Hit and Run tells the improbable and often hilarious story of how two Hollywood film packagers went on a campaign to reinvent themselves as studio executives -- at Sony's expense. Veteran reporters Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters chronicle the rise of Jon Peters, a former hairdresser, seventh-grade dropout, and juvenile delinquent, and his soulless soul mate, Peter Guber -- and all the sex, drugs, and fistfights along the way. It is the story of the ultimate Hollywood con job and the standard by which every subsequent business blunder has been measured. Hit and Run delivers rock-solid business reporting liberally laced with inside gossip and outrageous scandal -- plus a new afterword bringing us up to date on the latest fallout from the Guber-Peters legacy.

“A wonderfully significant and important book.” —Ken Wilber, The Integral Vision “A timely and penetrating analysis of spirituality’s shadow.” —Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism without Beliefs A spiritual teacher and integral psychotherapist offers a first-of-its-kind study on how we use—and abuse—spiritual beliefs and practices, revealing how to identify and move beyond what holds us back from living life fully. Spiritual bypassing—the use of spiritual beliefs to avoid dealing with painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs—is so pervasive that it goes largely unnoticed. The spiritual ideals of any tradition, whether Christian commandments or Buddhist precepts, can provide easy justification for practitioners to duck uncomfortable feelings in favor of more seemingly enlightened activity. When split off from fundamental psychological needs, such actions often do much more harm than good. While other authors have touched on the subject, this is the first book fully devoted to spiritual bypassing. In the lineage of Chögyam Trungpa’s landmark Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, Spiritual Bypassing provides an in-depth look at the unresolved or ignored psychological issues often masked as spirituality, including self-judgment, excessive niceness, and emotional dissociation. A longtime psychotherapist with an engaging writing style, Masters furthers the body of psychological insight into how we use (and abuse) religion in often unconscious ways. This book will hold particular appeal for those who grew up with an unstructured new-age spirituality now looking for a more mature spiritual practice, and for anyone seeking increased self-awareness and a more robust relationship with themselves and others.

From spoonriveranthology.net: "Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology was an immediate commercial success when it was published in 1915. Unconventional in both style and content, it shattered the myths of small town American life. A collection of epitaphs of residents of a small town, a full understanding of Spoon River requires the reader to piece together narratives from fragments contained in individual poems."

Presents a comprehensive A-to-Z reference to the empire that once encompassed large parts of the modern-day Middle East, North Africa, and southeastern Europe.

The innovative program described in this book revolutionizes the the treatment of sexual dysfunction. During eleven years of daily clinical work, more than five hundred couples have been treated at Masters and Johnson's Reproductive Biology Research Foundation in St. Louis. Here the relationship itself is the patient. The authors stress that there is no uninvolved partner when sex is a problem. Therefore they treat the partners even if only one appears to be sexually dysfunctional. And their therapy techniques have proven successful in 80 percent of all cases treated. The key to this unprecedented record is the role of the dual therapy team. Masters and Johnson have found that it takes both a man and a woman therapist to treat a couple effectively. The dual therapy team acts as a catalyst, encouraging communication between partners when none has existed before. They use psychological and psychological methods of treating impotence, ejaculatory incompetence, premature ejaculation, orgasmic dysfunction in women, vaginismus, and painful intercourse. Basic to all treatment techniques is the premise that attitudes and ignorance rather than any mental or physical illness are responsible for most sexual problems. The two-week rapid therapy program developed by Masters and Johnson includes both counseling and specific instructions for patients to follow in privacy. All results of success or failure reported in Human Sexual Inadequacy Are substantiated by a unique five-year patient follow up program. The concept and format of the therapy program are examined in detail in the first two chapters of the book. Included are discussions of the qualifications for co-therapists and accounts of history-taking techniques and round table talks held by the co-therapists and the couple. A full description follows of the instructions given by the therapists to effect psychosexual reorientation of the marital problems. Analysis of each type of dysfunction, its progression and manifestations, accompanies the important step-by-step explanation of practical treatment methods. Chapters on sexual function and dysfunction of the geriatric population explain how the aging male and female can function sexually even in their eighties if they learn to adjust their sexual activities to the natural changes of aging. Program statistics and a critical review of treatment failures conclude this landmark book. Masters and Johnson estimate that one-half of the marriages in the United States are threatened by sexual dysfunction. The therapy program described in HUMAN SEXUAL INADEQUACY introduces a new era in the effective treatment of these sexual difficulties that prevent the enjoyment of a full sex life and a happy marriage. The exceptionally clear account of their major breakthrough in therapy is a long-needed and invaluable guide to clinical counseling and treatment. In addition, it provides an excellent basis for training programs for professional therapists. HUMAN SEXUAL INADEQUACY is essential reading for all health professionals and introduces a new era in the effective treatment of sexual dysfunction.

Originally published: New York: MacMillan, 1915.

Spoon River Anthology (1915), by Edgar Lee Masters, is a collection of short free-form poems that collectively describe the life of the fictional small town of Spoon River, named after the real Spoon River that ran near Masters' home town. The collection includes two hundred and twelve separate characters, all providing two-hundred forty-four accounts of their lives and losses. (wikipedia)

Such is the lament of George Trimble, just one of the many good folk of Spoon River--late of the grave and raised from the dead to bear witness to life. Whether minister or judge, housewife or mayor, clerk or carpenter, banker, lawyer, or town drunk, these monologues form an unforgettable legacy of the private hopes, the dreams, and the aspirations, the successes and the failures, the jealousies and the betrayals, the prejudices and the disillusionments of the people of spoon river.