(View entire post here)

Michael A. Stusser is our guest blogger during the week of October 1st. If you have any questions for Michael A. Stusser, add a comment to any of his posts. Here is some brief information on The Dead Guy Interviews: Conversations with 45 of the Most Accomplished, Notorious, and Deceased Personalities in History: 

“Michael Stusser’s ingenious ability to bring historical figures to life falls somewhere between brilliant writing and method acting. Or perhaps even necrophilia. Who knows. Point is, The Dead Guy Interviews is both wildly educational (yes, it’s possible) and wickedly entertaining.”

- Neely Harris, Editor-in-Chief, mental_floss magazine

Ever wanted to ask Nostradamus for the winning lotto numbers or van Gogh about the whole ear episode? How about Napoleon about his complex, or if Frida might consider a brow wax? In The Dead Guy Interviews, journalist Michael Stusser has created forty-five interviews with some of the most famous personalities of all time, asking them probing questions about their lives, accomplishments, and what’s on their iPods. Based on his column in the acclaimed magazine mental_floss, this collection of conversations is incredibly funny, but each interview is also based on serious research, so in addition to laughing, readers actually learn real history.

(View entire post here)

We are only a couple of weeks into the fall soccer season, and what pops up in my email? A message from my 8th grade daughter’s school volleyball coach suggesting the girls go to an “optional” preseason practice with him, and the next weekend a volleyball clinic offered to buy one of the local elite club teams. Yet volleyball season games don’t begin till November. And this is September.

Minutes after that clinic email, another one appeared from the school basketball coach, advising that a basketball clinic team members should consider as well, even though the girls basketball season isn’t till spring.

I’m all for kids playing multiple sports, but how about one at a time? This constant encroachment is relatively new. Sports seasons used to be discrete. One ended and the other began. Gee, there might even have been a break in between. Imagine that.

Where I live in California, the high school Interscholastic Association makes certain that the high school and club sports seasons don’t overlap, because they want kids on club teams to be able to play for their schools if the want to. But the club team post-season play keeps getting extended, so kids playing high school soccer, for example, are missing weeks of practice with the school team because their club commitment demands it.

(View entire post here)

People always ask how I came to write a book that examines the over-the-top youth sports culture and how it’s affecting kids and families. They wonder if I or my kids had some bad experience so I had an axe to grind. Some assume I’ve yanked my kids out of sports.

In fact, my kids have had almost entirely good experiences and they’re still playing and enjoying multiple sports as teenagers. And I was a youth athlete myself: a competitive figure skater from second through 10th grade, when I quit partially because I wanted to join my high school basketball and swim teams. I know intimately all the good things to be gained from participating in sports: focus, discipline, healthy exercise, learning to work as part of a team, learning to work hard for a goal (literally and figuratively).

But as I looked around me, I noticed the things kids were losing amid all those gains: downtime, unstructured play, time to hang out at home with parents and siblings, holidays at home with relatives, family vacations and even family dinners.

And as hectic as things were for my family, driving two kids around to practices and games, zooming from the soccer field to the volleyball gym for those few weeks when the seasons overlap, I knew it was nothing compared with how it was for families with kids playing on elite travel teams, who were spending weekends and holidays at tournaments. I wondered how we got here, and if it had to be this way or if there was room for change.

(View entire post here)

Jumpstart's Read for the Record Is A Hit

Today, Jumpstart's Read for the Record 2007 Campaign set a new world record for the largest "shared reading experience" on a single day, when hundreds of thousands of adults and children across the U.S. read a custom limited edition of Penguin Young Readers children's classic The Story of Ferdinand, raising more than $1 million for Jumpstart. With 100% underwriting of the custom edition by the Pearson Foundation, proceeds from sales at Toys "R" Us, American Eagle Outfitters, and Hanna Andersson stores will benefit Jumpstart's work with at-risk children. NBC's "Today Show" created a special Ferdinand set on the plaza at Rockefeller Center, and the show was kicked off by First Lady Laura Bush, as she read to a group of children at the White House. In addition, Penguin Young Readers' Mike Lupica, author of the Mike Lupica's Comeback Kids series, was interviewed by Matt Lauer of the Today Show during the 8:30am segment. Lupica also participated in the campaign and read aloud on the air during the 9:00am segment. Other celebrities who participated included Mike Bloomberg, Frank McCourt, Sonia Manzano (Maria from Sesame Street), Meredith Vieira, Mariska Hargitay, and LL Cool J.

New this year, the Pearson Foundation matched each $10 online donation by the public with another donation of a book to a child from a low-income community. Additionally Pearson donated tens of thousands of books to Head Start and other Jumpstart-affiliated early education centers. For more on Pearson's participation, go to http://pearsonfoundation.org/pearsonrftr/.

(View entire post here)

It’s prime time for youth sports -- the fall season, when kids are back in school and parents are back in training: struggling to get their lawn chairs, their commuter mugs and their little darlings to the soccer field on time every Saturday morning. Not to mention getting to practice after school on the weekdays and making sure all their uniform parts are washed and still fit by game time. “I can only find one red sock!” comes the dreaded cry from the bedroom. Or worse: “Uh, Mom, I think I need new cleats. My toes are all the way at the end!”

My son is a senior in high school and still playing soccer, not for his school but for an Under 19 team in a recreational league. My daughter, an eighth grader, moved up to a Division 3 team, one level up from rec, and one level down from Division 1, the most intense and time-consuming kind of travel team. Her team generally doesn’t travel more than 45 minutes from home, and will only play a couple of tournaments this fall.

Being back on the sidelines, we’re reminded of the sights and sounds of soccer: exuberant kids running to the ball, faces contorted with intensity, unconscious grunts emitted when exerting that extra effort to make contact, whoops of joy as the ball crosses the goal line… and out-of-control parents shouting their own coaching orders and trashing the referee.

We don’t often see totally inappropriate sideline behavior, but when we do, it’s ugly. And at my daughter’s game on Sunday, a parent on the opposing team got thrown off the field by a young ref who wouldn’t tolerate it.

(View entire post here)

Regan McMahon is our guest blogger during the week of September 24th. If you have any questions for Regan McMahon, add a comment to any of her posts. Here is some brief information about Revolution in the Bleachers: How Parents Can Take Back Family Life in a World Gone Crazy Over Youth Sports:

A journalist and mother of two athletic kids exposes the physical and emotional dangers of our over-the-top youth sports culture—and offers practical solutions for positive change.

A decade ago, Joan Ryan’s expose, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, changed the way we look at elite sports, namely figure skating and gymnastics. Today, there is another crisis in youth sports. It may affect any child, from the kindergartner on the soccer field to the high school athlete competing for scarce scholarship money. Regan McMahon’s Revolution in the Bleachers is a wake-up call for parents who spend their lives shuttling their kids from one field and practice to the next and wonder what happened to family life.

Regan McMahon’s book began as a cover story for the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine. Titled “How Much is Too Much?” it got a tremendous response. Finally, someone had dared to say what many parents were thinking! Parents, kids and coaches responded, prompting McMahon to criss-cross the country, doing interviews and research to find out how deep the problem goes and how to fix it.

Dear Friends and Pilgrims one and all,

At eight o'clock last night, the old wooden door to the crypt of Chartres Cathedral creaked and groaned as it slowly swung open for our descent. We made our way down the centuries-old stone staircase, our eyes adjusting slowly from the world of light to the dim lights and flickering votive candles that guided our way through the crypt, the chapel below the cathedral where a second carved wooden Dark Madonna with a crown of oak leaves sits on the wall behind the altar holding the Christ Child in her lap. Though the original ancient statue was long ago destroyed, this carved copy sits with her eyes closed, holding her child, reigning over the silence. Called the Madonna Sous Terre, "the Madonna Under the Earth," or "the Madonna of the Underworld," this Madonna sits where a pre Christian statue was honored by the Druids.

Directly above her in the Cathedral stands the Black Madonna, Our Lady of the Pillar.

Just as our pilgrim's journey required a descent of the old smooth cold, stone stairs, it also required a descent into the mythic realm, into the soul's work of discovering what it is to be fully human. The way to the Divine, no matter by which name it is called, the ineffable Mystery, the descent which takes place on the way to God.

View more information about China Galland's Longing for Darkness

(View entire post here)

When you step into the 12th century Chartres Cathedral, directly in front of you is the main altar with a white marble sculpture of Mary being assumed into heaven by Bernini. Off to the side of the main altar there is a little side space with pews and people kneeling and praying. Banks of red votive candles are burning and people come and go in and out of this little prayer space most of the hours of the day.

There, on a pillar about six feet high stands one of the Black or Dark Madonnas at Chartres enveloped in garments encrusted with gold embroidery. Directly below sits the Madonna “Sous Terre,” Under the Earth, in the crypt. This wooden statue of the Madonna and Child is also spoken of as a Dark or Black Madonna. How accurate this is remains a matter of debate. Precision and dogma aside, this is the Madonna that accomplishes miracles and healing, hence the many devotees who come to her site from all over the world. The draw to Chartres is not only the extraordinary library of biblical stories in stained glass and the Rose Window, the eleven circuit labyrinth that’s being copied and used world wide, but also these Black or Dark Madonnas.

To clear up some confusion generated by books such as the DaVinci Code, and many others, the Black Madonna and Child or the Black Virgin (Mary without Child) is NOT Mary Magdalene. Magdalene has her own historical existence as does Mary, Christ’s mother.

Here’s a short definition of the Black or Dark Madonna that I recently wrote for the Cambridge Dictionary of Religion (2008). I was limited to 200 words, so the constraints on what I could cover were ferocious. For the moment, know that the term “Black Madonna” refers to a more than one thousand-year old Catholic tradition of venerating non-white images of Mary, the mother of Christ.

(View entire post here)

Penguin's Trade Paperback Bestsellers on Front Page of Friday's Wall Street Journal

In a rare display of attention, The Wall Street Journal dedicated a front page article to Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. Intrigued by the novel's startling success as a paperback, The Wall Street Journal examined Penguin's approach to marketing the book, uncovering 'a series of calculated moves... where executives worked to interpret sales patterns and create a marketing blitz to attract individual readers as well as book clubs.' The results have been fantastic: Eat, Pray, Love is now entering its 19th week at the #1 spot on The New York Times paperback nonfiction bestseller list.

The Age of Turbulence by Alan Greenspan Hits Bookstores Monday Amidst Flurry of Major National Media Coverage

On Monday, September 17th, The Age of Turbulence, the much-anticipated book by Dr. Alan Greenspan, hit bookstores amidst a flurry of national media. Dr. Greenspan's publicity campaign kicked off this past Sunday night with an interview on "60 Minutes," followed by appearances all this week on "The Today Show," "The Daily Show," "The Charlie Rose Show," "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer," "Your World with Neil Cavuto," "Fresh Air," "All Things Considered," "The Diane Rehm Show," "Meet the Press," as well as featured interviews in The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and Fortune.

(View entire post here)

Have you had a chance to take a look at the new Viking Penguin Book Club page? If not, grab a mug of something hot and head on over - it's well worth the browse. Not only does it feature a growing selection of Viking and Penguin's greatest books, but it's also beautifully designed and delightfully customizable.

Featuring reading guides, excerpts, posts from editors, publicists, sales and marketing people as well as from the authors, this webpage is focused on helping book clubs tackle novels such as this month's The 50th Anniversary edition of Jack Kerouac's On the Road (Viking), Yasmin Crowther's The Saffron Kitchen (Penguin) and Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice (Penguin Classics).

I actually spent as much time carefully decorating my desktop as I did browsing the books; the site comes with a fast loading Flash setup that allows you to choose between about 15 table top materials such as Dark Plankwood or Brushed Metal, and then litter them with chocolate pastries, starfish or paper airplanes. After about ten minutes of judicious testing, I opted for the Distressed Wood desktop with a mug of coffee and a chocolate chip cookie, which made me feel like I was indulging in creature comforts within the cindered husk of a beach house.