When United Airlines Flight 232 crashed in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1989, 112 people died, and 184 people survived. In this book Gregory S. Clapper, both a college professor and a chaplain in the National Guard, reflects on his ministry in the aftermath of this tragic event. Processing his chaplain experiences through the lens of his theological training, he reflects on six different resources from the Christian tradition that he saw transform people's lives during and after this tragedy.
When United Airlines Flight 232 crashed in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1989, 112 people died, and 184 people survived. In this book Gregory S. Clapper, both a college professor and a chaplain in the National Guard, reflects on his ministry in the aftermath of this tragic event. Processing his chaplain experiences through the lens of his theological training, he reflects on six different resources from the Christian tradition that he saw transform people's lives during and after this tragedy.
Bill Hayes's critically acclaimed memoir Insomniac City provided a first look at his unique street photography. Now he presents an exquisite collection that captures the full range of his work and the magic of chance encounters in New York City. Hayes's "frank, beautiful, bewitching" street photographs "unmask their subjects' best and truest selves" (Jennifer Senior, New York Times): A policeman pauses at the end of a day. Cooks sneak in cigarette breaks. A pair of movers plays cards on the back of a truck. Friends claim the sidewalk. Lovers embrace. A flame-haired girl gazes mysteriously into the lens. And park benches provide a setting for a couple of hunks, a mom and her baby, a stylish nonagenarian . . . How New York Breaks Your Heart reveals ordinary New Yorkers at their most peaceful, joyful, distracted, anxious, expressive, and at their most fleeting--bringing the texture of the city to vivid life. Woven through with Hayes's lyric reflections, these photos will, like the city itself, break your heart by asking you to fall in love.
A New York Times bestseller, The Silver Linings Playbook was adapted into the Oscar-winning movie starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. It tells the riotous and poignant story of how one man regains his memory and comes to terms with the magnitude of his wife's betrayal. During the years he spends in a neural health facility, Pat Peoples formulates a theory about silver linings: he believes his life is a movie produced by God, his mission is to become physically fit and emotionally supportive, and his happy ending will be the return of his estranged wife, Nikki. When Pat goes to live with his parents, everything seems changed: no one will talk to him about Nikki; his old friends are saddled with families; the Philadelphia Eagles keep losing, making his father moody; and his new therapist seems to be recommending adultery as a form of therapy. When Pat meets the tragically widowed and clinically depressed Tiffany, she offers to act as a liaison between him and his wife, if only he will give up watching football, agree to perform in this year's Dance Away Depression competition, and promise not to tell anyone about their "contract." All the while, Pat keeps searching for his silver lining. In this brilliantly written debut novel, Matthew Quick takes us inside Pat's mind, deftly showing us the world from his distorted yet endearing perspective. The result is a touching and funny story that helps us look at both depression and love in a wonderfully refreshing way.
In this groundbreaking book, Pastor Jason Adam Miller re-examines the Beatitudes—eight paradoxes found in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount—and points to a whole new way to find hope in the midst of suffering. If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that the world is broken. The world we thought we knew vanished, and so many of us are now struggling to make sense of a world that’s not what we thought it was. This book is about what happens when the fundamental picture we had relied on – our sense of how everything holds together - falls apart. For some, this moment comes when a global pandemic upends our security. For others, it’s a partner leaving, or a terrible diagnosis, or the death of a loved one. Many of us have felt our worlds breaking when long-held beliefs about God or faith slipped through our hands. Whether the details are global or personal, the experience is the same: you discover that the framing reality you were living in has fractured. But here’s the good news: The world has been breaking for as long as we can remember. We've been here before, which means we can turn to ancient, perennial wisdom to help us sort through these urgent problems. In When the World Breaks, Jason Adam Miller explores the possibilities for hope hidden in the paradoxes Jesus spoke when he taught the eight blessings – often called the Beatitudes - recorded in the beginning of Matthew chapter 5. These strange blessings name our experiences of suffering and are built on a particular kind of hope. This book is a meditation on those teachings as a transformative way forward when we suffer. Lyrically written, theologically rich, and supremely accessible, When the World Breaks reveals an unexpected way to look at these familiar verses, giving readers hope that God is with them in their suffering, and helping them become the kind of people who can put things back together.
A poet’s story of healing herself, working with wounded veterans, and learning that silence does not equal strength, written “with self-lacerating honesty” (Kirkus Reviews). In this poignant and unabashed self-examination, Seema Reza uncovers the lessons she learned through motherhood and a dysfunctional and abusive marriage, and how she used her discoveries to make a meaningful difference in the world. This lyrical, non-linear narrative memoir traces Reza’s journey from repressed suburban housewife to coordinator of a unique creative-expression military hospital program. Through observing her own experiences from the darkest moments of her life and investigating societal attitudes towards loss, love, motherhood, and community, Reza exposes her triumphs, weaknesses, fears, and regrets, and undermines the idea that strength requires silence. “Lyrical . . . powerful . . . It is her self-reflection which empowers this memoir; her responsibility to take action for herself and not to languish as she was.” —Entropy Literature Review
Beloved author Barbara Johnson offers hope to families facing difficulty coming to terms with a child's decisions in life, sharing how God brought her through the deep waters--and how he will do the same for them.
''A Farewell to Arms'' is Hemingway's classic set during the Italian campaign of World War I. The book, published in 1929, is a first-person account of American Frederic Henry, serving as a Lieutenant ("Tenente") in the ambulance corps of the Italian Army. It's about a love affair between the expatriate American Henry and Catherine Barkley against the backdrop of the First World War, cynical soldiers, fighting and the displacement of populations. The publication of ''A Farewell to Arms'' cemented Hemingway's stature as a modern American writer, became his first best-seller, and is described by biographer Michael Reynolds as "the premier American war novel from that debacle World War I."
Imagine if we treated broken hearts with the same respect and concern we have for broken arms? Psychologist Guy Winch urges us to rethink the way we deal with emotional pain, offering warm, wise, and witty advice for the broken-hearted. Real heartbreak is unmistakable. We think of nothing else. We feel nothing else. We care about nothing else. Yet while we wouldn’t expect someone to return to daily activities immediately after suffering a broken limb, heartbroken people are expected to function normally in their lives, despite the emotional pain they feel. Now psychologist Guy Winch imagines how different things would be if we paid more attention to this unique emotion—if only we can understand how heartbreak works, we can begin to fix it. Through compelling research and new scientific studies, Winch reveals how and why heartbreak impacts our brain and our behavior in dramatic and unexpected ways, regardless of our age. Emotional pain lowers our ability to reason, to think creatively, to problem solve, and to function at our best. In How to Fix a Broken Heart he focuses on two types of emotional pain—romantic heartbreak and the heartbreak that results from the loss of a cherished pet. These experiences are both accompanied by severe grief responses, yet they are not deemed as important as, for example, a formal divorce or the loss of a close relative. As a result, we are often deprived of the recognition, support, and compassion afforded to those whose heartbreak is considered more significant. Our heart might be broken, but we do not have to break with it. Winch reveals that recovering from heartbreak always starts with a decision, a determination to move on when our mind is fighting to keep us stuck. We can take control of our lives and our minds and put ourselves on the path to healing. Winch offers a toolkit on how to handle and cope with a broken heart and how to, eventually, move on.
We've always lived on a dangerous planet, but its disasters aren't what they used to be. How the World Breaks gives us a breathtaking new view of crisis and recovery on the unstable landscapes of the Earth's hazard zones. Father and son authors Stan and Paul Cox take us to the explosive fire fronts of overheated Australia, the future lost city of Miami, the fights over whether and how to fortify New York City in the wake of Sandy, the Indonesian mud volcano triggered by natural gas drilling, and other communities that are reimagining their lives after quakes, superstorms, tornadoes, and landslides. In the very decade when we should be rushing to heal the atmosphere and address the enormous inequalities of risk, a strange idea has taken hold of global disaster policy: resilience. Its proponents say that threatened communities must simply learn the art of resilience, adapt to risk, and thereby survive. This doctrine obscures the human hand in creating disasters and requires the planet's most beleaguered people to absorb the rush of floodwaters and the crush of landslides, freeing the world economy to go on undisturbed. The Coxes' great contribution is to pull the disaster debate out of the realm of theory and into the muck and ash of the world's broken places. There we learn that change is more than mere adaptation and life is more than mere survival. Ultimately, How the World Breaks reveals why--unless we address the social, ecological, and economic roots of disaster--millions more people every year will find themselves spiraling into misery. It is essential reading for our time.
