Posted on August 14, 2008 by bookupdate
Have a New Kid by Friday: How to Change Your Child’s Attitude, Behavior & Character in 5 Days
By Dr. Kevin Leman
Today’s kids are unionized, and they’ve got a game plan to drive you up the wall. But you don’t have to let them call the shots. If you picked up this book, you did so for a reason. You’d like to see a few things–or many–change in your house. Have a New Kid by Friday is a game plan guaranteed to work. All it takes is sticking to some simple strategies–strategies any parent can carry out. I’ll be blunt. You’ve got a big job to do and a short window in which to do it. If you believe that you are to be in healthy authority over your child, this book is for you. If you don’t, put it down right now and buy another. After you read Have a New Kid by Friday, you’ll tell yourself, “I can’t wait for my kids to misbehave. I’m ready for them!” I promise. Let the fun begin. . . .
Anyone who has dealt with a strong-willed child knows that it is no easy task to turn bad behavior around. But the popularity of TV programs like Supernanny and Nanny 911 shows that parents have had it up to here and are ready to try anything to get their children to behave. Bestselling author and psychologist Dr. Kevin Leman is here to help. Have a New Kid by Friday shows parents how to reverse negative behavior in their children–fast! With his signature wit and encouragement, Dr. Leman offers hope and real, practical, doable strategies for regaining control and becoming the parents they always wanted to be. Focusing on changing a child’s attitude, behavior, and character, it contains chapters for each day of the week and a special section with advice on everything from rolling eyes to sibling rivalry to talking back to punching walls and much, much more. This large section of more than 100 specific topics is indexed, allowing parents to flip immediately to any areas of concern for witty, straightforward, and gutsy plans of action.
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Posted on August 14, 2008 by bookupdate
The Lace Reader: A Novel
By Brunonia Barry
Towner Whitney, the self-confessed unreliable narrator of The Lace Reader, hails from a family of Salem women who can read the future in the patterns in lace, and who have guarded a history of secrets going back generations, but the disappearance of two women brings Towner home to Salem and the truth about the death of her twin sister to light.
The Lace Reader is a mesmerizing tale that spirals into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies, and half-truths in which the reader quickly finds it’s nearly impossible to separate fact from fiction, but as Towner Whitney points out early on in the novel, “There are no accidents.”
Brunonia Barry dreamt she saw a prophecy in a piece of lace, a vision so potent she spun it into a novel. The Lace Reader retains the strange magic of a vivid dream, though Barry’s portrayal of modern-day Salem, Massachusetts–with its fascinating cast of eccentrics–is reportedly spot-on. Some of its stranger residents include generations of Whitney women, with a gift for seeing the future in the lace they make. Towner Whitney, back to Salem from self-imposed exile on the West Coast, has plans for recuperation that evaporate with her great-aunt Eva’s mysterious drowning. Fighting fear from a traumatic adolescence she can barely remember, Towner digs in for answers. But questions compound with the disappearance of a young woman under the thrall of a local fire-and-brimstone preacher, whose history of violence against Whitney women makes the situation personal for Towner. Her role in cop John Rafferty’s investigation sparks a tentative romance. And as they scramble to avert disaster, the past that had slipped through the gaps in Towner’s memory explodes into the present with a violence that capsizes her concept of truth. Readers will look back at the story in a new light, picking out the clues in this complex, lovely piece of work.
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Posted on August 14, 2008 by bookupdate
Batman: The Killing Joke
By Alan Moore, Brian Bolland
The Killing Joke, one of my favorite Batman stories ever, stirred a bit of controversy because the story involves the Joker brutally, pointlessly shooting Commissioner Gordon’s daughter in the spine. This is a no-holds-barred take on a truly insane criminal mind, masterfully written by British comics writer Alan Moore. The art by Brian Bolland is so appealing that his depiction of the Joker became a standard and was imitated by many artists to follow.
one of my favorite Batman stories ever, stirred a bit of controversy because the story involves the Joker brutally, pointlessly shooting Commissioner Gordon’s daughter in the spine. This is a no-holds-barred take on a truly insane criminal mind, masterfully written by British comics writer Alan Moore. The art by Brian Bolland is so appealing that his depiction of the Joker became a standard and was imitated by many artists to follow.
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Posted on August 13, 2008 by bookupdate
The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism
By Ron Suskind
From Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind comes a startling look at how America lost its way and at the nation s struggle, day by day, to reclaim the moral authority upon which its survival depends. From the White House to Downing Street, from the fault-line countries of South Asia to the sands of Guantánamo, Suskind offers an astonishing story that connects world leaders to the forces waging today s shadow wars and to the next generation of global citizens. Tracking down truth and hope within the Beltway and far beyond it, Suskind delivers historic disclosures with this emotionally stirring and strikingly original portrait of the post-9/11 world.
In a sweeping, propulsive, and multilayered narrative, The Way of the World investigates how America relinquished the moral leadership it now desperately needs to fight the real threat of our era: a nuclear weapon in the hands of terrorists. Truth, justice, and accountability become more than mere words in this story. Suskind shows where the most neglected dangers lie in the story of The Armageddon Test a desperate gamble to send undercover teams into the world s nuclear black market to frustrate the efforts of terrorists trying to procure weapons-grade uranium. In the end, he finally reveals for the first time the explosive falsehood underlying the Iraq War and the entire Bush presidency.
While the public and political realms struggle, The Way of the World simultaneously follows an ensemble of characters in America and abroad who are turning fear and frustration into a desperate and often daring brand of human salvation. They include a striving, twenty-four-year-old Pakistani émigré, a fearless UN refugee commissioner, an Afghan teenager, a Holocaust survivor s son, and Benazir Bhutto, who discovers, days before her death, how she s been abandoned by the United States at her moment of greatest need. They are all testing American values at a time of peril, and discovering solutions human solutions to so much that has gone wrong.
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Posted on August 13, 2008 by bookupdate
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
By Jane Mayer
This hard-hitting expose examines both the controversial excesses of the war on terror and the home-front struggle to circumvent legal obstacles to its prosecution. New Yorker correspondent Mayer (Strange Justice) details the battle within the Bush Administration over a new anti-terrorism policy of harsh interrogations, indefinite detentions without due process, extraordinary renditions, secret CIA prisons and warrantless wiretappings. Fighting with memos and legal briefs, Mayer reports, hard-liners led by Dick Cheney, his aide David Addingtion and then-Justice Department lawyer John Yoo rejected any constraints on the treatment of prisoners or limitations on presidential power in fighting terrorism, while less militant administration lawyers invoked the Constitution and international law to oppose their initiatives. As a counterpoint to the wrangling over the definition of torture and the Geneva Conventions, the author looks at the use of techniques like waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation and sexual humiliation against prisoners by the American military and CIA; her chilling account compellingly argues that this “enhanced interrogation” regimen constitutes torture. The result is a must-read: a meticulous behind-the-scenes reconstruction of policymaking that demonstrates how legal abstractions became an ugly reality.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Jane Mayer mentioned last week that conservatives are maintaining radio silence on this book. Nice try, but that strategy is evidence of how deeply frightened many of them must be of it.
It’s absolutely engrossing, a page-turner. If all goes well it will get war crimes and other prosecutions rolling in an Obama administration.
Some of what’s in here is truly disgusting, and especially revolting in contrast to our ideals and traditions, even in the worst of times. People need to be held to account.
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Posted on August 13, 2008 by bookupdate
You: Staying Young: The Owner’s Manual for Extending Your Warranty (You)
By Michael F. Roizen, Mehmet C. Oz
The body is the most fascinating machine ever created, and nobody talks about it in ways that are as illuminating and compelling as Dr. Michael Roizen and Dr. Mehmet Oz. Most people think of the aging of our bodies the same way we think of the aging of our cars: the older we get, the more inevitable it is that we’re going to break down. Most of us believe that at age 40 or so, we begin the slow and steady decline of our minds, our eyes, our ears, our joints, our arteries, our libido, and every other system that affects the quality of life (and how long we live it). But according to Dr. Roizen and Dr. Oz, that’s a mistake.
Aging isn’t a decline in our systems. It’s actually very purposeful. The very systems and biological processes that age us are designed to help us when we’re a little bit younger. So what’s our role as part of the aging population? To learn how those systems work so we can reprogram them to work the way they did when we were younger. Your goal should be: die young at any age. That means you live a high quality of life (with everything from working joints to working genitals) until the day you die.
In their newest in the You series, physicians Oz and Roizen and a supporting cast of contributors explain why the body ages and how readers can become anatomical puppeteers, mastering their genes, bad habits, environmental pollution and stress while igniting the body’s ability to stay fit, strong and healthy. According to the authors, avoiding such major causes of death as cancer and heart disease increases life expectancy by only just under a decade. With their talent for creating vivid, humorous images (amplified by cartoon drawings), they describe 14 major agers and how readers can use what is known about telomeres (which look like the plastic ends of shoelaces), mitochondria (the body’s energy powerhouses) and other components of body functioning to repair and rejuvenate cells. While the hefty amount of detailed information might seem overwhelming, the suggestions in the authors’ tool box are straightforward and, frequently, simple: walking a half hour each day; consistently getting enough sleep; relieving stress with yoga, meditation and chi gong; removing toxins from the home; and avoiding accidents, for example. Perhaps most simple—and surprising—is their claim that one of the best predictors of aging is your perception of your own health. With the facts and tools laid out here, readers will be able to articulate, challenge and change those perceptions through positive action. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Posted on August 7, 2008 by bookupdate
The Obama Nation
By Jerome R Corsi
In this thoroughly researched and documented book, the #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry explains why the extreme leftism of an Obama presidency would leave the United States weakened, diminished and divided, why Obama must be defeatedâand how he can be.
DR. JEROME CORSI received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972 and has written many books and articles, including the No. 1 New York Times best-seller, Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. His latest best-seller was The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada. He is a senior staff reporter for WorldNetDaily.com and the author of two books on contemporary Iran: Atomic Iran and Showdown with Nuclear Iran. In his 2005 book Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil, which he co-authored with Craig.
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Posted on August 7, 2008 by bookupdate
The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Collector’s Edition
By J. K. Rowling
Tucked in its own case disguised as a wizarding textbook found in the Hogwarts library, the Collector’s Edition includes an exclusive reproduction of J.K. Rowling’s handwritten introduction, as well as 10 additional illustrations not found in the Standard Edition or the original. Opening the case reveals a velvet bag embroidered with J.K. Rowling’s signature, in which sits the piece de resistance: your very own copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, complete with metal skull, corners, and clasp; replica gemstones; and emerald ribbon.
Offering the trademark wit and imagination familiar to Rowling’s legions of readers–as well as Aesop’s wisdom and the occasional darkness of the Brothers Grimm–each of these five tales reveals a lesson befitting children and parents alike: the strength gained with a trusted friendship, the redemptive power of love, and the true magic that exists in the hearts of all of us. Rowling’s new introduction also comments on the personal lessons she has taken from the Tales, noting that the characters in Beedle’s collection “take their fates into their own hands, rather than taking a prolonged nap or waiting for someone to return a lost shoe,” and “that magic causes as much trouble as it cures.”
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Posted on August 7, 2008 by bookupdate
The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Standard Edition
By J. K. Rowling
Offering the trademark wit and imagination familiar to Rowling’s legions of readers–as well as Aesop’s wisdom and the occasional darkness of the Brothers Grimm–each of these five tales reveals a lesson befitting children and parents alike: the strength gained with a trusted friendship, the redemptive power of love, and the true magic that exists in the hearts of all of us. Rowling’s new introduction also comments on the personal lessons she has taken from the Tales, noting that the characters in Beedle’s collection “take their fates into their own hands, rather than taking a prolonged nap or waiting for someone to return a lost shoe,” and “that magic causes as much trouble as it cures.”
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Posted on August 4, 2008 by bookupdate
When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change
By Mohamed El-Erian
When Markets Collide is a timely alert to the fundamental changes taking place in today’s global economic and financial systems–and a call to action for investors who may fall victim to misinterpreting important signals. While some have tended to view asset class mispricings as mere “noise,” this compelling book shows why they are important signals of opportunities and risks that will shape the market for years to come. One of today’s most respected names in finance, Mohamed El-Erian puts recent events in their proper context, giving you the tools that can help you interpret the markets, benefit from global economic change, and navigate the risks.
The world economy is in the midst of a series of hand-offs. Global growth is now being heavily influenced by nations that previously had little or no systemic influence. Former debtor nations are building unforeseen wealth and, thus, enjoying unprecedented influence and facing unusual challenges. And new derivative products have changed the behavior of many market segments and players. Yet, despite all these changes, the system’s infrastructure is yet to be upgraded to reflect the realities of today’s and tomorrow’s world. El-Erian investigates the underlying drivers of global change to shed light on how you should:
- Think about the new opportunities and risks
- Construct an appropriately diversified and internationalized portfolio
- Protect your portfolio against new sources of systemic risk
- Best think about the impact of central banks and financial policies around the world
Offering up predictions of future developments, El-Erian directs his focus to help you capitalize on the new financial landscape, while limiting exposure to new risk configurations.
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