The author offers advice for those experiencing the grief and loss of a loved one, those supporting someone who is grieving, and those who want to start preparing for the inevitable. Grieving is different for everyone, but has a common theme in that it may lead to depression or despair. This book provides strategies for alleviating feelings of grief and affirmations that provide hope for healing.
In this comprehensive guide, top specialists in oncology, radiology, plastic surgery, gynecology, psychiatry, and other fields demystify the information women need to know about breast cancer.
Elves, Wights and Trolls explores the relationship between the small beings throughout the Nordic region and their relationship with both humans and gods alike. From the small beings that dwell in rocks and plants to the large giants that formed strong relationships with the gods, Elves, Wights and Trolls contains a wealth of knowledge on the original views of these beings and how modern practitioners can form sacred relationships within the confines of today’s modern civilization.
Choosing My Religion is a luminous memoir, crafted with the eye of a journalist and the art of a novelist by New York Times Magazine writer and editor Stephen J. Dubner. By turns comic and heartbreaking, it tells the story of a family torn apart by religion, sustained by faith, and reunited by truth.
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! AS HEARD ON NPR MORNING EDITION AND ON BEING WITH KRISTA TIPPETT “Katherine May opens up exactly what I and so many need to hear but haven't known how to name.” —Krista Tippett, On Being “Every bit as beautiful and healing as the season itself. . . . This is truly a beautiful book.” —Elizabeth Gilbert "Proves that there is grace in letting go, stepping back and giving yourself time to repair in the dark...May is a clear-eyed observer and her language is steady, honest and accurate—capturing the sense, the beauty and the latent power of our resting landscapes." —Wall Street Journal An intimate, revelatory book exploring the ways we can care for and repair ourselves when life knocks us down. Sometimes you slip through the cracks: unforeseen circumstances like an abrupt illness, the death of a loved one, a break up, or a job loss can derail a life. These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered. A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May's story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath, swimming in icy waters and sailing arctic seas. Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. A secular mystic, May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.
Esther Amini grew up in Queens, New York, during the free-wheeling 1960s. She also grew up in a Persian-Jewish household, the American- born daughter of parents who had fled Mashhad, Iran. In CONCEALED she tells the story of being caught between these two worlds: the dutiful daughter of tradition-bound parents who hungers for more self-determination than tradition allows. Exploring the roots of her father's deep silences and explosive temper, her mother's flamboyance and flights from home, and her own sense of indebtedness to her two Iranian-born brothers, Amini uncovers the story of her parents' early years in Mashhad, Iran's holiest Muslim city; the little known history and persecution of Mashhad's underground Jews; the incident that steeled her mother's resolve to leave; and her parents' arduous journey to the United States, where they found themselves facing a new threat to their traditions: the threat of freedom. Determined to protect his only daughter from corruption, Amini's father prohibits talk, books, higher education, and tries to push her into an early Persian marriage. Can she resist? Should she? Focused intently on what she stands to gain, Amini eventually comes to see what she also stands to lose: a family and community bound together by food, celebrations, sibling escapades, and unexpected acts of devotion by parents to whom she feels invisible. In this poignant, funny, entertaining and uplifting memoir, Amini documents with keen eye, quick wit, and warm heart, how family members build, buoy, wound, and save one another across generations; how lives are shaped by the demands and burdens of loyalty and legacy; and how she rose to the challenge of deciding what to keep and what to discard.
From New York Times bestselling author Diane Chamberlain comes a novel of chilling intrigue, a decades-old disappearance, and one woman’s quest to find the truth... “A novel about arts and secrets...grippingly told...pulls readers toward a shocking conclusion.”—People magazine, Best New Books North Carolina, 2018: Morgan Christopher's life has been derailed. Taking the fall for a crime she did not commit, her dream of a career in art is put on hold—until a mysterious visitor makes her an offer that will get her released from prison immediately. Her assignment: restore an old post office mural in a sleepy southern town. Morgan knows nothing about art restoration, but desperate to be free, she accepts. What she finds under the layers of grime is a painting that tells the story of madness, violence, and a conspiracy of small town secrets. North Carolina, 1940: Anna Dale, an artist from New Jersey, wins a national contest to paint a mural for the post office in Edenton, North Carolina. Alone in the world and in great need of work, she accepts. But what she doesn't expect is to find herself immersed in a town where prejudices run deep, where people are hiding secrets behind closed doors, and where the price of being different might just end in murder. What happened to Anna Dale? Are the clues hidden in the decrepit mural? Can Morgan overcome her own demons to discover what exists beneath the layers of lies? “Chamberlain, a master storyteller, keeps readers hooked, with a story line that leavens history and social commentary with romance and mystery.”—Lexington Dispatch
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE A SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE BESTSELLER In AD 70, when the Second Temple was destroyed, a handful of visionaries saved Judaism by reinventing it, taking what had been a national religion and turning it into an idea. Whenever a Jew studied—wherever he was—he would be in the holy city, and his faith preserved. But in our own time, Zionists have turned the book back into a temple, and unlike an idea, a temple can be destroyed. With exuberance, humor, and real scholarship, Rich Cohen's Israel is Real offers "a serious attempt by a gifted storyteller to enliven and elucidate Jewish religious, cultural, and political history . . . A powerful narrative" (Los Angeles Times).
The liberal world order, a euphemism for American global hegemony, is crumbling at an accelerating pace. While its collapse is tangible, the outcome of such a collapse remains a matter of speculation and public debate. The US is desperately seeking to preserve the status quo, which rests primarily upon recognition of its military supremacy. For millennia, warfare has been a driving force behind changes in the geopolitical status of power configurations (whether of peoples, states or empires), and it remains so, today. Accordingly, short of actual warfare, the assessment (modeling) of relative military power plays an inordinate role in the determination of national status. Models of emerging changes in military capability range from relatively simple to extremely complex ones. Viewing the evolution of the current system of international relations outside the framework of actual, rather than propaganda-driven, military capabilities is not only useless, it is dangerous since states’ mistaken assessment of their own and other states’ military power can lead to misadventures and catastrophic mistakes. The United States’ efforts to preserve not just its dominance but the perception of its dominance are bound to fail for many important reasons, none more important than what is often misidentified in past American military-theoretical hypotheses about the future of warfare, known generically as the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). This book explains why those hypotheses are failing and will continue to fail, and addresses the real RMA. In the end, technological development in weaponry as a response to tactical, operational and strategic requirements defines not only a nation’s geopolitical status but determines the global order. Assessments of military capacity, if reality-based, serve as good predictors of the level of volatility in international relations and the level of violence globally. This book gives an insight into the evolution of weapons and the way they influenced international relations in the 20th and 21st centuries. It also defines Revolution in Military Affairs as manifested via policy, politics, and technology. It reviews some models which are useful in assessing the current geopolitical situation. This book also tries to give a forecast of the future development of warfare and the ways in which it is going to change the whole system of the international relations, hopefully towards a new geopolitical equilibrium.
