Losing Music

“I was in the car the first time music seemed strange: the instruments less distinct, the vocals less crisp.” John Cotter was thirty years old when he first began to notice a ringing in his ears. Soon the ringing became a roar inside his head. Next came partial deafness, then dizziness and vertigo that rendered him unable to walk, work, sleep, or even communicate. At a stage of life when he expected to be emerging fully into adulthood, teaching and writing books, he found himself “crippled and dependent,” and in search of care. When he is first told that his debilitating condition is likely Ménière’s Disease, but that there is “no reliable test, no reliable treatment, and no consensus on its cause,” Cotter quits teaching, stops writing, and commences upon a series of visits to doctors and treatment centers. What begins as an expedition across the country navigating and battling the limits of the American healthcare system, quickly becomes something else entirely: a journey through hopelessness and adaptation to disability. Along the way, hearing aids become inseparable from his sense of self, as does a growing understanding that the possibilities in his life are narrowing rather than expanding. And with this understanding of his own travails comes reflection on age-old questions around fate, coincidence, and making meaning of inexplicable misfortune. A devastating memoir that sheds urgent, bracingly honest light on both the taboos surrounding disability and the limits of medical science, Losing Music is refreshingly vulnerable and singularly illuminating—a story that will make readers see their own lives anew.

From longtime New York Times columnist Bob Herbert comes a wrenching portrayal of ordinary Americans struggling for survival in a nation that has lost its way In his eighteen years as an opinion columnist for The New York Times, Herbert championed the working poor and the middle class. After filing his last column in 2011, he set off on a journey across the country to report on Americans who were being left behind in an economy that has never fully recovered from the Great Recession. The portraits of those he encountered fuel his new book, Losing Our Way. Herbert’s combination of heartrending reporting and keen political analysis is the purest expression since the Occupy movement of the plight of the 99 percent. The individuals and families who are paying the price of America’s bad choices in recent decades form the book’s emotional center: an exhausted high school student in Brooklyn who works the overnight shift in a factory at minimum wage to help pay her family’s rent; a twenty-four-year-old soldier from Peachtree City, Georgia, who loses both legs in a misguided, mismanaged, seemingly endless war; a young woman, only recently engaged, who suffers devastating injuries in a tragic bridge collapse in Minneapolis; and a group of parents in Pittsburgh who courageously fight back against the politicians who decimated funding for their children’s schools. Herbert reminds us of a time in America when unemployment was low, wages and profits were high, and the nation’s wealth, by current standards, was distributed much more equitably. Today, the gap between the wealthy and everyone else has widened dramatically, the nation’s physical plant is crumbling, and the inability to find decent work is a plague on a generation. Herbert traces where we went wrong and spotlights the drastic and dangerous shift of political power from ordinary Americans to the corporate and financial elite. Hope for America, he argues, lies in a concerted push to redress that political imbalance. Searing and unforgettable, Losing Our Way ultimately inspires with its faith in ordinary citizens to take back their true political power and reclaim the American dream.

These warnings by Jesus Christ have not deterred the millions who simply respond to His awesome love. Millions love Jesus Christ in spite of the difficult conditions that He has set for following Him. Somehow, knowing the living God and His Son Jesus Christ is more than enough compensation for any difficulties we must experience. Don’t listen to anyone who claims that following Jesus is all about getting blessed, rich and successful. That is not Christianity. Christianity is about losing, sacrificing, suffering and dying.

It was a classic modern business story: two Canadian entrepreneurs build an iconic brand that would forever change the way we communicate. From its humble beginnings in an office above a bagel store in Waterloo, Ontario, BlackBerry outsmarted the global giants with an addictive smartphone that generated billions of dollars. Its devices were so ubiquitous that even President Barack Obama favoured them above all others. But just as it was emerging as the dominant global player, BlackBerry took a dramatic turn. Losing the Signal is the riveting, never-before-told story of one of the most spectacular technological upsets of the 21st century. Unlike Enron, which was undone by its executives' illegal activities, or Lehman Brothers, which collapsed as part of a larger global banking crisis, BlackBerry's rise and fall is a modern-day tale of the unrelenting speed of success and failure. It is a thrilling account of how two mismatched CEOs outsmarted more-powerful competitors with a combination of innovation and sharp-elbowed tactics; and how, once on top of the world, they lost their way. The company responded too slowly to competitors' innovations, and when it finally made its move, it stumbled with delayed, poorly designed and unpopular smartphones. A little more than a decade after Research In Motion introduced the BlackBerry, it is now struggling to survive. Its share of the US phone market fell from 50 per cent in 2009 to about one percent in 2013, showing just how aggressive, fast and unforgiving today's global business market can be.

Losing Our Heads explores in both artistic and cultural contexts the role of the chopped-off head.

‘Branson has a list of achievements unmatched by any other UK businessman. For anyone burning with entrepreneurial zeal, his reminiscences are akin to a sacred text’ Mail on Sunday THE NO.1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER The worldwide bestselling autobiography of iconic entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, with over two million copies sold to date. Much more than a memoir, this is Sir Richard Branson’s own take on his extraordinary life so far – and a definitive business guide that reveals his unique philosophy of commerce, success and life. In Losing My Virginity, you'll discover how Virgin grew from a mail-order music business into a path-breaking global brand. From the $25 million Virgin Earth initiative to the launch of Virgin Galactic, this is a powerful and unique look into the life of an iconic global entrepreneur.

The incredible story of a lead singer's rise to fame and his crushing fall when he lost his singing voice, his career, and his marriage--and then found a new calling more in tune with God than he ever thought possible. Mark Stuart was the front man of popular Christian rock band, Audio Adrenaline, at a time when the Christian music scene exploded. Advancing from garage band to global success, the group sold out stadiums all over the world, won Grammy Awards, and even celebrated an album going certified Gold. But after almost twenty years, Mark's voice began to give out. When doctors diagnosed him with a debilitating disease, the career with the band he'd founded and dedicated his life to building was gone. Then to his shock, his wife ended their marriage, and Mark believed he'd lost everything. Unsure of his future, Mark traveled to Haiti to help with the band's ministry, the Hands and Feet Project. When the devastating 2010 earthquake hit, media learned he was present and sought him out for interviews. Ironically, Mark became the scratchy voice for the struggling Haitians, drawing the world's attention to their dire circumstances. In the process, Mark found a greater purpose than he'd ever known before. In this gripping, compelling new book, Mark Stuart overlays his story with passages from the gospel of John, urging his readers to listen for God's voice and to embrace his big love that calls us into a big life.

“Hold tight. The way to go mad without losing your mind is sometimes unruly.” So begins La Marr Jurelle Bruce's urgent provocation and poignant meditation on madness in black radical art. Bruce theorizes four overlapping meanings of madness: the lived experience of an unruly mind, the psychiatric category of serious mental illness, the emotional state also known as “rage,” and any drastic deviation from psychosocial norms. With care and verve, he explores the mad in the literature of Amiri Baraka, Gayl Jones, and Ntozake Shange; in the jazz repertoires of Buddy Bolden, Sun Ra, and Charles Mingus; in the comedic performances of Richard Pryor and Dave Chappelle; in the protest music of Nina Simone, Lauryn Hill, and Kendrick Lamar, and beyond. These artists activate madness as content, form, aesthetic, strategy, philosophy, and energy in an enduring black radical tradition. Joining this tradition, Bruce mobilizes a set of interpretive practices, affective dispositions, political principles, and existential orientations that he calls “mad methodology.” Ultimately, How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind is both a study and an act of critical, ethical, radical madness.

"In this story there is a moment, a long moment despite being so brief in real time, starting in the month of February when I felt so deeply loved, I thought the world was mine and anything was possible..." Bernie hadn't been looking for love. Recently divorced, she has her children, her writing, her house on a hill near Byron Bay. Then Jack comes back into her life. What starts as the reunion of two old friends turns into an intense affair. Their love is fuelled by the fevered exchange of emails and texts. Bernie is free, but Jack is married and it soon becomes clear he won't leave his family to follow his heart. Bernie seeks solace in the strange world of internet chatrooms, where she encounters men hungry for her in a way that Jack is not. Virtual sex is addictive and it's never enough. Before long, Bernie is meeting up with her online pursuers, and engaging in acts of increasingly deviant and dangerous sex - whatever it takes to feel desired. Losing February is the story of love without sex and sex without love. Explicit, compelling and confronting, it describes what happens when a capable, passionate woman tries to flee the pain of having loved and lost too much.

The iPod, Apple's breakthrough MP3 music player, boasts a contact list, calendar, alarm clock, notes reader, and a handful of games In its first year, iTunes has sold more than 70 million songs; since hitting the market in November 2001, the iPod has sold more than 3 million units This updated edition covers cool new third-party accessories, new iTunes features, iPod functions, troubleshooting, and more Covers naming an iPod, setting preferences, connecting and sharing an iPod, organizing a digital jukebox, playing music, copying files, burning an audio CD, searching for and downloading songs from the music store, and much more Updated and revised to include coverage on both the Windows and Mac Platforms

Humans have always sought ecstatic experiences - moments where they go beyond their ordinary self and feel connected to something greater than them. Such moments are fundamental to human flourishing, but they can also be dangerous. Beginning around the Enlightenment, western intellectual culture has written off ecstasy as ignorance or delusion. But philosopher Jules Evans argues that this diminishes our reality and denies us the healing, connection and meaning that ecstasy can bring. He sets out to discover how people find ecstasy in a post-religious culture, how it can be good for us, and also harmful. Along the way, he explores the growing science of ecstasy, to help the reader - and himself - learn the art of losing control. Jules' exploration of ecstasy is an intellectual and emotional odyssey balancing personal experience, interviews and readings from ancient and modern philosophers that will change the way you think about how you feel. From Aristotle and Plato, via the Bishop of London and Sister Bliss, radical jihadis and Silicon Valley transhumanists, The Art of Losing Control is a funny and life-enhancing journey through under-explored terrain.

The unusual, frequently outrageous autobiography of one of the great business geniuses of our time, Richard Branson. In little more than twenty-five years, Richard Branson spawned nearly a hundred successful ventures. From the airline business (Virgin Atlantic Airways), to music (Virgin Records and V2), to cola (Virgin Cola), and others ranging from financial services to bridal wear, Branson has a track record second to none. Many of his companies were started in the face of entrenched competition. The experts said, "Don't do it." But Branson found golden opportunities in markets in which customers have been ripped off or underserved, where confusion reigns, and the competition is complacent. In this stressed-out, overworked age, Richard Branson gives us a new model: a dynamic, hardworking, successful entrepreneur who lives life to the fullest. Branson has written his own "rules" for success, creating a group of companies with a global presence, but no central headquarters, no management hierarchy, and minimal bureaucracy. Family, friends, fun, and adventure are equally important as business in his life. Losing My Virginity is a portrait of a productive, sane, balanced life, filled with rich and colorful stories, including: - Crash-landing his hot-air balloon in the Algerian desert, yet remaining determined to have another go at being the first to circle the globe - Signing the Sex Pistols, Janet Jackson, the Rolling Stones, Boy George, and Phil Collins - Fighting back when British Airways took on Virgin Atlantic and successfully suing this pillar of the British business establishment - Swimming two miles to safety during a violent storm off the coast of Mexico - Staging a rescue flight into Baghdad before the start of the Gulf War And much more. Losing My Virginity is the ultimate tale of personal and business survival from a man who combines the business prowess of Bill Gates and the promotional instincts of P. T. Barnum.

Losing me, Finding Me is an adventure that will change you, your size, your health, and much more to the degree that you are willing to change habits. During this course, you will be recognizing habits you have and learning and deciding which habits to retain, which to let loose, and what new ones you’d like to include in your life. It is a three-month class to help you lose layers of excess fat as well as lists of shoulds and big concrete blocks of “I can’t.” Topics covered are nutrition, fitness, sleep, stress, emotions, mind, relationships, spirit, visioning, and mindfulness—all working together under your own guidance to create a balanced, integrated, and happy you.

This book is about the practical realities of the film market today and how to make a film while minimizing financial risk. Film is a risky investment and securing that investment is a huge challenge. The best way to get investors is to do everything possible to make the film without losing money. Featuring interviews with film industry veterans - sales agents, producers, distributors, directors, film investors, film authors and accountants - Daniel Harlow explores some of the biggest obstacles to making a commercially successful film and offers best practice advice on making a good film, that will also be a commercial success. The book explores key topics such as smart financing, casting to add value, understanding the film supply chain, the importance of genre, picking the right producer, negotiating pre-sales and much more. By learning how to break even, this book provides invaluable insight into the film industry that will help filmmakers build a real, continuing career. A vital resource for filmmakers serious about sustaining a career in the 21st century film industry.

Born in 1940s Brooklyn to a father prone to rages and an emotionally erratic mother, Vivian Conan grew up in two different worlds: Outside and Inside. Outside, she had friends, excelled in school, and was close to her cousins and brother. Inside, she saw faces that weren't hers in her bedroom mirror and was surrounded by an invisible Atmosphere that bathed her in the love and understanding she craved. Moving between these worlds enabled Vivian to survive her childhood but limited her ability to live fully as an adult. To others, her life seemed rich with work, friends, music, and boyfriends. But her mind and soul were filled with chaos and pain. Neither she nor her therapists could figure out why. LOSING THE ATMOSPHERE is Vivian Conan's riveting account of her journey toward self-understanding and wholeness; her encounters with a string of more and less helpful therapists; and her unconventional relationship with the therapist who was finally able to guide her through the courageous, messy work healing required. Told with honesty, humor, and grace, LOSING THE ATMOSPHERE is a never-too-late story about the growth possible for anyone with the guts to pursue it, and a testament to the redemptive power of love: not the perfect kind Vivian experienced in her imaginary world, but the imperfect kind that connects us, flawed human being to flawed human being, in the real world she lives in now.

If you have a child with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, you know what it's like to feel frazzled, frustrated, and exhausted. You've also probably learned self-help books focusing on the condition don't always offer constructive or realistic solutions. At least that's what Jennifer Metzger discovered on her daily journey of parenting her son, David, through ADHD's ups and downs, twists and turns, and emotional highs and lows. In this revealing and instructive memoir, she brings readers into her home to get an inside look at how she's raising three boys-one with ADHD-and how she's tweaked her style to adapt to their different personalities while surviving horrific tantrums. So pull up a chair, grab a cup of coffee (you'll probably need a box of tissues, too), and celebrate the successes and unwavering faith of an everyday mom doing her best to help a child with ADHD.

This guidebook addresses the concerns of young designers who want to earn a living by doing expressive and meaningful work, but want to avoid becoming a hired drone working on soulless projects. It offers straight-talking advice on how to establish your design career and practical suggestions for running a successful business.