Triumph of the Straight Dope

Author: Ed Zotti
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 034542008X
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
Why do parachute jumpers yell "Geronimo"? Is it aerodynamically impossible for bumblebees to fly? Will watching too much TV ruin your eyes? Fresh from the popular newspaper column by CECIL ADAMS! WHAT IS CECIL ADAMS'S IQ? "Do you want it in scientific notation? Little Ed, get out the slide rule." --Cecil Adams For more than a quarter of a century Cecil Adams has been courageously attempting to lift the veil of ignorance surrounding the modern world. Now, in his fifth book, he takes yet another stab, dissecting such classic conundrums as --If you swim less than an hour after eating, will you get cramps and die? --What's the difference between a Looney Tune and a Merrie Melody? --Can you see a Munchkin committing suicide in The Wizard of Oz? --Was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre based on actual events? --Did medieval lords really have "the right of the first night"? And much more! THE CRITICS: STILL RAVING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! "Trenchant, witty answers to the great imponderables." --Denver Post

You Can't Always Get What You Want

Author: Sam Cutler
Publisher: ECW Press
ISBN: 1554906962
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Book Description
A “straight-dope, tell-all account” of touring with two of the world’s greatest bands of the 60s and 70s—A “fast-moving narrative of rock-n-roll excess” (Publishers Weekly). In this all-access memoir of the psychedelic era, Sam Cutler recounts his life as tour manager for the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead—whom he calls the yin and yang of bands. After working with the Rolling Stones at their historic Hyde Park concert in 1969, Sam managed their American tour later that year, when he famously dubbed them “The Greatest Rock Band in the World.” And he was caught in the middle as their triumph took a tragic turn during a free concert at the Altamont Speedway in California, where a man in the crowd was killed by the Hell’s Angels. After that, Sam took up with the fun-loving Grateful Dead, managing their tours and finances, and taking part in their endless hijinks on the road. With intimate portraits of other stars of the time—including Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, the Band, the Allman Brothers, Pink Floyd, and Eric Clapton—this memoir is a treasure trove of insights and anecdotes that bring some of rock’s greatest legends to life.

The Straight Dope

Author: Cecil Adams
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780345422910
Category : Questions and answers
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Is it true what they say about Catherine the Great and the horse? How do they measure snow? How do they get the stripes into toothpaste? Do cats have navels? How are coins taken out of circulation? Why do men have nipples? Cecil Adams has tackled these questions and more in his outspoken, uncompromising, and always entertaining weekly newspaper column, The Straight Dope. Now the best of these questions and answers--from the profound to the ridiculous--are collected in book form so that you can know a little about a lot. Exploding myths, revealing shocking truths, and explaining all major mysteries of the cosmos, The Straight Dope contains more than four hundred fully-indexed entries on topics ranging from sex to consumer products, science to history, and rock 'n' roll to much, much more!

How to Raise a Drug-Free Kid

Author: Joseph A. Califano
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476728496
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
The highly acclaimed comprehensive guide to getting your child through the formative pre-teen, teen, and college years drug-free—now completely revised and updated. Nearly every child will be offered drugs or alcohol before graduating high school, and excessive drinking is common at most colleges. But the good news is that a child who gets to age twenty-one without smoking, using illegal drugs, or abusing alcohol or prescription drugs is virtually certain never to do so. Drawing on more than two decades of research at The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASAColumbia), founder Joseph A. Califano, Jr., presents a clear, common-sense guide to helping kids stay drug-free. All parents dream of a healthy, productive, and fulfilling future for their children; Califano shows which specific actions work and what parents can do to teach, protect, and empower their children to have the greatest chance of making that future come true. Teenagers who learn about the risks of drugs from their parents are twice as likely never to try them, and this book provides the tools parents need to prepare their children for those crucial decision-making moments. In this revised and updated edition, Califano tackles some of the newest obstacles standing between our kids and a drug-free life—from social media sites and cell phone apps to the explosion in prescription and over-the-counter drug abuse and the increased dangers and addictive power of marijuana. He reveals what teens can’t or won’t tell their parents about their thoughts on drugs and alcohol, and combines the latest research with his discussions with thousands of parents and teens about the challenges that widespread access to drugs and alcohol present, and how parents can instill in their teens the will and skills to choose not to use. Califano’s insightful and lively guide is as readable as it is informative.

Up Shit Creek

Author: Joe Lindsay
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
ISBN: 0898159393
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 98

Book Description
We all know HOW TO SHIT IN THE WOODS—but do we dare? After reading this uproarious collection of "fecal misadventures" from a veteran river-rafting guide and yarn spinner extraordinaire, you may think twice before venturing out into the great beyond...or even down the hall to your nice safe water closet.

Steve Lacy

Author: Jason Weiss
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822338154
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Book Description
A collection of thirty-four interviews with the innovative soprano saxophonist and jazz composer Steve Lacy (1934&–2004).

Po H# on Dope to PhD

Author: Elaine Richardson
Publisher: Parlor Press LLC
ISBN: 160235426X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Book Description
"There was a time when Elaine Richardson was one of 'the Negroes everybody pointed to as the Negroes you didn't want to become.' The title of this book is no metaphor or allusion, but a literal shorthand for a remarkable, unpredictable journey. She inherits a plain way of talking about horrific pain from a mother who seemed impossible to shock. The way too fast way she grew up was and is too common, but her will to remap her destiny is uncommon indeed. To call her story inspiring would be itself too plain a thing, hers is a heroic life." -dream Hampton, writer and filmmaker

Red Harvest

Author: Dashiell Hammett
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
ISBN: 0307767485
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
The steadfast and sturdy Continental Op has been summoned to the town of Personville—known as Poisonville—a dusty mining community splintered by competing factions of gangsters and petty criminals. The Op has been hired by Donald Willsson, publisher of the local newspaper, who gave little indication about the reason for the visit. No sooner does the Op arrive, than the body count begins to climb . . . starting with his client. With this last honest citizen of Poisonville murdered, the Op decides to stay on and force a reckoning—even if that means taking on an entire town. Red Harvest is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Author: Michael Lewis
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393066231
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
Michael Lewis’s instant classic may be “the most influential book on sports ever written” (People), but “you need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of [Lewis’s] thoughts about it” (Janet Maslin, New York Times). One of GQ's 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone—but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games? In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only “the single most influential baseball book ever” (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what “may be the best book ever written on business” (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places—the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players—but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers?numbers!?collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors. What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?

Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War

Author: Mary Roach
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393245454
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Book Description
A New York Times / National Bestseller "America's funniest science writer" (Washington Post) Mary Roach explores the science of keeping human beings intact, awake, sane, uninfected, and uninfested in the bizarre and extreme circumstances of war. Grunt tackles the science behind some of a soldier's most challenging adversaries—panic, exhaustion, heat, noise—and introduces us to the scientists who seek to conquer them. Mary Roach dodges hostile fire with the U.S. Marine Corps Paintball Team as part of a study on hearing loss and survivability in combat. She visits the fashion design studio of U.S. Army Natick Labs and learns why a zipper is a problem for a sniper. She visits a repurposed movie studio where amputee actors help prepare Marine Corps medics for the shock and gore of combat wounds. At Camp Lemmonier, Djibouti, in east Africa, we learn how diarrhea can be a threat to national security. Roach samples caffeinated meat, sniffs an archival sample of a World War II stink bomb, and stays up all night with the crew tending the missiles on the nuclear submarine USS Tennessee. She answers questions not found in any other book on the military: Why is DARPA interested in ducks? How is a wedding gown like a bomb suit? Why are shrimp more dangerous to sailors than sharks? Take a tour of duty with Roach, and you’ll never see our nation’s defenders in the same way again.