The New York Times bestselling collection of humorous autobiographical essays by the Academy Award nominated actress and star of Up in the Air and Pitch Perfect. Even before she made a name for herself on the silver screen starring in films like Pitch Perfect, Up in the Air, Twilight, and Into the Woods, Anna Kendrick was unusually small, weird, and “10 percent defiant.” At the ripe age of thirteen, she had already resolved to “keep the crazy inside my head where it belonged. Forever. But here’s the thing about crazy: It. Wants. Out.” In Scrappy Little Nobody, she invites readers inside her brain, sharing extraordinary and charmingly ordinary stories with candor and winningly wry observations. With her razor-sharp wit, Anna recounts the absurdities she’s experienced on her way to and from the heart of pop culture as only she can—from her unusual path to the performing arts (Vanilla Ice and baggy neon pants may have played a role) to her double life as a middle-school student who also starred on Broadway to her initial “dating experiments” (including only liking boys who didn’t like her back) to reviewing a binder full of butt doubles to her struggle to live like an adult woman instead of a perpetual “man-child.” Enter Anna’s world and follow her rise from “scrappy little nobody” to somebody who dazzles on the stage, the screen, and now the page—with an electric, singular voice, at once familiar and surprising, sharp and sweet, funny and serious (well, not that serious).

Thomas feels like no matter what he does, he can’t escape Kyle’s persistent bullying. At school, at soccer—nowhere feels safe! “Mom said Kyle would grow over the summer and stop picking on me, but he didn’t grow up, he just grew.” With support from friends, classmates, and adults, Thomas starts to feel more confident in himself and his hobbies, while Kyle learns the importance of kindness to others. The book concludes with “activity club” pages for kids, as well as information to help parents, teachers, counselors, and other adults foster dialogue with children about ways to stop bullying.

An "analysis of deeper meaning behind the string of deaths of unarmed citizens like Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray, providing ... [commentary] on the intersection of race and class in America today"--

The full story of the rise and spectacular comeback of the band hailed as the saviors of punk rock. It's hard to believe that in early 2004 Green Day was considered over -- the band was still together, but they were dismissed as a strictly '90s phenomenon, incapable of re-creating the success of their groundbreaking album Dookie. Then American Idiot debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts, stayed on the charts for nearly 18 months, and went on to sell more than four million records and to win the Grammy for Record of the Year for "Boulevard of Broken Dreams." Combining unique access to Green Day with a seasoned journalists nose for a great story, Marc Spitz gives the complete account of the band, from their earliest days to their most recent explosion of popularity and critical acclaim. Foremost, Nobody Likes You is a story of friendship and the transporting power of playing very loud music. It is the story of how high school dropout Billie Joe Armstrong came to write song lyrics that inflamed the political conscience of fans in a way that two Yale graduates couldn't. Green Days story -- from rise, to fall, to rise again -- has never been fully told.

Housed on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the University Musical Society is one of the oldest performing arts presenters in the country. A past recipient of the National Medal of Arts, the nation’s highest public artistic honor, UMS connects audiences with wide-ranging performances in music, dance, and theater each season.Between 1987 and 2017, UMS was led by Ken Fischer, who over three decades pursued an ambitious campaign to expand and diversify the organization’s programming and audiences—initiatives inspired by Fischer’s overarching philosophy toward promoting the arts, “Everybody In, Nobody Out.” The approach not only deepened UMS’s engagement with the university and southeast Michigan communities, it led to exemplary partnerships with distinguished artists across the world. Under Fischer’s leadership, UMS hosted numerous breakthrough performances, including the Vienna Philharmonic’s final tour with Leonard Bernstein, appearances by then relatively unknown opera singer Cecilia Bartoli, a multiyear partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and artists as diverse as Yo-Yo Ma, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Elizabeth Streb, and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Though peppered with colorful anecdotes of how these successes came to be, this book is neither a history of UMS nor a memoir of Fischer’s significant accomplishments with the organization. Rather it is a reflection on the power of the performing arts to engage and enrich communities—not by handing down cultural enrichment from on high, but by meeting communities where they live and helping them preserve cultural heritage, incubate talent, and find ways to make community voices heard.