Plastic Cars and Plywood Houses is less about plastic cars and plywood houses, and more about other stuff. The book follows the life journey of a blundering, bumbling “trust fund kid” from private boarding school through middle age. There is quite a bit of allusion to recreational drug consumption and alcohol abuse humorously, but discouragingly depicted. In fact, deadpan humor is the driving force of the book, offering more gags for the dollar than just about anything else in print, and t...

It is the 1950s in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, as Bruce Johnson grows up in a traditional middle-class Caucasian family—a label that causes his mother to drink. When he starts school, he soon becomes the youngest student ever to be expelled from Saint Petronille Elementary School. Meanwhile, halfway around the globe, in Vietnam, Southeast Asia, the Geneva Accords effectively disunites the country at the seventeenth parallel. While on his unique coming-of-age journey, Bruce hunts for soda-pop bot...

10¢ anda Silver Star...A Sardonic Saga of PTSDJust as WWII gave us Catch 22 and Korea produced M*A*S*H, Vietnam delivers 10 cents and a Silver Star. No one can laugh off the incredibly cruel Vietnam War, but Bruce Johnson’s sardonic antidote to the plague of PTSD helps recover the truth – if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.An unworldly young man volunteers to be drafted early. He ventures into the essen...

Medical care is the most critical issue of our time and will be so for the foreseeable future. In this regard, the pace and sophistication of advances in medicine in the past two decades have been truly breathtaking. This has necessitated a growing need for comprehensive reference resources that highlight current issues in specific sectors of medicine. Keeping this in mind, each volume in the Current Issues in Medicine series is a stand‐alone text that provides a broad survey of v...

Stop juggling and start managing everything you need to do at home and at work.It used to be simple before kids: Say yes to everything, stay late, turn in flawless work, catch up on sleep later. But now you need a different mindset to succeed at work, as a parent, and as a family member.Getting It All Done can't teach you to be in two places at once, but it provides you with expert advice as you manage the challenges of succeeding at work while mak...

Tips, stories, and strategies for the job that never ends.When it comes to being a working parent, there are no right answers to the tough questions you grapple with, from how to get your toddler out the door to supporting your teen through struggles with their peers to whether or not to accept that big promotion—and the extensive travel and long hours that come with it. But there are answers that are right for you and your family. The HBR Working Parents Serie...

Every great book begins with an idea, whether it comes to a writer's mind with lightning speed or tugs at the imagination over time. Dancing with Mrs. Dalloway offers stories of the inspiration behind fifty classic works, from The Sound and the Fury, Jane Eyre, and Frankenstein to Anna Karenina, The Bell Jar, and Winnie-the-Pooh. Gabriel García Márquez was driving to Acapulco with his family when he slammed on the brakes, turned the car around, and insisted they abandon their trip so he co...

Every great writer has a unique way of setting a story to paper. And, it turns out, many of these writers used methods that were just as inventive as the works they produced. Odd Type Writers explores the quirky writing habits of renowned authors, including Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, and Alexandre Dumas, among many others.* To meet his deadline for The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo placed himself under strict house arrest, locking up all of his clothes and wea...

When you have nothing to lose, you can risk everything.There was no reason to bet on Bruce Johnson, given where he started out. Poor, Black, and raised by a single mother who had a secret. He was the child she hid in plain view from the rest of her family.Bruce would spend his youth at Chickasaw Park in Louisville—Kentucky’s segregated west end. He would grab the low hanging tree branches, then swing out over the Ohio River before dropping into the dangerous water below. He...

Have you ever felt distant from God? Have you ever questioned His purpose for your life? Are you fearful of taking that first step? To be honest, we all have, but this is the greatest lie of the enemy. While reading this devotional, you will realize that you have everything you need to pursue the purpose and calling God has for you. All you have to do is restart and take a risk on God!Known for his revelatory yet practical teaching style, Bruce Johnson, Jr's love...

In Promoting Early Career Teacher Resilience the stories of 60 graduate teachers are documented as they grapple with some of the most persistent and protracted personal and professional struggles facing teachers today. Narratives emerge detailing feelings of frustration, disillusionment and even outrage as they struggle with the complexity, intensity and immediacy of life in schools. Other stories also surface to show exhilarating experiences, documenting the wonder, joy and excit...

Memory, Space and Sound presents a collection of essays from scholars in a range of disciplines that together explore the social, spatial and temporal contexts that shape different forms of music and sonic practice. The contributors deploy different theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches from musicology, ethnomusicology, popular music studies, cultural history, media studies and cultural studies as they analyse an array of examples, including live performances, mus...