I was never supposed to fall in love with a married man. My best friend's brother. I'd made too many mistakes in my past. Like last night-when I married Lex Edwards impulsively. In a bid to finally find their happily ever after, Lex and Charlie find themselves on a journey of learning how to love again. They began a new future to move forward from a broken past, finally together at last. They vowed nothing would tear them apart... again. But life's cruel fate destroys their lives, and in desperate times they tear their love apart grieving over a lost loved one. Lex and Charlie find themselves on the verge of finally saying goodbye to each other, until the return of a scorned ex-fiancé who's desperate to claim back what was his.
He was my best friend's older brother. My first love, who left town without so much as a goodbye... Eight years later, I've said yes to marrying another man-the ever-so-perfect Julian Baker. I'm finally ready to let go of my past for a new future. But like all gut-wrenching love triangles, my past and future collide in a cruel twist of fate. Inside a busy restaurant, he's sitting at the table next to me wearing a jealous stare. And I'm forced to face the man who destroyed my heart in high school. Lex Edwards, now billionaire tycoon, won't back down easily. He's ruthless, cunning, and no longer the sweet and loving college graduate studying to become a doctor. Just like me, our tumultuous affair broke him. But now, he is hell-bent on winning me back. And Lex Edwards will stop at nothing to prove just how powerful our love is, even if it means we need to relive the past... A forbidden love story about fate, heartache, and second chances.
The United States has been epitomized as a land of opportunity, where hard work and skill can bring personal success and economic well-being. The American Dream has captured the imagination of people from all walks of life, and to many, it represents the heart and soul of the country. But there is another, darker side to the bargain that America strikes with its people -- it is the price we pay for our individual pursuit of the American Dream. That price can be found in the economic hardship present in the lives of millions of Americans. In Chasing the American Dream, leading social scientists Mark Robert Rank, Thomas A. Hirschl, and Kirk A. Foster provide a new and innovative look into a curious dynamic -- the tension between the promise of economic opportunities and rewards and the amount of turmoil that Americans encounter in their quest for those rewards. The authors explore questions such as: -What percentage of Americans achieve affluence, and how much income mobility do we actually have? -Are most Americans able to own a home, and at what age? -How is it that nearly 80 percent of us will experience significant economic insecurity at some point between ages 25 and 60? -How can access to the American Dream be increased? Combining personal interviews with dozens of Americans and a longitudinal study covering 40 years of income data, the authors tell the story of the American Dream and reveal a number of surprises. The risk of economic vulnerability has increased substantially over the past four decades, and the American Dream is becoming harder to reach and harder to keep. Yet for most Americans, the Dream lies not in wealth, but in economic security, pursuing one's passions, and looking toward the future. Chasing the American Dream provides us with a new understanding into the dynamics that shape our fortunes and a deeper insight into the importance of the American Dream for the future of the country.
Chasing Slow models HGTV star Erin Loechner's journey to help you break out of the faster-better-stronger trap and make small changes to refresh your perspective, renew your priorities, and shift your focus to what matters most. You're here, but you want to be there. So you spend your life narrowing this divide, and you call this your race, your journey, your path. You live your days tightening your boot straps, wiping the sweat from your brow, chasing undiscovered happiness just around the bend. And on and on you run. Viral sensation and HGTV.com star Erin Loechner knows about the chase. Before turning 30, she'd earned the title "The Nicest Girl Online" as she was praised for her authentic voice and effortless style. Her HGTV web show garnered over one million fans worldwide, and her client list includes Walt Disney World, IKEA, Martha Stewart and Home Depot. The New York Times applauded her, her friends and church admired her, and her husband and baby adored her. She had arrived at the ultimate destination. So why did she feel so lost? Through a series of steep climbs--her husband's brain tumor, bankruptcy, family loss, and public criticism--Erin learns just how much strength it takes to surrender it all, and to veer right into grace. In Chasing Slow, Erin upgrades her life through downsizing--her stuff, her obligations, her fears, her personal metric of "perfect." And ultimately, her invitation becomes yours: to turn away from the fast and frenzy, and find freedom in a new-fashioned lifestyle defined by grace. Life's answers are not always hidden where they seem. It's time to venture off the beaten path to see that we’ve already been given everything we need. We've already arrived. You see? You'll see.
Americans in the early 19th century were, as one foreign traveller bluntly put it, "filthy, bordering on the beastly"--perfectly at home in dirty, bug-infested, malodorous surroundings. Many a home swarmed with flies, barnyard animals, dust, and dirt; clothes were seldom washed; men hardly ever shaved or bathed. Yet gradually all this changed, and today, Americans are known worldwide for their obsession with cleanliness--for their sophisticated plumbing, daily bathing, shiny hair and teeth, and spotless clothes. In Chasing Dirt, Suellen Hoy provides a colorful history of this remarkable transformation from "dreadfully dirty" to "cleaner than clean," ranging from the pre-Civil War era to the 1950s, when American's obsession with cleanliness reached its peak. Hoy offers here a fascinating narrative, filled with vivid portraits of the men and especially the women who helped America come clean. She examines the work of early promoters of cleanliness, such as Catharine Beecher and Sylvester Graham; and describes how the Civil War marked a turning point in our attitudes toward cleanliness, discussing the work of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, headed by Frederick Law Olmsted, and revealing how the efforts of Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War inspired American women--such as Dorothea Dix, Clara Barton, and Louisa May Alcott--to volunteer as nurses during the war. We also read of the postwar efforts of George E. Waring, Jr., a sanitary engineer who constructed sewer systems around the nation and who, as head of New York City's street-cleaning department, transformed the city from the nation's dirtiest to the nation's cleanest in three years. Hoy details the efforts to convince African-Americans and immigrants of the importance of cleanliness, examining the efforts of Booker T. Washington (who preached the "gospel of the toothbrush"), Jane Addams at Hull House, and Lillian Wald at the Henry Street Settlement House. Indeed, we see how cleanliness gradually shifted from a way to prevent disease to a way to assimilate, to become American. And as the book enters the modern era, we learn how advertising for soaps, mouth washes, toothpastes, and deodorants in mass-circulation magazines showed working men and women how to cleanse themselves and become part of the increasingly sweatless, odorless, and successful middle class. Shower for success! By illuminating the historical roots of America's shift from "dreadfully dirty" to "squeaky clean," Chasing Dirt adds a new dimension to our understanding of our national culture. And along the way, it provides colorful and often amusing social history as well as insight into what makes Americans the way we are today.
Chasing the Rising Sun is the story of an American musical journey told by a prize-winning writer who traced one song in its many incarnations as it was carried across the world by some of the most famous singers of the twentieth century. Most people know the song "House of the Rising Sun" as 1960s rock by the British Invasion group the Animals, a ballad about a place in New Orleans -- a whorehouse or a prison or gambling joint that's been the ruin of many poor girls or boys. Bob Dylan did a version and Frijid Pink cut a hard-rocking rendition. But that barely scratches the surface; few songs have traveled a journey as intricate as "House of the Rising Sun." The rise of the song in this country and the launch of its world travels can be traced to Georgia Turner, a poor, sixteen-year-old daughter of a miner living in Middlesboro, Kentucky, in 1937 when the young folk-music collector Alan Lomax, on a trip collecting field recordings, captured her voice singing "The Rising Sun Blues." Lomax deposited the song in the Library of Congress and included it in the 1941 book Our Singing Country. In short order, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, and Josh White learned the song and each recorded it. From there it began to move to the planet's farthest corners. Today, hundreds of artists have recorded "House of the Rising Sun," and it can be heard in the most diverse of places -- Chinese karaoke bars, Gatorade ads, and as a ring tone on cell phones. Anthony began his search in New Orleans, where he met Eric Burdon of the Animals. He traveled to the Appalachians -- to eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina -- to scour the mountains for the song's beginnings. He found Homer Callahan, who learned it in the mountains during a corn shucking; he discovered connections to Clarence "Tom" Ashley, who traveled as a performer in a 1920s medicine show. He went to Daisy, Kentucky, to visit the family of the late high-lonesome singer Roscoe Holcomb, and finally back to Bourbon Street to see if there really was a House of the Rising Sun. He interviewed scores of singers who performed the song. Through his own journey he discovered how American traditions survived and prospered -- and how a piece of culture moves through the modern world, propelled by technology and globalization and recorded sound.
"And I thought I knew this crazy-brave black boy who bolted out of a Harlem ghetto into a white prep school and bobbed and weaved his way across the treacherous divide between black and white America. But Dennis Watlington's life story is even more astonishing than I knew. He emerges a no-jive black integrationist who is proud of the slave ancestry that makes him a solid American foreperson." -Gail Sheehy, bestselling author of Passages and Understanding Men's Passages Chasing America is a rollercoaster ride through promise and poverty, affirmative action and addiction, and a powerful story that captures a life and an era that is seminally American. Born in Harlem in 1952, Dennis developed a heroin habit at the age of 14, kicked it, and received a scholarship to the Hotchkiss School where he was elected president of his class. He went on to NYU, became involved in film and theater (he had a small role in The Deerhunter and gave Bruce Willis his start in a play called Bullpen), got addicted to crack, kicked that, and became an Emmy winning television writer. Chasing America shows us the best and worst that America offers to a Black man--from the Jim Crow South to boarding school life in New England to backstage at the Fillmore East to a holding cell in Bellevue Hospital. Part Ellison, part Exley, Chasing America is an amazing story.
Chasing Wonder is a story for all ages, about confronting the unknown. The story is told in clever and entertaining rhyme, rich in word play, that adds multiple layers of meaning and intrigue. A fast-paced underwater tale told by an EMMY-award-winning author, Chasing Wonder is the odyssey of a small oyster, banished from the oyster bed Just because! On his reluctant journey of discovery, he encounters Esteemed Lobster, Squid Pro Quo, Coral Larry, Marlin Brand-Oh, and other wittily named characters--smart and foolish, good and evil, all of whom shape his journey and ultimately his, and the reader's, self-awareness. Suffused with humor and wisdom, with enticing illustrations (each one itself containing a game of discovery), the story captivates readers quickly and entertains them throughout, en route to a dramatic ending. Alive with the joys of wonderment, this book is easy to read, hard to put down, and insightfully profound.
