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Meet Laura Van Ryn and Whitney Cerak: one buried under the wrong name, one in a coma and being
cared for by the wrong family.
This shocking case of mistaken identity stunned the country and made national news. Would it
destroy a family? Shatter their faith? Push two families into bitterness, resentment, and guilt?
Read this unprecedented story of two traumatized families who describe their ordeal and explore
the bond sustaining and uniting them as they deal with their bizarre reversal of life lost and
life found.
And join Whitney Cerak, the sole surviving student, as she comes to terms with her new
identity, forever altered, yet on the brink of new beginnings.
Mistaken Identity weaves a complex tale of honesty, vulnerability, loss, hope, faith, and love
in the face of one of the strangest twists of circumstances imaginable.
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Sheff's story is a first: a teenager's addiction from the parent's point of view-a real-time
chronicle of the shocking descent into substance abuse and the gradual emergence into hope. Before
meth, Sheff's son Nic was a varsity athlete, honor student, and award-winning journalist. After
meth, he was a trembling wraith who stole money from his eight-year-old brother and lived on the
streets. With haunting candor, Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs, the denial (by both
child and parents), the three A.M. phone calls (is it Nic? the police? the hospital?), the
attempts at rehab, and, at last, the way past addiction. He shows us that, whatever an addict's
fate, the rest of the family must care for each other too, lest they become addicted to addiction.
Meth is the fastest-growing drug in the United States, as well as the most addictive and the
most dangerous-wreaking permanent brain damage faster than any other readily available drug. It
has invaded every region and demographic in America. This book is the first that treats meth and
its impact in depth. But it is not just about meth. Nic's addiction has wrought the same damage
that any addiction will wreak. His story, and his father's, are those of any family that contains
an addict-and one in three American families does.
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We all knew and loved Valerie Bertinelli as the girl next door cutie, Barbara Cooper, in the
hit TV show "One Day at a Time." Now she is the divorced mother of a teenager and is conducting a
very public -- and already successful -- campaign to lose weight as a spokesperson for Jenny
Craig.
Losing It is Bertinelli's frank motivational story -- from her complicated family life to her
struggles to maintain a healthy self-image while coping with celebrity, her tumultuous 20-year
marriage to rock star Eddie Van Halen, and her difficulties with depression. She takes us behind
the scenes in her acting career and marriage, recalling the stress and concerns of being a rock
star's wife, the joys of motherhood, her lifelong battle with weight, and her determination to let
herself feel loved again.
With courage and candor, humor and emotion, Bertinelli shares her fears and insecurities in
ways that will appeal to the hundreds of thousands of women who face these same issues every day.
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What to eat, what not to eat, and how to think about health: a manifesto for our times
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." These simple words go to the heart of Michael Pollan's
In Defense of Food, the well-considered answers he provides to the questions posed in the
bestselling The Omnivore's Dilemma.
Humans used to know how to eat well, Pollan argues. But the balanced dietary lessons that were
once passed down through generations have been confused, complicated, and distorted by food
industry marketers, nutritional scientists, and journalists-all of whom have much to gain from our
dietary confusion. As a result, we face today a complex culinary landscape dense with bad advice
and foods that are not "real." These "edible foodlike substances" are often packaged with labels
bearing health claims that are typically false or misleading. Indeed, real food is fast
disappearing from the marketplace, to be replaced by "nutrients," and plain old eating by an
obsession with nutrition that is, paradoxically, ruining our health, not to mention our meals.
Michael Pollan's sensible and decidedly counterintuitive advice is: "Don't eat anything that your
great-great grandmother would not recognize as food."
Writing In Defense of Food, and affirming the joy of eating, Pollan suggests that if we would
pay more for better, well-grown food, but buy less of it, we'll benefit ourselves, our
communities, and the environment at large. Taking a clear-eyed look at what science does and does
not know about the links between diet and health, he proposes a new way to think about the
question of what to eat that is informed by ecology and tradition rather than by theprevailing
nutrient-by-nutrient approach.
In Defense of Food reminds us that, despite the daunting dietary landscape Americans confront
in the modern supermarket, the solutions to the current omnivore's dilemma can be found all around
us.
In looking toward traditional diets the world over, as well as the foods our families-and
regions-historically enjoyed, we can recover a more balanced, reasonable, and pleasurable approach
to food. Michael Pollan's bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we might start making
thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives and enlarge our sense of what it means to be
healthy.
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She was television's most famous virgin -- and, as Aaron Spelling's daughter, arguably its most
famous case of nepotism. Portraying Donna Martin on Beverly Hills, 90210, Tori Spelling became one
of the most recognizable young actresses of her generation, with a not-so-private personal life
every bit as fascinating as her character's exploits. Yet years later the name Tori Spelling too
often closed -- and sometimes slammed -- the same doors it had opened.
sTORI telling is Tori's chance to finally tell her side of the tabloid-worthy life she's led,
and she talks about it all: her decadent childhood birthday parties, her nose job, her fairy-tale
wedding to the wrong man, her so-called feud with her mother. Tori has already revealed her flair
for brilliant, self-effacing satire on her VH1 show So NoTORIous and Oxygen's Tori & Dean: Inn
Love, but her memoir goes deeper, into the real life behind the rumors: her complicated
relationship with her parents; her struggles as an actress after 90210; her accident-prone love
life; and, ultimately, her quest to define herself on her own terms.
From her over-the-top first wedding to finding new love to her much-publicized -- and
misunderstood -- "disinheritance," sTORI telling is a juicy, eye-opening, enthralling look at what
it really means to be Tori Spelling.
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