Great Second Acts

These inspiring true stories of women who’ve made the most of their mature years “will get you fired up” (Becca Anderson, author of The Book of Awesome Women and Real Life Mindfulness). The amazing women profiled in Great Second Acts refused to be defined by the dates on their birth certificates. Their lives are testimony that one can be feisty after fifty—and this book says in no uncertain terms to those who think otherwise, in the words of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “I dissent.” This isa fascinating collection of biographical sketches of dozens of women of a certain age who have excelled, inspired, and achieved. Learn how these women changed their respective fields of art, politics, science, mathematics, media, literature, business, activism, education, and more. Included are: · Biographies of influential women such as PM Margaret Thatcher, chef Julia Child, Mother Teresa, feminist Gloria Steinem, actress Rita Moreno, inventor Ruth Handler, Judge Judy Sheindlin, and many more · Empowering quotes from strong women who epitomize grit and persistence · Motivational, inspirational, and educational stories of ordinary older women who’ve accomplished extraordinary things

Glimpse Behind the Façade of Rich and Famous Women If you liked The Last Castle and Lean In, you’ll love Women of Means. The Grass Isn't Greener on the Other Side. Heiresses have always been viewed with eyes of envy. They were the ones for whom the cornucopia had been upended, showering them with unimaginable wealth and opportunity. However, through intimate historical biographies, Women of Means shows us that oftentimes the weaving sisters saved their most heart-wrenching tapestries for the destinies of wealthy women. Happily Never After. From the author of Behind Every Great Man, we now have Women of Means, vignettes of the women who were slated from birth―or marriage―to great privilege, only to endure lives which were the stuff Russian tragic heroines are made of. They are the nonfictional Richard Corys―those not slated for happily ever after. Women of Means is bound to be a non-fiction best seller, full of the best biographies of all time. Some of the women whose silver spoons rusted include: • Almira Carnarvon, the real-life counterpart to Lady Cora of Downton Abbey • Liliane Bettencourt, whose chemist father created L’Oreal... and was a Nazi collaborator • Peggy Guggenheim, who had an insatiable appetite for modern art and men • Nica Rothschild, who traded her gilded life to become the Baroness of Bebop • Jocelyn Wildenstein, who became a cosmetology-enhanced cat-woman • Ruth Madoff, the dethroned queen of Manhattan • Patty Hearst, who trod the path from heiress... to terrorist

Second Acts is a guide to reinventing your life. Whether you wish to change careers, move to a more desirable part of the country, start a business, write a novel, or drop everything to pursue a life dream, Stephen Pollan offers a powerful message ofhope and guidance that has benefited his own clients. Through a series of exercises, you will develop a comprehensive "script" for your second act—a step-by-step action plan that will lead you to the life you've always wanted.

An entertaining book “filled with inspirational anecdotes” (People) about second acts in life and reinventing yourself from beloved television actress Patricia Heaton—Emmy Award–winning star of Everybody Love’s Raymond, The Middle, Patricia Heaton Parties, and most recently, Carol’s Second Act. Patricia Heaton is one of TV’s most recognizable and beloved moms. She’s won three Emmys, two for her starring role as Debra Barone on the long-running comedy Everybody Loves Raymond, and followed that career-making role with another gem as Frances Heck on the popular sitcom The Middle. She returned to television as the lead in the series Carol’s Second Act, which followed divorced fifty-year-old Carol Kenney (played by Heaton), who after raising two children and retiring as a teacher decides to finally pursue her dream of becoming a doctor. Patricia Heaton knows what it’s like to stage a second act and navigate pivotal transitions in life. When Heaton’s children left the nest, she found herself in a new and unfamiliar stage of life, compelling her to evaluate which direction to take next. Heaton discovered she had the time pursue passions that were previously placed on hold, both personally and professionally. She made her move and took a step forward in her career and for the first time, Heaton was not only the star of her own show, but also the executive producer. She now finds her greatest fulfillment in using her influence to support humanitarian efforts as a Celebrity Ambassador for World Vision, the world’s largest non-governmental organization. She and her husband support their work in poverty relief around the globe, something that was planted in her heart long ago. Through her own experience, Heaton became curious about other people’s stories of second-act transitions and ways to offer support in the process. Now, in Your Second Act, she shares wisdom from her own personal journey as well as insight from stories of numerous people across the country. From work to health, to love and more, the results are heartwarming, inspiring, and surprisingly relatable. “If you’ve been wanting to start your second act, Patricia Heaton may have just what you need” (Today). Filled with light-hearted anecdotes and pragmatic steps, Heaton shows us that midlife doesn’t have to be about crisis when you focus on the opportunity. After all, it’s never too late, or too early to stage your second act.

"These cautionary tales are provocative, highly instructive, occasionally brutal, and, from a safe distance, downright hilarious, making Second Act Trouble the perfect Broadway bedtime reader - unless you are prone to nightmares."--BOOK JACKET.

Now published in the Bloomsbury Revelations series, this is a classic work on the power and importance of drama by renowned American playwright, screenwriter and essayist David Mamet. In this short but arresting series of essays, David Mamet explains the necessity, purpose and demands of drama. A celebration of the ties that bind art to life, Three Uses of the Knife is an enthralling read for anyone who has sat anxiously waiting for the lights to go up on Act 1. In three tightly woven essays of characteristic force and resonance, Mamet speaks about the connection of art to life, language to power, imagination to survival, public spectacle to private script. Self-assured and filled with autobiographical touches Three Uses of the Knife is a call to art and arms, a manifesto that reminds us of the singular power of the theatre to keep us sane, whole and human.

In O My America!, the travel writer and biographer Sara Wheeler embarks on a journey across the United States, guided by the adventures of six women who reinvented themselves as they chased the frontier west. Wheeler's career has propelled her from pole to pole—camping in Arctic igloos, tracking Indian elephants, contemplating East African swamps so hot that toads explode—but as she stared down the uncharted territory of middle age, she found herself in need of a guide. "Fifty is a tough age," she writes. "Role models are scarce for women contemplating a second act." Scarce, that is, until she stumbled upon Fanny Trollope. In 1827, forty-nine-year-old Trollope—mother of Victorian novelist Anthony—swapped England for Ohio and wrote one of the most sensational travel accounts of the nineteenth century. Domestic Manners of the Americans made an instant splash on both sides of the Atlantic: Mark Twain judged her the best foreign commentator of his country, and the last king of France threw a ball in her honor. Fanny was living proof of life after fertility, and she led Wheeler to other trailblazing British travelers and transplants: - the actress Fanny Kemble, who shocked the nation with her passionate firsthand indictment of slavery; - the prolifically pamphleteering economist Harriet Martineau; - the homesteader Rebecca Burlend, who had never been more than twelve miles from her Yorkshire village before she sailed to the New World; - the traveler Isabella Bird, whose many ailments remained in check as long as she was scaling the Rockies; - and the novelist Catherine Hubback, a niece of Jane Austen, who deposited her husband in a madhouse and rode the rails to San Francisco. Tough-minded outsiders, these women's truest qualities emerged in a country as incomplete and tentative as their native land was staid and settled. And they discovered second acts for themselves at a time when the world expected them to politely disappear. In O My America!, Wheeler tracks her subjects from the Mississippi to the cinder cones of the Mayacamas at the tail end of the Cascades, armed with two sets of maps for each adventure: one current and one the women before her would have used. Ambitious and full of life, O My America! is not only a great writer's reckoning with a young country, but also an exuberant tribute to fresh starts, second acts, and six unstoppable women. Shortlisted for the Dolman Travel Book Award

Winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Poetry * An NPR, Slate, Oregonian, Kansas City Star, Willamette Week, and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year * Amazon's Best Book of the Year in Poetry 2013 * In Incarnadine, Mary Szybist restlessly seeks out places where meaning might take on new color. One poem is presented as a diagrammed sentence. Another is an abecedarium made of lines of dialogue spoken by girls overheard while assembling a puzzle. Several poems arrive as a series of Annunciations, while others purport to give an update on Mary, who must finish the dishes before she will open herself to God. One poem appears on the page as spokes radiating from a wheel, or as a sunburst, or as the cycle around which all times and all tenses are alive in this moment. Szybist's formal innovations are matched by her musical lines, by her poetry's insistence on singing as a lure toward the unknowable. Inside these poems is a deep yearning—for love, motherhood, the will to see things as they are and to speak. Beautiful and inventive, Incarnadine is the new collection by one of America's most ambitious poets.