Manga is the backbone of Japanese popular culture, influencing everything from television, movies, and video games to novels, art, and theater. Shojo manga (girls’ comics) has been seminal to the genre as a whole and especially formative for Japanese girls’ culture throughout the postwar era. In Straight from the Heart, Jennifer Prough examines the shojo manga industry as a site of cultural storytelling, illuminating the ways that issues of mass media, gender, production, and consumption are involved in the process of creating shojo manga. With their glittery pastel covers and focus on human relationships and romance, shojo manga are thoroughly marked by gender—as indeed are almost all manga titles, magazines, and publishing divisions. Drawing on two years of fieldwork on the production of shojo manga, Prough analyzes shojo manga texts and their magazine contexts to explain their distinctive appeal, probe the gendered dynamics inherent in their creation, and demonstrate the feedback system that links producers and consumers in a continuous cycle of "affective labor." Each chapter focuses on one facet of shojo manga production (stories, format, personnel, industry dynamics), providing engaging insights into this popular medium. Tacking between story development, interactive magazine features, and relationships between male editors and female artists, Prough examines the concrete ways in which shojo manga reflect, refract, and fabricate constructions of gender, consumption, and intimacy. Straight from the Heart thus weaves together issues of production and consumption, human relations, and gender to explain the unique world of shojo manga and to interpret its dramatic cultural and economic success on a national—and increasingly global—scale.

Straight from the Heart is Ann Richards’s story, told with her trademark candor and spicy humor. Born in a tiny town near Waco, Texas, she entered politics when her husband wouldn’t—and went on to become state treasurer, the first woman elected to statewide office in Texas in fifty years. She’s had her victories and her battles (the breakup of a thirty-year marriage and a bout with alcohol), but it’s her love of Texas and Texas politics that has made her who she is. This extraordinary memoir by one of the nation’s leading politicians proves the wisdom of her observation that women “can have a good and wonderful life, but that it only begins when they accept responsibility for it, not when they expect someone else to make it happen.” Richards talks openly about the course her life has taken and the choices she has made on the way. Her hard-won triumphs and savvy political career provide inspiring examples for all.

Straight from My Heart presents a collection of true stories and poetry written by a woman who has helped others to discover their true selves. It shares her journey as her life is touched by others. Author Jacqui DeLorenzo shares several inspiring tales of hope and courage intended to resonate with anyone who has suffered a hardship or the loss of a loved one. She considers whether there is life after death. She also ventures on journeys to the other side of the rainbowto a place where there is no pain and no illness. She goes to a place where we can fi nd love in our hearts, peace in our souls, and happiness in our lives again, even when it seems that all has been lost along the way. Each story seeks to open hearts, touch souls, and encourage all to believe in what is possible. Through the personal journeys of DeLorenzo, her friends, her hospice patients, and their caregivers, Straight from My Heart provides the opportunity to know and understand that life continues after this life on earth. We need to open our hearts to the positive energy and the spirit of loved ones who are on the other side waiting to greet us with open arms when it is our turn to journey to the other side.

Former Mr. Universe Bob Paris and topflight model Rod Jackson tell how their marriage catapulted them from physique icons to international spokesmen for gay rights.

From America's beloved storyteller, Barbara Delinsky, comes Straight from the Heart, a classic novel of one lovesick doctor and the woman who makes his heart ache with desire... As the head of cardiology at New Haven Medical Center, Dr. Robert McCrae knows a lot about the human heart. But it's not until he spots Heather Cole's beautiful face at one of his lectures that he realizes how much more he needs to learn. From the moment he sees her, his heart skips a beat—metaphorically speaking—and his pulse rate soars. It turns out that Heather is a local hand-bag designer who's not just playing doctor; she's putting her heart on the line. Rob may be the only one who can help. But first she'll have to trust him—and take a risk on falling in love...

Zoey Donavan might have it made in New York City, but at 35, she wants more than what her successful photography career offers. Secretly she longs for a real family life, shared with someone who doesn't value work above everything else.