Grand Central Publishing – serie

Using the plights of twelve very different patients-from dignitaries at the nearby UN, to supermax prisoners at Riker's Island, to illegal immigrants, and Wall Street tycoons-Dr. Eric Manheimer "offers far more than remarkable medical dramas: he blends each patient's personal experiences with their social implications" (Publishers Weekly).Manheimer was not only the medical director of the country's oldest public hospital for over 13 years but he was also a patient.As the book unfolds, the narrator is diagnosed with cancer and he is forced to wrestle with the end of his own life even as he struggles to save the lives of others.

A psychiatrist traces how he helped two of his patients discover that they have been lovers over the centuries.

In the predawn hours of March 4, 2002, just below the 10,469-foot peak of a mountain in eastern Afghanistan, a fierce battle raged. Outnumbered by Al Qaeda fighters, Air Force Combat Controller John Chapman and a handful of Navy SEALs struggled to take the summit in a desperate bid to find a lost teammate. Chapman, leading the charge, was gravely wounded in the initial assault. Believing he was dead, his SEAL leader ordered a retreat. Chapman regained consciousness alone, with the enemy closing in on three sides.John Chapman's subsequent display of incredible valor -- first saving the lives of his SEAL teammates and then, knowing he was mortally wounded, single-handedly engaging two dozen hardened fighters to save the lives of an incoming rescue squad -- posthumously earned him the Medal of Honor. Chapman is the first airman in nearly fifty years to be given the distinction reserved for America's greatest heroes.Alone at Dawn is also a behind-the-scenes look at the Air Force Combat Controllers: the world's deadliest and most versatile special operations force, whose members must not only exceed the qualifications of Navy SEAL and Army Delta Force teams but also act with sharp decisiveness and deft precision -- even in the face of life-threatening danger.Drawing from firsthand accounts, classified documents, dramatic video footage, and extensive interviews with leaders and survivors of the operation, Alone at Dawn is the story of an extraordinary man's brave last stand and the brotherhood that forged him.

With impeccable timing, outrageous humour, irreverent wit, and a superb sense of the ridiculous, Groucho tells the saga of the Marx Brothers: the poverty of their childhood in New York's Upper East Side the crooked world of small-time vaudeville (where they learned to carry blackjacks) how a pretzel magnate and the graceless dancer of his dreams led to the Marx Brothers' first Broadway hit, I'll Say She Is! how the stock market crash in 1929 proved a godsend for Groucho (even though he lost nearly a quarter of a million dollars) the adventures of the Marx Brothers in Hollywood, the making of their hilarious films, and Groucho's triumphant television series, You Bet Your Life! Here is the life and lunatic times of the great eccentric genius, Groucho, a.k.a. Julius Henry Marx.

In North America's first major conflict, known today as the French and Indian War, France and England-both in alliance with Native American tribes-fought each other in a series of bloody battles and terrifying raids. No confrontation was more brutal and notorious than the massacre of the British garrison of Fort William Henry- an incident memorably depicted in James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans . That atrocity stoked calls for revenge, and the tough young Major Robert Rogers and his "Rangers" were ordered north into enemy territory to take it. On the morning of October 4, 1759, they surprised the Abenaki Indian village of St. Francis, slaughtering its sleeping inhabitants without mercy. When the raiders returned to safety, they were hailed as heroes by the colonists, and their leader was immortalized as "the brave Major Rogers." But the Abenakis remembered Rogers differently: To them he was Wobomagonda- "White Devil."

A New York Times best-seller when it was first published, Rice's biography is the gripping story of a fierce, magnetic, and brilliant man whose real-life accomplishments are the stuff of legend. Rice retraces Burton's steps as the first European adventurer to search for the source of the Nile to enter, disguised, the forbidden cities of Mecca and Medina and to travel through remote stretches of India, the Near East, and Africa. From his spying exploits to his startling literary accomplishments (the discovery and translation of the Kama Sutra and his seventeen-volume translation of Arabian Nights ), Burton was an engrossing, larger-than-life Victorian figure, and Rice's splendid biography lays open a portrayal as dramatic, complicated, and compelling as the man himself.

A homage to the city of Trieste, rich with history and tinged with the melancholy of remembrance. "Morris at the peak of her form." -The Atlantic Monthly

In this fresh approach to the history of the Black Death, John Hatcher, a world-renowned scholar of the Middle Ages, recreates everyday life in a mid-fourteenth century rural English village. By focusing on the experiences of ordinary villagers as they lived,and died,during the Black Death (1345-50 AD), Hatcher vividly places the reader directly into those tumultuous years and describes in fascinating detail the day-to-day existence of people struggling with the tragic effects of the plague. Dramatic scenes portray how contemporaries must have experienced and thought about the momentous events,and how they tried to make sense of it all.

Growing up in Beverly Hills, the only child of a comedy writer and a fashion designer, Amy Dresner believed that everything was always funny and turned out right. And she needed to believe it. If you could snort it, smoke it, shoot it, or have sex with it, she did. It was never her dream to become an Olympic athlete of self-destruction, but that's what happened.Amy had managed to dodge any real repercussions of her 20-year battle with addiction despite 6 rehabs, 4 psych wards, 3 suicide attempts, and 20 grand mal seizures. But on Christmas Eve of 2011, that all changed. She was high on Oxycontin, in a shitty marriage, and she stupidly pulled a knife on her then husband. She was promptly arrested for felony domestic violence with a deadly weapon. Within a few months, she found herself in a psych ward, penniless, abandoned by her then husband, and looking at a sentence of 240 grueling hours of "community service." For the next two years she would sweep up condoms and syringes on Hollywood Boulevard in the grueling sun as she bounced from various rehabs to halfway houses, all while struggling with sobriety, sex addiction, and starting life over in her 40s. MY FAIR JUNKIE is the shameless, hilarious, and unfortunately--to Amy--true account of it all. A safari through the wild world of addiction, it's a raucous, inspiring story of redemption, and ultimately an insightful tale of courage and metamorphosis.