determination." —Publisher's Weekly
"There are humorous moments, heartwarming moments, moments of self-discovery and moments of profound wisdom." —Deseret Morning News
Richard Paul Evans is the #1 bestselling author of The Christmas Box. Each of his more than thirty novels has been a New York Times bestseller. There are more than thirty million copies of his books in print worldwide, translated into more than twenty-four languages. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Mothers Book Award, the Romantic Times Best Women’s Novel of the Year Award, the German Audience Gold Award for Romance, two Religion Communicators Council Wilbur Awards, the Washington Times Humanitarian of the Century Award and the Volunteers of America National Empathy Award. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with his wife, Keri, and their five children. You can learn more about Richard on Facebook at Facebook.com/RPEFans, or visit his website, RichardPaulEvans.com.
"The conflict between work and family is the American story, but it is nowhere else so complex as it is when the job is the presidency. In First Dads, Joshua Kendall gives us a window into the many challenges the role includes, and shows how some men have succeeded in balancing love of family and love of country, while others have tripped over the joint role. It is an engaging book, presenting the most human face that can be given to great power."―Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
"Joshua Kendall's First Dads vividly brings the personal histories of the presidents to life from a new angle - their experiences as fathers. With meticulous research, he draws connections between presidential parenting styles and governing policies. First Dads is a fresh and engaging take."―Jay Winik, New York Times bestselling author of April 1865: The Month That Saved America and 1944: FDR and the Year that Changed History
"Engaging...Kendall writes movingly and effectively about the parenting skills of the 43 men who have served as president."―USA Today (3 1/2 stars)
"Anecdote-packed...Provides delightful peeks at life inside the White House...Kendall is good at linking a president's strengths or failures as a parent to his success or failure at governing...FIRST DADS provides a valuable reminder that while an American president may have the clout to launch spaceships and end world wars, that doesn't mean he can get his children to behave, be happy or even return his phone calls. In fact, when it comes to parenthood--that great, humbling equalizer--the most intelligent and powerful men on earth seem to flounder and fail even more than the rest of us."―New York Times Book Review
"In FIRST DADS, Joshua Kendall opens a window into the inner lives of our presidents in ways that tell us a lot about both their approach to parenting and their approach to the presidency. The view is often moving and always illuminating."―The Washington Times
"Kendall takes readers behind the scenes to reveal their private parenting techniques, using interviews, letters, and diaries to access a world that few have seen...Kendall's research puts all the presidents and their parenting practices in perspective, giving readers great insight into these men and their children. Rich in detail, this informative book gives new understanding to our nation's leaders and their offspring."―Kirkus Reviews
"Fascinating...This inspiring title is likely to appeal to many different readers. History buffs, U.S. presidential scholars, and Dad on Father's Day will all relish this walk though time and the shared experience of parenting."―Library Journal
"What kind of a father is a man? The question is so basic and potentially revealing of character, yet most presidential biographers barely discuss it. With insight, grace, and wit, Josh Kendall delves deeply into the fascinating and often fraught relationships of presidents and their progeny. An illuminating and highly readable book."―Evan Thomas, New York Times bestselling author Being Nixon and Ike's Bluff
"Josh Kendall's First Dads is a fascinating look at how U.S. presidents were influenced-for better or worse-by their experiences as a father. Kendall has a gift for writing lively anecdotes, which keeps his narrative hopping. It's an indispensable book...Highly recommended!"―Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author of Cronkite and The Wilderness Warrior
"Joshua Kendall's First Dads is a comprehensive and always entertaining guide to a little noticed aspect of the American presidency-the family lives of our founding and presiding fathers. Based on extensive research, including interviews with surviving daughters and sons, which reveals a link between parenting and governing styles, First Dads is bound to influence the conversation during this election year. In our age of helicopter parenting, it's both refreshing and instructive to follow Kendall's parade of presidential dads who often coaxed their kids to march to the beat of their own unbridled ambitions."―Megan Marshall, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life
"From George Washington onward, Americans have treated our presidents as a kind of national father figure, but rarely have we looked at them as actual fathers. In First Dads, Joshua Kendall shows how the parenting styles of the presidents reveal hidden aspects of their public characters and political decision-making, and offers intriguing insights into the complex relationships between family life and the pursuit of power."―Debby Applegate, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher
"Joshua Kendall's First Dads gives us a unique glimpse into the usually secretive lives of presidents and their children. Here you will discover that John Tyler cut seven children out of his will. And that John Quincy Adams was a "tiger dad" obsessed with pushing his children to greatness. And that Truman doted on his daughter Margaret. Fascinating stuff."―Paul Raeburn, author of Do Fathers Matter? and The Game Theorist's Guide to Parenting
"Here, for the first time is a fast-paced narrative concentrating on the presidents, their politics and their parenting. First Dads oftentimes is compelling in its accounts of the sometimes heroic and sometimes destructive behavior of the presidents and their families."―Irwin F. Gellman, author of The President and the Apprentice
"Joshua Kendall's fascinating and magnificently researched First Dads fills a surprising gap in the study of presidential leadership. Kendall's lively anecdotes, his interviews with the children of presidents Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter, among others, and his archival research into the lives of 19th Century presidents like John Tyler and Grover Cleveland make the case that studying how the presidents have interacted with their offspring gives us important insights into how they formulate policy."
―Will Swift, author of Pat and Dick: The Nixons: An Intimate Portrait of a Marriage
"The insights into the presidents' lives (not to mention the dollops of gossip) will hold readers' interest."―Booklist
Joshua C. Kendall is the author of The Man Who Made Lists, about the creation of Roget's Thesaurus, and The Forgotten Founding Father, a biography of Noah Webster, the lexicographer responsible for Webster's Dictionary. He is also an award-winning journalist, with work in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Psychology Today, and BusinessWeek, among other publications. He is an Associate Fellow of Yale's Trumbull College.
This book presents the history of HIV/AIDS in China, which over the last three decades has been a gripping tale of exclusion and fear, and then, by turns, of involuntary tragedy, cautious experimentation and finally vigorous response. It discusses the occurrence, development and epidemic studies and also introduces China’s policies and measures to conquer this epidemic, offering readers valuable insights into China’s approach to prevention in this field.
Dr. Zunyou Wu is the Director of the National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control, Beijing, China.
Dr. Zunyou Wu is the Director of the National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control, Beijing, China.
“Outstanding.” —Gabrielle Hamilton, The New York Times Book Review
“Vivid and exquisite.” —NPR
“[A] heady first taste of self-discovery, bitter and salty and sweet.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Meticulously rendered.” —Los Angeles Times
“Ravishing. . . . It tantalizes, seduces, satisfies.” —O, The Oprah Magazine
“Smart, delicious. . . . A sexy, sweaty book of sensory overload.” —The Washington Post
“[Sweetbitter] is going to make a lot of people hungry.” .—The New York Times
“A heady mix of youth, love, gastronomic delights and determined self-invention. . . . [Danler] is a writer of prodigious talent.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A raw, shucked, pungent, wild love story.” —Marie Claire
“Sexy, astute. . . . Anyone who’s ever tied on an apron will think, ‘Finally, someone wrote a book about us.’ And nailed it.” —People
“This dynamite book is filled with the heart-wrenching indignities of self-discovery, and gives a gritty, inside look to the fast-paced, drug-filled, whirlwind scene of restaurant life.” —Bon Appétit
Stephanie Danler is a writer based in Los Angeles, California.
I
You will develop a palate.
A palate is a spot on your tongue where you remember. Where you assign words to the textures of taste. Eating becomes a discipline, language-obsessed. You will never simply eat food again.
I don’t know what it is exactly, being a server. It’s a job, certainly, but not exclusively. There’s a transparency to it, an occupation stripped of the usual ambitions. One doesn’t move up or down. One waits. You are a waiter.
It is fast money—loose, slippery bills that inflate and disappear over the course of an evening. It can be a means, to those with concrete ends and unwavering vision. I grasped most of that easily enough when I was hired at the restaurant at twenty-two.
Some of it was a draw: the money, the sense of safety that came from having a place to wait. What I didn’t see was that the time had severe brackets around it. Within those brackets nothing else existed. Outside of them, all you could remember was the blur of a momentary madness. Ninety percent of us wouldn’t even put it on a résumé. We might mention it as a tossed-off reference to our moral rigor, a badge of a certain kind of misery, like enduring earthquakes, or spending time in the army. It was so finite.
I came here in a car like everybody else. In a car filled with shit I thought meant something and shortly thereafter tossed on the street: DVDs, soon to be irrelevant, a box of digital and film cameras for a still-latent photography talent, a copy of On the Road that I couldn’t finish, and a Swedish-modern lamp from Walmart. It was a long, dark drive from a place so small you couldn’t find it on a generous map.
Does anyone come to New York clean? I’m afraid not. But crossing the Hudson I thought of crossing Lethe, milky river of forgetting. I forgot that I had a mother who drove away before I could open my eyes, and a father who moved invisibly through the rooms of our house. I forgot the parade of people in my life as thin as mesh screens, who couldn’t catch whatever it was I wanted to say to them, and I forgot how I drove down dirt roads between desiccated fields, under an oppressive guard of stars, and felt nothing.
Yes, I’d come to escape, but from what? The twin pillars of football and church? The low, faded homes on childless cul-de-sacs? Mornings of the Gazette and boxed doughnuts? The sedated, sentimental middle of it? It didn’t matter. I would never know exactly, for my life, like most, moved only imperceptibly and definitively forward.
Let’s say I was born in late June of 2006 when I came over the George Washington Bridge at seven a.m. with the sun circulating and dawning, the sky full of sharp corners of light, before the exhaust rose, before the heat gridlocked in, windows unrolled, radio turned up to some impossibly hopeful pop song, open, open, open.
SOUR: all the puckering citrus juices, the thin-skinned Meyer lemons, knobbed Kaffirs. Astringent yogurts and vinegars. Lemons resting in pint containers at all the cooks’ sides. Chef yelled, This needs acid!, and they eviscerated lemons, leaving the caressing sting of food that’s alive.
I didn’t know about the tollbooths.
“I didn’t know,” I said to the tollbooth lady. “Can’t I squeeze through this one time?”
The woman in the booth was as unmoved as an obelisk. The driver in the car behind me started honking, and then the driver behind him, until I wanted to duck under the steering wheel. She directed me to the side where I reversed, turned, and found myself facing the direction from which I had just come.
I pulled off into a maze of industrial streets, each one more misleading than the next. It was irrational but I was terrified of not being able to find an ATM and having to go all the way back. I pulled into a Dunkin’ Donuts. I took out twenty dollars and looked at my remaining balance: $146.00. I used the restroom and rinsed off my face. Almost, I said to my strained face in the mirror.
“Can I get a large iced hazelnut coffee?” I asked. The man wheezing behind the counter masticated me with his eyes.
“You’re back?” He handed me the change.
“Excuse me?”
“You were in here yesterday. You got that same coffee.”
“No. I. Did. Not.” I shook my head for emphasis. I imagined myself getting out of the car yesterday, tomorrow, and every day of my new life, pulling into the Dunkin’ Donuts in motherfucking New Jersey, and ordering that coffee. I felt sick. “I didn’t,” I said again, still shaking my head.
“I’m back, it’s me,” I said to the tollbooth woman, rolling the window down triumphantly. She raised one eyebrow and hooked her thumb into her belt loop. I handed her money like it was nothing. “Can I get in now?”
SALT: your mouth waters itself. Flakes from Brittany, liquescent on contact. Blocks of pink salt from the Himalayas, matte gray clumps from Japan. An endless stream of kosher salt, falling from Chef’s hand. Salting the most nuanced of enterprises, the food always requesting more, but the tipping point fatal.
A friend of a friend of a friend, his name was Jesse. A spare bedroom for $700 a month. A neighborhood called Williamsburg. The city was in the grips of a tyrannical heat wave, the daily papers headlined with news of people dying in Queens and the outer boroughs where there were blackouts. The cops were passing out bags of ice, an evaporating consolation.
The streets were wide and vacant and I parked my car on Roebling. It was midafternoon, there wasn’t enough shade, and every business seemed closed. I walked over to Bedford Avenue to look for signs of life. I saw a coffee shop and thought about asking if they needed a barista. When I looked through the window the kids on laptops were thin lipped, pierced, gaunt, so much older than me. I had promised myself to find work swiftly and unthinkingly—as a waitress, a barista, a whatever-the-fuck-job so I could feel planted. But when I told myself to open the door my hand objected.
The waterfront skyline was plastered with skeletons of high-rises, escalating out of the low buildings. They looked like mistakes that had been rubbed out with an eraser. Creaking above an overgrown, abandoned lot was a rusted-out Mobil gas sign—all around me ambivalent evidence of extinction.
This new roommate had left the keys at a bar near the apartment. He worked in an office in Midtown during the day and couldn’t meet me.
Clem’s was a dark spot on a bright corner, the air conditioner rumbling like a diesel motor. It anointed me with a drip when I walked in, and I stood blinking in the airstream while my eyes adjusted.
There was a bartender leaning heavily against the back counter with his boots up on the bar in front of him. He wore a patched and studded denim vest with no shirt underneath. Two women sat in front of him in yellow print dresses, twirling straws in big drinks. No one said anything to me.
“Keys, keys, keys,” he said when I asked. In addition to his body odor, which hit me in the face on my approach, this man was covered in terrifying—demonic—tattoos. The skin of his ribs seemed glued on. A mustache as defined as pigtails. He pulled out the register, threw it on the bar, and rummaged through the drawer underneath. Stacks of credit cards, foreign change, envelopes, receipts. The bills fluttered against the clamps.
“You Jesse’s girl?”
“Ha,” one of the women said from down the bar. She pressed her drink onto her forehead and rolled it back and forth. “That was funny.”
“It’s South Second and Roebling,” I said.
“Am I a fucking real estate agent?” He threw a handful of keys with plastic colored tags at me.
“Aw, don’t scare her,” the second woman said. They didn’t look like sisters exactly, but they were both fleshy, rising out of their halter necklines like figureheads on the prow of a ship. One was blond, the other brunette—and now that I was looking, their dresses were definitely identical. They murmured inside jokes to each other.
How am I going to live here? I wondered. Someone is going to have to change, them or me. I found the keys marked 220 Roebling. The bartender ducked down.
“Thank you very much, sir,” I said to the air.
“Oh, no problem, madame,” he said, popping up and batting his eyes at me. He opened a can of beer, pushed his mustache up, and ran his tongue around it while looking at me.
“Okay,” I said, backing away. “Well, maybe I’ll come in again. For like . . . a drink.”
“I’ll be here with bells on,” he said, turning his back on me. His stench lingered.
Just before I stepped out into the heat I heard one of the women say, “Oh god,” and then from that bartender: “There goes the fucking neighborhood.”
SWEET: granular, powdered, brown, slow like honey or molasses. The mouth-coating sugars in milk. Once, when we were wild, sugar intoxicated us, the first narcotic we craved and languished in. We’ve tamed, refined it, but the juice from a peach still runs like a flash flood.
I don’t remember why I went to that restaurant first.
I do remember—in perfect detail—that stretch of Sixteenth Street that gave away so little: the impersonal, midcentury teal of Coffee Shop, the battalion of dumpsters between us and Blue Water Grill, the bodega with two small card tables where they let you drink beer. Always uniformed servers buying Altoids and energy drinks.
The alley where the cooks lined up to smoke cigarettes between services, the recesses of the alley where they smoked pot and kicked at the rats tearing through the trash. And just beyond our line of vision we could sense the outlines of the scrawny park.
What did the Owner gaze at when he built it? The future.
When I got there they told me a lot of stories. Nobody went to Union Square in the eighties, they said. Only a few of the publishing houses had moved down there. That city has been replaced by another city. The Whole Foods, the Barnes & Noble, the Best Buy—they got stacked right on top of it. In Rome, they dig for a subway and find whole civilizations. With all the artists, the politicians, the tailors, the hairdressers, the bartenders. If you dug right here on Sixteenth Street you’d find us, younger, and all the stale haunts, and all the old bums in the park younger too.
What did those original servers see when they went to the first interviews in 1985? A tavern, a grill, a bistro? A mess of Italy, France, and some burgeoning American cuisine that nobody really believed in yet? A hodgepodge that shouldn’t have worked? When I asked them what they saw, they said he’d built a kind of restaurant that hadn’t been there before. They all said that when they walked in, it felt like coming home.
BITTER: always a bit unanticipated. Coffee, chocolate, rosemary, citrus rinds, wine. Once, when we were wild, it told us about poison. The mouth still hesitates at each new encounter. We urge it forward, say, Adapt. Now, enjoy it.
I smiled too much. At the end of the interview the corners of my mouth ached like stakes in a tent. I wore a black sundress and a pilled cardigan, which was the most conservative and professional thing I owned. I had a handful of résumés folded up in my purse, and my loose plan—if that’s even the right word for the hesitant brand of instinct I forced myself to follow with a sense of doom—was to walk into restaurants until I got hired. When I asked my roommate where I should look for a job, he said the best restaurant in New York City was in Union Square. Within a minute of getting off the train I developed giant wet half-moons of sweat in the cardigan, but the top of my dress was too revealing to remove it.
“Why did you choose New York?” asked Howard, the general manager.
“I thought you were going to ask me why I chose this restaurant,” I said.
“Let’s start with New York.”
I knew from books, movies, and Sex and the City how I was supposed to answer. I’ve always dreamed of living here, they say. They stress the word dreamed, lengthen it, to make it sound true.
I knew so many said: I came here to be a singer/dancer/actress/photographer/painter. In finance/fashion/publishing. I came here to be powerful/beautiful/wealthy. This always seemed to mean: I’m stopping here to become someone else.
I said, “It really didn’t feel like a choice. Where else is there to go?”
“Ah,” he said. “It’s a bit of a calling isn’t it?”
That’s all. Ah. And I felt like he understood that I didn’t have endless options, that there was only one place large enough to hold so much unbridled, unfocused desire. Ah. Maybe he knew how I fantasized about living a twenty-four-hour life. Maybe he knew how bored I had been up until now.
Howard was in his late forties with a cultivated, square face. His hair receded finely, emphasizing bulging eyes that told me he didn’t need much sleep. He stood squarely on athletic legs, balancing a prominent belly. Judicious eyes, I thought, as he tapped his fingers on the white tablecloth and assessed me.
“You have nice nails,” I said, looking at his hands.
“It’s part of the job,” he said, unswayed. “Tell me what you know about wine.”
“Oh, the basics. I’m competent in the basics.” As in I knew the difference between white and red wine and it couldn’t get more basic than that.
“For example,” he said, looking around the room as if plucking a question from the air, “what are the five noble grapes of Bordeaux?”
I pictured cartoon grapes wearing crowns on their heads, welcoming me to their châteaux—Hello, we are the noble grapes of Bordeaux, they said. I debated lying. It was impossible to know how much honesty about my ignorance would be valued.
“Mer . . . lot?”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s one.”
“Cabernet? I’m sorry, I don’t really drink Bordeaux.”
He seemed sympathetic. “Of course, it’s a bit above the average price point.”
“Yep.” I nodded. “That’s totally it.”
“What do you drink?”
My first instinct was to list the different beverages I drank on a daily basis. The noble grapes were back in my head, dancing, telling him all about my Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee.
“What do I drink when?”
“When you purchase a bottle of wine, what do you tend toward?”
I imagined myself purchasing a bottle of wine, not based on price or proximity to the checkout line, not based on what animal was on the label, but by an internal matrix of my own taste. That image was as laughable as my noble grapes, even if I was wearing a cardigan.
“Beaujolais? Is that a wine?”
“It is. Beaujolais, c’est un vin fainéant et radin.”
“Yes. That.”
“Which cru do you prefer?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, batting my eyelashes forcibly, falsely.
“Do you have any experience as a server?”
“Yes. I’ve been working at that coffee shop for years. It’s on my résumé.”
“I mean in a restaurant. Do you know what it means to be a server?”
“Yes. When the plates are ready I bring them out and serve them to customers.”
“You mean guests.”
“Guests?”
“Your guests.”
“Yes, that’s what I meant.” He scribbled on the top of my résumé. Server? Guests? What was the difference between a guest and a customer?
“It says here you were an English major.”
“Yes. I know. It’s generic.”
“What are you reading?”
“Reading?”
“What are you reading right now?”
“Is that a job question?”
“Perhaps.” He smiled. His eyes made an unabashed, slow circle around my face.
“Um. Nothing. For the first time in my life, I’m reading nothing.” I paused and looked out the window. I don’t think anyone, even my professors, had once asked me what I was reading. He was digging, and though I had no idea what he was looking for, I decided it was better to play. “You know, Howard, if I can call you that, when I was leaving for here I packed a few boxes of books. But then I really started looking at them. These books were . . . I don’t know . . . totems of who I was. . . . I . . .”
My words had a point, I had just felt the point coming, I was trying to tell him the truth. “I left them behind. That’s what I mean.”
He rested his cheek on an aristocratic hand. He listened. No, he perceived. I felt perceived. “Yes. It’s startling to look back on the passionate epiphanies of our youth. But a good sign perhaps. That our minds have changed, that we’ve evolved.”
“Or maybe it means we’ve forgotten ourselves. And we keep forgetting ourselves. And that’s the big grown-up secret to survival.”
I stared out the window. The city passed on, obliviously. If this went badly I would forget it too.
“Are you a writer?”
“No,” I said. The table came back into focus. He was looking at me. “I like books. And everything else.”
“You like everything else?”
“You know what I mean, I like it all. I like being moved.”
He made another note on my résumé.
“What do you dislike?”
“What?” I thought I’d misheard him.
“If you like being moved, what do you dislike?”
“Are these normal questions?”
“This isn’t a normal restaurant.” He smiled and crossed his hands.
“Okay.” I looked back out the window. Enough. “I don’t like that question.”
“Why?”
My palms were damp. That was the moment I realized I wanted the job. That job, at that restaurant specifically. I looked at my hands and said, “It feels a little personal.”
“All right.” He didn’t skip a beat, a quick glance at my résumé and he was on track. “Can you tell me about a problem at one of your last jobs? At that coffee shop, I suppose. Tell me about a problem there and how you solved it.”
As if I had dreamed it, the interior of the coffee shop dissolved when I tried to recall it directly. And when I tried to remember punching in there, tried to remember the sink, the register, the coffee grinds, the objects faded. And then her fat, gloating, vindictive face appeared.
“There was this awful woman, Mrs. Pound. I mean it, she was insufferable. We called her The Hammer. From the second she walked in everything was wrong, the coffee scalded her or it tasted like dirt, the music was too loud, or her blueberry muffin had poisoned her the night before. She was always threatening to shut us down, telling us to get our lawyer ready each time she bumped into a table. She wanted scrambled eggs for her dog. Never tipped us a cent. She was dreaded. But then, this was a little over a year ago, she had her foot amputated. She was diabetic. None of us ever knew, I mean, why would we know? And she would wheel by in her wheelchair and everyone was like, Finally, The Hammer is done.”
“Finally, what?” Howard asked.
“Oh, I forgot that part. We didn’t have a ramp. And there were stairs. So she was finished, more or less.”
“More or less,” he said.
“But, the real part of the story. We met eyes one day when she was wheeling by, and she was glaring, I mean, hateful. And I don’t know why, but I missed her. I missed her face. So I made her coffee and I ran after her. I wheeled her across the street to the park and she complained about everything from the weather to indigestion. From then on it was our thing. Every day. I even brought the scrambled eggs in a to-go container for her dog. My coworkers made so much fun of me.”
The Hammer’s swollen, varicosed legs. Flashing her stump at me from under her housedress. Her purple fingers.
“Does that answer your question? The problem was not having a ramp, I guess. The solution was to bring out the coffee. I’m sorry, I didn’t explain it very well.”
“I think you explained it perfectly. That was a kind thing to do.”
I shrugged. “I really liked her actually.”
The Hammer was the only impolite person I knew. She put me in that restaurant. I felt it then but didn’t understand it. It was her niece’s daughter who was a friend of a friend of my new roommate in Williamsburg. Our goodbye had been tearful—on my end, not hers. I promised to write her letters, but the weeks were eclipsing our small relationship. And as I looked at Howard and the perfectly set table and the tasteful hydrangea arrangement between us, I understood what he meant by guest, and I also knew that I would never see her again.
“Did you move here with anyone? Girlfriends? A boyfriend?”
“No.”
“That’s very brave.”
“Is it? It’s been two days and I feel pretty foolish.”
“It’s brave if you make it, foolish if you fail.”
I wanted to ask him how I would be able to tell the difference and when.
“If you’re hired here, what do you want the next year to bring you?”
I forgot that I was being interviewed. I forgot about my negative bank account, my pit stains, and the noble grapes. I said something about wanting to learn. About my work ethic.
I was never good at the future. I grew up with girls whose chief occupation was the future—designing it, instigating it. They could talk about it with so much confidence that it sounded like the past. During those talks, I had contributed nothing.
I had visions, too abstract and flat for me to hang on to. For years I saw a generic city lit up at night. I would use those remote, artificial lights to soothe myself to sleep. One day I was quitting my job with no sense of exhilaration, one day I was leaving a note for my father, pulling out of his driveway, slightly bewildered, and two days later I was sitting in front of Howard. That was the way the future came to me.
The vision that accompanied me on my drive was a girl, a lady actually. We had the same hair but she didn’t look like me. She was in a camel coat and ankle boots. A dress under the coat was belted high on her waist. She carried various shopping bags from specialty stores and as she was walking, pausing at certain windows, her coat would fly back in the wind. Her boot heels tapped on the cobblestones. She had lovers and breakups, an analyst, a library, acquaintances she ran into on the street whose names she couldn’t call to mind. She belonged to herself only. She had edges, boundaries, tastes, definition down to her eyelashes. And when she walked it was clear she knew where she was going.
As I thanked him and we reviewed my contact information, I didn’t know what had transpired, whether it was good or bad. It took me a moment to even remember the name of the restaurant. He held my hand too long and as I stood, his eyes traveled down my body, not like an employer’s, but like a man’s.
“I dislike mopping. And lying,” I said. I don’t know why. “Those are the two that come to mind.”
He nodded and smiled—what I wanted to call a private smile. The backs of my legs were damp with sweat and as I walked away I felt his eyes unabashedly on my ass. At the door, I rolled my cardigan off my shoulders, and arched as if stretching. No one knows how I got the job, but it’s better to be honest about these things.
TASTE, Chef said, is all about balance. The sour, the salty, the sweet, the bitter. Now your tongue is coded. A certain connoisseurship of taste, a mark of how you deal with the world, is the ability to relish the bitter, to crave it even, the way you do the sweet.
New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank was born and raised on Sullivans Island, South Carolina. She resides in the New York area with her husband.
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Safety, feeling at home, trust, self-confidence, creativity and comfort in exploring the world are things all children should have. From an early age, children form attachments that become the foundation for their future relationships. Strong bonds with their world (parents, educators, plants, and animals) must begin with a healthy connection to themselves. With practical tips and real-life examples from an experienced educator, this insightful book explores how the process of healthy attachment develops in young children (until six years old), what conditions are needed for becoming well bonded, and how care providers and educators can help in this important process.
Lois Eijgenraam was born in 1965 in the Netherlands. She has been a kindergarten teacher for over 30 years and also works as an educational consultant and lecturer.
Barbara Mees is a professional translator living in the Netherlands.
