With more than twenty years of hands-on leadership experience in federal, state, and local government, Gary De Carolis, President, Center for Community Leadership, is a leading authority in creating community-based systems of services and supports for children with disabilities and their families. His new book, A View from the Balcony, is a source of unique insight into leading, planning, and implementing effective systems change. You will: ? Learn from real-world examples how to design, build, and administer a system of care. ? Realize the vital role of parent organizations in all aspects of systems of care. ? Understand the theory and practice of effective leadership in systems of care. ? Discover how you can make a real difference in your community.

A true story of three young men who came from a small town are given the opportunity to open a store in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. A Head Shop. They've never owned or managed a store before. Two of them work full time in a tool and die shop and the third one is a senior in high school. See how they started in 1969 working together building a thriving business that surprised even their closest friends. It was a different time many things in the world were changing and they had to change with them. Navigating through the competitive business world and at the same time managing their personal lives. Starting in their hometown of Lansdowne the story moves to Terminal Square in Upper Darby where they sub rent a loft, they named The Balcony. It was not easy, many obstacles came their way. Since they were a Head Shop, they were aware many believed they were selling drugs. Overcoming their personal problems became the hard part. Running the business came surprisingly easier. You would have thought the partying, drug use, a stolen car, a buyout, bootleg albums, marriages, the FBI, women, death, two new neighboring malls, additions, a move, a divorce, bootleg tee shirts, would have brought them down, but they didn't. The Balcony survived nineteen years. Nineteen years is a long time when you are working. The three main characters find out owning your own business is a 24/7 job. Like many things in life, they started together with a lot of energy and enthusiasm. Many fads came and went but the store was always up to date on all the new trends. The store became so popular customers would drive from New Jersey and Delaware to shop there. It was the beginning of the Woodstock nation. The music, drugs and sex were happening like never before and these three were ready to take it on. Many newsworthy events happened during the life of The Balcony. The reopening of the Tower Theater revised the music scene in Upper Darby bringing memorable acts to town. David Bowie played a whole week of shows to promote one of his albums. Bob Marley made a rare appearance and actually sent one of his crew to come in and ask if Bob could come in to shop. Bob and some of his band including his little brother and son came and spent over an hour shopping before the show started. Money was being made as the three partners started to disagree and find fault with each other. This is the story of how it happened from the very beginning to the end. It answers so many of the questions that have been asked since The Balcony closed its doors in 1988.

WINNER OF THE SUE KAUFMAN PRIZE FOR FIRST FICTION FROM THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS What if our homes could tell the stories of others who lived there before us? To those who have ventured past it over the years, this small estate in a village outside Paris has always seemed calm and poised. But should you open the gates and enter inside, you will find rooms which have become the silent witnesses to a century of human drama: from the young American au pair developing a crush on her brilliant employer to the ex-courtesan shocking the servants, and the Jewish couple in hiding from the Gestapo to the housewife who begins an affair while renovating her downstairs. The stories of those who have lived within the estate have been many and varied. But as the years unfold, their lives inevitably come to haunt the same spaces and intertwine, creating a rich tapestry of the relationships, life-altering choices, and fleeting moments which have kept the house alive through the last hundred years. . . 'Sweeping, suspenseful, rich with surprises and eerie atmosphere' Jennifer Egan

Joyce Landorf Heatherley writes insightfully about the gift and ministry of affirmation and those people in the balcony who shout words of encouragement to us and spur us on to be what God intends for us.

"What if you had a dying child, spouse, lover, parent, and the world caved in? It could happen. What was it like, after the Towers fell, to live in a war zone with a gravely ill husband? Julia Frey's BALCONY VIEW is far more than a 9/11 story. In this unique, historic diary -- the handwritten original is in the 9/11 Museum in New York -- Frey, a distinguished biographer, found herself in the unenviable position of writing about a life as it was falling apart -- her own. Her vivid, wry, tender book describes living for six months at Ground Zero with writer, Ron Sukenick during his terminal illness. It's a beautifully written, clear-eyed portrait of simple courage, remarkable humor, generosity and decency." Douglas Penick, writer, literary critic "The view from this balcony is compelling and utterly unique. Julia Frey has a first row seat for the two tragedies which mark her existence -- the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and her husband's progressively disabling malady. She peers down at the excavation of Ground Zero and brings us an account both riveting and thoughtful, despairing and buoyant, graceful and frank. As she navigates post 9-11 Manhattan, and a marriage that has been dealt the blow of untimely illness, we get to see, up-close, how ordinary people get through extraordinary times. With her deft touch and her sharp-warm humor, Frey is the perfect guide for such daunting territory." Elizabeth Scarboro, author: Phoenix, upside down Very quietly Ron said, "You know, I think the Towers are going to go. Maybe we'd better get out of here." If either of the Towers fell at a certain angle, our building was directly in the line of fall. Above the raging flames, the steel I-beams were beginning to bulge out, softening in the heat. Again his unnaturally quiet voice, "I can't stay here. If the Towers start falling on us, I'll die of fright." (BALCONY VIEW - a 9/11/ Diary ) Julia Frey's remarkable account begins on September 11, 2001, as the couple decide that no matter how weak Ron is, they must somehow flee. They abandon his wheelchair. He is too frail to climb on a boat. Later that day, covered with ashes, they struggle home through a neighborhood pitched into destruction and chaos, to look out his study window at their new view: "the stage-set for Dante's Inferno." The domino effect of one burning, collapsing building setting fire to the next one makes it clear that their own building could still go. "The electricity was out. Ron could never go down 26 flights on his rear end. We were trapped in the sky." That's when Julia decides to write it all down -- if only for the people who will find their bodies. Describing the first night in the the ruins, being evacuated, then returning weeks later, to live at Ground Zero, she discovers that their world has totally changed, yet finally not changed at all. "Our previous problems didn't magically disappear. They were just waiting for us to come back in the door." This hugely powerful narrative of double coping -- with Ron's progressive illness and with the after-effects of 9/11 -- describes a situation the manuals don't cover -- caregiving in a disaster. Her intense yet humorous 'you are there' style moves the diary swiftly along, catching us in a gripping, touching, brave, and yes, funny story of falling towers, a failing husband and a floundering ménage à trois. "Nothing happens in a vacuum," she says, weaving in the leitmotif of a love affair. Unflinchingly, she faces the ruins outside and her frightening, inner ambivalence as she sacrifices creative and professional life to nurse her husband. Ron is no angel either -- the self-centered, willful novelist insists she take a lover, then wants her to give him up. "What makes him think he can turn us off and on like televisions?" she wonders. In a poignant Coda, she describes an almost supernatural series of events after Ron dies. There is even a happy ending.

Alvin has had it. He sees civilization crumbling around him and wants no part of it. The only place he feels safe is inside his Chicago high rise apartment, so that's where he stays until Karen moves in next door. She is a die hard optimist with a high pressure job and a relentless ex boyfriend who won't take no for an answer. Alvin and Karen meet on their adjoining balconies and form a friendship that sets their two worlds on a collision course.

A stand-alone companion to the successful Tasting the Sky, this memoir further examines the author's childhood in Palestine.