Rhonda Shear loves her breasts. She calls them her "girls," and they've served her well over the years. "My background is as a beauty queen," said Shear, "so I've always been good at manipulating the girls. I've always known how to use them to my advantage." That advantage ultimately came...

What if men aren't from Mars and women aren't from Venus? What if, in fact, we're not as different as cultural gatekeepers would lead us to believe? "Male and female sexuality are massively different on some levels," said Esther Perel, "but on many other very interesting levels, they...

"When I turned 60," Rob Reiner said, "I started thinking about my own mortality. I thought of myself as a very, very, very young old person." We were talking about Reiner's latest film, "The Magic of Belle Isle," a love story featuring Morgan Freeman and Virginia Madsen. In the film,...

"I love the idea of playing a mysterious fantasy who's a mother, lover, and muse-type character," said Kristin Scott Thomas of her role in the recently released movie "The Woman in the Fifth." "Mysterious" is something of an understatement.

In the film by director Pawel Pawlikowski, Scott...

A few years ago on a "Say It Like You Mean It" segment of "The Wendy Williams Show," Williams showed Cloris Leachman photos of various celebrities and asked her to say the first thing that came to mind. When a photo of Betty White was projected, Leachman simply...

In the film "Jeff, Who Lives At Home," Jeff (Jason Segal), a 30 year-old still living at home, is having a phone conversation with his mother, Sharon (Susan Sarandon). It goes like this:

Mother: "Get off that couch or you're going to have to find some place else...

Leonard Mlodinow is a man at home with big ideas. Really big ideas. A physicist, author and professor, Mlodinow has spent much of the past few decades exploring life's most complicated questions: What's the nature of the universe? How does the human mind work? Did Darwin go wrong? What is...

In the beginning of Wes Anderson's new movie "Moonrise Kingdom," Bob Balaban appears on a desolate New England island looking a bit like one of Santa's helpers. As the movie's narrator, he sets the scene for what's to come: an emotionally subtle but complex love story between two...

In Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character, author Jack Hitt contends that what he calls "the Golden Age of American amateurism" is far from over. On the contrary, the amateur's dream is the American dream. One of the great unspoken liberties in our country, writes...

In 1962, on a stunning stretch of land bordering the Pacific Ocean in Big Sur, California, two Stanford graduates named Michael Murphy and Dick Price founded a small retreat and workshop center called The Esalen Institute, otherwise known simply as Esalen. Their goal was to create a space...

"Life is a pilgrimage," Swami Sivananda once wrote. "The wise man does not rest by the roadside inns. He marches direct to the illimitable domain of eternal bliss, his ultimate destination." These days, however, when Google Earth can peer into every patch of our planet, finding solace off-the-grid on those...

Ever since Joan of Arc battled the British, we Anglo-Saxons have loved and hated French women in equal doses. Samantha Brick's dishy tirade against new First Lady Valerie Trierweiler --- "Think I'm in love with myself? I'm a shrinking violet next to man-stealing French women like the new...

"Life is a precious gift, and I don't intend to waste a day of it." So writes Jai Pausch at the end of her new book Dream New Dreams: Reimagining My Life After Loss, summing up the wisdom accrued on her journey literally rebuilding new dreams after her...

Most people can't remember what they ate for dinner yesterday, never mind how they celebrated their 17th birthday or what headlined the news that day. Marilu Henner, on the other hand, can remember virtually every day of her life. Henner, who many remember as the character Elaine O'Connor Nardo on...

When the wife of former French president Giscard d'Estaing was asked what she wanted to do as France's First Lady, Anne-Aymone Giscard d'Estaing said: "To no longer be one." Similarly, when the second wife of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was asked about the role of First Lady (Sarkozy has...

In the first chapter of his book Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success, U.S. News & World Report Chief Business Correspondent Rick Newman quotes German philosopher Nietzsche, who unbeknownst to many (including yours truly) brought us the oft-cited aphorism: "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger."...

Behind every great band there's often great drama, and Fleetwood Mac was no exception. The band marked the 70s with huge hits, including its album Rumours, which produced four top-ten singles, stayed on the charts for 31 weeks, sold over 40 million copies and won a Grammy Award for Album...

In "The Perfect Family," Kathleen Turner plays Eileen Cleary, a devout Roman Catholic who's been nominated for "Catholic Woman of the Year." But Eileen's "perfect family" is not so perfect: her daughter Shannon (Emily Deschanel) is gay, pregnant through artificial insemination, and about to marry her live-in girlfriend Angela (Angelique...

God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine is a fascinating book about physician Victoria Sweet's 20-year experience working at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco -- a ramshackle but charming former almshouse where Sweet was able to practice what she calls...

Reversals of fortune and the artifice of self-presentation are the subjects of author Deborah Copaken Kogan's superb new novel, "The Red Book".

The red book, from which the book takes its title, is a Harvard class report published every five years with brief autobiographical overviews written by...