Portrait of an addict as a young man

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Kara DioGuardi

Kara DioGuardi is an award-winning hitmaker, a savvy record executive, and a successful music publisher whose songs have been recorded by such superstars as Pink, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani, Santana, Steven Tyler, and many others. She was also the feisty fourth judge on American Idol. But success wouldn't have happened for this songwriter, artist, and producer without the dark times of defeat. Kara not only writes about what it was like to collaborate with some of our favorite performing artists, she also opens up about everything from her struggles with debilitating stage fright and an equally paralyzing eating disorder, to caring for her mother during her final battle with cancer. And, of course, she shares behind-the-scenes stories from her years on American Idol and the real truth about her departure from the show.--From publisher description.

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Livia Bitton-Jackson

So wonders thirteen-year-old Elli Friedmann, just one of the many innocent Holocaust victims, as she fights for her life in a concentration camp. It wasn't long ago that Elli led a normal life; a life rich and full that included family, friends, school, and thoughts about boys. A life in which Elli could lie and daydream for hours that she was a beautiful and elegant celebrated poet. But these adolescent daydreams quickly darken in March 1944, when the Nazis invade Hungary. First Elli can no longer attend school have possessions, or talk to her neighbors. Then she and her family are forced to leave their house behind to move into a crowded ghetto, where privacy becomes a luxury of the past and food becomes a scarcity. Her strong will and faith allow Elli to manage and adjust somehow, but what Elli doesn't know is that this is only the beginning and the worst is yet to come.

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Chris Jones

"Rookie reporter Chris Jones had no idea what he was getting himself into when he took on the boxing beat. He was just looking for a sport to call his own, and boxing "was the unloved and unclaimed, the abandoned child on the department's stoop." But like so many others who are drawn toward boxing's dark lights, what began as a simple curiosity soon escalated to an unhealthy obsession.". "In Falling Hard, Jones documents the year that followed, as the mysterious trade crept deep inside him, set his heart pumping one minute and broke it the next. It forced him to stare at violence - in others and in himself - and dared him not to flinch. He brings the reader with him, right down to ringside, where we can feel the blood and sweat of today's greatest boxers: Otis Grant, Roy Jones, Francois Botha, Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, and Cesar Soto, among others."--BOOK JACKET.

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Anna Suvorova

"This book studies the veneration practices and rituals of the Muslim saints. It outlines the principle trends of the main Sufi orders in India, the profiles and teachings of the famous and less well-known saints, and the development of pilgrimage to their tombs in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. A detailed discussion of the interaction of the Hindu mystic tradition and Sufism shows the polarity between the rigidity of the orthodox and the flexibility of the popular Islam in South Asia. Treating the cult of saints as a universal and all pervading phenomenon embracing the life of the region in all its aspects, the analysis includes politics, social and family life, interpersonal relations, gender problems and national psyche. The author uses a multidimensional approach to the subject: a historical, religious and literary analysis of sources is combined with an anthropological study of the rites and rituals of the veneration of the shrines and the description of the architecture of the tombs." --Book Jacket.