Bøger udgivet af PERENNIAL

From childhood, acclaimed novelist A. Manette Ansay trained to become a concert pianist. But when she was nineteen, a mysterious muscle disorder forced her to give up the piano, and by twenty-one, she couldn't grip a pen or walk across a room. She entered a world of limbo, one in which no one could explain what was happening to her or predict what the future would hold. At twenty-three, beginning a whole new life in a motorized wheelchair, Ansay made a New Year's resolution to start writing fiction, rediscovering the sense of passion and purpose she thought she had lost for good. Thirteen years later, still without a firm diagnosis or prognosis, Ansay reflects on the ways in which the unraveling of one life can plant the seeds of another, and considers how her own physical limbo has challenged?in ways not necessarily bad?her most fundamental assumptions about life and faith.Luminously written, Limbo is a brilliant and moving testimony to the resilience of the human spirit.

More seriously funny writing from American's most trusted humor anthology Witty, wise, and just plain wonderful, the inaugural volume of this biennial, Mirth of a Nation, ensured a place for the best contemporary humor writing in the country. And with this second treasury, Michael J. Rosen has once again assembled a triumphant salute to one of America's greatest assets: its sense of humor. More than five dozen acclaimed authors showcase their hilariously inventive works, including Paul Rudnick, Henry Alford, Susan McCarthy, Media Person Lewis Grossberger, Ian Frazier, Richard Bausch, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Nell Scovell, Andy Borowitz, and Ben Greenman -- just to mention a handful so that the other contributors can justify their feelings that the world slights them. But there's more! More Mirth of a Nation includes scads of Unnatural Histories from Randy Cohen, Will Durst's "Top Top-100 Lists" (including the top 100 colors, foods, and body parts), and three unabridged (albeit rather short) chapbooks: David Bader's "How to Meditate Faster" (Enlightenment for those who keep asking, "Are we done yet?") Matt Neuman's "49 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth" (for instance, "Make your own honey" and "Share your shower.") Francis Heaney's "Holy Tango of Poetry" (which answers the question, "What if poets wrote poems whose titles were anagrams of their names, i.e., 'Toilets,' by T. S. Eliot?") And there's still more: "The Periodic Table of Rejected Elements," meaningless fables, Van Gogh's Etch A Sketch drawings, a Zagat's survey of existence, an international baby-naming encyclopedia, Aristotle's long-lost treatise "On Baseball," and an unhealthy selection of letters from Dr. Science's mailbag. And that's just for starters! Just remember, as one reviewer wrote of the first volume, "Don't drink milk while reading."

Straight from the heart?real-life couples share inspiring, edifying stories of Mars and Venus in love.Millions of readers have learned about relationships from John Gray's previous bestsellers, such as Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus; Mars and Venus on a Date; and Mars and Venus in the Bedroom. Inspired by this enthusiasm, Gray asked a number of readers to share their own stories of how they've put his principles to work in their relationships. The result is this amazing collection of first-person accounts?along with Gray's own enlightening commentary?that will have you laughing, crying, and nodding in recognition.Gray's contributors answer such questions as:What problems have you had in your relationship, and how have you overcome them?What special things do you and your partner do for each other?How do you best communicate with each other?How do you practice what you've learned?How does your love feel different now from how it felt before?Their answers illustrate more eloquently than any textbook how to use Gray's advice and counsel to create your own fulfilling, healthy, and loving relationships.

In Sherman, Lee Kennett offers a brilliant new interpretation of the general's life and career, one that probes his erratic, contradictory nature. Here we see the making of a true soldier, beginning with the frontier society and the extraordinary family from which he came, his formative years at West Point, and the critical period leading up to the Civil War. Throughout the spirited battles at Bull Run and Shiloh, the siege of Vicksburg, and ultimately, the Great March, Sherman displayed a blend of drive, determination, and mastery of detail unique in the annals of war.By drawing upon previously unexploited materials and maintaining a sharp, lively narrative, Lee Kennett presents a rich, authoritative portrait of Sherman -- the man and the soldier -- who emerges from this work more human and more fascinating than ever before.

For the sake of salt, Rome created a system of remuneration (from which we get the word salary), nomads domesticated the camel, the Low Countries revolted against their Spanish oppressors, and Gandhi marched against the British. Through the ages, salt has conferred status, preserved foods, and mingled in the blood, sweat, and tears of humankind. Today, chefs of haute cuisine covet its most exotic forms -- underground salt deposits, Hawaiian black lava salt, glittery African crystals, and pink Peruvian sea salt carried in bricks on the backs of Ilamas.From proverbs to technical arguments, from anecdotes to tales of folklore, chemist and philosopher Pierre Laszlo takes us through the kingdom of "white gold." With "enthusiasm and freshness" (Le Monde), he mixes literary analysis, history, anthropology, biology, physics, economics, art history, political science, chemistry, ethnology, and linguistics to create a full body of knowledge about the everyday substance that rocked the world and still brings zest to the ordinary.Salt is a tour de force about a substance that is one of the very foundations of civilization.

Isabelle, a woman in her thirties without any of the trappings of a grown-up life, has just been fired from her job at a San Francisco phone company. Returning to the midwestern suburb of her childhood, Standardsville, Illinois, she contends with her dating single mother, a neighbor who once appeared on The Honeymooners, and an ex-boyfriend. She also becomes a mystery shopper for a temp agency, posing as a variety of potential tenants for newly built suburban communities to access their exclusive services.Enchanted by the possiblities of disguise, Isabelle spins a web of lies that keeps the world at a distance until she unearths long-kept secrets that force her to rethink everything she thought she knew.

Known as "the Leopard," the president of Zaire for thirty-two years, Mobutu Sese Seko, showed all the cunning of his namesake -- seducing Western powers, buying up the opposition, and dominating his people with a devastating combination of brutality and charm. While the population was pauperized, he plundered the country's copper and diamond resources, downing pink champagne in his jungle palace like some modern-day reincarnation of Joseph Conrad's crazed station manager.Michela Wrong, a correspondent who witnessed Mobutu's last days, traces the rise and fall of the idealistic young journalist who became the stereotype of an African despot. Engrossing, highly readable, and as funny as it is tragic, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz assesses the acts of the villains and the heroes in this fascinating story of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A Rolls Royce Silver Cloud drove him to airports; the British film industry kowtowed to his power; the great Hollywood studios fawned at his feet.Sir Alexander Korda, one of the world's most flamboyant movie tycoons, rose from obscurity in rural Hungary to become a legendary filmmaker. With him were his brothers, Zoltan and Vincent, all living charmed lives in circles that included H. G. Wells, Sir Lawrence Olivier, Marlena Dietrich, Vivien Leigh, and Merle Oberon, who was soon to be Alex's wife. But along with Alex's flair for success was an equally powerful impulse for destruction. Now, Vincent's son, Michael Korda, in the first book of his memoirs, recalls the enchanted figures of his childhood...the glory days of the Korda brothers' great films...and then their heartbreaking, tragic end.

In this timely book, Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell investigate the mindsets of individuals involved in the death penalty -- including prison wardens, prosecutors, jurors, religious figures, governors, judges, and relatives of murder victims -- and offer a textured look at a system that perpetuates the longstanding American habit of violence. Richly rewarding and meticulously researched, Who Owns Death? explores the history of the death penalty in the United States, from hanging to lethal injection, and considers what this search for more "humane" executions reveals about us as individuals and as a society... and what the future of the death penalty holds for us all.

Diego de Godoy sets off for South America in 1518 with Cortes and the Conquistadors. During his travels he falls in love with Ignacia, a native woman who introduces him to the secrets of the most delicious drink he has ever tasted: chocolate. Tragically, their passionate affair is cut short by the chaotic conquest of Mexico. Diego later discovers that his lover had secretly added the elixir of life to his chocolate. Unable to die, he lives on through history -- Paris during the time of the Revolution, Vienna in the 19th century, late Victorian England, and Hershey, Pennsylvania -- accompanied by his trusty greyhound, Pedro. All the while, he searches to recapture the magic of Ignacia's chocolate -- and to learn to love life just as fully.Playful and intelligent, this is a romantic story about love and loss inspired by a very enchanting substance.

Porter Ellis once believed he would be a famous painter -- until a decade of eking out a living as a graphic designer crushed his dreams.Suddenly his wife, Lucy, dies of breast cancer, and Porter discovers that he can't deal with her parents. Sneaking out of town with his twelve-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son, he sets out on an adventure that he hopes will mend their broken hearts. Along the way, chance encounters with a number of eccentric and amusing characters help him realize that he must face his sorrow and restart his life.Hilarious and poignant, After Lucy is a wild ride through family relationships, emotions, and hopes for the future.

In 1851, Elanor Creesy, in a position almost unheard of for a woman in the mid-nineteenth century, served as the navigator on the maiden voyage of the clipper ship Flying Cloud -- traveling from New York to San Francisco in only eighty-nine days. This swift passage set a world record that went unbroken for more than a century. Upon arrival in San Francisco, Flying Cloud became an enduring symbol of a young nation's frontier spirit. Illustrated with original maps and charts as well as historical photographs, David Shaw's compelling narrative captures the drama of this maritime adventure.

Do You: Harbor guilt or grudges from past relationships? Feel plagued by thoughts of regret? Think "Oh, no, not again!" when personal problems arise? Wonder why life hasn't turned out the way you wanted? Feel anxious or depressed about your future? Seem to be less happy as time goes by?If you answered yes to even one of these questions, this book can help you make peace with your past -- here and now.The past lives on in everything we think, feel, say, and do. Medical studies show that adults who've had adverse or traumatic past experiences are much more vulnerable to life-threatening illnesses such as cancer and heart disease. Now, world-renowned psychiatrist Dr. Harold Bloomfield, bestselling author of Making Peace with Your Parents and Making Peace with Yourself, offers practical, scientifically proven techniques that can help you heal the wounds of the past; transform feelings of pain, shame, and blame into high self-worth; and reawaken to the magic and joy of being alive.

If you are one of the 45 million Americans suffering from chronic pain, you've most likely seen numerous doctors and tried a wide range of medicines and treatments, only to alleviate your pain. You've probably come to believe that there's nothing to be done and that your chronic pain, is, well, chronic. Now, in a groundbreaking contribution, Dr. Scott Fishman introduces an interdisciplinary pain-management approach that integrates traditional and alternative techniques including pharmcology, neuroscience, experimental precedures and mind-body medicine. For anyone who suffers from chronic pain conditions such as back pain, post-surgical pain, migraines, and arthritis, The War on Pain, with the latest research personal stories of patients, and the wise and compassionate advice of a leading pain expert, is a patient's best defense.

William Butter Yeats, who some critics feel was the greatest English language poet of our century, led a life of many contradictions. He was Ireland's most revered writer and won the Nobel Prize for Literature. But in his private life, Yeats struggled with passionate, if unrequited, relationships with women and was haunted by the spirits of his ancestors. Renowned biographer Brenda Maddox examines the poet's life through the prism of his personal obsession with the supernatural and otherworldly. She considers for the first time the Automatic Script, the trancelike communication with supposed spirits that he and his much younger wife. Georgie, conducted during the early years of their marriage. Writing with edge, wit, and energy, she finds the essential clues to Yeats's life and work in his unusual relationships with women, most particularly Maude and Iseult Gonne, his wife Georgie, and his rarely discussed mother.

NBC News correspondent Betty Rollin, glamorous, successful, and happily married, had it all -- and then she learned that she had a malignant tumor in her breast. Written with wit, warmth, and soul searching honesty, First, You Cry is the inspiring, true story about how one woman transformed the most terrifying ordeal of her life into a new beginning. Now with a new introduction and epilogue, this unique memoir serves as a fascinating retrospective of the twenty-five years since Rollin's first mastectomy and, given the continuing threat of breast cancer, tells a story that will inform all women as it touches them with its honesty and even, humor.

Here are prayers and meditations for parents and others who strive to instill values of faith, integrity, compassion, and service in our children at a time when these ideas are threatened by commercialism and violence. With warmth and conviction, Edleman shares his own prayers as well as inspirational readings from others. Turn in this book for guidelines and support--again and again.

She invites the reader into her life and into the questions raised by a crime with no obvious solutions or easy answers. We see the dimensions of a human struggle often kept hidden from view. While there are an estimated twelve million rape survivors in the United States, rape is still unspeakable, left out of our personal and cultural conversation. In Telling, Francisco has found a language for the secret grief carried by men and women who have survived rape.

Universities once believed themselves to be sacred enclaves, where students and professors could debate the issues of the day and arrive at a better understanding of the human condition. Today, sadly, this ideal of the university is being quietly betrayed from within. Universities still set themselves apart from American society, but now they do so by enforcing their own politically correct worldview through censorship, double standards and a judicial system without due process. Faculty and students who threaten the prevailing norms may be forced to undergo "thought reform."In a surreptitious about-face, universities have become the enemy of a free society, and the time has come to hold these institutions to account.The Shadow University is a stinging indictment of the covert system of justice on college campuses, exposing the widespread reliance of n kangaroo courts and arbitrary punishment to coerce students and faculty into conformity. Alan Charles Kors and Harvey A. Silverglate, staunch civil libertarians and active defenders of free inquiry on campus, lay bare the totalitarian mindset that undergirds speech codes, conduct codes, and "campus life" bureaucracies, through which a cadre of deans and counselors indoctrinate students and faculty in an ideology that favors group rights over individual rights, sacrificing free speech and academic freedom to spare the sensitivities of currently favored groups. From Maine to California, at public and private universities alike, liberty and fairness are the first casualties as teachers and students find themselves in the dock, presumed guilty until proven innocent and often forbidden to cross-examine their accusers. Kors and Silverglate introduce us to many of those who have firsthand experience of The Shadow University, including: The student at the center of the 1993 "Water Buffalo" case at the University of Pennsylvania who was brought up on charges of racial harassment after calling a group of rowdy students "water buffalo" -- even though the terms has no racial connotations.The Catholic residence adviser who was fired for refusing, on the grounds of religious conscience, to wear a symbol of lesbian and gay causes The professor who was investigated for sexual harassment when he disagreed with campus feminists about curriculum issuesThe student who was punished for laughing at a statement deemed offensive to others and who was ordered to undergo "sensitivity training" as a result.The Shadow University unmasks a chilling reality for parent who entrust their sons and daughters to the authority of such institutions, for thinking people who recognize that vigorous debate is the only sure path to truth, and for all Americans who realize that when even one citizen is deprived of liberty, we are all diminished.

Set in west Philadelphia in the early sixties, Tempest Rising tells the story of three sisters, Bliss, Victoria, and Shern, budding adolescents raised in a world of financial privilege among the upper-black-class. But their lives quickly unravel as their father's lucrative catering business collapses. He disappears and is presumed dead, and their mother suffers an apparent breakdown. The girls are wrenched from their mother, and as the novel opens they are living in foster care in a working-class neighborhood in the home of Mae, a politically connected card shark. Though Mae is filled with syrupy names like "pudding" and "doll face" for the foster girls, she is abusive to her own child, Ramona, a twenty-something stunning beauty. As Ramona struggles with Mae's abuse and her own hatred for the foster children, she also tries to keep at bay a powerful attraction she has for her boyfriend's father.Diane McKinney-Whetstone richly evokes the early 1960s in west Philadelphia in this spicy story of loss and healing, redemption and love.

The acclaimed author of "The Culture of Disbelief" proves to readers that manners matter to the future of America.

Monkey King  tells the story of 28-year-old Sally Wang, a Chinese-American woman whose mental breakdown and sojourn in a hospital set her firmly on the path of memory. Her recovery takes place against a rich tapestry of culture and personality that unfolds before our eyes under the Monkey King's ghostly shadow. For Sally has been living with a terrible family secret, one that has shattered her life. How she pulls together her Chinese and American identities into a cohesive self and rejoins the land of the living is recounted with a wry and refreshing honesty.

For years, women thought they had only two choices for menopause: avoid taking synthetic hormones altogether and suffer the occasionally debilitating effects of menopause, ranging from bone loss to sleeplessness, or accept a prescription for Premarin and Provera and with it an increased risk of some cancers. But, at this groundbreaking book proves, there is a better, safer, more effective way.In Natural Woman, Natural Menopause, Marcus Laux, N.D., a leading expert on natural medicine, and Christine Conrad, a patient herself who experienced the unpleasant side effects of synthetic hormones, cut through the confusion and misinformation and show women that:They can take natural, plant-derived hormones, which match their own hormones exactly, without any known side effects or cancer risksBio-identical plant-derived hormones are widely available in this country, are prescribed by doctors, and can be taken in pill form or as a creamMore and more pharmaceutical companies are manufacturing bio-identical plant-derived hormonesThey can look and feel better than ever beforeAccessible as well as authoritative, Natural Woman, Natural Menopause features the stories of other women who, like Christine Conrad, found that they didn't have to accept less than a completely safe alternative. More important, in Natural Woman, Natural Menopause Marcus Laux and Christine Conrad offer readers their complete plan for long-lasting health and renewed vitality. Following their "Natural Woman Plan," which features the right combination of plant-derived hormones, nutritional supplements, a plant-rich diet, and an exercise program to eliminate and even reverse the effects of bone loss, women will find that not only will they be more energetic and radiant than they thought possible but they will be adding years of good health to their lives.Whether you are currently undergoing hormone replacement therapy and can't imagine giving it up or you are in the process of considering your alternatives, Natural Woman, Natural Menopause is a book that no woman nearing or experiencing menopause should be without.

The quest for an elusive amphibian in the mountains of violence-torn Haiti brings together an unlikely pair of hunters--American herpetologist Victor Grigg and his Haitian guide, Thierry Adrien--whose individual stories unfold and intertwine in a mesmerizing tale of love, sex, and fraternal rivalry; of the propagation and extinction of species in the natural world; and of the mysterious forces of nature that govern the fate of all living creatures. In the Palm of Darkness is a compelling tale that reads like a murder mystery but also reveals a highly sophisticated and refined literary voice.