The author of The Nurse’s Secret delivers a haunting new book based on true history perfect for readers of Kristin Hannah, Ellen Marie Wiseman, and Donna Everhart. This spellbinding story of a determined female doctor pushed into life as part of a menacing swindler’s traveling medicine show in order to support her son is rife with unflinching prose and set against the backdrop of the devastating Galveston Hurricane of 1900. "Perfect on so many levels that I don't even know where to begin." —Addison Armstrong, Author of The War Librarian Once a trailblazer in the field of medicine, Dr. Tucia Hatherley hasn’t touched a scalpel or stethoscope since she made a fatal mistake in the operating theater. Instead, she works in a corset factory, striving to earn enough to support her disabled son. When even that livelihood is threatened, Tucia is left with one option—to join a wily, charismatic showman named Huey and become part of his traveling medicine show. Her medical license lends the show a pretense of credibility, but the cures and tonics Tucia is forced to peddle are little more than purgatives and bathwater. Loathing the duplicity, even as she finds uneasy kinship with the other misfit performers, Tucia vows to leave as soon as her debts are paid and start a new life with her son—if Huey will ever let her go. When the show reaches Galveston, Texas, Tucia tries to break free from Huey, only to be pulled even deeper into his schemes. But there is a far greater reckoning ahead, as a September storm becomes a devastating hurricane that will decimate the Gulf Coast—and challenge Tucia to recover her belief in medicine, in the goodness of others—and in herself.

TV's most popular pitchman reveals the secrets of pitching to get what you want in virtually any situation. Anthony "Sully" Sullivan went from selling car washers in rainy Welsh street markets to selling to audiences of millions around the world as the face of OxiClean. How did he do it? Convincing people to give you what you want is an art form that takes charisma and confidence. But no great pitchman achieves success based on those qualities alone. The good ones make themselves great with practice and discipline, mastering a series of skills that Sullivan dubs the ten "Pitch Powers." These are essential techniques he's learned in more than twenty-five years "on the joint" (that's pitchman-speak for the area where you're selling). For the first time ever, Sullivan reveals the secrets behind his seemingly superhuman ability to persuade others--even if they start out regarding you with suspicion or even hostility. Do it right and you'll change minds, open doors, get opportunities, turn adversaries into allies, make more money, and gain the kind of confidence that makes other people want to know you. From the first Pitch Power ("Know Your Acceptable Outcomes") to the last ("Finish with Confidence")--with invaluable strategies along the way on using your flubs to get a laugh, how to deal with push-back, and more--Sullivan reveals that pitching is all about engaging a person face-to-face and eye-to-eye so they feel like you're speaking directly to them, even if there are fifty other people in the room. It's turning a crowd of strangers with their arms folded into a legion of fans ready to say "yes" enthusiastically to whatever you propose, what Anthony Sullivan calls fierce agreement. It's the power to get the job, get the girl (or guy), get the part, make money, get better service, advance your career--do just about anything you want to do.

This short story collection offers snapshots of a life. A kid is set up by an old uncle to think he’s going to be scalped. Seeing demons in every shadow a few nights later, he’s told by an older cousin it was all a joke, that adults always seem to want kids to go through the same bad things they did. Just how they are. Shut up, he’s advised. Get used to it. Hunkered in the dark listening. In the next room, bubbling a bottle with a drinking buddy, his Old Man telling tales of roadhouse glory. Bad odds fist fights, rearranged faces that stay that way. For weeks he wakes afraid to touch his face. Will his nose, ears and eyes have shifted places while he slept, his face forever scrambled, rearranged? Riots and war. Conscription. The fights, the violence no longer just yarns heard late at night. Drafted at eighteen, he has to decide, will he go halfway round the world to kill people he has no earthly quarrel with? Considers conscientious objection. His girlfriend bluntly asks him when he became a pacifist. You can’t, she suggests, the minute you get drafted, suddenly announce yourself as some kind of Instant Gandhi. Not, anyway, and expect a Draft Board made up of World War II vets to buy it. Teaching in a tiny mountain town. Some kids, he’s told early on, are just too dumb to bother with. Signing on for a salesman’s pay. Hit your quota or hit the road. Logic of a kiss, that sprung free promise of what life can be, the one constant throughout. A better way glimpsed, lost and found, here and gone. Pitchman’s blues.

Meet Billy Mays. You know, the TV and cable pitchman for Oxiclean, Zorbeez, Mighty Putty, WashMatic, Kaboom! and a host of other products that just made life easier for millions. Billy's real story, from his birth in '58 to his funeral in '09 the story of the son, husband, father, and friend is written by Bill Mays Sr., who tells you about the behind-the-scene Billy he loved so much. Billy's upbringing was humble, but he was surrounded by a loving family of longtime Pennsylvania residents. His father filled a whole suitcase with memories, mementos, photos, and news clippings that detail Billy's short life. He wasn't always the guy with the full beard; he was an infant, a schoolboy, a teenager, and then a young adult who worked his way from pitching products at county fairs and flea markets to the top promoter on the Home Shopping Network and the owner of a custom-built mansion in Odessa, Florida. Everyone wanted him as a pitchman, and his popularity, voice, and image ended up eclipsing the products he sold. He became a celebrity in his own right, making various appearances including both Jay Leno's and Conan O'Brien's Tonight Shows. Billy was a remarkable person with a level of energy that defies description or imitation. Give a big thumbs-up for Billy Mays!

Why do we find ourselves living in an Information Society? How did the collection, processing, and communication of information come to play an increasingly important role in advanced industrial countries relative to the roles of matter and energy? And why is this change recent--or is it? James Beniger traces the origin of the Information Society to major economic and business crises of the past century. In the United States, applications of steam power in the early 1800s brought a dramatic rise in the speed, volume, and complexity of industrial processes, making them difficult to control. Scores of problems arose: fatal train wrecks, misplacement of freight cars for months at a time, loss of shipments, inability to maintain high rates of inventory turnover. Inevitably the Industrial Revolution, with its ballooning use of energy to drive material processes, required a corresponding growth in the exploitation of information: the Control Revolution. Between the 1840s and the 1920s came most of the important information-processing and communication technologies still in use today: telegraphy, modern bureaucracy. rotary power printing, the postage stamp, paper money, typewriter, telephone, punch-card processing, motion pictures, radio, and television. Beniger shows that more recent developments in microprocessors, computers, and telecommunications are only a smooth continuation of this Control Revolution. Along the way he touches on many fascinating topics: why breakfast was invented, how trademarks came to be worth more than the companies that own them, why some employees wear uniforms, and whether time zones will always be necessary. The book is impressive not only for the breadth of its scholarship but also for the subtlety and force of its argument. It will be welcomed by sociologists, economists, historians of science and technology, and all curious in general.