Social High

From an early age, Amber van de Bunt knew she wasn't like the other girls in town. From childhood struggles with depression and eating disorders, her years as a topless dancer in Florida, and an eventual abortion and suicide attempt, to her rebirth in Los Angeles as a porn star named Karmen Karma, overcoming her relationship with her abusive mother, and her struggle to maintain a clean and sober lifestyle - van de Bunt's life has been a roller coaster. With humor, alacrity, and profound insight, she reveals her deepest, darkest secrets and pulls no punches - least of all with herself.

In The Cold War, Odd Arne Westad offers a new perspective on a century when a superpower rivalry and an ideological war transformed every corner of our globe. We traditionally think of the Cold War as a post-World War II diplomatic and military conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. But in this major new work, Westad argues that the conflict must be understood as a global ideological confrontation with roots in the industrial revolution and with continuing implications for the world today.

Whereas so many 20th-century Spanish histories begin with Franco and the devastating Civil War, Paul Preston's magisterial work begins in the late 19th century with Spain's collapse as a global power, especially reflected in its humiliating defeat in 1898 at the hands of the United States and its loss of colonial territory.

Goodhearted, highly masculine, relationship-minded men will do everything in their power to avoid falling in love with a woman who could make their life a living hell. And because of this one simple fact, guys like this are very discriminating when assessing a woman's long-term relationship potential.

The most important issue in a gay man’s life is not “coming out”, but coming to terms with the invalidating past. Despite the progress made in recent years, many gay men still wonder, “Are we better off?” The byproduct of growing up gay in a straight world continues to be the internalization of shame, rejection, and anger - a toxic cocktail that can lead to drug abuse, promiscuity, alcoholism, depression, and suicide.

The night that changes everything in Andy's life begins as a great time. His basketball team wins a big game, and he and his best friend have some cold brews stashed in the car, just waiting for the rolling party to begin. Nothing anyone can say or do afterwards will convince Andy that what happens next isn't his fault.

Emotions are deeply rooted within our lives. They govern our instinct and actions to the point that it is imperative to understand other people’s emotions and how to properly react. In our society we hear a lot of about IQ. The general norm is that a person with a high IQ is bound for success. But is that necessarily true? Some are naturally gifted with the ability to solve problems and think of the fly. However, the ability to interact with others in social settings or in a work place truly overshadows those with a high IQ.

Everyone wants to be an influencer. We all want to learn how to help ourselves and others change behavior. And yet, in spite of the fact that we routinely attempt to do everything from lose weight to improve quality at work, few of us have more than one or two ideas about how to exert influence. For the first time, Influencer brings together the breakthrough strategies of contemporary influence masters.

Cohen shows how smart guys like Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, and Mark Zuckerberg fell in love with a radically individualistic ideal and then mainstreamed it. With these very rich men leading the way, unions, libraries, public schools, common courtesy, and even government itself have been pushed aside to make way for supposedly efficient market-based encounters via the Internet. Donald Trump's election victory was an inadvertent triumph of the "disruption" that Silicon Valley has been pushing. A society that belittles civility, empathy, and collaboration can easily be led astray.

Drawing on new and often startling information from newly opened Soviet, Eastern European, and Chinese archives, this thrilling account explores the strategic dynamics that drove the Cold War, provides illuminating portraits of its major personalities, and offers much fresh insight into its most crucial events. Riveting, revelatory, and wise, it tells a story whose lessons it is vitally necessary to understand as America once more faces an implacable ideological enemy.

Abraham H. Maslow was one of the foremost spokespersons of humanistic psychology. In The Farthest Reaches of Human Nature, an extension of his classic Toward a Psychology of Being, Maslow explores the complexities of human nature by using both the empirical methods of science and the aesthetics of philosophical inquiry. With essays on biology, synergy, creativity, cognition, self-actualization, and the hierarchy of needs, this posthumous work is a wide-ranging synthesis of Maslow's inspiring and influential ideas.

You can learn a lot from the movies—about sex and relationships, about business, about history. Sure, there’s a fair amount of fantasy, wish fulfillment, and glorious hair to exaggerate everything, but for better or for worse, films remain one of the most important ways that viewers around the world learn about other people and cultures. And almost since the dawn of the medium, movies have shaped the public’s understanding of and assumptions about disability.

The narrow Darién Gap, the only land bridge connecting South and Central America, encompasses a spectacularly hostile jungle, covered in steep mountains, dense rainforests, and flood-prone marshes. Known in Spanish as el infierno verde, or “the green hell,” it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world. Its terrain is too treacherous for roads, yet hundreds of thousands of refuge seekers contend with its horrors every year in the hopes of reaching the United States, still some three thousand miles away. And of the countless who set out for the border, an untold number never arrive.

In The Ghost, investigative reporter Jefferson Morley tells Angleton's dramatic story, from his friendship with the poet Ezra Pound through the underground gay milieu of mid-century Washington to the Kennedy assassination to the Watergate scandal. From the agency's MKULTRA mind-control experiments to the wars of the Mideast, Angleton wielded far more power than anyone knew.

"Everything is sad," wrote the Ancient poets. But is this sadness merely a human experience, projected onto the world, or is there a gloom attributable to the world itself? Could the universe be forever weeping the "tears of things"? In this series of meditations, Dominic Pettman and Eugene Thacker explore some of the key "negative affects"—both eternal and emergent—associated with climate change, environmental destruction, and cosmic solitude. In so doing they unearth something so obvious that it has gone largely unnoticed: the question of how we should feel about climate change.

In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. And it's that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope - the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman....

The earthlines speak to Mirasol, but her family has lived in the demesne for centuries, and many of the old families can hear the land. She knows that the violent deaths of the last Master and Chalice have thrown Willowlands into turmoil; but she is only a beekeeper, and the problems of the Circle that govern Willowlands have nothing to do with her - although she wonders what will become of her demesne, because the Master and Chalice left no heirs to carry on their crucial duties.

Drawing together the worlds of classroom practice, school leadership, and scientific research, this is an essential how-to guide for initiating and maintaining a school improvement journey based on the science of learning.

Most of the world remembers Crazy Horse as a peerless warrior who brought the U.S. Army to its knees at the Battle of Little Bighorn. But to his fellow Lakota Indians, he was a dutiful son and humble fighting man who, with valor, spirit, respect, and unparalleled leadership, fought for his people's land, livelihood, and honor. In this fascinating biography, Joseph Marshall, himself a Lakota Indian, creates a vibrant portrait of the man, his times, and his legacy.

In the popular imagination, lethal injection is a slight pinch and a swift nodding off to forever-sleep. It is performed by well-qualified medical professionals. It is regulated and carefully conducted. And it usually provides a "humane" death. In reality, however, not one of those things is true. Secrets of the Killing State pulls back the curtain on this clandestine punishment practice, presenting a view of lethal injection that states have worked hard to hide. Botched executions are a part of this story, but they are just the tip of the iceberg.