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From Shel Silverstein, the celebrated author of The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends, comes The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, sure to delight fans of all ages with Silverstein's iconic drawings and humor.
This companion tale to The Missing Piece is an inventive and heartwarming book where the missing piece is in search of its perfect match.

The missing piece sat alone...waiting for someone to come along and take it somewhere. All it wants is to roll along with its perfect match, but some are too small, others too big, and some fit yet don't roll. The missing piece feels sad and lonely until it meets the Big O, and learns that all it ever needed was a little encouragement and determination to fulfill its dreams.

And don't miss Runny Babbit Returns, the new book from Shel Silverstein!

Discover all Special Editions!

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b&w From Shel Silverstein, the celebrated author of The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends, comes The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, sure to delight fans of all ages with Silverstein's iconic drawings and humor. This companion tale to The Missing Piece is an inventive and heartwarming book where the missing piece is in search of its perfect match.

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Parable of the Sower

(Grand Central Publishing, Paperback, aPRIL 2019)
This highly acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from award-winning author Octavia E. Butler "pairs well with 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale" (John Green, New York Times)
Now with a new foreword by N. K. JEMISIN

When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions.

Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith . . . and a startling vision of human destiny.

Parable of the Talents

(Grand Central Publishing, Paperback, august 2019)
Originally published in 1998, this shockingly prescient novel's timely message of hope and resistance in the face of fanaticism is more relevant than ever.
In 2032, Lauren Olamina has survived the destruction of her home and family, and realized her vision of a peaceful community in northern California based on her newly founded faith, Earthseed. The fledgling community provides refuge for outcasts facing persecution after the election of an ultra-conservative president who vows to "make America great again." In an increasingly divided and dangerous nation, Lauren's subversive colony-a minority religious faction led by a young black woman-becomes a target for President Jarret's reign of terror and oppression.Years later, Asha Vere reads the journals of a mother she never knew, Lauren Olamina. As she searches for answers about her own past, she also struggles to reconcile with the legacy of a mother caught between her duty to her chosen family and her calling to lead humankind into a better future.

(Seven Stories Press, hardcover, February 2017)

New Introduction by GLORIA STEINEM

Parable of the Sower is the Butlerian odyssey of one woman who is twice as feeling in a world that has become doubly dehumanized. The time is 2025. The place is California, where small walled communities must protect themselves from hordes of desperate scavengers and roaming bands of people addicted to a drug that activates an orgasmic desire to burn, rape, and murder. When one small community is overrun, Lauren Olamina, an 18 year old black woman with the hereditary train of "hyperempathy"-which causes her to feel others' pain as her own-sets off on foot along the dangerous coastal highways, moving north into the unknown.

Available from: Seven Stories Press, Amazon, Indie Bound, Powell's Books, Barnes & Noble

(Seven Stories Press, hardcover, February 2017)

New Introduction by TOSHI REAGON

Parable of the Talents celebrates the Butlerian themes of alienation and transcendence, violence and spirituality, slavery and freedom, separation and community, to astonishing effect, in the shockingly familiar, broken world of 2032. Long awaited, Parable of the Talents is the continuation of the travails of Lauren Olamina, the heroine of 1994′s Nebula-Prize finalist, bestselling Parable of the Sower. It is told in the voice of Lauren Olamina's daughter-from whom she has been separated for most of the girl's life-with sections in the form of Lauren's journal. Against a background of a war-torn continent, and with a far-right religious crusader in the office of the U.S. presidency, this is a book about a society whose very fabric has been torn asunder, and where the basic physical and emotional needs of people seem almost impossible to meet.

As Ms. Butler herself explained, " Parable of the Sower was a book about problems. I originally intended that Parable of the Talents be a book about solutions. I don't have the solutions, so what I've done here is looked at the solutions that people tend to reach for when they're feeling troubled and confused."

And yet, human life, oddly, thrives in this unforgettable novel. And the young Lauren of Parable of the Sower here blossoms into the full strength of her womanhood, complex and entirely credible.

Available from: Seven Stories Press, Barnes & Noble, Indie Bound, Powell's Books

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This highly acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from award-winning author Octavia E. Butler "pairs well with 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale" (John Green, New York Times) Now with a new foreword by N. K.

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A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)

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Read 11.6k reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandere...

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A powerful and provocative novel about ordinary lives that intersect during a heart-stopping crisis.

The warm fall day starts like any other at the Center-a women's reproductive health services clinic -its staff offering care to anyone who passes through its doors. Then, in late morning, a desperate and distraught gunman bursts in and opens fire, taking all inside hostage.

After rushing to the scene, Hugh McElroy, a police hostage negotiator, sets up a perimeter and begins making a plan to communicate with the gunman. As his phone vibrates with incoming text messages he glances at it and, to his horror, finds out that his fifteen-year-old daughter, Wren, is inside the clinic. Read on "

Critical acclaim...

"This is Jodi Picoult at her best: tackling an emotional hot-button issue and putting a human face on it."
PEOPLE magazine

"A Spark Of Light is a book written with warmth and urgency. Picoult sees humans at their best, while understanding them at their most fragile. The story is told in real time, but backwards, a startlingly effective framing device as its texture and tone take on a greater weight than the events it is comprised of...In a lesser writer's hands, A Spark Of Light could simply be a pacy page turner, but Picoult's timing is a Brechtian masterstroke. We know what's going to happen, and instead of breathlessly leading us to an ending, Picoult forces us to focus on the flesh and feelings of everyone who populates the world she has drawn. She makes the political personal, and I believe her novel has the power to alter the landscape at a time when women's reproductive rights are constantly under threat. ...There's a lyricism to Picoult's language, and she sketches her characters vividly and immediately, using the stories they tell as a way of illuminating their creativity and sensitivity. A Spark Of Light is about love and pain, but Picoult never tells you how to feel. She simply explores and promotes the link between intelligence and empathy - and when both qualities are in desperately short supply, I think she's a writer the world needs to be reading right now."
THE INDEPENDENT

#ASparkOfLight debuts as the #1 NYT bestseller!

Join the conversation about A Spark of Light

Upcoming events

Between the Lines Musical "

Due to the coronavirus, we have delayed our off-Broadway opening in New York until Spring 2021. Details will be posted as soon as we have them!

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Jodi Picoult: novels about family, relationships, love, and more

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Official site of Jodi Picoult - author of 24 novels, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers The Storyteller, My Sister's Keeper and many more top sellers. It is estimated that there are 40 million books by Jodi Picoult in print - in 35 countries.

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Read 84.9k reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385547345.. Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your aver...

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Read 20.6k reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Fans of Jacqueline Woodson, Meg Medina, and Jason Reynolds will fall hard for this aston...

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A Story of Justice and Redemption

A powerful true story about the Equal Justice Initiative, the people we represent, and the importance of confronting injustice, Just Mercy is a bestselling book by Bryan Stevenson that has been adapted into a feature film.

About EJI &
Bryan Stevenson

Equal Justice Initiative

EJI is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, challenging racial and economic injustice, and protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society. Founded in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson, a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer and bestselling author of Just Mercy, EJI is a private, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization located in Montgomery, Alabama.

LEARN MORE ABOUT EJI

Bryan Stevenson

Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. A widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned, he has won numerous awards, including the prestigious MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Prize and the ACLU's National Medal of Liberty.

JUST MERCY - #1 New York Times Bestseller

The Book

An unforgettable true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to end mass incarceration in America - from one of the most inspiring lawyers of our time.

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit law office in Montgomery, Alabama, dedicated to defending the poor, the incarcerated, and the wrongly condemned.

Just Mercy tells the story of EJI, from the early days with a small staff facing the nation's highest death sentencing and execution rates, through a successful campaign to challenge the cruel practice of sentencing children to die in prison, to revolutionary projects designed to confront Americans with our history of racial injustice.

One of EJI's first clients was Walter McMillian, a young Black man who was sentenced to die for the murder of a young white woman that he didn't commit. The case exemplifies how the death penalty in America is a direct descendant of lynching - a system that treats the rich and guilty better than the poor and innocent.

Download discussion guide

The message of this book . . . is that evil can be overcome, a difference can be made. Just Mercy will make you upset and it will make you hopeful.

Ted Conover / The New York Times Book Review

Selected as a

New York Times Best Seller

Winner of the

Dayton Literary Peace Prize

Winner of a

NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction

Finalist for the

Kirkus Reviews Prize

Winner of a

Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

Selected as a

An American Library Association Notable Book

The Movie

Just Mercy takes us inside America's broken criminal justice system and compels us to confront inequality and injustice.

Based on the bestselling book, the Just Mercy movie presents the unforgettable story of Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) and the case of Walter McMillian (Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx), who was convicted and sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit.

Download discussion guide

I spent most of Just Mercy devastated by its most rueful death-row inmate, only to belatedly realize that it was [Rob] Morgan who was breaking my heart.

Wesley Morris / The New York Times

Just Mercy is a handsome, impeccably mounted tribute to [Stevenson's] activism and also his fellow advocates.

Justin Chang / Los Angeles Times

Winner of

ABA Silver Gavel Award

Winner of the National Board of Review's

Freedom of Expression Award

Earned audience score of

99% on Rotten Tomatoes

Michael B. Jordan Winner of

BET Award for Best Actor

Winner of

Christopher Award

Winner of

Four NAACP Image Awards

Winner of American Black Film Festival

Movie of the Year

Jamie Foxx Winner of American Black Film Festival

Excellence in the Arts Award

Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Brie Larson, Rob Morgan, Tim Blake Nelson, Andrene Ward-Hammond, O'Shea Jackson Jr. and Karan Kendrick

Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. He had barely opened the nonprofit law office in Montgomery, Alabama, when he agreed to represent Walter McMillian, a Black man wrongly convicted of killing a white woman in the town that inspired To Kill a Mockingbird.

Clients

Just Mercy tells the story of EJI's clients, from Walter McMillian and Anthony Ray Hinton - who were exonerated from Alabama's death row - to Joe Sullivan and Ian Manuel - who won release after being sentenced to die in prison for nonhomicide crimes in Florida when they were just 13 years old. We invite you to learn more about the clients featured in the book below.

Sign up to stay connected and receive updates about EJI's work.

By submitting this form, you are granting: Equal Justice Initiative, 122 Commerce Street, Montgomery, Alabama, 36104, United States, http://www.eji.org permission to email you. You may unsubscribe via the link found at the bottom of every email. (See our Email Privacy Policy for details.) Emails are serviced by Mailchimp.

FAQ

If you have additional questions about Just Mercy or the work of EJI, please visit eji.org.

Is Just Mercy a true story?

Yes. The movie is based on an actual case that is detailed in Bryan Stevenson's book, Just Mercy, published in 2014. Bryan took on Walter McMillian's case in 1988 to challenge his wrongful conviction and death sentence. Over the next six years, Bryan filed multiple legal challenges and conducted several hearings, but the trial court refused to grant Mr. McMillian a new trial despite overwhelming evidence of innocence, including the recantation of the State's main witness, Ralph Myers. Bryan appealed the ruling and the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals ordered a new trial because the State withheld evidence of Mr. McMillian's innocence. Bryan filed a motion to dismiss all charges; the trial court granted it after the district attorney acknowledged Mr. McMillian's innocence. While the movie condenses the six years of litigation, it mostly tracks the actual account presented in the book. Mr. McMillian's claim of innocence attracted national attention as broadcast a story about the case. The movie accurately introduces other people represented by Bryan Stevenson, including Herbert Richardson, a Vietnam War veteran who was executed in 1989, and Anthony Ray Hinton, who spent nearly 30 years on death row for a crime he did not commit.

What made the Walter McMillian case unique?

Sadly, while the McMillian case had some unique features, there are actually lots of people who are innocent who have been sentenced to death in the United States. Because Mr. McMillian was accused of a crime that took place in Monroeville, Alabama, the community where Harper Lee grew up and wrote the beloved novel To Kill a Mockingbird, there were interesting dynamics at play in the case. While the Monroeville community loves the Mockingbird story and took great pride in its association with the fictional characters of the book, there was tremendous resistance to recognizing Mr. McMillian's innocence despite overwhelming evidence. Walter McMillian and Ralph Myers were both placed on death row before going to trial, which is illegal and a rare form of coercion. After Mr. Myers agreed to give false testimony against Mr. McMillian, he was removed from death row. Mr. McMillian spent 15 months on death row awaiting his trial in an effort to pressure him into pleading guilty. The case was unique as well because the trial judge, Robert E. Lee Key Jr., moved the trial from Monroe County, which is over 40% Black, to Baldwin County, which had a much smaller Black population, making a nearly all-white jury more likely. Despite that change of venue, the jury that convicted Mr. McMillian of capital murder sentenced him to life imprisonment without parole. In Alabama, the trial judge has the authority to override a jury's verdict of life and impose the death penalty, which is what happened. Judge override of life verdicts has been a unique characteristic of the death penalty in Alabama. The Walter McMillian case is also significant because it was one of the very early cases where a death row prisoner was proved innocent after being sentenced to death despite death penalty reforms in the 1970s and early 1980s.

What happened to Walter McMillian after his release?

Walter McMillian stayed in Alabama after his release. Bryan and the staff at EJI filed civil rights lawsuits against state and local officials for putting him on death row before his trial and for violating his rights. The case settled out of court after several years of litigation. Because police, prosecutors, and judges are immune from judgments that require them to make payments to people victimized by abuse of authority and wrongdoing, the settlement compensation was much less than had been hoped. An effort to make the sheriff accountable went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, but the Court ruled that the sheriff could be protected from liability based on immunity laws. With the money that was obtained for Mr. McMillian, he was able to work in Monroe County selling scrap metal. About 10 years after his release, he began showing symptoms of early onset dementia, which some doctors believed was caused by the trauma of his ordeal on death row. Mr. McMillian died in 2013. He and Bryan remained close friends, occasionally traveling together to talk to audiences about the death penalty. They appeared at a United States Senate hearing shortly after Mr. McMillian's release to testify about the need for ending the death penalty and for reform of the criminal justice system. Read Mr. McMillian's statement.

How often are innocent people sentenced to death?

Since 1973, more than 165 people have been released from death row after evidence of their innocence was uncovered. A shocking rate of error has emerged: for every nine people executed in this country, one innocent person has been exonerated. Wrongful convictions have been found to result from erroneous eyewitness identifications, false and coerced confessions, misconduct by police and prosecutors, inadequate legal defense, false or misleading forensic evidence, and perjury by witnesses who are promised lenient treatment or other incentives in exchange for their testimony. Nine people have been exonerated in Alabama. Walter McMillian, Randall Padgett, Gary Drinkard, Louis Griffin, Wesley Quick, James Cochran, Charles Bufford, Anthony Ray Hinton, and Daniel Moore were found not guilty of the crimes that originally put them on Alabama's death row.

How does the Just Mercy book differ from the movie?

The book provides much more historical context for the issues raised in the movie and provides detail about our nation's evolving embrace of mass incarceration and excessive punishment. The book discusses many more clients and cases than the McMillian case depicted in the movie. The book focuses a lot on Bryan and EJI's work challenging the adult prosecution of children, some of whom were condemned to die in prison when they were 13 or 14 years of age. Bryan explores the evolution of mass incarceration and the impact on the poor, people of color, and people who are disfavored. The impact of over-incarceration on the mentally disabled and the growing numbers of people sentenced harshly because of mental illness is detailed. There are chapters that explore the increasing incarceration rates for women and how many women are criminalized for being poor. Bryan's own journey dealing with racial bias, police violence, and the enormous obstacles that must be overcome to do justice are more fully developed in the book, which recently was adapted for young adults.

How can I learn more about the issues raised in the movie?

In addition to reading the book, Just Mercy, you should visit EJI in Montgomery, Alabama. EJI has recently opened a major cultural complex to educate the public about our nation's history of racial injustice and the implications of that history for issues like mass incarceration and the death penalty. The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration opened in April 2018 along with the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which is dedicated to thousands of African American victims of lynching. EJI's Peace and Justice Memorial Center provides daily presentations about EJI's work and the sites. Over 600,000 people have visited these sites. Visit eji.org to take a closer look at the work of EJI.

Do you have resources for discussing Just Mercy with students or community groups?

Yes, we have a Discussion Guide that provides background information and selected topics for discussing the Just Mercy movie with students, community groups, friends, and family. You can also download this discussion guide for students and groups who are reading the Just Mercy book.

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Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson | Bestselling Book and Adapted Film

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'Just Mercy' is a bestselling book telling the story of EJI and who we represent, that has been adapted into a feature film.

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Read 561 reviews from the world’s largest community for readers. At twenty-two, Julie Barton collapsed on her kitchen floor in Manhattan. She was one year …

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Read 21.2k reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Welcome to Charon's Crossing. The tea is hot, the scones are fresh, and the dead are jus...

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Mother Hunger® is a registered trademark of Kelly McDaniel, and as such, one cannot be represented without the other. We invite you to use the term Mother Hunger® along with material from the book and this site both internally and publicly, within boundaries. You may use the content within your practices, community groups, conferences, and more. You must include the following attribution: Copyright Kelly McDaniel, Mother Hunger® and kellymcdanieltherapy.com, All rights reserved.

You can also share and post Mother Hunger® references and materials on social media, within emails and newsletters, and on resource lists with the original link to this website, with the following attribution: Mother Hunger® @kellymcdanieltherapy and kellymcdanieltherapy.com, All rights reserved.

No commercial use is permitted. Unapproved derivations of Mother Hunger® content can not be used to accrue money for yourself or your organization, ie., charging people or asking for donations in a session that includes Mother Hunger® material; or making and selling products based on Kelly McDaniel's content. If you would like to discuss the possibility of partnering or training for you or your organization, please visit the "For Professionals" section of this site or contact us at contact@kellymcdanieltherapy.com.

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Books * Kelly McDaniel Therapy | Mother Hunger

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Books by Kelly McDaniel Mother Hunger Ready to Heal Making Advances How Adult Daughters Can Understand and Heal from Lost Nurturance, Protection, and Guidance The constant search for mother love can be a lifelong emotional burden, but healing begins with knowing and naming what we are missing.

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National Book Critics Circle Award Winner (Nonfiction)
PEN/Oakland Award Winner
BCALA Nonfiction Award Winner
Gustavus Meyers Award Winner

"This groundbreaking study documents that the infamous Tuskegee experiment, in which black syphilitic men were studied but not treated, was simply the most publicized in a long, and continuing, history of the American medical establishment using African Americans as unwitting or unwilling human guinea pigs . . . Washington is a great storyteller, and in addition to giving us an abundance of information on 'scientific racism,' the book, even at its most disturbing, is compulsively readable. It covers a wide range of topics-the history of hospitals not charging black patients so that, after death, their bodies could be used for anatomy classes; the exhaustive research done on black prisoners throughout the 20th century-and paints a powerful and disturbing portrait of medicine, race, sex, and the abuse of power."
- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Medical ethicist and journalist Washington details the abusive medical practices to which African Americans have been subjected.
"She begins her shocking history in the colonial period, when owners would hire out or sell slaves to physicians for use as guinea pigs in medical experiments. Into the 19th century, black cadavers were routinely exploited for profit by whites who shipped them to medical schools for dissection and to museums and traveling shows for casual public display. The most notorious case here may be the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which about 600 syphilitic men were left untreated by the U.S. Public Health Service so it could study the progression of the disease, but Washington asserts that it was the forerunner to a host of similar medical abuses . . . African American skepticism about the medical establishment and reluctance to participate in medical research is an unfortunate result. One of her goals in writing this book, aside from documenting a shameful past, is to convince them that they must participate actively in therapeutic medical research, especially in areas that most affect their community's health, while remaining ever alert to possible abuses.
"Sweeping and powerful."
- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

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Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington: 9780767915472 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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National Book Critics Circle Award Winner (Nonfiction)PEN/Oakland Award WinnerBCALA Nonfiction Award WinnerGustavus Meyers Award Winner "This groundbreaking study documents that the infamous Tuskegee experiment, in which black syphilitic men were studied but not treated, was simply the most publicized in a long, and continuing, history of the American medical establishment using African Americans as unwitting or unwilling human guinea pigs .

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When I picked up I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou I knew two things:

1. The author is friends with Oprah and the Clintons.
2. The book is considered a classic.

The book is mostly set in the tiny town of Stamps, Arkansas. I lived much of my childhood within an hour's drive of Stamps so I found that detail very interesting.

The account of life as a Negro (the term Ms. Angelou uses) in rural Arkansas was fascinating. Some of it brought to mind memories of my own childhood (though I am "l...more

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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1)

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When I picked up I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou I knew two things: 1. The author is friends with Oprah and the Clintons.2. The book is considered a classic. The book is mostly set in the tiny town of Stamps, Arkansas.

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It turns out that when a wrenching past is confronted with wisdom and bravery, the outcome can be compassion and enlightenment-both for the reader who has lived through this kind of unimaginable pain and for the reader who knows nothing of it. Roxane Gay shows us how to be decent to ourselves, and decent to one another. HUNGER is an amazing achievement in more ways than I can count.
Ann Patchett, Commonwealth and Bel Canto

At its simplest, it's a memoir about being fat - Gay's preferred term - in a hostile, fat-phobic world. At its most symphonic, it's an intellectually rigorous and deeply moving exploration of the ways in which trauma, stories, desire, language and metaphor shape our experiences and construct our reality.
New York Times

Wrenching, deeply moving. . . a memoir that's so brave, so raw, it feels as if [Gay]'s entrusting you with her soul
Seattle Times

Gay turns to memoir in this powerful reflection on her childhood traumas...Timely and resonant, you can be sure that Hunger will touch a nerve, as so much of Roxane Gay's writing does.
Newsday

This raw and graceful memoir digs deeply into what it means to be comfortable in one's body. Gay denies that hers is a story of "triumph," but readers will be hard pressed to find a better word.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A heart-rending debut memoir from the outspoken feminist and essayist. . . . An intense, unsparingly honest portrait of childhood crisis and its enduring aftermath.
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Displays bravery, resilience, and naked honesty from the first to last page. . . . Stunning . . . essential reading.
Library Journal (starred review)

It's hard to imagine this electrifying book being more personal, candid, or confessional. . . . In 88 short, lucid chapters, Gay powerfully takes readers through realities that pain her, vex her, guide her, and inform her work. The result is a generous and empathic consideration of what it's like to be someone else: in itself something of a miracle.
Booklist (starred review)

The book's short, sharp chapters come alive in vivid personal anecdotes. . . . And on nearly every page, Gay's raw, powerful prose plants a flag, facing down decades of shame and self-loathing by reclaiming the body she never should have had to lose.
Entertainment Weekly

Her spare prose, written with a raw grace, heightens the emotional resonance of her story, making each observation sharper, each revelation more riveting. . . . It is a thing of raw beauty.
USA Today

Bracingly vivid. . . . Remarkable. . . . Undestroyed, unruly, unfettered, Ms. Gay, live your life. We are all better for having you do so in the same ferociously honest fashion that you have written this book.
Los Angeles Times

Unforgettable. . . . Breathtaking. . . . We all need to hear what Gay has to say in these pages. . . . Gay says hers is not a success story because it's not the weight-loss story our culture demands, but her breaking of her own silence, her movement from shame and self-loathing toward honoring and forgiving and caring for herself, is in itself a profound victory.
San Francisco Chronicle

Hunger is Gay at her most lacerating and probing. . . . Anyone familiar with Gay's books or tweets knows she also wields a dagger-sharp wit.
Boston Globe

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It turns out that when a wrenching past is confronted with wisdom and bravery, the outcome can be compassion and enlightenment-both for the reader who has lived through this kind of unimaginable pain and for the reader who knows nothing of it. Roxane Gay shows us how to be decent to ourselves, and decent to one another.

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New York Times, National, & International Bestseller

Best Book of the Year:
Amazon * NPR * Entertainment Weekly * Huffington Post * Buzzfeed * Grantland * Booklist * and more

Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet . . .

So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue-in Marilyn's case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James's case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the center of every party.

When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. James, consumed by guilt, sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to find a responsible party, no matter what the cost. Lydia's older brother, Nathan, is certain that the neighborhood bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it's the youngest of the family-Hannah-who observes far more than anyone realizes and who may be the only one who knows the truth about what happened.

A profoundly moving story of family, history, and the meaning of home, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, exploring the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family, and uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

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Everything I Never Told You - CELESTE NG

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Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet . . . So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair.

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Read 32.3k reviews from the world's largest community for readers. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Writ...

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Read 73.8k reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Mariam is only fifteen when she is sent to Kabul to marry the troubled and bitter Rashee...

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i can't read about foot binding anymore. it literally makes me sick to my stomach. this is mostly due to a 15 minute video displayed twice every hour in a small missionary museum in new mexico.

the sole purpose of this museum, for reasons i still can't
explain, was to display unusual world practices encountered by missionaries around the globe, throughout history. my parents, wishing to enliven and culture my young and spongelike brain, (and also having nothing else t...more

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Petra X finds walking to get fit very boring

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Lisa (not getting friends updates) Vegan

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uuughughghghghg ugh ugh ugh. i can't read about foot binding anymore. it literally makes me sick to my stomach. this is mostly due to a 15 minute video displayed twice every hour in a small missionary museum in new mexico.

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Read 94.6k reviews from the world's largest community for readers. 1970s Afghanistan: Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tour...

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Read 3,424 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. * Duration: 7 hours and 45 minutes * A candid, compulsively readable, hilarious, and he...

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A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1), The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2), and The Golden Enclaves (The Scholomance, #3)

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A Tale for the Time Being has 70,415 ratings and 9,456 reviews. Zaphoddent said: Dammit this should have been at least a 4 star book! Till about the se...

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Read 13.2k reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since fifth grade, when they bonded over a shar...

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You can support us on Patreon , make a one-time donation on PayPal or get Maintenance Phase shirts, mugs & more on TeePublic .

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Now in paperback

A New York Times Bestseller

A Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick

A gripping novel about the whirlwind rise of an iconic 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer, revealing the mystery behind their infamous break up.

Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the real reason why they split at the absolute height of their popularity...until now.

Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go-Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it's the rock and roll she loves most. By the time she's twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.

Another band getting noticed is The Six, led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she's pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.

Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.

Reviews & Praise

I devoured Daisy Jones & The Six in a day, falling head over heels for it. Taylor Jenkins Reid transported me into the magic of the 70's music scene in a way I'll never forget. The characters were beautifully layered and complex...Daisy and the band captured my heart, and they're sure to capture yours too.

Reese Witherspoon

Taylor Jenkins Reid has written a stylish and propulsive if sometimes sentimental novel set against that backdrop, in the stadiums, studios and pool houses of late-1970s L.A...easily her most sophisticated and ambitious novel... In the end, that's the most surprising gift of Daisy Jones & The Six - it's a way to love the rock n roll of the 1970s, without apology, without cynicism, bell-bottoms and all.

New York Times Book Review

Backstage intrigue is the engine of Daisy Jones & The Six, Los Angeles novelist Taylor Jenkins Reid's celebration of American mythmaking. The enigmatic Daisy is bound for stardom-and likely to live on beyond the pages of this book.

Vogue

In Daisy Jones & The Six, Taylor Jenkins Reid imagines an oral history of the band's rise and fall. It's fictional-though Reid was inspired by Fleetwood Mac and others-but the band and the era are so fully realized you'll think you're reading a true story.

Real Simple

Daisy Jones & The Six is an explosive, dynamite, down-and-dirty look at a fictional rock band told in an interview style that gives it irresistible surface energy...although the real power of this delicious novel is at its tender beating heart. It's an anthem and a ballad and a marvel.

Elin Hilderbrand, author of The Perfect Couple

Taylor Jenkins Reid is a stunning writer whose characters are unforgettable and stories are deeply emotional. Her new book is her most gripping book yet and takes her writing to a whole new level.

Emily Giffin, author of All We Ever Wanted

As a writer, you try to stay in your own lane. Every now and then you come across a book and think 'I wish I had thought of that.' Daisy Jones & The Six is the first book I've read where I thought 'I wish I were cool enough to write that.' Raw, emotive and addictively voyeuristic, Daisy Jones is imbued with the same anguished heart that fuels the very best rock and roll. Like my favorite albums, this book will live with me for a very long time.

Steven Rowley, author of Lily and the Octopus

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Now in paperback A New York Times Bestseller A Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick A gripping novel about the whirlwind rise of an iconic 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer, revealing the mystery behind their infamous break up.

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We are born. We die. In between we watch a lot of films. And some of these films shape the people we are. This is a podcast about those films. (And a bit about death.)

Join comedian, actor, writer and swimmer Brett Goldstein and an extra special weekly guest as they go all the way into life and death by way of movies, to ultimately pick their Films To Be Buried With!

We are born. We die. In between we watch a lot of films. And some of these films shape the people we are. This is a podcast about those films. (And a bit about death.)

Join comedian, actor, writer and swimmer Brett Goldstein and an extra special weekly guest as they go all the way into life and death by way of movies, to ultimately pick their Films To Be Buried With!

you don't have to be a film buff to enjoy this

only just found this podcast. Brett is great at encouraging conversation around whatever films are suggested. whether pre-recorded at Brett's home or with a live audience, these podcasts are amazing, 55 down, 200 episodes to go.... 🥰

Pure escapism

I absolutely love this podcast. Never fails to entertain. Would love to see Greg Davies on the show.

Wonderful podcast!

About 5 years ago I had a car crash... no significant injuries - I was lucky to have walked away with just a few bruises. However, I was a mess. I couldn't focus and was just sat at home crying, not knowing what to do with myself. I called a friend, and she came straight over gave me a hug and we watched The Fantastic Mr Fox. It's the film that means the most to me because every time I watch or think about that film, I remember how much I love her for being there when I needed her most... also, less importantly, the film is lovely.

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films to be buried with with brett goldstein

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‎Films To Be Buried With with Brett Goldstein on Apple Podcasts

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We are born. We die. In between we watch a lot of films. And some of these films shape the people we are. This is a podcast about those films. (And a bit about death.) Join comedian, actor, writer and swimmer Brett Goldstein and an extra special weekly guest as they go all the way into life and d...

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Read 22.7k reviews from the world's largest community for readers. "The Trunchbull" is no match for Matilda! Matilda is a little girl who is far too good ...

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Wesley Morris and J Wortham are working it out in this weekly show about culture in the broadest sense. That means television, film, books, music — but also the culture of work, dating, the internet and how those all fit together.

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Spare by Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex: 9780593593806 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Discover the global phenomenon that tells an unforgettable story of love, loss, and healing. “Compellingly artful . . . [a] blockbuster memoir.”—The…

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Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Or...

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Read 4,832 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Now a New York Times Bestseller! As a college student he spent 16 days in the Pacific O...

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In Part 1 of this 2-part video, we learn about the "domestication" of humans and how all the rules and values of our family and society are imposed on us through a system of punishment and reward. As little children, our true nature is to love and be happy, to explore and enjoy life; we are completely authentic. But then we learn to be what others think we "should" be, and because it's not okay for us to be what we are, we start pretending to be what we are not. By the time we are teenagers, we've learned to judge ourselves, punish ourselves, and reward ourselves according to agreements that we never even chose. The Four Agreements help us to break self-limiting agreements and replace them with agreements that bring us freedom, happiness, and love.

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The Four Agreements have sold over 10 million copies in the United States, and have been published in 40 languages worldwide. The Four Agreements are: Be impeccable with your word. Don't take anything personally. Don't make assumptions. Always do your best.

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President Bill Clinton has always been known for his ability to explain complex issues in a way that makes sense, and for finding a way to connect with everyone he meets. To hear him tell it, this comes from growing up in a family and a culture where storytelling was their entertainment. From a young age, he learned to speak by learning to listen. He found that everyone has a story, and understanding their story is the key to understanding them as people. And if you understand people, it's easier to make sense of our world. Inspired by this belief, this series will feature conversations with Bill Clinton and some of the most fascinating people of our time-to explore where we've been, but more importantly, where we're going.

President Bill Clinton has always been known for his ability to explain complex issues in a way that makes sense, and for finding a way to connect with everyone he meets. To hear him tell it, this comes from growing up in a family and a culture where storytelling was their entertainment. From a young age, he learned to speak by learning to listen. He found that everyone has a story, and understanding their story is the key to understanding them as people. And if you understand people, it's easier to make sense of our world. Inspired by this belief, this series will feature conversations with Bill Clinton and some of the most fascinating people of our time-to explore where we've been, but more importantly, where we're going.

Love this podcast!

President Clinton is insightful and curious, and he understands the uniqueness of each of us and our individual contributions to this great country of ours.

?

Do you realize absolutely no one is listening to this?

The Clintons are so mysterious until now!

I was just researching all the people close to the Clintons killed and "committed suicide" and determined that despite the mountain of evidence against them I love them, the global agenda and dig their unique view even though it is anti-American and Anti-freedom.

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why am i telling you this? with bill clinton

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‎Why Am I Telling You This? with Bill Clinton on Apple Podcasts

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President Bill Clinton has always been known for his ability to explain complex issues in a way that makes sense, and for finding a way to connect with everyone he meets. To hear him tell it, this comes from growing up in a family and a culture where storytelling was their entertainment.

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Welcome to The Good Parts Podcast, an irreverent dive into what's below the surface.
Multi-platinum pop artist Andy Grammer is the creator and host of The Good Parts Podcast, a series that digs into the philosophies, successes, failures, and spiritual experiences of the of the world's best known entertainers. From Grammy-award winner Dan Reynolds of Imagine Dragons to Tony-award winning actor and musician Leslie Odom Jr. ( Hamilton), Andy's guests are some of the most interesting and creative people in business, entertainment, and media. Each episode is an intimate conversation as Andy that lays bare who they are and why they do what they do.

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Welcome to The Good Parts Podcast, an irreverent dive into what's below the surface. Multi-platinum pop artist Andy Grammer is the creator and host of The Good Parts Podcast, a series that digs into the philosophies, successes, failures, and spiritual experiences of the of the world's best known entertainers.

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I feel the author deliberately kept the years ambiguous, wiping each chapter clean of all traces of any defining cultural / technological landmarks thI feel the author deliberately kept the years ambiguous, wiping each chapter clean of all traces of any defining cultural / technological landmarks that would place a scene in a particular year. The entire story exists in a time that feels a lot like now (or now-ish) as a result - felt like a very deliberate ambiguity, and another of the things that gave the book a rather unique vibe. Perhaps the point is the time isn't important - keeps the focus on the characters, and the idea that the issues dealt with were timeless. ...more (less)

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I feel the author deliberately kept the years ambiguous, wiping each chapter clean of all traces of any defining cultural / technological landmarks thI feel the author deliberately kept the years ambiguous, wiping each chapter clean of all traces of any defining cultural / technological landmarks that would place a scene in a particular year.

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Discover and share books you love on Goodreads.

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After 25 years at the Late Night desk, Conan realized that the only people at his holiday party are the men and women who work for him. Over the years and despite thousands of interviews, Conan has never made a real and lasting friendship with any of his celebrity guests. So, he started a podcast to do just that. Deeper, unboundedly playful, and free from FCC regulations, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend is a weekly opportunity for Conan to hang out with the people he enjoys most and perhaps find some real friendship along the way.

After 25 years at the Late Night desk, Conan realized that the only people at his holiday party are the men and women who work for him. Over the years and despite thousands of interviews, Conan has never made a real and lasting friendship with any of his celebrity guests. So, he started a podcast to do just that. Deeper, unboundedly playful, and free from FCC regulations, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend is a weekly opportunity for Conan to hang out with the people he enjoys most and perhaps find some real friendship along the way.

Arnold

It was the most delightful, spontaneous gem of an interview.
Thank you!

Openings

Thought I was listening to the view..don't think Conan will find a friend.

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‎Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend on Apple Podcasts

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After 25 years at the Late Night desk, Conan realized that the only people at his holiday party are the men and women who work for him. Over the years and despite thousands of interviews, Conan has never made a real and lasting friendship with any of his celebrity guests.

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Discover and share books you love on Goodreads.

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"If you read one book in 2020, make it this one." Tricycle, The Buddhist Review
"With grace, intelligence, and palpable compassion, Selassie weaves discussions of implicit bias, intergenerational trauma, and white supremacy throughout her coverage of more traditional spiritual topics, such as ego and conscious awareness. This is a powerful work of spirituality and anti-racism." "This debut from meditation teacher Sebene Selassie is a pure delight. Selassie's style tells the reader: You belong in these pages, and her message tells us: You belong, period." Mindful Magazine Publishers Weekly
You are not separate. You never were. You never will be.

We are not separate from each other. But we don't always believe it, and we certainly don't always practice it. In fact, we often practice the opposite-disconnection and domination. From unconscious bias to "cancel culture," denial of our inherent interconnection limits our own freedom.

In You Belong, I reveal that accepting your belonging is the key to facing the many challenges currently impacting our world. I use ancient philosophy, multidisciplinary research, exquisite storytelling, and razor sharp wit (if I may so myself!). I lead you in an exploration of all the ways we separate (and thus suffer) and offer you a map back to belonging.

To belong is to experience joy in any moment: to feel pleasure, dance in public, accept death, forgive what seems unforgivable, and extend kindness to yourself and others. To belong is also to acknowledge injustice, reckon with history, and face your own shadows. In You Belong, I offer you practical advice and profound revelations and I make a winning case for resisting the forces that demand separation and invite you to reclaim the connection-and belonging-that have been yours all along.

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You Belong | SEBENE SELASSIE | Teacher & Author |

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"If you read one book in 2020, make it this one." Tricycle, The Buddhist Review "With grace, intelligence, and palpable compassion, Selassie weaves discussions of implicit bias, intergenerational trauma, and white supremacy throughout her coverage of more traditional spiritual topics, such as ego and conscious awareness.

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Discover and share books you love on Goodreads.

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Read 27.3k reviews from the world's largest community for readers. In a house full of sadness and secrets, can young, orphaned Mary find happiness? Mary L...

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Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Col…

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Read 45.6k reviews from the world’s largest community for readers. What would you change if you could go back in time? In a small back alley in Tokyo, the…

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Read 1,868 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. A stunning and honest debut poetry collection about the beauty and hardships in being a ...

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In this season of On Being and those to come, we are going to train the core human questions on the emerging "generative AI." Beyond the hype and the doom, what is this new technology calling us to as human beings? What is our agency to shape it to human purpose, and how might it bring us - literally - to our senses? This inaugural conversation with Reid Hoffman is a wide and deep beginning foundation. He and Krista venture into unexpectedly relevant places, like the nature of friendship in human life, and what it would mean to create "contained, boundaried AI" - and Reid's use of words like "delightful" and "elevating" as qualities we can impart to this technology which, as we're hearing again and again, is going to change everything.

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Deep thinking and moral imagination, social creativity - and joy. Podcasts, convenings, and much, much more.

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Skip to Main Content (Press Enter)

"An incendiary cocktail of literary ambition, fame, sexual adventure and addiction."
- Newsweek

"Perfectly outstanding...Milford's biography takes the whole of Millay's heaving, grieving, ecstatic life into account in a way that is almost loving, always respectful, even when blunt truth and candor are necessary....Masterful."
-Kaye Gibbons, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Original and spellbinding."
-Lorrie Moore, The New York Review of Books

" Savage Beauty is irresistible."
-Amanda Foreman

"One seldom sees this level of brilliant, hands-on research in contemporary literary biography. The result is this compelling, keenly perceptive life of Edna St. Vincent Millay-with its own 'savage beauty.'"
-Toni Morrison

"Riveting and revealing... Savage Beauty sweeps before it all previous biographies of Millay, which by contrast seem uninformed and too discreet."
-J. D. McClatchy, The New York Times Book Review

Get the latest updates about Nancy Milford

And go from well-read to best read with book recs, deals and more in your inbox every week.

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Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford: 9780375760815 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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Skip to Main Content (Press Enter) "An incendiary cocktail of literary ambition, fame, sexual adventure and addiction."- Newsweek "Perfectly outstanding...Milford's biography takes the whole of Millay's heaving, grieving, ecstatic life into account in a way that is almost loving, always respectful, even when blunt truth and candor are necessary....Masterful."-Kaye Gibbons, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution "Original and spellbinding."-Lorrie Moore, The New York Review of Books " Savage Beauty is irresistible."-Amanda Foreman "One seldom sees this level of brilliant, hands-on research in contemporary literary biography.

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Discover and share books you love on Goodreads.

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photo by Los Angeles Times

From celebrated ballerina and New York Times bestselling author Misty Copeland, a heartfelt memoir about her friendship with trailblazer Raven Wilkinson which captures the importance of mentorship, shared history, and honoring the past to ensure a stronger future.
Misty Copeland made history as the first African-American principal ballerina at the American Ballet Theatre. Her talent, passion, and perseverance enabled her to make strides no one had accomplished before. But as she will tell you, achievement never happens in a void. Behind her, supporting her rise was her mentor Raven Wilkinson. Raven had been virtually alone in her quest to breach the all-white ballet world when she fought to be taken seriously as a Black ballerina in the 1950s and 60s. A trailblazer in the world of ballet decades before Misty's time, Raven faced overt and casual racism, hostile crowds, and death threats for having the audacity to dance ballet.

The Wind at My Back tells the story of two unapologetically Black ballerinas, their friendship, and how they changed each other-and the dance world-forever. Misty Copeland shares her own struggles with racism and exclusion in her pursuit of this dream career and honors the women like Raven who paved the way for her but whose contributions have gone unheralded. She celebrates the connection she made with her mentor, the only teacher who could truly understand the obstacles she faced, beyond the technical or artistic demands.

A beautiful and wise memoir of intergenerational friendship and the impressive journeys of two remarkable women, The Wind at My Back captures the importance of mentorship, of shared history, and of respecting the past to ensure a stronger future.
Books-A-Million Indiebound

As a young girl living in a motel with her mother and her five siblings, Misty Copeland didn't have a lot of exposure to ballet or prominent dancers. She was sixteen when she saw a black ballerina on a magazine cover for the first time. The experience emboldened Misty and told her that she wasn't alone-and her dream wasn't impossible.

In the years since, Misty has only learned more about the trailblazing women who made her own success possible by pushing back against repression and racism with their talent and tenacity. Misty brings these women's stories to a new generation of readers and gives them the recognition they deserve.

With an introduction from Misty about the legacy these women have had on dance and on her career itself, this book delves into the lives and careers of women of color who fundamentally changed the landscape of American ballet from the early 20th century to today.

The first in a series of picture books inspired by premier ballerina and author Misty Copeland's own early experiences in ballet.
From prima ballerina and New York Times bestselling author Misty Copeland comes the story of a young Misty, who discovers her love of dance through the ballet Coppélia -a story about a toymaker who devises a villainous plan to bring a doll to life.

Misty is so captivated by the tale and its heroine, Swanilda, she decides to audition for the role. But she's never danced ballet before; in fact, this is the very first day of her very first dance class!

Though Misty is excited, she's also nervous. But as she learns from her fellow bunheads, she makes wonderful friends who encourage her to do her very best. Misty's nerves quickly fall away, and with a little teamwork, the bunheads put on a show to remember.

Featuring the stunning artwork of newcomer Setor Fiadzigbey, Bunheads is an inspiring tale for anyone looking for the courage to try something new.

Iconic ballerina Misty Copeland made history when she became the first African-American woman to be named principal dancer of the legendary American Ballet Theater. Get the incredible, behind-the-scenes story of how she overcame a tumultuous upbringing and near career-ending injuries to become one of the most revered dancers of her generation. More than just a ballet success story, Copeland's journey is a hugely inspirational, universal tale of perseverance.

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photo by Los Angeles Times From celebrated ballerina and New York Times bestselling author Misty Copeland, a heartfelt memoir about her friendship with trailblazer Raven Wilkinson which captures the importance of mentorship, shared history, and honoring the past to ensure a stronger future.

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"Perhaps no one knows the importance of balancing feelings with thoughts better than Dr. Judith Orloff, the author of "The Empath's Survival Guide." Her book can help highly sensitive people avoid taking on everyone else's needs and problems."
-Jane Brody, New York Times
"Dr Orloff has done a great service to empaths everywhere with The Empath's Survival Guide. This information will help thousands of people protect themselves from psychic vampires, set healthy boundaries, and recognize their sensitivity as the gift it truly is."
-Christiane Northrup M.D. NY Times best-selling author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom

Book Description

New York Times bestselling author and UCLA psychiatrist, Judith Orloff, M.D. created this practical, empowering book for everyone who wants to develop their sensitivities and empathy to become more caring people in an often insensitive world. Whether you're a highly sensitive person, or an empath who absorbs other people's stress, or simply someone who wants to live a more open-hearted life without burning out or experiencing compassion fatigue-this book is for you. It's also for the loved ones of sensitive people who want to become more supportive of them. Sensitivity is a great gift that needs to be honored and developed.

The Empath's Survival Guide begins with self-assessment exercises to help you understand your sensitivity, then offers potent strategies for protecting yourself from overwhelm and replenishing your vital energy. For any sensitive person who's been told to "grow a thick skin," here is your lifelong guide for staying fully open while building resilience, exploring your gifts, raising empathic children, and feeling welcomed and valued by a world that desperately needs what you have to offer. It's also about embracing the empath in all of us.

As a physician and empath herself, Dr Orloff is passionate about this topic as she sees how sensitive people too often get misdiagnosed in the mainstream health care system with depression, agoraphobia, panic disorder, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. In this book, she offers empaths and all sensitive people a range of "survival guide" strategies to positively manage their sensitivities and avoid sensory and intuitive overload. She covers topics including health, work, love, sex, parenting, narcissists and other energy vampires, and developing intuition. Then, with these strategies in place, they can enjoy their gifts of depth, creativity, intuition, love of nature, capacity to deeply love, and fulfill their desire to help others and better the world.

What is the difference between having empathy and being an empath? "Having empathy means our heart goes out to another person in joy or pain," says Dr. Judith Orloff. "But, for empaths, it goes much farther. We actually feel others' emotions, energy, and physical symptoms in our own bodies, without the usual defenses that most people have."
CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE THE COMPANION AUDIO PROGRAM "ESSENTIAL TOOLS FOR EMPATHS" Click HERE to receive 4.75 Home Study CEU's for Counselors, Social Workers & Psychologists."
With The Empath's Survival Guide, Dr. Orloff offers an invaluable resource to help sensitive people develop healthy coping mechanisms in our high-stimulus world-while fully embracing their gifts and power.

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"Perhaps no one knows the importance of balancing feelings with thoughts better than Dr. Judith Orloff, the author of "The Empath's Survival Guide." Her book can help highly sensitive people avoid taking on everyone else's needs and problems." -Jane Brody, New York Times "Dr Orloff has done a great service to empaths everywhere with The Empath's Survival Guide.

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The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the ...

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Read 11.1k reviews from the world's largest community for readers. A pioneering researcher and one of the world's foremost experts on traumatic stress offe...

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Official Website for Best Selling Author Elizabeth Gilbert

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The instant #1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller
"A must read for anyone hoping to live a creative life... I dare you not to be inspired to be brave, to be free, and to be curious." -PopSugar

From the worldwide bestselling author of Eat Pray Love: the path to the vibrant, fulfilling life you've dreamed of.

Readers of all ages and walks of life have drawn inspiration and empowerment from Elizabeth Gilbert's books for years. Now this beloved author digs deep into her own generative process to share her wisdom and unique perspective about creativity. With profound empathy and radiant generosity, she offers potent insights into the mysterious nature of inspiration. She asks us to embrace our curiosity and let go of needless suffering. She shows us how to tackle what we most love, and how to face down what we most fear. She discusses the attitudes, approaches, and habits we need in order to live our most creative lives. Balancing between soulful spirituality and cheerful pragmatism, Gilbert encourages us to uncover the "strange jewels" that are hidden within each of us. Whether we are looking to write a book, make art, find new ways to address challenges in our work, embark on a dream long deferred, or simply infuse our everyday lives with more mindfulness and passion, Big Magi c cracks open a world of wonder and joy.

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Big Magic | Official Website for Best Selling Author Elizabeth Gilbert

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The instant #1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller "A must read for anyone hoping to live a creative life... I dare you not to be inspired to be brave, to be free, and to be curious." -PopSugar From the worldwide bestselling author of Eat Pray Love: the path to the vibrant, fulfilling life you've dreamed of.

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Read 12.3k reviews from the world's largest community for readers. As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the ...

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I think this book is more self-help than it is memoir, and the memoir parts were way more interesting.
First off: I have a real problem with the author describing herself as "caged." I think middle-class, college educated white women really overestimate and catastrophise the kind of disadvantages they face from being women. We are all certainly confined by cultural and social values that are arbitrary. I would not call being in an unhappy marriage "caged." There are actual people in cages in Ame...more

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I think this book is more self-help than it is memoir, and the memoir parts were way more interesting. First off: I have a real problem with the author describing herself as "caged." I think middle-class, college educated white women really overestimate and catastrophise the kind of disadvantages they face from being women.

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Read 130 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. An urgent, vital manifesto of intersectional, internationalist, abolitionist feminism, fro...

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"Like so many pieces of yarn, [Badkhen] weaves the words of Persian poets, Western explorers, contemporary journalists and scholars into her narrative, enriching her own account with those that came before... a powerful, unsentimental study of life persisting in extreme conditions. Perhaps the greatest testament to her success is that, upon reading the final page, the reader wonders how the people populating her narrative are faring, and desperately hopes that they are all right." - The New York Observer

"Capture[s] the fatalistic ambience of a place where opium addiction is rampant, mobile phones are an impossible luxury and the Taliban lurk in the shadows." - The New York Times Book Review

"Transporting... even in this harshest of environments, Badkhen is able to capture kinship, laughter, and merriment... At the risk of spouting clichés (but don't they become such because of the universal truths buried within?), Badkhen weaves her own literary magic." - Christian Science Monitor

"Intrepid... Season by season, rite by rite, encounter by encounter, thread by illuminating thread, Badkhen weaves a glorious prose carpet that poignantly captures the surface and the soul of life in Oqa, and in all the Oqas that grace the loom of Afghanistan." - National Geographic

"This book will leave you entertained, informed and heartbroken. It will allow you not only to imagine another place but also to bear witness to a community of cultural producers and preservers of the highest skill whose women are able to create objects of beauty amid poverty, hardship and bloodshed." - TorontoStar

"Anna Badkhen is the latest chronicler to show how great beauty can come out of great deprivation... borders on the sublime. The World is a Carpet is a well-spun tale of a remote world we rarely see." - Financial Times

" The World Is a Carpet will give readers a better understanding of this mysterious land and the courageous and determined people who live there... gorgeous... a lovely treasure unearthed from beneath those shifting desert sands." - Dayton Daily News

"Badkhen makes friends and shares their stories, drawing readers into this small village where the dream of wealth is hope for a life without suffering... A beautifully written book of eternal heartbreak." - Booklist (starred review)

"Badkhen gains astonishing access... More travelogue than reportage, her prose is rich and unhurried, evoking the harshness of the desolate landscape. Oqa's isolation means Osama bin Laden may be unknown, but the Taliban is not; their presence an inescapable fact of life, one that propels Badkhen's story to a simple yet chilling dénouement." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A fearless author regards the Afghans on their own terms... Enormously detailed and moving... a dense, intimate portrayal of an ancient people." -Kirkus

"In an age when writers too often see Afghanistan from behind guarded compound walls, Badkhen places herself alone, for a year, in rural Afghanistan. This perspective-animated by her love of the country, and her hosts-yields a remarkable account of the rhythms, the wit, and the energy of village life." -Rory Stewart, author of The Places in Between

"Nearly a hundred and eighty degrees around the globe, and even farther from our imagining, Anna Badkhen captures with an unerring eye-and just as powerfully, in the haunting cadences of her narrative-the strange, harsh beauty of an unvanquished way of life." -William Langewiesche, author of Sahara Unveiled, American Ground, and The Outlaw Sea

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The World Is a Carpet by Anna Badkhen: 9781594632679 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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"Like so many pieces of yarn, [Badkhen] weaves the words of Persian poets, Western explorers, contemporary journalists and scholars into her narrative, enriching her own account with those that came before... a powerful, unsentimental study of life persisting in extreme conditions.

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Read 38.6k reviews from the world's largest community for readers. A memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identi...

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Women, Race & Class by Angela Y. Davis: 9780394713519 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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From one of our most important scholars and civil rights activist icon, a powerful study of the women’s liberation movement and the tangled knot of oppression facing Black women. “Angela Davis…

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Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement For...

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Caste by Isabel Wilkerson: 9780593230275 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”—Dwight…

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In Atlas of the Heart, we explore eighty-seven of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human and walk through a new framework for cultivating meaningful connection. This is for the mapmakers and travelers in all of us.

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Read 28.5k reviews from the world's largest community for readers. "This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way...

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"It is a testament to the power of His Name Is George Floyd that the book's most vital moments come not after Floyd's death, but in its intimate, unvarnished and scrupulous account of his life . . . a brilliantly revealing portrait of the structures of poverty, land theft and racism that shaped not only Floyd but also his kinship networks in the South. . . . Impressive."
-The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice
"[T]he definitive work on who Floyd was and what his murder triggered. Gripping, heartbreaking, revelatory."
-Oprah Daily

"[A]n expertly researched and excellent biography, a necessary and enlightening read for all."
-The Atlantic

"Masterful, thorough and even-handed."
-Associated Press

"A full, nuanced picture of the man whose murder sparked a movement."

" His Name Is George Floyd reaches way beyond the familiar narrative to consider the world of George Floyd, his country, his history, and the politics and policies that shaped his family-and the family of his murder, Derek Chauvin. It's a feat of fresh reporting, and vivid, contextual contemporary history."
-Chicago Tribune

"Detailed, vivid and moving."
-The Washington Post, 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction

"This deeply reported biography reaches into history to help us understand how the forces of racism shaped every aspect of Floyd's life, up to his tragic death."
-NPR, Books We Love

"Sometimes a single book can change a national discussion, and certainly this is one. With diligence, respect, unflinching courage, His Name Is George Floyd affords tender, trenchant testimony to a man's life and the lessons in the legacies of racism that took it."
-Barnes & Noble, Best Books of the Year

"An incredibly powerful biography."
-Walter Isaacson, Amanpour & Co.

"This is a profound book that everyone in this country needs to read."
-Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!

"Sad, tragic, and such a good read."
-Yamiche Alcindor, PBS Washington Week

"Impeccably researched . . . Interwoven with the biographical details are incisive sketches of the political and historical events that have shaped life for Floyd's family and other Black Americans. This multifaceted and exceptionally informative account is both a moving testament to Floyd and a devastating indictment of America's racial inequities."
-Publishers Weekly, starred review, Best Books 2022"Writing with cogency and compassion, the authors free Floyd from the realm of iconography, restoring his humanity . . . A brilliant biography, history book, and searing indictment of this country's ongoing failure to eradicate systemic racism."
-Kirkus Reviews, starred review, Best of 2022
"This gripping oral history offers a behind-the-scenes look at the man, his loved ones and community, and the aftermath of his horrific death . . . A wrenching chronicle of one of the most devastating events of our time . . . vital and illuminating." starred review, Editors' Choice

"This landmark biography . . . puts the systemic racism Floyd endured his entire life on full, unflinching display."
-Library Journal, Best Books 2022

"A healing book about a truly terrible moment . . . this social biography of George Floyd is a masterwork."
-The Progressive

"Excellent, important . . . Samuels and Olorunnipa's achievement is to bring to life the flesh-and-blood man behind the stereotype and statistics."

"In painstaking detail and textured storytelling, Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa reveal how George Floyd fought to live his entire life. Since we know George Floyd's death with tragic clarity, we must know Floyd's America-and life-with tragic clarity. His Name Is George Floyd is essential for our times."
-Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist

"A much-needed portrait of the life, times, and martyrdom of George Floyd, a chronicle of the racial awakening sparked by his brutal and untimely death, and an essential work of history I hope everyone will read."
-Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song

"A vivid, necessary portrait of a Black man in America, in all its nuance, tragedy, and fullness. In his death, George Floyd's name became a rallying cry for the entire world. And this extraordinary book brings to life, with thoroughly reported detail, the indispensable context of systemic racism in which he lived."
-Abby Phillip, CNN anchor and senior political correspondent

"In the years that have passed since his dying declaration-I can't breathe-we have come to know George Floyd as a symbol but have known little of George Floyd the man. In a monumental work of reporting and storytelling, Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa reveal who George Floyd was in life, and the extent to which his death was the result not just of the callous choices of a single police officer but of four hundred years of societal decisions to devalue Black life. Amid a raging pandemic and urgent questions about our democracy, there has been little time to mourn George Floyd. The pages of this book provide us all with that that long-overdue opportunity."
-Wesley Lowery, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of They Can't Kill Us All: The Story of the Struggle for Black Lives

" His Name Is George Floyd is part eulogy, part elegy, and part psalm. It dares to reclaim the humanity of George Floyd while simultaneously forcing the reader to confront a truth saturated with sorrow and with elements of hope that many in the nation refuse to accept. If we as a nation refuse to 'say his name' and face this tragic moment, we shall condemn our democracy to the lower circle of Dante's Inferno. Let us 'say his name' and thoughtfully read and be moved by this powerful work of journalism and prose."
-Reverend Otis Moss III"This book is a wondrous feat of vivid writing and deep reporting, from the way it leads the reader through George Floyd's final fateful day on earth to its masterly account of Floyd's hopes and frustrations in the larger context of race in America."
-David Maraniss, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of Barack Obama: The Story

" His Name Is George Floyd is a sobering, deeply intimate account of George Floyd's life and all that he had to carry and contend with as a Black man coming of age in America. In a remarkable feat of reporting, Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa help us come to know Floyd as a full, rich, complicated human being, whose murder and whose journey in life forces us to reckon with the unquestionable truth that race still very much matters in this country. Thank you Samuels and Olorunnipa for taking us behind the headlines."
-Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America

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His Name Is George Floyd (Pulitzer Prize Winner) by Robert Samuels, Toluse Olorunnipa: 9780593490617 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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WINNER OF THE 2023 PULITZER PRIZE IN NONFICTION FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE; FINALIST FOR THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS PRIZE; A BCALA 2023 HONOR NONFICTION AWARD WINNER....

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Now available in paperback, featuring a new introduction by Michelle Obama, a letter from the author to her younger self, and a book club guide with 20 discussion questions and a 5-question Q&A.

In her memoir, now available in paperback and as a Young Readers edition, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her-from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world's most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it-in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations-and whose story inspires us to do the same.

Also available as a Young Readers edition adapted for children ages 10 and up, with a special introduction for kids written by the author, and 3 full-color photo inserts.

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America-the first African American to serve in that role-she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.

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Becoming by Michelle Obama - Michelle Obama Books

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Michelle Obama's memoir BECOMING is a deeply personal account from a woman who has steadily defied expectations and who now shares her extraordinary and inspiring story.

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She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor, #1)

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Hello, and welcome to my podcast. I first went viral on TikTok after telling the story of how I got stuck buying 100 tacos on a first date. Since then, it’s been a wild and crazy ride. I now have millions of eyeballs watching my videos on a daily basis (which is just a terrifying number of eyeballs,

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All About Jen

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All About Jen If my broke ass can get rich, you can too. Jen Sincero is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, success coach and motivational cattle prod who's helped countless people transform their personal and professional lives via her products, speaking engagements, newsletters, seminars and books.

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The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist A…

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Read 310 reviews from the world’s largest community for readers. “In the four years before the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, most women deter…

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About Clarissa Pinkola Estés Phd Clarissa Pinkola Estés is an American poet, author, and spoken word artist.

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Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés Phd: 9780345396815 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking

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The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama: 9780593237465 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER • ONE OF TIME’S 100 MUST-READ BOOKS OF 2022 • In an inspiring follow-up to her critically acclaimed, #1 bestselling memoir Becoming, former…

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OUR MOMENT, OUR POWER, OUR PLAN

OUR MOMENT

Here is what people have been doing the last few years:

The Arab Spring, the Orange Revolution, the Maidan protests, the Green Revolution, the Cedar Revolution, the indignados, the Umbrella Revolution, the Brexit, anti-government protests in Iceland, Poland, South Korea, Ethiopia, Hungary, Thailand, Brazil. In the United States, we've had Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, the Dreamers, Black Lives Matter, $15 Now, Standing Rock, Feel the Bern, and then, of course, the Trump Train.

Not every one of these movements has, in a conventional sense, "succeeded." In fact, most have not (yet). But they're all connected. And they're still coming. Occupy begat We Are the 99% begat Fast Food Forward begat $15 Now begat the Bernie Sanders campaign. The Tea Party harnessed a radical anti-establishment spirit that seized and then consumed the Republican Party, fueled Donald Trump's election, unleashed a new populism, and created a "none-of-the-above" opening for libertarians.

This is a moment of citizen power. And that is nowhere more visible than in the turbulence of American political and civic life.

The coming-out of undocumented immigrants; the gradual then sudden triumph of marriage equality activists; the counteroffensive for religious liberty; demonstrations against racial inequity; demonstrations for free speech; the rising voices of sexual assault survivors; the emergence of moms for gun responsibility; the unadorned anger of nativists and white nationalists; the rise of Native American environmental activism; the obliteration of elite gatekeepers in party politics, consumer markets, mass media, pop culture-all are evidence of the same bewildering reality.

The old deal is dead. There is no new deal yet.

Citizens today no longer have to accept the bundles-the one-size-fits-all packages-that the monopolies of politics and business have long forced upon us. Unbundling is everywhere, from how we get the news to how we listen to music or watch television to how we catch a ride across town to how we label ourselves by party, gender, or race.

There is an upbeat, utopian version of this story that's all about an explosion of individual choice. But of course the unbundling is happening to us as well, in ways that have eaten away at our cohesion, security, and dignity. Social contracts-of trust and common cause-have been unbundled by technologies that sift and sort us ever more narrowly. Collective economic arrangements-pensions, benefits, livable wages, worker safety-have been unbundled by the Uberization and globalization of work.

As a result, in greater and growing numbers, we Americans no longer feel in control of our own everyday lives. We have little say in a workplace that makes us expendable. Our lives as consumers are dominated by distant, impersonal brands. In our lives as citizens too many of us are passive spectators or the clients of distant bureaucracies. We have a surplus of stuff and a deficit of attention and purpose. As we retreat to smaller circles of kith and kin, the commons goes to seed.

All this is propelled by a relentlessly upward concentration of wealth. Since 1980, the share of national income flowing to the wealthiest 1 percent has tripled. Since the end of the Great Recession in 2010, over 90 percent of the recovery's gains have gone to the 1 percent. Median wages have barely moved in forty years, while CEO pay has increased tenfold. More than half the benefits of federal tax breaks flow to the wealthiest 5 percent, while low-income families get nearly nothing. Today the greatest determinant of whether an American child will end up poor or rich is whether their parents are poor or rich. By the standards of our national self-story, that is profoundly un-American.

Meanwhile, economic concentration of power begets political concentration of power. Congress today is now driven by the policy preferences of wealthy individuals and corporations. A comprehensive study of congressional action by the political scientists Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens showed that when the average American's policy views clash with those of the rich, the rich almost always prevail. The average American is heard only if wealthy donors happen to be saying the same thing. Congress, redistricted to make itself challenger-proof, is walled off against reform. Meanwhile, Republicans use trumped-up charges of election fraud to keep low-income voters of color from voting. And government insiders from both parties cycle through a perpetual revolving door to Wall Street.

But we knew all this already: the system truly has been rigged.

What's new is that this unprecedented concentration of power is now giving rise to a Great Push Back: a sprawling, disorderly effort by citizens of the right, the left, and the scrambled everywhere-else-people of every color and faith-to challenge monopolized power in all its forms and to demand a greater say in how things are run. The revolutions promised by both Sanders and Trump are still coalescing, even if only one of them has the power of the federal government behind him.

And this Great Push Back-this chaotic, contagious cross-ideological revolt of the smalls-is not the end of the story. It's just the raucous beginning. (Also, there is no end.)

It's made all the more turbulent by another great shift underway: the delinking of whiteness and Americanness. The imminent arrival of an America that is majority-of-color-even as the power structure has remained predominantly white, and even as uneducated whites face declining opportunities and life expectancies-has amplified the anxiety and expectation and volatility already in the air. It has made populists out of racists, and vice versa. It has emboldened social justice advocates and white supremacists alike to press their claims more impatiently.

At some point we may reach a stable new equilibrium in political life. Before then, we can expect many more kinds of confrontation between the people in charge and The People. Between monopoly and its discontents. "Power," as Frederick Douglass said, "concedes nothing without a demand."

But here's the thing: there is a gap between making demands and making them happen. It is the gap between the rhetoric of revolution and the actual changes in values, systems, habits, and skills that add up to a revolution.

This book is designed to help close this "revolution gap": to help you make better demands-and then to make them a reality. It will give you new ways of understanding power in civic life and new tools for claiming and exercising it.

OUR POWER

Let's start with a simple definition: power is the capacity to ensure that others do as you would want them to do.

If that sounds menacing or distasteful, or makes you feel squeamish, I understand. And I invite you to get over it.

Power is something we are often uncomfortable naming and talking about explicitly. In the culture and mythology of democracy, power is supposed to reside with the people. End of story. Further inquiry unnecessary and unwelcome. In our everyday talk, power has a negative moral vibe. Power-mad. Power-hungry. Power grab. Power trip. It's a dirty word. Which is why we so often soften it with such euphemisms as "voice" or "strength."

But power is no more inherently good or evil than fire or physics. It just is. The only question is whether we will try to understand and harness it.

If power is the capacity to ensure that others do as you would want them to do, civic power is that capacity exercised by citizens in public, whether in elections or government or in social and economic arenas.

I say "ensure" rather than "compel" or "make," because power is as often about persuasion or contagion as coercion. And when I say "citizens" here, I do not mean only people with the right papers; I mean all members of the body politic, who can and do contribute to our common life, whatever their documentation status.

Power in civic life takes many forms: force, wealth, state action, ideas, social norms, numbers. And it flows through many conduits: institutions, organizations, networks, laws and rules, narratives and ideologies. Map these forms and conduits against each other and you get what we think of as "the power structure."

But the problem today is that too many people aren't able to draw, read, or follow such a map. Too many people are profoundly-and willfully-illiterate in power: what it is, what forms it takes, who has it, who doesn't, why that is, how it is exercised.

As a result, it's become ever easier for those who do understand how power operates in civic life-those who understand how a bill becomes a law, yes, but also how a friendship becomes a subsidy or how a bias becomes a policy or how a slogan becomes a movement-those folks are more capable than ever of wielding disproportionate influence and filling the void created by the ignorance of the majority.

How does a friendship become a subsidy? Seamlessly, when senior government staffers become corporate lobbyists and work their relationships to benefit their new masters. How does a bias become a policy? Insidiously, as with stop-and-frisk. How does a slogan become a movement? Virally, as when Tea Party activists co-opt "Don't Tread on Me," or Black Lives Matter turns a hashtag into a movement.

But most people don't see or care to look for these realities. Much of this ignorance, this power illiteracy, is intentional. And that compounds the problem.

There are some young people who think the whole business is sordid and would rather do community service or direct action and exempt themselves from politics altogether.

There are some techies who think that the cure-all for power imbalances or abuses is simply more data and transparency, and that tech networks are inherently beneficial.

There are some on the left who think only business has power and some on the right who think only government has power; both blinded by their selective outrage.

There are the naïve who believe that good things just happen, and the cynical who believe that bad things just happen: the fortunate and unfortunate alike who believe their lot is simply what happens to them, rather than the alterable result of a prior arrangement, an inherited allocation, of power.

But as the sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote in The Power Elite: "To accept either view-of all history as conspiracy or all of history as drift-is to relax the effort to understand the facts of power and the ways of the powerful."

As a result of this creeping public fatalism, we now have depressingly low levels of civic participation, knowledge, engagement, and awareness. Political life has been subcontracted out to a band of professionals-money people, message people, outreach people. The rest of us are made to feel like amateurs, as in suckers. We become demotivated to learn more about how things work. And this pervasive power illiteracy becomes, in a vicious cycle, both a cause and a consequence of the concentration of opportunity, wealth, and clout in society.

This is why reimagining civics as the teaching and learning of power is so necessary-now perhaps more than at any time in the last century. If you don't learn how to practice power, someone else will do it for you-in your name, on your turf, with your voice, and often against your interests.

Power plays out in every arena of life, from the home to the workplace to the public square. In this book our focus is on power in political and civic life-how we live in public. And the core question of such power is this: Who decides?

Every aspect of collective existence in a complex society is the result of countless layers of countless decisions, including decisions not to challenge long-ago decisions.

Think: How did the railroad tracks get put down in my town and who decided what would be the wrong side and the right side of those tracks? Why does one employer get tax breaks and subsidies but not another? Why is this community center getting funded instead of that one? Why a new jail instead of preschool? Who decided that?

When a city passes an anti-discrimination ordinance to protect gay, lesbian, and transgender people, but then the state preempts the ordinance, what unfolds is an argument not only about local government law but also about culture and identity. When a national political party has a system for allocating delegates, and one candidate's campaign comes to resent that system, the conflict may unfold in the language of parliamentary rules but it is, more deeply, a matter of muscle and "street heat."

Who decides? All politics turns on that question. The answer is in furious flux today. If you are illiterate in power, if you cannot speak the language of who has clout and how it is exercised, you will not even realize you've been excluded from the question.

OUR PLAN

Before we go through the plan for the pages to come, I want to make one thing clear. This book is not about personal empowerment in the self-help sense. There is no chicken soup for anyone's soul here. Nor is it about empowerment in the Machiavellian sense. You'll find nothing in these pages about how to manipulate the boss or edge out workplace rivals. I offer not the courtier's view of power but the citizen's view.

The citizen's view is by definition greater than the self because the citizen-a member of the body, a contributor to community-is by definition acting in a social context. To be sure, the citizen's view of power is not selfless. It is often quite selfish. But whereas self-help and self-advancement focus on the individual, often in isolation, citizen power is about identity and action in the collective: how we make change happen together.

Something else to be up front about: This book is for underdogs and challengers, not top dogs and incumbents. It's for people who want to be change agents, not defenders of the status quo. That change can emanate from the left or from the right. In many cases, it will scramble the lines between left and right. But in all cases, this book is about democratizing power rather than hoarding it.

As the coming pages will demonstrate, hoarding is not just morally repugnant; it is systemically suicidal. If we want our society to work for everyone, it is imperative that we learn to circulate power and literacy in power far more widely.

And literacy isn't just a metaphor. Imagine finding yourself in a foreign land. If you can't read or write the language, life is very challenging. Street signs, storefronts, newspapers, public notices: all are undecipherable to you. Because you don't know what you don't know, you become an easy mark for fraud, you waste energy and time on everyday tasks, you are cut out of chances to improve your situation, you are in every sense voiceless. You might survive, but you will never thrive.

Not knowing how to read or write power has exactly the same effects. Power is a language. It has a grammar and a syntax. It expresses our wants and needs, and is the medium by which those wants and needs are negotiated and addressed. Ignorance of that language is harmful to your aspirations and to your well-being.

So literacy in power means understanding the what, the how, and the why of power. That's the plan for the rest of this book. In Part II, we will focus on what power truly is and how to imagine it anew. We will explore three core laws of power that shape the patterns of public life-and that challenge us not to give away our power carelessly but to circulate it wisely.

Then in Part III, we will examine how to practice power-and specifically, how those laws demand three kinds of strategies for the citizen who wants to create change. Finally, Part IV examines why you'd want civic power. To what ends are you learning about the elements and the strategies of political action? What are the moral purposes and ethical foundations of your desire for clout?

In every part, we will look at cases from the past and present. Full disclosure: most are from the contemporary United States. That's not jingoism or parochialism. It's knowing what I know best. And it's trusting that you'll be able and willing to connect dots across place and time to your own situation.

We will also look at cases from across the ideological spectrum. You may not like the positions or beliefs of some of the people you will meet. But a skillful citizen finds lessons everywhere. This is important. In case you couldn't tell, I am not the mythical creature called the Impartial Observer. I write as a citizen who has progressive and communitarian views and who has put those views into practice-in government and policy making, in concerted citizen action, and in the publication of ideas.

But I also write as the founder of a cross-ideological organization, Citizen University, that brings together people from the Occupy left, the Tea Party right, and many points between. We challenge each other to find common interests. We generate unlikely collaborations and friendships. We engage where we can in mutual aid because although we will often disagree on policy and intellectual paradigms, we can all agree that this is a time to take on entrenched monopolists-and to boost citizen power.

The analogy I often use in my work, because I am a baseball fanatic, is this: I grew up in upstate New York and I'm a Yankees fan. I hate the Boston Red Sox. But I share with Red Sox fans an abiding interest in the underlying health of the game. The more people who know how to play, and the more resources there are for people to learn how to play, and the less corrupt and rigged the game is, and the less rigid a wall there is between amateurs and professionals, the better it is for everyone. Let's first make sure, together, that the game is not sick-that it prospers in every way. Then my Yanks can go beat the Sox.

The underlying health of civic life today is poor. The Trump presidency was born of decades of democratic decline. The clubs and associations where people used to practice citizenship are moribund. Everyday journalism that holds local power to account is evaporating. Muckraking investigative journalism is even rarer. Civic education in the schools is disappearing, and where it survives, it is often reduced to a bland "lowest-controversy denominator" that makes civics unsexy-or worse, it's hijacked by history-blind fanatics who call Moses one of the Founding Fathers or describe enslaved people as "workers." The game is sick. And it's not a game.

Let's begin the work of healing it.

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I've helped over one million badass women make more, spend less, and feel financially confident.

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Loved how it was organized. It would be easy for a book on trauma to get very heavy and scientific, but it's essentially a transcript of a conversation between Oprah and Dr. Perry, broken up by anecdotes from the both of them.

I also love that they mentioned the pandemic in their conversation-it felt weird to be reading about it while we're still in the midst of it all, but considering how traumatic the last year has been, it felt very timely.

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Loved how it was organized. It would be easy for a book on trauma to get very heavy and scientific, but it's essentially a transcript of a conversation between Oprah and Dr. Perry, broken up by anecdotes from the both of them.

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A few years ago I said 'things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered. We must continue to hold each other tight and pull back the veil.' I have to revise that. Things are getting worse for most of us, between mass shootings, climate catastrophe, regressive sociopolitical battles and an ongoing global pandemic. It's an overwhelming, terrifying and grief-stricken time.

It's also an inevitable time of crisis, given the political and cultural choices we are living through, and the leaders we have elected.

Emergent strategists are often drawn to this liberatory path because our hearts keep breaking - when we hear of the shootings, we love each elder, each baby - we look at their faces, we learn their stories, we say their names, we add them and their families to our altars and light candles. We do the same for those killed by police, those who die because they can't access an abortion, those dying from COVID-19, those dying from mental illness, those dying because of capitalism and white sociopathy and patriarchy and other delusions of scarcity and superiority.

This palpable, active, ongoing grief is a non-negotiable part of this period of immense change. Grief is one of the most beautiful and difficult ways we love. As we grieve we feel our humanity and connection to each other.

Building the path from this heartbreaking present to a future where we center our collective existence in love and care is where we come in.

We are the ones shining light on the lies and inconsistencies in our current reality, and we are the ones dreaming up, remembering and practicing mutual ways of being in community with each other.

We are learning how to grieve without disappearing, and we are refusing to normalize this terror.

We are scholars of belonging and accountability, releasing ourselves from the reductive protocols of punitive culture.

We are protesting injustice wherever we find it, while forging the pathways to a justice we cocreate.

We are releasing either/or thinking, and we are outgrowing every construct meant to divide and disempower us.

We understand that this is an extinction point, and we are not just interested in survival - we want a just world for future generations and for the earth. Each day, we are the ones creating more possibilities.

We at ESII see how this community is showing up to hold each other, to grieve, to care for each other, to practice the future together. We love you, we trust you, we grieve with you, and we change with you.

amb, Sage, Mia, Aliana, Tyler

i also wanted to share a few poems pushing through in this time, trying to hold the hardest pieces:

1.

all of the children
are worth all of our love
worth our intentions
our policies and practices
worth our protection
worth our last breaths
each one a divine gift
from the eternal tree
ripe with potential
and so full of god

knowing this
we have one mission:
treat each one as precious
as a promise unfurling

failing that
let us go extinct

2.

beautiful child
i want to offer you
all the brightness of the world
and show you how you shine

little one
i want to show you
how we always help people
rescue those in danger
show up
be the angel

but first i must teach you
to keep the door closed
on someone
a stranger, a friend, a sibling
screaming
begging

i must teach you
that not everyone can be saved

little darling child
i want you to know
that no one is disposable
each life precious
miraculous
each person someone's child
in need of love
in need of holding

little one
i want to show you
this stunning, abundant world

i'm sorry for the burden
i'm sorry for the truth
i'm sorry for the pale pale time
that we live in

i want you to dream so big
but first
i have to wake you up

3.

the white men
have stopped having sex
it is their protest
they play first person shooter games
with everyone they meet
everywhere they go
they call it defense

the white men get lost
and murder everyone in sight

the white men will only pray
if we make god a mirror for them

the white men don't know
they are the shadow of the species
the part we must navigate
integrate or be swallowed by
our holy gauntlet
achilles and devil and crisis

the white men are lucky
we not an eye for an eye people
not even a vengeful people

what i mean is we a full of God people
not that punitive imposter, no
we a god-is-change people

we building a future
where even the white men
can recover themselves

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an emergent strategy response to mass shootings

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A few years ago I said 'things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered. We must continue to hold each other tight and pull back the veil.' I have to revise that. Things are getting worse for most of us, between mass shootings, climate catastrophe, regressive sociopolitical battles and an ongoing global pandemic.

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I've spent twenty years studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy, and I recently completed a seven-year study on brave leadership. The goal of Dare to Lead is to share everything we've learned about taking off the armor and showing up as leaders in a skills-based and actionable playbook. Here are a few of the big ideas that emerged from this research:

You can't get to courage without rumbling with vulnerability. Embrace the suck.

Daring leadership is a collection of four skill sets that are 100% teachable, observable, and measurable. The foundational skill set of courage-building is "rumbling with vulnerability." Once we have built these rumbling skills, we can move on to the other three skill sets: Living into Our Values, Braving Trust, and Learning to Rise. Our ability to be daring leaders will never be greater than our capacity for vulnerability.

Self-awareness and self-love matter. Who we are is how we lead.

The greatest barrier to courageous leadership is not fear-it's how we respond to our fear. Our armor-the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that we use to protect ourselves when we aren't willing and able to rumble with vulnerability-move us out of alignment with our values, corrode trust with our colleagues and teams, and prevent us from being our most courageous selves.

To scale daring leadership and build courage in teams and organizations, we have to cultivate a culture in which brave work, tough conversations, and whole hearts are the expectation, and armor is not necessary or rewarded. We have to be vigilant about creating a culture in which people feel safe, seen, heard, and respected.

The skill sets that make up courage are not new; they've been aspirational leadership skills for as long as there have been leaders. We just haven't had the courage for real talk about courage. But it's time. And if you want to call these "soft skills" after you've tried putting them into practice-go for it. I dare you. Until then, find a home for your armor, and I'll see you in the arena.

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Daring leadership requires brave work, tough conversations, and showing up with our whole hearts.

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Finding Our Way Podcast - this isn’t a podcast about answers

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This isn’t a podcast about answers.It is an exploration into ourselves, and the skills we need to create and embody the world we want.