Award winning internationally recognized U.S. fashion designer, Agatha Brown, was born in Texas and graduated Southern Methodist University Fashion School of Design. Known in the fashion world simply as "Agatha," she chronicles her very free spirited, adventurous, and glamorous life. From very humble beginnings and growing up during the Great Depression, she overcame all obstacles to reach the top in her career. Her adventurous travels alone took her to Italy and France to design and produce her collections, and a dangerous trip to Israel three weeks after the Six Day War will keep the reader entranced. In her travels, she meets many fascinating people and celebrities, both the famous and infamous. Her adventures in the Far East and exotic Hong Kong are wildly exciting and her trip to Brazil almost cost her life. Finally, she meets her soul mate, and opens her own company at 550 Seventh Avenue in New York. At the pinnacle of her career, events bring it all crashing down and she starts all over again from the island paradise of Aruba. Her autobiography tells it all. The great successes, the downfalls, the hot passionate love affairs, the heartbreaks, and the adventures that challenge her indomitable free spirit are all here in this thrilling read. Member New York Fashion Council; Named "Guest Designer" Dallas Fashion Mart 1986; Nominated "Best Designer" Mohair Council of America 1985; "Best of Fall" for fragrance "Mystery of Agatha" awarded by www.ashford.com 2000; "Best of 2002" award for fragrances "Imperial Jade Empress and Emperor" by www.lucire.com

Despite the West's privileging of slenderness as an aesthetic ideal, the African Diaspora has historically displayed a resistance to the Western European and North American indulgence in 'fat anxiety.' The Embodiment of Disobedience explores the ways in which the African Diaspora has rejected the West's efforts to impose imperatives of slenderness and mass market fat-anxiety. Author Andrea Shaw explores the origins and contradictions of this phenomenon, especially the cultural deviations in beauty criteria and the related social and cultural practices. Unique in its examination of how both fatness and blackness interact on literary cultural planes, this book also offers a diasporic scope that develops previously unexamined connections among female representations throughout the African Diaspora.

The surprisingly hopeful story of how a straight, nonpromiscuous, everyday girl contracted HIV and how she manages to stay upbeat, inspired, and more positive about life than ever before

At nineteen years of age, Marvelyn Brown was lying in a stark white hospital bed at Tennessee Christian Medical Center, feeling hopeless. A former top track and basketball athlete, she was in the best shape of her life, but she was battling a sudden illness in the intensive care unit. Doctors had no idea what was going on. It never occurred to Brown that she might be HIV positive.

Having unprotected sex with her Prince Charming had set into swift motion a set of circumstances that not only landed her in the fight of her life, but also alienated her from her community. Rather than give up, however, Brown found a reason to fight and a reason to live.

The Naked Truth is an inspirational memoir that shares how an everyday teen refused to give up on herself, even as others would forsake her. More, it's a cautionary tale that every parent, guidance counselor, and young adult should read.

This book explores the role of advertising and the consumption that it promotes in changing cultural perceptions of sex and femininity across the Balkan region. Ibroscheva theorizes how the marketing of gender identities that has taken place in the years of the post-socialist transition has fundamentally affected the social, economic, and political positioning of women. Advertising is one of the major factories of cultural signification, and as such serves as the most ubiquitous vessel of global norms of gendered selves. In addition, advertising serves as a literacy tool for learning the grammar of consumption, studying the ideologies of femininity and sex before and after the collapse of the socialist project, as well as the prevailing portrayals of femininity in advertising in present day Bulgaria. This study provides a revealing look at the mechanisms of how post-socialist norms of desired and accepted sexual behavior are being engendered, and specifically, what role do media play in this transformative process.

An enchanting 1940Us adventure of Connee in her childhood summer resort home and Sally, daughter of the wealthy cottage owners. Loneliness juxtaposed with hilarious escapades will fill tweenagers to keenagers with sadness and delight. Features 25 illustrations by Wendel Norton.

In From Out of the Shadows, historian Vicki L. Ruiz provides the first full study of Mexican-American women in the 20th century, in a narrative that is greatly enhanced by Ruiz's skillful use of interviews and personal stories, capturing a vivid sense of the Mexicana experience in the United States. For this new edition, Ruiz includes a preface that continues the story of the Mexicana experience in the United States, as well as the growth of the field of Latina history.
The book begins with the first wave of Mexican women crossing the border from Mexico early in our century. She reveals that between 1910 and 1930, over one million Mexican men and women (perhaps as much as ten percent of Mexico's population) migrated "al otro lado." Ruiz illuminates attempts to Americanize the Mexicanas, especially by Protestant groups, whose efforts by and large failed; the women instead relied on their own community groups--mutualistas (mutual aid societies), parish organizations, auxiliaries, and labor unions--to help them assimilate. We also read about the tensions that arose between generations, as the parents tried to rein in young daughters eager to adopt American ways--forbidding the use of makeup and insisting that teenage girls attend a dance, a movie, or even a church function with a chaperone, usually their mothers. Perhaps most important, the book highlights the various forms of political protest initiated by Mexican-American women, including civil rights activity and protests against the war in Vietnam.
What emerges from the book finally is a portrait of a very distinctive culture in America, one that has slowly gathered strength in the last 95 years. From Out of the Shadows is animportant addition to the largely undocumented history of Mexican-American women in our century.

Throughout all of her life's experiences, author Angela Michelle has learned that both happiness and suffering are ubiquitous. In "Choice," she shares a compilation of journal entries and narratives discussing some of her life's most intense moments: being beaten nearly to death; having paranormal dreams and hearing voices validated by God; experiencing the brutal murder of her father; enduring flashbacks of childhood molestation; being raped in her own home; suffering through a frightening pregnancy and childbirth; and receiving visits from angels.

This memoir shares her thoughts and feelings as she moved through life, facing her fears and learning from all of her experiences. Choice narrates how she discovered there was a purpose for and a lesson learned from each event-a challenge to overcome and a new direction to follow.

Filled with emotion, "Choice" not only tells the story of Angela Michelle and how she faced her crazy life, but also serves to show that, through both the good and the bad, life has purpose.

When the Germans invaded her small Belgian village in 1914, Marthe Cnockaert's home was burned and her family separated. After getting a job at a German hospital, and winning the Iron Cross for her service to the Reich, she was approached by a neighbor and invited to become an intelligence agent for the British. Not without trepidation, Cnockaert embarked on a career as a spy, providing information and engaging in sabotage before her capture and imprisonment in 1916. After the war, she was paid and decorated by a grateful British government for her service. Cnockaert's is only one of the surprising and gripping stories that comprise Female Intelligence. This is the first history of the female spies who served Britain during World War I, focusing on both the powerful cultural images of these women and the realities, challenges, and contradictions of intelligence service. Between the founding of modern British intelligence organizations in 1909 and the demobilization of 1919, more than 6,000 women served the British government in either civil or military occupations as members of the intelligence community. These women performed a variety of services, and they represented an astonishing diversity of nationality, age, and class. From Aphra Behn, who spied for the British government in the seventeenth century, to the most well known example, Mata Hari, female spies have a long history, existing in juxtaposition to the folkloric notion of women as chatty, gossipy, and indiscreet. Using personal accounts, letters, official documents and newspaper reports, Female Intelligence interrogates different, and apparently contradictory, constructions of gender in the competing spheres of espionage activity.

Was she a selfless political activist? A feminist heroine? A gifted writer who rose from poverty to become a leading journalist and author of the cult classic Daughter of Earth? A spy for the Soviet Union? Or all of these things?
Drawing on fifteen years of intensive research and unprecedented access to previously unpublished documents, this vibrant book brings to life one of the twentieth century's most fascinating women. Ruth Price traces Agnes Smedley's unlikely trajectory from a small Missouri town to the coal country of Colorado; to Berkeley and Greenwich Village; to Berlin, Moscow, and China. Fueled by a fury at injustice, Smedley threw herself headlong into the crucial issues of the time, from Indian independence to birth control, women's rights, and the revolution in China. Her friends included such figures as Margaret Sanger, Langston Hughes, Emma Goldman, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mao Zedong, and many others. Perhaps most important, Price uncovers an astonishing truth: Smedley, long thought to be the unfair target of a Cold War smear campaign, was indeed guilty of the espionage charges leveled against her by General Douglas MacArthur and others. Smedley worked to foment armed revolution in India and gathered intelligence for the Soviet Union, seeing it as a bulwark against fascism. Price argues that Smedley acted out of a passionate idealism and that she exhibited a courage and compassion worthy of a renewed, if more complicated, admiration today.
Epic in scope, painstakingly researched, and unflinchingly honest, The Lives of Agnes Smedley offers a stunning reappraisal of one of America's most controversial Leftists and a new look at the troubled historical terrain of the first half of the twentieth century.

View the Table of Contents.
Read the Introduction.

"Lively tales of girls who long for the lives of male scholars, and rebels who visit strip clubs, smoke pot, and dream of high-powered careers."--"Books to Watch out For"

"Stephanie Levine's book is full of surprises."--"Midstream"

"A fascinating read for anyone interested in youth culture."
--"Youth Today"

"In an era seemingly plagued with sex, anorexia and depression among our nation's girls, a page from "Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers" is a refreshing peek into the possibilities for growth, strength and self."--"The Jewish New Weekly of Northern California"

"At all times, Levine's genuine respect for the community shines through. The book is eminently readable and undoubtedly fascinating."--"Jewish Chronicle"

"A vivid portrayal of the Lubavitcher community."
--" Library Journal"

"[Levine's] empathy is palpable in each one of the profiles. Levine has a natural, artful style and writes with a lively and keen vision."
--"Moment magazine"

"Her findings are fascinating."
--"Jewish Telegraph"

"Levine treats all her subjects with respect. At the core, this is a popularly written academic study."
-- "KLIATT"

"Levine vividly portrays these girls, their hopes and their struggles, as well as her own feelings towards Orthodoxy and the Lubavitch way of life."
--"JOFA Book Corner"

"Levine's portraits provide a cross-section of the very human faces of these ultra-religious girls."
--"New Jersey Times"

"Stephanie Wellen Levine's suggestions are obviously heartfelt and perhaps sensible....at turns charming and scandalous."
--"The Jerusalem Report"

"Levine takes readersinto an unfamiliar world of girls who were raised in the Lubavitcher sect of Hasidim in Crown Heights, Brooklyn...One intriguing paradox she explores is how these girls created distinct personalities while living in a very closed society."
--"Choice"

"Levine does a splendid job of presenting how the girls cope, and paints vivid pictures of Shabbat around their family tables."
--" The Jerusalem Post Literary Quarterly"

"Stephanie Wellen Levine has written an intriguing and joyous account of the lives of young adult Hasidic women."
--" Jewish Book World"

"Eminently readable."
--" Jewish Journal Book Review"

"Levine steps back and lets the girls speak for themselves; their voices, layered with determination, yearning, confusion and wonder, emerge clearly."
--" Na'amat Woman Book Reviews"

"This absorbing ethnography acts as one subculture's corrective to "Reviving Ophelia," in that it offers a refreshing portrait of adolescent girls who are far from insecure."--"Publishers Weekly" (starred review)

From the ardently religious young woman who longs for the life of a male scholar to the young rebel who visits a strip club, smokes pot, and agonizes over her loss of faith to the proud Lubavitcher with a desire for a high-powered career, Stephanie Wellen Levine provides a rare glimpse into the inner worlds and daily lives of these Hasidic girls.

Lubavitcher Hasidim are famous for their efforts to inspire secular Jews to become more observant and for their messianic fervor. Strict followers of Orthodox Judaism, they maintain sharp gender-role distinctions.

Levine spent a year living in the Lubavitch community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, participating in the rhythms of Hasidic girlhood. Drawing on many intimate hours among Hasidim and over 30 in-depth interviews, Mystics, Mavericks, and Merrymakers offers rich portraits of individual Hasidic young women and how they deal with the conflicts between the regimented society in which they live and the pull of mainstream American life.

This superbly crafted book offers intimate stories from Hasidic teenagers' lives, providing an intriguing twist to a universal theme: the struggle to grow up and define who we are within the context of culture, family, and life-driving beliefs.

Cuddled in God's Hands is a magnificent inspirational autobiographical journey of a woman whose life is filled with a mixture of joy, pain, tragedy, euphoria, and supernatural visions. This memoir portrays the author's upbringing in Greenwood, Mississippi, during the pinnacle of the Civil Rights movement. During this turbulent segregated period in history, the author gives an in-depth look at her life and how, as a teenager, she and her family coped. The book chronicles the author's spiritual growth and shares stories of her extraordinary supernatural visions and encounters with angels. Her most amazing story of all is revealed when she is on the edge of despair after a horrible breakup with her husband, and God came to her and lifted her out of her darkness and brought her into the light. This transformed her life forever and gave her enormous faith as she juggled the many commitments of teaching, the uplifting yet critical demands of motherhood, and the resolve to triumph no matter what obstacles lay waiting.

Tourism has become the world's largest industry, according to the World Tourism Organization; no surprise when one considers that it incorporates the world's oldest profession. In some developing regions, such as the Caribbean or the South Pacific, tourism is the primary sector in which significant economic growth takes place. In other regions, including areas of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and formerly communist eastern Europe, tourism is just beginning to take off. In all of these areas, tourisM's impact has been decidedly mixed. Nowhere is this more visible than in the context of women's roles in tourism. The contributors demonstrate the many ways in which gender determines the roles they play as both tourists and providers of tourism as product and service. A valuable contribution to tourism studies, women's studies, and the literature of economic development.

The premises of this unique collection of research are that women's roles in tourism are gendered, just as are their other roles in gendered societies; that tourism affects women differently than it affects men; and that women themselves are affected in different ways by tourism depending on such factors as race, region, and class (leisured consumer vs. working producer, or guest vs. host). The contributors cover theoretical perspectives, including those provided by feminists and economic development analysts; women's roles in tourism in the mature industries of the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific; women's roles in the less-developed tourist destinations of the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and eastern Europe; and implications for the future of economic development policy and of gender relations in tourism.

This fascinating work presents biographical essays about women from the colonial period to modern times, chronicling the previously untold story of the female financial experience in the United States. Petticoats and Pinstripes: Portraits of Women in Wall Street's History provides a fascinating chronological account of the contributions of women on Wall Street through profiles of selected individuals that set their achievements in the context of the prevailing times. The book documents how women frequently assumed financial roles as a temporary palliative to the nation's ills, only to be cast aside once conditions improved, and how they were often restrained from financial endeavors by various factors, including American legal, political, economic, and cultural norms. Author Sheri J. Caplan describes the accomplishments of women in the financial world against the backdrop of the general advancement of women's rights and the evolution of gender-based roles in society, and identifies the primary factors in the development of a greater female role in finance: wartime urgency, personal necessity, technological change, and financial education. Explores the female financial experience in the United States from the colonial period to modern times Presents the history of women on Wall Street by placing personalities in the context of both Wall Street's development and prevailing political and cultural times Identifies common themes and issues confronted by women in finance Provides two quick-reference appendices, one describing the significance of particular women and a second that provides a chronology of milestones

Although educational theories are presented in a variety of textbooks and in some discipline-specific handbooks and encyclopedias, no publication exists which serves as a comprehensive, consolidated collection of the most influential and most frequently quoted and consulted theories. There is a need to place such theories into a single, easily accessible volume. A unique feature of the Handbook of Educational Theories is the way in which it conveys the 101 theories presented by 152 authors and 17 editors distributed among its 13 sections. These authors and editors represent 10 countries, including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, Dubai (An Emirate of the United Arab Emirates), England, Norway, Scotland, United States (28 states represented), and Wales.The organization of the chapters within each section makes the volume easy to use. It includes understandable reference tools for researchers and practitioners to use at they seek theories to guide their research and practice and as they develop theoretical frameworks. In addition to the traditional theories presented, the Handbook includes emerging theories for the 21st Century. Practical examples are presented on the use of these theories in research from dissertations and published articles. Section I provides the introduction with a focus on Philosophical Educational Constructs. The remaining sections include: Learning Theory, Instructional Theory, Curriculum Theory, Literacy and Language Acquisition Theory, Counseling Theory, Moral Development Theory, Classroom Management Theory, Assessment Theory, Organizational Theory, Leadership and Management Theory, Social Justice Theory, and Teaching and Education Delivery Theory. Each section consists of an overview written by the section editor of the general theoretical concepts addressed by the chapter authors. Each chapter within the section includes (a) a description of the theory with goals, assumptions, and aspects particular to the theory, (b) the original development of and interactions of the theory, (c) validation of the theory, (d) generalizability of the theory across cultures, ethnicities, and genders, (e) the use and application of the theory, (f) critiques of the theory, (g) any instruments associated with the theory, and (h) two to five particular studies exemplifying particular theories as individuals have used them in theoretical framework of dissertations or published articles. Some theories are presented by the original theorist(s) or by prominent contributors to the theory. The Handbook of Educational Theories is intended for graduate students enrolled in research courses or completing theses and dissertations. Additionally, professors of all educational disciplines in the social sciences may be interested in this book. There is also potential use of the text as administrators, counselors, and teachers in schools use theory to guide practice. As more inquiry is being promoted among school leaders, this book also holds promise for practitioners.

"In high school I was known as the girl whose father took pictures of naked women. Boys wanted to hang out at my house, hoping to glimpse Peter Gowland photographing a Playboy centerfold. Or perhaps they'd get to see Jayne Mansfield or Raquel Welch or another Hollywood celebrity."

What authors have said about Mary Lee's previous books

Tender Bough

I am happy to say I find a simplicity, a beauty, a tenderness which is so lacking today and which is not old-fashioned, as some may think, but perpetually new and refreshing, inspiring to young and old alike. - Henry Miller

Tender Bough is beautiful. There's the freshness I mean, the child's wild eye. (and not only beautiful, but successful, man), - Ben Massalink

The Guest of Tyn-y-Coedcae

Because of the directness and simplicity, the wistfulness which underlies the moods touches one more deeply than the louder wail of sorrow in some of the screaming poets. It is a poetry of moods, shared with gentleness and precision of color and the feelings issued from human experience. One feels with her. - Anais Nin