From Publishers WeeklyAt the beginning of this bawdy, in your face, hugely entertaining bear of a book, Kinder explains that he intends to tell readers about his home state, West Virginia, land of "legendary mountain dancers, moonshiners, stupendous marijuana farmers, snakehandlers, blood-feudists, mystery midgets, mothmen [and] horny space aliens who drop into my home state as regular as clock-work in order to engage in extra-terrestrial sex with a multitude of juicy West Virginia majorettes...." On sabbatical from his professorship at the University of Pittsburgh, Kinder travels home to mine the state's legendary depravity. Family members, old drinking buddies, new drinking buddies and a host of others flood the narrative. Sparks fly, plans are hatched, threats are made and a lot of legally questionable activity is engaged in, and Kinder's fine prose relates it all. But the sheer density of outlandish behavior and credibility-stretching hijinks can, at times, be exhausting. Through the unending consumption of booze, controlled substances and sex, Kinder seems unable (or unwilling) to let any detail go unmentioned. He thereby loses a bit of perspective on both the foreground subject (Kinder and his life and travails), as well as the background (West Virginia and its place in the annals of strange and nobly benighted Americana). Still, Kinder's unflappable, humble demeanor and heartbreaking humanity hold this sometimes unwieldy book together.Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A colorful memoir recalls the author's journey of discovery back to his West Virginia roots, detailing his midlife odyssey to the region of his birth to recount the family stories, local legends and lore, colorful celebrations, oddball characters, and rich history of the region.

He is a sergeant-major in the SAS. His task is to snatch a defecting Russian 'Star Wars' scientist from Stockholm. She is the she-wolf. Leader of a crack Spetsnaz pack. Her task is to get the scientist back. Dead or alive. Their paths have crossed before. Now the score has to be settled. In between is the scientist, ruthlessly manipulated by both sides, torn between loyalty to his country and the love of a woman. That Last Mountain is a story of sweeping passion and betrayal, of endurance and breathtaking action in the Scandinavian mountains - the toughest terrain on earth.

A poetic description of various kinds of mountains and how they are formed. Includes factual information on mountains.

"The last mountain man: From his Missouri farm, the boy travels west. In his heart is vengeance. In his hand is a Navy Colt. By his side is the old mountain man named Preacher, who'll teach young Smoke Jensen everything he needs to know about fighting like the devil, and--when the time comes--dying like a man. Although his enemies have destroyed everything he's ever loved, they made one mistake: they let him live...."--P. [4] of cover.

DIVDIVIn the second book of Caroline B. Cooney’s bestselling Night to Remember series, five high school juniors get ready for the most important night of their lives—a dance that will bring happiness . . . or heartbreak/divDIV For Kip, Anne, Beth Rose, Emily, and Molly, it’s the perfect end to their junior year. The night they’ve been waiting for—a night to wish upon a star./divDIV Kip just got the ultimate kiss-off: Her boyfriend, Mike, suddenly wants to be “just friends.”/divDIV At the start of junior year, Anne and Conrad were Westerly High’s most popular couple. Now everything’s different, and Anne wonders if the whole school knows her secret./divDIV Beth Rose was a perennial wallflower before she met Gary. She’s crazy about him, but he’s never once said the L-word./divDIV Emily’s life just fell apart, and all she wants is for Matt to make the pain go away./divDIV Molly’s furious that Con is taking Anne to the dance when she knows he really loves her. She’s about to plot the perfect revenge . . ./divDIV For five very different girls, it’s a dance they’ll always remember. Will it be a night of love—or loneliness? An ending—or a new beginning?/divDIV/div/div

Her aunt was a nun who popped pills and did time in Narcotics Anonymous. Her father grew up during the Depression, believed he'd be the next Frank Sinatra, and ended up working in the mills. His daughter, Lori Jakiela, spent her suburban Pittsburgh childhood watching Marlo Thomas in That Girl and dreaming of New York City.Instead, she got bad talent shows, a Junior Miss contest, and college in Erie, PA, where the big attraction was chicken wings. But years later, her Big Apple dreams were still going strong. With her twenties becoming a distant memory, Jakiela answered an airline ad promising a NYC home base, high-flying glamour, and three-day layovers in Paris. The reality was a roach-filled apartment in Queens, a polyester uniform cut like a sack, and a life that wasn't quite what she imagined.

We were going down the road, and we came to this house. There was a little boy standing by the road just crying and crying. We stopped, and we heard the biggest racket you ever heard up in the house. “What’s the matter, son?” “Why, Maw and Paw are up there fightin’.” “Who is your Paw, son?” “Well, that’s what they are fightin’ over.” Brimming with ballads, stories, riddles, tall tales, and great good humor, My Curious and Jocular Heroes pays homage to four people who guided and inspired Loyal Jones’s own study of Appalachian culture. His sharp-eyed portraits introduce a new generation to Bascom Lunsford, the pioneer behind the “memory collections” of song and story at Columbia University and the Library of Congress; the Sorbonne-educated collector and performer Josiah H. Combs; Cratis D. Williams, the legendary father of Appalachian studies; and the folklorist and master storyteller Leonard W. Roberts. Throughout, Jones highlights the tales, songs, jokes, and other collected nuggets that define the breadth of each man’s research and repertoire.

For approximately eight months during 1931-1932, anthropologist Margaret Mead lived with and studied the Mountain Arapesh-a segment of the population of the East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. She found a culture based on simplicity, sensitivity, and cooperation. In contrast to the aggressive Arapesh who lived on the plains, both the men and the women of the mountain settlements were found to be, in Mead's word, maternal. The Mountain Arapesh exhibited qualities that many might consider feminine: they were, in general, passive, affectionate, and peaceloving. Though Mead partially explains the male's "femininity" as being due to the type of nourishment available to the Arapesh, she maintains social conditioning to be a factor in the type of lifestyle led by both sexes. Mead's study encapsulates all aspects of the Arapesh culture. She discusses betrothal and marriage customs, sexuality, gender roles, diet, religion, arts, agriculture, and rites of passage. In possibly a portent for the breakdown of traditional roles and beliefs in the latter part of the twentieth century, Mead discusses the purpose of rites of passage in maintaining societal values and social control. Mead also discovered that both male and female parents took an active role in raising their children. Furthermore, it was found that there were few conflicts over property: the Arapesh, having no concept of land ownership, maintained a peaceful existence with each other. In his new introduction to The Mountain Arapesh, Paul B. Roscoe assesses the importance of Mead's work in light of modern anthropological and ethnographic research, as well as how it fits into her own canon of writings. Roscoe discusses findings he culled from a trip to Papua New Guinea in 1991 to clarify some ambiguities in Mead's work. His travels also served to help reconstruct what had happened to the Arapesh since Mead's historic visit in the early 1930s.