Mary Oliver is one of America's best-loved poets, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Her luminous poetry celebrates nature and beauty, love and the spirit, silence and wonder, extending the visionary American tradition of Whitman, Emerson, Frost and Emily Dickinson. Her extraordinary poetry is nourished by her intimate knowledge and minute daily observation of the New England coast, its woods and ponds, its birds and animals, plants and trees.
When Dayna MacCulloch was two years old, her father killed his friend and then himself. Twenty years later, she went back to see where it happened—where her father morphed from the hippie, homesteading, jack-of-all-trades man that everyone loved to the guy who took his rifle off the shelf one night and shot his friend in the face. Standing in the place where he did it, a wildfire of unanswered questions—the ones she’d suppressed all her life—blazed open within her. The life she was living no longer made sense, no longer was enough. While most of her friends were applying for big jobs, getting married, and getting pregnant, she bought a one-way ticket to a Greek island—determined to, as Rilke advised, live the questions for as long as she could. You Do Not Have to Be Good is the story of where that choice led her: to five different countries over the course of five years. It is a candid, intimate memoir about the ways that loss and landscape guide and shape us, the ways strangers can heal us, and what it means to finally come home.
Can God be good when life is not? Rediscover faith in the character, power, and presence of God. Even in the questions. Even in the hurt. "I want to believe, I want to have hope, but . . ." Pastor and bestselling author Craig Groeschel hears these words often and has asked them himself. We want to know God, feel his presence, and trust that he hears our prayers, but in the midst of great pain, we may wonder if he really cares about us. Even when we have both hope and hurt, sometimes it's the hurt that shouts the loudest. In Hope in the Dark, Groeschel explores the story of the father who brought his demon-possessed son to Jesus, saying, "I believe! Help my unbelief!" In the man's sincere plea, Jesus heard the tension in the man's battle-scarred heart. He healed not only the boy but the father too, driving out the hopelessness that had overtaken him. He can do the same for us today. As Groeschel shares his pain surrounding the health challenges of his daughter, he acknowledges the questions we may ask in our own deepest pain: "Where was God when I was being abused?" "Why was my child born with a disability?" "Why did the cancer come back?" "Why are all my friends married and I'm alone?" He invites us to wrestle with such questions as we ask God to honor our faith and heal our unbelief. Because in the middle of your profound pain, you long for authentic words of understanding and hope. You long to know that even in overwhelming reality, you can still believe that God is good. Hope in the Dark is also available in Spanish, Esperanza en la Oscuridad.
An urgent, compact manifesto that will teach you how to protect your rights, your freedom, and your future when talking to police. Law professor James J. Duane became a viral sensation thanks to a 2008 lecture outlining the reasons why you should never agree to answer questions from the police--especially if you are innocent and wish to stay out of trouble with the law. In this timely, relevant, and pragmatic new book, he expands on that presentation, offering a vigorous defense of every citizen's constitutionally protected right to avoid self-incrimination. Getting a lawyer is not only the best policy, Professor Duane argues, it's also the advice law-enforcement professionals give their own kids. Using actual case histories of innocent men and women exonerated after decades in prison because of information they voluntarily gave to police, Professor Duane demonstrates the critical importance of a constitutional right not well or widely understood by the average American. Reflecting the most recent attitudes of the Supreme Court, Professor Duane argues that it is now even easier for police to use your own words against you. This lively and informative guide explains what everyone needs to know to protect themselves and those they love.
Poems to Turn to Again and Again – from Amanda Gorman, Sharon Olds, Kate Baer, and More Created and compiled just for young women, You Don’t Have to Be Everything is filled with works by a wide range of poets who are honest, unafraid, and skilled at addressing the complex feelings of coming-of-age, from loneliness to joy, longing to solace, attitude to humor. These unintimidating poems offer girls a message of self-acceptance and strength, giving them permission to let go of shame and perfectionism. The cast of 68 poets is extraordinary: Amanda Gorman, the first National Youth Poet Laureate, who read at Joe Biden's inauguration; bestselling authors like Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Acevedo, Sharon Olds, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Mary Oliver; Instagram-famous poets including Kate Baer, Melody Lee, and Andrea Gibson; poets who are LGBTQ, poets of diverse racial and cultural backgrounds, poets who sing of human experience in ways that are free from conventional ideas of femininity. Illustrated in full color with work by three diverse artists, this book is an inspired gift for daughters and granddaughters—and anyone on the path to becoming themselves. No matter how old you are, it helps to be young when you're coming to life, to be unfinished, a mysterious statement, a journey from star to star. —Joy Ladin, excerpt from "Survival Guide"
"Kristi Coulter charts the raw, unvarnished, and quietly riveting terrain of new sobriety with wit and warmth. Nothing Good Can Come from This is a book about generative discomfort, surprising sources of beauty, and the odd, often hilarious, business of being human." —Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams and The Recovering Kristi Coulter inspired and incensed the internet when she wrote about what happened when she stopped drinking. Nothing Good Can Come from This is her debut--a frank, funny, and feminist essay collection by a keen-eyed observer no longer numbed into complacency. When Kristi stopped drinking, she started noticing things. Like when you give up a debilitating habit, it leaves a space, one that can’t easily be filled by mocktails or ice cream or sex or crafting. And when you cancel Rosé Season for yourself, you’re left with just Summer, and that’s when you notice that the women around you are tanked—that alcohol is the oil in the motors that keeps them purring when they could be making other kinds of noise. In her sharp, incisive debut essay collection, Coulter reveals a portrait of a life in transition. By turns hilarious and heartrending, Nothing Good Can Come from This introduces a fierce new voice to fans of Sloane Crosley, David Sedaris, and Cheryl Strayed—perfect for anyone who has ever stood in the middle of a so-called perfect life and looked for an escape hatch.
Herbert McCabe OP was one of the most intelligent Roman Catholic thinkers of the 20th century, whose writings have enjoyed enormous and welcome success. A significant influence on philosophers such as Anthony Kenny and Alasdair McIntyre, McCabe also counted amongst his friends Seamus Heaney and Terry Eagleton, and moved amongst the literary elite. His wide personal interests are reflected in his writings, which cover a broad range of topics. In this reader we glimpse an insight into the workings of a brilliant mind occupied by topics including the philosophy of God and Christian doctrine, ethics and moral theology, the problem of evil, the philosophical theology of St Thomas Aquinas, the traditional catholic concern for prayer, liturgy, Mary and St Dominic. Further musings reflect on issues that interested McCabe the most - philosophy of God, Christology, fundamental and sacramental theology, and ethics. Edited by Brian Davies and Paul Kucharski, two well known McCabe specialists, the selection is a gem which will be of use to any reader interested in comprehending the key issues for a thoughtful life, and also includes some of McCabe's most dazzling sermons.
Here is a collection of Herbert McCabe's more popular spiritual writings. McCabe was highly regarded as a writer on philosophy and theology but in true Dominican tradition (the Order of Preachers) he was also a brilliant preacher. He always preached in a lively and witty way - his style has been compared to that of G.K. Chesterton. This collection of his sermons and spiritual addresses are never platitudinous or short of ideas, filled with questions, arguments and solid intellectual content. The major influence on McCabe was the Bible but he was also a devoted admirer of the thought of St Thomas Aquinas, whose ideas saturated his public speaking. From the Bible, McCabe derived the notion of God leading us to happiness through the work of grace and through the life and teachings of Jesus. From Aquinas, McCabe derived a hatred of idolatry, a powerful sense of the incomprehensibility of God and a recognition that we depend on God's gracious revelation of himself rather that what we can work out on the basis of our limited understanding. A presiding theme in this book is that we are saved because of the life of someone fully human. God, Christ and Us communicates the essence of the Gospel in an original and compelling way. It can therefore be mentioned in the same breath as works by Dean Inge, Donald Soper, H.A. Williams and Leslie Weatherhead.
From the former director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, a timely and passionate case for the role of the well-designed object in the digital age. Curator and scholar Glenn Adamson opens Fewer, Better Things by contrasting his beloved childhood teddy bear to the smartphones and digital tablets children have today. He laments that many children and adults are losing touch with the material objects that have nurtured human development for thousands of years. The objects are still here, but we seem to care less and know less about them. In his presentations to groups, he often asks an audience member what he or she knows about the chair the person is sitting in. Few people know much more than whether it's made of wood, plastic, or metal. If we know little about how things are made, it's hard to remain connected to the world around us. Fewer, Better Things explores the history of craft in its many forms, explaining how raw materials, tools, design, and technique come together to produce beauty and utility in handmade or manufactured items. Whether describing the implements used in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, the use of woodworking tools, or the use of new fabrication technologies, Adamson writes expertly and lovingly about the aesthetics of objects, and the care and attention that goes into producing them. Reading this wise and elegant book is a truly transformative experience.
Newly repackaged as a Penguin paperback, an “astonishing” book of poetry from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Primitive and “one of our very best poets” (New York Times Book Review) Dream Work, a collection of forty-five poems originally published in 1986, follows both chronologically and logically Mary Oliver’s American Primitive, which won her the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1983. The depth and diversity of perceptual awareness, so steadfast and radiant in American Primitive, continues in Dream Work. Additionally, she has turned her attention in these poems to the solitary and difficult labors of the spirit, to accepting the truth about one’s personal world, and to valuing the triumphs while transcending the failures of human relationships.
