The product of painstaking research and countless interviews, A High Price offers a nuanced, definitive historical account of Israel's bold but often failed efforts to fight terrorist groups. Beginning with the violent border disputes that emerged after Israel's founding in 1948, Daniel Byman charts the rise of Yasir Arafat's Fatah and leftist groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine--organizations that ushered in the era of international terrorism epitomized by the 1972 hostage-taking at the Munich Olympics. Byman reveals how Israel fought these groups and others, such as Hamas, in the decades that follow, with particular attention to the grinding and painful struggle during the second intifada. Israel's debacles in Lebanon against groups like the Lebanese Hizballah are examined in-depth, as is the country's problematic response to Jewish terrorist groups that have struck at Arabs and Israelis seeking peace. In surveying Israel's response to terror, the author points to the coups of shadowy Israeli intelligence services, the much-emulated use of defensive measures such as sky marshals on airplanes, and the role of controversial techniques such as targeted killings and the security barrier that separates Israel from Palestinian areas. Equally instructive are the shortcomings that have undermined Israel's counterterrorism goals, including a disregard for long-term planning and a failure to recognize the long-term political repercussions of counterterrorism tactics.

High Price is the harrowing and inspiring memoir of neuroscientist Carl Hart, a man who grew up in one of Miami’s toughest neighborhoods and, determined to make a difference as an adult, tirelessly applies his scientific training to help save real lives. Young Carl didn't see the value of school, studying just enough to keep him on the basketball team. Today, he is a cutting-edge neuroscientist—Columbia University’s first tenured African American professor in the sciences—whose landmark, controversial research is redefining our understanding of addiction. In this provocative and eye-opening memoir, Dr. Carl Hart recalls his journey of self-discovery, how he escaped a life of crime and drugs and avoided becoming one of the crack addicts he now studies. Interweaving past and present, Hart goes beyond the hype as he examines the relationship between drugs and pleasure, choice, and motivation, both in the brain and in society. His findings shed new light on common ideas about race, poverty, and drugs, and explain why current policies are failing.

A study of how materialism and consumerism undermine our quality of life. In The High Price of Materialism, Tim Kasser offers a scientific explanation of how our contemporary culture of consumerism and materialism affects our everyday happiness and psychological health. Other writers have shown that once we have sufficient food, shelter, and clothing, further material gains do little to improve our well-being. Kasser goes beyond these findings to investigate how people's materialistic desires relate to their well-being. He shows that people whose values center on the accumulation of wealth or material possessions face a greater risk of unhappiness, including anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and problems with intimacy—regardless of age, income, or culture. Drawing on a decade's worth of empirical data, Kasser examines what happens when we organize our lives around materialistic pursuits. He looks at the effects on our internal experience and interpersonal relationships, as well as on our communities and the world at large. He shows that materialistic values actually undermine our well-being, as they perpetuate feelings of insecurity, weaken the ties that bind us, and make us feel less free. Kasser not only defines the problem but proposes ways we can change ourselves, our families, and society to become less materialistic.

"First of all, just for the record, I love me some me. You heard right. . .I truly love Miss Queenisha Renae Sutton. The tall, well-endowed, fine honey-coated sistah that I be." Queenisha Renae Sutton is always ready, willing and able to walk away from any man who either can't or won't appreciate her, because after all, she is all woman. Then she meets tall and handsome Zeke Washington at a charity fundraiser, and buys him lock, stock and barrel. For one night. Determined to get her money's worth, she approaches their first date with one goal: to make Zeke her man, no matter what the cost. With the help of her best friend, Poetta, who puts a "voodoo hex" on Zeke to help lure him in, Queenisha gets more than she bargained for. And before long she finds herself changing to please a man. And if love wasn't complicated enough, she discovers an even sweeter love where she least expects it.

A party for California’s rich and fabulous is the perfect place to start a deadly game of revenge in this mystery thriller by the author of Spouse Trap. Santa Barbara event planner Madeline Dawkins is coordinating a weekend-long birthday bash for the wife of a famous film director. It should be a highlight of her career. But when precious jewels go missing and dead bodies start turning up, Madeline puts party hosting aside to focus on her other line of work—as a private investigator. Together with her partner Mike Delaney, Madeline follows the clues to some dark mansions that hide even darker secrets. A grim and terrifying chapter of Madeline’s past has been reopened, and a soulless predator is now on a quest for vengeance. But while searching for the killer, Madeline soon learns that the victims aren’t random; they were meant to send her a personal message: “You’re next.”

On the threshold of her fifties, Michela retraces the important stages of her life and going back and forth between past and present she relives crucial moments: the pain, the downfalls, the defeats and rebirths, up to the full understanding of herself and the achievement of a form of serenity and, maybe, why not, of true happiness. "The choices we make, especially the rational ones, are too often dictated by social conventions and by what others expect of us . We do things out of duty and make the big blunders . With hindsight I would never do things that everybody considered perfectly legitimate and sensible. What I have done only following my instinct and my heart, I would do it again today.” "To start again I needed a superhuman courage, because I had to get my life back. And only when I overcome all this, when I am the master of my time and I feel calm and happy of solitude as well, of my space, so hard-won, and of my time because finally I'll know how to handle it, only then I will be able to declare myself truly free, to be alone or to fall in love again. This freedom must be won, but freedom is sweat and blood, freedom has a high price.” "It's strange but I have found happiness through winding and tiring roads, overcoming the greatest sorrows, I have overcome anger and pain through my passion for life, despite it all.I always tried to be like others and comply to common rules, but the paths of life have led me to be different, and I have always paid the price.”