Showing results by author "Kaplan" in All Categories

On July 6, 2002, 16-year-old Alisa Kaplan woke, sick and disoriented, in the passenger seat of her car. She'd been at a party the night before, but there was a big blank hole where her own memories of the night should have been. So what happened at that party? Why couldn't she remember anything about the night before? As the appalling, terrifying details of that night began to surface, it ignited a media frenzy and a storm of controversy with Alisa trapped at the center.

La Princesa Perdida es el primer cuento relatado por el Rabí Najmán de Breslov y forma parte del volumen titulado Sipurey Maasiot (Los Cuentos del Rabí Najmán). Cautivantes, enigmáticos y asombrosos, los Cuentosdel Rabí Najmán de Breslov ocultan mucho más detrás de una brillante superficie. Su propósito es despertar a los seres humanos de su sueño, mediante el uso de la más poderosa de las armas: los ocultos secretos de la Torá.

America's power is in decline, its foreign policy adrift, its allies alienated, its soldiers trapped in a war that even generals regard as unwinnable. What has happened these past eight years is well known. Why it happened continues to puzzle. Daydream Believers combines in-depth reporting and analysis to explain how George W. Bush and his aides got so far off track - and why much of the nation followed.

In a future ravaged by fire and drought, two climate refugees ride their motorcycles across the wasteland of the western US, and stumble upon an old silver mine. Descending into the cool darkness of the caved-in tunnels in desperate search of water, the two women find Lavinia Cain’s diary, a settler in search of prosperity who brought her family to Nevada in the late 1860s. Whispers of curses and phantom figures haunt the diary, and now, over 150 years later, trapped and injured in the abandoned mine, the women discover they’re not alone . . . with no easy way out.

Ethics of the Fathers is a compilation of the ethical teachings and maxims from Rabbinic Jewish tradition.

In Does Santa Exist?, Kaplan shows how philosophy giants Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein strove to smooth over this uncomfortable meeting of the real and unreal - and failed. From there he turns to mysticism's attempts to resolve such paradoxes. Finally, he alights on comedy as the ultimate resolution of the fundamental paradoxes of life. Kaplan delves deeper into what this means, from how our physical brains work to his own personal confrontations with life's biggest questions.

Sometimes, there are stories about other people. But if you read between the lines, you'll find that most stories are about me: Brandon Thighmaster. And why wouldn't they be? You can have your tales of daring-do and double-crossing rogues, sure, but that's kind of the story bread, you know? Useless carbs. You want to get to the meat of the story, that's where the rich protein is.

Can migrations of birds foretell our future? Do phases of the moon hold sway over our lives? Are there sacred springs that cure the ill? What is the best way to brew a love potion? How do we create mutant humans who regenerate like Wolverine? In Science of the Magical, noted science journalist Matt Kaplan plumbs the rich, lively, and surprising history of the magical objects, places, and rituals that infuse ancient and contemporary myth.

Cosmology is the story we tell ourselves about why we are here in this Universe. Right now we humans find ourselves in a cosmological transformation that is as profound as the radical shift in collective consciousness after we realized that the Sun doesn’t orbit around the Earth. We live in a time that collapses time into timelessness; we live in a space that doesn’t acknowledge boundary. The story is changing right now, because our knowledge of who we are is changing. We must re-understand humanity, its reason for existence, and its potential for co-participating with evolution.

In a last ditch effort to revive his career, washed-out Agent Ari Ben-Sion accepts a mission he never would have 30 years ago to smuggle a group of Jewish children out of the Damascus ghetto. Or so he thinks. In Damascus, a beautiful American photographer, Kim, seems to be falling in love with Ari, but she is asking too many questions. His communication equipment disappears. His contact never shows up. The operation is only hours away, and everything seems awry. Desperate to succeed, Ari might risk everything. Even his life.

The words you use say a lot about who you are and where you're headed. Whether you want to express yourself clearly to impress a prospective employer during a job interview, or just brush up on those pesky words you encounter every so often reading the newspaper, Kaplan Word Power is the essential tool to help you expand your daily vocabulary.

This is a common critique of Obama’s foreign policy: that he evades hard decisions, that he is allergic to military force if it risks American casualties or escalation, that there is often a mismatch between his words and his deeds. “This is a pattern,” one retired four-star general said. “He issues stern warnings, then does nothing. It damages American credibility.”Is the charge true?

Washington’s foreign policy elites have been left just as disoriented by the rise of presidential hopefuls, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, as everyone else. In signaling the rise of populism as a dominant strain in US politics, Trump and Sanders challenge the basic assumptions on which decades of US foreign and domestic policy have been built.

A candidate for US president ahead in the polls and about to win the election suddenly commits suicide, and no one knows why. A mysterious woman the media has dubbed “the Invisible Woman” may hold the key. An American bystander is killed during a botched jewel heist in the French Riviera. This triggers a worldwide hunt by global intelligence agencies for something the dead American left behind - a secret so explosive they will let nothing get in their way.

As China asserts itself in its nearby seas and Russia wages war in Syria and Ukraine, it is easy to assume that Eurasia’s two great land powers are showing signs of newfound strength. But the opposite is true: increasingly, China and Russia flex their muscles not because they are powerful but because they are weak. Unlike Nazi Germany, whose power at home in the 1930s fueled its military aggression abroad, today’s revisionist powers are experiencing the reverse phenomenon.

Today's business environment demands leapfroggers - those who create rapid, disruptive innovation, not small improvements. A leading innovation pioneer shows that businesses often ignore the very thing that could lead them to game-changing products - the power of surprise. How did Gatorade revitalize itself in the wake of Red Bull and Starbucks? How did Four Seasons become the world’s leading luxury hotel brand? What makes one leader or company thrive while others languish?

In the wealthy New York suburb of Hadley Farms, divorced mom Sara Turner is juggling a new fiance, a new TV career, and a Newcomer's Club that throws sex-toy parties. Her oldest friend, Kate Steele, is Manhattan's "Derm Darling", a successful Park Avenue skin doctor whose office is always packed with the city's creme de la thin...and whose bedroom is frequented by a real estate mogul who has his own plane, and his own very big problem.

In the quaint but frigid Chicago suburb of Lake Park Villa, grumpy food critic Josie Tucker is on the trail of a would-be killer. Is wealthy cough drop heiress Lynetta Downes about to lose her life? Or is she simply losing her marbles?

Lucy is a talented television producer with a husband, three kids, and a big-time crush on a game show host. Her best friend Jess is a divorced suburban mom with a sexy French ex-husband in her bed and a reality show "bachelor" named Boulder on her couch. Jess and Lucy's friendship flourishes through bake sales, Botox parties, and the transition from itty-bitty bikinis to "Kindest Cut" one-piece suits.

Johanna Kaplan’s beautifully written stories first burst on the literary scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Today they have retained all of their depth, surprise, and humor—their simultaneously scathing, hilarious, and compassionate insight into character and behavior. From Miriam, home from school with the measles, to Louise, the daughter of a family that fled Vienna for the Dominican Republic, to Naomi, a young psychiatrist, her heroines are fierce, tender, funny, and cuttingly smart.