For seven months, Manny Howard—a lifelong urbanite—woke up every morning and ventured into his eight-hundred-square-foot backyard to maintain the first farm in Flatbush, Brooklyn, in generations. His goal was simple: to subsist on what he could produce on this farm, and only this farm, for at least a month. The project came at a time in Manny’s life when he most needed it—even if his family, and especially his wife, seemingly did not. But a farmer’s life, he discovered—after a string of catastrophes, including a tornado, countless animal deaths (natural, accidental, and inflicted), and even a severed finger—is not an easy one. And it can be just as hard on those he shares it with. Manny’s James Beard Foundation Award–winning New York magazine cover story—the impetus for this project—began as an assessment of the locavore movement. We now think more about what we eat than ever before, buying organic for our health and local for the environment, often making those decisions into political statements in the process. My Empire of Dirt is a ground-level examination—trenchant, touching, and outrageous—of the cultural reflex to control one of the most elemental aspects of our lives: feeding ourselves. Unlike most foodies with a farm fetish, Manny didn’t put on overalls with much of a philosophy in mind, save a healthy dose of skepticism about some of the more doctrinaire tendencies of locavores. He did not set out to grow all of his own food because he thought it was the right thing to do or because he thought the rest of us should do the same. Rather, he did it because he was just crazy enough to want to find out how hard it would actually be to take on a challenge based on a radical interpretation of a trendy (if well-meaning) idea and see if he could rise to the occasion. A chronicle of the experiment that took slow-food to the extreme, My Empire of Dirt tells the story of one man’s struggle against environmental, familial, and agricultural chaos, and in the process asks us to consider what it really takes (and what it really means) to produce our own food. It’s one thing to know the farmer, it turns out—it’s another thing entirely to be the farmer. For most of us, farming is about food. For the farmer, and his family, it’s about work.

Inside the culture of an artistically influential music community Britain is widely considered the cradle of independent music culture. Bands like Radiohead and Belle and Sebastian, which epitomize indie music's sounds and attitudes, have spawned worldwide fanbases. This in-depth study of the British independent music scene explores how the behavior of fans, artists, and music industry professionals produce a community with a specific aesthetic based on moral values. Author Wendy Fonarow, a scholar with years of experience in the various sectors of the indie music scene, examines the indie music "gig" as a ritual in which all participants are actively involved. This ritual allows participants to play with cultural norms regarding appropriate behavior, especially in the domains of sex and creativity. Her investigation uncovers the motivations of audience members when they first enter the community and how their positions change over time so that the gig functions for most members as a rite of passage. Empire of Dirt sheds new light on music, gender roles, emotion, subjectivity, embodiment, and authenticity.

Fishing is many things to many people. To some, quietly dangling a worm for a sunfish in a local farm pond is not only exciting, but relaxing and reflective. To others, it’s all about the adventure of traveling to exotic locales and fishing for ten-pound rainbow trout in Alaska or 100-pound tarpon in Central America. To others, it’s an integral part of life, not just a pastime but something to live for. Still others feel compelled to write about it, to try to understand this sport that grips so many. In this collection, you’ll read works from celebrated writers that aim to explore the mysterious grip that fishing has held on so many of us. Within these pages, the reader can: Join Rudyard Kipling as he chases a cow that has stolen his minnow Examine the philosophical side of angling with Thaddeus Norris Fish the Ohio River with John James Audubon Learn what it’s like to fish for Great Lakes steelhead with Jerry Hamza Get used to fishing alongside Alaskan brown bears with Richard Chiappone And many more fishing escapades! With more than three dozen photographs and illustrations that masterfully bring these stories to life, Incredible Fishing Stories is a must-have for every angler looking to share in the joy of their chosen sport.

What kind of maniacal deviant preys on young teenage girls and viciously terrorizes a small town in upstate New York? Roman Wolfe, a.k.a. Wolfman, is a Vietnam combat veteran who had specialized in the stealthy, nighttime-stalking and killing of the enemy. After the war Roman gets a college education and becomes an elementary school teacher who is still haunted by his violent war experiences on the killing fields and in the jungles of Vietnam. Roman feels the need to end his teaching career when his schools community is informed about his specialized actions in Vietnam and many parents react negatively. When most parents no longer want their children placed in Romans classroom, he resigns his teaching position and becomes a Private Investigator who prefers to handle cases involving children. Shortly after becoming a PI, his two high-ranking state trooper friends ask him for help as a consultant in solving a serial murders case involving the killing of female children. Now Wolfman must emerge again to hunt a sadistic, but intelligent killer.

As it self-destructs, the strategy of secularism (the idea that nations can be religiously neutral) is splitting between American exceptionalism and radical Islam. American exceptionalism, the belief that "America" is more than a nation, is folly. Radical Islam is obviously wrong as well, but Muslims at least own the nature of the current cultural conflict: You must follow somebody, whether it's Allah, the State, or Jesus Christ. This important and timely book is an analysis of the changing face of religion and politics and also an extended argument for Christian expression of faith in Jesus Christ. This does not mean a withdrawal from politics to our own communities and churches. Instead, we Christians must take what we have learned from the wreck of secularism and build a Christendom of the New Foundation: A network of nations bound together by a formal, public, civic acknowledgement of the lordship of Jesus Christ and the fundamental truth of the Apostles' Creed.

The author, Shane Feldman, is a college-aged person suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar. In this memoir he allows the reader to observe actual thoughts and behaviors exhibited as a manic episode occurred in a real-time journal. He allows the reader to follow him on an intimate descent and recovery from a manic episode along with providing a prologue detailing his relatively normal life and high level of functionality in the absence of devastating psychological symptoms. After the episode, Shane added a series of insightful postdated footnotes strategically located to aid the reader in fully understanding the complexity of his mind frame. The memoir is far from being simply a documentation of a disease as Shane demonstrates his poetic and perceptive brilliance in a series of satires about the relationships between religion, society, and government. Though Mr. Feldman has suffered serious psychological illness for a small percent of his life... he is one-hundred percent a writer and has written and published a wide variety of works.

Belize: The Final Chapter (Viva, Mexico! And Other Assorted Love Songs) is the author's second book and is a sequel to his first book, On Both Sides of the Street, and is a continuation of the life and times of John Headley. It is a story of his unplanned but fortuitous stumbling into a new country and a new life. This adventure recounts John's desperate escape from a miserable existence in Belize to Mexico, where, in a moment of sheer luck, John encounters an angel sent from the heavens who w