Title search results
Showing 1 - 20 of 7875 items
Millennial Nuns: Reflections on Living a Spiritual Life in a World of Social Media
By The Daughters of Saint Paul. 2021
Discover how to engage in a faith-filled life in the era of social media from a group of young, consecrated…
Catholic sisters.Friend. Artist. Writer. Businesswomen. Advocate. Scholar. The women whose pieces are included in this book hold many different titles. But they all share two important characteristics. First, they are all young women. Second, they are all consecrated religious of the Catholic order the Daughters of Saint Paul. They are millennial nuns.More and more people—especially millennials—are turning to religion as a source of comfort and solace in our increasingly chaotic world. But rather than live a cloistered life of seclusion, the Daughters of Saint Paul actively embrace social media, using platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to evangelize, collectively calling themselves the #MediaNuns.In this &“funny and poignant&” (Colleen Carroll Campbell, award-winning author of The Heart of Perfection) memoir, eight of these Sisters share their own discernment journeys, struggles, and crises of faith that they&’ve overcome, and episodes from their daily lives. Through these reflections, the Sisters also offer practical takeaways and tips for living a more spiritually-fulfilled life, no matter your religious affiliation.In a collection as diverse and varied as the Daughters of Saint Paul themselves, Millennial Nuns will appeal to anyone looking to discover more about balancing faith with the modern age.Boltzmann's Atom: The Great Debate That Launched a Revolution in Physics
By David Lindley. 2001
In 1900 many eminent scientists did not believe atoms existed, yet within just a few years the atomic century launched…
into history with an astonishing string of breakthroughs in physics that began with Albert Einstein and continues to this day. Before this explosive growth into the modern age took place, an all-but-forgotten genius strove for forty years to win acceptance for the atomic theory of matter and an altogether new way of doing physics. Ludwig Boltz-mann battled with philosophers, the scientific establishment, and his own potent demons. His victory led the way to the greatest scientific achievements of the twentieth century.Now acclaimed science writer David Lindley portrays the dramatic story of Boltzmann and his embrace of the atom, while providing a window on the civilized world that gave birth to our scientific era. Boltzmann emerges as an endearingly quixotic character, passionately inspired by Beethoven, who muddled through the practical matters of life in a European gilded age.Boltzmann's story reaches from fin de siècle Vienna, across Germany and Britain, to America. As the Habsburg Empire was crumbling, Germany's intellectual might was growing; Edinburgh in Scotland was one of the most intellectually fertile places on earth; and, in America, brilliant independent minds were beginning to draw on the best ideas of the bureaucratized old world.Boltzmann's nemesis in the field of theoretical physics at home in Austria was Ernst Mach, noted today in the term Mach I, the speed of sound. Mach believed physics should address only that which could be directly observed. How could we know that frisky atoms jiggling about corresponded to heat if we couldn't see them? Why should we bother with theories that only told us what would probably happen, rather than making an absolute prediction? Mach and Boltzmann both believed in the power of science, but their approaches to physics could not have been more opposed. Boltzmann sought to explain the real world, and cast aside any philosophical criteria. Mach, along with many nineteenth-century scientists, wanted to construct an empirical edifice of absolute truths that obeyed strict philosophical rules. Boltzmann did not get on well with authority in any form, and he did his best work at arm's length from it. When at the end of his career he engaged with the philosophical authorities in the Viennese academy, the results were personally disastrous and tragic. Yet Boltzmann's enduring legacy lives on in the new physics and technology of our wired world.Lindley's elegant telling of this tale combines the detailed breadth of the best history, the beauty of theoretical physics, and the psychological insight belonging to the finest of novels.The Water Giver: The Story of a Mother, a Son, and Their Second Chance
By Joan Ryan. 2009
Both a medical drama and meditation on motherhood, The Water Giver is Joan Ryan's honest account of her doubts and…
mistakes in raising a learning-disabled son and the story of how his near-fatal accident gave her a second chance as a parent. Joan Ryan tells the powerful story of how her son&’s near-fatal accident, and his struggle to become whole again, gave her a second chance to become the mother she had always wished she could be.• Acclaimed journalist and author: Joan Ryan&’s sports columns earned her thirteen Associated Press Sports editors Awards, the National Headliner Award, and the Women&’s Sports Foundation&’s Journalism Award, among other honors. Her first book, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters was named one of the Top 100 Sports Books of all Time by Sports Illustrated.• Medical drama: When Ryan&’s sixteen-year-old son fell off of a skateboard, it wasn&’t obvious at first how serious his injuries were. With a journalist&’s eye for the telling detail and the rhythms of a natural storyteller, she captures his medical ordeal as he lurches from crisis to crisis—and with harrowing honesty and astonishing insight, relates her own journey through unknown emotional terrain.• A mother&’s story: Ryan&’s son was diagnosed with Sensory Integration Dysfunction as a toddler; by the time he reached school age, it was clear that he suffered from ADHD and other learning disabilities. Though she loved him fiercely, she never stopped trying to fix him. When he is restored to her after his accident, she realizes she has the opportunity to be his mother all over again—only this time she lets go of the illusion of control. Now she not only accepts, but also embraces her son for who he really is.Hyper-chondriac: One Man's Quest to Hurry Up and Calm Down
By Brian Frazer. 2007
Does your blood pressure surge if the car in front of you turns without signaling? Do your neck veins pulsate…
when a cashier takes too long to ring you up? Does relaxing seem like it'll have to wait until you're dead? Then your name could very well be Brian Frazer. On paper, Frazer is the world's healthiest guy. He eats right, exercises regularly, gets plenty of sleep, has never smoked and has missed only one day of flossing in the last five years. But inside he's a swirling vortex of angst, capable of contracting a new malady every month. Once Frazer realized that all his ills were tied to stress, he went on a quixotic quest for calm, venturing into everything from Tai Chi, serotonin blockers and Kabbalah to an unfortunate incident involving pineapple-chicken curry at a Craniosacral therapy session. Never has the road to wellville taken so many unforeseen turns. Achingly funny, uncomfortably true and always entertaining, Hyperchondriac is just the medicine for anyone who wants to take it down a notch.Fight for the Forgotten: How a Mixed Martial Artist Stopped Fighting for Himself and Started Fighting for Others
By Justin Wren, Loretta Hunt. 2015
From notable mixed martial artist and UFC fighter Justin Wren comes a personal account of faith, redemption, empowerment, and overwhelming…
love as one man sets out on an international mission to fight for those who can’t fight for themselves.Justin knows what it feels like to be wronged. Bullied as a child, he dreamed of becoming a UFC fighter and used his anger as fuel to propel his dream into reality. But the pain from his childhood didn’t dissipate. Instead, Justin fell into a spiral of depression and addiction, leading him on a path toward destruction. Kicked out of his training community and with no other place to go, Justin agreed to attend a men’s retreat, and it was there he found God.As Justin began piecing his life back together, he joined several international mission trips that opened his eyes and his heart to a world filled with suffering deep in the jungle of the Democratic Republic of Congo. There he met the Mbuti Pygmy tribe, a group of people persecuted by neighboring tribes and forced into slavery. His encounter with the Pygmy tribe left him wondering who was there to help them and in that moment Justin stepped out of the ring and into a fight for the forgotten.From cage fighter to freedom fighter, Justin’s story is a deeply personal memoir with a bigger message about a quest, justice, and the amazing things that can happen when we relinquish our lives to God.Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet
By Michael Wolff. 1999
From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Fire and Fury and Siege: Trump Under Fire—Michael Wolff's wickedly…
funny chronicle of his rags-to-riches-to-rags adventure as a fledgling Internet entrepreneur exposes an industry powered by hype, celebrity, and billions of investment dollars, and notably devoid of profit-making enterprises.As he describes his efforts to control his company's burn rate—the amount of money the company consumes in excess of its income—Wolff offers a no-holds-barred portrait of unaccountable successes and major disasters, including the story behind Wired magazine and its fanatical founder, Louis Rossetto; the rise of America Online, perhaps the most dysfunctional successful company in history, and the humiliating inability of people such as Bill Gates to untangle the intricacies of the Web.The &“delightfully macabre&” (The New York Times) true tale of a brilliant and eccentric surgeon…and his quest to transplant the…
human soul.In the early days of the Cold War, a spirit of desperate scientific rivalry birthed a different kind of space race: not the race to outer space that we all know, but a race to master the inner space of the human body. While surgeons on either side of the Iron Curtain competed to become the first to transplant organs like the kidney and heart, a young American neurosurgeon had an even more ambitious thought: Why not transplant the brain?Dr. Robert White was a friend to two popes and a founder of the Vatican&’s Commission on Bioethics. He developed lifesaving neurosurgical techniques still used in hospitals today and was nominated for the Nobel Prize. But like Dr. Jekyll before him, Dr. White had another identity. In his lab, he was waging a battle against the limits of science and against mortality itself—working to perfect a surgery that would allow the soul to live on after the human body had died.This &“fascinating&” (The Wall Street Journal), &“provocative&” (The Washington Post) tale follows his decades-long quest into tangled matters of science, Cold War politics, and faith, revealing the complex (and often murky) ethics of experimentation and remarkable innovations that today save patients from certain death. It&’s a &“masterful&” (Science) look at our greatest fears and our greatest hopes—and the long, strange journey from science fiction to science fact.The Rise and Fall of Bear Stearns
By Alan C. Greenberg, Mark Singer. 2010
Former CEO of Bear Stearns, Alan Greenberg, sheds light on his life as one of Wall Street&’s most respected figures…
in this candid and fascinating account of a storied career and its stunning conclusion. On March 16, 2008, Alan Greenberg, former CEO and current chairman of the executive committee of Bear Stearns, found himself in the company&’s offices on a Sunday. More remarkable by far than the fact that he was in the office on a Sunday is what he was doing: participating in a meeting of the board of directors to discuss selling the company he had worked decades to build for a fraction of what it had been worth as little as ten days earlier. In less than a week the value of Bear Stearns had diminished by tens of billions of dollars.As Greenberg recalls, "our most unassailable assumption—that Bear Stearns, an independent investment firm with a proud eighty-five-year history, would be in business tomorrow—had been extinguished. . . . What was it, exactly, that had happened, and how, and why?" This book provides answers to those questions from one of Wall Street&’s most respected figures, the man most closely identified with Bear Stearns&’ decades of success.The Rise and Fall of Bear Stearns is Alan Greenberg&’s remarkable story of ascending to the top of one of Wall Street&’s venerable powerhouse financial institutions. After joining Bear Stearns in 1949, Greenberg rose to become formally head of the firm in 1978.No one knows the history of Bear Stearns as he does; no one participated in more key decisions, right into the company&’s final days. Greenberg offers an honest, clear-eyed assessment of how the collapse of the company surprised him and other top executives, and he explains who he thinks was responsible.Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America
By Mel White. 1994
&“Compelling…eloquent and compassionate…We learn as much about growing up in the Christian right as we do about gay life in…
Mel White&’s heartfelt and revealing memoir.&” —San Francisco ExaminerUntil Christmas Eve 1991, Mel White was regarded by the leaders of the religious right as one of their most talented and productive supporters. He penned the speeches of Oliver North. He was a ghostwriter for Jerry Falwell, worked with Jim Bakker, flew in Pat Robertson&’s private jet, walked sandy beaches with Billy Graham. What these men didn&’t know was that Mel White—evangelical minister, committed Christian, family man—was gay. &“An engrossing journey to unite sexuality with faith&” (Dallas Morning News), Stranger at the Gate details Mel White&’s twenty-five years of being counseled, exorcised, electric-shocked, prayed for, and nearly driven to suicide because his church said homosexuality was wrong. But his salvation—to be openly gay and Christian—is more than a unique coming-out story. It is a chilling exposé that goes right into the secret meetings and hidden agendas of the religious right. Told by an eyewitness and sure to anger those Mel White once knew best, Stranger at the Gate is a warning about where the politics of hate may lead America…an important book by a brave man whose words can make us both richer in spirit and much wiser too.Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son
By Peter Manseau. 2005
The 1950s was a boom time for the Catholic Church in America, with large families of devout members providing at…
least one son or daughter for a life of religious service. Boston was at the epicenter of this explosion, and Bill Manseau and Mary Doherty -- two eager young parishioners from different towns -- became part of a new breed of clergy, eschewing the comforts of homey parishes and choosing instead to minister to the inner-city poor. Peter Manseau's riveting evocation of his parents' parallel childhoods, their similar callings, their experiences in the seminary and convent, and how they met while tending to the homeless of Roxbury during the riot-prone 1960s is a page-turning meditation on the effect that love can have on profound faith. Once married, the Manseaus continued to fight for Father Bill's right to serve the church as a priest, and it was into this situation that Peter and his siblings were born and raised to be good Catholics while they witnessed their father's personal conflict with the church's hierarchy. A multigenerational tale of spirituality, Vows also charts Peter's own calling, one which he tried to deny even as he felt compelled to consider the monastic life, toying with the idea of continuing a family tradition that stretches back over 300 years of Irish and French Catholic priests and nuns. It is also in Peter's deft hands that we learn about a culture and a religion that has shaped so much of American life, affected generations of true believers, and withstood great turmoil. Vows is a compelling tale of one family's unshakable faith that to be called is to serve, however high the cost may be.For the Love of Physics: From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time—A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics
By Walter Lewin, Warren Goldstein. 2011
“YOU HAVE CHANGED MY LIFE” is a common refrain in the emails Walter Lewin receives daily from fans who have…
been enthralled by his world-famous video lectures about the wonders of physics. “I walk with a new spring in my step and I look at life through physics-colored eyes,” wrote one such fan. When Lewin’s lectures were made available online, he became an instant YouTube celebrity, and The New York Times declared, “Walter Lewin delivers his lectures with the panache of Julia Child bringing French cooking to amateurs and the zany theatricality of YouTube’s greatest hits.” For more than thirty years as a beloved professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lewin honed his singular craft of making physics not only accessible but truly fun, whether putting his head in the path of a wrecking ball, supercharging himself with three hundred thousand volts of electricity, or demonstrating why the sky is blue and why clouds are white. Now, as Carl Sagan did for astronomy and Brian Green did for cosmology, Lewin takes readers on a marvelous journey in For the Love of Physics, opening our eyes as never before to the amazing beauty and power with which physics can reveal the hidden workings of the world all around us. “I introduce people to their own world,” writes Lewin, “the world they live in and are familiar with but don’t approach like a physicist—yet.” Could it be true that we are shorter standing up than lying down? Why can we snorkel no deeper than about one foot below the surface? Why are the colors of a rainbow always in the same order, and would it be possible to put our hand out and touch one? Whether introducing why the air smells so fresh after a lightning storm, why we briefly lose (and gain) weight when we ride in an elevator, or what the big bang would have sounded like had anyone existed to hear it, Lewin never ceases to surprise and delight with the extraordinary ability of physics to answer even the most elusive questions. Recounting his own exciting discoveries as a pioneer in the field of X-ray astronomy—arriving at MIT right at the start of an astonishing revolution in astronomy—he also brings to life the power of physics to reach into the vastness of space and unveil exotic uncharted territories, from the marvels of a supernova explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud to the unseeable depths of black holes. “For me,” Lewin writes, “physics is a way of seeing—the spectacular and the mundane, the immense and the minute—as a beautiful, thrillingly interwoven whole.” His wonderfully inventive and vivid ways of introducing us to the revelations of physics impart to us a new appreciation of the remarkable beauty and intricate harmonies of the forces that govern our lives.God Gave Me You: A True Story of Love, Loss, and a Heaven-Sent Miracle
By Tricia Seaman, Diane Nichols. 2016
When a single mother with terminal cancer asked a nurse she’d met in the oncology ward to raise her son,…
neither could have imagined the miracles God had in store.God Gave Me You tells the true story of how these two incredible mothers met, the immediate bond they formed, and the ups and downs of joining families as one’s earthly life ebbed away. The miracle of these two families coming together demonstrates that family isn’t always blood—sometimes it’s made up of the people God gives you if you have a willing heart.Oncology nurse Tricia Seaman and her family had their hearts set on adopting a son. They were months into the grueling process when Tricia met a terminally ill cancer patient on her regular rounds. Curiously, the two shared the same name. Trish Somers was that patient—a single mom whose world revolved around her eight-year-old son, Wesley. As the young mother poured out her fears and emotions during her post-operative care, Tricia sensed theirs would be like no other nurse-patient relationship she had experienced in her career.When the cancer spread, it became clear Trish had only a short time left to live. That’s when the inconceivable happened: Trish asked her nurse—a woman who had been a complete stranger just days before—to raise her beloved son when she passed away.God Gave Me You will inspire you with a story of courage, trust, and faith that God’s plans are bigger and more amazing then we could hope for on our own. It’s a story you’ll turn to again and again when you’re looking for hope and a reason to believe in miracles.A Bookshop in Berlin: The Rediscovered Memoir of One Woman's Harrowing Escape from the Nazis
By Françoise Frenkel. 2019
A PEOPLE BOOK OF THE WEEKWINNER OF THE JQ–WINGATE LITERARY PRIZE&“A haunting tribute to survivors and those lost forever—and a…
reminder, in our own troubled era, never to forget.&” —PeopleAn &“exceptional&” (TheWall Street Journal) and &“poignant&” (TheNew York Times) book in the tradition of rediscovered works like SuiteFrançaise and The Nazi Officer&’s Wife, the powerful memoir of a fearless Jewish bookseller on a harrowing fight for survival across Nazi-occupied Europe.In 1921, Françoise Frenkel—a Jewish woman from Poland—fulfills a dream. She opens La Maison du Livre, Berlin&’s first French bookshop, attracting artists and diplomats, celebrities and poets. The shop becomes a haven for intellectual exchange as Nazi ideology begins to poison the culturally rich city. In 1935, the scene continues to darken. First come the new bureaucratic hurdles, followed by frequent police visits and book confiscations. Françoise&’s dream finally shatters on Kristallnacht in November 1938, as hundreds of Jewish shops and businesses are destroyed. La Maison du Livre is miraculously spared, but fear of persecution eventually forces Françoise on a desperate, lonely flight to Paris. When the city is bombed, she seeks refuge across southern France, witnessing countless horrors: children torn from their parents, mothers throwing themselves under buses. Secreted away from one safe house to the next, Françoise survives at the heroic hands of strangers risking their lives to protect her. Published quietly in 1945, then rediscovered nearly sixty years later in an attic, A Bookshop in Berlin is a remarkable story of survival and resilience, of human cruelty and human spirit. In the tradition of Suite Française and The Nazi Officer&’s Wife, this book is the tale of a fearless woman whose lust for life and literature refuses to leave her, even in her darkest hours.Fields of Grace: Faith, Friendship, and the Day I Nearly Lost Everything
By Hannah Luce, Robin Gaby Fisher. 2013
In this remarkable tale of hope and survival, Hannah Luce tells how, as the sole survivor of a terrible plane…
crash, she came to grips with her faith: “a calamitous, fascinating memoir, written with surprising spiritual sophistication” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).On May 11, 2012, a small plane carrying five young adults, en route to a Christian youth rally, crashed in a Kansas field, skidding 200 yards before hitting a tree and bursting into flames. Only two survived the crash: ex-marine Austin Anderson, who would die the next morning from extensive burns, and his friend Hannah Luce, the daughter of Teen Mania founder and influential youth minister Ron Luce.This is Hannah’s story.In Fields of Grace, Hannah details the investigation of her faith, her coming-of-age as the dutiful daughter of Evangelical royalty, her decision to join her father’s ministry outreach to teens, and her miraculous survival and recovery following the accident. It also serves as a tribute and testament to the lives of the dear friends who perished in the catastrophic plane crash and reveals how their memory continues to inspire all that she does.Here is the “riveting personal account” (Booklist) of a girl who grew up as the daughter of one of the most influential evangelical leaders of our time, who questioned her early religious convictions somewhere along the way and who, from the embers of that doomed plane ride, finally found her faith.Bigger, Fancier, and more cutthorat than ever!When Freeman Hall left The Big Fancy to pursue his screenwriting dreams, he thought…
the horrors of working in a handbag department were finally over. But instead of fame and fortune, he found himself stuck behind a wall of script-killing rewrites, unable to make a living.In Return to the Big Fancy, Freeman shares his wildly entertaining journey back through the fiery gates of Retail Hell. He thought he had seen it all in his day, but with the bar set higher than ever before, employees are now graciously bowing before Corporate as they climb over fellow salespeople, and even friends, to earn enough transactions and commissions to actually survive. As he learns more of the wretchedness that has befallen the sales floor, he realizes that The Big Fancy has its customers and its employees on a short leash. But leave it to Freeman and the threat of disappearing commissions to rally the retail slaves and show Corporate who's really in charge!Parish the Thought: An Inspirational Memoir of Growing Up Catholic in the 1960s
By John Bernard Ruane. 2007
In a warm and affectionate narrative that "transports readers back to a time before cable television, cell phones, and the…
Internet" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), John Bernard Ruane paints a marvelous portrait of his Irish-Catholic boyhood on the southwest side of Chicago in the 1960s. Capturing all the details that perfectly evoke those bygone days for Catholics and baby boomers everywhere, Ruane recounts his formative years donning the navy-and-plaid school uniform of St. Bede's: the priests and nuns; bullies, best friends, and first loves; and most memorable teachers -- including the miniskirted blonde who inspired lust among the fifth-grade boys but was fired for protesting the Vietnam War. Here are stories from the heart of his hardworking, blue-collar family: the good times and bad; sibling rivalries; summers by the lake; delivering newspapers in the frigid Chicago winter; the fire that destroyed the family home; and the loss of their beloved mother to cancer. And here are priceless accounts of Ruane's days as an altar boy: from an embarrassing bell-ringing mishap, to serving a strict pastor who built a magnificent church but couldn't inspire Christian spirit, to the Heaven-sent guitar-playing priest who turned worship around for a generation of youth.A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing
By Reynolds Price. 2003
Reynolds Price has long been one of America's most acclaimed and accomplished men of letters -- the author of novels,…
stories, poems, essays, plays, and a memoir. In A Whole New Life, however, he steps from behind that roster of achievements to present us with a more personal story, a narrative as intimate and compelling as any work of the imagination.In 1984, a large cancer was discovered in his spinal cord ("The tumor was pencil-thick and gray-colored, ten inches long from my neck-hair downward"). Here, for the first time, Price recounts without self-pity what became a long struggle to withstand and recover from this appalling, if all too common, affliction (one American in three will experience some from of cancer). He charts the first puzzling symptoms; the urgent surgery that fails to remove the growth and the radiation that temporarily arrests it (but hurries his loss of control of his lower body); the occasionally comic trials of rehab; the steady rise of severe pain and reliance on drugs; two further radical surgeries; the sustaining force of a certain religious vision; an eventual discovery of help from biofeedback and hypnosis; and the miraculous return of his powers as a writer in a new, active life.Beyond the particulars of pain and mortal illness, larger concerns surface here -- a determination to get on with the human interaction that is so much a part of this writer's much-loved work, the gratitude he feels toward kin and friends and some (though by no means all) doctors, the return to his prolific work, and the "now appalling, now astonishing grace of God."A Whole New Life offers more than the portrait of one brave person in tribulation; it offers honest insight, realistic encouragement and inspiration to others who suffer the bafflement of catastrophic illness or who know someone who does or will.Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty
By Kate Hennessy. 2017
&“An intimate, revealing and sometimes wrenching family memoir of the journalist and social advocate who is now being considered for…
canonization&” (The New York Times), told with illuminating detail by her granddaughter.Dorothy Day (1897-1980) was a prominent Catholic, writer, social activist, and co-founder of a movement dedicated to serving the poorest of the poor. Her life has been documented through her own writings as well as the work of historians, theologians, and academics. What has been missing until now is a more personal account from the point of view of someone who knew her well. Dorothy Day:The World Will Be Saved by Beauty is a frank and reflective, heartfelt and humorous portrayal written by her granddaughter, Kate Hennessy.Dorothy Day, writes Hennessy, is an unusual candidate for sainthood. Before her conversion, she lived what she called a &“disorderly life,&” during which she had an abortion and then gave birth to a child out of wedlock. After her conversion, she was both an obedient servant and a rigorous challenger of the Church. She was a prolific writer whose books are still in print and widely read. Although compassionate, Hennessy shows Day to be driven, dogmatic, loving, as well as judgmental, in particular with her only daughter, Tamar. She was also full of humor and laughter and could light up any room she entered.An undisputed radical heroine, called &“a saint for the occupy era&” by TheNew Yorker, Day&’s story unfolds against a backdrop of New York City from the 1910s to the 1980s and world events spanning from World War I to Vietnam. This thoroughly researched and intimate biography provides a valuable and nuanced portrait of an undersung and provocative American woman. &“Frankly,&” says actor and activist Martin Sheen, &“it is a must-read.&”In this &“riveting read, meshing memoir with scientific explication&” (Nature), a world-renowned neuroscientist reveals how he learned to communicate with…
patients in vegetative or &“gray zone&” states and, more importantly, he explains what those interactions tell us about the working of our own brains.&“Vivid, emotional, and thought-provoking&” (Publishers Weekly), Into the Gray Zone takes readers to the edge of a dazzling, humbling frontier in our understanding of the brain: the so-called &“gray zone&” between full consciousness and brain death. People in this middle place have sustained traumatic brain injuries or are the victims of stroke or degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer&’s and Parkinson&’s. Many are oblivious to the outside world, and their doctors believe they are incapable of thought. But a sizeable number—as many as twenty percent—are experiencing something different: intact minds adrift deep within damaged brains and bodies. An expert in the field, Adrian Owen led a team that, in 2006, discovered this lost population and made medical history. Scientists, physicians, and philosophers have only just begun to grapple with the implications. Following Owen&’s journey of exciting medical discovery, Intothe Gray Zone asks some tough and terrifying questions, such as: What is life like for these patients? What can their families and friends do to help them? What are the ethical implications for religious organizations, politicians, the Right to Die movement, and even insurers? And perhaps most intriguing of all: in defining what a life worth living is, are we too concerned with the physical and not giving enough emphasis to the power of thought? What, truly, defines a satisfying life? &“Strangely uplifting…the testimonies of people who have returned from the gray zone evoke the mysteries of consciousness and identity with tremendous power&” (The New Yorker). This book is about the difference between a brain and a mind, a body and a person. Into the Gray Zone is &“a fascinating memoir…reads like a thriller&” (Mail on Sunday).Between Two Trailers: A Memoir
By J. Dana Trent. 2024
A powerful, unforgettable memoir about a girl who escapes her childhood as a preschool drug dealer in rural Indiana—only to…
find that no one can really &“make it out&” until they make peace with where their story began: homeHome, it turns out, is where the war is. It&’s also where the healing begins.Dana Trent is only a preschooler the first time she uses a razor blade to cut up weed and fill dime bags for her schizophrenic father, King. While King struggles with his unmedicated psychosis, Dana&’s mother, the Lady, a cold and self-absorbed woman whose personality disorders rule the home, guards large bricks of drugs from the safety of their squalid trailer. But when the Lady impulsively plucks Dana from the Midwest and moves the two of them south, their fresh start results in homelessness and bankruptcy. In North Carolina, Dana becomes torn between her gritty midwestern past and her newfound desire to be a polite southern girl, struggling to reconcile her shame with an ache to figure out who she is, and where she belongs.But the past is never far behind. After persevering through childhood and eventually graduating from Duke University, Dana imagines that her hidden Indiana life is finally behind her, only to realize that running from her upbringing has kept her from making peace with the people and places that shaped her. Ultimately, Dana finds that though love for family is universally complicated, there is no shame in survival, and for those who want it, there is always a path home.