A memoir of a brief career as a top model - and the brutally honest account of what goes on behind the scenes in a fascinating, closed industry. Scouted in the street when she is 17, Victoire Dauxerre's story started like a teenager's dream: within months she was on the catwalks of New York's major fashion shows, and part of the most select circle of in-demand supermodels in the world.But when fashion executives and photographers began to pressure her about her weight, forcing her to become ever thinner, Victoire's fantasy came at a cost. Food was now her enemy, and soon, living on only three apples a day and Diet Coke galore, Victoire became anorexic.An unflinching, painful expose of the uglier face of fashion, her testimony is a shocking example of how our culture's mechanisms of anorexia and bulimia can push a young woman to the point of suicide. It is the story of a survivor whose fight against poisonous illness and body image shows us how to take courage and embrace life.

Scouted in the street when she was 17, Victoire Dauxerre’s story started like a teenager’s fantasy: within months she was strutting down the catwalks of New York’s major fashion shows. But when fashion executives and photographers forced her to become ever thinner, Victoire’s dream became a nightmare.

From New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes incredible stories of science, history, finance, mythology, the arts, medicine, and more, as told by the Periodic Table. Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie Curie's reputation? And why is gallium (Ga, 31) the go-to element for laboratory pranksters? The Periodic Table is a crowning scientific achievement, but it's also a treasure trove of adventure, betrayal, and obsession. These fascinating tales follow every element on the table as they play out their parts in human history, and in the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them. The Disappearing Spoon masterfully fuses science with the classic lore of invention, investigation, and discovery -- from the Big Bang through the end of time. Though solid at room temperature, gallium is a moldable metal that melts at 84 degrees Fahrenheit. A classic science prank is to mold gallium spoons, serve them with tea, and watch guests recoil as their utensils disappear.

Trinetta drops off her two young boys with her mother, Betty Jean - and then pulls a disappearing act. BJ is a sassy, pull-no-punches, trademark McMillan matriarch, and she already has her hands full picking up the slack for her other kids, coaching her best friend Tammy through her own tribulations and dealing with two feuding sisters, all while holding down a job as a hotel maid. Who Asked You? raises questions about how we care for one another and how we set limits for those we love when the demands are too great.

“Eloquent . . . An incredibly realistic portrayal of anorexia.” —The New Yorker She devoured their memoirs and magazine articles, committing the most salacious details to memory to learn what it would take to be the very best anorexic. When she was hospitalized at fifteen, she found herself in an existential wormhole: How can one suffer from something one has actively sought out? With attuned storytelling and unflinching introspection, Kelsey Osgood unpacks the modern myths of anorexia as she chronicles her own rehabilitation. How to Disappear Completely is a brave, candid and emotionally wrenching memoir that explores the physical, internal, and social ramifications of eating disorders. “Osgood vividly portrays the creepy phenomenon of the ‘pro-ana’ movement and the claustrophobic, self-involved, achingly lonely world in which young women compete to be ‘perfect’ anorexics. . . . imbued with pathos and tenderness.” —Publishers Weekly “What sets Kelsey Osgood’s memoir apart from the existing literature on anorexia is the author’s commitment to stripping the glamour and romance from the illness . . . Intelligent, moving, beautifully written, Osgood has written a paean to wellness, and taken a forthright look at everything that anorexia, ‘bastard child of vanity and self-loathing,’ took from her life.” —Molly McCloskey, author of Circles Around the Sun: In Search of a Lost Brother

‘People often say that non-fiction books read like fast-moving thrillers, but this one genuinely does... This is a splendid book – and highly recommended.’ Daily Mail A remarkable piece of investigative journalism into one of the most pervasive and troubling mysteries of recent memory.

Presents the text of Alice Walker's story "Everyday Use"; contains background essays that provide insight into the story; and features a selection of critical response. Includes a chronology and an interview with the author.

In gripping prose, one of the world's leading cardiac surgeons lays bare both the wonder and the horror of a life spent a heartbeat away from death When Stephen Westaby witnessed a patient die on the table during open-heart surgery for the first time, he was struck by the quiet, determined way the surgeons walked away. As he soon understood, this detachment is a crucial survival strategy in a profession where death is only a heartbeat away. In Open Heart, Westaby reflects on over 11,000 surgeries, showing us why the procedures have never become routine and will never be. With astonishing compassion, he recounts harrowing and sometimes hopeful stories from his operating room: we meet a pulseless man who lives with an electric heart pump, an expecting mother who refuses surgery unless the doctors let her pregnancy reach full term, and a baby who gets a heart transplant-only to die once it's in place. For readers of Atul Gawande's Being Mortal and of Henry Marsh's Do No Harm, Open Heart offers a soul-baring account of a life spent in constant confrontation with death.

It is called zero point energy, and it really exists - a state of energy contained in all matter everywhere, and thus all but unlimited. Nobody has ever found a way to tap into it, however - until one scientist discovers a way. Or at least he thinks he has. The problem is, his machines also cause great earthquakes, even fissures in tectonic plates. One machine is buried deep underground; the other is submerged in a vast ocean trench. If Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala and the rest of the NUMA team aren't able to find and destroy them, and soon, the world will be on the threshold of a new era of earth tremors and unchecked volcanism.

The bestselling author of Zero shows how mathematical misinformation pervades-and shapes-our daily lives. According to MSNBC, having a child makes you stupid. You actually lose IQ points. Good Morning America has announced that natural blondes will be extinct within two hundred years. Pundits estimated that there were more than a million demonstrators at a tea party rally in Washington, D.C., even though roughly sixty thousand were there. Numbers have peculiar powers-they can disarm skeptics, befuddle journalists, and hoodwink the public into believing almost anything. "Proofiness," as Charles Seife explains in this eye-opening book, is the art of using pure mathematics for impure ends, and he reminds readers that bad mathematics has a dark side. It is used to bring down beloved government officials and to appoint undeserving ones (both Democratic and Republican), to convict the innocent and acquit the guilty, to ruin our economy, and to fix the outcomes of future elections. This penetrating look at the intersection of math and society will appeal to readers of Freakonomics and the books of Malcolm Gladwell.