What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage

Author: Amy Sutherland
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588366901
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
While observing exotic animal trainers for her acclaimed book Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched, journalist Amy Sutherland had an epiphany: What if she used these training techniques with the human animals in her own life–namely her dear husband, Scott? In this lively and perceptive book, Sutherland tells how she took the trainers’ lessons home. The next time her forgetful husband stomped through the house in search of his mislaid car keys, she asked herself, “What would a dolphin trainer do?” The answer was: nothing. Trainers reward the behavior they want and, just as important, ignore the behavior they don’t. Rather than appease her mate’s rising temper by joining in the search, or fuel his temper by nagging him to keep better track of his things in the first place, Sutherland kept her mouth shut and her eyes on the dishes she was washing. In short order, Scott found his keys and regained his cool. “I felt like I should throw him a mackerel,” she writes. In time, as she put more training principles into action, she noticed that she became more optimistic and less judgmental, and their twelve-year marriage was better than ever. What started as a goofy experiment had such good results that Sutherland began using the training techniques with all the people in her life, including her mother, her friends, her students, even the clerk at the post office. In the end, the biggest lesson she learned is that the only animal you can truly change is yourself. Full of fun facts, fascinating insights, hilarious anecdotes, and practical tips, What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage describes Sutherland’s Alice-in-Wonderland experience of stumbling into a world where cheetahs walk nicely on leashes and elephants paint with watercolors, and of leaving a new, improved Homo sapiens.

Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched

Author: Amy Sutherland
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101218827
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 397

Book Description
A rare and absolutely enchanting look inside the Harvard of wild animal wranglers As is obvious to anyone who has read her most e-mailed New York Times article of 2006, "What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage," Amy Sutherland knows a thing or two about animals. In Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched, she takes readers behind the gates of Moorpark Community College, where students are taught such skills as how to train a hyena to pirouette and coax a tiger to open wide for a vet exam. As she follows the faculty, student body, and four- footed teaching aides at Moorpark's Exotic Animal Training and Management program, Sutherland produces a true walk on the wild side, filled with wonder, comedy, occasional heartache, and transcendent beauty.

Teenage as a Second Language

Author: Barbara R Greenberg
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1440509166
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 159

Book Description
What are you to do when your cheerful, friendly family members morph overnight into sarcastic, sullen, teens? How can you get through to these hormonally challenged strangers when all you get in return are sighs and eyerolls? Thankfully, this book reveals the groundbreaking strategies you can use to maintain good communication, healthy interaction, and strong connections to your teen, no matter how rocky the road to puberty becomes. You'll learn how to: Let your teens help set the rules--and the consequences for breaking them Realize that "me, me, me!" is actually age-appropriate Put honesty above all else Try not to criticize, judge, or become angry Based on the latest research, this book works as a Rosetta Stone to help you hear what your kids are really saying--and makes sure nothing is lost in translation!

The Queer Art of Failure

Author: Jack Halberstam
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822350459
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
DIVProminent queer theorist offers a "low theory" of culture knowledge drawn from popular texts and films./div

Beyond Addiction

Author: Jeffrey Foote
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476709475
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
The most innovative leaders in progressive addiction treatment in the US offer a groundbreaking, science-based guide to helping loved ones overcome addiction problems and compulsive behaviors. The most innovative leaders in progressive addiction treatment in the US offer a groundbreaking, science-based guide to helping loved ones overcome addiction problems and compulsive behaviors. Beyond Addiction eschews the theatrics of interventions and tough love to show family and friends how they can use kindness, positive reinforcement, and motivational and behavioral strategies to help their loved ones change. Drawing on forty collective years of research and decades of clinical experience, the authors present the best practical advice science has to offer. Delivered with warmth, optimism, and humor, Beyond Addiction defines a new, empowered role for friends and family and a paradigm shift for the field. Learn how to tap the transformative power of relationships for positive change, guided by exercises and examples. Practice what really works in therapy and in everyday life, and discover many different treatment options along with tips for navigating the system. And have hope: this guide is designed not only to help someone change, but to help someone want to change.

The Child of Pleasure

Author: Gabriele D'Annunzio
Publisher: Mondial
ISBN: 1595690581
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Book Description
Originally published in 1889, this work's protagonist Andrea Sperelli introduced the Italian culture to aestheticism and a taste for decadence. The young count seeks beauty, despises the bourgeois world, and rejects the basic rules of morality and social interaction. His corruption is evident in his sadistic superimposing of two women.

Garfield Eats and Runs

Author: Jim Davis
Publisher: Random House Worlds
ISBN: 0425285723
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 98

Book Description
Snack Attack! For Garfield, eating is a full-contact sport. Boasting an Olympic-sized appetite, the famished feline dives into each meal with the heart—and mouth—of a champion. Garfield fans can chow down on this latest collection of all-new comics featuring the fat cat’s biting humor.

Quirk

Author: Hannah Holmes
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1400068401
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
Who are you? It’s the most fundamental of human questions. Are you the type of person who tilts at windmills, or the one who prefers to view them from the comfort of an air-conditioned motorcoach? Our personalities are endlessly fascinating—not just to ourselves but also to our spouses, our parents, our children, our co-workers, our neighbors. As a highly social species, humans have to navigate among an astonishing variety of personalities. But how did all these different permutations come about? And what purpose do they serve? With her trademark wit and sly humor, Hannah Holmes takes readers into the amazing world of personality and modern brain science. Using the Five Factor Model, which slices temperaments into the major factors (Extraversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness) and minor facets (such as impulsive, artistic, or cautious), Holmes demonstrates how our genes and brains dictate which factors and facets each of us displays. Are you a Nervous Nelly? Your amygdala is probably calling the shots. Hyperactive Hal? It’s all about the dopamine. Each facet took root deep in the evolution of life on Earth, with Nature allowing enough personal variation to see a species through good times and bad. Just as there are introverted and extroverted people, there are introverted and extroverted mice, and even starfish. In fact, the personality genes we share with mice make them invaluable models for the study of disorders like depression, schizophrenia, and anxiety. Thus it is deep and ancient biases that guide your dealings with a very modern world. Your personality helps to determine the political party you support, the car you drive, the way you eat M&Ms, and the likelihood that you’ll cheat on your spouse. Drawing on data from top research laboratories, the lives of her eccentric friends, the conflicts that plague her own household, and even the habits of her two pet mice, Hannah Holmes summarizes the factors that shape you. And what she proves is that it does take all kinds. Even the most irksome and trying personality you’ve ever encountered contributes to the diversity of our species. And diversity is the key to our survival.

She's Not My Mother-in-Law

Author: Rebecca Miller Pringle
Publisher: Outskirts Press
ISBN: 9781432749873
Category : Interracial marriage
Languages : en
Pages : 89

Book Description
Follow one womans true story as she journeys through a torrent of deceptions and fabrications that kept a family divided. See how her faith in God helped tighten her bond with her husband. Together, they weathered the in-law storm against all odds. Learn how she coped and the advice she gives. Shes not my mother-in-law: Shes my husbands mother is a story that must be told.

The Science of Consequences

Author: Susan M. Schneider
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 161614663X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Book Description
Actions have consequences--and the ability to learn from them revolutionized life on earth. While it's easy enough to see that consequences are important (where would we be without positive reinforcement?), few have heard there's a science of consequences, with principles that affect us every day. Despite their variety, consequences appear to follow a common set of scientific principles and share some similar effects in the brain--such as the "pleasure centers." Nature and nurture always work together, and scientists have demonstrated that learning from consequences predictably activates genes and restructures the brain. Applications are everywhere--at home, at work, and at school, and that's just for starters. Individually and societally, for example, self-control pits short-term against long-term consequences. Ten years in the making, this award-winning book tells a tale ranging from genetics to neurotransmitters, from emotion to language, from parenting to politics, taking an inclusive interdisciplinary approach to show how something so deceptively simple can help make sense of so much.