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Do You Snore? Have Trouble Staying Awake?
Guess what? You may have a sleep disorder. Victor Katch describes the symptoms and health impacts of sleep disorders and describes two simple tests to see if you are at risk.
Who Knows?
Video: Anne Curzan tackles the subject (or is it the object?) of "who" vs. "whom."
- Exactly how much housework does a husband create?
- The Doors' disaster at Michigan
- U-M Heritage: Panty Raid, 1952
The House of Redgrave
Frank Beaver explores the Redgrave dynasty's far-reaching impact on film and theater history.
Brain Scans Reveal First Objective Measure of Pain
Scientists have identified how much pain people feel by looking at images of their brains. The research may set the stage to objectively measure anxiety, depression, anger, and more.
Cyber Attacks: A Clear and Present Danger?
Video: The U.S. Dept. of Defense recently blamed China's military for cyber attacks on American systems. Just how do these attacks occur, what kind of damage can they create, and how can we combat them?
Statewide Startup Program Launches
Innovators are exploring business opportunities around their technologies via Michigan I-Corps, a seven-week entrepreneurial training workshop funded by the National Science Foundation.
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Alumni books and arts
Death of the Chesapeake
While military munitions sources contribute significantly to the pollution and degradation of Chesapeake Bay, they have been completely overlooked in many of the efforts to restore the Bay. Death of the Chesapeake, Richard Albright's third environmental book, explores this important aspect of the nation's environmental health. The book also recognizes for the first time that efforts to restore the Bay have failed because of the violation of a fundamental precept of environmental cleanup; that is, to sample the site and see what’s there. The Bay itself has never been sampled. Thus, this book presents a view of the environmental condition of Chesapeake Bay that is totally unique. It covers a part of the history of the Bay that is not widely known, including how the Bay was formed. It presents a mixture of science, military history, and novel solutions to the Bay's degradation. In so doing, the author examines the military use of the Bay and reveals the extent that munitions dumpsites containing nitrogen and phosphorus as well as chemical warfare material are affecting the environment. The book concludes with the author's own cleanup plan, which, if implemented, would go a long way toward restoring health to the Bay.
Notes author Albright: "In college I was a member of the Ann Arbor Amphibians SCUBA Club. One of our members was the American on the three-country team with Jacques Cousteau that developed the aqua lung during WWII. Whenever Jacques would come to the Great Lakes, we would be invited to see his latest movies. Cousteau introduced me to underwater munitions and environmental changes in the oceans. Also, while at U-M, I ran a dive boat out of Port Huron and was part of the team that found the Charles S. Price, a freighter that sank in the great storm of 1913, memorialized by Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
Deadly Secrets
Shakespeare-loving detective Jake Wanderman is at it again. In this latest mystery thriller from Boris (Bob) Riskin, Wanderman takes on the Hamptons' art scene, the local police, and a fiercely determined international drug ring. From Sag Harbor to London to Paris, Wanderman's a magnet for trouble, all to save his best friend’s daughter from a bogus murder charge. He managed to survive his previous adventures with both his wit and physical skills. In Scrambled Eggs, he went to Moscow and dealt with the NKVD. Deadly Bones took him to Jerusalem where he encountered the vicious Russian Mafia. Much like his character, novelist Bob Riskin also has traveled the world. These days he lives and writes in Sag Harbor, "where the bay and ocean are close enough to touch," he says, "and the air is alive with stories." His work has appeared in a number of literary journals, as well as The New Yorker. Learn more about his work at robertborisriskin.com.
Restraint and Seclusion: Hear Our Voices
Dan Habib's latest film, Restraint and Seclusion: Hear Our Voices, is now available for viewing at the Stop Hurting Kids campaign website. Dan is a filmmaker at the Institute on Disability at the University of New Hampshire, and creator of the films Including Samuel and Who Cares About Kelsey? In Restraint and Seclusion: Hear Our Vioices Jino Medina, Brianna Hammon, Peyton Goddard, and Helena Stephenson describe the restraint and seclusion they experienced while students in public schools, and the devastating physical and emotional injuries they suffered as a results. There is no cost to view or download the 28-minute film, and it will be available indefinitely. Dan encourages people to use the film for public awareness, professional development, teacher training, or any other purpose that does not involve charging a fee. The free distribution of the film is possible thanks to support from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
Rivka's War
Can a woman fight successfully on the front lines?
In Russia, in 1917, when demoralized soldiers were deserting their posts in droves, one enterprising woman recruited an all-female battalion to set an example for the men. It was an experiment that combined the ideal of pure womanhood with the grittiness of trench warfare and the vision of a good death. Rivka’s War tells the story of this battalion—and more—through the eyes of a Jewish girl, daughter of a bootmaker.
Prize-winning author Marilyn Oser learned of the women's battalion while researching unusual careers of women throughout history. The novel portrays the formation and destruction of this dedicated group, known as the Battalion of Death. "World War I was a disastrous war," Oser says. "It ended in a disastrous peace, the consequences of which are still being felt today. Its effect on Jewish life at the time has not often been written about, yet in Eastern Europe and in Palestine that effect was profound." Panoramic in scope, the novel follows 13-year-old Rivka from a shtetl in the Ukraine in the summer of 1914, to Eastern Front battlefields in the grip of revolutionary fervor; from there, across the steppes of war-torn Siberia; and finally to Palestine in the fall of 1918, site of history's last great cavalry attack and first great air attack.
Marilyn Oser lives in New York's Hudson Valley and on Long Island. A PhD in language and literature, she has taught English and history and has raised funds for arts, environmental, and community organizations. Author of the novel Playing for Keeps and the blog Streets of Israel, she is a recipient of the University of Michigan’s coveted Avery Hopwood Prize for excellence in writing.
Directional Sense: How to Find Your Way Around
Were you born with no sense of direction? Does the mere thought of navigating twisting hospital corridors, deciphering cryptic expressway signs, or fumbling with cumbersome maps fill your heart with dread? If so, you need this trusty guidebook, which explains that finding your way around is a learnable skill, not a mysterious instinct you're doomed to live without. A lighthearted introduction to the ins and outs of wayfinding, it provides step-by-step guides to following signs, reading maps, recognizing landmarks, using GPS devices, and more. Along with anecdotes describing how everyone gets lost at times, and photos showing how being turned around is not always your fault, Directional Sense offers a wealth of practical advice to help you confidently get from here to thereMdash;and back. Learn more about the book and "wayfinding consultants" Carpman Grant Associates.
The Cineaste
This luminous new volume of narrative poetry takes us to the movies—from Metropolis to Blazing Saddles—and uses each film to meditate on issues of race, growth, identity, and memory. At the collection’s center is a sonnet sequence in the voice of filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, where Jordan struggles with the disjuncture between the ugly racism and powerful artistic achievements of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. Jordan is an award-winning author of three previous volumes of poetry in which he weaves multiple personnas, fragmented worlds, and multiple art forms together in a single voice that is entirely his own. In Rise (2001), winner of the PEN/Josephine Miles Book Award, Jordan harmonized with musicians: blues lyrics and field hollers infused and shaped his lines; jazz supplied a lustrous ambience via such heroes as Ellington, Davis, and Monk. In M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A (2005), which won the Anisfield-Wolf Award, he spelled along with 1935 teenager MacNolia Cox, the first African-American finalist of the National Spelling Bee Competition. In Quantum Lyrics (2007), the world of Jordan’s poetry became a multiverse populated by physicists and comic book superheroes alike. Jordan, who has also been awarded a Whiting Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, lives in Ann Arbor and is a professor at U-M.
Held Hostage
Al-Qaeda has taken over the Middle East and control of the OPEC oil that is shipped to the United States. With the goal of a nuclear-armed United Middle East, Al-Qaeda plans to hold the United States hostage for nuclear weapons technology in exchange for oil. Osama Bin Laden, as supreme leader, sets some other ominous conditions as well. America must abandon its bases in the region, and Israel must leave the Middle East forever. The clock is ticking. When the United States is slow to act and the oil supply is cut off entirely, the former L-REDD (long-range explosives detection and detonation) team of renowned scientist Bradford Tully and his brilliant and beautiful partner Zeneca Lang-Tully, along with resourceful and skilled Sam Elson and Aldora Klein, steps in to take on this new challenge. Held Hostage is the sequel to Wayne Pletcher's, The Campaign of Fear. Using fact-based fiction to suggest ways to solve our country's energy issues, Held Hostage offers an adept social commentary on one of the biggest issues facing the country today. Author Pletcher earned his PhD in chemistry in 1971. The book is available at Amazon in both paper and Kindle formats.
The World Without You
It's July 4th in the Berkshires and the far-flung Frankel clan has reunited for a weekend rich with unexpected revelations, long-simmering rivalries, and not-so-subtle complexities. Parents Marilyn and David are contemplating divorce after four decades, much to their adult children's collective dismay. Their tenuous marriage has disintegrated in the year since their only son was killed in Iraq. Leo, a celebrated and charismatic journalist, commanded the spotlight in both life and death. Now, on the first anniversary of his very public funeral, the family has convened to claim the intimate memorial they were denied the first time around. While the rest of the nation glorifies the rocket's red glare—which ultimately killed their beloved brother—siblings Noelle, Clarissa, and Lily negotiate a tangled web of family and political dynamics that is at once both heartwarming and heartbreaking. It doesn't help that Leo's widow, Thisbe, mother to his only son, carries life-changing secrets of her own.
Henkin is the author of "Swimming Across the Hudson" (a Los Angeles Times Notable Book) and "Matrimony" (a New York Times Notable Book). His stories have been published widely, cited for distinction in Best American Short Stories, and broadcast on NPR's "Selected Shorts." He directs the MFA Program in Fiction Writing at Brooklyn College and is the recipient of the James Fellowship for the Novel, the Hopwood Award, the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, and a grant from the Michigan Council of the Arts.
Say Nice Things About Detroit
Twenty-five years after his high school graduation, David Halpert returns to a place that most people flee. But David is making his own escape—from his divorce and the death of his son. In Detroit, David learns about the double shooting of his high school girlfriend Natalie and her black half-brother. As David becomes involved with Natalie's sister, he will discover that both he and his hometown have reasons to hope. The racially polarized and economically troubled city of Detroit may not seem like a natural place for rebirth. But as David tries to make sense of the mystery behind Natalie's death and puts back the pieces of his own life, he is forced to answer a simple question: If you want to go home again, what do you do if home is Detroit?
Lasser is a Detroit native and has worked for National Steel Corp. and Lehman Brothers. He is the author of three novels, including "Battle Creek," and lives in Aspen, Colo., and Los Angeles, Calif.
Newt: The Father of Michigan Men's Gymnastics
Newt Loken was a coach like no other. He has been compared to Bo Schembechler and John Wooden for his highly honored place in the sport of gymnastics, but he had a style all his own. He was a champion gymnast, an innovative Navy athletic welfare officer in World War II, a dedicated father, a compelling storyteller, and a unique coach.
But those outside the Michigan and gymnastics worlds haven't really had a chance to know this amazing man, one of the most likeable and successful coaches in Big Ten history ... until now. "Colt Rosensweig's 'Newt' captures the coach's magical quality and infuses it into each chapter. Her chronicle of Newt's life entertains as it preserves his memory for generations to come," says Justin Toman, former USA gymnastics national team member and Michigan captain, 1999-2002.
Bought and Sold
Yugoslavia was unique among the communist countries of the Cold War era in its openness to mixing cultural elements from both socialism and capitalism. Unlike their counterparts in the nations of the Soviet Bloc, ordinary Yugoslavs enjoyed access to a wide range of consumer goods and services, from clothes and appliances to travel agencies and discotheques. From the mid-1950s onward the political climate in Yugoslavia permitted, and later at times encouraged, a consumerist lifestyle of shopping, spending, acquiring, and enjoying that engaged the public on a day-to-day basis through modern advertising and sales techniques. In Bought and Sold, Patrick Hyder Patterson reveals the extent to which socialist Yugoslavia embraced a consumer culture usually associated with capitalism and explores the role of consumerism in the federation's collapse into civil war in 1991.
Based on extraordinary research and featuring remarkable examples of Yugoslav print advertising and mass culture, this book reconstructs in often dramatic detail the rise of a culture in which shoppers' desires trumped genuine human needs. Yugoslavia, Patterson argues, became a land where the symbolic, cultural value of consumer goods was a primary factor in individual and group identity. He shows how a new, aggressive business establishment promoted consumerist tendencies that ordinary citizens eagerly adopted, while the Communist leadership alternately encouraged and constrained the consumer orientation.
Abundance translated into civic contentment and seemed to prove that the regime could provide goods and services equal to those of the capitalist West, but many Yugoslavs, both inside and outside the circles of official power, worried about the contradiction between the population's embrace of consumption and the dictates of Marxist ideology. The result was a heated public debate over creeping consumerist values, with the new way of life finding fierce critics and, surprisingly for a communist country, many passionate and vocal defenders. Patterson argues that consumerism was one of the critical factors that held the multiethnic society together during the years of the Yugoslav "Good Life" of the 1960s and 1970s. With the economic downturn of the 1980s, however, the reliance on expanding consumerism ultimately led to bitter disillusionment, stripping the unique Yugoslav model of its legitimacy and priming the populace for mutual resentment, ethnic conflict, and war.
Jewish Major Leaguers: In Their Own Words
Between 1870 and 2010, 165 Jewish Americans played major league baseball. This work presents oral histories featuring 23 of these Jewish major leaguers. From Bob Berman, a catcher for the Washington Senators in 1918, to Adam Greenberg, an outfielder for the Chicago Cubs in 2005, the players discuss their careers and consider how their Jewish heritage has affected their lives in and out of baseball. Legends like Hank Greenberg and Al Rosen join lesser-known players to reflect on topics such as the annual dilemma of whether to play on high holidays, efforts to rebut anti-Semitism on and off the field, bonds formed with black teammates also facing prejudice, and personal and Jewish pride in their accomplishments. Together, these oral histories paint a vivid portrait of what it was like to be a Jewish major leaguer and shed light on a fascinating facet of American baseball history.
The Great Bordello, a Story of the Theatre
"The Great Bordello, a Story of the Theatre" is the heretofore unpublished work of Jazz-Age playwright Avery Hopwood (1882-1928), benefactor of the Avery and Jule Hopwood Awards Program at U-M, his alma mater. Hopwood was the most successful playwright of his day, with four hits on Broadway at the same time, and other hits peppering other seasons. Although Hopwood amassed a fortune writing these Broadway entertainments, his chief goal was to write a significant novel. "Something," he once told a newspaper reporter, "which an intelligent man can sit down and read and think about."
A roman à clef completed only days before Hopwood's early death, "The Great Bordello" was rumored to be "the most devastating exposé of the American theatre as an institution imaginable." The story plays out in the early decades of the twentieth century, portraying the life of aspiring playwright Edwin Endsleigh, Avery Hopwood's fictional counterpart. After graduating from the University of Michigan, Edwin heads for Broadway to earn his fortune and the security to pursue his one true dream of writing the great American novel. Shaping Edwin's ambitious journey is his love of three women: the strong-minded Julia Scarlet; the haunting Jessamy Lee, and Adelina Kane, idol of the American stage; in the company of Edwin and his loves are a dramatic array of thinly veiled representations of theatrical personages of the time, amongst them Daniel Mendoza, the powerful impresario; the worldly-wise veteran of the stage, Ottilie Potter, who has gotten where she is because, "Men had what I wanted, and I had what they wanted"; and the huge, manlike Helen Sampson, chief among theatrical agents. In the end, "The Great Bordello" provides a deeper understanding of the human desire to accomplish something of enduring value amidst commercial success and ruthless realities of life.
Jack F. Sharrar is author of "Avery Hopwood, His Life and Plays" (UMI Press), and has adapted two of Hopwood's plays, "Fair and Warmer" and "Just for Tonight." He is Director of Academic Affairs for the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, and is a graduate of the University of Michigan, and holds a Ph.D. in theater history and dramatic literature from the University of Utah.
Innovation for the 21st Century
In recent years, innovation has been threatened by the United States legal system. Much of the blame can be attributed to the antitrust and intellectual property laws. "Innovation for the 21st Century" seeks to reverse this trend, offering ten revolutionary proposals, from pharmaceuticals to peer-to-peer software, to help foster innovation. Rutgers law professor Michael Carrier (UM Law ’95) discusses how antitrust law could lower prescription drug prices. He explains how copyright law could be changed to create the next FaceBook or YouTube. And he proposes a system that would result in better patents.
Tales from the Tailgate: From the Fan Who's Seen 'Em All
Few can say they have seen every NCAA Division 1A football team play. Steve Koreivo can claim just that. "College football—what better way to spend an autumn afternoon?" As a boy, those words from ABC's Chris Schenkel inspired Koreivo, who details his quest to see every major team (now Football Bowl Subdivision) in his book "Tales from the Tailgate: From the Fan Who's Seen 'Em All."
Koreivo's history of games involving FBS teams from Michigan includes Michigan State's 500th win led by RB Tico Duckett; Michigan's first Big Ten visit to Happy Valley with a big day from RB Tyrone Wheatley; and the "directional" Michigans in their struggles on the road. Central visits Syracuse, Eastern's Eagles avoid a goose egg at Maryland's Byrd, and Western's Broncos get dumped on as does the author at Virginia Tech. His history also details Notre Dame games against Navy, LSU, and Washington State as each game added another team to his final goal.
Also included are Koreivo's experiences with a lucky snag of Rose Bowl tickets in 1995 thanks to Kermit the Frog; an intense cross-country flight after 9/11; record-setting games of Head Coach Joe Paterno; and Marshall's 1997 rebirth into 1A football years after a tragic plane crash killed most of their football players in 1970. Koreivo's history is recorded on his website www.collegefootballfan.com.
The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South
In defiance of his middle-class landowning family, a young white man named James Morgan Richardson married a light-skinned black woman, Edna Howell. It was 1914 in south Alabama. Together they eventually built a house at the dead end of a road in a rural black community. If you came there to do the Richardson family harm, you faced Jim Richardson's rule of justice, represented by a double-barreled shotgun. And at the end of the road, there was only one way out. "The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South" examines how one pioneering interracial couple developed a love and a racial identity that carried them defiantly through the Jim Crow years. Through interviews and oral history collected from both sides of the Richardson family's racial divide, as well as archival research, The House at the End of the Road probes into the core of the issue of race in early twentieth-century America. At the same time, it takes the lessons of the past and places them under the scrutiny of a contemporary world adjusted to DNA ancestry testing, a more flexible sense of racial and ethnic identity, and a tolerance and acceptance of the racial ambiguity that laws prohibiting Jim and Edna Richardson's marriage sought to eliminate.
The Nimble Men
A bit of ancient Scottish folklore attributes the Northern Lights to a mythical tribe of creatures called the Nimble Men. "The Nimble Men" is the tale that myth inspired, one that weaves the colorful spirit of golf with the equally colorful legend. It's a golf story. But like any good golf story, it's about more than just golf. When a woman in a broken marriage enters an antique shop on a rainy day, she ends up getting more than she bargained for. Depressed and searching for answers, she hears the tale of two Scottish golfers from rival clans locked in mortal antipathy, and how a mythical being helps to reconcile them. She leaves the shop determined to seek a reconciliation of her own. It's a story of love and hatred, friends and enemies, conflict and resolution, hope and magic. "The Nimble Men" is the first in a new series of golf stories: "Golf Is No Ordinary Game."
Cyber Styletto
Super hacker Yvonne Tran, part of a secret government agency called CyberCom, is brought in to investigate a malicious network attack that caused the deaths of eight innocent people. She and her team follow the trail to Hong Kong and Afghanistan, and they must pinpoint the source before the next attack, which has the potential to kill hundreds of US citizens. It is for sale at cyberstyletto.com, where U-M grads can receive a discount coupon.
Dancing in Puddles
Jacob Feldman is a senior at the University of Michigan and is desperately searching for meaning in his life. He delves into religion, science, philosophy, and sexuality in an attempt to make greater sense of the world. Jacob's inability to live a carefree life leads to his taking real risks. His first bold move results in his working as a nude model. Jacob begins to question his relationship with his long-distance girlfriend. She's his first real love, and Jacob wonders about his lack of experience and need for other women. His best friend, a self-described nihilist, causes Jacob to think about life without her. Following graduation, Jacob moves out to Massachusetts to teach English. Even though the school is less than an hour away from his girlfriend's apartment, he refuses to live with her. Jacob soon grows tired of his life in suburbia and heads to San Francisco to meet up with his best friend. It is there that Jacob finds his life's real meaning.
Silence: The Impending Threat to the Charitable Sector
Charity malfeasance is an addiction of epic proportions. Charity leaders and regulators, by their silence and denial, are enablers. Because the misdeeds were kept secret, there was no public outcry. The secrets are now being exposed. The sector needs a new paradigm, and "Silence" makes numerous suggestions as to how to turn it around. This exposé is based on the largest repository of charity fraud anywhere. Many trusted leaders are exposed including board members, presidents, superintendents, chief executive officers, accountants—and more. They embezzled, forged, extorted, and falsified records; they self-dealt, negligently managed assets, and had multiple conflicts of interest.
Maze in Blue
All Denney Silber wants from her senior year at the University of Michigan is to enjoy sorority parties, football games, and concerts - plans that go awry when she discovers her best friend, Helen, dead in the office of the faculty member Denney most despises. Compelled to solve Helen's murder, Denney quickly realizes that her own life is in danger. She can no longer trust friends, teachers, or even the cutest guy in Poetry 331.
The Power of Paradox: The Protean Leader and Leading in Uncertain Times
Leaders' actions can have consequences opposite to those they intend. These unintentional results are difficult to detect, understand, and change. Consequently, leaders' actions tend to persist resulting in further unexpected outcomes. This can create a vicious cycle of leadership failure. Unaware, these leaders self-sabotage and sabotage others, no matter how hard they try. "Understanding the Power of Paradox" can empower leaders in uncertain times, giving them room to breathe and time to think, to become more resilient, adaptive and flexible, so they can create the consequences they intend.
Separate Kingdoms
Set in Russia and the U.S., these are stories of fractured, misplaced characters moving beyond the borders of their isolation and reaching for the connections that will make them whole. Reviewer Adam Eaglin calls it "a taut, beautiful book," and Alan Cheuse hails its "fine craftsmanship and powerful insight."
Suyama: A Complex Serenity
George Suyama began his architectural practice in Seattle in 1971. Over time, he developed an architecture characterized by a search for minimalist simplicity, a paradoxical architecture of intense, even exciting, tranquility. Suyama's quest to eliminate what he calls "visual noise" has yielded not visual silence but a kind of visual music. "Suyama: A Complex Serenity" introduces the man and his work, and twenty of his built and unbuilt projects that illuminate the development of his remarkable art and craft.
Grant Hildebrand ('57, MA '64) is professor emeritus of architecture and art history at the University of Washington, and author of seven books on architecture.
What is Life?: To Live A Controlled, Realistic, Happy Life
Concise and to the point, What is Life? by James C. Lin, MD calls on his vast medical experience to point readers in the right direction to live their life to the fullest. With the goal to help others rediscover the real power of life, he offers this intelligent self-improvement guide that breaks the mold in empowering readers to apply a number of esoteric teachings to their lives so that they might become healthier, happier humans. In forty-six chapters he teaches the importance of daily "self-care" initiatives that directly lead to self-preservation and spiritual harmony. Beginning with understanding the need for change and the nature of life and living, the author's "facts of life" unfold. With chapter titles like "Understand the Purpose of Life-to Live as Well and to Last as Long as Possible" and "How Can We Look Nicer, Feel Better, and Live Longer?" he leaves no stone unearthed in providing an invaluable doctrine of well-being in the modern world.
On The Other Guy's Dime: A Professional's Guide to Traveling Without Paying
Do you want to live the kind of life most people only dream about? Do you want to travel? See the world? Live and work in exotic locales without having to quit your day job? And do it all on someone else's dime? Well, you can. For the past three decades the author has been doing just that on what he calls working vacations–short-term overseas assignments that do not require you to sell the house or quit your job. In this book he provides the reader with invaluable "how to" information such as locating the best working vacation opportunities, negotiating terms, renting your home, securing housing in the host country, traveling safely with young children, and much, much more.
The Campaign of Fear
The newly formed US Department of Advanced Technology, working in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security, has stepped up emphasis on advancing bomb detection. Why? To counteract the growing terrorist threat by elusive al Qaeda operatives around the world.Renowned scientist Bradford Tully, striving tirelessly alongside his brilliant and beautiful partner, Zenica Lang, hopes to develop the ultimate defense against the radical framework of jihad, its Campaign of Fear. They will stop at nothing until they have bestowed a greater sense of security upon the people of the Free World by bringing al Qaeda to its knees.
How Warm it was and How Far
This is an Anne Frank story with a happy ending; the author recounts his youth in Holland, a Jewish kid being pursued by, and hidden from, the Nazis. He finds himself orphaned at war’s end, his father having perished in a camp and his mother having succumbed to cancer, He is raised by an indifferent family, losing a leg in the process. At age twenty he leaves Holland for America where he has a successful career in chemistry (Michigan PhD 1961) and medicine.
Amortals
The very best person to catch your killer—is you. Matt Forbeck arrives as the new king of high-concept—with a blockbuster action movie in a book. In the near future, scientists solve the problem of mortality by learning how to backup and restore a persons memories into a vat-bred clone. When Secret Service agent Ronan "Methusaleh" Dooley is brutally murdered, he’s brought back from the dead one more time to hunt his killer, but this time those who wanted him dead are much closer to home.
Don't Touch Me
World renowned pianist Donna Coleman has just released "Don't Touch Me," comprising the complete solo Danzas Cubanas by the great Cuban composer Ignacio Cervantes, who lived in Havana, Paris and New York between 1847-1905. The music can be described as Cuba's answer to Frédéric Chopin in sultry, habañera-infused miniatures that play like the precursors of Scott Joplin's rags. Thirty-seven tracks that unfold like episodes in a steamy romance novel, steeped in Afro-Cuban rhythmic verse, Chopin's pathos, Bach's contrapuntal detail and voice-leading, sumptuous French harmony, and sensuality redolent of rum, cigar smoke, sea air, sweat, and tears.
Men CAN
How have American families changed over the past generation? Who does what at home? How? Why? For what benefit? At what cost? "Men CAN" tells the stories of a half dozen families—of varied ethnicities, geographical locations, and philosophical orientations—in which fathers are either primary caregivers or equally sharing parents, personalizing how Americans are now caring for their children and illuminating the ways that popular culture both reflects and influences these changes in family roles.
A New York Memoir
"A New York Memoir" is about a life lived in New York City over a period of thirty years. The memoir begins in 1975, with author Richard Goodman's arrival in New York, an intimidated newcomer. It follows him through the years as he encounters some of the remarkable people one meets in New York, while harkening back to the inspiration the city provides, especially for artists and young writers. The memoir follows the author as he witnesses tragedies and then ruminates on growing old in New York. It tells of the joys and the difficulties of living in this remarkable city. "A New York Memoir" is, essentially, a long love letter to the city. Like all great loves, this volume reflects passion, promise, hope, pain, regret and, ultimately, the author's pride.
Fine art by Scott Redmond
Scott Redmond was born in Michigan and works from his studio in Kalamazoo. He holds a B.A. from the University of Michigan, studied Law at Michigan State University and pursued an M.B.A. in Finance at Wayne State University. He studied art at The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts and Western Michigan University and is currently pursuing an MFA at Academy of Art University in San Francisco, California. Redmond captures the feeling or mood created in a landscape, and he explores the relationship between the natural elements God has created and elements of human creation including buildings, docks, boats, and lighthouses. His work typically involves a sentimental or emotional theme intended to evoke memories in the viewer, or transport the viewer to the emotional state of the artist. He is intrigued by the technical aspects of painting, presented by combining color and brush strokes to generate the appearance of texture, light and shadow. Redmond completes his work on a variety of substrates including cotton and linen canvas, canvas and wood panels, and hand crafted art papers. For more information or for commissioned abstract and landscape work in oil and acrylic.
Island Light
In the third volume of the Snow Island trilogy, Katherine Towler returns to her fictional setting off the New England coast, continuing the saga of two generations in two island families and her chronicle of the impact of war in the second half of the 20th century. "Island Light" is set in the fall of 1990, when the Snow Island community includes a Vietnam veteran, an aging lesbian, and a photographer seeking to redefine herself and her art, an unlikely trio who find their lives unexpectedly linked. Though the island remains a world away from the mainland, it is not immune to the effects of war. Old wounds and new uncertainties come to the surface as the United States prepares to go to war again, this time in the Persian Gulf. In the silence of a New England winter, former residents and prodigal wanderers return to Snow Island in search of refuge from wars both private and public. Through a rich collection of characters and a tightly-woven story, "Island Light" traces a path from the scars of the past to the promise of the future. This taut tale of love and perseverance evokes the isolation and connection at the heart of every community.
My Beautiful Leukemia
Jan Lucas-Grimm was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia in 2005. After undergoing traditional chemotherapy, she went into remission for a short time, then relapsed and underwent a stem cell transplant in 2006. A down-to-earth description of diagnosis and treatment, this is a realistic portrayal with equal measures of humor and hope, despair and fear. My Beautiful Leukemia unravels the intricate fabric of the illness and reveals the very bare, human fibers that remain. The book also contains some of the color illustrations that the author did while in hospital. The book is available online and in bookstores. More information at