Eugene Cross captures much of his generation's fears and excitements with a collection of realistic stories that borders on darkness at times. His is a... voice combining humor and pathos with an edginess creating fresh new stories that are being published in great literary journals regularly.A boy acts out at the death of his father and abandonment by his brother through a savage playground beating; a young man confronts his own troubled history when asked to hire on his girlfriend's strung-out brother in an attempt to keep him out of prison; a teenage babysitter works through a scorching-hot summer afternoon that will prove to alter her life forever; a grieving widower finds comfort in the unlikeliest of places, a recently-built casino; an itinerant farm worker visits the same former lover in South Dakota year after year while following the Harvest north; two friends search for excuses and fail to claim responsibility for their own decisions after one loses his father, and the other's house burns to the ground; and a taxidermist falls in love with the ex-wife of his high school bully and tries to convince her to marry him despite her son who seems to share his father's bullying mentality."A brilliant, sometimes heartbreaking debut by this gifted young writer and Columbia writing teacher. Cross captures the angst and tenderness of the young men and women growing up in the rust belt with little hope and less luck. The moments of grace and redemption shine through. I loved every story." —Linda Bubon, Women & Children First Bookstore"There are countless moments like this in Fires of Our Choosing, lines that appear true from the moment they’ve been written and hang in the back of the mind for days afterwards... With Fires of Our Choosing, Cross climbs boldly into the ring with the greats, if only to deliver a decisive knockout punch." —Urban Waite, Fiction Writers Review"Cross offers no apologies for his characters: their poor choices, their lack of moral fortitude, their betrayals of each other and the poverty of their surroundings and, often, themselves; he leaves these things alone. They are who they are, and if dignity has been denied them by the rest of us, including us story-tellers, it is restored by this collection. That he has undertaken to serve as their raconteur should place Cross on the radar of all the big prizes that gift those blessed with talent, compassion and fearlessness, particularly during this present moment in our history." —Ru Freeman, Huffington PostEugene Cross was born and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania and received an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. His stories have appeared in Narrative Magazine (which named him one of "20 Best New Writers" and his story "Harvester's" a "Top Five Story of 2009-2010"), American Short Fiction, Story Quarterly, TriQuarterly, and Callalloo among other publications. His work was also listed among the 2010 Best American Short Stories' 100 Distinguished Stories. He is the recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Chautauqua Writers' Festival, and the winner of the 2009 Dzanc Prize for Excellence in Literary Fiction and Community Service. He currently lives in Chicago where he teaches in the Fiction Department at Columbia College Chicago.

This haunting novel explores the complete degradation and isolation of a man by war. Set on a Philippine island during World War II where the Japanese... army is disintegrating under the blows of the American forces landings, Private Tamura's own private battles cost him first his hope and then his sanity as he loses his own tenuous ties with human society.

His mother is not his mother. His father is not his father. And if Jack he hadn’t broken the high school rushing record that night, nothing would have... changed. He’d just be going out for pizza, playing football, trying yet again to score with his girlfriend, P.J.     But he did break the record. He appeared on the news. And now they have found him.     Ripped from the only world he has ever known, Jack plunges into a space-time–bending game of survival with no way out. The rules are shrouded in secrets they say he can’t handle. But some things he learns fast: Trust no one. Never forget that your friends could reveal themselves as your enemies at any second. Every turn leads to betrayal. And if you don’t go along with it, you die.     After centuries of abuse, the earth is dying, and it’s up to Jack to reverse the decline before the Turning Point, when nothing will ever be the same again. Beaten into shape by a ninja babe and a huge telepathic man’s best friend, Jack hurtles across the ocean to save the future from the present and to solve the mystery of his purpose. Exactly who, or what, is Firestorm, and what does it have to do with Jack? And what comes next when everything you have ever known turns out to be wrong?

Fire Them Up! will give you the astonishing communication skills that will help you enjoy more successful and fulfilling relationships with colleagues,... clients, employees, or anyone else in your personal or professional life. It is full of stories and tactics from some of the world’s most influential people. More than two dozen of today’s most inspiring business leaders share their secrets including men and women who run The Ritz-Carlton, Google, Travelocity, Cranium, Cold Stone Creamery, Gymboree, 24-Hour Fitness and many other big-name brands. The book reveals seven simple secrets distilled from the wisdom of leaders, entrepreneurs, and visionaries from different backgrounds, generations and industries. Together, they possess all the tools you need to transform yourself into an extraordinary, electrifying, and enthusiastic leader who communicates with power, passion, confidence and charisma!

Mark Doty's Fire to Fire collects the best of his seven books of poetry, along with a generous selection of new work. His signature style encompasses... both the plainspoken and the artfully wrought, as one of contemporary American poetry's most lauded, recognizable voices speaks to the crises and possibilities of our time.

Radically Rethinking Mental Illness. Firewalkers chronicles the profound, turbulent, spiritual experience of living through a mental health crisis. What... our society labels as "mental illness" can be a sacred quest that has the power to enrich us, reveal unknown strengths, and transform our lives. A note about buying this book: If you buy two copies, your shipping will be free! Please consider buying a second copy as a gift for a loved one, local library, agency, therapist waiting room, hospital, or anywhere else where you think a spark of fire can make a difference in this world. (all proceeds go to support our nonprofit community working for mental health hope, healing, and recovery) A guide to radically rethinking mental health, Firewalkers redefines mental illness as a journey of emotional turbulence, crazy blessings, ecstatic visions and mad gifts. Could it be that what we are diagnosing as mental illness is in fact a search for wholeness, balance, and meaning in a sometimes painful and irrational world? Firewalkers is the story of seven people who have experienced extreme mental states and through this experience, have learned things they never expected to learn and become people they never expected to be.

"If the Saint calls you, if you have an open road, then you don't feel the fire as if it were your enemy," says one of the participants in the... Anastenaria. This compelling work evokes and contrasts two forms of firewalking and religious healing: first, the Anastenaria, a northern Greek ritual in which people who are possessed by Saint Constantine dance dramatically over red-hot coals, and, second, American firewalking, one of the more spectacular activities of New Age psychology. Loring Danforth not only analyzes these rituals in light of the most recent work in medical and symbolic anthropology but also describes in detail the lives of individual firewalkers, involving the reader personally in their experiences: he views ritual therapy as a process of transformation and empowerment through which people are metaphorically moved from a state of illness to a state of health. Danforth shows that the Anastenaria and the songs accompanying it allow people to express and resolve conflict-laden family relationships that may lead to certain kinds of illnesses. He also demonstrates how women use the ritual to gain a sense of power and control over their lives without actually challenging the ideology of male dominance that pervades Greek culture. Comparing the Anastenaria with American firewalking, Danforth includes a gripping account of his own participation in a firewalk in rural Maine. Finally he examines the place of anthropology in a postmodern world in which the boundaries between cultures are becoming increasingly blurred.

The best-selling first edition of Firewalls and Internet Security became the bible of Internet security by showing readers how to think about threats... and solutions. The completely updated and expanded second edition defines the security problems students face in today's Internet, identifies the weaknesses of the most popular security technologies, and illustrates the ins and outs of deploying an effective firewall. Students learn how to plan and execute a security strategy that allows easy access to Internet services while defeating even the wiliest of hackers. Written by well-known senior researchers at AT&T Bell Labs, Lumeta, and Johns Hopkins University the students will benefit from the actual, real-world experiences of the authors maintaining, improving, and redesigning AT&T's Internet gateway.

In "Fireweed", Gerda Lerner, a pioneer and leading scholar in women's history, tells her story of moral courage and commitment to social change with a... novelist's skill and a historian's command of context. Lerner's memoir focuses on the formative experiences that made her an activist for social justice before her academic career began. The child of a well-to-do Viennese Jewish family, she was still a teenager when a fascist regime came to power in 1934, and she became involved in the underground resistance movement. The Nazi takeover of Austria cast her into prison, then forced her and her family into exile; she alone was able to leave Europe. Once in the United States, she experienced the harshness of the Depression and despair over the fate of her family. Still, she persisted in adapting to the new culture and to becoming a writer. Here she met and married her life-long partner, Carl Lerner, a film editor and director. Together they become deeply involved in left-wing activities, from struggling to unionize the film industry and resisting the blacklist in Hollywood to community organizing for peace, for an interracial civil rights movement, and for better schools in New York City. Lerner insists that her decades of grassroots organizing largely account for the theoretical insights she was later able to bring to the development of women's history. In "Fireweed", Lerner presents her life in the context of the major historical events of the twentieth century and the repression of dissent. Hers is a gripping story about surviving hardship and summoning the courage to live according to one's convictions. The author's note: Gerda Lerner, a past president of the Organization of American Historians, is Robinson-Edwards Professor of History, Emerita, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her eleven books in history include "Creation of Patriarchy", "Creation of Feminist Consciousness", "Why History Matters", and "Black Women in White America: A Documentary History".

Globalization's threat to artists and intellectuals, and how they can rebut it. Pierre Bourdieu, described by The Nation as "worthy of the militant... mantle of Sartre and Foucault," here continues the themes advanced so successfully in his previous book Acts of Resistance. Firing Back is an eloquent dissection of globalization's intellectual and cultural role throughout the world, and a discussion of the ways in which effective opposition to it can be mounted. Bourdieu examines Europe's potential as a counterweight to America's globalizing policy and discusses how intellectuals and those working in the cultural sphere can create meaningful alternatives. He also raises challenging questions about the depoliticization of the academic world, arguing that scholars can no longer maintain that their research is objective or value-free. In a preface written for this edition, Bourdieu directly addresses American readers about the role they can play in the burgeoning anti-globalization movement.