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Prayers for Bobby: A Mother's Coming to Terms with the Suicide of Her Gay Son
by Leroy AaronsBobby Griffith was an all-American boy ...and he was gay. Faced with an irresolvable conflict--for both his family and his religion taught him that being gay was "wrong"--Bobby chose to take his own life. Prayers for Bobby, nominated for a 1996 Lambda Literary Award, is the story of the emotional journey that led Bobby to this tragic conclusion. But it is also the story of Bobby's mother, a fearful church goer who first prayed that her son would be "healed," then anguished over his suicide, and ultimately transformed herself into a national crusader for gay and lesbian youth. As told through Bobby's poignant journal entries and his mother's reminiscences, Prayers for Bobby is at once a moving personal story, a true profile in courage, and a call to arms to parents everywhere.
Coming Out Within: Stages of Spiritual Awakening for Lesbians and Gay Men
by Craig O'Neill Kathleen Ritter(From the Book Jacket:) Coming Out Within explores loss-feeling unacceptable to family, church, or workplace; losing loved ones to AIDS; being despised by segments of society- as a catalyst for growth. Using an eight-stage model illustrated with real-life stories, Ritter and O'Neill chart the process by which even the most poignant loss can facilitate personal and spiritual transformation.
Facing Love Addiction: The Love Connection to Codependence, 1st Edition
by Pia Mellody Andrea Wells Miller J. Keith MillerIn this revised and updated version of Facing Love Addiction, Pia Mellody unravels the intricate dynamics of unhealthy love relationships and shows us how to let go of toxic love. Through twelve-step work, exercises, and journal-keeping, the book outlines the recovery process for Love Addicts, and Mellody’s fresh perspective and clear methods work to comfort and motivate all those looking to establish and maintain healthy, happy relationships.
Living Your Dreams
by Gayle DelaneyThe most important thing you will find in these pages is a new method of dream interpretation which is elegantly simple and extraordinarily accurate. The method, called dream interviewing, minimizes the interpreter's distortions and maximizes the dreamer's ability to discover the highly personal and specific meaning of the dream. With practice, both beginners and professionals will discover that dream interviewing techniques will shorten the time necessary to understand a dream and will heighten the dreamer's appreciation for the practical application of the intuition, objectivity, and creativity so abundant in the sleeping mind. You needn't wait years for the good fortune of helpful and beautiful dreams; you can call them forth tonight, or almost any night you wish, by incubating them.
Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance
by Malcolm Gladwell Alex Hutchinson"Reveals how we can all surpass our perceived physical limits." —Adam Grant • "This book is AMAZING!" —Malcolm GladwellLimits are an illusion: a revolutionary book that reveals the secrets of reaching the hidden extra potential within us allForeword by Malcolm GladwellThe capacity to endure is the key trait that underlies great performance in virtually every field—from a 100-meter sprint to a 100-mile ultramarathon, from summiting Everest to acing final exams or completing any difficult project. But what if we all can go farther, push harder, and achieve more than we think we’re capable of?Blending cutting-edge science and gripping storytelling in the spirit of Malcolm Gladwell—who contributes the book’s foreword—award-winning journalist Alex Hutchinson reveals that a wave of paradigm-altering research over the past decade suggests the seemingly physical barriers you encounter as set as much by your brain as by your body. This means the mind is the new frontier of endurance—and that the horizons of performance are much more elastic than we once thought.But, of course, it’s not “all in your head.” For each of the physical limits that Hutchinson explores—pain, muscle, oxygen, heat, thirst, fuel—he carefully disentangles the delicate interplay of mind and body by telling the riveting stories of men and women who’ve pushed their own limits in extraordinary ways.The longtime “Sweat Science” columnist for Outside and Runner’s World, Hutchinson, a former national-team long-distance runner and Cambridge-trained physicist, was one of only two reporters granted access to Nike’s top-secret training project to break the two-hour marathon barrier, an extreme quest he traces throughout the book. But the lessons he draws from shadowing elite athletes and from traveling to high-tech labs around the world are surprisingly universal. Endurance, Hutchinson writes, is “the struggle to continue against a mounting desire to stop”—and we’re always capable of pushing a little farther.
Modern Loss: Candid Conversation About Grief. Beginners Welcome.
by Rebecca Soffer Gabrielle BirknerInspired by the website that the New York Times hailed as "redefining mourning," this book is a fresh and irreverent examination into navigating grief and resilience in the age of social media, offering comfort and community for coping with the mess of loss through candid original essays from a variety of voices, accompanied by gorgeous two-color illustrations and wry infographics.At a time when we mourn public figures and national tragedies with hashtags, where intimate posts about loss go viral and we receive automated birthday reminders for dead friends, it’s clear we are navigating new terrain without a road map.Let’s face it: most of us have always had a difficult time talking about death and sharing our grief. We’re awkward and uncertain; we avoid, ignore, or even deny feelings of sadness; we offer platitudes; we send sympathy bouquets whittled out of fruit.Enter Rebecca Soffer and Gabrielle Birkner, who can help us do better. Each having lost parents as young adults, they co-founded Modern Loss, responding to a need to change the dialogue around the messy experience of grief. Now, in this wise and often funny book, they offer the insights of the Modern Loss community to help us cry, laugh, grieve, identify, and—above all—empathize.Soffer and Birkner, along with forty guest contributors including Lucy Kalanithi, singer Amanda Palmer, and CNN’s Brian Stelter, reveal their own stories on a wide range of topics including triggers, sex, secrets, and inheritance. Accompanied by beautiful hand-drawn illustrations and witty "how to" cartoons, each contribution provides a unique perspective on loss as well as a remarkable life-affirming message.Brutally honest and inspiring, Modern Loss invites us to talk intimately and humorously about grief, helping us confront the humanity (and mortality) we all share. Beginners welcome.
Soon: An Overdue History of Procrastination, from Leonardo and Darwin to You and Me
by Andrew Santella“Well-researched…[Soon] argues that in many cases eminent figures have done great work while putting off work they were supposed to be doing. Procrastination might, for some people, be part of innovation and the creative process.” — Wall Street JournalA fun and erudite celebration of procrastinationAn entertaining, fact-filled defense of the nearly universal tendency to procrastinate, drawing on the stories of history’s greatest delayers, and on the work of psychologists, philosophers, and behavioral economists to explain why we put off what we’re supposed to be doing and why we shouldn’t feel so bad about it. Like so many of us, including most of America’s workforce, and nearly two-thirds of all university students, Andrew Santella procrastinates. Concerned about his habit, but not quite ready to give it up, he set out to learn all he could about the human tendency to delay. He studied history’s greatest procrastinators to gain insights into human behavior, and also, he writes, to kill time, “research being the best way to avoid real work.”He talked with psychologists, philosophers, and priests. He visited New Orleans’ French Quarter, home to a shrine to the patron saint of procrastinators. And at the home of Charles Darwin outside London, he learned why the great naturalist delayed writing his masterwork for more than two decades. Drawing on an eclectic mix of historical case studies in procrastination—from Leonardo da Vinci to Frank Lloyd Wright, and from Old Testament prophets to Civil War generals—Santella offers a sympathetic take on habitual postponement. He questions our devotion to “the cult of efficiency” and suggests that delay and deferral can help us understand what truly matters to us. Being attentive to our procrastination, Santella writes, means asking, “whether the things the world wants us to do are really worth doing.”
Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters--And How to Get It
by Dr Laurie MintzWe’ve been thinking about sex all wrong. Mainstream media, movies, and porn have taught us that sex = penis + vagina, and everything else is just secondary. Standard penetration is how men most reliably achieve orgasm. The problem is, women don’t orgasm this way. We’ve separated our most reliable route to orgasm—clitoral stimulation—from how we feel we should orgasm—penetration. As a result, we’ve created a pleasure gap between women and men:50% of 18-35-year-old women say they have trouble reaching orgasm with a partner64% of women vs 91% of men said they had an orgasm at their last sexual encounter55% of men vs. 4% of women say they usually reach orgasm during first-time hookup sexIn Becoming Cliterate, psychology professor and human sexuality expert Dr. Laurie Mintz exposes the broader cultural problem that’s perpetuating this gap, and what we can do about it. Pulling together evidence from biology, sociology, linguistics, and sex therapy into one comprehensive, accessible, and prescriptive book, Becoming Cliterate features: Cultural & historical analysis of female orgasm (spoiler: the problem’s been going on for ages)An anatomy section (it’s all custom under the hood) Proven techniques for cliterate sex (it starts with training the sex organ between your ears)A comprehensive final chapter for men (because you don’t have to have a clitoris to be cliterate)By dispelling the lies, misunderstandings, and myths that have been holding us back, Becoming Cliterate tackles both personal and political problems and replaces them with updated outlooks and practical skills needed to change our collective perspective on sex. It’s time to finally inform women and men on how to have satisfying experiences in bed that benefit both parties. The revolution is cuming—and Becoming Cliterate offers a radical, simple solution to progress and pleasure for all.
Care of the Soul Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition
by Thomas MooreIn this special twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Thomas Moore's bestselling Care of the Soul, which includes a new introduction by the author, readers are presented with a revolutionary approach to thinking about daily life--everyday activities, events, problems, and creative opportunities--and a therapeutic lifestyle is proposed that focuses on looking more deeply into emotional problems and learning how to sense sacredness in ordinary things.Basing his writing on the ancient model of "care of the soul"--which provided a religious context for viewing the everyday events of life--Moore brings "care of the soul" into the twenty-first century. Promising to deepen and broaden the readers' perspectives on their life experiences, Moore draws on his own life as a therapist practicing "care of the soul," as well as his studies of the world's religions and his work in music and art, to create this inspirational guide that examines the connections between spirituality and the problems of individuals and society."Thoughtful, eloquent, inspiring." --San Francisco Chronicle"I soulfully recommend it without reservation." --John Bradshaw, author of Homecoming
Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women
by Renee EngelnAn award-winning Northwestern University psychology professor reveals how the cultural obsession with women's appearance is an epidemic that harms women's ability to get ahead and to live happy, meaningful lives, in this powerful, eye-opening work in the vein of Naomi Wolf, Peggy Orenstein, and Sheryl Sandberg.Today’s young women face a bewildering set of contradictions when it comes to beauty. They don’t want to be Barbie dolls but, like generations of women before them, are told they must look like them. They’re angry about the media’s treatment of women but hungrily consume the very outlets that belittle them. They mock modern culture’s absurd beauty ideal and make videos exposing Photoshopping tricks, but feel pressured to emulate the same images they criticize by posing with a "skinny arm." They understand that what they see isn’t real but still download apps to airbrush their selfies. Yet these same young women are fierce fighters for the issues they care about. They are ready to fight back against their beauty-sick culture and create a different world for themselves, but they need a way forward.In Beauty Sick, Dr. Renee Engeln, whose TEDx talk on beauty sickness has received more than 250,000 views, reveals the shocking consequences of our obsession with girls’ appearance on their emotional and physical health and their wallets and ambitions, including depression, eating disorders, disruptions in cognitive processing, and lost money and time. Combining scientific studies with the voices of real women of all ages, she makes clear that to truly fulfill their potential, we must break free from cultural forces that feed destructive desires, attitudes, and words—from fat-shaming to denigrating commentary about other women. She provides inspiration and workable solutions to help girls and women overcome negative attitudes and embrace their whole selves, to transform their lives, claim the futures they deserve, and, ultimately, change their world.
The Unspeakable Mind: Stories of Trauma and Healing from the Frontlines of PTSD Science
by Shaili JainFrom a physician and post-traumatic stress disorder specialist comes a nuanced cartography of PTSD, a widely misunderstood yet crushing condition that afflicts millions of Americans."Dr. Jain’s beautiful prose illuminates this widely misunderstood condition and makes for fascinating reading. It is a must for anyone who has a survived trauma, their loved ones and the healthcare professionals who care for them." --Irvin Yalom, bestselling author of When Nietzsche WeptThe Unspeakable Mind is the definitive guide for a trauma-burdened age. With profound empathy and meticulous research, Shaili Jain, M.D.—a practicing psychiatrist and PTSD specialist at one of America’s top VA hospitals, trauma scientist at the National Center for PTSD, and a Stanford Professor—shines a long-overdue light on the PTSD epidemic affecting today’s fractured world. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder goes far beyond the horrors of war and is an inescapable part of all our lives. At any given moment, more than six million Americans are suffering with PTSD. Dr. Jain’s groundbreaking work demonstrates the ways this disorder cuts to the heart of life, interfering with one’s capacity to love, create, and work—incapacity brought on by a complex interplay between biology, genetics, and environment. Beyond the struggles of individuals, PTSD has a tangible imprint on our cultures and societies around the world.Since 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been a huge growth in the science of PTSD, a body of evidence that continues to grow exponentially. With this new knowledge have come dramatic advances in the effective treatment of this condition. Jain draws on a decade of her own clinical innovation and research and argues for a paradigm shift in how PTSD should be approached in the new millennium. She highlights the myriads of ways PTSD care is being transformed to make it more accessible, acceptable, and available to sufferers via integrated care models, use of peer support programs, and technology. By identifying those among us who are most vulnerable to developing PTSD, cutting edge medical interventions that hold the promise of preventing the onset of PTSD are becoming more of a reality than ever before.Combining vividly recounted patient stories, interviews with some of the world’s top trauma scientists, and her professional expertise from working on the frontlines of PTSD, The Unspeakable Mind offers a textured portrait of this invisible illness that is unrivaled in scope and lays bare PTSD's roots, inner workings, and paths to healing. This book is essential reading for understanding how humans can recover from unspeakable trauma. The Unspeakable Mind stands as the definitive guide to PTSD and offers lasting hope to sufferers, their loved ones, and health care providers everywhere.
Project Semicolon: Your Story Isn't Over
by Amy BleuelFor fans of PostSecret, Humans of New York, and If You Feel Too Much, this collection from suicide-awareness organization Project Semicolon features stories and photos from those struggling with mental illness. Project Semicolon began in 2013 to spread a message of hope: No one struggling with a mental illness is alone; you, too, can survive and live a life filled with joy and love. In support of the project and its message, thousands of people all over the world have gotten semicolon tattoos and shared photos of them, often alongside stories of hardship, growth, and rebirth.Project Semicolon: Your Story Isn't Over reveals dozens of new portraits and stories from people of all ages talking about what they have endured and what they want for their futures. This represents a new step in the movement and a new awareness around those who struggle with mental illness and those who support them. At once heartfelt, unflinchingly honest, and eternally hopeful, this collection tells a story of choice: every day you choose to live and let your story continue on.Learn more about the project at www.projectsemicolon.com.
A Dog Like Daisy
by Kristin O'Donnell TubbMax meets A Dog Called Homeless in this sweet and poignant middle grade novel told from the humorous, thoughtful perspective of a rescued pit bull as she trains to be a service dog for an injured veteran and his family.Daisy has only ten weeks to prove her usefulness or else be sent back to the pound. Yet if she goes back, who will protect Colonel Victor from his PTSD attacks? Or save the littler human, Micah, from those infernal ear muzzles he calls earphones? What if no one ever adopts her again?Determined to become the elite protector the colonel needs, Daisy vows to ace the service dog test. She’ll accept the ridiculous leash and learn to sit, heel, shake, even do your business, Daisy when told to. But Daisy must first learn how to face her own fears from the past or risk losing the family she’s so desperate to guard—again.
May Cause Love: An Unexpected Journey of Enlightenment After Abortion
by Kassi UnderwoodIn this powerful memoir, a fiercely honest and surprisingly funny testament to healing after abortion, a young woman travels across the United States to meet a motley crew of spiritual teachers and a caravan of new friends.At age nineteen, Kassi Underwood discovered she was pregnant. Broke, unwed, struggling with alcohol, and living a thousand miles away from home, she checked into an abortion clinic. While her abortion sparked her “feminist awakening,” she also felt lost and lawless, drinking to oblivion and talking about her pregnancy with her parents, her friends, strangers-anyone. Three years later, just when she had settled into a sober life at her dream job, the ex-boyfriend with whom she had become pregnant had a baby with someone else. She shattered. In the depths of a blinding depression, Kassi refused to believe that she would “never get over” her abortion. Inspired by rebellious women in history who used spiritual practices to attain emotional freedom, Kassi embarked on a journey of recovery after abortion-a road trip with pit stops at a Buddhist “water baby” ritual, where she learns a new way to think about lost pregnancies; a Roman Catholic retreat for abortion that turns out to be staffed with clinic picketers; a crash course in grief from a Planned Parenthood counselor; a night in a motel with a “Midwife for the Soul” who teaches her how to take up space; and a Jewish “wild woman” celebration led by a wise and zany rabbi. Dazzling with warmth and leavened by humor, May Cause Love captures one woman’s journey of self-discovery that enraged her, changed her, and ultimately enlightened her.
Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less -and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined
by Scott SonensheinA groundbreaking approach to succeeding in business and life, using the science of resourcefulness.We often think the key to success and satisfaction is to get more: more money, time, and possessions; bigger budgets, job titles, and teams; and additional resources for our professional and personal goals. It turns out we’re wrong. Using captivating stories to illustrate research in psychology and management, Rice University professor Scott Sonenshein examines why some people and organizations succeed with so little, while others fail with so much.People and organizations approach resources in two different ways: “chasing” and “stretching.” When chasing, we exhaust ourselves in the pursuit of more. When stretching, we embrace the resources we already have. This frees us to find creative and productive ways to solve problems, innovate, and engage our work and lives more fully.Stretch shows why everyone—from executives to entrepreneurs, professionals to parents, athletes to artists—performs better with constraints; why seeking too many resources undermines our work and well-being; and why even those with a lot benefit from making the most out of a little.Drawing from examples in business, education, sports, medicine, and history, Scott Sonenshein advocates a powerful framework of resourcefulness that allows anybody to work and live better.
Head in the Game: The Mental Engineering of the World's Greatest Athletes
by Brandon SneedAn intriguing blend of science and sports that explores how some of the worlds greatest athletes are utilizing the last frontier of performance-enhancing technology—the mental mapping and engineering of their own brains—for peak performance, and what it means for the future of athleticism, sports, and the rest of us.Moneyball showed how statistics were revolutionizing baseball. The Sports Gene revealed the role genetics play in sports. Now, Head in the Game examines the next evolution: how mental engineering—the manipulation of the cognitive processes of the brain—can make gifted athletes even better. For years, technology—from EEG (electroencephalogram) to fMRI (Functional magnetic resonance imaging) to video games, tablets, and personal data collection devices—have been used with soldiers to understand their physical and mental functioning. Touching on brain functionality vital to sports—both the "hard" (coordination, stimuli processing, functional memory, decision-making, load-processing) and the "soft" (emotion regulation, visualization, psychology, mindfulness)—this tech is now being adopted by scores of championship franchises and top athletes—including scrappy underdogs forced to innovate and elite players looking for an advantage. Star NFL quarterbacks Russell Wilson and Tom Brady, the NBA’s Kyle Korver, and Olympic volleyball champion Kerri Walsh are using mental engineering to up their game. It’s not luck that has transformed the San Antonio Spurs into a formidable force—it’s science, Sneed demonstrates. As mental engineering becomes widespread—taking athletes who are already freaks of nature and making them better—the impact on the multi-billion dollar sports industry will be dramatic on players, managers, trainers, owners, and even fans. Interviewing athletes and coaches, visiting training camps and sports science firms, Brandon Sneed offers a firsthand, on-the-ground look at this exciting breakthrough that has the potential to transform to transform the game—and all our lives.
Strange Contagion: Inside the Surprising Science of Infectious Behaviors and Viral Emotions and What They Tell Us About Ourselves
by Lee Daniel KravetzPicking up where The Tipping Point leaves off, respected journalist Lee Daniel Kravetz’s Strange Contagion is a provocative look at both the science and lived experience of social contagion.In 2009, tragedy struck the town of Palo Alto: A student from the local high school had died by suicide by stepping in front of an oncoming train. Grief-stricken, the community mourned what they thought was an isolated loss. Until, a few weeks later, it happened again. And again. And again. In six months, the high school lost five students to suicide at those train tracks. A recent transplant to the community and a new father himself, Lee Daniel Kravetz’s experience as a science journalist kicked in: what was causing this tragedy? More important, how was it possible that a suicide cluster could develop in a community of concerned, aware, hyper-vigilant adults? The answer? Social contagion. We all know that ideas, emotions, and actions are communicable—from mirroring someone’s posture to mimicking their speech patterns, we are all driven by unconscious motivations triggered by our environment. But when just the right physiological, psychological, and social factors come together, we get what Kravetz calls a "strange contagion:" a perfect storm of highly common social viruses that, combined, form a highly volatile condition.Strange Contagion is simultaneously a moving account of one community’s tragedy and a rigorous investigation of social phenomenon, as Kravetz draws on research and insights from experts worldwide to unlock the mystery of how ideas spread, why they take hold, and offer thoughts on our responsibility to one another as citizens of a globally and perpetually connected world.
Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work
by Steven Kotler Jamie WhealIt’s the biggest revolution you’ve never heard of, and it’s hiding in plain sight. Over the past decade, Silicon Valley executives like Eric Schmidt and Elon Musk, Special Operators like the Navy SEALs and the Green Berets, and maverick scientists like Sasha Shulgin and Amy Cuddy have turned everything we thought we knew about high performance upside down. Instead of grit, better habits, or 10,000 hours, these trailblazers have found a surprising short cut. They're harnessing rare and controversial states of consciousness to solve critical challenges and outperform the competition. New York Times bestselling author Steven Kotler and high performance expert Jamie Wheal spent four years investigating the leading edges of this revolution—from the home of SEAL Team Six to the Googleplex, the Burning Man festival, Richard Branson’s Necker Island, Red Bull’s training center, Nike’s innovation team, and the United Nations’ Headquarters. And what they learned was stunning: In their own ways, with differing languages, techniques, and applications, every one of these groups has been quietly seeking the same thing: the boost in information and inspiration that altered states provide. Today, this revolution is spreading to the mainstream, fueling a trillion dollar underground economy and forcing us to rethink how we can all lead richer, more productive, more satisfying lives. Driven by four accelerating forces—psychology, neurobiology, technology and pharmacology—we are gaining access to and insights about some of the most contested and misunderstood terrain in history. Stealing Fire is a provocative examination of what’s actually possible; a guidebook for anyone who wants to radically upgrade their life.
21 Days to Resilience: How to Transcend the Daily Grind, Deal with the Tough Stuff, and Discover Your Strongest Self
by Zelana MontminyHappiness is not about wishful thinking, good luck, or avoiding negative thoughts. In fact, the only path to true happiness requires seeing challenges as opportunities and discovering emotional strength during times of struggle. In other words, it's about resilience. Resilience is a quality most of us want to possess. The big issue is that no one knows how to access it in their day-to-day life. We understand that it's important, that it's crucial even, but it seems like an ephemeral thing that you either have or you don't. How we actually attain the skills to become resilient has been left out of the conversation. Until now.In 21 Days to Resilience, Dr. Zelana Montminy, a leading expert in positive psychology, offers a practical, science-backed toolkit to develop your capacity to handle whatever life throws your way—and thrive. Each day of her powerful program, Dr. Montminy introduces a key trait necessary to improve resiliency and enhance wellbeing, such as gratitude, focus, playfulness, self-respect, and flexibility, then provides three simple tasks to accomplish that day—one in the morning, one during the day, and one in the evening. In addition, the book offers a "Take Stock" section that will help you gauge your current level of skill and each chapter ends with a "Lifelong" exercise that offers ways to build the skill as needed to keep your resiliency muscles strong.Dr. Montminy writes, "Being resilient does not mean that you won't encounter problems or have difficulties overcoming a challenge in your life. The difference is that resilient people don't let their adversity define them. At its core, resilience is about being capable and strong enough to persevere in adverse or stressful conditions—and to take away positive meaning from that experience. Living with resilience is more than just bouncing back; it is about shifting our perceptions, changing our responses, and growing from them." Combining proven science, unique exercises, and insights from real-life experience, 21 Days to Resilience lays the foundation for happiness and shows you how to build your strength to carry you through the rest of your life.
What to Think About Machines That Think: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Age of Machine Intelligence
by Mr John BrockmanAs the world becomes ever more dominated by technology, John Brockman’s latest addition to the acclaimed and bestselling “Edge Question Series” asks more than 175 leading scientists, philosophers, and artists: What do you think about machines that think? <P><P> The development of artificial intelligence has been a source of fascination and anxiety ever since Alan Turing formalized the concept in 1950. Today, Stephen Hawking believes that AI “could spell the end of the human race.” At the very least, its development raises complicated moral issues with powerful real-world implications—for us and for our machines. <P> In this volume, recording artist Brian Eno proposes that we’re already part of an AI: global civilization, or what TED curator Chris Anderson elsewhere calls the hive mind. And author Pamela McCorduck considers what drives us to pursue AI in the first place. <P> On the existential threat posed by superintelligent machines, Steven Pinker questions the likelihood of a robot uprising. Douglas Coupland traces discomfort with human-programmed AI to deeper fears about what constitutes “humanness.” Martin Rees predicts the end of organic thinking, while Daniel C. Dennett explains why he believes the Singularity might be an urban legend.
The Art of Fear: Why Conquering Fear Won't Work and What to Do Instead
by Kristen UlmerA revolutionary guide to acknowledging fear and developing the tools we need to build a healthy relationship with this confusing emotion—and use it as a positive force in our lives.We all feel fear. Yet we are often taught to ignore it, overcome it, push past it. But to what benefit? This is the essential question that guides Kristen Ulmer’s remarkable exploration of our most misunderstood emotion in The Art of Fear. Once recognized as the best extreme skier in the world (an honor she held for twelve years), Ulmer knows fear well. In this conversation-changing book, she argues that fear is not here to cause us problems—and that in fact, the only true issue we face with fear is our misguided reaction to it (not the fear itself). Rebuilding our experience with fear from the ground up, Ulmer starts by exploring why we’ve come to view it as a negative. From here, she unpacks fear and shows it to be just one of 10,000 voices that make up our reality, here to help us come alive alongside joy, love, and gratitude. Introducing a mindfulness tool called “Shift,” Ulmer teaches readers how to experience fear in a simpler, more authentic way, transforming our relationship with this emotion from that of a draining battle into one that’s in line with our true nature. Influenced by Ulmer’s own complicated relationship with fear and her over 15 years as a mindset facilitator, The Art of Fear will reconstruct the way we react to and experience fear—empowering us to easily and permanently address the underlying cause of our fear-based problems, and setting us on course to live a happier, more expansive future.
My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward: A Memoir
by Mark LukachA heart-wrenching, yet hopeful, memoir of a young marriage that is redefined by mental illness and affirms the power of love.Mark and Giulia’s life together began as a storybook romance. They fell in love at eighteen, married at twenty-four, and were living their dream life in San Francisco. When Giulia was twenty-seven, she suffered a terrifying and unexpected psychotic break that landed her in the psych ward for nearly a month. One day she was vibrant and well-adjusted; the next she was delusional and suicidal, convinced that her loved ones were not safe. Eventually, Giulia fully recovered, and the couple had a son. But, soon after Jonas was born, Giulia had another breakdown, and then a third a few years after that. Pushed to the edge of the abyss, everything the couple had once taken for granted was upended. A story of the fragility of the mind, and the tenacity of the human spirit, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward is, above all, a love story that raises profound questions: How do we care for the people we love? What and who do we live for? Breathtaking in its candor, radiant with compassion, and written with dazzling lyricism, Lukach’s is an intensely personal odyssey through the harrowing years of his wife’s mental illness, anchored by an abiding devotion to family that will affirm readers’ faith in the power of love.
Organize Your Emotions, Optimize Your Life: Decode Your Emotional DNA-and Thrive
by Margaret Moore Edward Phillips John HancFrom a top wellness coach and a Harvard Medical School professor, comes this revolutionary book that will show you how to identify and decode your nine most basic emotional needs--and coach yourself to a calmer, healthier, and happier life.The more you thrive, the better your brain functions, and you're able to perform at the best level. Your health improves. You enjoy life more. When you're thriving, your stress level is down, your confidence is up, and the internal frenzy is tamed by a poised, self-assured mind.But if you're like the majority of Americans, you may be, in psychological terms, languishing rather than flourishing--surviving instead of thriving. For many, feeling overwhelmed and out of balance has become normal, a consequence of overlooking basic emotional needs. The key to reaching a happy, healthy state is by tapping into, not tuning out, your distinct emotions, and listening to the inner monologue inside your mind.Organize Your Brain, Optimize Your Life combines the worlds of self-help, psychology, and medical science to guide you to a place of self-management and control. This insightful, approachable book will teach you how to identify, decode, and assess the nine most basic emotions that rule your brain and to recognize each of these voices and act accordingly to achieve a wide range of goals--from weight loss to career management. Coach your brain to gain deeper insight of your individual needs and live life to your maximum potential.
Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong
by Eric BarkerMuch of the advice we’ve been told about achievement is logical, earnest…and downright wrong. In Barking Up the Wrong Tree, Eric Barker reveals the extraordinary science behind what actually determines success and most importantly, how anyone can achieve it. You’ll learn:• Why valedictorians rarely become millionaires, and how your biggest weakness might actually be your greatest strength • Whether nice guys finish last and why the best lessons about cooperation come from gang members, pirates, and serial killers• Why trying to increase confidence fails and how Buddhist philosophy holds a superior solution• The secret ingredient to “grit” that Navy SEALs and disaster survivors leverage to keep going• How to find work-life balance using the strategy of Genghis Khan, the errors of Albert Einstein, and a little lesson from Spider-ManBy looking at what separates the extremely successful from the rest of us, we learn what we can do to be more like them—and find out in some cases why it’s good that we aren’t. Barking Up the Wrong Tree draws on startling statistics and surprising anecdotes to help you understand what works and what doesn’t so you can stop guessing at success and start living the life you want.
Scratched: A Memoir of Perfectionism
by Elizabeth Tallent“Reading Scratched gave me the feeling of standing very close to a blazing fire. It is that brilliant, that intense, and one of the finest explorations I know of what it means to be a woman and an artist.”—Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend and Winner of the National Book Award for FictionIn a bold and brilliant memoir that reinvents the form, the acclaimed author of the novel Museum Pieces and the collection Mendocino Fire explores the ferocious desire for perfection which has shaped her writing life as well as her rich, dramatic, and constantly surprising personal life.Scratched is an intimate account of the uses a child, and the adult she becomes, will find for perfectionism and the role it will play in every part of her life. Elizabeth Tallent’s story begins in a hospital in mid-1950s suburban Washington, D.C., when her mother refuses to hold her newborn daughter, shocking behavior that baffles the nurses. Imagining her own mother’s perfectionist ideal at this critical moment, Elizabeth moves back and forth in time, juxtaposing moments in the past with the present in this innovative and spellbinding narrative.Elizabeth traces her journey from her early years in which she perceived herself as “the child whose flaws let disaster into an otherwise perfect family,” to her adulthood, when perfectionism came to affect everything. In the decade between 27 and 37, she publishes five literary books with Knopf and her short stories appear in The New Yorker. But this extraordinary start to her career is followed by twenty-two years of silence. She wrote, or rather published, nothing at all. Why? Scratched is the remarkable response to that question.Elizabeth’s early publications secure her a coveted teaching job at Stanford University. As she toggles between Palo Alto and the Mendocino coast where she lives, raises her son Gabriel, and pursues an important psychoanalysis, Elizabeth grapples with the perfectionism that has always been home to her. Eventually, she finds love and acceptance in the most unlikely place, and finally accepts an “as is” relationship with herself and others. Her final triumph is the writing of this memoir, filled with wit, humor, and heart, and unlike any other you will read. Scratched is a brave book that repeatedly searches for the emotional truth beneath the conventional surface of existence.