Hold On to Your Dreams is the first biography of the musician and composer Arthur Russell, one of the most important but least known contributors to New York's downtown music scene during the 1970s and 1980s. With the exception of a few dance recordings, including "Is It All Over My Face?" and "Go Bang! #5", Russell's pioneering music was largely forgotten until 2004, when the posthumous release of two albums brought new attention to the artist. This revival of interest gained momentum with the issue of additional albums and the documentary film Wild Combination. Based on interviews with more than seventy of his collaborators, family members, and friends, Hold On to Your Dreams provides vital new information about this singular, eccentric musician and his role in the boundary-breaking downtown music scene. Tim Lawrence traces Russell's odyssey from his hometown of Oskaloosa, Iowa, to countercultural San Francisco, and eventually to New York, where he lived from 1973 until his death from AIDS-related complications in 1992. Resisting definition while dreaming of commercial success, Russell wrote and performed new wave and disco as well as quirky rock, twisted folk, voice-cello dub, and hip-hop-inflected pop. “He was way ahead of other people in understanding that the walls between concert music and popular music and avant-garde music were illusory,” comments the composer Philip Glass. "He lived in a world in which those walls weren't there." Lawrence follows Russell across musical genres and through such vital downtown music spaces as the Kitchen, the Loft, the Gallery, the Paradise Garage, and the Experimental Intermedia Foundation. Along the way, he captures Russell's openness to sound, his commitment to collaboration, and his uncompromising idealism.

An “invaluable” memoir by a counselor who left the elite private-school world to help poor and working-class kids get into college (Washington Monthly). Winner of the Studs and Ida Terkel Award Joshua Steckel left an elite Manhattan school to serve as the first-ever college guidance counselor at a Brooklyn public high school—and has helped hundreds of disadvantaged kids gain acceptance. But getting in is only one part of the drama. This riveting work of narrative nonfiction follows the lives of ten of Josh’s students as they navigate the vast, obstacle-ridden landscape of college in America, where students for whom the stakes of education are highest find unequal access and inadequate support. Among the students we meet are Mike, who writes his essays from a homeless shelter and is torn between his longing to get away to an idyllic campus and his fear of leaving his family in desperate circumstances; Santiago, a talented, motivated, and undocumented student, who battles bureaucracy and low expectations as he seeks a life outside the low-wage world of manual labor; and Ashley, who pursues her ambition to become a doctor with almost superhuman drive—but then forges a path that challenges received wisdom about the value of an elite liberal arts education. At a time when the idea of “college for all” is hotly debated, this book uncovers, in heartrending detail, the ways the American education system fails in its promise as a ladder to opportunity—yet provides hope in its portrayal of the intelligence, resilience, and everyday heroics of young people whose potential is too often ignored. “A profound examination of the obstacles faced by low-income students . . . and the kinds of reforms needed to make higher education and the upward mobility it promises more accessible.” —Booklist

"[A] mordant debut novel....examines what it means to covet the lives of others, no matter the cost."—The New York Times "Tense, twisty, and packed with shocks."—Riley Sager, New York Times bestselling author of Survive The Night Six friends. One college reunion. One unsolved murder. Ten years after graduation, Jessica Miller has planned her triumphant return to her southern, elite Duquette University, down to the envious whispers that are sure to follow in her wake. Everyone is going to see the girl she wants them to see—confident, beautiful, indifferent. Not the girl she was when she left campus, back when Heather Shelby's murder fractured everything, including the tight bond linking the six friends she'd been closest to since freshman year. But not everyone is ready to move on. Not everyone left Duquette ten years ago, and not everyone can let Heather's murder go unsolved. Someone is determined to trap the real killer, to make the guilty pay. When the six friends are reunited, they will be forced to confront what happened that night—and the years' worth of secrets each of them would do anything to keep hidden. Told in racing dual timelines, with a dark campus setting and a darker look at friendship, love, obsession, and ambition, In My Dreams I Hold A Knife is an addictive, propulsive read you won't be able to put down. "Beautiful writing, juicy secrets, complex female characters, and drumbeat suspense—what more could you want from a debut thriller?"—Andrea Bartz, author of Reese's Book Club pick We Were Never Here

This heartwarming picture book reassures children that a parent’s love never lets go—based on the poignant lyrics of JJ Heller’s beloved lullaby “Hand to Hold.” “May the living light inside you be the compass as you go / May you always know you have my hand to hold.” With delightful illustrations and an engaging rhyme scheme, this book offers the promise of security and love every child’s heart longs to know. From skipping stones and counting stars to climbing trees and telling stories, every moment is wrapped snugly in the certain warmth of a parent’s presence and God’s blessing. With poignancy and joy, this bedtime read captures the unconditional love parents want their children to know but so often fail to express amid the chaos of daily life.

A step-by-step plan offers examples and exercises on how to determine and live by a set of values, experiment with failure as a formula for success, and take life beyond set limits.

As the 1970s gave way to the 80s, New York's party scene entered a ferociously inventive period characterized by its creativity, intensity, and hybridity. Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor chronicles this tumultuous time, charting the sonic and social eruptions that took place in the city’s subterranean party venues as well as the way they cultivated breakthrough movements in art, performance, video, and film. Interviewing DJs, party hosts, producers, musicians, artists, and dancers, Tim Lawrence illustrates how the relatively discrete post-disco, post-punk, and hip hop scenes became marked by their level of plurality, interaction, and convergence. He also explains how the shifting urban landscape of New York supported the cultural renaissance before gentrification, Reaganomics, corporate intrusion, and the spread of AIDS brought this gritty and protean time and place in American culture to a troubled denouement.

MEANT FOR THIS is for anyone with a dream inside their heart they can't ignore. The kind of dream that feels too big, or too impossible to ever become a reality. Whether you've put it on the back burner for years, or you've been working towards it your whole life, this book will breathe new life into it and create a whole new world of possibility. As artists and dreamers, we're flooded with discouraging rhetoric: "That dream is going to be really hard." "Good luck winning the lottery!" "Do you really want to be a starving artist?" Not only does this tempt people to pursue something more "realistic," but it also robs us of hope and sticks us with a dead end. Meant For This is just the opposite. Finally, a book that understands the artist's journey and guides you with a refreshingly motivating perspective. Through 20 chapters of personal stories, exercises, and actionable content, Hollywood's Success Coach Erica Wernick shows you the strategies and mindset that has helped countless artists turn their biggest dreams into reality. Erica has built a career providing support and strategy in a way that was desperately needed in the Hollywood industry. Between Erica and her clients, they've booked work on over 60 television shows and films on Netflix, Hulu, HBO and every other major network under the sun, working with A-listers, starting their own companies, and landing opportunities they never had before. This book will: Give you permission to dream as big as you possibly can Show you how to access your Star Power to unlock bigger opportunities Help you map out a brand new strategy for your biggest dream Make you feel seen and heard as an artist like you've never felt before Inspire you to stop settling and finally lead the extraordinary life you desire Erica first walks readers through the mindset of a High Achiever. It's about accessing your Star Power and taking on a set of beliefs that unleash your potential like never before. You want to achieve the exceptional? You want to achieve what most people never will? It starts within. You have to be exceptional to achieve the exceptional. Then Erica shows you how to tangibly make your dreams happen. Once you become the person you're meant to be, you can take the actions that will propel you forward. Erica digs in deep to practical strategies about making connections, asking for what you want, and creating the most effective plan for even the biggest dreams. The last section of the book covers the edge. It's the power behind the truly exceptional results. From breaking the rules, to expecting miracles from the Universe, this section is the cherry on top of the cake. It's what successful people do differently, beyond the principles we've heard before. People who succeed at high levels do things differently. Meant For This will show you exactly what they're doing and how you can achieve everything you feel meant for. This book gives stars permission to call themselves Stars. It gives dreamers the courage to do the big things in their heart. When you don't achieve something you feel you're meant for, the agony is one of the most excruciating experiences. This book ends that pain, replaces it with joy and epic fulfillment, and subsequently expands the light in a ripple effect of dreams realized. No dream is too big or too impossible. If it keeps whispering to you, it's time to answer the call and live the life you've always dreamed of.

The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.

Originally [and it may still be] a-work-in-progress... Yet, I have decided to move beyond the comfort of my computer and four little walls of an apartment, and share a labor of love that has taken me twenty-five years to bring out of the closet so too speak. So pull out those old LP's or CD's of a lil Coltrane, Carol Sloane, Shirley Horn, Miles Davis and of course Lady Day. And for all of you new kids on the block, Jill Scott, Remy Shand and Ledisi Young, too! So light some aroma-therapy candles, burn some incense and then allow me to transport you back to a time of growth for some and a revelation for others, for I am the product of: the Civil Rights era/the BEATLES/the SUPREMES/ both the Korean/& VIETNAM wars/the1963 march on Washington...

I started writing poetry at the age of 16 for an English assignment. An assignment I was less than thrilled about. As it turns out, writing those first two poems opened up the floodgates, and allowed me to express all the emotions and thoughts that I was unable to express to those around me. It was written therapy. I came to enjoy writing, and over the years, my work has expressed a myriad of thoughts, emotions and dreams. I hope that within these pages you will find something that speaks to you, and helps you feel like you are not alone in the world. I have written about love, hate, pain, fear, loss, dreams, wishes, and all the things that I had inside myself, and that you may have inside of you. It is also my hope that reading these poems will not only give you a sense of belonging, but perhaps inspire you to write poetry of your own. It can be a wonderful release in times when you feel overburdened and alone. It is a wonderful art, and should be both created and enjoyed bar far more people.