Escaping Escapism


Book Description

An inspiring book that shows how knowing and trusting Jesus enables us to do hard things rather than seeking to escape from them Almost anything that is worth doing is a struggle. Almost anything that benefits other people is tough to do. Almost anything that makes a difference in this world is hard to see through to the end. Which is why, we’ll often do almost anything to escape doing it! Yet we want to love people well, even when they’re difficult... tackle challenges that we find difficult... and keep moving forwards through times that prove difficult. Deep down we want to get on with doing hard things, fix what needs fixing and change what needs changing. This book shows us how a bigger, better picture of Jesus will transform us. Our panic and tendency to avoid difficult things can be replaced with joyful, get-things-done confidence and proactivity when we depend on God’s power. If you avoid difficult things but want to change, this book is for you.




The Noonday Demon


Book Description

The author offers a look at depression in which he draws on his own battle with the illness and interviews with fellow sufferers, researchers, doctors, and others to assess the complexities of the disease, its causes and symptoms, and available therapies. This book examines depression in personal, cultural, and scientific terms. He confronts the challenge of defining the illness and describes the vast range of available medications, the efficacy of alternative treatments, and the impact the malady has on various demographic populations, around the world and throughout history. He also explores the thorny patch of moral and ethical questions posed by emerging biological explanations for mental illness. He takes readers on a journey into the most pervasive of family secrets and contributes to our understanding not only of mental illness but also of the human condition.




Escapism


Book Description

Acclaimed cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan considers humanity's enduring desire to escape reality— and embrace alternatives such as love, culture, and Disneyworld In prehistoric times, our ancestors began building shelters and planting crops in order to escape from nature's harsh realities. Today, we flee urban dangers for the safer, reconfigured world of suburban lawns and parks. According to geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, people have always sought to escape in one way or another, sometimes foolishly, often creatively and ingeniously. Glass-tower cities, suburbs, shopping malls, Disneyland—all are among the most recent monuments in our efforts to escape the constraints and uncertainties of life—ultimately, those imposed by nature. "What cultural product," Tuan asks, "is not escape?" In his new book, the capstone of a celebrated career, Tuan shows that escapism is an inescapable component of human thought and culture.




The Art of Escaping


Book Description

Seventeen-year-old Mattie has a hidden obsession: escapology. Emphasis on hidden. If anyone from school finds out, she’ll be abandoned to her haters. Facing a long and lonely summer, Mattie finally seeks out Miyu, the reclusive daughter of a world-renowned escape artist. Following in Houdini’s footsteps, Miyu helps Mattie secretly transform herself into an escapologist and performance artist. When Will, a popular athlete from school, discovers Mattie’s act at an underground venue, Mattie fears her secret persona will be exposed. Instead of outing her, though, Will tells Mattie a secret not even his girlfriend knows. Through a blossoming friendship, the two must find a way to express their authentic selves. Told through the perspectives of the witty main characters, this funny and fresh debut explores the power of stage personas and secret spaces, and speaks to the uncanny ways in which friendships transform us.




Napoleon Hill's Self-Confidence Formula


Book Description

Your formula to build a strong sense of self-worth so that you can better recognize opportunity, take action on your dreams, and enhance your resilience. A lack of self-confidence is one of the greatest maladies of today’s world, one that is responsible for the rampant helplessness, lack of self-control, aimlessness, procrastination, and despair that characterize modern society. But as the venerable steel magnate Andrew Carnegie emphasized to Hill, “Confidence is a state of mind, necessary to succeed, and the starting point of developing self-confidence is definiteness of purpose.” The time for self-doubt and self-criticism is over. Your faith in yourself and your abilities determines whether you fail or succeed. Napoleon Hill’s Self-Confidence Formula enables you to boost your self-confidence through the application of Hill’s strategies for controlling your thoughts. By implementing these principles, you will not only be able to operate at a higher plane of thought and action—attracting more opportunities, gaining influence, and strengthening relationships—but you will also be able to instill this critical quality in others. Napoleon Hill’s Self-Confidence Formula gives you the keys to success and fulfillment by equipping you to: unlearn fears, insecurities, and limitations acquired in childhood and adolescence condition your mind to believe in the certainty of your success take bold, confident action on your definite chief aim conquer your inferiority complex through the mastermind principle build the self-reliance and self-esteem of today’s youth You are now on the journey to confident, purposeful living. As you implement Hill’s principles, you will cultivate a state of mind primed to accept the abundance reserved for you.




Feeling Good


Book Description

National Bestseller – More than five million copies sold worldwide! From renowned psychiatrist Dr. David D. Burns, the revolutionary volume that popularized Dr. Aaron T. Beck’s cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and has helped millions combat feelings of depression and develop greater self-esteem. Anxiety and depression are the most common mental illnesses in the world, affecting 18% of the U.S. population every year. But for many, the path to recovery seems daunting, endless, or completely out of reach. The good news is that anxiety, guilt, pessimism, procrastination, low self-esteem, and other "black holes" of depression can be alleviated. In Feeling Good, eminent psychiatrist, David D. Burns, M.D., outlines the remarkable, scientifically proven techniques that will immediately lift your spirits and help you develop a positive outlook on life, enabling you to: Nip negative feelings in the bud Recognize what causes your mood swings Deal with guilt Handle hostility and criticism Overcome addiction to love and approval Build self-esteem Feel good every day This groundbreaking, life-changing book has helped millions overcome negative thoughts and discover joy in their daily lives. You owe it to yourself to FEEL GOOD! "I would personally evaluate David Burns' Feeling Good as one of the most significant books to come out of the last third of the Twentieth Century."—Dr. David F. Maas, Professor of English, Ambassador University




A Time to Die


Book Description

How would you live if you knew the day you'd die? Parvin Blackwater believes she has wasted her life. At only seventeen, she has one year left according to the Clock by her bedside. In a last-ditch effort to make a difference, she tries to rescue Radicals from the government's crooked justice system. But when the authorities find out about her illegal activity, they cast her through the Wall -- her people's death sentence. What she finds on the other side about the world, about eternity, and about herself changes Parvin forever and might just save her people. But her clock is running out.




The Art of Escapism Cooking


Book Description

In this inventive and intensely personal cookbook, the blogger behind the award-winning ladyandpups.com reveals how she cooked her way out of an untenable living situation, with more than eighty delicious Asian-inspired dishes with influences from around the world. For Mandy Lee, moving from New York to Beijing for her husband’s work wasn’t an exotic adventure—it was an ordeal. Growing increasingly exasperated with China’s stifling political climate, its infuriating bureaucracy, and its choking pollution, she began “an unapologetically angry food blog,” LadyandPups.com, to keep herself from going mad. Mandy cooked because it channeled her focus, helping her cope with the difficult circumstances of her new life. She filled her kitchen with warming spices and sticky sauces while she shared recipes and observations about life, food, and cooking in her blog posts. Born in Taiwan and raised in Vancouver, she came of age food-wise in New York City and now lives in Hong Kong; her food reflects the many places she’s lived. This entertaining and unusual cookbook is the story of how “escapism cooking”—using the kitchen as a refuge and ultimately creating delicious and satisfying meals—helped her crawl out of her expat limbo. Illustrated with her own gorgeous photography, The Art of Escapism Cooking provides that comforting feeling a good meal provides. Here are dozens of innovative and often Asian-influenced recipes, divided into categories by mood and occasion, such as: For Getting Out of Bed Poached Eggs with Miso-Browned Butter Hollandaise Crackling Pancake with Caramel-Clustered Blueberries and Balsamic Honey For Slurping Buffalo Fried Chicken Ramen Crab Bisque Tsukemen For a Crowd Cumin Lamb Rib Burger Italian Meatballs in Taiwanese Rouzao Sauce For Snacking Wontons with Shrimp and Chili Coconut Oil and Herbed Yogurt Spicy Chickpea Poppers For Sweets Mochi with Peanut Brown Sugar and Ice Cream Recycled Nuts and Caramel Apple Cake Every dish is sublimely delicious and worth the time and attention required. Mandy also demystifies unfamiliar ingredients and where to find them, shares her favorite tools, and provides instructions for essential condiments for the pantry and fridge, such as Ramen Seasoning, Fried Chili Verde Sauce, Caramelized Onion Powder Paste, and her Ultimate Sichuan Chile Oil.




Escape from Slavery


Book Description

In this groundbreaking modern slave narrative, Francis Bok shares his remarkable story with grace, honesty, and a wisdom gained from surviving ten years in captivity. May, 1986: Selling his mother's eggs and peanuts near his village in southern Sudan, seven year old Francis Bok's life was shattered when Arab raiders on horseback, armed with rifles and long knives, burst into the quiet marketplace, murdering men and women and gathering the young children into a group. Strapped to horses and donkeys, Francis and others were taken north, into lives of slavery under wealthy Muslim farmers. For ten years, Francis lived alone in a shed near the goats and cattle that were his responsibility. Fed with scraps from the table, slowly learning bits of an unfamiliar language and religion, the boy had almost no human contact other than his captor's family. After two failed attempts to escape-each bringing severe beatings and death threats-Francis finally escaped at age seventeen, a dramatic breakaway on foot that was his final chance. Yet his slavery did not end there, for even as he made his way toward the capital city of Khartoum, others sought to deprive him of his freedom. Determined to avoid that fate and discover what had happened to his family on that terrible day in 1986, the teenager persevered through prison and refugee camps for three more years, winning the attention of United Nations officials and being granted passage to America. Now a student and an anti-slavery activist, Francis Bok has made it his life mission to combat world slavery. His is the first voice to speak for an estimated twenty seven million people held against their will in nearly every nation, including our own. Escape from Slavery is at once a riveting adventure, a story of desperation and triumph, and a window revealing a world that few have survived to tell.




The Unveiled Wife


Book Description

As a young bride, Jennifer Smith couldn’t wait to build her life with the man she adored. She dreamed of closeness, of being fully known and loved by her husband. But the first years of marriage were nothing like she’d imagined. Instead, they were marked by disappointment and pain. Trapped by fear and insecurity, and feeling totally alone, Jennifer cried out to God: What am I doing wrong? Why is this happening to us? It was as if a veil had descended between her and her husband, and between her and God—one that kept her from experiencing the fullness of love. How did Jennifer and her husband survive the painful times? What did they do when they were tempted to call it quits? How did God miraculously step in during the darkest hour to rescue and redeem them, tearing down the veil once and for all? The Unveiled Wife is a real-life love story; one couple’s refreshingly raw, transparent journey touching the deep places in a marriage that only God can reach. If you are feeling disappointment or even despair about your marriage, the heart-cry of this book is: You are not alone. Discover through Jennifer’s story how God can bring you through it all to a place of transformation.