Beg

Rory Freedman, co-author of the #1 New York Times mega-seller Skinny Bitch, returns with a call-to-arms to all animal lovers. So many of us call ourselves animal lovers and worship our dogs and cats -- but we could be using that love as a force for helping all animals. Beg is a battle cry on their behalf, as well as an inspirational, empowering guide to what we can do to help them. With the same no-nonsense tone that made Skinny Bitch a multi-million copy success, Beg galvanizes us to change our choices and actions, and to love animals in a radical new way.

You are a good person. You are one of the 84 million Americans who volunteer with a charity. You are part of a national donor pool that contributes nearly $200 billion to good causes every year. But you wonder: Why don't your efforts seem to make a difference? Fifteen years ago, Robert Egger asked himself this same question as he reluctantly climbed aboard a food service truck for a night of volunteering to help serve meals to the homeless. He wondered why there were still people waiting in line for soup in this day and age. Where were the drug counselors, the job trainers, and the support team to help these men and women get off the streets? Why were volunteers buying supplies from grocery stores when restaurants were throwing away unused fresh food every night? Why had politicians, citizens, and local businesses allowed charity to become an end in itself? Why wasn't there an efficient way to solve the problem? Robert knew there had to be a better way. In 1989, he started the D.C. Central Kitchen by collecting unused food from local restaurants, caterers, and hotels and bringing it back to a central location where hot, nutritious meals were prepared and distributed to agencies around the city. Since then, the D.C. Central Kitchen has been named one of President Bush Sr.'s Thousand Points of Light and has become one of the most respected and emulated nonprofit agencies in the world, producing and distributing more than 4,000 meals a day. Its highly successful 12-week job-training program equips former homeless transients and drug addicts with culinary and life skills to gain employment in the restaurant business. In Begging for Change, Robert Egger looks back on his experience and exposes the startling lack of logic, waste, and ineffectiveness he has encountered during his years in the nonprofit sector, and calls for reform of this $800 billion industry from the inside out. In his entertaining and inimitable way, he weaves stories from his days in music, when he encountered legends such as Sarah Vaughan, Mel Torme, and Iggy Pop, together with stories from his experiences in the hunger movement -- and recently as volunteer interim director to help clean up the beleaguered United Way National Capital Area. He asks for nonprofits to be more innovative and results-driven, for corporate and nonprofit leaders to be more focused and responsible, and for citizens who contribute their time and money to be smarter and more demanding of nonprofits and what they provide in return. Robert's appeal to common sense will resonate with readers who are tired of hearing the same nonprofit fund-raising appeals and pity-based messages. Instead of asking the "who" and "what" of giving, he leads the way in asking the "how" and "why" in order to move beyond our 19th-century concept of charity, and usher in a 21st-century model of change and reform for nonprofits. Enlightening and provocative, engaging and moving, this book is essential reading for nonprofit managers, corporate leaders, and, most of all, any citizen who has ever cared enough to give of themselves to a worthy cause.

The true story of Greenpeace activists imprisoned in Russia—and the fight to free them: “A gripping story of tremendous courage that reads like a thriller” (Naomi Klein). “The most important prison motto is hope for the better, but every moment, literally every moment, be prepared for the worst. Don’t hope, don’t fear, don’t beg.” —Roman Dolgov, one of the Arctic 30 With rising temperatures, a military arms race, and a multi-national rush to exploit resources at any cost, the Arctic is now the stage on which our future will be decided. As the ice melts, Vladimir Putin orders Russia’s oil rigs to move further north. But one early September morning in 2013, thirty men and women from eighteen countries—the crew of Greenpeace’s Arctic Sunrise—decided to draw a line in the ice and protest Arctic drilling. Thrown together by a common cause, they are determined to stop Putin and the oligarchs. But their protest is met with brutal force as Russian commandos seize the Arctic Sunrise. Held under armed guard by masked men, they are charged with piracy and face fifteen years in Russia’s nightmarish prison system. Journalist and activist Ben Stewart spearheaded the campaign to release the Arctic 30. Now he tells their astonishing story—a tale of passion, courage, brutality, and survival. With wit, verve, and candor, Stewart chronicles the extraordinary friendships the activists made with their often murderous cellmates, their battle to outwit the prison guards, and the struggle to stay true to the cause that brought them there. “With its colorful dialogue, moral dilemmas, and scenes of physical danger, Stewart’s book would make a great movie . . . the prison life the book reveals is eye-opening, and Stewart describes it with great verve.” —Foreign Affairs

She had never been more beautiful to him than when she was making him hurt. Corinne was young once. Reese wasn’t her first lover, but he was the first to submit to her. For a while they had something special, but it ended badly. She’s a little older now — and the wealthy businessman who just bought the company she works for bears little resemblance to that boy. He’s commanding, domineering, and seems hell-bent on pushing her past her limits. In a flash of anger, she falls back into their old pattern—and Reese falls right in with her. Before she knows it, she’s testing him. Then tasting him. Corrine knows she can’t afford to get involved again. Her life is complicated enough without throwing in a slew of kink. Now if only Reese would stop making her feel like the goddess she used to be…and showing her who’s been the boss all along. But if he wants her, he’s going to have to beg for it.

Poetry. "T.J. Sandella's poems have compassion, humor, grace, and range. He writes about himself and others, about music and sex and trees and Houdini, and death, of course, else how would we recognize him as a poet? But what moves most deeply across and within these poems is an engaging mixture of curiosity and conscience, a need to discover various kinds of truth, whether ethical or aspirational. In poems that 'keep bending / into questions,' he moves graciously across what he sees, what he has done and what he has imagined doing or becoming. One poem asks, 'How long / until we become what we've always wanted to be?' That none of the poems answer that question shouldn't be held against Sandella. That all of them try is to his credit and our immense benefit."--Bob Hicok "WAYS TO BEG risks the big questions. These poems ignite, they incinerate the straight line--the easy road to sweetness--to ask: What does it mean to be sanctified? In an avalanche of grit and tenderness, Sandella roils with heartbreaking humanity. He speaks in the voice of the working class, of salvation and truth as a wild act. This is a brave and beautiful book."--Jan Beatty "WAYS TO BEG aches as it gazes into the upended present with an unflinching eye, searching for a home. There's loneliness here, and a belief in companionship and the power of another to both heal us and to open us. I love the way surprise leads us to the familiar and the familiar to surprise, and how the poet renders the ordinary and the tragic as equals. Woven together into a fugue, each poem builds moment by intimate moment. These poems begin in the noise and commotion of the world and travel toward quiet reflection after the loss of a mother. It is here that the work crescendos, the pain of grief reminding us to hold each moment and to make it, in no small way, sacred."--Dorianne Laux

"Art is theft," Picasso once proclaimed, and much of the best and most "original" new art involves an act or two of unequivocal, overt theft. Paradoxically, the law relating to artistic borrowing has grown more restrictive. "The plagiarism and copyright trials of the twenty-first century are what the obscenity trials were to the twentieth century," Kenneth Goldsmith, has observed. "These are really the issues of our time." Beg, Steal and Borrow offers a comprehensive and provocative survey of a complex subject that is destined to grow in relevance and importance. It traces an artistic lineage of appropriation from Michelangelo to Jeff Koons, and examines the history of its legality from the sixteenth century to now.

The first and only definitive biography of legendary Motown group, the Temptations The Temptations are an incomparable soul group, with dozens of chart-topping hits such as My Girl and Papa Was a Rollin Stone. From the sharp suits, stylish choreography, and distinctive vocals that epitomized their onstage triumphs to the personal failings and psycho-dramas that played out behind the scenes, Ain't Too Proud to Beg tells the complete story of this most popular—and tragic—of all Motown super groups. Based on in-depth research and interviews with founding Temptations member Otis Williams and many others, the book reveals the highly individual, even mutually antagonistic, nature of the group's members. Venturing beyond the money and the fame, it shares the compelling tale of these sometime allies, sometime rivals and reveals the unique dynamic of push and pull and give and take that resulted in musical genius. The first book to tell the whole story of Motown's greatest group, with all-new interviews and previously undiscovered sources and photographs Gives the last word on enduring Motown mysteries, including the deaths of Paul Williams and David Ruffin and the truth behind Ruffin's tumultuous romance with Tammi Terrell Reveals the secret "can't miss" formula behind the Temptations' thirty-seven chart hits Draws on more than one hundred interviews with the group's associates, industry figures, family members, and most importantly, founding Temptation Otis Williams Ain't Too Proud to Beg takes a cohesive and penetrating look at the life and enduring legacy of one of the greatest groups in popular music. It is essential reading for fans of the Temptations, music lovers, and anyone interested in the history of American popular culture over the last fifty years.

Begging by nestling birds has become the model system for investigating evolutionary conflicts of interest within families and their theoretical resolution provided by honest signals of offspring need. In response to the recent explosions of scientific papers on the revolution of begging; we have brought together twenty-four original contributions from major researchers in all areas of this dynamic field. Organised into six sections: I: Theoretical approaches; II: Begging as a signal; III: Nestling physiology; IV: Sibling competition; V: Brood parasitism; and VI: Statistical approaches; this book is primarily aimed at research scientists and those at the graduate student level. For the first time, the theoretical and empirical literature on begging is fully reviewed. New ideas and data are also presented from a wide range of natural systems, and each chapter ends with suggestions for future study.