Michael Jackson's former bodyguards reveal the amazing truths of the superstar's final 2 years--his life in hiding with his children, the financial crises that forced him into the ill-fated This Is It tour, and the events that led to his shocking death.On the brink of financial ruin and driven from his beloved sanctuary at Neverland , Michael Jackson spent his final years living like a nomad, moving his 3 children from the Middle East to Ireland to Las Vegas to Virginia and...

An irreverent, yet powerful exploration of race relations by the New York Times-bestselling author of The Chris Farley ShowFrank, funny, and incisive, Some of My Best Friends Are Black offers a profoundly honest portrait of race in America. In a book that is part reportage, part history, part social commentary, Tanner Colby explores why the civil rights movement ultimately produced such little true integration in schools, neighborhoods, o...

As humans have come to dominate the earth, the ideal of studying and teaching ecology in pristine ecosystems has become impossible to achieve. Our planet is now a mosaic of ecosystems ranging from the relatively undisturbed to the completely built, with the majority of people living in urban environments. This accessible introduction to the principles of urban ecology provides students with the tools they need to understand these increasingly important urban ecosystems. It builds upon the ...

Glenn Beck, the New York Times bestselling author of The Great Reset, provides the ultimate handbook for tackling and winning life’s most important arguments.FUNNY. FRIGHTENING. TRUE.The #1 New York Times bestseller that gives you the right answers when idiots leave you speechless!It happens to all of us: You’re minding your own business, when some idiot* informs you that guns are evil, the Prius will save...

An interdisciplinary and quantitative account of human claims on the biosphere's stores of living matter, from prehistoric hunting to modern energy production.The biosphere—the Earth's thin layer of life—dates from nearly four billion years ago, when the first simple organisms appeared. Many species have exerted enormous influence on the biosphere's character and productivity, but none has transformed the Earth in so many ways and on such a scale as Homo sapien...

Instead of one black America, today there are four.“There was a time when there were agreed-upon 'black leaders,' when there was a clear 'black agenda,' when we could talk confidently about 'the state of black America'—but not anymore.” —from DisintegrationThe African American population in the United States has always been seen as a single entity: a “Black America” with unified interests and needs. In his groundbreaking book, ...

This full-color illustrated textbook offers the first comprehensive introduction to all major aspects of tropical ecology. It explains why the world's tropical rain forests are so universally rich in species, what factors may contribute to high species richness, how nutrient cycles affect rain forest ecology, and how ecologists investigate the complex interrelationships among flora and fauna. It covers tropical montane ecology, riverine ecosystems, savanna, dry forest--and more.

When the Tea Party Came to Towndemonstrates Robert Draper’s uncanny ability to ferret out news-making tidbits and provides us with the first look at this game-changing Congress—sure to be a classic work.In When the Tea Party Came to Town, Robert Draper delivers the definitive account of what may turn out to be the worst congressional term in United States history. As he did in writing about President George W. Bush in Dead Cer...

Pollination and Floral Ecology is the most comprehensive single-volume reference to all aspects of pollination biology--and the first fully up-to-date resource of its kind to appear in decades. This beautifully illustrated book describes how flowers use colors, shapes, and scents to advertise themselves; how they offer pollen and nectar as rewards; and how they share complex interactions with beetles, birds, bats, bees, and other creatures. The ecology of these interactions is cov...

Barack Obama's inspirational politics and personal mythology have overshadowed his fascinating history. Young Mr. Obama gives us the missing chapter: the portrait of the politician as a young leader, often too ambitious for his own good, but still equipped with a rare ability to inspire change. The route to the White House began on the streets of Chicago's South Side.Edward McClelland, a veteran Chicago journalist, tells the real story of the first black president's politi...

Chuck Thompson—dubbed "savagely funny" by The New York Times and "wickedly entertaining" by the San Francisco Chronicle—spent two years traveling the American South to determine whether, as he’d long suspected but not yet proven, the whole country might be better off letting Dixieland make good on its two-hundred-years-old threat to secede. The result is a long overdue and serious inquiry into national divides that is deliberately provocative and uproario...

At its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, Detroit's status as epicenter of the American auto industry made it a vibrant, populous, commercial hub—and then the bottom fell out. Detroit : A Biography takes a long, unflinching look at the evolution of one of America's great cities and one of the nation's greatest urban failures. This authoritative yet accessible narrative seeks to explain how the city grew to become the heart of American industry and how its utter collapse—from ...