Up Yours

How to Mess Up Your Life is an uproariously funny and eminently useful guide for those of us "failures" who can use a little realistic help. Best-selling author Darrin Zeer teaches readers the essential life lessons by learning what not to do. In the persona of "Doctor Dread" Zeer proffers a pithy and profound approach to personal growth with his unique brand of snarky self-help. He punctuates his own advice with quotes from such luminaries as Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and others. Unforgettable quips include:True friends stab you in the front. -Oscar WildeSpeak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret. -Ambrose BierceThe difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits. -Albert Einstein From how to get dumped or fired to tips on how to stay miserable, Zeer's hilarious helpers will refresh your attitude and offer invaluable new perspective. Who knew that procrastination could actually help you get ahead? Or that not keeping a to-do list is true Zen? With helpful sidebars, handy lists, and a stress-management workbook, How to Mess Up Your Life is a truly unique guide. Don't be fooled by the title, it might just be the best help you'll ever receive to straighten up your life!

Available for the first time in the United States, this international bestseller reveals the secrets of nonverbal communication to give you confidence and control in any face-to-face encounter—from making a great first impression and acing a job interview to finding the right partner. It is a scientific fact that people’s gestures give away their true intentions. Yet most of us don’t know how to read body language– and don’t realize how our own physical movements speak to others. Now the world’s foremost experts on the subject share their techniques for reading body language signals to achieve success in every area of life. Drawing upon more than thirty years in the field, as well as cutting-edge research from evolutionary biology, psychology, and medical technologies that demonstrate what happens in the brain, the authors examine each component of body language and give you the basic vocabulary to read attitudes and emotions through behavior. Discover: • How palms and handshakes are used to gain control • The most common gestures of liars • How the legs reveal what the mind wants to do • The most common male and female courtship gestures and signals • The secret signals of cigarettes, glasses, and makeup • The magic of smiles–including smiling advice for women • How to use nonverbal cues and signals to communicate more effectively and get the reactions you want Filled with fascinating insights, humorous observations, and simple strategies that you can apply to any situation, this intriguing book will enrich your communication with and understanding of others–as well as yourself.

THE BLOCKBUSTER HIT—Over two million copies sold! A New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly Bestseller “Poignant, engrossing.”—People • “Lisa Wingate takes an almost unthinkable chapter in our nation’s history and weaves a tale of enduring power.”—Paula McLain Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty. Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption. Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong. Publishers Weekly’s #3 Longest-Running Bestseller of 2017 • Winner of the Southern Book Prize • If All Arkansas Read the Same Book Selection This edition includes a new essay by the author about shantyboat life.

A National Book Award-winning satire about the unchecked power of American capitalism, written more than three decades before the 2008 financial crisis. At the center of J R is J R Vansant, a very average sixth grader from Long Island with torn sneakers, a runny nose, and a juvenile fascination with junk-mail get-rich-quick offers. Responding to one, he sees a small return; soon, he is running a paper empire out of a phone booth in the school hallway. Everyone from the school staff to the municipal government to the squabbling heirs of a player-piano company to the titans of Wall Street and the politicians in Washington will be caught up in the endlessly ballooning bubble of the J R Family of Companies. First published in 1975 and winner of the National Book Award in 1976, J R is an appallingly funny and all-too-prophetic depiction of America’s romance with finance. It is also a book about suburban development and urban decay, divorce proceedings and disputed wills, the crumbling facade of Western civilization and the impossible demands of love and art, with characters ranging from the earnest young composer Edward Bast to the berserk publicist Davidoff. Told almost entirely through dialogue, William Gaddis’s novel is both a literary tour de force and an unsurpassed reckoning with the way we live now.

In a natural follow-up to her national bestseller Front Row at the White House, the dean of the White House press corps presents a vivid and personal presidential chronicle. Currently a columnist for Hearst and a former White House bureau chief for UPI, Helen Thomas has covered an unprecedented nine presidential administrations, endearing herself with her trademark "Thank you, Mr. President," at the conclusion of White House press conferences. Thomas has amassed many wonderful tales about her personal interactions with and observations of the presidents and their families that can all be found in Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President. In nine riveting chapters -- one for each administration -- Thomas delights, informs, spins yarns, and offers opinions on the commanders in chief, from Kennedy through George W. Bush. In these accounts, Thomas reveals Kennedy's love of sparring with the press, the unique invitation LBJ extended to Hubert Humphrey to become his running mate, and Reagan's down-home ways of avoiding the press's tougher questions. This book is as entertaining and compelling as Helen Thomas herself.

This compilation of essays and reviews, gathered posthumously from the New York Times Book Review and other publications, solidifies John Gardner's legacy as a consummate teacher and controversial critic with a provocative sense of humor. Writing about his fellow craftsmen, John Gardner offers piercing insights into those whose works he admired and those whose works he didn't. In exacting unapologetic evaluations upon such writers as Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth, John Cheever, Larry Woiwode, Joyce Carol Oates, and John Updike, Gardner separates genuine fiction from fakery, careful not to spare his own writings in the process, and in doing so, he displays his influences and wide–reaching observations of the literary life. Refreshingly unpredictable and self–aware, this collection lays bare the core qualities of lasting fiction and is essential reading for anyone interested in American literature.