"This book is like a good song; it will reach so many people right where they live." ----Tanya Tucker How do you beat the blues? We all have moments in life when we're down, lonely, or just plain sad. It's part of being human. Just as everyone is different, everyone has a unique way of beating the blues. For anyone who needs a bit of inspiration, a smile, or a friendly pat on the back, Tanya Tucker and ninety-nine friends offer this heartwarming collection of their personal recipes for beating the blues. Whether through family, friends, nature, music, or maybe even a little Jack Daniel's (as Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner recommended), the collected voices in this timeless book remind us of all the happiness and joy life has to offer. President George H. W. Bush yells at the television. Loretta Lynn makes herself a fried bologna sandwich. Sir Arthur C. Clarke explores the infinite universe of fractals. NASCAR's Geoff Bodine cleans the house. Seventy celebrities such as Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Orbach, and Garth Brooks and thirty ordinary folks such as a farmer, a private detective, a doctor, and a retired gospel radio-show host share what lifts their spirits and puts them back in the game of life. From George Jones's practical "Around the Farm Blues" to "Weird Al" Yankovic's funny "The Warm Weather Blues" to Cathie Pelletier's soulful "The Sunday Blues," 100 Ways to Beat the Blues is an inspiring guide to finding happiness no matter what the blues may bring.

Do you feel plagued by negative thoughts about yourself, overwhelmed by loneliness, paralyzed by a fear of failure? If so, you're not alone. Depression affects millions of people worldwide, regardless of race, gender, age, and socioeconomic class. These numbers have been steadily rising, and sadly, most people who feel the unbearable pain, hopelessness, and self-criticism of depression never seek treatment. If not you, then someone you know most likely hides within these statistics, suffering in silence. The good news is that with effective treatment you can overcome depression--and once you do, you will be better equipped to prevent its recurrence.In his new book, Beat the Blues Before They Beat You, world-renowned cognitive therapist and best-selling author Robert Leahy shows how you can alleviate the effects of major depressive disorders. By redefining your relationship with depression, you can learn to change your attitude and responses toward these unpleasant, intrusive thoughts. Using mindful awareness practices and thought exercises, the troubling images you experience can be looked at in a new light.In a clear and easy-to-read manner, Leahy outlines the causes, symptoms, and treatments for depression, combining real-life patient stories and simple step-by-step instructions to help you understand your depression so you will know how best to treat it. Learn what triggers your moods. Figure out how to defeat feelings of fatigue, hopelessness, and worthlessness. Design a plan to develop self-confidence. Determine what treatments--both medication and therapy--are available to prevent relapse. Beat the Blues Before They Beat You is a collection of the most powerful tools in cognitive therapy to help you curb your thoughts and behaviors, so you can begin to feel good again. You don't have to wait for someone to rescue you. You can rescue yourself.

Longing for more than yet another limp salad? Tired of tussling with the kids over junk food lunch kits? Sounds like you’ve got the lunch box blues. J. M. Hirsch has the fix. But it isn’t a cookbook. Because when it comes to lunch, nobody has time to break out a recipe to bang out a brown bag special. Busy people need lunch ideas. Lots of them. And those ideas need to be healthy, fast, easy, affordable, and delicious. That’s what Beating the Lunch Box Blues is—an idea book to inspire anyone daunted by the daily ordeal of packing lunch. Jammed with nearly 200 photos and more than 500 tips and meals, this book is designed to save families time, money, and their sanity. Whether you want to jazz up a grilled cheese, turn leftover steak into a DIY taco kit, or make pizza “sushi,” Hirsch has it covered. And because the best lunches often are built from the leftovers of great suppers, he has also included 30 fast and flavorful dinner recipes designed to make enough for tomorrow, too. Crazy good stuff like short ribs braised in a Rosemary-Port Sauce, Hoisin-Glazed Meatloaf, and kid-friendly classics such as Turkey Sloppy Joes and American Chop Suey. With ideas this easy and this delicious, there’s no reason to let the lunch box blues get you down.

Search the Internet for the 100 best songs or best albums. Dozens of lists will appear from aficionados to major music personalities. But what if you not only love listening to the blues or country music or jazz or rock, you love reading about it, too. How do you separate what matters from what doesn’t among the hundreds—sometimes thousands—of books on the music you so love? In the Best Music Books series, readers finally have a quick-and-ready list of the most important works published on modern major music genres by leading experts. In 100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own, Edward Komara, former Blues Archivist of the University of Mississippi, and his successor Greg Johnson select those histories, biographies, surveys, transcriptions and studies from the many hundreds of works that have been published about this vital American musical genre. Komara and Johnson provide a short description of the contents and the achievement of each title selected for their “Blues 100.” Entries include full bibliographic citations, prices of copies in print, and even descriptions of specific editions for book collectors. 100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own also includes suggested blues recordings to accompany each recommended work, as well as a concluding section on key reference titles—or as Komara and Johnson phrase it: “The Books behind the Blues 100.” 100 Books Every Blues Fan Should Own serves as a guide for any blues fan looking for a road map through the history of—and even history of the scholarship on—the blues. Here Komara and Johnson answer the question of not only what is a “blues” book, but which ones are worth owning.

"Lift Your Mood Now" is divided into parts that cover understanding depression, stabilizing the brain, avoiding negative thinking, combating low self-esteem, and being true to oneself.

“A brilliant illumination of how the ancient wisdom of the yogic tradition can penetrate the often-intractable challenges of depression.”—Phil Catalfo, Yoga Journal Take the natural path to mental wellness. More than twenty-five million Americans are treated with antidepressants each year, at a cost in excess of $50 billion. But the side effects of popular prescription drugs may seem nearly as depressing as the symptoms they’re meant to treat. Veteran yoga instructor Amy Weintraub offers a better solution—one that taps the scientifically proven link between yoga and emotional well-being as well as the beauty of ancient approaches to inner peace. Addressing a range of diagnoses, including dysthymia, anxiety-based depression, and bipolar disorder, Yoga for Depression reveals why specific postures, breathing practices, and meditation techniques can ease suffering and release life’s traumas and losses. Weintraub also reflects on her own experience with severe depression, from which she recovered through immersing herself in a daily yoga routine. Yoga for Depression is the first yoga book devoted exclusively to the treatment of these debilitating conditions. Amy Weintraub will help readers see their suffering and themselves in a vibrant new light.

Best known for his "Legend of Duluoz" novels, including On the Road and The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac is also an important poet. In these eight extended poems, Kerouac writes from the heart of experience in the music of language, employing the same instrumental blues form that he used to fullest effect in Mexico City Blues, his largely unheralded classic of postmodern literature. Edited by Kerouac himself, Book of Blues is an exuberant foray into language and consciousness, rich with imagery, propelled by rythm, and based in a reverent attentiveness to the moment. "In my system, the form of blues choruses is limited by the small page of the breastpocket notebook in which they are written, like the form of a set number of bars in a jazz blues chorus, and so sometimes the word-meaning can carry from one chorus into another, or not, just like the phrase-meaning can carry harmonically from one chorus to the other, or not, in jazz, so that, in these blues as in jazz, the form is determined by time, and by the musicians spontaneous phrasing & harmonizing with the beat of time as it waves & waves on by in measured choruses." —Jack Kerouac