Offers advice on pre-and post-natal care, and parenthood.

Charles Mingus was one of the most innovative jazz musicians of the 20th Century, and ranks with Ives and Ellington as one of America's greatest composers. By temperament, he was a high-strung and sensitive romantic, a towering figure whose tempestuous personal life found powerfully coherent expression in the ever-shifting textures of his music. Now, acclaimed music critic Gene Santoro strips away the myths shrouding "Jazz's Angry Man," revealing Mingus as more complex than even his lovers and close friends knew. A pioneering bassist and composer, Mingus redefined jazz's terrain. He penned over 300 works spanning gutbucket gospel, Colombian cumbias, orchestral tone poems, multimedia performance, and chamber jazz. By the time he was 35, his growing body of music won increasing attention as it unfolded into one pioneering musical venture after another, from classical-meets-jazz extended pieces to spoken-word and dramatic performances and television and movie soundtracks. Though critics and musicians debated his musical merits and his personality, by the late 1950s he was widely recognized as a major jazz star, a bellwether whose combined grasp of tradition and feel for change poured his inventive creativity into new musical outlets. But Mingus got headlines less for his art than for his volatile and often provocative behavior, which drew fans who wanted to watch his temper suddenly flare onstage. Impromptu outbursts and speeches formed an integral part of his long-running jazz workshop, modeled partly on dramatic models like Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. Keeping up with the organized chaos of Mingus's art demanded gymnastic improvisational skills and openness from his musicians-which is why some of them called it "the Sweatshop." He hired and fired musicians on the bandstand, attacked a few musicians physically and many more verbally, twice threw Lionel Hampton's drummer off the stage, and routinely harangued chattering audiences, once chasing a table of inattentive patrons out of the FIVE SPOT with a meat cleaver. But the musical and mental challenges this volcanic man set his bands also nurtured deep loyalties. Key sidemen stayed with him for years and even decades. In this biography, Santoro probes the sore spots in Mingus's easily wounded nature that helped make him so explosive: his bullying father, his interracial background, his vulnerability to women and distrust of men, his views of political and social issues, his overwhelming need for love and acceptance. Of black, white, and Asian descent, Mingus made race a central issue in his life as well as a crucial aspect of his music, becoming an outspoken (and often misunderstood) critic of racial injustice. Santoro gives us a vivid portrait of Mingus's development, from the racially mixed Watts where he mingled with artists and writers as well as mobsters, union toughs, and pimps to the artistic ferment of postwar Greenwich Village, where he absorbed and extended the radical improvisation flowing through the work of Allen Ginsberg, Jackson Pollock, and Charlie Parker. Indeed, unlike Most jazz biographers, Santoro examines Mingus's extra-musical influences--from Orson Welles to Langston Hughes, Farwell Taylor, and Timothy Leary--and illuminates his achievement in the broader cultural context it demands. Written in a lively, novelistic style, Myself When I Am Real draws on dozens of new interviews and previously untapped letters and archival materials to explore the intricate connections between this extraordinary man and the extraordinary music he made.

In these five stories, Ernest Gaines returns to the cane fields, sharecroppers' shacks, and decaying plantation houses of Louisiana, the terrain of his great novels A Gathering of Old Men and A Lesson Before Dying. As rendered by Gaines, this country becomes as familiar, and as haunted by cruelty, suffering, and courage, as Ralph Ellison's Harlem or Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. Gaines introduces us to this world through the eyes of guileless children and wizened jailbirds, black tenants and white planters. He shows his characters eking out a living and making love, breaking apart aand coming together. And on every page he captures the soul of black community whose circumstances make even the slightest assertion of self-respect an act of majestic—and sometimes suicidal—heroism. Bloodline is a miracle of storytelling. STORIES INCLUDE: A Long Day in November The Sky Is Gray Three Men Bloodline Just Like a Tree

Many books have been written about the Southern lifestyle during the 1930's through the 1940's, but sit back and lend your ear (eyes) to a personal account of how a young man grew up under these trying conditions. Not only were the conditions trying, but getting an education was bleak and almost impossible, not just due to the segregation, but from the internal conflicts among the families. See how the hand of God moved to help this family over-come hardships and calamities, but how He touched the life of this young man when he was determined to better himself, his sisters and brothers, mother and father and to make a life outside the Racial Southern expectations of young black men. These are issues that I experienced growing up as a black person in the South in the USA. I want my children and grandchildren to know the things I experienced and how I was able to overcome and make a better life for my family. Currently I am living in Southern California, and I have lived quite a long life. I am currently on the downside of being a septagenarian. Unfortunately, I have lost my eyesight due to a disease called diabetic retinopathy. I am dependent on my wife and my sister to assist me in getting this book completed. I have been trying to get the book finished for the past fifteen years. I hope this book gives insight to not only my family, but to all that would care to read it.

Music In Minutes, is a method book, designed to both learn ukulele as well as teach music through song. It has been developed with even the most novice musician in mind and is suitable for ages 10-110. Our approach to achieving fantastic results is based on many years of experience in composition and performance, along with sound pedagogical and psychological principle. Fast-track your musical progress. You will be literally playing and singing (plinging) along in just minutes to the accompanying musical tracks as you work your way through the progressively ordered tunes. There are even heaps of songs that exclusively utilise chord shapes (finger positions on the fret board) requiring just one finger! To make things even easier, the first 30 songs are based on a simple repeated chord pattern. It's just so simple, but this by no means compromises any musicality. We believe that there is great sophistication in simplicity, and where confusion is eliminated, both understanding and joy are increased.

"In this insightful and enlightening book, E. Willa Simpson takes readers on a journey through the African American experience. Her version of history as retold in poetic terms is a refreshing tribute to countless African American leaders. Through her honesty, courage and the unique critical dialogue reflected through interviews with key civil rights leaders including Angela Davis, Michael Eric Dyson, Mamie Till Mobley and Howard Bingham (producer of motion picture film Ali), combined with thought provoking verses; Simpson's work promises to leave readers pondering just how deeply African Americans were affected by their shackled enslavement, psychological impact of lynchings and tumultuous history in the United States. Simpson senses the worth involved in honoring the lives of those who contributed unselfishly to the struggle for justice and equality. Her book is definitely a must read! "The Hollywood Film and Entertainment Review" "On My Brother's Shoulder's" is the single most important book for African Americans today. It pays tribute to those who came before us and laid down their lives so that future generations would be able to have better and continue to sing a triumphant song. Simpson's book presents a timeless journey through the early civil rights movement as portrayed through the skillful retelling of the brutal lynching of Emmett Till a fourteen year old youth who was accused of having wolf whistled at a white woman. Through Simpson's thoughtful examination of the ideology behind lynching noted filmmaker, historian and poet; E. Willa Simpson pays tribute to countless African American legends including Emmett Till, Angela Davis, Michael Eric Dyson, Medgar Evers, Ida B. Wells and more.

Four talented girls from vastly different pasts share a dream of stardom: Cinnamon, the edgy actress; Ice, the phenomenal vocalist; Rose, the beautiful dancer; and Honey, the first-rate violinist. The four meet at the prestigious Senetsky School of the Performing Arts - housed in an ornate New York mansion - and become instant friends as they take off on a dazzling whirlwind of intense classes, theatre outings and celebrity-studded parties. But they soon realise this is no ordinary school. Madame Senetsky pushes the girls' studies beyond reason. She controls their social lives. And they get the strange feeling someone is watching them. But who? And why? Cinnamon, Ice, Rose and Honey set out to untangle a shadowy web of Senetsky family secrets. As they explore dark corners and hidden rooms, every creak and moan of the old mansion tells a story too frightening to repeat. A devastating story that could destroy their dreams.