Whether viewed as villain or victim, outcast or rebel, the High School Slut remains a figure of fascination--and more than a touch of fear. Full of... quirky insights into sexual standards and practices, Fast Girls is a journey into the dark side of the teenage years, a revealing study of American society.

Anita Desai's new book, hailed as "unsparing, yet tender and funny,"* brilliantly confirms her place among today's foremost Indian writers. FASTING,... FEASTING takes on Desai's greatest theme: the intricate, delicate web of family conflict. It tells the moving story of Uma, the plain older daughter of an Indian family, tied to the household of her childhood and tending to her parents' every extravagant demand, and of her younger brother, Arun, across the world in Massachusetts, bewildered by his new life in college and the suburbs, where he lives with the Patton family. Published in Britain to rave reviews, FASTING, FEASTING is "rich in the sensuous atmosphere, elegiac pathos, and bleak comedy at which the author excels" (The Spectator). From the overpowering warmth of Indian culture to the cool center of the American family, it captures the physical -- and emotional -- fasting and feasting that define two distinct cultures. *(Times Literary Supplement)

To go without food from dawn to dusk for the month of Ramadan - how does this feel? When we deny our major appetites, what do we become? Kazim Ali... brings a poet's precision and ardor to his brilliant meditations on ritual fasting. Jane Hirshfield, author of AFTER and NINE GATES, says: "Kazim Ali -- a writer whose powers astonish in everything he puts pen to -- has made in FASTING FOR RAMADAN a book that is hybrid, peregrine, and deeply, quietly revelatory. Ali's meditations on the month-long ritual fast unfold, across cultures and spiritual practices, the deep meaning of a chosen foregoing. These journal-born pages are both intimate and public, at once ecumenical, particular, daily, and eloquently learned; planted on the deep roots of tradition, they breathe this moment's air. Is it possible for a work to be at once modest and an undeniable tour de force? This book proves: it is."

Kazim Ali's searching descriptions of the Ramadan sensibility and its arduous but liberating annual rite of communal fasting is sure to be a revelation... to many readers -- intellectually illuminating and aesthetically exhilarating.Fasting for Ramadan is structured as a chronicle of daily meditations, during two cycles of the 30-day rite of daytime abstinence required by Ramadan for purgation and prayer. Estranged in certain ways from his family's cultural traditions when he was younger, Ali has in recent years re-embraced the Ramadan ritual, and brings to this rediscovery an extraordinary delicacy of reflection, a powerfully inquiring mind, and the linguistic precision and ardor of a superb poet.

Fasting for Spiritual Breakthrough is a thought-provoking book on one of the least understood--but most powerful--disciplines of Christianity.  Most... believers know about fasting, but few of us really understand the wonderful benefits that come when we fast with purpose and direction.  Written in Dr. Elmer Towns’ dynamic; descriptive style, this book gives the “why” of fasting, rather than just the “how.”  Towns avoids a glut of techniques and schedules, and instead provides a probing look at Isaiah 58, often called the fasting passage.  Learn how fasting can strengthen your faith and draw you closer to God, helping you to be a true overcomer in Christ.

Winner of four major awards, this updated edition of Joan Jacobs Brumberg's Fasting Girls, presents a history of women's food-refusal dating back as far... as the sixteenth century. Here is a tableau of female self-denial: medieval martyrs who used starvation to demonstrate religious devotion, "wonders of science" whose families capitalized on their ability to survive on flower petals and air, silent screen stars whose strict "slimming" regimens inspired a generation. Here, too, is a fascinating look at how the cultural ramifications of the Industrial Revolution produced a disorder that continues to render privileged young women helpless. Incisive, compassionate, illuminating, Fasting Girls offers real understanding to victims and their families, clinicians, and all women who are interested in the origins and future of this complex, modern and characteristically female disease.

Written after he had been banished to the Black Sea city of Tomis by Emperor Augustus, the Fasti is Ovid's last major poetic work. Both a calendar of... daily rituals and a witty sequence of stories recounted in a variety of styles, it weaves together tales of gods and citizens together to explore Rome's history, religious beliefs and traditions. It may also be read as a subtle but powerful political manifesto which derides Augustus' attempts to control his subjects by imposing his own mythology upon them: after celebrating the emperor as a Jupiter-on-earth, for example, Ovid deliberately juxtaposes a story showing the king of the gods as a savage rapist. Endlessly playful, this is also a work of integrity and courage, and a superb climax to the life of one of Rome's greatest writers.

Jayne Anne Phillips has always been a master of portraiture, both in her widely acclaimed novels and in her short fiction.  The stories in Fast Lanes... demonstrated the breadth of her talent in a tour de force of voices, offering elegantly rendered views into the lives of characters torn between the liberation of detachment and the desire to connect.Three stories are collected in this edition for the first time: in "Alma," and adolescent daughter is made the confidante of her lonely mother; "Counting" traces the history of a dommed love affair; and "Callie" evokes memories of the haunting death of a child in 1920's West Virginia.  Along with the original seven stories from Fast Lanes--each told in extraordinary first person narratives that have been hailed by critics as virtuoso performances--these incandescent portraits offer windows into the lives of an entire generation of Americans, demonstrating again and again why Jayne Anne Phillips remains one of our most powerful writers.

  FAST MEDIA, MEDIA FAST is an exciting guide for taking a liberating media fast in an age of increasingly fast media. It is the first book to... provide readers a practical, user-friendly and thought-provoking guide to gaining a newfound control and understanding of their relationship with the media. This researched, seasoned manual provides specific guidelines, important areas for thought, creative options and life-changing opportunities.   FAST MEDIA, MEDIA FAST also shows how to take control of the media choices in our lives. This book is not a judgmental, media-bashing sermon, but rather an inspiring guide to cultural nutrition. In fact, most people do not typically choose to eliminate all media from their lives when they return from a fast, but rather make more informed and conscious choices about what to consume, how much, when, and why.

Anne Waldman takes the opportunity with this twentieth-anniversary expanded edition to add twenty poems to this collection that brings into focus her... lifelong engagement with “Chant” as central to contemporary performative poetry.Here are spells, invocations, laments, ritual rants. Archaic beliefs in magic and ecstasy meet current notions of the power of the spoken word. Waldman writes, ""The poem is a textured energy field or modal structure. The poems for performance seem to manifest as psychological states of mind. They come together in a mental, verbal, physical, and emotional form, making their particular demands on my voice and body. I am the ‘energumen.’ The poem is the experience."" Also included in this book are three essays on the oral tradition in poetry. One essay discusses the history and occasion of the title poem. The others treat such topics as performance art and poetic tradition, ethnopoetics, intoxication and transformation, Tibetan Buddhism, and the renewed ascendency of feminine energy in writing. Anne Waldman, world renowned for her high-energy poetry performances, is the author of over thirty books and chapbooks of poetry. She is the co-founder and director of The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

The U.S. Army entered World War II unprepared. In addition, lacking Germany's blitzkrieg approach of coordinated armor and air power, the army was... organized to fight two wars: one on the ground and one in the air. Previous commentators have blamed Congressional funding and public apathy for the army's unprepared state. David E. Johnson believes instead that the principal causes were internal: army culture and bureaucracy, and their combined impact on the development of weapons and doctrine. Johnson examines the U.S. Army's innovations for both armor and aviation between the world wars, arguing that the tank became a captive of the conservative infantry and cavalry branches, while the airplane's development was channeled by air power insurgents bent on creating an independent air force. He maintains that as a consequence, the tank's potential was hindered by the traditional arms, while air power advocates focused mainly on proving the decisiveness of strategic bombing, neglecting the mission of tactical support for ground troops. Minimal interaction between ground and air officers resulted in insufficient cooperation between armored forces and air forces. Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers makes a major contribution to a new understanding of both the creation of the modern U.S. Army and the Army's performance in World War II. The book also provides important insights for future military innovation.

The "disease" of self-deception (acting in ways contrary to what one knows is right) underlies all leadership problems in today's organizations,... according to the premise of this work. However well intentioned they may be, leaders who deceive themselves always end up undermining their own performance.This straightforward book explains how leaders can discover their own self-deceptions and learn how to escape destructive patterns. The authors demonstrate that breaking out of these patterns leads to improved teamwork, commitment, trust, communication, motivation, and leadership.

This is a revision guide for students giving bullet points of basic information on pharmaceutics - dosage form and design. "FASTtrack" is a new series... of indispensable study guides created especially for undergraduate pharmacy students.The content of each title focuses on what pharmacy students really need to know in order to pass exams, providing concise, bulleted information, key points, tips and an all-important self-assessment section which includes MCQs, case studies, sample essay questions and worked examples.This title follows on from the "FASTtrack: Physical Pharmacy" book by David Attwood and Alexander T Florence covering information on the formulation, what components are used and the dosage form. In addition, this title will complement "FASTtrack: Pharmaceutics - Delivery and Taregting" by Yvonne Perrie and Thomas Rades. The "FASTtrack" series provides the ultimate lecture notes and is a must-have for all pharmacy undergraduate students wanting to revise and test themselves for forthcoming exams. A FASTtrack website includes MCQs, sample online content and much more.

Fast Track Phonics, by Kaye Wiley, is a highly visual program centered around the activities of a lively "Phonics Team." Each unit contains carefully... controlled high-frequency words embedded in the context of simple, decodable sentences, with clear illustrations to bolster new readers' comprehension and confidence. Features The Student Book uses the advantage of the Phonics Team to present: * Activities highlighting vowels, blends, digraphs, and dipthongs. * More than 400 high-frequency words illustrated in sentences. * Survival themes–sports, health, food, and shopping. * Grammar topics, including prepositions and verbs. * Ten engaging photo stories and photo plays for students to read and act out together. * Audiocassettes or audio CDs with chants, songs, readings, and photo stories and photo plays. * Colorful Phonics Cards to visually reinforce sounds and letters. * A comprehensive Teacher's Guide with phonetic awareness practice and a host of extension activities to engage older learners.