This beautifully illustrated and joyful tribute celebrates famous friendships (both real and fictional) and proves that there is no relationship more important than friendship. Our best friends are our soulmates. They understand us when no one else does, lift us up, and bring out the best in us. It’s a relationship based on a bond that can’t always be described, but is always magical. Billions of Besties shines a light on some of the most engaging, funny, inspiring, and sometimes unexpected sets of friends. In this gorgeous and playfully illustrated volume, creators and besties Peggy and Susie highlight more than 100 besties, both real and fictional, from all walks of life. From the comedic powerhouse of Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, to the unexpected camaraderie between RGB and Antonin Scalia, the glamourous friendship between Anna Wintour and Roger Federer, or the fictional ride-or-die bond between Thelma and Louise, this book is a timeless salute to friendship in all its forms. Uplifting and charming, Billions of Besties celebrates the power and vitality of friendship—from bromances to work wives—reminding us that when we have each other’s backs, we have the power to change the world.

This beautifully illustrated and joyful tribute celebrates famous friendships (both real and fictional) and proves that there is no relationship more important than friendship. Our best friends are our soulmates. They understand us when no one else does, lift us up, and bring out the best in us. It’s a relationship based on a bond that can’t always be described, but is always magical. Billions of Besties shines a light on some of the most engaging, funny, inspiring, and sometimes unexpected sets of friends. In this gorgeous and playfully illustrated volume, creators and besties Peggy and Susie highlight more than 100 besties, both real and fictional, from all walks of life. From the comedic powerhouse of Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, to the unexpected camaraderie between RGB and Antonin Scalia, the glamourous friendship between Anna Wintour and Roger Federer, or the fictional ride-or-die bond between Thelma and Louise, this book is a timeless salute to friendship in all its forms. Uplifting and charming, Billions of Besties celebrates the power and vitality of friendship—from bromances to work wives—reminding us that when we have each other’s backs, we have the power to change the world.

LYWA director Nick Ribush writes: The story behind this book is that in the early Kopan Monastery courses, Lama Zopa Rinpoche would start his day’s teachings by quoting a verse from Shantideva’s or Khunu Lama Rinpoche’s seminal texts, giving a short teaching on it and then suggesting that students use it to generate a bodhicitta motivation for the day’s activities (mainly teachings, meditations and discussion groups but also ordinary activities such as eating, talking, walking around and so forth). Since those days I’ve always thought that a compilation of these short teachings would make a great book, and finally, here it is. Editor Gordon McDougall has assembled Rinpoche's teachings into two parts, sorted by author of the verses and arranged thematically. In Part One, Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaches on selected verses from Khunu Lama Rinpoche's Jewel Lamp, now published as Vast as the Heavens, Deep as the Sea. Lama Zopa Rinpoche advises, "Understanding and constantly reminding ourselves of the skies of benefits that bodhicitta brings is unbelievably worthwhile. This is the overall purpose of Khunu Lama Rinpoche’s book, to cause us to feel inspired and joyful that such a mind is possible." In Part Two, Rinpoche teaches on verses from the first chapter of Shantideva's Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life. These verses describe the amazing benefits of developing the precious mind of bodhicitta, the supreme cause of happiness for all sentient beings.

How can an old man and his wife select one cat from a choice of millions and trillions.

The extraordinary story of a transformative decade on Broadway, featuring gripping behind-the-scenes accounts of shows such as Rent, Angels in America, Chicago, The Lion King, and The Producers—shows that changed the history of the American theater. The 1990s was a decade of profound change on Broadway. At the dawn of the nineties, the British invasion of Broadway was in full swing, as musical spectacles like Les Miserables, Cats, and The Phantom of the Opera dominated the box office. But Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard soon spelled the end of this era and ushered in a new wave of American musicals, beginning with the ascendance of an unlikely show by a struggling writer who reimagined Puccini’s opera La Bohème as the smash Broadway show Rent. American musical comedy made its grand return, culminating in The Producers, while plays, always an endangered species on Broadway, staged a powerful comeback with Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. A different breed of producers rose up to challenge the grip theater owners had long held on Broadway, and corporations began to see how much money could be made from live theater. And just as Broadway had clawed its way back into the mainstream of American popular culture, the September 11 attacks struck fear into the heart of Americans who thought Times Square might be the next target. But Broadway was back in business just two days later, buoyed by talented theater people intent on bringing New Yorkers together and supporting the economics of an injured city. Michael Riedel presents the drama behind every mega-hit or shocking flop, bringing readers into high-stakes premieres, fraught rehearsals, tough contract negotiations, intense Tony Award battles, and more. From the bitter feuds to the surprising collaborations, all the intrigue of a revolutionary era in the Theater District is packed into Singular Sensation. Broadway has triumphs and disasters, but the show always goes on.

In this New York Times bestselling “imperative how-to for creativity” (Nick Offerman), Adam Savage—star of Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters—shares his golden rules of creativity, from finding inspiration to following through and successfully making your idea a reality. Every Tool’s a Hammer is a chronicle of my life as a maker. It’s an exploration of making, but it’s also a permission slip of sorts from me to you. Permission to grab hold of the things you’re interested in, that fascinate you, and to dive deeper into them to see where they lead you. Through stories from forty-plus years of making and molding, building and break­ing, along with the lessons I learned along the way, this book is meant to be a toolbox of problem solving, complete with a shop’s worth of notes on the tools, techniques, and materials that I use most often. Things like: In Every Tool There Is a Hammer—don’t wait until everything is perfect to begin a project, and if you don’t have the exact right tool for a task, just use whatever’s handy; Increase Your Loose Tolerance—making is messy and filled with screwups, but that’s okay, as creativity is a path with twists and turns and not a straight line to be found; Use More Cooling Fluid—it prolongs the life of blades and bits, and it prevents tool failure, but beyond that it’s a reminder to slow down and reduce the fric­tion in your work and relationships; Screw Before You Glue—mechanical fasteners allow you to change and modify a project while glue is forever but sometimes you just need the right glue, so I dig into which ones will do the job with the least harm and best effects. This toolbox also includes lessons from many other incredible makers and creators, including: Jamie Hyneman, Nick Offerman, Pixar director Andrew Stanton, Oscar-winner Guillermo del Toro, artist Tom Sachs, and chef Traci Des Jardins. And if everything goes well, we will hopefully save you a few mistakes (and maybe fingers) as well as help you turn your curiosities into creations. I hope this book serves as “creative rocket fuel” (Ed Helms) to build, make, invent, explore, and—most of all—enjoy the thrills of being a creator.

Diverse learners with exceptional needs require a specialized curriculum that will help them to develop socially and intellectually in a way that traditional pedagogical practice is unable to fulfill. As educational technologies and theoretical approaches to learning continue to advance, so do the opportunities for exceptional children. Special and Gifted Education: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is an exhaustive compilation of emerging research, theoretical concepts, and real-world examples of the ways in which the education of special needs and exceptional children is evolving. Emphasizing pedagogical innovation and new ways of looking at contemporary educational practice, this multi-volume reference work is ideal for inclusion in academic libraries for use by pre-service and in-service teachers, graduate-level students, researchers, and educational software designers and developers.

"Each year 11 million bridesmaids lead their best friends down the aisle. Most wear matching dresses, and nearly all have a thing or two to say about the bride. In this ... oral history, editor and journalist Eimear Lynch offers us an intimate glimpse at the moments the wedding photographer failed to capture. From the accidental bridesmaid who helped sew the bride into her 'designer' gown to the tomboy who struggled to carry Princess Diana's twenty-five foot train, [the book] lifts the veil on the Big Day"--

Five school kids get swallowed by the silver screen by accident while watching a film and transported into a universe where everything is identical to that of our universe except that its time is ahead of ours. There theyve learnt what the future world is like and what the human beings in our present world need to do in order to make our world become identical to the future world one of these days in our future. But before theyre able to return to our world, the existence of the entire future universe is being threatened by antimatter.

From Christina Lamb, the coauthor of the bestselling I Am Malala and an award-winning journalist—an essential, groundbreaking examination of how women experience war. In Our Bodies, Their Battlefields, longtime intrepid war correspondent Christina Lamb makes us witness to the lives of women in wartime. An award-winning war correspondent for twenty-five years (she’s never had a female editor) Lamb reports two wars—the “bang-bang” war and the story of how the people behind the lines live and survive. At the same time, since men usually act as the fighters, women are rarely interviewed about their experience of wartime, other than as grieving widows and mothers, though their experience is markedly different from that of the men involved in battle. Lamb chronicles extraordinary tragedy and challenges in the lives of women in wartime. And none is more devastating than the increase of the use of rape as a weapon of war. Visiting warzones including the Congo, Rwanda, Nigeria, Bosnia, and Iraq, and spending time with the Rohingya fleeing Myanmar, she records the harrowing stories of survivors, from Yazidi girls kept as sex slaves by ISIS fighters and the beekeeper risking his life to rescue them; to the thousands of schoolgirls abducted across northern Nigeria by Boko Haram, to the Congolese gynecologist who stitches up more rape victims than anyone on earth. Told as a journey, and structured by country, Our Bodies, Their Battlefields gives these women voice. We have made significant progress in international women’s rights, but across the world women are victimized by wartime atrocities that are rarely recorded, much less punished. The first ever prosecution for war rape was in 1997 and there have been remarkably few convictions since, as if rape doesn’t matter in the reckoning of war, only killing. Some courageous women in countries around the world are taking things in their own hands, hunting down the war criminals themselves, trying to trap them through Facebook. In this profoundly important book, Christina Lamb shines a light on some of the darkest parts of the human experience—so that we might find a new way forward. Our Bodies, Their Battlefields is as inspiring and empowering is as it is urgent, a clarion call for necessary change.