A Passion For Parties

A guide to party planning shows how to select invitations, themes, menus, table settings, music, lighting, flowers, and decor for weddings, holiday parties, formal dinners, and cocktail parties.

In A Passion for Parties, Carolyne Roehm presents her dazzlingly creative ideas for every kind of event, from a black-and-white dinner dance to a spring tulip celebration. Original themes, detailed decorating tips, gorgeous table settings and floral arrangements, as well as more than forty outstanding and surprisingly easy recipes–are all here to lend your next occasion the sumptuous touches that are the hallmarks of Carolyne Roehm’s style. The book offers practical advice and inspiration and even a way to partake in these breathtakingly exquisite events, both behind the scenes and as they take place. Whether it is an intimate Valentine’s Day in Paris or an Autumn Barn Dance for seventy, all of the events depicted here are equally splendid. Organized seasonally, the book features ideas for small gatherings (Christmas Dinner in Aspen) or big blowout events (a Fourth of July dinner with fireworks) and family festivities (a seventy-fifth birthday party, a Dickens-inspired Halloween; a children’s Christmas cookie-decorating party). Recipes include Mini Lemon Crepes Stuffed with Lobster, Chilled Zucchini Soup with Toasted Coconut, Baby Back Ribs with Rhubarb Barbecue Sauce, and Bread Pudding with Bourbon Sauce.

Presents a tour of the author's three homes--a pre-war Manhattan duplex, a Colonial-era Connecticut stone house, and an Aspen residence--in order to show how to make the most of architectural features and interior furnishings.

How do mass protests become an organized activist collective? Crowds and Party channels the energies of the riotous crowds who took to the streets in the past five years into an argument for the political party. Rejecting the emphasis on individuals and multitudes, Jodi Dean argues that we need to rethink the collective subject of politics. When crowds appear in spaces unauthorized by capital and the state—such as in the Occupy movement in New York, London and across the world—they create a gap of possibility. But too many on the Left remain stuck in this beautiful moment of promise—they argue for more of the same, further fragmenting issues and identities, rehearsing the last thirty years of left-wing defeat. In Crowds and Party, Dean argues that previous discussions of the party have missed its affective dimensions, the way it operates as a knot of unconscious processes and binds people together. Dean shows how we can see the party as an organization that can reinvigorate political practice.

In this path-breaking book, Tong Lam examines the emergence of the "culture of fact" in modern China, showing how elites and intellectuals sought to transform the dynastic empire into a nation-state, thereby ensuring its survival. Lam argues that an epistemological break away from traditional modes of understanding the observable world began around the turn of the twentieth century. Tracing the Neo-Confucian school of evidentiary research and the modern departure from it, Lam shows how, through the rise of the social survey, "the fact" became a basic conceptual medium and source of truth. In focusing on China’s social survey movement, A Passion for Facts analyzes how information generated by a range of research practices—census, sociological investigation, and ethnography—was mobilized by competing political factions to imagine, manage, and remake the nation.

In 1966, everyone who was anyone wanted an invitation to Truman Capote's "Black and White Dance" in New York, and guests included Frank Sinatra, Norman Mailer, C. Z. Guest, Kennedys, Rockefellers, and more. Lavishly illustrated with photographs and drawings of the guests, this portrait of revelry at the height of the swirling, swinging sixties is a must for anyone interested in American popular culture and the lifestyles of the rich, famous, and talented.

The internationally acclaimed event producer shows his ideas and inspiration for ultimate and intimate celebrations What defines a truly great party? Most of all: generosity of spirit. In his first book, Bronson van Wyck, the man Vogue called 'The Wizard of Oz of New York party planning,' distills the essential pillars of the art of celebration into one volume, with examples drawn from his many successes - and, admittedly, a few entertaining failures. Lusciously illustrated with images from van Wyck's most spectacular events, this is the perfect primer on throwing parties that are as much fun to give as they are to attend.

Make every night a Passion Party with this intimate bedside guide that delivers the secrets of mind-blowing sexual pleasure. On any given night, thousands of Passion Consultants roll into driveways across America with sensuous goodies and frank advice to rekindle the relationships of women everywhere. Passion Parties® are the Tupperware parties of the new millennium, a place where women can get together to talk, laugh, and swap the secrets of great sex. Passion Parties president Pat Davis knows that every woman has a Passion Diva inside of her—it doesn’t matter what you look like or how old you are, if you’re a boardroom superstar or a stay-at-home mom. And in The Passion Parties Guide to Great Sex, she reveals a treasure trove of spicy tips and techniques that will elevate your lovemaking to extraordinary new heights. Beginning with a lesson in the art of RomantaTherapy—creative ways to set the scene for an incredible night (or morning, or afternoon!) of sexual pleasure—The Passion Parties Guide to Great Sex shares a delicious variety of tantalizing moves, tricks, and sensual enhancements from the mild to the wild. With tastefully explicit, step-by-step, how-tos for steamy foreplay, intercourse, and more, this ultimate pleasure handbook offers innovative sex positions, tips for sweetening oral sex, and the keys to stronger, longer, more frequent orgasms. It also invites you to explore the world of Passion Parties products—from lotions and potions, to safe and sexy toys that will bring further bedroom bliss. Flavored with real-life stories and confessions from Passion Party-goers around the country, and complete with a Seven-Day Passion Challenge (a week-long journey you and your partner will never forget), The Passion Parties Guide to Great Sex gives you everything you need to surprise and excite the one you love—and reach new levels of intimacy and ecstasy in your relationship.

A captivating novel of manners that tells the story of a dark and disturbing period of British history, by a master storyteller. It is the summer of 1938 and Phyllis Forrester has returned to England after years abroad. Moving into her sister’s grand country house, she soon finds herself entangled in a new world of idealistic beliefs and seemingly innocent friendships. Fevered talk of another war infiltrates their small, privileged circle, giving way to a thrilling solution: the appointment of a great and charismatic new leader who will restore England to its former glory. At a party hosted by her new friends, Phyllis lets down her guard for a single moment, with devastating consequences. Years later, Phyllis, alone and embittered, recounts the dramatic events which led to her imprisonment and changed the course of her life forever. Powerful, poignant, and exquisitely observed, After the Party is an illuminating portrait of a dark period of British history which has yet to be fully acknowledged.