Rare Bird Books, A Vireo Book – serie

Thirsty is the history of Los Angeles and its fraught relationship with water. As a city on the make since the early twentieth century, Los Angeles' resources fought hard to keep up with its unchecked growth. The city's water chief William Mulholland built an aqueduct to grab water over 200 miles away in Owens Valley, but it wasn't enough. Thirsty is the gripping tale of Los Angeles' epic battles for water, the larger-than-life characters that shaped a city's destiny, and the man-made tragedy that killed 400 and forever changed the way water would be harnessed and allocated.

The Ultimate Anti-Cancer Cookbook takes "you are what you eat" to a whole new level with easy to use recipes, using everyday foods. Incorporating sound science, a chef's sensibility, and common sense, this indispensable reference gets tons of use while inspiring well-being with Pam Braun's delicious recipes that are virtuous for your body. Plus, readers learn about nutrition along the way.

In News Junkie, the cutthroat worlds of journalism, politics, and high finance are laid bare by Jason Leopold, whose addictive tendencies led him from a life of drug abuse and petty crime to become an award-winning investigative journalist who exposed some of the biggest corporate and political scandals in recent American history. Leopold broke key stories about the California energy crisis and Enron Corporation's infamous phony trading floor as a reporter for the Dow Jones Newswires. While he exposed high-rolling hucksters and double-dealing politicians, Leopold hid the secrets of his own felonious past, terrified that he would be discovered. When the news junkie closed in on his biggest story--one that implicated a Bush administration member--he found himself pilloried by angry colleagues and the president's press secretary, all attempting to destroy his career.Introducing an unforgettable array of characters--from weepy editors and love-starved politicos to steroid-pumped mobsters who intimidate the author into selling drugs and stolen goods--News Junkie shows how a man once fueled by raging fear and self-hatred transforms his life, regenerated by love, sobriety, and a new, harmonious career with the media.

Maverick environmental writers William J. Kelly and Chip Jacobs follow up their acclaimed Smogtown with a provocative examination of China's ecological calamity already imperiling a warming planet. Toxic smog most people figured was obsolete needlessly kills as many as died in the 9/11 attacks every day, while sometimes Grand Canyon-sized drifts of industrial particles aloft on the winds rain down ozone and waterway-poisoning mercury in America. In vivid, gonzo prose blending first-person reportage with exhaustive research and a sense of karma, Kelly and Jacobs describe China's ancient love affair with coal, Bill Clinton's blunders cutting free-trade deals enabling the U.S. to "export" manufacturing emissions to Asia in a shift that pilloried the West's middle class, Communist Party manipulation of eco-statistics, the horror of cancer villages, the deception of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and spellbinding peasant revolts against cancer-spreading plants involving thousands in mostly-censored melees.Ending with China's monumental coal-bases decried by climatologists as a global warming dagger, The People's Republic of Chemicals names names and emphasizes humanity over bloodless statistics in a classic sure to ruffle feathers as an indictment of money as the real green that not even Al Gore can deny.

Paralyzed from the neck down, Gordon Zahler rose from his deathbed to a fast-talking, Hollywood entrepreneur/idea man who traveled the world, lived hard, married, fantasized about water-skiing and chased his dreams to create one of the largest independent postproduction shops in Hollywood. While this is Jacobs' story about his coming to grips with his deformed uncle, himself and his mother, the silent victim to Gordon's recklessness, Strange As It Seems is also a tip of the hat to the man who turned his back on the notion of I can't.

Most Evil II is Steve Hodel's follow-up investigation (2009-2015) into his father's potential murders and introduces new evidence and additional linkage obtained by him over the past six years.Included in that evidence, is the solving of the Zodiac’s forty-five year cryptic cipher, which gives us the answer to the question asked in Most Evil, “Were Black Dahlia Avenger and Zodiac the same serial killer?”

From the fictional towns of Hill Valley, CA, and Shermer, IL, to the beautiful landscapes of the "Goondocks" in Astoria and the "time of your life" dirty dancing resort still alive and well in Lake Lure, NC, '80s teen movies left their mark not just on movie screen and in the hearts of fans, but on the landscape of America itself. Like few other eras in movie history, the '80s teen movies has endured and gotten better with time. In Brat Pack America, Kevin Smokler gives virtual tours of your favorite movies while also picking apart why these locations are so important to these movies. Including interviews with actors, writers, and directors of the era, and chock full of interesting facts about your favorite '80s movies, Brat Pack America is a must for any fan. Smokler went to Goonies Day in Astoria, OR, took a Lost Boys tour of Santa Cruz, CA, and deeply explored every nook and cranny of the movies we all know and love, and it shows.

Do Americans live in a land of freedom and equality where people with vision, brains, and a strong work ethic can have rewarding lives? Or is ours a society where well-being, dignity, and independence are reserved for a narrow elite?Bitter Is the Wind is a coming of age novel that traces the lives of George Johnson Jr. and his father from the rural blue-collar landscape of upstate New York in the 1970s to the halls of Wharton Business School and the heights of Wall Street. After a tragedy strengthens their familial bond, the Johnsons contend with assembly line monotony and unfulfilled dreams of baseball stardom, and they learn what it means to be tempted, trapped, jailed, and ignored by a seemingly uncaring God.First time novelist Jim McDermott opens a window on the American working class and its aching desire for financial security, recognition, and respect. His characters confront a modern world with limited possibilities, ambiguous mores, and authorities who seem devoted to keeping the brightest and most talented members of the underclass on the other side of town. Bitter Is the Wind is a deft and timely deconstruction of the American Dream.

In Inside Studio 54, the former owner takes you behind the scenes of the most famous nightclub in the world, through the crowd, to a place where celebrities, friends, and the beautiful people sip champagne and share lines of cocaine using rolled-up hundred-dollar bills. In the early eighties, Mark Fleischman reopened Studio 54, the world's most glamorous and notorious nightclub, after it was closed down by the State of New York. Ten thousand people showed up that night, ready to restart the party that abruptly ended after the raid in 1978 landed its former owners in jail.Inside Studio 54 invites you to revisit the happening scenes of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, the post-Pill, pre-AIDS era of free love, consequence-free sex, and seemingly endless partying. Following Fleischman as he builtconnections as a hotel, restaurant, and club owner that lead him to Studio 54. Inside Studio 54 takes the reader from Brazil to the heights of debauchery in the Virgin Islands and finally to New York City. A star-studded thrill ride through decadent and drug-fueled parties at the legendary Studio 54.

Paterson Boy is a memoir told as a series of stories. Sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes ironic, and sometimes filled with heartache, Paterson Boy takes you on a journey that will make you reflect on your own childhood with its many disparate pieces. Collectively they are a rite-of-passage story with all the varied emotions that would suggest, minus the drama of war, incest, or physical abuse.With a fresh, wise voice, Jerry Vis tells a marvelous story of the freedom of childhood, its loss, and search for the path back to oneself. It is also a tale of Paterson, NJ, as it starts to decline, of a neighborhood that is an entire world for an only child born into a blue-collar family just months before the start of WW II. It is a place of family-owned stores and horse-drawn vendor wagons, of aunts and uncles, grandparents, teachers, and friends. Jerry has an adoring mother who provides a decade of loving security and the freedom to explore his boyhood world on his own, and a remote father who comes in and out of focus in Jerry’s life until he dramatically emerges center stage, along with a confusing mix of God, religion, and alcohol.At the same time, other family members scheme, lure, cajole, and bribe Jerry in an attempt to shape him into what each thinks he ought to be, and in an attempt to save him from his father. Influenced by those around him, Jerry must somehow learn to find a way to become himself.