Academic Life

From watching his colleague get shot in the testicles by a jealous producer to running Hollywood's most successful television studio, Harris Katleman had a front row seat in the development of the television industry. Through a number of hilarious accounts, Harris Katleman shares his journey from office boy to talent agent to television producer, and finally to studio head at both MGM and 20th Century Fox. Along the way, we meet industry giants including Rupert Murdoch, Bob Iger, Barry Diller, Marvin Davis, Kirk Kerkorian, Mark Goodson, and Lew Wasserman.

Crush Your Freshman Year: Mastering Academics, Social Life, Time Management, and Freedom for College Success is your guide to navigating the complex world of college. From time management to social skills, this book has it all.

After 28 days on a respirator, hanging in the balance of life and death at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Queens, Gary Mizel was well enough to be sent into a rehabilitation center to regain the strength to hold up his head and walk again. A month later, Mizel was released to his only family member, his sister Vicki, and returned to his home in Astoria. This miraculous story of recovery is being published in Vicki Mizel’s newest book, A Sister’s Love–How Family Bonds Can Save a Life.

In Biblical Critical Theory Audio Lectures, Part 1 Watkin draws a winsome vision for biblical cultural engagement in which faithfulness to Scripture and sensitivity to culture walk hand in hand. If Christians want to speak with a fresh, engaging and constructive voice within our culture, we need to press deeper into the core truths of the Bible.

Many academics attack the very idea of a Western canon as chauvinistic, while the general public increasingly doubts the value of the humanities. In Rescuing Socrates, Dominican-born American academic Roosevelt Montás tells the story of how a liberal education transformed his life, and offers an intimate account of the relevance of the Great Books today, especially to members of historically marginalized communities.

Stany Nyandwi’s gift for communicating with chimpanzees is so special that world-renowned primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall has called him a “chimpanzee whisperer.” His skills and devotion to these creatures—our closest living relatives, with whom we share 98.7 percent of our DNA—have earned him international awards and sent him on travels within Africa and around the world. But he began life in poverty, born and raised in a dirt-floor, straw-roofed hut in rural Burundi. The Chimpanzee Whisperer is the story of his astonishing life journey.

When Shannon Sovndal started medical school, he was confident and motivated and felt invincible. He thought he was going in with his eyes wide open. Really, he had no clue. Nothing could prepare him for the harsh reality of being a compassionate human and working as an ER doctor. In his emotionally charged memoir, Sovndal examines the tenuous balance between trying to compartmentalize the trauma of tragedy while also preserving his own humanity.

This book is rocking communities nationwide, especially the ALS community. Never before has anyone gone into such great detail about what you need to survive and overcome a terminal illness. From how to boost your will to live, to the weapons you need, Elizabeth covers all the bases with her fun style of wit and humor. Loaded with biblical references, this book is a wonderful evangelical tool. This book will either help you to fight for your own life or learn to appreciate the healthy life you already have!

Anyone who lives with an eating disorder fights their own thoughts, their own anxieties, their own self, every second of every minute of every day. For Lizzie this was her reality from the age of 14. However through professional help, the support of her loving family, and her Christian faith, she somehow found the hope and strength to overcome. Life Hurts tells Lizzie's story, reflecting on it from her perspective as a doctor. Her vision is to inspire and encourage other to see that, although eating disorders can be devastating, there is hope for all of us.

In December 2008, the world watched as master financier Bernard L. Madoff was taken away from his posh Manhattan apartment in handcuffs, accused of swindling thousands of innocent victims - including friends and family - out of billions of dollars in the world's largest Ponzi scheme. Madoff went to jail; he will spend the rest of his life there. But what happened to his devoted wife and sons?

At 23, Jane Goodall made her first voyage to Africa and began her determined steps to achieve her goal of studying animals by living among them. In My Life with the Chimpanzees, she shares the remarkable journey which took her from her childhood in London to the realization of her dream in the wilds of Gombe, Tanzania.

In Part of the Pride, Kevin Richardson, dubbed "The Lion Man" on 60 Minutes, tells the story of how he grew from a young boy who loved animals to become a man able to cross the divide between humans and predators, looking some of the world's most dangerous animals directly in the eye, playing with them, and even kissing them on the nose - all without ever being attacked or injured.

Born in rural Mexico, Eduardo “Lalo” García Guzmán and his family left for the United States when he was a child, picking fruits and vegetables on the migrant route from Florida to Michigan. He worked in Atlanta restaurants as a teenager before being convicted of a robbery, incarcerated, and eventually deported. Lalo landed in Mexico City as a new generation of chefs was questioning the hierarchies that had historically privileged European cuisine in elite spaces. At his acclaimed restaurant, Máximo Bistrot, he began to craft food that narrated his memories and hopes.

In What We Wish Were True, Quinn achingly grapples with the possibility of leaving behind the husband and children she adores, and what it means to live with a terminal diagnosis and still find meaning. “I think about how my purpose may be the same in death as it continues to be in life—surrendering to the hope that our weaknesses can be made strong, that what is broken can be made whole,” she writes.

This book is an introduction to the field of theological ethics with a Trinitarian perspective that guides pastors, ministry leaders, and students about how to think in a gospel way about the moral formation of persons and communities, about ethical inquiry and action, and about the tone and content of engagement in the public square.

Ken Chenault’s life confounds stereotypical presumptions about and expectations for a Black American man. Born in Mineola, New York, to a dentist and a hygienist as the civil rights movement began to gather steam, much of his childhood and early adult years unfolded in a modest middle-class setting during the political and social tumult of the 1960s—the Vietnam War, the struggle for racial equality, the fight for women’s rights, the rise of the counterculture. Though he was partly informed by these inescapable influences, even then, Chenault displayed an independence of thought.

Humanity is on an astronomical trajectory and according to aerospace professional and popular science communicator Kellie Gerardi, that future doesn’t rest solely on the shoulders of rocket scientists. Gerardi’s non-traditional path in the space industry shows us that humanity’s next giant leap will require the contributions of artists, engineers, and everyone in between. Gerardi takes us on a tour of this unique window in history and offers encouragement and advice for anyone who has ever dreamed of the stars and galaxies far, far away.

Barry Avrich - a self-made, Montreal-born film producer-director, flamboyant advertising executive, and legendary biographer and connector of moguls and stars. For over three decades, he has relentlessly produced films on some of the most notorious show-business titans and also found the time to market and promote feature films, concerts, and the biggest shows on Broadway.

Steve Jobs was a remarkable man who wanted to unify the world through technology. For him, the point was to set people free with tools to explore their own unique creativity. Chrisann Brennan knows this better than anyone. She met him in high school, at a time when Jobs was passionately aware that there was something much bigger to be had out of life, and that new kinds of revelations were within reach. The Bite in the Apple is the very human tale of Jobs's ascent and the toll it took.

Permanent Present Tense tells the incredible story of Henry Gustav Molaison, known only as H. M. until his death in 2008. In 1953, at the age of 27, Molaison underwent a dangerous "psychosurgical" procedure intended to alleviate his debilitating epilepsy. The surgery went horribly wrong, and when Molaison awoke he was unable to store new experiences. For the rest of his life, he would be trapped in the moment. But Molaison’s tragedy would prove a gift to humanity.