The story of Viva Cohen, a London teenager who is so entranced with old silver-screen legends that she and her two best friends head for Los Angeles, searching "for love, experience, and Jack Nicholson."--Cover.

Confessions of a Name Dropper is an insider's account of some of the most significant men and moments in American history. Veterans will be especially drawn to Nichols' revealing look at the heroic exploits of the 10th Armored Tiger"" Division...from their ""days of white hell"" to the nights in ""bloody Bastogne"" and beyond. Nichols also writes of his contact with notable figures like General Patton, Roy Rogers, Jimmy Durante, Jackie Robinson, and Vice-President Ted Agnew. Contents include a special tribute to the work of organizations like the American Red Cross, the Kentucky Hotel-Motel Association, and the Kentucky Heart Association.""

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the First International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering, and Knowledge Management, IC3K 2009, held in Funchal, Madeira, Portugal, in October 2009. This book includes revised and extended versions of a strict selection of the best papers presented at the conference; 27 revised full papers together with 3 invited lectures were carefully reviewed and selected from 369 submissions. According to the three covered conferences KDIR 2009, KEOD 2009, and KMIS 2009, the papers are organized in topical sections on on knowledge discovery and information retrieval, knowledge engineering and ontology development, and on knowledge management and information sharing.

Aby was a normal girl. And then an accident--a fatal one--made a society columnist out of her. But it takes a special kind of person to track the lives of the beautiful, the famous and the merely rich. They are the partying set--extravagant, bitchy, amoral, and always in your face. You mess with them at your own peril. Dazzled and disoriented, Aby follows overrated designers, narcissistic models, aging beauty queens, second-rung politicians and jealous fellow hacks through five-star Delhi. Somewhere along the line, she becomes a stranger to herself--till heartbreak sets her right again. Almost. Among the Chatterati marks the arrival of a spunky, intelligent and tremendously entertaining voice in Indian fiction. '...this is an important book. Society journalism is here to stay and a record of its development was long overdue. Gahlaut has done just that through this obviously personal account. Without any apparent agenda, she has written about the Page Three People (PTP) with tongue firmly in cheek--always remembering to take potshots at herself too.' -- The Indian Express 'Kanika Gahlaut's debut novel, Among the Chatterati...bowled me over with its spontaneous wit, its caustic irony identity, and steps into the realm of faction. Although it is at one level a real page-turner, it also looks deeper and more reflectively at the neuroses and anxieties of the famous and wannabe famous. The desperate narcissism of the partying set makes for topical social comedy.' --Namita Gokhale, The Times of India 'This is a book written breathlessly on the speedkeys, an artful ruse by a ruthless young debut writer who has managed to portray an airhead's passage through parties she was not born into with self-deprecatory sophistication and endearing cynicism...Aby, the hack and main protagonist of Among the Chatterati, is an endearing creature, with her hormones going berserk at the sight of Raghavendra Rathore's (renamed Ramendra Pratap Singh) royal chest hair at one party and chilling out with Feroze Varun in a dusk-filled backgarden in verdant Pilibhit...The action moves with deft speed--hotel rooms of lechy film producers, glitzy dos at megahotels full of inane models and wannabe actresses, exclusive drawing rooms of the self-confessed elite and the Jaipur Polo Ground are all Aby's wonderland.

John Graham shares his stand-up magic routines.

In The Cheerful Subversive’s Guide to Independent Filmmaking, celebrated Slamdance Film Festival co-founder Dan Mirvish offers a rich exploration of the process and culture of making low-budget, independent films. Once labelled a "cheerful subversive" by The New York Times, Mirvish shares his unfiltered pragmatic approach to scriptwriting, casting, directing, producing, managing a crew, post-production, navigating the film festival circuit, distributing your film, dealing with piracy and building a career. Readers will learn how to game the Hollywood system to their advantage, get their films accepted by respected festivals without going broke, and utilize a broad range of media and tactics to promote and distribute their work. A companion website features behind-the-scenes interviews and footage from Dan’s films, and much more. Learn everything you need to know to make, promote, and distribute your independent films, with time-tested lessons and practical advice on scriptwriting, casting and directing A-list actors, financing, producing, managing a crew, editing in post, creating visual effects on a budget, and successuflly navigating the film festival circuit Find out what it takes to become a true "cheerful subversive" and adopt new and innovative approaches to producing your films, discover hidden loopholes in the Hollywood system and festival scene, take advantage of a broad range of media formats to promote and distribute your indie films, and generally make bold moves in service of your creative work, all while staying flexible enough to pivot at a moment’s notice An extensive companion website features in-depth interviews with filmmakers, more than an hour of behind-the-scenes footage from Dan Mirvish’s films, festival resources, and much more

Test your knowledge of the last Time Lord and the worlds he’s visited in Who-ology, an unforgettable journey through over 50 years of Doctor Who. Packed with facts, figures and stories from the show’s galactic run, this unique tour of space and time takes you from Totters Lane to Heaven itself, taking in guides to UNIT call signs, details of the inner workings of sonic screwdrivers, and a reliability chart covering every element of the TARDIS. Now fully updated to cover everything through to the 12th Doctor's final episode, and with tables, charts and illustrations dotted throughout, as well as fascinating lists and exhaustive detail, you won’t believe the wonders that await.

"My lifelong love affair with bread has less to do with crust, crumb, and the vagaries of sourdough cultures and more to do with bread as a reflection of people's varied beliefs, daily lives, and blood memories....Bread tells the most essential human stories." So begins Susan Seligson's personal and often humorous journey to discover the secrets of the baker's trade and the place bread has in the lives of those who consume it. Part travelogue, part cultural history, with a handful of recipes thrown in for good measure, it is an exploration of the customs, traditions, and rituals around the creating and eating of this most basic and enduring form of sustenance. Bread is the stuff of life. Governments have been overthrown and religious rituals created because of it. Fry bread, matzo, ksra, nan, baguette: all are as resonant of their specific culture as any artifact. In Going with the Grain, Seligson wanders the streets of the Casbah in Fès, Morocco, to unlock the secrets of the thousand-year-old communal bakeries there. In Saratoga Springs, New York, she finds a bread maker so committed to making the ultimate loaf, he built a unique sixty-ton hearth and uses only certified biodynamically grown wheat. Seligson knelt in the Jordanian desert beside a woman turning flat breads over glowing embers and plumbed the mysteries of Wonder Bread in an aseptic American factory. As satisfying as a slice of good bread with butter, Going with the Grain is for the armchair traveler and armchair baker alike.

21 Dirty Tricks at Work is about lies. The type of underhand, pernicious and downright Machiavellian scheming that goes on in business every day. An estimated £7.8bn is lost each year in the UK alone though unnecessary and counter-productive office politicking. But 21 Dirty Tricks at Work is also a book of hope. It exposes the classic manoeuvres and gives practical advice on dealing with them to the vast majority who just want to do a good day's work. 21 Dirty Tricks at Work provides you with all the information you need to spot negative tactics and self-interested strategies. It shows you how to spot the games frequently being played and how to come out with your credibility intact and your sanity preserved. So, if you are fed-up of being on the receiving end of constant backbiting and skulduggery from workmates, join hands with the authors and get Machiavelli on the run!

From Ross Mathews, the nationally bestselling author of Man Up!, judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race, and alum of Chelsea Lately, a collection of hilarious and irreverent essays about his experience with Hollywood’s most talked-about celebrities. Pretend it’s happy hour and you and I are sitting at the bar. I look amazing and, I agree with you, much thinner in person. You look good, too. Maybe it’s the candlelight, maybe it’s the booze. Either way, let’s just go with it. Keep this all between you and me, and do me a favor? Don’t judge me if I name drop just a little. Television personality Ross Mathews likes telling stories. He was always outrageous and hilariously honest, even when the biggest celebrity he knew was his favorite lunch lady in the school cafeteria. Now that he has Hollywood experience—from interning behind the scenes at The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to judging RuPaul’s Drag Race—he has a lot to talk about. In Name Drop, Ross dishes about being an unlikely insider in the alternate reality that is showbiz, like that time he was invited by Barbara Walters to host The View—only to learn his hero did not suffer fools; his Christmas with the Kardashians, which should be its own holiday special; and his news-making talk with Omarosa on Celebrity Big Brother, which, as it turns out, was just the tip of the iceberg. Holding nothing back, Ross shares the most treasured and surprising moments in his celebrity-filled career, and proves that while exposure may have made him a little bit famous, he is still as much a fanboy as ever. Filled with tales ranging from the horrifying to the hilarious—and with just the right “Rossipes” and cocktails to go along with them—Name Drop is every pop culture lover’s dream come true.