Product Description When Doctor M. Scott Peck suggested Elan to my parents I was skeptical because the first program he sent me to was a drug program, and I had never done drugs. He said it wasn't, and that Elan treated teens with emotional problems. He told me that Elan had psychiatrists and counselors, and activities, so I agreed to go.What I witnessed was unbelievable. Elan was an insane asylum, run by the inmates, and Joe Ricci was God. For more than thirty years I told people I had been in prison, rather than the truth of what happened there. After you read this book you will understand why.

Joyce Farmer's memoir chronicles the decline of the author's parents' health, their relationship with one another and with their daughter, and how they cope with the day-to-day emotional fragility of the most taxing time of their lives. Joyce Farmer, best known for co-creating the Tits 'n Clits comics anthology in the 1970s, a feminist response to the rampant misogyny in underground comix, spent 11 years crafting Special Exits, a graphic memoir in the vein of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home or Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner, and Frank Stack's Our Cancer Year, about caring for her dying father and stepmother.

During the Civil War, the outcome of many a battle or campaign hinged on the proper wording, dissemination and interpretation of battlefield orders. Early in the war, officers trained in small unit combat could suddenly find themselves commanding thousands of men and writing orders to subordinates with little experience in the practice. The inclusion of accurate origin information, up-to-date knowledge of the situation in the field, the amount of discretion given to recipients, and the speed and geographical acumen of couriers were critical. This innovative volume examines 13 cases in which the tide of battle turned on written orders, including Ball's Bluff, Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, Gettysburg and Chickamauga. The importance of this seemingly clerical task, this work shows, equaled that of tactics, manpower, and supplies in determining the course of the Civil War.

From the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending comes “a brilliant, rueful look at love—what we do for it, how we experience it and what makes it die” (People). One summer in the sixties, in a staid suburb south of London, nineteen-year-old Paul comes home from university and is urged by his mother to join the tennis club. There he’s partnered with Susan Macleod, a fine player who’s forty-eight, confident, witty, and married, with two nearly adult daughters. She is a warm companion, her bond with Paul immediate. And soon, inevitably, they are lovers. Basking in the glow of one another, they set up house together in London. Decades later, Paul looks back at how they fell in love and how—gradually, relentlessly—everything fell apart. As he turns over his only story in his mind, examining it from different vantage points, he finds himself confronted with the contradictions and slips of his own memory—and the ways in which our narratives and our lives shape one another. Poignant, vivid and profound, The Only Story is a searing novel of memory, devotion, and how first love fixes a life forever.

"Mesmerizing... A portrait of something familiar gone wildly, tragically awry." —The New York Times “Sometimes, a child is born to a parent who can’t be a parent, and, like a seedling in the shade, has to grow toward a distant sun. Ariel Leve’s spare and powerful memoir will remind us that family isn’t everything—kindness and nurturing are.” —Gloria Steinem Ariel Leve grew up in Manhattan with an eccentric mother she describes as “a poet, an artist, a self-appointed troublemaker and attention seeker.” Leve learned to become her own parent, taking care of herself and her mother’s needs. There would be uncontrolled, impulsive rages followed with denial, disavowed responsibility, and then extreme outpourings of affection. How does a child learn to feel safe in this topsyturvy world of conditional love? Leve captures the chaos and lasting impact of a child’s life under siege and explores how the coping mechanisms she developed to survive later incapacitated her as an adult. There were material comforts, but no emotional safety, except for summer visits to her father’s home in South East Asia-an escape that was terminated after he attempted to gain custody. Following the death of a loving caretaker, a succession of replacements raised Leve—relationships which resulted in intense attachment and loss. It was not until decades later, when Leve moved to other side of the world, that she could begin to emancipate herself from the past. In a relationship with a man who has children, caring for them yields a clarity of what was missing. In telling her haunting story, Leve seeks to understand the effects of chronic psychological maltreatment on a child’s developing brain, and to discover how to build a life for herself that she never dreamed possible: An unabbreviated life.

The perfect anti-valentine: a whirlwind tour through love’s most crushing moments What’s the best way to mend a broken heart? Forget ice cream, wine, and sappy movies. Journalist Meghan Laslocky advises: Read through the pain. From forbidden love in 12th century Paris to the art of crafting the perfect “I’m over you” mix, The Little Book of Heartbreak is a quirky exploration of all things lovelorn, including: • How serial cheater Ernest Hemingway stole his wife’s job just as their marriage was collapsing • Kinky spells cast by lovesick men in ancient Greece • Painter Oscar Kokoschka’s attempt to get over an ex by creating (and having liaisons with!) her life-size replica • Brooding crooner Morrissey’s personal creed about how romantic love is useless • The surprising science behind heartbreak and love addiction • The connection between World War II and what you talk about with your therapist • Insights into the tricky chemistry of monogamy and infidelity, courtesy of tiny rodents • And other lessons learned from ill-fated romances, lovers’ quarrels, and hell-hath-no-fury spats throughout the ages Featuring anecdotes from history, literature, culture, art and music, The Little Book of Heartbreak shares the entertaining, empowering and occasionally absurd things that happen when love is on its last legs.