David Sheff

What happens when 600 million Chinese get wired and become the world's largest group of Internet users? What happens when China's state-owned companies link up with the global marketplace? In answering these questions, journalist David Sheff goes into the trenches of the Chinese technology revolution and introduces the players who are leading China into the 21st century. Bo Feng, the former sushi chef who is now a leading venture capitalist, and Edward Tian, who has been dubbed China's Bill Gates, are some of the unlikely revolutionaries making history as they struggle to transform a nation. But presiding over all these developments in China is a repressive government caught between craving business dominance and fearing the results of giving its population uncensored information and a voice. In this compelling book, David Sheff provides an in-depth account of what is happening now with the tiger at the keyboard and a cautious prediction that, if caught within the World Wide Web, China may become a free market to be reckoned with globally.

Twenty years ago David Sheff climbed the back steps of the Dakota into the personal thoughts and dreams of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. From the kitchen to the studio and up those fateful Dakota steps, Sheff recorded 20 hours of tape, discussing everything from childhood to the Beatles. Sheff gives a rare and last glimpse of John and Yoko, one that seemed to look beyond the kitchen table to the future of the world with startling premonitions of what was to come.

The Ladies of Pinewood face their biggest challenge yet-- and, if they succeed, a reward that may spell the end of the vigilante days forever...

What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family? What did I do wrong? Those are the wrenching questions that haunted every moment of David Sheff’s journey through his son Nic’s addiction to drugs and tentative steps toward recovery. Before Nic Sheff became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole, and lived on the streets. David Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs: the denial, the 3 A.M. phone calls (is it Nic? The police? The hospital?), the rehabs. His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself, and the obsessive worry and stress took a tremendous toll, but as a journalist, he instinctively researched every avenue of treatment that might save his son and refused to give up on him. Beautiful Boy is a fiercely candid memoir that brings immediacy to the emotional roller coaster of loving a child who seems beyond help.

Addiction is a preventable, treatable disease, not a moral failing. As with other illnesses, the approaches most likely to work are based on science -- not on faith, tradition, contrition, or wishful thinking. These facts are the foundation of Clean, a myth-shattering look at drug abuse by the author of Beautiful Boy. Based on the latest research in psychology, neuroscience, and medicine, Clean is a leap beyond the traditional approaches to prevention and treatment of addiction and the mental illnesses that usually accompany it. The existing treatment system, including Twelve Step programs and rehabs, has helped some, but it has failed to help many more, and David Sheff explains why. He spent time with scores of scientists, doctors, counselors, and addicts and their families to learn how addiction works and what can effectively treat it. Clean offers clear, cogent counsel for parents and others who want to prevent drug problems and for addicts and their loved ones no matter what stage of the illness they're in. But it is also a book for all of us -- a powerful rethinking of the greatest public health challenge of our time. - Author website.

"The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Boy explores the transformation of Jarvis Jay Masters who became one of America's most respected Buddhist practitioners during his two decades in solitary confinement in San Quentin"-- Jarvis Jay Masters was born into a house filled with crack, alcohol, physical abuse, and men who paid his mother for sex. Sent to foster care when he was five, he progressed quickly to juvenile detention, car theft, armed robbery, and ultimately San Quentin. While in prison, he was set up for the murder of a guard, and has been on death row since 1990. Sheff describes Masters's gradual transformation from a man dedicated to hurting others to one drawn to the principles that Buddhism espouses: compassion, sacrifice, and living in the moment. Still in San Quentin, still on death row, he now shows us how to ease our everyday suffering, relish the light that surrounds us, and endure the tragedies that befall us all. -- adapted from jacket