"Among You" is a gripping psychological real-life account of idealism, dehumanisation and post-traumatic stress disorder, set against the juxtapositions of business, combat, love and betrayal. On his first tour of duty, the author experiences the harsh reality of front-line combat during the invasion of Iraq. On his second, he conducts surveillance on Iraqi insurgents. But he does not return to a barracks after each of these tours, for he is TA. Instead, he returns to the glass tower of an international investment bank. As well as finding love - and betrayal - in the workplace, his eyes are opened to the amorality of the banking business, from which he eventually escapes, returning to the only world that now makes any sense to him. In Afghanistan, the soldier discovers the savage, dehumanising effect that war exacts on both the body and mind. Diagnosed with chronic PTSD upon his return, and with the loss of the two conflicting walks of life that used to personally define him, he must now fight the last enemy - himself - in order to exorcise the ghosts of his past.

 

Leonard Bernstein was arguably the most highly esteemed, influential, and charismatic American classical music personality of the twentieth century. Conductor, composer, pianist, writer, educator, and human rights activist, Bernstein truly led a life of Byronic intensity--passionate, risk-taking, and convention-breaking.

 

In November 1989, just a year before his death, Bernstein invited writer Jonathan Cott to his country home in Fairfield, Connecticut for what turned out to be his last major interview--an unprecedented and astonishingly frank twelve-hour conversation. Now, in Dinner with Lenny, Cott provides a complete account of this remarkable dialogue in which Bernstein discourses with disarming frankness, humor, and intensity on matters musical, pedagogical, political, psychological, spiritual, and the unabashedly personal. Bernstein comes alive again, with vodka glass in hand, singing, humming, and making pointed comments on a wide array of topics, from popular music ("the Beatles were the best songwriters since Gershwin"), to great composers ("Wagner was always in a psychotic frenzy. He was a madman, a megalomaniac"), and politics (lamenting "the brainlessness, the mindlessness, the carelessness, and the heedlessness of the Reagans of the world"). And of course, Bernstein talks of conducting, advising students "to look at the score and make it come alive as if they were the composer. If you can do that, you're a conductorand if you can't, you're not. If I don't become Brahms or Tchaikovsky or Stravinsky when I'm conducting their works, then it won't be a great performance."

 

After Rolling Stone magazine published an abridged version of the conversation in 1990, the Chicago Tribune praised it as "an extraordinary interview" filled with "passion, wit, and acute analysis." Studs Terkel called the interview "astonishing and revelatory."

 

Now, this full-length version provides the reader with a unique, you-are-there perspective on what it was like to converse with this gregarious, witty, candid, and inspiring American dynamo. 

 

After four decades in the music industry, Michael Bolton has cemented himself as on one the most successful musicians of our time. THE SOUL OF IT ALL is his backstage pass into his life lived thus far-into the venues, busses, limos, and hotel rooms of stardom, and finally into his home and heart. His story will go long and dive deep, not only into his self-proclaimed "vagabond vampire" life, but also into the belly of the beast that is the music industry, with its joys, follies, and torments.

 

From a 14 year old kid performing in dive bars in his hometown of New Haven, CT, to struggling to provide for his wife and kids, to finally breaking through with the Soul Provider album, and going on to sell more than 53 million albums and singles worldwide, Bolton has fought for and earned a life most just dream of. THE SOUL OF IT ALL is his life, chock-full of all the incredible stories, and the star-studded cast you'd expect, including: Luciano Pavarotti, Paula Abdul, Cher, Bob Dylan, Barbara Streisand, Kanye West, Jay-Z, John Legend, Lady Gaga, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, Celine Dion, Placido Domingo, Rascal Flatts, Renee Fleming, Bon Jovi, Wynonna Judd, BB King, Patti LaBelle, Carlos Santana, Clive Davis, Nicolette Sheridan, Teri Hatcher and others... 

 

From the author of an acclaimed biography of Josephine Bonaparte: a stunning history of the interdependence of sugar, slavery, and colonial settlement in the New World—from the seventeenth century to the present—which is, as well, a spellbinding family memoir.

 

Andrea Stuart uses her own family story as the pivot of an epic tale, examining the ways in which the sugar crop cultivated on the island of Barbados created nations, enriched Europe beyond its wildest imaginings, and precipitated the enslavement of the millions of Africans in the Americas. Interspersing the tectonic shifts of colonial history with her own ancestors' experiences, Stuart explores, with subtlety and sensitivity, how this one particular commodity has shaped the destiny of her family—its identity, genealogy, place of origin, varying hues of skin—and how our hunger for it has mobilized forces that converged to shape the world for four centuries and counting. 

 

An instant American icon--the first Hispanic on the U.S. Supreme Court--tells the story of her life before becoming a judge in an inspiring, surprisingly personal memoir.

 

With startling candor and intimacy, Sonia Sotomayor recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a progress that is testament to her extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself.  She writes of her precarious childhood and the refuge she took with her passionately spirited paternal grandmother. She describes her resolve as a young girl to become a lawyer, and how she made this dream become reality: valedictorian of her high school class, summa cum laude at Princeton, Yale Law, prosecutor in the Manhattan D.A.'s office, private practice, federal district judge before the age of forty. She writes about her deeply valued mentors, about her failed marriage, about her cherished family of friends. Through her still-astonished eyes, America's infinite possibilities are envisioned anew in this warm and honest book, destined to become a classic of self-discovery and self-invention, alongside Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father.

 

In the candid, contemplative memoir May I Be Happy, revered yoga teacher Cyndi Lee gives readers an unforgettable gift: the ability to focus on our experiences as we have them, on the way to a lighter life.

 

For all her wisdom as a teacher, Cyndi Lee—founder of New York’s world renowned OM yoga Center—understood intuitively that she still had a lot to learn. In spite of her success in physically demanding professions—dancer, choreographer, and yoga teacher—Lee was caught in a lifelong cycle of repetitive self-judgment about her body. Instead of the radical contentment expected in international yoga teachers, she realized that hating her body was a form of suffering, which was infecting her closest relationships—including her relationship to herself.

 

Inspired by the honesty and vulnerability of her students, Lee embarked on a journey of self-discovery that led her outward—from the sacred sites of the parched Indian countryside to the center of the 2011 earthquake in Japan—and inward, to seek the counsel of wise women, friends and strangers both. Applying the ancient Buddhist practice of loving-kindness meditation to herself, Lee learned that compassion is the only antidote to hatred, thereby healing her heart and changing her mind.

 

With prose as agile as the yoga sequences she creates, May I Be Happy gives voice to Lee’s belief that every life arises, abides, and ultimately dissolves. By becoming her own best student, Lee internalizes the strength, stability, and clarity she imparts in her Buddhist-inspired yoga classes.

 

This inspiring autobiography offers a rare, personal look into the extraordinary life of leading entrepreneur, tech industry leader, and third-party politician Ross Perot.

 

Born in 1930 to a Texas cotton broker, Ross Perot is an American patriot celebrated not only as a politician, but as an iconic businessman, talented entrepreneur, and legendary supporter of the Special Forces. Perot has built and sold two multi billion-dollar businesses, twice ran as a third-party candidate for president, and profoundly improved the lives of countless servicemen, students, and average Americans through his efforts to reform veteran affairs, education, and the country’s calcified political systems.

 

For the first time, Perot shares the principles, talents, and dedication behind his accomplishments. Among the many stories he tells are how he exploited IBM’s blind spot in the 1960s, how he became Steve Job’s angel investor behind NeXT, and how he turned a $1,000 investment into a company worth $2.5 billion. His life as a technology industry leader has transformed American politics through his effort to pull the country out of its ever-deepening fiscal crisis, and as a bonus feature, this book includes a tear-out collection of Perot’s iconic charts spelling out the country’s fiscal crisis and what can be done.

 

Now more relevant than ever, Ross Perot tells what it takes to make American businesses work and deliver a better future for America.