Books published by Simon & Schuster

In I Was Born This Way, Carl Bean, former Motown recording artist, noted AIDS activist, and founder of the Unity Fellowship of Christ Church in Los Angeles, shares his extraordinary personal journey from Baltimore foster homes to the stage of the Apollo Theater and beyond.CARL BEAN has been crossing boundaries all his life and helping others do the same. He’s never been stopped by his race or orientation, never fit or stayed in the boxes people have wanted to put him in. He left his foster home in Baltimore at seventeen and took the bus to New York City, where he quickly found the rich culture of the Harlem churches. As a singer, first with the gospel Alex Bradford Singers and later as a Motown recording artist, Bean was a sensation. When Berry Gordy signed him to record "I Was Born This Way," it was a first: the biggest black-owned record company broadcasting a statement on gender identity. The #1 song, recorded with the Sweet Inspirations, was the first gay liberation dance club hit.Whether making records, educating the black community about HIV and AIDS, or preaching to his growing congregation, Archbishop Bean has never wanted to minister to just one group. He’s worked on AIDS issues with C. Everett Koop and Elizabeth Taylor and on civil rights issues with Maxine Waters, Julian Bond, and Reverend Joseph Lowery. At the height of his recording career, he worked with Dionne Warwick, Burt Bacharach, Miles Davis, and Sammy Davis Jr. He’s brought South Central Los Angeles gang members into his church, which now has 25,000 members in twelve cities nationwide; those same Crips and Bloods have shown up at the Gay Pride parades Bean has organized with U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters. And he has courageously devoted his time and energy to spurring black civil rights leaders to address the AIDS health crisis within the African American community—an issue on which they had been silent.Preaching an all-embracing progressive theology, he is an outspoken practitioner of brotherly love, a dynamic preacher, and a social activist. The Unity Fellowship message is grace: "God is love, and God is for everyone"; "God is gay, God is straight, God is black, God is white." I Was Born This Way is the rare personal history of one of black gospel’s biggest stars and a frank, powerful, and warmhearted testament to how one man found his calling.

A visionary and optimistic thinker examines the tension between privacy and publicness that is transforming how we form communities, create identities, do business, and live our lives.Thanks to the internet, we now live—more and more—in public. More than 750 million people (and half of all Americans) use Facebook, where we share a billion times a day. The collective voice of Twitter echoes instantly 100 million times daily, from Tahrir Square to the Mall of America, on subjects that range from democratic reform to unfolding natural disasters to celebrity gossip. New tools let us share our photos, videos, purchases, knowledge, friendships, locations, and lives.Yet change brings fear, and many people—nostalgic for a more homogeneous mass culture and provoked by well-meaning advocates for privacy—despair that the internet and how we share there is making us dumber, crasser, distracted, and vulnerable to threats of all kinds. But not Jeff Jarvis.In this shibboleth-destroying book, Public Parts argues persuasively and personally that the internet and our new sense of publicness are, in fact, doing the opposite. Jarvis travels back in time to show the amazing parallels of fear and resistance that met the advent of other innovations such as the camera and the printing press. The internet, he argues, will change business, society, and life as profoundly as Gutenberg’s invention, shifting power from old institutions to us all.Based on extensive interviews, Public Parts introduces us to the men and women building a new industry based on sharing. Some of them have become household names—Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Eric Schmidt, and Twitter’s Evan Williams. Others may soon be recognized as the industrialists, philosophers, and designers of our future. Jarvis explores the promising ways in which the internet and publicness allow us to collaborate, think, ways—how we manufacture and market, buy and sell, organize and govern, teach and learn. He also examines the necessity as well as the limits of privacy in an effort to understand and thus protect it. This new and open era has already profoundly disrupted economies, industries, laws, ethics, childhood, and many other facets of our daily lives. But the change has just begun. The shape of the future is not assured. The amazing new tools of publicness can be used to good ends and bad. The choices—and the responsibilities—lie with us. Jarvis makes an urgent case that the future of the internet—what one technologist calls “the eighth continent”—requires as much protection as the physical space we share, the air we breathe, and the rights we afford one another. It is a space of the public, for the public, and by the public. It needs protection and respect from all of us. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in the wake of the uprisings in the Middle East, “If people around the world are going to come together every day online and have a safe and productive experience, we need a shared vision to guide us.” Jeff Jarvis has that vision and will be that guide.

Ratigan transcends the talking heads and is an award-winning journalist respected and admired across the political spectrum. He rips the lid off of a deeply crooked system--and offers a way out.

Celebrated for her indelible, Oscar-caliber performances in some of the most memorable films of the 1980s and 1990s, Debra Winger, in Undiscovered, her first book, demonstrates that her creative range extends from screen to page. Here is an intimate glimpse of an artist marvelously wide-ranging in her gifts. In fact, as this beguiling book reveals, Winger is that rare star who dared to resist the all-consuming industry that is Hollywood becoming her entire reason for being. "I love the work," she states, "and don't much care for the business." Yet she cares deeply for the people who have inspired her. We meet them (most famously, James Bridges, Bernardo Bertolucci; most dearly, her mother, husband, and sons) here, as Winger passionately makes her case for forging a life beyond acting -- and shows how she has done just that. Winger's screen performances have long been celebrated for their breathtaking emotional range, a quality that shines through in these pages. "When I was little," she writes, "someone told me that when you age, you turn into the person you were all your life." In this intriguing mix of reminiscence, poetry, storytelling, and insightful observation, a portrait of a life well-lived is strikingly rendered.

• An ingenious mix of facts and flights of fancy: The history of golf begins in 732 AD, when a relic of St. Andrew—patron saint of Scotland and of golf—was found wearing a copper arthritis bracelet. And who could forget 1492, when Christopher Columbus discovered the birthplace of Tiger Woods. Golf is the perfect gift for the serious—and not so serious—golfer. .• Bestselling humorist: Henry Beard has authored or coauthored ten parodies, five of which are New York Times bestsellers, as well as more than two dozen other humor books, including French for Cats and The Official Politically Correct Dictionary . .• Golf is Beard’s game: In a New York Times interview, Beard once said “It’s the most insidious of sports because once in a while you have a day where you do extraordinarily well and you think you can do very well—and you can’t. It’s just a tease. Even a Zen monk would be driven crazy by golf.” Beard has written seven other golf humor books, including Golfing: The Duffer’s Dictionary and The Official Rules of Bad Golf ..

A fast-paced literary puzzler, Dominance is “an academic mystery that gleefully illustrates the dangers of losing yourself in a book” (The New York Times Book Review).Fifteen years ago, Alex Shipley was part of a special night class taught by Richard Aldiss, a re-nowned literature professor— and convicted murderer. Lecturing the group of nine hand-picked students from a video feed in his prison cell, the professor spoke only of one novel by a famously reclusive author, and he challenged the class to solve the mystery of that writer’s identity once and for all. Today, Alex is a Harvard professor who made her name as a member of that class, and as the woman who helped set Richard Aldiss free. But when one of her fellow alums is murdered, can she use what she learned from Aldiss to stop a killer—before each of the night class students is picked off, one by one?

From America's Puzzle MasterAn Exciting and Fun Way to Learn Scripture Through Puzzles!The fourth in a series of puzzle books that are filled with handcrafted puzzles, "Extreme Puzzles from the Bible "serves two purposes: to entertain one's brain while expanding it. With sudoku, word search, Bible cryptograms, and crossword puzzles, this book is sure to build your Bible knowledge with fun for the whole family! Also included is a scorecard for recording your progress. With four levels of the "The Bible Genius Series," you can have hours of fun while graduating from "Sunday school" to "Bible scholar"!

Acclaimed novelist and nationally recognized family expert Lynne Griffin returns with Sea Escape—an emotional, beautifully imagined story inspired by the author’s family letters about the ties that bind mothers and daughters. Laura Martinez is wedged in the middle place, grappling with her busy life as a nurse, wife, and devoted mom to her two young children when her estranged mother, Helen, suffers a devastating stroke. In a desperate attempt to lure her mother into choosing life, Laura goes to Sea Escape, the pristine beach home that Helen took refuge in after the death of her beloved husband, Joseph. There, Laura hunts for the legendary love letters her father wrote to her mother when he served as a reporter for the Associated Press during wartime Vietnam. Believing the beauty and sway of her father’s words will have the power to heal, Laura reads the letters bedside to her mother, a woman who once spoke the language of fabric—of Peony Sky in Jade and Paradise Garden Sage—but who can’t or won’t speak to her now. As Laura delves deeper into her tangled family history, she becomes increasingly determined to save her mother. As each letter reveals a patchwork detail of her parents’ marriage, she discovers a common thread: a secret that mother and daughter unknowingly share. Weaving back and forth from Laura’s story to her mother’s, beginning in the idyllic 1950s with Helen’s love affair with Joseph through the tumultuous Vietnam War period on to the present, Sea Escape takes a gratifying look at what women face in their everyday lives—the balancing act of raising capable and happy children and being accomplished and steadfast wives while still being gracious and good daughters. It is a story that opens the door to family secrets so gripping, you won’t be able to put this book down until each is revealed.

The incredible true story of the last ship to carry enslaved people to America, the remarkable town its survivors founded after emancipation, and the complicated legacy their descendants carry with them to this day-by the journalist who discovered the ship's remains.

A one-of-a-kind graphic memoir about an artist's year abroad in Paris and how it gave way to a sweeping love affair and crushing heartbreak as he wrestled with trauma, masculinity, and the real possibility of hope.

A celebration of the creative and empowering bond between a father and his daughter, inspired by the real life creators of Daddy Dressed Me, Michael and Ava Gardner.

In the eagerly anticipated sequel to Jamie Sumner's acclaimed and beloved middle grade novel Roll with It, Ellie finds her own way to shine.Ellie is so not the pageant type. They're Coralee's thing, and Ellie is happy to let her talented friend shine in the spotlight. But what's she supposed to do when Coralee asks her to enter a beauty pageant, and their other best friend, Bert, volunteers to be their manager? Then again, how else is she going to get through this summer with her dad, who barely knows her, while her mom is off on her honeymoon with Ellie's amazing gym teacher? Ellie decides she has nothing to lose. There's only one problem: the director of the pageant seems determined to put Ellie and her wheelchair front and center. So it's up to Ellie to figure out a way to do it on her own terms and make sure her friendships don't fall apart along the way. Through it all, from thrift store deep dives to disastrous dance routines, she begins to form her own definition of beauty and what it means to really be seen.

A hilarious picture book of curious questions with refreshingly quirky answers perfect for fans of Mac Barnett and Amy Krouse Rosenthal!Why do kids lose their teeth? Why do seals clap? What is at the bottom of the ocean? Artist and musician Tim Fite is here to almost-answer all your most important questions?and then some!?in this marvelously wacky, utterly imaginative, and irreverently playful picture book.

From the creator of Nickelodeon’s hit series Shimmer and Shine and the author of Little Leo comes a story about a little girl who spends the day with her grandfather and discovers who he really is.

A teen boy thinks his vaping habit is harmless until it becomes a crippling addiction of nightmarish dimensions in this searing young adult novel from Newbery and National Book Award winner Cynthia Kadohata.Sixteen-year-old Elijah is pretty damn sick of his parents always being on his case about vaping. It's not like he's shooting up or knocking back pills. Until something changes, so slowly Jacob isn't even aware it's happening. Instead of vaping every now and then when he wants to, he's vaping all the time because he has to. And soon, Elijah and his friends need even more than vaping and are stumbling their way into the sprawling drug culture of Southern California, where girls sell pictures of themselves for vape and pill money, and the dealers are cutthroat. The more desperate the teens become, the more money they need. And to get that money they're being blackmailed into an impossible choice?and an end you won't see coming.

A bold and original argument that upends the myth of the Fifties as a decade of conformity to celebrate the solitary, brave, and stubborn individuals who pioneered the radical gay rights, feminist, civil rights, and environmental movements, from historian James R. Gaines.In a fascinating and beautifully written series of character portraits, The Fifties invokes the accidental radicalspeople motivated not by politics but by their own most intimate conflictswho sparked movements for change in their time and our own. Among many others, we meet the legal pathfinder Pauli Murray, who was tortured by both her mixed-race heritage and her ';in between' sexuality. Through years of hard work and self-examination, she turned her demons into historic victories. Ruth Bader Ginsberg credited her for the argument that made sex discrimination illegal, but that was only one of her gifts to 21st-century feminism. We meet Harry Hay, who dreamed of a national gay-rights movement as early as the mid-1940s, a time when the US, Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany viewed gay people as subversives and mentally ill. And in perhaps the book's unlikeliest pairing, we hear the prophetic voices of Silent Spring's Rachel Carson and MIT's preeminent mathematician, Norbert Wiener, who from their very different perspectivesshe in the living world, he in the theoretical oneconverged on the then-heretical idea that our mastery over the natural world carried the potential for disaster. Their legacy is the environmental movement. The Fifties is a dazzling and provocative work of history that transforms our understanding of a seemingly staid decade and honors the pioneers of gay rights, feminism, civil rights, and environmentalism. The book carries the powerful message that change actually begins not in mass movements and new legislation but in the lives of de-centered, often lonely individuals, who learn to fight for change in a daily struggle with themselves.

“Those who enjoyed Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle will find much to admire” (Booklist, starred review) in this “thoroughly engrossing” (The New York Times Book Review) memoir about a boy on the run with his mother, as she abducts him to Latin America in search of the revolution.Carol Andreas was a traditional 1950s housewife from a small Mennonite town in central Kansas who became a radical feminist and Marxist revolutionary. From the late sixties to the early eighties, she went through multiple husbands and countless lovers while living in three states and five countries. She took her youngest son, Peter, with her wherever she went, even kidnapping him and running off to South America after his straitlaced father won a long and bitter custody fight. They were chasing the revolution together, though the more they chased it the more distant it became. They battled the bad “isms” (sexism, imperialism, capitalism, fascism, consumerism), and fought for the good “isms” (feminism, socialism, communism, egalitarianism). Between the ages of five and eleven, Peter lived in more than a dozen homes, moving from the comfortably bland suburbs of Detroit to a hippie commune in Berkeley to a socialist collective farm in pre-military coup Chile to highland villages and coastal shantytowns in Peru. When they secretly returned to America they settled down clandestinely in Denver, where his mother changed her name to hide from his father. A “luminous memoir” (Publishers Marketplace, starred review) and “an illuminating portrait of a childhood of excitement, adventure, and love” (Kirkus Reviews) this is an extraordinary account of a deep mother-son bond and the joy and toll of growing up in a radical age. Peter Andreas is an insightful and candid narrator of “a profound and enlightening book that will open readers up to different ideas about love, acceptance, and the bond between mother and son” (Library Journal, starred review).

Not your hippie uncle's pot brownies, these 50 delicious and (mostly) easy cannabis-infused desserts are the brainchild of a passionate cannabis industry pioneer who is leading the movement to use herbals in everyday baking.

Learn to deepen love and connection primarily through physical touch from John Howard, one of the nation's only therapists to incorporate the principles of neuroscience into his practice.