The Big Gig is much more than just an intriguing and comprehensive insider's guide to breaking into the music industry as an independent musician. Compelling and thought-provoking, it is an excellent resource for leadership training, networking techniques, and personal development. The Big Gig is the first book that describes the inner workings of the highly competitive music industry as seen through the eyes of a world-renowned and highly successful musician. The Big Gig provides a template for success by covering the vocational, personal, and spiritual aspects of a musician's life. The Big Gig is much more than educational. It is inspirational, motivational, and life-changing. "Whether you aspire to tour with a rock band, play jazz in nightclubs, work in the studios, or perform with a symphony orchestra, there is information in this book that will help prepare you to make a living as a musician." - Rick Mattingly, Percussive Notes "What a fabulous resource Zoro has compiled here! . . . This is a great book that is going to help many young musicians and drummers (amongst others) achieve their dreams with integrity. Five Stars!" - DRUMscene Magazine "A great book which genuinely can help people, not just drummers."- mikedolbear.com "Bottom Line: I highly recommend this book and I only wish that I had it when I started out in the music business! Whether you are a musician who specializes in drums or any instrument, you need this book. Without it, you'll waste years of your life figuring out all of the things that Z has already neatly laid out for you."- Tigerbill.com

From the author of the acclaimed Roll with It comes a moving novel about a girl with a sensory processing disorder who has to find her own voice after her whole world turns upside down. Lou Montgomery has the voice of an angel, or so her mother tells her and anyone else who will listen. But Lou can only hear the fear in her own voice. She’s never liked crowds or loud noises or even high fives; in fact, she’s terrified of them, which makes her pretty sure there’s something wrong with her. When Lou crashes their pickup on a dark and snowy road, child services separate the mother-daughter duo. Now she has to start all over again at a fancy private school far away from anything she’s ever known. With help from an outgoing new friend, her aunt and uncle, and the school counselor, she begins to see things differently. A sensory processing disorder isn’t something to be ashamed of, and music might just be the thing that saves Lou—and maybe her mom, too.

Cincinnati was transformed to Cin-sow-nati in the summer of 2000. The Big Pig Gig, a public art initiative, brought local artists, businesses, community and arts organizations, schools and individuals together to celebrate Cincinnati's porkopolis past. More than 400 decorated life-size fiberglass pigs were placed in downtown Cincinnati, OH and Covington and Newport, KY. The Big Pig Gig: Celebrating Pigs in the City is the official keepsake publication of the Big Pig Gig. Containing over 300 gorgeous 4-color photographs by well-known Cincinnati photographers, you will learn how the Big Pig Gig came to be such a success in Cincinnati.

In the magnificent epic, The Ramayana, no other character stands out as strikingly as Hanuman. The valiant Monkey Chief has universal appeal as a natural hero. Hanuman’s love and sincerity are as strong as his valour. “Hanuman’s Big Gig” is a unique story depicting Hanuman’s Humility and deep devotion, in the encounter with Krishna and Narad Muni. This story is adapted from the folktales. Chinmaya Bala Katha is a series of children’s books that seek to inspire as they educate and entertain. They aim to build a firm foundation of virtues and value, coupled with dynamism and enthusiasm, to enable children to grow and live with joy, success and fulfilment. www.chinmayamission.com www.chinmayakids.org

“An engaging, humorous, revealing, and refreshingly human look at the bizarre, life-threatening, and delightfully humdrum exploits of everyone from sports heroes to sex workers.” -- Douglas Rushkoff, author of Coercion, Ecstasy Club, and Media Virus This wide-ranging survey of the American economy at the turn of the millennium is stunning, surprising, and always entertaining. It gives us an unflinching view of the fabric of this country from the point of view of the people who keep it all moving. The more than 120 roughly textured monologues that make up Gig beautifully capture the voices of our fast-paced and diverse economy. The selections demonstrate how much our world has changed--and stayed the same--in the three decades prior to the turn of the millennium. If you think things have speeded up, become more complicated and more technological, you're right. But people's attitudes about their jobs, their hopes and goals and disappointments, endure. Gig's soul isn't sociological--it's emotional. The wholehearted diligence that people bring to their work is deeply, inexplicably moving. People speak in these pages of the constant and complex stresses nearly all of them confront on the job, but, nearly universally, they throw themselves without reservation into coping with them. Instead of resisting work, we seem to adapt to it. Some of us love our jobs, some of us don't, but almost all of us are not quite sure what we would do without one. With all the hallmarks of another classic on this subject, Gig is a fabulous read, filled with indelible voices from coast to coast. After hearing them, you'll never again feel quite the same about how we work.

Never get sexually involved with a client. I should’ve heeded my own advice. But one look at Mandy and you’d have fallen too. She was a real ball breaker. Serving divorce papers shouldn’t get a private investigator shot. But it happened to me. But life goes on, right? I was summoned upstairs to Rock ‘n’ Roll Heaven. Someone was trying to sabotage the upcoming big gig. A humorous tale of music and intrigue on a fantasy world.

The Commandments of R&B Drumming is a historical and in-depth study of R&B drumming, from soul to funk to hip-hop, written by world-renowned session & live drummer Zoro (Lenny Kravitz, Bobby Brown, Sean Lennon). Topics include practice tips, developing the funky bass drum and hi-hat, creating and playing with loops, and what are considered the Ten Commandments of Soul, Funk, and Hip-Hop (the top ten recordings from each era). This book not only pays homage to the R&B drummers of the past, but gives the reader a fortune of invaluable information both in history and playing. This newly revised 10th anniversary edition features updated information and loads of new photos and album artwork throughout. It includes a play-along recording featuring various styles of R&B, and also includes an R&B history tree. 160 pages covering every imaginable angle, nook, and cranny of R&B for only $25.99! The book was voted the #1 educational drum book in the world by Modern Drummer magazine's Readers Poll and also deemed a must-have for the soulful drummer," by Traps Magazine. "Zoro's book is a milestone achievement and the most comprehensive book on the subject of R&B drumming I have ever seen." -Vinnie Colaiuta "I consider Zoro's book an essential investment!" -Dennis Chambers"

With Tomorrow, When the War Began, John Marsden wrote the most powerful novel for teenagers ever published in this country. Now he has written the most powerful non-fiction work ever made available to young men. Where Steve Biddulph's bestselling Raising Boys talks to parents and teachers, Secret Men's Business talks to young men themselves, in the way that only John Marsden can. It sets out, in direct, honest language, the things every young man needs to know... And the things young men aren't being told. Young men who read this book will learn how to be strong, how to be honest, how to confront their fears. They'll understand how to deal with men and women, parents and teachers, male friends and female friends. They'll get a sense of the integrity that every true man needs. They'll find ways to resolve problems without being destructive or self-destructive. They'll have their questions about sex answered... In clear, straightforward language. As John Marsden says: "In one way all you have to do to become a man is to stay alive. Physically you'll grow into a man. But to become a man who is mature, independent, responsible and wise, you'll need to do more than just have birthdays."

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Driving, wild and hilarious” (The Washington Post), here is the incredible “memoir” of the legendary actor, gambler, raconteur, and Saturday Night Live veteran. When Norm Macdonald, one of the greatest stand-up comics of all time, was approached to write a celebrity memoir, he flatly refused, calling the genre “one step below instruction manuals.” Norm then promptly took a two-year hiatus from stand-up comedy to live on a farm in northern Canada. When he emerged he had under his arm a manuscript, a genre-smashing book about comedy, tragedy, love, loss, war, and redemption. When asked if this was the celebrity memoir, Norm replied, “Call it anything you damn like.”

How to capture Amy Wright’s Paper Concert: A Conversation in the Round, a one-of-a-kind book-length essay containing a multitude of individual voices? Wright, conductor extraordinaire, has managed to piece apart, then fold together conversations from a bevy of thinkers like Dorothy Allison, Rae Armantrout, Gerald Stern, Lia Purpura, Raven Jackson, Wendy Walters, Kimiko Hahn, Philanese Slaughter, and others, blended into one harmonious whole. Wright opens the book: “This essay anchors a central thread of dialogue over a dizzying divide. It weaves a decades worth of questions and answers from a range of discussions I’ve had with artists, activists, scientists, philosophers, physicians, priests, musicians, and other representatives of the human population. Some of them are famous, some will be, some should be—but all of them refract the light of the unknowable mystery of the self.” The subjects range from the interconnected (inspiration and craft) to the seemingly disparate (colonialism and entomophagy), all with the hope of finding what truly matters to us. If this book is a paper concert, it is a symphony. Just pull up a chair and listen.