A quarter of a century after his death, the questions remain: what was John Lennon really like, what drove him to the heights of creativity and the depths of despair, and why do his music and message still resonate for millions around the world? Now acclaimed broadcast journalist and author Larry Kane uncovers the mysteries of Lennon's life and implodes the myths surrounding it. Kane definitely has the right credentials for the job. He was the only American reporter to travel in the Beatles' official entourage to every stop on their history-making first American tours, and he stayed in touch with Lennon until an assassin ended the former Beatles' life in 1980. Lennon Revealed is filled with revelations about John Lennon's path from public glory to personal crisis, and ultimately to his inspiring rebirth and the triumph of his spirit. Drawing on extensive personal accounts and extraordinary new interviews with more than 100 confidants-most notably, Yoko Ono-Kane presents stunning revelations and brings the reader closer than ever to the man who, in life and in death, has had an incalculable impact on humanity. Includes an exclusive DVD featuring the final interview with Lennon and Paul McCartney, conducted by Larry Kane.

Susan Shumsky is a successful author in the human potential field. But in the 1970s, in India, the Swiss Alps, and elsewhere, she served on the personal staff of the most famous guru of the 20th century—Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Maharishi died in 2008 at age ninety, but his influence endures through the spiritual movement he founded: TM (Transcendental Meditation). Other books have been written about him, but this spellbinding page-turner offers a rare insider's view of life with the guru, including the time the Beatles studied at his feet in Rishikesh, India, and wrote dozens of songs under his influence. Both inspirational and disturbing, Maharishi and Me illuminates Susan's two decades living in Maharishi's ashrams, where she grew from a painfully shy teenage seeker into a spiritually aware teacher and author. It features behind-the-scenes, myth-busting stories, and over 100 photos of Maharishi and his celebrity disciples (the Beatles, Deepak Chopra, Mia Farrow, Beach Boys, and many more). Susan's candid, honest portrayal draws back the curtain on her shattering, extreme emotional seesaws of heaven and hell at her guru's hands. This compelling, haunting memoir will continue to challenge readers long after they turn its last page. It dismantles all previous beliefs about the spiritual path and how spiritual masters are supposed to behave. Susan shares: “Merely by being in his presence, we disciples entered an utterly timeless place and rapturous feeling, and, at the same time, realized the utter futility and insanity of the mundane world.” Susan's heartfelt masterwork blends her experiences, exacting research, artistically descriptive and humorous writing, emotional intelligence, and intensely personal inner exploration into a feast for thought and contemplation. Neither starry-eyed nor antagonistic, it captures, from a balanced viewpoint, the essence of life in an ashram.

Teaching the Beatles is designed to provide ideas for instructors who teach the music of the Beatles. Experienced contributors describe varied approaches to effectively convey the group’s characteristics and lasting importance. Some of these include: treating the Beatles’ lyrics as poetry; their influence on the world of art, film, fashion and spirituality; the group’s impact on post-war Britain; political aspects of the Fab Four; Lennon and McCartney’s songwriting and musical innovations; the band’s use of recording technology; business aspects of the Beatles’ career; and insights into teaching the Beatles in an online format.

This is a collection of essays about the media, the environment, and the whole of humanity at the brink of extinction. As the demands of overpopulation and of an unsustainable consumer economy dry up existing natural resources and destroy vital ecosystems that we need to survive, the corporate-controlled media saturate worldwide audiences with a barrage of hypnotic images and narratives to stimulate over-consumption and to distract us from the consequences of rampant consumerism, while remaining silent about the systematic destruction of the environment and our future. Academicians from the across the sciences, the social sciences, the arts, and the humanities engage in an interdisciplinary discussion informed by a vision of an interconnected humanity and focused on the role of the media in forging public discourse. Contributors to the collection argue that today’s media are failing humanity. Rather than providing pictures of reality on which the world’s citizens can act, the corporate-controlled media are widely used as instruments of commercial and political propaganda, creating an immense web of images and narratives that their creators know to be not true–-fabrications designed to sell, to manipulate, in a sense to enslave worldwide audiences. At the core of the discussion in this book is a utopian vision of one unified humanity—billions of people whose destinies and dreams are imbricated and interdependent, and who share the same world, the same habitats. It is a vision of a world that cherishes diversity but is also united—a world where our differences are no longer a cause for conflict and where separate countries or separate ethnic or religious communities no longer have to compete or wage war to exploit available resources. As extensions of humans, the media can be instruments of salvation instead of destruction, liberation instead of oppression. But first, we must recognize the challenges we face.

Nineteen-seventy-one was the year John Lennon left London and pop stardom for a life in New York City as a solo artist, record producer and activist looking to help end the war in Vietnam. He settled in Greenwich Village and quickly came to be seen by the leaders of the faltering anti-war movement as someone who was capable of reinvigorating it. The government was acutely aware of Lennon’s power as well, seeing him as a viable threat to Nixon’s reelection hopes, initiating extradition proceedings against him. Lennon’s second solo album, Imagine, appeared in 1971, followed the following year by Sometime in New York City. Meanwhile, John and Yoko are searching for her daughter, a primary reason they came to America in the first place. And John is struggling to embrace feminism. The Walrus and the Elephants tells a double-barreled story of music and politics, how the personal is political and the political is personal, of upheavals in one life amid the larger cultural upheavals of an era.

It's perhaps the relative modernity of rock 'n' roll that makes the genre a minefield of myths and legends accepted as truth. History hasn't had time to dissect the bunk. Until now. Discover the real stories behind rock's biggest crocks, how they came to be but why they have persisted. Did Cass Elliott really asphyxiate herself with a ham sandwich? Did the Beatles spark a spliff in Buckingham? Did Willie Nelson do the same in the White House? Did Keith Richards get a complete "oil change" at a Swiss clinic in 1973 to pass a drug test necessary to embark on an American tour with the Stones? Then there's the freaky (did Michael Jackson own the remains of the Elephant Man?), the quasi-medical (Rod Stewart and that stomach pump?), the culinary (did Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne really do all those things to bats, chickens, etc. onstage?), and the apocryphal (did Robert Johnson sell his soul to the Prince of Darkness in exchange for mastery of the blues?). In all, more than 50 enduring lies are examined, explained, and debunked.

Heroic Leadership is a celebration of our greatest heroes, from legends such as Mahatma Gandhi to the legions of unsung heroes who transform our world quietly behind the scenes. The authors argue that all great heroes are also great leaders. The term ‘heroic leadership’ is coined to describe how heroism and leadership are intertwined, and how our most cherished heroes are also our most transforming leaders. This book offers a new conceptual framework for understanding heroism and heroic leadership, drawing from theories of great leadership and heroic action. Ten categories of heroism are described: Trending Heroes, Transitory Heroes, Transparent Heroes, Transitional Heroes, Tragic Heroes, Transposed Heroes, Transitional Heroes, Traditional Heroes, Transforming Heroes, and Transcendent Heroes. The authors describe the lives of 100 exceptional individuals whose accomplishments place them into one of these ten hero categories. These 100 hero profiles offer supporting evidence for a new integration of theories of leadership and theories of heroism.

Hold On World revisits Lennon and Ono's love affair and startling collaborations. John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band was arguably the most emotionally honest album ever made. It wasn't merely another record but more like a sonic exorcism, a spiritual, public bloodletting. Lennon's album drove a stake through the heart of the Beatles' myth while confronting everything else in John's life, from Dylan to God to his glorified status as a "Working Class Hero." Determined to rid himself of past traumas—abandonment by his father and the death of his mother, Julia—Lennon wrote the most powerful song cycle of his career, confronting fear, disappointment, and illusion, all the while espousing his love for Yoko Ono. Released simultaneously, Ono's album Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band is emotionally raw and challenging. It inspired bands like the B-52s and Yo La Tengo to employ pure sound, whether shrieking vocals or guitar feedback, to express their deepest feelings.

From their 1962 debut single Love Me Do to the most recent remastered albums, this is an album-by-album, track-by-track catalogue of every songs ever released by The Beatles Includes: A chronology of key events in the life of the greatest ever rock band Separate sections on compilation albums, the Anthology series and non-EMI recordings Eight pages of colour picturesThis is the books that Beatles fans have been looking for - packed with details, facts and pictures it's the definitive concise guide to the music of The Beatles.