Presents a selection of interviews with some of the entertainment world's most important directors, creators, writers, actors, and musicians who discuss their unique careers.

The first collected edition of legendary writer, actress, and adventurer Cookie Mueller's stories, featuring the entire contents of her 1990 book Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, alongside more than two dozen others, some previously unpublished. Legendary as an underground actress, female adventurer, and East Village raconteur, Cookie Mueller's first calling was to the written word: "I started writing when I was six and have never stopped completely," she once confessed. Muellerís 1990 Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, the first volume of the Semiotext(e) Native Agents series, was the largest collection of stories she compiled during her life. But it presented only a slice of Mueller's prolific work as a writer. This new, landmark volume collects all of Mueller's stories: from the original contents of Clear Water, to additional stories discovered by Amy Scholder for the posthumous anthology Ask Dr. Mueller, to selections from Mueller's art and advice columns for Details and the East Village Eye, to still "new" stories collected and published here for the first time. Olivia Laing's new introduction situates Mueller's writing within the context of her life—and our times. Thanks to recent documentaries like Mallory Curley's A Cookie Mueller Encyclopedia and Chloé Griffin's oral biography Edgewise, Mueller's life and work have been discovered by a new generation of readers. Walking through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories returns essential source material to these readers, the archive of Mueller's writing itself. Mueller's many mise en scènes—the Baltimore of John Waters, post-Stonewall Provincetown, avant-garde Italy, 1980s New York, an America enduring Reagan and AIDS—patches together a singular personal history and a primer for others. As Laing writes in her introduction, Collected Stories amounts to "a how-to manual for a life ricocheting joyously off the rails . . . a live corrective to conformity, conservatism, and cruelty."

If you've ever wondered what that leggy, buzzing creature was in your bathroom (or backyard, bed, or pantry), perhaps you've come across WhatsThatBug.com, where people around the world go to ask "What's that bug?" From mating African beetles to the tiniest of bedbugs, Daniel Marlos (The Bugman) has identified them all. The Curious World of Bugs is a miscellany of illuminating facts, curiosities, helpful hints, and remarkable science about the bugs that share our world-a compendium that celebrates bugs for what they truly are: strange, mysterious, cute, beautiful, and occasionally disturbing. Gorgeously illustrated with vintage drawings, The Curious World of Bugs offers a glimpse into the magical world of bugs that bite, infest, fascinate, repulse, and inform us all.

Countless people around the world suffer from allergies and allergy-like symptoms. Many of these symptoms can be reduced through dietary change and nutritional supplements. This User's Guide to Natural Allergy Relief explains allergies in simple terms, as well as the steps you can take to ease your symptoms.

When you visit Las Vegas, you expect to get the best entertainment in the world. Well, why not. You are in "The Entertainment Capitol of The World." Well, do I have news for you! Las Vegas casinos not only want to take your cash, they are also ripping you off when it comes to music entertainment. This town has more corn in it than Iowa. Could you please pass the salt and butter? You will understand the meaning of this joke as you continue reading. In the good old days, Vegas entertainment was at its best. Who can forget the indelible Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack? The majestic King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley crowned the viva into "Viva Las Vegas." Today, we still have the impressionable Mr. Las Vegas, Wayne Newton. Back in the old days, Entertainment Directors were privy to good music. The Entertainment Directors today, for lack of better words, are incompetent. They have zero knowledge of the entertainment business. Most of these people are in charge of the Food and Beverage Department of the casinos. How in the heck can they distinguish a "bottle of beer" from a great "entertainment act"? Entertainment Directors have a business scam of accepting kick back money. The stone cold truth of Las Vegas is politics and money. Forget sleeping with the right person to get a job. It is not applicable in this city. It's all about kissing ass and "SHOW ME THE MONEY!" So who finds the entertainment acts that are in casino lounges? We can thank those wonderful people who call themselves "agents." I call a majority of them thieves. They are in the same category as used car salespersons. They sell lemons. They are laughing all the way to the bank. This is when the amusement park fun begins for me. Bette Davis once recited in a movie, "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride." You might think I am vindictive and bitter towards agents and entertainment directors. I have been a victim of these vultures along with many other musicians. It is an insult to my musical intelligence. Unfortunately, I can not reveal names of casinos, Entertainment Directors, agents, sex and ethnicity of musicians. I do not want to end up in a court of law down the road. I will get satisfaction exposing their scams. It's a dirty job, but someone has to clean the scum off the toilet.

The natural approach presented in this handbook seeks to help sufferers of asthma to breathe more easily. While drugs have proved lifesaving for many people, the long-term answer for asthma sufferers is in learning how to embrace a healthy lifestyle. Jonathan Berkowitz shows how dietary changes, exercise, environmental controls, supplements and herbs can alleviate your symptoms safely and effectively, without the side effects of conventional drugs. Berkowitz is an asthmatic as well as a physician.