Learn the language of Nebraska . . .and 49 other states With more entries than any other reference of its kind,McGraw-Hill’s Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs shows you how American English is spoken today. You will find commonly used phrasal verbs, idiomatic expressions, proverbial expressions, and clichés. The dictionary contains more than 24,000 entries, each defined and followed by one or two example sentences. It also includes a Phrase-Finder Index with more than 60,000 entries.

Praise for Mind Gym "Believing in yourself is paramount to success for any athlete. Gary's lessons and David's writing provide examples of the importance of the mental game." --Ben Crenshaw, two-time Masters champion and former Ryder Cup captain "Mind Gym hits a home run. If you want to build mental muscle for the major leagues, read this book." --Ken Griffey Jr., Major League Baseball MVP "I read Mind Gym on my way to the Sydney Olympics and really got a lot out of it. Gary has important lessons to teach, and you'll find the exercises fun and beneficial." --Jason Kidd, NBA All-Star and Olympic gold-medal winner In Mind Gym, noted sports psychology consultant Gary Mack explains how your mind influences your performance on the field or on the court as much as your physical skill does, if not more so. Through forty accessible lessons and inspirational anecdotes from prominent athletes--many of whom he has worked with--you will learn the same techniques and exercises Mack uses to help elite athletes build mental "muscle." Mind Gym will give you the "head edge" over the competition.

Part of the regionalist movement that included Grant Wood, Paul Engle, Hamlin Garland, and Jay G. Sigmund, James Hearst helped create what Iowa novelist Ruth Suckow called a poetry of place. A lifelong Iowa farner, Hearst began writing poetry at age nineteen and eventually wrote thirteen books of poems, a novel, short stories, cantatas, and essays, which gained him a devoted following Many of his poems were published in the regionalist periodicals of the time, including the Midland, and by the great regional presses, including Carroll Coleman's Prairie Press. Drawing on his experiences as a farmer, Hearst wrote with a distinct voice of rural life and its joys and conflicts, of his own battles with physical and emotional pain (he was partially paralyzed in a farm accident), and of his own place in the world. His clear eye offered a vision of the midwestern agrarian life that was sympathetic but not sentimental - a people and an art rooted in place.

"Here is the journal which ultimately proved the motive force for The Magnificent Obsession, the journal as it was set down by Doctor Hudson himself. One feels that he must have been a real person (or that at any rate, in his fictional being he represented the personification of someone’s experience and thought). Here we learn whence came the power—the inner strength through which he built spiritual, physical and worldly success. Here we trace the various experiments which proved his own theory. And here too we follow his opinion on a world facing much of what our world is facing today. This gives the book not only the customary hypodermic that Doctor Douglas so ably administers, but a timeliness that is not to be ignored. There is no one writing today who can put more punch into a sermon—without making one conscious it is a sermon." —Kirkus Review Lloyd C. Douglas was an American minister and author born in Indiana in 1877. He was married and had two children. He did not write his first novel until the age of 50 but was considered to be one of the most popular writers of his time. His works usually had a moral and religious tone. Two of his best known works were The Robe and The Big Fisherman, which were made into major motion pictures. The Robe, written in 1942, sold over two million copies in hardcover alone. It held the number one position on the New York Times Best Seller list for over a year and remained on the list for an additional two years. The film version of The Robe hit the screen in 1953 and starred Richard Burton.

'Blown to Bits' is about how the digital explosion is changing everything. The text explains the technology, why it creates so many surprises and why things often don't work the way we expect them to. It is also about things the information explosion is destroying: old assumptions about who is really in control of our lives.

Like music, art is a universal language. Although looking at works of art is a pleasurable enough experience, to appreciate them fully requires certain skills and knowledge." --Carol Strickland, from the introduction to The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern * This heavily illustrated crash course in art history is revised and updated. This second edition of Carol Strickland's The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern offers an illustrated tutorial of prehistoric to post-modern art from cave paintings to video art installations to digital and Internet media. * Featuring succinct page-length essays, instructive sidebars, and more than 300 photographs, The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern takes art history out of the realm of dreary textbooks, demystifies jargon and theory, and makes art accessible-even at a cursory reading. * From Stonehenge to the Guggenheim and from Holbein to Warhol, more than 25,000 years of art is distilled into five sections covering a little more than 200 pages.

No longer relegated to reporting on society happenings or household hints, women columnists have over the past twenty years surged across the boundary separating the "women's" or "lifestyle" sections and into the formerly male bastions of the editorial, financial, medical, and "op-ed" pages. Where men previously controlled the nation's new organizations, were the chief opinion givers, and defined what is newsworthy, many women newspaper columnists are now nationally syndicated and tackle the same subjects as their male counterparts, bringing with them distinctive styles and viewpoints. Through these frank and lively interviews, Maria Braden explores the lives and work of columnists Erma Bombeck, Jane Brody, Mona Charen, Merlene Davis, Georgie Anne Geyer, Dorothy Gilliam, Ellen Goodman, Molly Ivins, Mary McGrory, Judith ("Miss Manners") Martin, Joyce Maynard, Anna Quindlen, and Jane Bryant Quinn. Pofiles describe how these writers got started, where they get the nerve to tell the world what they think, how they generate ideas for columns, and what it's like to create under the pressure of deadlines. Representative columns illustrate their distinctive voices, and an introductory essay provides a historical overview of women in journalism, including pioneering women columnists Fanny Fern, Dorothy Thompson, and Sylvia Porter. Braden finds that today's women columnists frequently raise issues or use examples unique to their gender. Because they are likely to have a direct personal connection to current social issues such as abortion, child care, or sexual harassment, they are able to provide fresh perspectives on these provocative topics. In doing so, they are helping to define what is worthy of attention in the '90s and to shape public response. A unique addition to the literature on women in journalism, this book will interest general readers as well as students of journalism, literature, American studies, and women's studies. Aspiring writers will find here role models and practical guidance.