"From one of Fine Homebuilding's best-loved authors, Larry Haun, comes a unique story that looks at American home building from the perspective of twelve houses he has known intimately. Part memoir, part cultural history, A Carpenter's Life as Told by Houses takes the reader house by house over an arc of 100 years. Along with period photos, the author shows us the sod house in Nebraska where his mother was born, the frame house of his childhood, the production houses he built in the San Fernando Valley, and the Habitat for Humanity homes he devotes his time to now. It's an engaging read written by a veteran builder with a thoughtful awareness of what was intrinsic to home building in the past and the many ways it has evolved. Builders and history lovers will appreciate his deep connection to the natural world, yearning for simplicity, respect for humanity, and evocative notion of what we mean by "home.""--

Karen Carpenter was the instantly recognisable lead singer of the Carpenters. The top-selling American musical act of the 1970s, they delivered the love songs that defined a generation. Karen's velvety voice on a string of 16 consecutive Top 20 hits from 1970 to 1976 – including Close to You, We've Only Just Begun, Rainy Days and Mondays, Superstar, and Hurting Each Other – propelled the duo to worldwide stardom and record sales of over 100 million. Karen's musical career was short – only 13 years. During that time, the Carpenters released 10 studio albums, toured more than 200 days a year, taped five television specials, and won three Grammys and an American Music Award. But that's only part of Karen's story. As the world received news of her death at 32 years of age in 1983, she became the proverbial poster child for anorexia nervosa. Little Girl Blue is an intimate profile of Karen Carpenter, a girl from a modest Connecticut upbringing who became a Superstar. Based on exclusive interviews with nearly 100 friends and associates, including record producers, studio musicians, songwriters, television directors, photographers, radio personalities, classmates, childhood friends, neighbours, personal assistants, romantic interests, hairdressers, and housekeepers.'...thorough and affectionate biography of a singer who's been constantly undervalued by the music industry.' MOJO 'Schmidt cannot be faulted... carefully factual, sensitively pitched book.' The Word 'The first truly convincing account of her nightmarish story.' The Guardian

Bestselling author Jon Gordon returns with his most inspiring book yet—filled with powerful lessons and the greatest success strategies of all. Michael wakes up in the hospital with a bandage on his head and fear in his heart. The stress of building a growing business, with his wife Sarah, caused him to collapse while on a morning jog. When Michael finds out the man who saved his life is a Carpenter he visits him and quickly learns that he is more than just a Carpenter; he is also a builder of lives, careers, people, and teams. As the Carpenter shares his wisdom, Michael attempts to save his business in the face of adversity, rejection, fear, and failure. Along the way he learns that there's no such thing as an overnight success but there are timeless principles to help you stand out, excel, and make an impact on people and the world. Drawing upon his work with countless leaders, sales people, professional and college sports teams, non-profit organizations and schools, Jon Gordon shares an entertaining and enlightening story that will inspire you to build a better life, career, and team with the greatest success strategies of all. If you are ready to create your masterpiece, read The Carpenter and begin the building process today.

Ty Pennington shares stories from his life and offers a behind-the-scenes look at your favorite home shows! As a kid, Ty Pennington had too much energy. He was chaotic, bouncing off the walls, and on a first-name basis with the local emergency room staff. Back then there wasn't public awareness of attention deficit disorder yet. People just thought Ty was rambunctious. A trouble maker. What do you do with a kid who just can't sit still? Who can't focus? But Ty discovered something amazing when he was just a boy: he felt focused when he was building something. He discovered that he loved to work with his hands - to use tools and be creative. He loved to try new things, build and design new things. In Life to the Extreme Ty shares his remarkable life story. In his characteristic humorous style, he takes you racing through his life with ADHD-infused diversions that will make you laugh out loud. He shares about how he was diagnosed with ADHD in college, and what it has meant to be an advocate for ADHD awareness. He shares about his start as a model and carpenter, and his eventual move to television where he starred in the hit shows Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and Trading Spaces. Life to the Extreme will inspire you. Ty's boundless energy and his sense of humor are infectious. You'll laugh. You might cry a little. And you'll definitely be inspired to change the lives of those around you.

First published in 1937, this woodworking classic reveals a fascinating look into the social structure of a 19th-century English town and a carpenter's place in it. Encapsulating a time prior to power tools and mass production, when woodworkers made virtually everything, Walter Rose writes eloquently on a number of topics, including running a country business; the carpenter's shop; working on a farm, new home, and windmill; undertaking; and furniture repairs. Manifesting the importance of skill and the attitudes of the craftsman to his tools and work, this book will be of great interest to any carpenter or woodworker with an appreciation for the history of their craft.

Introduction by Richard Carpenter The definitive biography of one of the most enduring and endeared recording artists in history—the Carpenters—is told for the first time from the perspective of Richard Carpenter, through more than 100 hours of exclusive interviews and some 200 photographs from Richard's personal archive, many never published. After becoming multimillion-selling, Grammy-winning superstars with their 1970 breakthrough hit "(They Long to Be) Close to You," Richard and Karen Carpenter would win over millions of fans worldwide with a record-breaking string of hits including "We've Only Just Begun," "Top of the World," and "Yesterday Once More." By 1975, success was taking its toll. Years of jam-packed work schedules, including hundreds of concert engagements, proved to be just too much for the Carpenters to keep the hits coming—and, ultimately, to keep the music playing at all. However, Richard and Karen never took their adoring public, or each other, for granted. In Carpenters: The Musical Legacy, Richard Carpenter tells his story for the first time. With candor, heart, and humor, he sheds new light on the Carpenters' trials and triumphs—work that remains the gold standard for melodic pop. This beautifully illustrated definitive biography, with exclusive interviews and never-before-seen photographs, is a must-have for any Carpenters fan.

Acclaimed biography of the pioneering advocate of free love, gay rights and women's suffrage.

In the '60s and '70s, America's music scene was marked by raucous excess, reflected in the tragic overdoses of young superstars such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. At the same time, the uplifting harmonies and sunny lyrics that propelled Karen Carpenter and her brother, Richard, to international fame belied a different sort of tragedy—the underconsumption that led to Karen's death at age thirty-two from the effects of an eating disorder. In Why Karen Carpenter Matters, Karen Tongson (whose Filipino musician parents named her after the pop icon) interweaves the story of the singer’s rise to fame with her own trans-Pacific journey between the Philippines—where imitations of American pop styles flourished—and Karen Carpenter’s home ground of Southern California. Tongson reveals why the Carpenters' chart-topping, seemingly whitewashed musical fantasies of "normal love" can now have profound significance for her—as well as for other people of color, LGBT+ communities, and anyone outside the mainstream culture usually associated with Karen Carpenter’s legacy. This hybrid of memoir and biography excavates the destructive perfectionism at the root of the Carpenters’ sound, while finding the beauty in the singer's all too brief life.