In 1997 Mark Salzman, bestselling author Iron and Silk and Lying Awake, paid a reluctant visit to a writing class at L.A.’s Central Juvenile Hall, a lockup for violent teenage offenders, many of them charged with murder. What he found so moved and astonished him that he began to teach there regularly. In voices of indelible emotional presence, the boys write about what led them to crime and about the lives that stretch ahead of them behind bars. We see them coming to terms with their crime-ridden pasts and searching for a reason to believe in their future selves. Insightful, comic, honest and tragic, True Notebooks is an object lesson in the redemptive power of writing.

A collection of photographs is complemented by notes and excerpts from the journals and correspondence of the late photographer

René Descartes (1596–1650) is one of the towering and central figures in Western philosophy and mathematics. His apothegm “Cogito, ergo sum” marked the birth of the mind-body problem, while his creation of so-called Cartesian coordinates have made our physical and intellectual conquest of physical space possible. But Descartes had a mysterious and mystical side, as well. Almost certainly a member of the occult brotherhood of the Rosicrucians, he kept a secret notebook, now lost, most of which was written in code. After Descartes’s death, Gottfried Leibniz, inventor of calculus and one of the greatest mathematicians in history, moved to Paris in search of this notebook—and eventually found it in the possession of Claude Clerselier, a friend of Descartes. Leibniz called on Clerselier and was allowed to copy only a couple of pages—which, though written in code, he amazingly deciphered there on the spot. Leibniz’s hastily scribbled notes are all we have today of Descartes’s notebook, which has disappeared. Why did Descartes keep a secret notebook, and what were its contents? The answers to these questions lead Amir Aczel and the reader on an exciting, swashbuckling journey, and offer a fascinating look at one of the great figures of Western culture.

Salzman captures post-cultural revolution China through his adventures as a young American English teacher in China and his shifu-tudi (master-student) relationship with China's foremost martial arts teacher.

The stories between the covers of this book are for those who love their tales of the weird, unusual and macabre deliciously - real. Werewolves, vampires, aliens, cryptids, and ghosts are just a few of the mysterious creatures to whom you will be introduced or reintroduced through the voices of those who have encountered them. Come join the Paranormal Journalist as she guides you through a fantastical landscape inhabited by otherworldly beings too often relegated to the dark corners of humanity's consciousness. Read about real paranormal investigators who go places few would go to meet and communicate with the spirits of those long dead. Find out about a harbinger of doom that foretold the collapse of a superstructure and launched a legend. Learn about an organization dedicated to the pursuit of evidence of UFO abductions and visitations. Many writers conduct academic research, but Pat Bussard has also traveled to many of the locations she wrote about in this book to bring to the reader a deeper connection to these places of historical supernatural significance. She has interviewed some of the most renowned voices in the paranormal field to give readers authentic true stories of the preternatural. The book is heavily illustrated by photographs taken by the author while she was on location. Foreword by Rosemary Ellen Guiley. Hear their voices. Read the book. Know the truth.

A collection from the works of Lorri Jackson

Mark Salzman never thought he would be teaching writing at Central Juvenile Hall, a lockup for kids in LA, but their writing changed his mind. Underneath their bravado, his students were scared, and wrote about it. This is an account of these classes and of Salzman's own transformation.