I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die


Book Description

A compassionate, shame-free guide for your darkest days “A one-of-a-kind book . . . to read for yourself or give to a struggling friend or loved one without the fear that depression and suicidal thoughts will be minimized, medicalized or over-spiritualized.”—Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church What happens when loving Jesus doesn’t cure you of depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts? You might be crushed by shame over your mental illness, only to be told by well-meaning Christians to “choose joy” and “pray more.” So you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. As darkness lingers and color drains from your world, you’re left wondering if God has abandoned you. You just want a way out. But there’s hope. In I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die, Sarah J. Robinson offers a healthy, practical, and shame-free guide for Christians struggling with mental illness. With unflinching honesty, Sarah shares her story of battling depression and fighting to stay alive despite toxic theology that made her afraid to seek help outside the church. Pairing her own story with scriptural insights, mental health research, and simple practices, Sarah helps you reconnect with the God who is present in our deepest anguish and discover that you are worth everything it takes to get better. Beautifully written and full of hard-won wisdom, I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die offers a path toward a rich, hope-filled life in Christ, even when healing doesn’t look like what you expect.




Little Soldiers


Book Description

New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice; Real Simple Best of the Month; Library Journal Editors’ Pick In the spirit of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Bringing up Bébé, and The Smartest Kids in the World, a hard-hitting exploration of China’s widely acclaimed yet insular education system that raises important questions for the future of American parenting and education When students in Shanghai rose to the top of international rankings in 2009, Americans feared that they were being "out-educated" by the rising super power. An American journalist of Chinese descent raising a young family in Shanghai, Lenora Chu noticed how well-behaved Chinese children were compared to her boisterous toddler. How did the Chinese create their academic super-achievers? Would their little boy benefit from Chinese school? Chu and her husband decided to enroll three-year-old Rainer in China’s state-run public school system. The results were positive—her son quickly settled down, became fluent in Mandarin, and enjoyed his friends—but she also began to notice troubling new behaviors. Wondering what was happening behind closed classroom doors, she embarked on an exploratory journey, interviewing Chinese parents, teachers, and education professors, and following students at all stages of their education. What she discovered is a military-like education system driven by high-stakes testing, with teachers posting rankings in public, using bribes to reward students who comply, and shaming to isolate those who do not. At the same time, she uncovered a years-long desire by government to alleviate its students’ crushing academic burden and make education friendlier for all. The more she learns, the more she wonders: Are Chinese children—and her son—paying too high a price for their obedience and the promise of future academic prowess? Is there a way to appropriate the excellence of the system but dispense with the bad? What, if anything, could Westerners learn from China’s education journey? Chu’s eye-opening investigation challenges our assumptions and asks us to consider the true value and purpose of education.




The Altar of Innocence


Book Description

The Altar of Innocence is about a mother who is in unfilled artist and a daughter who struggles to untangle the web of her mother¿s depression, alcoholism, and suicide attempt. As the daughter grows into a woman, she experiences her own confrontation with depression and a crumbling marriage. Deeply dissatisfied with the explanation of depression as a chemical imbalance in the brain, she peers into her own dark night of the soul and undertakes a spiritual journey. In order to finally claim her voice, she must overcome the patriarchy of the mental health system, challenge her treatment options, and navigate an increasingly difficult relationship with her husband. The poems in The Altar of Innocence come from my heart and from the sincere desire to share my journey in the hopes that others may find courage and inspiration. ¿Ann Bracken creates a vibrant dialogue with her reader. Her emotional vocabulary is wholeheartedly offered to us like a gift to the world. Bracken¿s strength comes from an equilibrium between idea and performance¿interior and exterior lives, smartly drawn. With a strong voice, vitally engaged, she presents characters and behavior without judgment. Poetry is the vehicle that makes us laugh and cry at her ¿Altar of Innocence.¿ ¿Grace Cavalieri, poet and producer of the radio show ¿The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress¿ ¿The Altar of Innocence offers readers a rare and compassionate look at depression. By telling her mother¿s story and sharing her own, Ann Bracken takes us on an intimate journey through two generations of mental illness and ultimate healing. Readers will find hope in her journey.¿ ¿ Laura Shovan, writer and publisher of Little Patuxant Review




The Things They Carried


Book Description

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.




Sophie's World


Book Description

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.




Combat-Ready Kitchen


Book Description

Americans eat more processed foods than anyone else in the world. We also spend more on military research. These two seemingly unrelated facts are inextricably linked. If you ever wondered how ready-to-eat foods infiltrated your kitchen, you’ll love this entertaining romp through the secret military history of practically everything you buy at the supermarket. In a nondescript Boston suburb, in a handful of low buildings buffered by trees and a lake, a group of men and women spend their days researching, testing, tasting, and producing the foods that form the bedrock of the American diet. If you stumbled into the facility, you might think the technicians dressed in lab coats and the shiny kitchen equipment belonged to one of the giant food conglomerates responsible for your favorite brand of frozen pizza or microwavable breakfast burritos. So you’d be surprised to learn that you’ve just entered the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Systems Center, ground zero for the processed food industry. Ever since Napoleon, armies have sought better ways to preserve, store, and transport food for battle. As part of this quest, although most people don’t realize it, the U.S. military spearheaded the invention of energy bars, restructured meat, extended-life bread, instant coffee, and much more. But there’s been an insidious mission creep: because the military enlisted industry—huge corporations such as ADM, ConAgra, General Mills, Hershey, Hormel, Mars, Nabisco, Reynolds, Smithfield, Swift, Tyson, and Unilever—to help develop and manufacture food for soldiers on the front line, over the years combat rations, or the key technologies used in engineering them, have ended up dominating grocery store shelves and refrigerator cases. TV dinners, the cheese powder in snack foods, cling wrap . . . The list is almost endless. Now food writer Anastacia Marx de Salcedo scrutinizes the world of processed food and its long relationship with the military—unveiling the twists, turns, successes, failures, and products that have found their way from the armed forces’ and contractors’ laboratories into our kitchens. In developing these rations, the army was looking for some of the very same qualities as we do in our hectic, fast-paced twenty-first-century lives: portability, ease of preparation, extended shelf life at room temperature, affordability, and appeal to even the least adventurous eaters. In other words, the military has us chowing down like special ops. What is the effect of such a diet, eaten—as it is by soldiers and most consumers—day in and day out, year after year? We don’t really know. We’re the guinea pigs in a giant public health experiment, one in which science and technology, at the beck and call of the military, have taken over our kitchens.




Sarah's Legacy


Book Description

Sarah and her mother become the recipients of an unusual inheritance. A home of their own sounds too good to be true but the conditions that come with it are strange indeed.




Albion's Seed


Book Description

This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.




Whole New You


Book Description

From the star of the Cooking Channel’s Tia Mowry at Home comes a timely clean-eating cookbook that will change the way you think about what you eat and jump-start your journey to a healthier, more gorgeous you. When actress Tia Mowry landed her breakthrough role on the sitcom Sister, Sister, she swapped home-cooked meals for catering spreads. But her teen-dream diet of candies and carbs turned into a nightmare when she developed endometriosis, a painful disease that affects one in ten women worldwide. Two years and two surgeries later, some surprising advice from her doctor inspired Tia to radically change one of the most basic elements of her life: her diet. After ditching the dairy and the refined sugars and processed foods, Tia’s pain receded drastically. What’s more, her migraines stopped, her skin cleared up, and she was finally able to get pregnant. Drawing on the latest research on whole plant foods, inflammation, and gut flora, Whole New You chronicles Tia’s journey to wellness and provides all the resources you need to feel better, including • a ten-day menu plan to begin your healthy life • more than 100 delicious recipes • lighter versions of your favorite comfort food recipes, including “Buttermilk” Fried Chicken and Crispy Collard Chips • healthy recipes for your kids • tips and tricks for eating on the go • complementary approaches, such as acupuncture and yoga, for whole body healing Like a trusted friend, Tia recounts both her setbacks and her triumphs—and shows you how to listen to what your body is telling you. With Whole New You, your healing begins now. Praise for Whole New You “Simple and flavorful . . . Readers looking to jump-start a healthier diet will find this book encouraging and useful as both coach and guide.”—Booklist “I’m on the go 24/7 and am always in search of healthy, easy meal options. This book delivers with maximum flavor every single time.”—Morris Chestnut, actor and author of The Cut “No one ever said healthy meals can’t be prepared in delicious ways, and my friend Tia shows us that she is the one to make that happen!”—Chloë Grace Moretz, actress “Tia [Mowry] understands that eating healthy is a lifestyle that can make your life more enriching. Healthy eating equals healthy mind, body, and mental prowess.”—Serena Williams “Whole New You is a must-read for anyone who wants to eat better, live healthier, and learn something along the way. Tia’s recipes are so delicious and this book definitely had me going back for seconds!”—Naya Rivera, actress, mom, and author of Sorry Not Sorry “Tia’s passion for creating a sustainable, happy, and healthy lifestyle is contagious. Whole New You empowers us to transform our health in a fun and easy way. Her personal story of transformation and recovery inspires us to get in the kitchen, enjoy the process of cooking, and start living radiantly well.”—Tara Stiles, founder of Strala Yoga “Tia Mowry has a wealth of knowledge that will change your life. With this book, you can fuel your body with delicious recipes that will help you function at your best so you feel amazing! Buy ten copies and share them with your friends! I will be sharing her book with everyone.”—Jeanette Jenkins, founder and president of The Hollywood Trainer LLC




Grandma Gatewood's Walk


Book Description

Winner of the 2014 National Outdoor Book Awards for History/Biography Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, having survived a rattlesnake strike, two hurricanes, and a run-in with gangsters from Harlem, she stood atop Maine's Mount Katahdin. There she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it." Grandma Gatewood, as the reporters called her, became the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail alone, as well as the first person—man or woman—to walk it twice and three times. Gatewood became a hiking celebrity and appeared on TV and in the pages of Sports Illustrated. The public attention she brought to the little-known footpath was unprecedented. Her vocal criticism of the lousy, difficult stretches led to bolstered maintenance, and very likely saved the trail from extinction. Author Ben Montgomery was given unprecedented access to Gatewood's own diaries, trail journals, and correspondence, and interviewed surviving family members and those she met along her hike, all to answer the question so many asked: Why did she do it? The story of Grandma Gatewood will inspire readers of all ages by illustrating the full power of human spirit and determination. Even those who know of Gatewood don't know the full story—a story of triumph from pain, rebellion from brutality, hope from suffering.