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A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Mary Wollstonecraft

Writing in an age when the call for the rights of man had brought revolution to America and France, Mary Wollstonecraft produced her own declaration of female independence in 1792. Passionate and forthright, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman attacked the prevailing view of docile, decorative femininity, and instead laid out the principles of emancipation: an equal education for girls and boys, an end to prejudice, and for women to become defined by their profession, not their partner. Mary Wollstonecraft's work was received with a mixture of admiration and outrage - Walpole called her 'a hyena in petticoats' - yet it established her as the mother of modern feminism.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

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My Name Is Barbra

Barbra Streisand

The long-awaited memoir by the superstar of stage, screen, recordings, and television
Barbra Streisand is by any account a living legend, a woman who in a career spanning six decades has excelled in every area of entertainment. She is among the handful of EGOT winners (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) and has one of the greatest and most recognizable voices in the history of popular music. She has been nominated for a Grammy 46 times, and with Yentl she became the first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major motion picture. In My Name Is Barbra, she tells her own story about her life and extraordinary career, from growing up in Brooklyn to her first star-making appearances in New York nightclubs to her breakout performance in Funny Girl on stage and winning the Oscar for that performance on film. Then came a long string of successes in every medium in the years that followed. The book is, like Barbra herself, frank, funny, opinionated, and charming. She recounts her early struggles to become an actress, eventually turning to singing to earn a living; the recording of some of her acclaimed albums; the years of effort involved in making Yentl; her direction of The Prince of Tides; her friendships with figures ranging from Marlon Brando to Madeleine Albright; her political advocacy; and the fulfillment she’s found in her marriage to James Brolin.
 
No entertainer’s memoir has been more anticipated than Barbra Streisand’s, and this engrossing and delightful book will be eagerly welcomed by her millions of fans.

 

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The Pirate's Wife

Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos

The dramatic and deliciously swashbuckling story of Sarah Kidd, the wife of the famous pirate Captain Kidd, charting her transformation from New York socialite to international outlaw during the Golden Age of Piracy

Captain Kidd was one of the most notorious pirates to ever prowl the seas. But few know that Kidd had an accomplice, a behind-the-scenes player who enabled his plundering and helped him outpace his enemies.

That accomplice was his wife, Sarah Kidd, a well-to-do woman whose extraordinary life is a lesson in reinvention and resourcefulness. Twice widowed by twenty-one and operating within the strictures of polite society in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New York, Sarah secretly aided and abetted her husband, fighting alongside him against his accusers. More remarkable still was that Sarah not only survived the tragedy wrought by her infamous husband's deeds, but went on to live a successful and productive life as one of New York's most prominent citizens.

Marshaling in newly discovered primary-source documents from archives in London, New York and Boston, historian and journalist Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos reconstructs the extraordinary life of Sarah Kidd, uncovering a rare example of the kind of life that pirate wives lived during the Golden Age of Piracy. A compelling tale of love, treasure, motherhood and survival, this landmark work of narrative nonfiction weaves together the personal and the epic in a sweeping historical story of romance and adventure.

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Code Name Blue Wren

Jim Popkin

The incredible true story of Ana Montes, the most damaging female spy in US history, drawing upon never-before-seen material and to be published upon her release from prison, for readers of Agent Sonya and A Woman of No Importance.

Just days after the 9-11 attacks, a senior Pentagon analyst eased her red Toyota Echo into traffic and headed to work. She never saw the undercover cars tracking her every turn. As she settled into her cubicle on the 6th floor of the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, FBI Agents and twitchy DIA officers were hiding in nearby offices. For this was the day that Ana Montes--the US Intelligence Community superstar who had just won a prestigious fellowship at the CIA--was to be arrested and publicly exposed as a secret agent for Cuba.

Like spies Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen before her, Ana Montes blindsided her colleagues with brazen acts of treason. For nearly 17 years, Montes succeeded in two high-stress jobs. By day, she was one of the government's top Cuba experts, a buttoned-down GS-14 with shockingly easy access to classified documents. By night, she was on the clock for Fidel Castro, listening to coded messages over shortwave radio, passing US secrets to handlers in local restaurants, and slipping into Havana wearing a wig.

Montes didn't just deceive her country. Her betrayal was intensely personal. Her mercurial father was a former US Army Colonel. Her brother and sister-in-law were FBI Special Agents. And her only sister, Lucy, also worked her entire career for the Bureau. The highlight of her distinguished 31 years as a Miami-based language specialist: Helping the FBI flush Cuban spies out of the United States. Little did Lucy or her family know that the greatest Cuban spy of all was sitting right next to them at Thanksgivings, baptisms, and weddings.

In Code Name Blue Wren, investigative journalist Jim Popkin weaves the tale of two sisters who chose two very different paths, plus the unsung heroes who had to fight to bring Ana to justice. With exclusive access to a "Secret" CIA behavioral profile of Ana, family memoirs, and Ana's incriminating letters from prison, Popkin reveals the making of a traitor--a woman labelled "one of the most damaging spies in U.S. history" by America's top counter-intelligence official.

After more than two decades in federal prison, Montes will be freed in January 2023. Code Name Blue Wren is a thrilling detective tale, an insider's look at the clandestine world of espionage, and an intimate exploration of the dark side of betrayal.

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Femina

Janina Ramirez

THE #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 CUNDIL HISTORY PRIZE
A "Next Big Idea Book Club" Must Read?

A groundbreaking reappraisal of medieval femininity, revealing why women have been written out of history and why it matters

The Middle Ages are seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, saints and kings; a patriarchal society that oppressed and excluded women. But when we dig a little deeper into the truth, we can see that the "Dark" Ages were anything but.

Oxford and BBC historian Janina Ramirez has uncovered countless influential women's names struck out of historical records, with the word FEMINA annotated beside them. As gatekeepers of the past ordered books to be burned, artworks to be destroyed, and new versions of myths, legends and historical documents to be produced, our view of history has been manipulated.

Only now, through a careful examination of the artifacts, writings and possessions they left behind, are the influential and multifaceted lives of women emerging. Femina goes beyond the official records to uncover the true impact of women, such as:

  • Jadwiga, the only female king in Europe
  • Margery Kempe, who exploited her image and story to ensure her notoriety
  • Loftus Princess, whose existence gives us clues about the beginnings of Christianity in England

 

 


In Femina, Ramirez invites us to see the medieval world with fresh eyes and discover why these remarkable women were removed from our collective memories.

 

 

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Pure Wit

Francesca Peacock

A biography of the remarkable—and in her time scandalous—seventeenth-century writer Margaret Cavendish, who pioneered the science fiction novel.

"My ambition is not only to be Empress, but Authoress of a whole world."—Margaret Cavendish

Margaret Cavendish, then Lucas, was born in 1623 to an aristocratic family. In 1644, as England descended into civil war, she joined the court of the formidable Queen Henrietta Maria at Oxford. With the rest of the court she went into self-imposed exile in France. Her family's wealth and lands were forfeited by Parliament. It was in France that she met her partner, William Cavendish, Marquess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a marriage that made her the Duchess of Newcastle and would remain at the heart of both her life and career.

Margaret was a passionate writer. She wrote extensively on gender, science, philosophy, and published under her own name at a time when women simply did not do so. Her greatest work was The Blazing World, published in 1666, a utopian proto-novel that is thought to be one of the earliest works of science fiction that brought together Margaret's talents in poetry, philosophy, and science.

Yet hers is a legacy that has long divided opinion, and history has largely forgotten her, an undeserved fate for a brilliant, courageous proto-feminist. In Pure Wit, Francesca Peacock remedies this omission and shines a spotlight on the fascinating, pioneering, yet often complex and controversial life, of the multi-faceted Margaret Cavendish.

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The Watchmaker's Daughter

Larry Loftis

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

New York Times bestselling author and master of nonfiction spy thrillers Larry Loftis writes the first major biography of Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch watchmaker who saved the lives of hundreds of Jews during WWII--at the cost of losing her family and being sent to a concentration camp, only to survive, forgive her captors, and live the rest of her life as a Christian missionary.

The Watchmaker's Daughter is one of the greatest stories of World War II that readers haven't heard: the remarkable and inspiring life story of Corrie ten Boom--a groundbreaking, female Dutch watchmaker, whose family unselfishly transformed their house into a hiding place straight out of a spy novel to shelter Jews and refugees from the Nazis during Gestapo raids. Even though the Nazis knew what the ten Booms were up to, they were never able to find those sheltered within the house when they raided it.

Corrie stopped at nothing to face down the evils of her time and overcame unbelievable obstacles and odds. She persevered despite the loss of most of her family and relied on her faith to survive the horrors of a notorious concentration camp. But even more remarkable than her heroism and survival was Corrie's attitude when she was released. Miraculously, she was able to eschew bitterness and embrace forgiveness as she ministered to people in need around the globe. Corrie's ability to forgive is just one of the myriad lessons that her life story holds for readers today.

Reminiscent of Schindler's List and featuring a journey of faith and forgiveness not unlike Unbroken, The Watchmaker's Daughter is destined to become a classic work of World War II nonfiction.

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Wild Girls

Tiya Miles

Harriet Tubman, forced to labor outdoors on a Maryland plantation, learned from the land a terrain for escape. Louisa May Alcott ran wild, eluding gendered expectations in New England. The Indigenous women's basketball team from Fort Shaw, Montana, recaptured a sense of pride in physical prowess as they trounced the white teams of the 1904 World's Fair. Celebrating women like these who acted on their confidence outdoors, Wild Girls brings new context to misunderstood icons like Sacagawea and Pocahontas, and to underappreciated figures like Native American activist writer Zitkála-Sá, also known as Gertrude Bonnin, farmworkers' champion Dolores Huerta, and labor and Civil Rights organizer Grace Lee Boggs.

This beautiful, meditative work of history puts girls of all races--and the landscapes they loved--at center stage and reveals the impact of the outdoors on women's independence, resourcefulness, and vision. For these trailblazing women of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, navigating the woods, following the stars, playing sports, and taking to the streets in peaceful protest were not only joyful pursuits, but also techniques to resist assimilation, racism, and sexism. Lyrically written and full of archival discoveries, Wild Girls evokes landscapes as richly as the girls who roamed in them--and argues for equal access to outdoor spaces for young women of every race and class today.

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Normal Women

Philippa Gregory

"Lively, timely and gloriously energetic. Each page bursts with life, and every chapter swirls with personalities left out of traditional narratives of Britain's past. Philippa Gregory has produced something rare and wonderful: a genuinely new history of [Britain], with women at its beating heart." --Dan Jones, New York Times bestselling author of The Plantagenets

"Stunning. . . . Full of surprises. . . . A brilliant, essential read." --The Independent (UK)

The #1 New York Times bestselling historical novelist delivers her magnum opus--a landmark work of feminist nonfiction that radically redefines our understanding of the extraordinary roles ordinary women played throughout British history and "should be included in every history lesson" (Glamour UK)

Did you know that there are more penises than women in the Bayeux Tapestry? That the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 was started and propelled by women who were protesting a tax on women? Or that celebrated naturalist Charles Darwin believed not just that women were naturally inferior to men, but that they'd evolve to become ever more inferior?

These are just a few of the startling findings you will learn from reading Philippa Gregory's Normal Women. In this ambitious and groundbreaking book, she tells the story of England over 900 years, for the very first time placing women--some fifty per cent of the population--center stage.

Using research skills honed in her work as one of our foremost historical novelists, Gregory trawled through court records, newspapers, and journals to find highwaywomen and beggars, murderers and brides, housewives and pirates, female husbands and hermits. The "normal women" you will meet in these pages went to war, ploughed the fields, campaigned, wrote, and loved. They rode in jousts, flew Spitfires, issued their own currency, and built ships, corn mills and houses. They committed crimes or treason, worshipped many gods, cooked and nursed, invented things, and rioted. A lot.

A landmark work of scholarship and storytelling, Normal Women chronicles centuries of social and cultural change--from 1066 to modern times--powered by the determination, persistence, and effectiveness of women.

*INCLUDES ILLUSTRATIONS THROUGHOUT AND A FULL-COLOR INSERT*

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The Sisterhood

Liza Mundy

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • The acclaimed author of Code Girls returns with a “rip-roaring” (Steve Coll), “staggeringly well-researched” (The New York Times) history of three generations at the CIA, “electric with revelations” (Booklist) about the women who fought to become operatives, transformed spycraft, and tracked down Osama bin Laden.

“This masterful book cements Liza Mundy as one of our foremost historians.”—Kate Moore, bestselling author of The Radium Girls

A FOREIGN POLICY AND SMITHSONIAN BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Created in the aftermath of World War II, the Central Intelligence Agency relied on women even as it attempted to channel their talents and keep them down. Women sent cables, made dead drops, and maintained the agency’s secrets. Despite discrimination—even because of it—women who started as clerks, secretaries, or unpaid spouses rose to become some of the CIA’s shrewdest operatives.

They were unlikely spies—and that’s exactly what made them perfect for the role. Because women were seen as unimportant, pioneering female intelligence officers moved unnoticed around Bonn, Geneva, and Moscow, stealing secrets from under the noses of their KGB adversaries. Back at headquarters, women built the CIA’s critical archives—first by hand, then by computer. And they noticed things that the men at the top didn’t see. As the CIA faced an identity crisis after the Cold War, it was a close-knit network of female analysts who spotted the rising threat of al-Qaeda—though their warnings were repeatedly brushed aside.

After the 9/11 attacks, more women joined the agency as a new job, targeter, came to prominence. They showed that data analysis would be crucial to the post-9/11 national security landscape—an effort that culminated spectacularly in the CIA’s successful effort to track down bin Laden in his Pakistani compound.

Propelled by the same meticulous reporting and vivid storytelling that infused Code Girls, The Sisterhood offers a riveting new perspective on history, revealing how women at the CIA ushered in the modern intelligence age, and how their silencing made the world more dangerous.

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A Rome of One's Own

Emma Southon

From the acclaimed author of A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, a wildly entertaining new history of Rome that uses the lives of 21 women to upend our understanding of the ancient world

The history of Rome has long been narrow and one-sided, essentially a history of "the Doing of Important Things." And as far as Roman historians have been concerned, women don't make that history. From Romulus through the political stab-fest of the late Republic, and then on to all the emperors, Roman historians may deign to give you a wife or a mother to show how bad things become when women get out of control, but history is more than that.

Emma Southon's A Rome of One's Own is the best kind of correction. This is a retelling of the history of Rome with all the things Roman history writers relegate to the background, or designate as domestic, feminine, or worthless. This is a history of women who caused outrage, led armies in rebellion, wrote poetry; who lived independently or under the thumb of emperors. Told with humor and verve as well as a deep scholarly background, A Rome of One's Own highlights women overlooked and misunderstood, and through them offers a fascinating and groundbreaking chronicle of the ancient world.

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Woman, Watching

Merilyn Simonds

From award-winning author Merilyn Simonds, a remarkable biography of an extraordinary woman -- a Swedish aristocrat who survived the Russian Revolution to become an internationally renowned naturalist, one of the first to track the mid-century decline of songbirds.

2022 Foreword Indies Award Winner for the Editor's Choice Prize, non fiction

"[A] lyrical, passionate, and deeply researched portrait." -- Margaret Atwood

"This brilliant account does justice to a pioneering figure who merits wider recognition." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review

"[A] marvelous biography of a true pioneer of ornithology." -- Booklist, starred review

"Woman, Watching is an entrancing blend of biography, memoir, history, research, and homage that is unlike anything I've ever read. It's radical, it's ravishing." -- Kyo Maclear, author of Birds Art Life

Referred to as a Canadian Rachel Carson, Louise de Kiriline Lawrence lived and worked in an isolated log cabin near North Bay. After her husband was murdered by Bolsheviks, she refused her Swedish privilege and joined the Canadian Red Cross, visiting her northern Ontario patients by dogsled. When Elzire Dionne gave birth to five babies, Louise became nurse to the Dionne Quintuplets. Repulsed by the media circus, she retreated to her wilderness cabin, where she devoted herself to studying the birds that nested in her forest. Author of six books and scores of magazine stories, de Kiriline Lawrence and her "loghouse nest" became a Mecca for international ornithologists.

Lawrence was an old woman when Merilyn Simonds moved into the woods not far away. Their paths crossed, sparking Simonds's lifelong interest. A dedicated birder, Simonds brings her own songbird experiences from Canadian nesting grounds and Mexican wintering grounds to this deeply researched, engaging portrait of a uniquely fascinating woman.

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Brave the Wild River

Melissa L. Sevigny

In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off to run the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious and entrepreneurial expedition leader, a zoologist, and two amateur boatmen. With its churning waters and treacherous boulders, the Colorado was famed as the most dangerous river in the world. Journalists and veteran river runners boldly proclaimed that the motley crew would never make it out alive. But for Clover and Jotter, the expedition held a tantalizing appeal: no one had yet surveyed the plant life of the Grand Canyon, and they were determined to be the first.

Through the vibrant letters and diaries of the two women, science journalist Melissa L. Sevigny traces their daring forty-three-day journey down the river, during which they meticulously cataloged the thorny plants that thrived in the Grand Canyon's secret nooks and crannies. Along the way, they chased a runaway boat, ran the river's most fearsome rapids, and turned the harshest critic of female river runners into an ally. Clover and Jotter's plant list, including four new cactus species, would one day become vital for efforts to protect and restore the river ecosystem.

Brave the Wild River is a spellbinding adventure of two women who risked their lives to make an unprecedented botanical survey of a defining landscape in the American West, at a time when human influences had begun to change it forever.

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Skinnytaste Simple

Gina Homolka

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A delectable collection of 120 healthy dishes that use seven ingredients or fewer to deliver big flavor without the fuss—the easiest, simplest recipes yet from #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Skinnytaste Cookbook

Gina Homolka knows how tough it can be to put a meal together when she’s tight for time and energy. Skinnytaste Simple is the solution: recipes with minimum ingredients but maximum flavor and nutrition. These game-changing, no-fuss dinners use no more than seven ingredients each, allowing you to put easy, healthy meals on the table with little-to-no effort.

From hearty breakfasts like Chilaquiles with Fried Eggs and Acai Berry Bowls to crowd-pleasing dinners including One Pan Shrimp and Saffron Orzo and Sheet Pan Eggplant Lasagna, you’ll find recipes the whole family will love. Plus, sweet indulgences are a snap with quick-and-easy chocolatey Flourless Sea Salt Brownies and make-ahead Strawberry and Cheese Turnovers. Each recipe features a gorgeous photo, icons that indicate recipes that may suit your dietary needs (such as gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian), and nutritional info, with the most up to date Weight Watchers points available on the Skinnytaste site. 

With Skinnytaste Simple, cooking delicious, nutritious meals for your family is easier than ever!

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Come Hungry

Melissa Ben-Ishay

From Melissa Ben-Ishay--the co-founder of Baked by Melissa and creator of the viral Green Goddess Salad--comes an irresistible, veggie-packed cookbook with over 100 flavorful, nourishing recipes to inspire you to eat delicious meals that make you feel great.

When Melissa Ben-Ishay, the co-founder and CEO of bite-size cupcake empire Baked by Melissa, posted her vegan Green Goddess Salad on TikTok, it became a viral sensation. The recipe exploded online, gaining over 25 million views, landing Melissa on the TODAY Show, and inspiring fans like Cardi B and Lizzo to make their own version of the salad.

After the success of the Green Goddess Salad, Melissa continued to share her finely chopped, vegetable-focused recipes and inspired millions of fans to eat more greens with her flavorful, fresh creations. The meals all highlight Melissa's food philosophy: if you get your nourishment from mealtime, you can absolutely indulge in dessert every day, just like she does.

In Come Hungry, Melissa shares her favorite everyday recipes and tips for creating nourishing, delicious meals the whole family will love. With flavorful ingredients and easy-to-follow instructions, Melissa encourages home cooks of all levels to cook outside of their comfort zones and reveals her go-to techniques for creating the perfect bite. Packed with colorful, craveable recipes, Come Hungry offers a wide range of simple dishes for any diet, including:

  • Mediterranean Grain Salad
  • Coffee Shop Sesame Chicken Salad
  • Crunchy Ramen Slaw with Grilled Ribeye
  • Green Veggie Pizza
  • Double Chocolate Zucchini Cake

From her grandmother's kitchen in the Catskills to her in-laws' home on the Mediterranean, Melissa features recipes inspired by meals that have shaped her as a cook and promote a veggie-packed way of eating, from mouthwatering toasts topped with leftovers to filling a pita with flavorful small plates. Ultimately, each and every recipe encourages creativity in the kitchen and invites the reader--as Melissa's family says to guests on their way for dinner--to come hungry.

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Bountiful Cooking

Agatha Achindu

Come Home to Your Kitchen

I want you to close your eyes as you hold this book in your hands and understand that it is yours to create magic, to reinvent yourself in the kitchen in ways you never thought possible. It doesn't matter if you weren't raised in a home with skilled cooks or entrenched in healthy food traditions as I was. It doesn't matter if you have no culinary experience at all. I am sharing my kitchen, my mami's kitchen, my grandma's bare-bones, gadget-free kitchen that produced the healthiest, most mouthwatering meals. This book you are holding--full of recipes, knowledge, life stories, and tips I share with my own family and clients--is an extension of who I am. I hope it helps and brings you joy, too.

--from the Introduction

When Agatha Achindu came to the US from Cameroon, West Africa, for university, she didn't know what to make of the aisles and aisles of canned foods in the grocery store. She started making meals with fresh ingredients for her roommate; after her first community dinner for fifty fellow students, word spread. Fast-forward thirty years: What started as small dinners and workshops teaching moms how to make nutritious meals blossomed into a career dedicated to helping families live life unprocessed, and eat flavorful, nutrient‑dense foods that can help prevent chronic disease and other food-related health concerns. No matter what Agatha does, her dishes are always based on one fundamental principle she learned from her mami: You are what you eat. Throughout her career, she has shared this ethos: for each and every person--no matter their age, background, or locale--to grow and thrive without the daily aggravation and hardship (and expense!) of preventable chronic diseases. Agatha has been on an unrelenting mission to make families and communities healthier, to live a life that is bursting with vibrant energy, age gracefully and in good health. It is never too late to start eating food that will nourish our body, mind and soul.



Bountiful Cooking celebrates these matrilineal culinary philosophies with 100 recipes packed with life-giving nutrients. Not only are these recipes healthy, but with global flavors, they also serve as cultural nutrition for the whole family. Agatha's recipes will make you fall in love with food--and recognize that food, a sacred source of life and feeding, is the highest expression of love.

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Forever Strong

Gabrielle Lyon

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * USA TODAY BESTSELLER * WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER

Learn how to reboot your metabolism, build strength, and extend your life with this accessible new guidebook that demonstrates the importance of muscle for health and longevity from the founder of the Institute for Muscle-Centric Medicine®.

After years of watching patients cycle through her practice, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon noticed a pattern. While her patients struggled with a wide range of conditions, they all suffered from the same core problem: they had too little muscle rather than too much fat.

When we think about muscle, we tend to think about strength or aesthetics, but in reality, muscle accounts for so much more than that. As the body’s largest endocrine organ, muscle actually determines everything about the trajectory of health and aging. Many of the conditions Dr. Lyon’s patients were experiencing were actually symptoms of underdeveloped or unhealthy muscle.

Now, Dr. Lyon offers an easy-to-follow food, fitness, and self-care program anchored in evidence and pioneering research that teaches you how to optimize muscle—no matter your age or health background. Discover how to overcome everything from obesity to autoimmune disorders and avoid diseases like Alzheimer’s, hypertension, and diabetes by following Dr. Lyon’s powerful new approach to becoming forever strong.

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Master Slave Husband Wife

Ilyon Woo

One of The New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2023
New York Times Bestseller

Named a best book of 2023 by The New Yorker, Time, NPR, Smithsonian Magazine, Boston, Chicago Public Library, Oprah Daily, and People

The remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped slavery through daring, determination, and disguise, with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled White man and William posing as “his” slave.

In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.

Along the way, they dodged slave traders, military officers, and even friends of their enslavers, who might have revealed their true identities. The tale of their adventure soon made them celebrities, and generated headlines around the country. Americans could not get enough of this charismatic young couple, who traveled another 1,000 miles criss-crossing New England, drawing thunderous applause as they spoke alongside some of the greatest abolitionist luminaries of the day—among them Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown.

But even then, they were not out of danger. With the passage of an infamous new Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, all Americans became accountable for returning refugees like the Crafts to slavery. Then yet another adventure began, as slave hunters came up from Georgia, forcing the Crafts to flee once again—this time from the United States, their lives and thousands more on the line and the stakes never higher.

With three epic journeys compressed into one monumental bid for freedom, Master Slave Husband Wife is an American love story—one that would challenge the nation’s core precepts of life, liberty, and justice for all—one that challenges us even now.

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How to Say Babylon

Safiya Sinclair

A New York Times Notable Book
A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!
A Best Book of 2023 by the New York Times, Time, The Washington Post, Vulture, Shelf Awareness, Goodreads, Esquire, The Atlantic, NPR, and Barack Obama

With echoes of Educated and Born a Crime, How to Say Babylon is the stunning story of the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet.

Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.

In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and dresses to cover their arms and legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya’s mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father’s beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya’s voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them.

How to Say Babylon is Sinclair’s reckoning with the culture that initially nourished but ultimately sought to silence her; it is her reckoning with patriarchy and tradition, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica. Rich in lyricism and language only a poet could evoke, How to Say Babylon is both a universal story of a woman finding her own power and a unique glimpse into a rarefied world we may know how to name, Rastafari, but one we know little about.

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Forest Bathing

Dr. Qing Li

The definitive--and by far the most popular--guide to the therapeutic Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku, or the art and science of how trees can promote health and happiness

Notice how a tree sways in the wind. Run your hands over its bark. Take in its citrusy scent. As a society we suffer from nature deficit disorder, but studies have shown that spending mindful, intentional time around trees--what the Japanese call shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing--can promote health and happiness.

In this beautiful book--featuring more than 100 color photographs from forests around the world, including the forest therapy trails that criss-cross Japan--Dr. Qing Li, the world's foremost expert in forest medicine, shows how forest bathing can reduce your stress levels and blood pressure, strengthen your immune and cardiovascular systems, boost your energy, mood, creativity, and concentration, and even help you lose weight and live longer.

Once you've discovered the healing power of trees, you can lose yourself in the beauty of your surroundings, leave everyday stress behind, and reach a place of greater calm and wellness.

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Enchantment

Katherine May

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“When I tell you that I dogeared almost every page in this book, I'm telling God's honest truth. I didn't know how much I needed someone else to validate what I was going through. The sense that I had lost my curiosity, my imagination, my ability to make meaning.” – NPR Morning Edition host Rachel Martin

"Such a teacher for every single person who is trying to live closer to who they were born to be and not who the world tamed them to be.” – New York Times bestselling author Glennon Doyle on We Can Do Hard Things

“I love Katherine May’s new book, Enchantment.…It’s a beautiful offering of light, truth and charm in these strange, dark times.” – New York Times bestselling author Anne Lamott
 
“Katherine May gave so many of us language and vision for the long communal ‘wintering’ of the last years. Welcome this beautiful meditation for the time we've now entered. I cannot imagine a more gracious companion. This book is a gift.” – New York Times bestselling author Krista Tippett

“Gentle inspiration for those who feel exhausted or helpless… May shows how paying deliberate attention to what’s around us can surprise us with insights and reveal new connections that deepen our appreciation for the world.” – Washington Post


From the New York Times–bestselling author of Wintering, an invitation to rediscover the feelings of awe and wonder available to us all

Many of us feel trapped in a grind of constant change: rolling news cycles, the chatter of social media, our families split along partisan lines. We feel fearful and tired, on edge in our bodies, not quite knowing what has us perpetually depleted. For Katherine May, this low hum of fatigue and anxiety made her wonder what she was missing. Could there be a different way to relate to the world, one that would allow her to feel more rested and at ease, even as seismic changes unfold on the planet? Might there be a way for all of us to move through life with curiosity and tenderness, sensitized to the subtle magic all around?
 
In Enchantment, May invites the reader to come with her on a journey to reawaken our innate sense of wonder and awe. With humor, candor, and warmth, she shares stories of her own struggles with work, family, and the aftereffects of pandemic, particularly feelings of overwhelm as the world rushes to reopen. Craving a different way to live, May begins to explore the restorative properties of the natural world, moving through the elements of earth, water, fire, and air and identifying the quiet traces of magic that can be found only when we look for them. Through deliberate attention and ritual, she unearths the potency and nourishment that come from quiet reconnection with our immediate environment. Blending lyricism and storytelling, sensitivity and empathy, Enchantment invites each of us to open the door to human experience in all its sensual complexity, and to find the beauty waiting for us there.

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The Sleep Prescription

Aric A. Prather, PhD

“Vastly knowledgeable and genuinely brilliant . . . An easy yet most effective how-to guide on sleep.” —Dr. Matthew Walker, New York Times bestselling author of Why We Sleep

From renowned sleep scientist Dr. Aric Prather, a book that offers a simple yet powerful plan to improve your sleep in seven days


We need sleep to survive. Sleep is as essential as food, water, and oxygen. So how can something that should be so instinctual and automatic be so hard? Dr. Prather runs one of the world’s most successful sleep clinics and has cracked the code to help even the most restless of sleepers get a good night’s rest.  

In The Sleep Prescription, Dr. Prather shares the powerful solutions that he uses to help his patients at the clinic achieve healing and restorative sleep. Going beyond the obvious solutions, Dr. Prather shares surprisingly simple yet deeply effective techniques that will help you lie back and let sleep work its magic.

The seven-day prescription will lead you through these exercises:

Day 1: Set Your (Internal) Clock
Day 2: Ease Off the Gas
Day 3: Energize—But Do It Right
Day 4: Worry Early
Day 5: You Are Not a Computer; You Can't Just Shut Down
Day 6: (Re)Train Your Brain
Day 7: Stay Up Late

Over the course of seven days, this book will teach you how to get out of your own way, so that your body can do effortlessly what it was built to do: sleep well.

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The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy, Revised and Expanded

Valerie Ann Worwood

Completely updated, the best book on the topic available anywhere has just gotten better!

A necessary resource for anyone interested in alternative approaches to healing and lifestyle, this new edition contains more than 800 easy-to-follow recipes for essential oil treatments. No one has provided more thorough and accurate guidance to the home practitioner or professional aromatherapist than Valerie Ann Worwood.

In her clear and positive voice, Worwood provides tools to address a huge variety of health issues, including specific advice for children, women, men, and seniors. Other sections cover self-defense against microbes and contaminants, emotional challenges, care for the home and workplace, and applications for athletes, dancers, travelers, cooks, gardeners, and animal lovers. Worwood also offers us her expertise in the use of essential oils in beauty and spa treatments, plus profiles of 125 essential oils, 37 carrier oils, and more.

Since the publication of the first edition of this book 25 years ago, the positive impact of essential oil use has become increasingly recognized, as scientific researchers throughout the world have explored essential oils and their constituents for their unique properties and uses.

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Well at Work

Esther M. Sternberg,

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 OWL AWARDS

Full of science-backed tips on how to design any workspace for physical and emotional wellbeing, "Well at Work helps us thrive wherever we work." (Arianna Huffington)


Whether you work in a traditional office or a corner of your bedroom, staying well at work need not be a luxury. But wellness at work isn't just about staying physically healthy; it's also about reducing stress and improving mood, focus, energy, and productivity.

Well at Work reveals how to optimize our workspaces for wellbeing across the seven domains of integrative health: stress and resilience, movement, sleep, relationships, environment, nutrition, and spirituality, and even the air we breathe. You'll learn:

  • How the environment you work in all day can affect your sleep at night
  • Optimal lighting and noise levels for reducing stress and improving focus
  • How to adjust temperature and humidity to stay alert and protect against infection
  • Why open-plan offices can keep you more active
  • The myriad benefits of access to nature (and how to bring nature indoors)
  • Office layouts that foster social interactions but not distraction
  • Foods to enhance cognitive performance
  • And more

Along the way, you'll meet the scientists and doctors, designers and architects, and building science professionals who are striving to make workplaces more conducive to wellbeing. And you'll glimpse into the future of the workplace, where artificial intelligence and the metaverse will help us create environments that respond to our individual needs.

Above all, you'll come away with a menu of simple, "innovative, and often overlooked" (Dr. Richard Carmona) steps anyone can take to be--and stay--well at work.

 

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Home Detox

Daniella Chace

From the bedroom mattress and pillows to daily cleaning products for the kitchen and bath, toothbrushes, and even furniture and clothing, toxins are embedded in many products and items used regularly in the home—and they are making us sick. Home Detox is a practical, accessible guide to understanding the problem and how we can address it in our own homes in a manageable and affordable way. Daniella Chace, a professional toxicologist and health writer, teaches readers how to identify potential toxins, with an easy-to-follow, room-by-room evaluation of the "Toxic Ten" in each space. She explains the connection between toxins in everyday objects and chronic health issues such as headaches, asthma, high cholesterol, skin problems, and sleep problems and offers strategies for eliminating toxins, along with easy recipes for effective homemade cleaning solutions using essential oils, baking soda, vinegar, and other ingredients that are natural, affordable, and effective.
 
 

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The Wellness Trap

Christy Harrison

AS SEEN ON CBS MORNINGS, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE CUT, AND MORE
SELF MAGAZINE'S #1 WELLNESS BOOK OF 2023
A NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB MUST-READ BOOK FOR APRIL 2023

A searing critique of modern wellness culture and how it stands in the way of true well-being that "will change the way you think about your health--in all the best ways." (Casey Gueren)

"It's not a diet, it's a lifestyle." You've probably heard this phrase from any number of people in the wellness space. But as Christy Harrison reveals in her latest book, wellness culture promotes a standard of health that is often both unattainable and deeply harmful.

Many people with chronic illness understandably feel dismissed or abandoned by the healthcare system and find solace in alternative medicine, as Harrison once did. Yet the wellness industry promotes practices that often cause even more damage than the conventional approaches they're meant to replace. From the lack of pre-market safety testing on herbal and dietary supplements, to the unfounded claims made by many wellness influencers and functional-medicine providers, to the social-media algorithms driving users down rabbit holes of wellness mis- and disinformation, it can often feel like no one is looking out for us in the face of the $4.4 trillion global wellness industry.

The Wellness Trap delves into the persistent, systemic problems with that industry, offering insight into its troubling pattern of cultural appropriation and its destructive views on mental health, and shedding light on how a growing distrust of conventional medicine has led ordinary people to turn their backs on science. Weaving together history, memoir, reporting, and practical advice, Harrison illuminates the harms of wellness culture while re-imagining our society's relationship with well-being.

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Organic Beauty

Maru Godas

A beautifully illustrated guide to living organically.

Cottage-core, wellness, and sustainability collide with this playful, illustrated guide to organic skincare.

Learn what plants to use, how to collect and prepare them, and create your own masks, scrubs, balms, butter, hair lotions, and much more with detailed step-by-step instructions.

From helping you to decipher those complicated product labels and showing you how to make cosmetics from the plants in your own backyard, to how to use natural ingredients to help you care for your body, Organic Beauty is full of tips for building a healthy, natural lifestyle that fosters beauty from the inside out.

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To Dye For

Alden Wicker

A Silent Spring for your wardrobe, To Dye For is a jolting exposé that reveals the true cost of the toxic, largely unregulated chemicals found on most clothing today.

Many of us are aware of the ethical minefield that is fast fashion: the dodgy labor practices, the lax environmental standards, and the mountains of waste piling up on the shores of developing countries. But have you stopped to consider the dangerous effects your clothes are having on your own health? Award-winning journalist Alden Wicker breaks open a story hiding in plain sight: the unregulated toxic chemicals that are likely in your wardrobe right now, how they’re harming you, and what you can do about it.

In To Dye For, Wicker reveals how clothing manufacturers have successfully swept consumers’ concerns under the rug for more than 150 years, and why synthetic fashion and dyes made from fossil fuels are so deeply intertwined with the rise of autoimmune disease, infertility, asthma, eczema, and more. In fact, there’s little to no regulation of the clothes and textiles we wear each day—from uniforms to fast fashion, outdoor gear, and even the face masks that have become ubiquitous in recent years. Wicker explains how we got here, what the stakes are, and what all of us can do in the fight for a safe and healthy wardrobe for all.

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Recovery

Gavin Francis

“An essential book for our times, full of wisdom, compassion and sound advice. Every patient needs a copy of this gem.” –Katherine May, author of Wintering and Enchantment

A gentle, expert guide to the secrets of recovery, showing why we need it and how to do it better


For many of us, time spent in recovery—from a broken leg, a virus, chronic illness, or the crisis of depression or anxiety—can feel like an unwelcome obstacle on the road to health. Modern medicine too often assumes that once doctors have prescribed a course of treatment, healing takes care of itself. But recovery isn’t something that “just happens.” It is an act that we engage in and that has the potential to transform our lives, if only we can find ways to learn its rhythms and invest our time, energy, and participation.

Drawing on thirty years of medicine, and on insights from practitioners, psychologists, and writers across history, physician Gavin Francis delivers a profound, practical, and deeply hopeful guide to recovery. Rejecting the idea that healing is passive, Recovery offers tools and wisdom for convalescence, and shows how tending to our bodies, environments, and perspectives can help us move through the landscape of illness—and come out the other side whole.

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Well to the Core

Robin Long

You deserve to feel good--not just in your body, but in your whole being.

Robin Long, certified Pilates instructor and founder of Lindywell, is on a mission to help you reclaim your health, your fitness, and your body. In Well to the Core, join Robin on a journey toward holistic health and discover:

  • ten core components of an effective and realistic approach to healthy and balanced living;
  • a grace-over-guilt mindset to release shame and develop helpful habits in every season of life;
  • how breath, nature, rest, and play can improve your quality of life; and
  • exclusive Pilates workouts, mindfulness exercises, and deliciously crafted recipes to nourish your mind, body, and soul.

It is possible to break free from constant stress about what you're eating, how you're exercising, or how much weight you need to lose in order to really start living. This is where true wellness begins. Let Robin Long show you the way in Well to the Core.

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How to Eat to Change How You Drink

Brooke Scheller

"Scheller's practical guidance is elevated by her compassionate tone...The result is a solid guide to cutting back."--Publisher's Weekly

Let nutrition lead you to sobriety (or to just drinking a little less) with this guide and meal plan to reduce alcohol cravings and repair your health through food.

Trapped in alcohol's addictive grip, Dr. Brooke Scheller wanted a way out. For her, total sobriety was the answer to her problem, which she achieved by applying her skills as a doctor of nutrition, pairing her knowledge of nutrition with other integrative therapies to eliminate alcohol for good. Seeing the success in herself, she shifted her practice to help inspire others to explore a lifestyle with little to no alcohol.

How to Eat to Change How You Drink is a revolutionary guide to leverage food and nutrition to reduce or eliminate alcohol consumption, develop mindfulness, and promote a healthier relationship with alcohol. Working through the book, readers will identify their drinking archetype and then learn the types of nutritional changes they can make to reduce alcohol cravings alongside behavior modification; they'll learn how alcohol affects their nutritional status and can contribute to health symptoms ranging from fatigue, to hormonal imbalances, digestive irregularities, weight gain, thyroid disorders, autoimmune diseases and more; and they'll restore their nutritional status and repair key body systems after moderate to heavy alcohol consumption.

This book will change the way we think about and address alcohol intake in our society-- through the lens of nutrition.

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Strong Like Water

Aundi Kolber

There's a cost to being a certain kind of strong.

When it comes to difficult circumstances, we've all heard the platitudes: "No pain, no gain." "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." But if we spend our lives trying to be "the strong one," we become exhausted, burned-out, and disconnected from our truest selves.

What if it were different? Could there be a different way to be strong? Could strength mean more than pushing on and pushing through pain, bearing every heavy burden on our own? What if, instead, true strength were more like the tide: soft and bold, fierce and gentle, moving together as one powerful force?

In Strong like Water, author and trauma therapist Aundi Kolber offers a framework for true flourishing. With each page, you'll:

  • Learn how your nervous system shapes your experience so that we can move through pain instead of being stuck in it.
  • Explore various practices, rhythms, and resources to support you in challenging circumstances with compassion and hope.
  • Discover how to internalize connection, love, and safety--empowering you with greater resilience.

A different, more expansive way of healing, wholeness, and possibly--especially--strength is possible. We were made to be strong like water.

 

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The Stress Prescription

Elissa Epel, PhD

“A preeminent expert sheds light on how to handle the daily hassles of life. It’s not just a manual for managing stress—it’s a toolkit for preventing it.” —Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again

From world-renowned psychologist and New York Times–bestselling author Dr. Elissa Epel, a simple yet powerful plan to turn your stress into your strength in just seven days


We can’t avoid stress. But we can embrace it and transform it.

Whether we’re facing deadlines, difficulties with family or friends, personal crises, or just the uncertainty of the world—stress is the ocean we swim in. Even our negative thoughts can trigger our body’s stress response so we rarely experience periods of ease and deep restoration.

In The Stress Prescription, Dr. Epel distills decades of research, infused with wisdom, into a practical yet transformative seven-day plan of science-based techniques that can help you harness stress through more positive challenge and purpose. 

The seven-day prescription will lead you through these exercises:

Day 1: Things Will Go Wrong . . . And That’s All Right
Day 2: Control What You Can . . . And Put Down the Rest
Day 3: Be the Lion
Day 4: Train for Resilience
Day 5: Let Nature Do the Work
Day 6: Don’t Just Relax . . . Restore
Day 7: Start Full, End Full

Dr. Epel shows us how we can “stress better”—by training our minds and bodies to shift towards a flexible, beneficial stress response that can actually enhance health. You will develop a more robust mindset, build the resources you need to turn stress into strength, and fill your days with more joy, connection, and ease.

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Slow AF Run Club

Martinus Evans

A practical guide and a celebration of running for runners of all sizes and athletic ability, from the founder of the Slow AF Run Club.

Ten years ago, Martinus Evans got some stern advice from his doctor: “Lose weight or die.” First defensive, but then defiant, Evans vowed that day to run a marathon, though his doctor thought he was crazy. Since then, Evans has run eight marathons and hundreds of other distances in his 300-something pound body, created his own devoted running community, and has been featured on the cover of Runner’s World.
This book is a blueprint for those who may not fit the image of a “traditional” runner—that is, someone who is larger in size, less athletic, out of shape, or dealing with any kind of health issue that slows them down—to feel empowered to lace up their shoes and embrace the body they have right now.
As Evans says, the incredible benefits of running—better sleep, strong muscles and bones, better cardiovascular and mental health, and a sense of community—can and should be available to all of us. This practical handbook contains specialized advice to make getting started less intimidating, covering everything from gear and nutrition to training schedules, recovery tips, races (it’s okay to come in DFL! [i.e., dead f*cking last]), and finding a running group. Full of essential advice and humor from a former newbie who fell off a treadmill on his first run (literally), The Slow AF Run Club is for anyone who wants to pick up running for the sheer joy of it.

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Science of Stretch

Leada Malek

Explore new movements and alleviate stiff joints with more than 100 exercises designed to keep you flexible, energized, and active for life.

Pain and stiffness can create fear and uncertainty in our ability to move, affecting quality of life. Exercise has continuously proven to be beneficial against disease, yet people are becoming increasingly sedentary.

More than a quarter of the world's population is insufficiently active and it's time we remove barriers to exercise and encourage movement exploration. The Science of Stretch is your guide to understanding the human body's resilient and adaptable nature and how stretching can play a role in achieving your highest well-being.

Inside the pages of this book you'll learn about:

-The latest research on stretching

-Human anatomy and physiology

-The nervous system and pain science

-How to reduce injury risk with exercise

-Managing a lifestyle catered towards healthy aging

-What happens to the body when we stretch

-Different types of stretching and how to implement them to best compliment your daily life or sporting activities

-Finally, a series of suggested stretch routines are outlined, each with a progressive increase in challenge and tailored to different abilities and fitness objectives-alongside the tools to create your own bespoke workouts.

Every exercise is anatomized in detail to make movement easily understood using CGI artworks to show how each muscle is correctly activated and each joint aligned. Whether you're taking a walk around the park or running a marathon, Science of Stretch will help you stay flexible, keep active, and remove the uncertainty from stretching.

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Built to Move

Kelly Starrett

The innovators behind The Ready State and the movement bible Becoming a Supple Leopard present 10 practices proven to enhance mobility, make you feel energetic and alive, and, like a good 401(K), prepare your body for whatever comes its way in the future.

After decades spent working with pro-athletes, Olympians, and Navy Seals, mobility pioneers Kelly and Juliet Starrett began thinking about the physical well-being of the rest of us. What makes a durable human? How do we continue to feel great and function well as we age? And how do we counteract the effects of technology-dependence, sedentary living, and other modern ways of life on our body’s natural need for activity? Our bodies, after all, were built to move.

The answers lie in a simple formula for basic mobility maintenance: 10 tests + 10 physical practices = 10 ways to make your body work better.

Organized around ten assessments and ten physical practices that anyone can do, Built to Move is designed to improve the way your body feels—less stiffness! fewer aches and pain!— and boost the overall quality of your life, no matter how you spend your time. The book offers:

  • Easy mobilization practices to increase range of motion and avoid injury
  • Uncomplicated guidelines for improving nutrition and sleep
  • Breathing strategies to help you move more freely and manage stress and pain
  • Advice on easy ways to change sedentary habits and integrate more movement into your daily life.

This is the first body book written for exercisers and nonexercisers alike. It’s full of foundational wisdom for everyone from professional athletes to gym haters and everyone in between. Built to Move introduces readers to a set of simple principles and practices that are undemanding enough to work into any busy schedule, lead to greater ease of movement, better health, and a happier life doing whatever it is you love to do—and want to continue doing as long as you live. This book is your game plan for the long game.

 

 

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Ultra-Processed People

Chris van Tulleken

It's not you, it's the food.

We have entered a new age of eating. For the first time in human history, most of our calories come from an entirely novel set of substances called Ultra-Processed Food. There's a long, formal scientific definition, but it can be boiled down to this: if it's wrapped in plastic and has at least one ingredient that you wouldn't find in your kitchen, it's UPF.

These products are specifically engineered to behave as addictive substances, driving excess consumption. They are now linked to the leading cause of early death globally and the number one cause of environmental destruction. Yet almost all our staple foods are ultra-processed. UPF is our food culture and for many people it is the only available and affordable food.

In this book, Chris van Tulleken, father, scientist, doctor, and award-winning BBC broadcaster, marshals the latest evidence to show how governments, scientists, and doctors have allowed transnational food companies to create a pandemic of diet-related disease. The solutions don't lie in willpower, personal responsibility, or exercise. You'll find no diet plan in this book--but join Chris as he undertakes a powerful self-experiment that made headlines around the world: under the supervision of colleagues at University College London he spent a month eating a diet of 80 percent UPF, typical for many children and adults in the United States. While his body became the subject of scientific scrutiny, he spoke to the world's leading experts from academia, agriculture, and--most important--the food industry itself. But more than teaching him about the experience of the food, the diet switched off Chris's own addiction to UPF.

In a fast-paced and eye-opening narrative he explores the origins, science, and economics of UPF to reveal its catastrophic impact on our bodies and the planet. And he proposes real solutions for doctors, for policy makers, and for all of us who have to eat. A book that won't only upend the way you shop and eat, Ultra-Processed People will open your eyes to the need for action on a global scale.

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Sugarless

Nicole M. Avena

Break free from sugar addiction and take control of your health. In Sugarless, pioneering neuroscientist Dr. Nicole Avena provides a revolutionary step-by-step plan to help readers curb sweet cravings and quit sugar once and for all. With surprising sources of hidden sugars exposed, Dr. Avena's 7-step program empowers you to overcome sugar addiction by identifying sugar traps, taming your sweet tooth, and breaking the vicious diet cycle.

Backed by over 100 studies, Dr. Avena reveals how processed foods with refined sugars can be even more addictive than illicit drugs. She dispels myths blaming lack of willpower, and proves biologically how sugar affects the brain. With a foreword by Dr. Daniel Amen and 30 sugar-free recipes, this book provides the perfect blueprint for your sugar detox.

Hailed as the first to study sugar addiction, Dr. Avena is the world's foremost authority on the topic. Her blend of compelling research and actionable solutions makes embarking on your own sugar detox for beginners straightforward. Simply follow her advice to feel more in control, stop craving sugar, and start feeling healthier.

Key Features:

  • Science-backed 7-step program to reduce sugar consumption
  • 30 delicious sugar-free recipes
  • Foreword by Dr. Daniel Amen, 12-time New York Times bestselling author and integrative psychiatrist
  • Surprising sources of hidden sugars revealed
  • Tools to resist sweet cravings and manage sugar withdrawal
  • Practical plan to break the cycle for good
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The Comfort Crisis

Michael Easter

Discover the evolutionary mind and body benefits of living at the edges of your comfort zone and reconnecting with the wild—from the New York Times bestselling author of Scarcity Brain.

“If you’ve been looking for something different to level up your health, fitness, and personal growth, this is it.”—Melissa Urban, Whole30 CEO and author of The Book of Boundaries

“Michael Easter’s genius is that he puts data around the edges of what we intuitively believe. His work has inspired many to change their lives for the better.”—Dr. Peter Attia, author of Outlive


In many ways, we’re more comfortable than ever before. But could our sheltered, temperature-controlled, overfed, underchallenged lives actually be the leading cause of many our most urgent physical and mental health issues? In this gripping investigation, award-winning journalist Michael Easter seeks out off-the-grid visionaries, disruptive genius researchers, and mind-body conditioning trailblazers who are unlocking the life-enhancing secrets of a counterintuitive solution: discomfort.
 
Easter’s journey to understand our evolutionary need to be challenged takes him to meet the NBA’s top exercise scientist, who uses an ancient Japanese practice to build championship athletes; to the mystical country of Bhutan, where an Oxford economist and Buddhist leader are showing the world what death can teach us about happiness; to the outdoor lab of a young neuroscientist who’s found that nature tests our physical and mental endurance in ways that expand creativity while taming burnout and anxiety; to the remote Alaskan backcountry on a demanding thirty-three-day hunting expedition to experience the rewilding secrets of one of the last rugged places on Earth; and more.
 
Along the way, Easter uncovers a blueprint for leveraging the power of discomfort that will dramatically improve our health and happiness, and perhaps even help us understand what it means to be human. The Comfort Crisis is a bold call to break out of your comfort zone and explore the wild within yourself.

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Calm Your Mind with Food

Uma Naidoo

Relieve your anxiety through food with this "groundbreaking," full-body approach to mental health (Mark Hyman, MD), from bestselling author and nutritional psychiatrist Uma Naidoo, MD

In this groundbreaking guide, Dr. Uma Naidoo presents cutting-edge research about the ways anxiety is rooted in the brain, gut, immune system, and metabolism. Drawing on the latest science on the connection between diet and anxiety, Dr. Naidoo shows us how to effectively use food and nutrition as essential tools for calming the mind.

In Calm Your Mind with Food, you'll learn:

  • How inflammation affects everything from anxiety and depression to Alzheimer's disease
  • How the trillions of bacteria living in your gut are key to controlling anxiety
  • The six pillars for calming the mind
  • What to eat to balance leptin, a key link between the central nervous system and metabolic processes
  • How to incorporate anxiety-busting foods into your diet, from the obscure (ashwagandha) to the ubiquitous (vitamin C)
  • The best diets for managing symptoms of anxiety and depression

Along with guidelines for creating your own personal anti-anxiety meal plan and dozens of supernutrient-forward, delicious recipes, Calm Your Mind with Food will help you boost your immunity, reduce anxiety, and enhance your overall mental well-being.

 

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Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind

Georgia Ede

Combine the surprising truth about brain food with the cutting-edge science of brain metabolism to achieve extraordinary improvements to your emotional, cognitive, and physical health.​

Are you struggling with attention problems, mood swings, food obsession, or depression? Whatever the issue, you have far more control over your thoughts, feelings, and behavior than you realize. Although medications may bring some relief, in Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind, Dr. Georgia Ede reveals that the most powerful way to change brain chemistry is with food, because that's where brain chemicals come from in the first place.

In this provocative, illuminating guide, Dr. Ede explains why nearly everything we think we know about brain-healthy diets is wrong. We've been told the way to protect our brains is with superfoods, supplements, and plant-based diets rich in whole grains and legumes, but the science tells a different story: not only do these strategies often fail, but some can even work against us. The truth about brain food is that meat is not dangerous, vegan diets are not healthier, and antioxidants are not the answer.

Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind will empower you to:

 

 

  • understand how unscientific research methods drive fickle nutrition headlines and illogical dietary guidelines
  • weigh the risks and benefits of your favorite foods so you can make your own informed choices about what to eat
  • evaluate yourself for signs of insulin resistance--the silent metabolic disease that robs your brain of the energy it needs to thrive
  • improve your mental health with a choice of moderate-carbohydrate and ketogenic diets that you can personalize to your food preferences and health goals

Drawing on a wide range of scientific disciplines including biochemistry, neuroscience, and botany, Dr. Ede will ignite your curiosity about the fascinating world of food and its role in nourishing, protecting, and energizing your brain.

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Eat the Weeds

Deane Jordan

Forage all across the country with this informative guide to 274 edible plants, presented by expert Green Deane.

Eating wild edibles is in our genes, and it can be healthy fun! It's seasonal, sufficient, varied, and provides plenty of nutrients. It yields the satisfaction born of food independence and competence. There's no packaging, no labeling, no advertising, and no genetic tinkering involved. But which plants should you eat--and when should you eat them?

 

Let "Green Deane" Jordan guide you with Eat the Weeds. Green Deane teaches foraging classes and runs a popular foraging website (also called Eat the Weeds). Now he's sharing his expertise with you. Eat the Weeds presents 274 wild foods and helps you to find, identify, and harvest them. The book begins with an introduction that includes tips for using this comprehensive book. The weeds are organized alphabetically, and an extensive index further helps you find what you're looking for. Plus, a fascinating and informative table aids in choosing plants based on their notable nutrients!

 

Perhaps you recognize a shortage in your diet of a specific vitamin and/or mineral. This guide points you to the plants that could remedy it. The information appeals to everyone from foragers, gardeners, and nature-lovers to raw food enthusiasts, vegans, and survivalists. Each entry includes an introduction to the plant and recommended methods for preparing it, as well as its nutritional information. Yes, nearly every featured wild edible includes a full nutrition table! Color photographs and visual descriptions assist you in field identification, and Green Deane's insights are invaluable, whether you're a beginning forager or someone with plenty of experience.

 

Foraging is a treasure hunt, so eat healthier, save money, and have fun while enjoying Earth's delicious and nutritious bounty.

 

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How Not to Age

Michael Greger

Instant New York Times Bestseller

Uncover the evidence-based science to slowing the effects of aging, from the New York Times bestselling author of the How Not to Die series


When Dr. Michael Greger, founder of NutritionFacts.org, dove into the top peer-reviewed anti-aging medical research, he realized that diet could regulate every one of the most promising strategies for combating the effects of aging. We don’t need Big Pharma to keep us feeling young—we already have the tools. In How Not to Age, the internationally renowned physician and nutritionist breaks down the science of aging and chronic illness and explains how to help avoid the diseases most commonly encountered in our journeys through life.

Physicians have long treated aging as a malady, but getting older does not have to mean getting sicker. There are eleven pathways for aging in our bodies’ cells and we can disrupt each of them. Processes like autophagy, the upcycling of unusable junk, can be boosted with spermidine, a compound found in tempeh, mushrooms, and wheat germ. Senescent “zombie” cells that spew inflammation and are linked to many age-related diseases may be cleared in part with quercetin-rich foods like onions, apples, and kale. And we can combat effects of aging without breaking the bank. Why spend a small fortune on vitamin C and nicotinamide facial serums when you can make your own for up to 2,000 times cheaper?

Inspired by the dietary and lifestyle patterns of centenarians and residents of “blue zone” regions where people live the longest, Dr. Greger presents simple, accessible, and evidence-based methods to preserve the body functions that keep you feeling youthful, both physically and mentally. Brimming with expertise and actionable takeaways, How Not to Age lays out practical strategies for achieving ultimate longevity.

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Fast Like a Girl

Dr. Mindy Pelz

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER!
WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER!
PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY BESTSELLER!

Includes a 30-Day fasting reset that uses the power of your cycle—even if you no longer have one!

A go-to fasting manual created specifically to address women's needs based on their hormones and menstrual cycle by Dr. Mindy Pelz, a well-known expert on women and fasting, whose fast-growing YouTube channel has become the destination for women who want to learn about fasting.


Are you among the many women who feel unheard and unseen by their doctors and health professionals? Have you become exhausted by the promise of quick-fix diets that only leave you disappointed? Well in Fast Like a Girl, Dr. Mindy helps you to take back control of your health by using the quickest path back to better health—fasting.

While most fasting advice has been a one-size-fits-all approach that leaves women with more questions than answers, in this book Dr. Mindy shares the proven strategies, specific protocols to use if you are trying to overcome a condition, fasting hacks, and tools that she has used to help hundreds of thousands of women thrive with their fasting lifestyles.

Dr. Mindy will teach you:

  • the rights steps on how to go from eating all day to intermittent fasting (13-15 hours)
  • how to safely fast longer if you choose to do so (15-72 hours)
  • how to time fasting according to your menstrual cycle (although if you don’t have a cycle, she has you covered)
  • the best foods to break your fast to achieve better metabolic health


This book also includes more than 50 recipes based on the two food plans—ketobiotic and hormone feasting—she created to best support women’s hormones. And, it has recipes specifically created to break a fast such as her Coconut Cacao Chia Pudding.

Inspired by the thousands of women she has worked with who have reclaimed their health with fasting, Dr. Mindy wrote this book because, “once a woman knows how to build a fasting lifestyle around her cycle, she becomes unstoppable.”

 

 

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How Not to Die

Michael Greger

New York Times Bestseller

“This book may help those who are susceptible to illnesses that can be prevented.”—His Holiness the Dalai Lama

“Absolutely the best book I’ve read on nutrition and diet” –Dan Buettner, author of The Blue Zones Solution

From the physician behind the wildly popular Nutrition Facts website, How Not to Die reveals the groundbreaking scientific evidence behind the only diet that can help prevent and reverse many of the causes of disease-related death.

In How Not to Die, Dr. Michael Greger, the internationally-renowned nutrition expert, physician, and founder of NutritionFacts.org, examines the fifteen top causes of premature death in America--heart disease, various cancers, diabetes, Parkinson's, high blood pressure, and more--and explains how nutritional and lifestyle interventions can sometimes trump prescription pills and other pharmaceutical and surgical approaches to help prevent and reverse these diseases, freeing us to live healthier lives.

The simple truth is that most doctors are good at treating acute illnesses but bad at preventing chronic disease. The fifteen leading causes of death claim the lives of 1.6 million Americans annually. This doesn't have to be the case. By following Dr. Greger's advice, all of it backed up by strong scientific evidence, you will learn which foods to eat and which lifestyle changes to make to live longer.

History of prostate cancer in your family? Put down that glass of milk and add flaxseed to your diet whenever you can. Have high blood pressure? Hibiscus tea can work better than a leading hypertensive drug-and without the side effects. Fighting off liver disease? Drinking coffee can reduce liver inflammation. Battling breast cancer? Consuming soy is associated with prolonged survival. Worried about heart disease (the number 1 killer in the United States)? Switch to a whole-food, plant-based diet, which has been repeatedly shown not just to prevent the disease but often stop it in its tracks.

In addition to showing what to eat to help treat the top fifteen causes of death, How Not to Die includes Dr. Greger's Daily Dozen -a checklist of the twelve foods we should consume every day.Full of practical, actionable advice and surprising, cutting edge nutritional science, these doctor's orders are just what we need to live longer, healthier lives.

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Gut Check

Steven R. Gundry,

In this groundbreaking addition to his New York Times bestselling Plant Paradox series, Steven R.Gundry, MD offers a definitive guide to the gut biome and its control over its home--us!--revealing the unimaginably complex and intelligent ecosystem controlling our health and teaching us how to heal our guts to prevent and reverse every type of disease.

We may believe that we are the masters of our fates, but in reality, we are at the mercy of hundreds of trillions of single-celled organisms that exert control over every aspect of how our minds and bodies function. These are the diverse species of microbes living in our guts, mouths, and skin that work together synergistically to communicate with each other and with every system in our bodies. You are your microbiome's home, and it wants to take care of you, but first you have to protect it.

In Gut Check, Dr. Steven Gundry reveals the emerging science proving that Hippocrates was right - all disease begins in the gut. When our microbiomes are out of balance, it affects our immune systems, our hormone levels, our mental health, our longevity, and our risk of developing autoimmunity, heart, and neurodegenerative disease, as well as arthritis, diabetes, and cancer. Yet, not all hope is lost: disease can also be healed in the gut if we choose to treat our microbes right. In Gut Check, Dr. Gundry shows us how.

In his warm, authoritative voice, Dr. Gundry provides us with the keys to unlocking our gut health, allowing our bodies, and its microbiome, to function at their highest potential. Sharing shocking new research as well as a detailed eating plan with food lists and recipes to heal and rebalance the microbiome, Gut Check provides the cutting-edge information and tools we need to repair our health and reclaim our lives.

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Cool Food

Robert Downey

In Cool Food, celebrated actor and philanthropist Robert Downey Jr. and New York Times bestselling author Thomas Kostigen team up to discover how we can erase our carbon footprints--one bite at a time.

What we eat matters--to us, and to the planet. Cool food is a game-changing new food category and way of thinking that can help fix the climate. This engaging and persuasive book will show you how to make simple choices, starting today--in the supermarket, in your kitchen, and in the world--to reduce your environmental impact. Hundreds of cool foods exist, but until now have gone largely uncelebrated for their climate-positive powers. Some of these foods may already be on your shelf, and some are just on the horizon. But cool food is much more than just a shopping list: it's a way of life vitally important to our future.

Packed with eye-opening information, actionable items, and two dozen delicious recipes, Cool Food comes alive with engaging storytelling and refreshing humor. Robert and Tom have talked with experts around the globe--from farmers who are pioneering new pathways to more sustainable food, to cutting-edge, climate-friendly chefs. In seeking answers to what each of us can do, this intrepid duo discovered:

the power of ancient grains;

revolutionary farming techniques that create more sustainable foods;

the unexpected benefits of meal kits;

future foods that are made of thin air;

delicious and different recipes that do the world good, and much more.

What we choose to eat, where we shop, and how we plan our meals are daily choices that can have a wide impact on the world, whether we realize it or not. We have the power with each one of our daily purchases and our individual food habits to encourage a healthier and more sustainable food system for everyone.

Join Robert and Tom on this fun, exciting, and enlightening adventure and learn how to become part of the Cool Food revolution.

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And Then We Rise

Common

From the multi-award-winning performer, author, and activist, a comprehensive program for addressing mental and physical health--and encouraging communities to do the same.

Common has achieved success in many facets of his life and career, from music to acting to writing. But for a long time, he didn't feel that he had found fulfillment in his body and spirit.

And Then We Rise is about Common's journey to wellness as a vital element of his success. A testimony to the benefits of self-care, this book is composed of four different sections, each with its own important lessons: "The Food" focuses on nutrition. "The Body" focuses on fitness. "The Mind" focuses on mental health. And "The Soul" focuses on perhaps the most profound thing of all--spiritual well-being.

Common's personal stories act as the backbone of his book, but he also wants to give his readers the gift of professional expertise. Here, he acts as the liaison to his own nutritionist and chef, his own physical trainer, and his own therapist, as well as to those who act as his spiritual influences.

Wise, accessible, and powerful, And Then We Rise offers a comprehensive, holistic approach to wellness that will allow readers to transform their thinking, their actions, and, ultimately, their lives.

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Breath

James Nestor

A New York Times Bestseller

A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2020

Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR
 
“A fascinating scientific, cultural, spiritual and evolutionary history of the way humans breathe—and how we’ve all been doing it wrong for a long, long time.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic and Eat Pray Love

No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you’re not breathing properly.


There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.

Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.

Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is.

Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.

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Vigilance

Andrew K. Diemer

The remarkable and inspiring story of William Still, an unknown abolitionist who dedicated his life to managing a critical section of the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia—the free state directly north of the Mason-Dixon Line—helping hundreds of people escape from slavery.

Born free in 1821 to two parents who had been enslaved, William Still was drawn to antislavery work from a young age. Hired as a clerk at the Anti-Slavery office in Philadelphia after teaching himself to read and write, he began directly assisting enslaved people who were crossing over from the South into freedom. Andrew Diemer captures the full range and accomplishments of Still’s life, from his resistance to Fugitive Slave Laws and his relationship with John Brown before the war, to his long career fighting for citizenship rights and desegregation until the early twentieth century.

Despite Still’s disappearance from history books, during his lifetime he was known as “the Father of the Underground Railroad.” Working alongside Harriet Tubman and others at the center of the struggle for Black freedom, Still helped to lay the groundwork for long-lasting activism in the Black community, insisting that the success of their efforts lay not in the work of a few charismatic leaders, but in the cultivation of extensive grassroots networks. Through meticulous research and engaging writing, Vigilance establishes William Still in his rightful place in American history as a major figure of the abolitionist movement.

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The Complete Manual of Sewing

Marie Claire

Become a proficient sewist today Gather up thread, fabric, a needle, or a sewing machine, and you are ready to take your first steps in sewing! Designed for beginner sewists and those who already have the basics, this book offers you the essential knowledge for using those fabrics that have been waiting for the perfect project. Have doubts about a part of your sewing machine? Have questions about the quality of your fabric? Are you confused about the best seam to use? Refer to this manual and get started with confidence! - This visual guide will teach you how to sew by hand or machine with 120 comprehensive lessons - Provides the basics and beyond, from supplies and first steps to sewing collars, sleeves, pockets, and more- Includes tips and tricks to solve pesky sewing issues - Sew confidently with this thorough guide for beginner and advanced sewists alike!

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The Sustainable Homestead

Angela Ferraro-Fanning

Join the permaculture revolution! Author Angela Ferraro-Fanning (Axe & Root Homestead) shares techniques and tips for a homestead with synergy between soil, plants, animals, and trees.

If you’re like most homesteaders, the dream is to make the most of your land by working with it, not against it. From capturing water and building strong soil to helping your animals live their best lives, The Sustainable Homestead is about making your homestead stronger by achieving synergy between what can seem like different parts.

In this book, new and veteran homesteaders alike can find detailed information to put to use this year, this month, even this week! Angela—also the co-host of the HOMESTEADucation podcast and author of the Little Homesteader/Little Country Cottage series of children’s books—has spent more than a decade building and strengthening her small acreage homestead and shares the lessons chapter by chapter:
 

  • Site Selection: Evaluate the elements, water flow and management, wildlife considerations, effective layouts, land elevation, water access points, permaculture zones, considerations based on acreage, how to remedy site shortcomings
  • Soil: The importance of soil, symptoms of poor soil, synthetics, water and erosion, healthier crops and animals, how to regenerate soil, cover crops, no-till method, perennial plantings
  • Growing: Catching and storing water with swales, catchment ponds, and rain barrels; sunlight and garden design including mandala, terrace, and forest; plant choices; companion planting; holistic pest management including cultural, physical, and biological options
  • Pasture: Design considerations, cover cropping, grazing, animal compatibility, pasture rotation, closed-loop grazing systems, maintenance, solar fencing
  • Animals: Chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and the sustainable coop; sheep, goats, pigs, and sustainable living quarters; horses, cows, donkeys, and sustainable stable; natural remedies; livestock guardian dogs and barn cats
  • Compost: What is compost?, hot vs. cold, decomposition and carbon to nitrogen ratios, creating a composting system, tier considerations, access and rotation, uses of compost, compost tea
  • Overstory: Nut trees and permaculture contributions, pollinator groups, fruiting trees, planting in guilds, pest management, tree health


Wherever you want to start first, follow along and make your homestead more resilient by making it more sustainable

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The Seven-Step Homestead

Leah M. Webb

When faced with financial uncertainty or a potential disruption to the food supply, more people turn to vegetable gardening — for the joy, satisfaction, and sense of security that comes from growing food. Today’s gardeners want a bit of everything — vegetables, fruit, medicinal herbs, flowers for pollinators, and even chickens for eggs. The dream is to build a diverse landscape that serves multiple functions but achieving that goal can be intimidating and overwhelming. Homesteader Leah Webb shares her strategy for implementing a homestead plan in seven stages, starting small and gradually add more features each year. The Seven-Step Homestead takes readers through the process with a series of doable steps, beginning with establishing one or two raised beds of the easiest vegetables to grow, and gradually building up to the addition of fruit trees and berry bushes on hugelkulture mounds, a coop full of chickens, and a winter’s worth of storage crops. Step-by-step photos from the author's own homestead, accompanied by her hard-earned advice and instruction, make this a one-of-a-kind guide for anyone who aspires to free themselves from reliance on the commercial food system but doesn't know where to start or how to make it happen in a realistic way.
 

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Safe and Sound

Mercury Stardust

#1 New York Times Bestseller

Don't panic--Mercury Stardust, AKA The Trans Handy Ma'am is here to help!

For too many people, the simple act of contacting a plumber or repair person can feel like a game of chance. As a transwoman and a professional maintenance technician, Mercury Stardust has discovered (the hard way) that we live in a world with much to fear. If you've ever felt panicked about opening your home to strangers in order to fix a maintenance issue, this book is for you.

Renting a home can be a complex process--from finding a safe and affordable space, to hiring help for moving in and out, and of course, managing any repairs that come up during your stay.

You deserve to feel empowered to take matters into your own hands--and it's not as hard as you might think. In this book, Mercury will show you how to tackle the projects that need improvement in your home--from how to properly fix a clog in your bathroom sink and safely hang things on your walls to patching small and medium drywall holes.

Safe and Sound includes:

  • Guidance for over 50 simple home maintenance projects, such as replacing your showerhead and troubleshooting a faulty garbage disposal.
  • Chapters covering basic and handy repairs for your plumbing, electrical, carpentry, and safety needs.
  • Advice tailored to renters to minimize permanent changes.
  • Helpful illustrations and QR code links to videos to help you on your journey.


Remember--a little bit of knowledge can go a long way toward making you feel more safe and in control of your own life.

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How Not to Kill Your Houseplant New Edition

Veronica Peerless

How to keep alive 119 gorgeous indoor plants, then help them bloom and thrive.

You've welcomed a plant into the home: Now what? Your first job is to keep it alive, then after that help it bloom and thrive. Learn all the tips and tricks you need to become a proud plant parent--of more than 100 different plants (if you're up for it)!

Yellowed leaves, drooping leaves, dried leaves, even though you've watered it: What's going on? How Not to Kill Your Houseplant will explain--and fix--your houseplant woes.

Learn to spot the danger signs and take the proper action to rescue your sick plant.

Follow quick tips to understand what your plant does and doesn't like: how much light, water, food, heat, and humidity.

Discover the perfect plant for your unique space and needs. Bathrooms, cold rooms, at a desk, on a windowsill, or in a gloomy corner or hot suntrap--there are plants for every location to create your own indoor oasis.

This is your guide to every stage of plant parenting for beginners, from identifying exactly what's in the pot to keeping it in check when it grows too well!

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How to Win at Chess

Levy Rozman

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Learn chess from International Master and YouTube’s top chess teacher Levy Rozman (aka GothamChess) in this refreshing and fun guide for beginner and intermediate players.

Clever and informative, How to Win at Chess teaches you everything you need to know about the game, including all the important moves and strategies to start off strong and keep you thinking several steps ahead.

Full of Levy Rozman's signature charm and humor that have made him beloved by millions of fans, the first half of this unique guide introduces rising players (0-800 Elo rating) to the four key areas to consider when playing chess—openings, endings, tactics, and strategy—and the second half builds upon these core skills for more experienced players (800-1300 Elo rating). Brimming with practical and easy-to-follow tips for improving your game, How to Win at Chess includes over 500 instructional gameplay illustrations to help you better visualize the board, as well as chapter-specific QR codes for exclusive bonus content on Chessly, Rozman’s teaching platform.

Whether you want to become a recreational chess player or are training to be a Grandmaster, How to Win at Chess is the perfect interactive introduction to the world of chess!

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Dominoes Game Night

Travis Newsome

In this comprehensive guide, a 3-time World Domino Champion breaks down the fascinating history and culture of one of the world's most popular pastimes--and shares how-to instructions for playing 65 different domino games.

Featuring step-by-step, illustrated instructions, Dominoes Game Night will teach readers how to play 65 different domino games, including popular variations like Matador, Muggins, Chicken Foot, and Mexican Train.

In addition to providing the rules of standard game play, Dominoes Game Night also delves into the 1,000+ year history and culture of the game across the world, and it looks at modern day domino tournaments that are played both in person and online. Also touching on more idiosyncratic domino uses like toppling, Dominoes Game Night introduces readers to the countless benefits of playing Dominoes--like improved memory retention and concentration--while also teaching discipline and bolstering social interactions. With a breakdown of Dominoes terms, rules, and turn-by-turn examples, this book explains the reasoning behind making specific plays, and it takes an in-depth look at the critical thinking and deductive reasoning skills that are required to master the game. Whether you're a novice who is just learning to play, or an experienced player looking to elevate your game, Dominoes Game Night offers all the tools you need to consistently win games at a higher level. Written by a 3-time World Domino Champion, Dominoes Game Night is sure to become the go-to companion for both casual players and Domino die-hards.

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Field Guide to Outside Style

Ryan McEnaney

Make your outdoor space as comfortable and personal as the inside of your home with garden design and planting guidance from Field Guide to Outside Style.

Maybe you’ve just purchased your first home or you have an existing outdoor space that’s overgrown and old-fashioned, and you want to turn it into a place that blends perfectly with your sense of style and your life. But where should you start? How can you be sure to create a space you can sustain? Field Guide to Outside Style leads the way. You’ll learn to personalize your outdoor living space with the right plants, furnishings, and other design elements to create a space that reflects YOU perfectly, even if you’ve never sunk a shovel into the soil before.

The word “gardening” can be intimidating if you aren’t used to digging in the dirt, yet you want a gorgeous outdoor living area you feel proud of. Author and outdoor living pro Ryan McEnaney helps you make it happen by meeting you where you are. He cuts out the intimidating stuff, doesn’t use scary terms, and supports you through the entire process.
 

  • Start with what you already love. Learn how to translate your choices in clothing, colors, furniture, and architecture into an understanding of how to design your outdoor areas.
  • Next, set parameters and expectations. Learn how to plan smartly so you don’t get in over your head. 
  • Then, select your aesthetic. Decide which of three primary outdoor design styles—the classic, the modernist, and the naturalist—suit you best and use easy-to-digest, mix-and-match design suggestions and recipes to create an outdoor living area of your dreams.
  • Plus, see your options in action. Through case studies accompanied by before-and-after illustrations of outdoor rehab projects, you’ll walk away with a clear understanding of the options for you and your space.


Close the book confident in your ability to select plants and design concepts that work in your region, fit within your abilities, and ultimately match the rest of your life perfectly. And to sweeten the deal, the long-term success of your new outdoor space is supported by information on seasonality, sticking to a budget, and creating a balanced space to ensure your newly discovered outside style shines for many years to come.

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Foolproof Sketching & Painting Techniques for Beginners

Tomoko Kuramae

An inspiring guide to sketching and painting the world around you!

Packed with practical tips and advice, this book shows you how to fill your sketchbook or watercolor pad with a variety of everyday items that catch your eye, such as:

  • Kitchen items like cups, teapots and silverware
  • Toys like Rubik's Cubes and model cars
  • Tea sandwiches and roll cakes
  • Colorful bottles and containers
  • Household items like umbrellas, bottles and candles
  • Clothing and acessories including shirts, hats and umbrellas
  • And so much more!

Author Tomoko Kuramae provides clear step-by-step instructions on the proportions and perspective of basic objects and clearly explains how to draw dozens of items based on cubes, cylinders and flat shapes from a variety of angles. She then shows you how to bring your finished sketches alive with the use of brilliant transparent watercolors.

 

 

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Embrace Your Space

Katie Holdefehr

Organize and style your home using home-decorating and organization expert Katie Holdefehr’s modern, chic, and simple-to-achieve design tips and tricks.

Whether giving a studio apartment a makeover to maximize every inch of space for storage, creating a functional and streamlined kitchen, or revamping a bedroom into a relaxing sanctuary, home design expert Katie Holdefehr will be your personal designer throughout each step in Embrace Your Space. As an editor for top magazines and websites such as Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living, Good Housekeeping, and Apartment Therapy, Katie Holdefehr honed her expertise in home design and organization writing hundreds of articles and styling dozens of tasteful, livable rooms that anyone on any budget can achieve.

Featuring real homes from across the country and accompanied by gorgeous photographs, Embrace Your Space shares Katie’s tools of the trade, as well as designer-insider tips and tricks, to give every living space a Wow! effect. Also included are simple and affordable design projects for creating unique and custom-looking décor details.

GORGEOUS PHOTOGRAPHY: More than 150 beautiful full-color photographs show designer tips and tricks in action

DESIGN PROJECTS: Simple, affordable, and easy-to-accomplish design projects are included in each chapter

HOME ORGANIZATIONAL HACKS: Dozens of home organization tips help keep areas clutter-free

DECLUTTERING TIPS: Learn easy-and-quick ways to declutter and streamline those common problem areas such as closets, kitchen cabinets, entryways, and more.

INSIDER TIPS AND TRICKS: Having worked as a magazine editor in the home decor space, Katie Holdefehr provides information for home design and organization

BEAUTIFUL GIFT: Whether you appreciate home design or are just looking to downsize your clutter, this books makes a gorgeous and helpful gift

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Oil Painting Landscapes

Sarah Mckendry

Capture the Splendor of the Outdoors with 12 Beginner-Friendly Oil Painting Projects

Your artistic ability to bring wondrous backdrops to life is just a brushstroke away with Sarah Mckendry’s Oil Painting Landscapes. Now you can create breathtaking scenery—even if you’ve never held a brush—with Sarah’s easy-to-follow instructions and guided photography that take you carefully through each step.

Sarah makes the process easier than ever by providing helpful tips for blending color and adjusting artistic blunders, as well as information on oil painting techniques and material recommendations. To lower the cost of art supplies, each project uses only a handful of colors and keeps the number of necessary tools to a minimum—reducing stress for the aspiring artist.

Inside you will find 12 stunning projects, all in Sarah’s unique, atmospheric style, including enchanting forests, tranquil sunsets, peaceful meadows and magnificent ocean waves. So pick up your brush and open your mind to a new creative journey: painting the world around you with soft, beautiful color.

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Tiny Felt Cuties & Creatures

Delilah Iris

Craft adorable, trendy felt miniatures with this book of step-by-step tutorials and projects, featuring beautiful photos that illustrate easy felting techniques.

From self-taught artist Delilah Iris, Sew Cute!: Tiny Felt Cuties & Creatures includes more than a dozen patterns for making tiny animals, dolls, dollhouses, props, adorable gifts, and miniature play sets. The projects can be created as stand-alone finished works, but they can also be used to complement each other in a complete set for use in a tiny miniature world!

If you have been looking for new crafting techniques to learn at home and don’t want to buy a lot of tools and materials, creating felt miniatures is the perfect choice. Felting does not require a sewing machine and can be done using simple hand stitches and embroidery, all of which are demonstrated in the book along with stylized photo tutorials. Also included are detailed doll patterns, suggestions for materials to have on hand, and much more.

Sew Cute!: Tiny Felt Cuties & Creatures will help you create your own tiny world of animals, dolls, fairy houses, and more.

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Simple Origami

Adeline Klam

With simple visual step-by-step instructions and hand-drawn illustrations, effortlessly create over 50 different paper creations, from sea lions to spinning tops, Christmas decorations and colorful flowers.

This is origami at its most simple and elegant. With a special focus on a very visual method of explanation, this collection brings together 50 traditional origami projects, accessible to experts and beginners alike. The folds are organized from the simplest to the most complex.

The projects range from sea lions to spinning tops, Christmas decorations and colorful flowers, to sailboats. Detailed illustrations show you exactly where to place your hands at every step of the process, and projects are given a difficulty rating for ease of reference. Simply follow the diagrams and watch origami creations of all kinds come to life at your fingertips.

Brought to you from the Parisian boutique of Adeline Klam, this book is full of beautiful designs, fun toys, useful tips and paper surprises of every shape and size.

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Watercolor Made Simple

Nicki Traikos

Learn to paint in watercolor—with joy and confidence—as you explore simple techniques, popular subjects, and simple papercrafting projects.

Watercolor is a wonderful medium to explore your creativity, unwind, and have fun. Whether you’re new to watercolor painting or looking to expand your skills, Watercolor Made Simple will guide you to connect more personally with your watercolor practice and build your painting skills in a relaxing, welcoming way. Nicki Traikos, who teaches popular watercolor classes through life i design, wants to help you avoid the struggles and frustrations she experienced when learning to paint with watercolors by providing encouraging instruction, easy tutorials, and beautifully illustrated step-by-step projects.
 
Consider this your invitation to the world of watercolor as you:
 

  • Get familiar with paints, brushes, and papers
  • Learn fundamental watercolor washes and brushstrokes
  • Explore simple color theory and color mixing
  • Use a sketchbook to gather inspiration
  • Paint more than 15 popular subjects, such as flowers, leaves, feathers, still lifes, and simple landscapes, step by step

 
You’ll also find:
 

  • QR codes that link to helpful video tutorials
  • Traceable line drawings that allow you to jump right into painting
  • Charming papercrafting projects to feature your watercolor paintings
  • Tips for storing and displaying your art—and even what to do with paintings you don’t love

 
With gentle encouragement and techniques she has honed through teaching tens of thousands of watercolor students, Nicki will soon have you painting your favorite subjects with ease and enjoyment.

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Soap Making for Beginners

Ayako Umehara

The all-in-one guide to making 100% natural beauty and bath soaps at home!

This book makes it easy to create your own soaps using ingredients that you know and trust. Author Ayako Umehara is a certified herbal therapist, aromatherapy and Ayurveda instructor, and she shows you how to make your own soaps using pure and simple natural ingredients like olive oil, shea butter, rose hips, avocado, manuka honey and almonds as well as many and novel aromatic ingredients like Yuzu Matcha Mint, Lemon Eucalyptus and Salt, Seaweed and Clay.

The chapters in the book present 45 all-natural recipes using 100% pure essential oils and botanicals in the following categories:

  • Soaps That Are Gentle on the Skin including Manuka Honey Soap, Plain Olive Oil Soap and Skim Milk Soap for Kids
  • Soaps That Nourish the Skin and Body such as Avocado and Sweet Almond Soap, Grape Seed Soap and Sesame Spice Scrub Soap
  • Soaps that Soothe for example Lavender Marble Soap, Rosemary Soap and Linden Flower and Honey Soap
  • Natural Soaps for Everyday Use like Tea Tree Hand Soap and Baking Soda Paste for Cleaning
  • Special Occasion and Seasonal Soaps such as Valentine's Sweet Soap and Christmas Ornament Soap


A special section introduces basic techniques for bar soaps using the Cold Process and Melt-and-Pour Process as well as liquid soaps and how to vary the type and quantity of plant oils used. An extensive reference section covers everything you need to know about natural and botanical additives: plant and essential oils, herbs, dried flowers and other natural ingredients.

For all your cleansing needs, Soapmaking for Beginners has got you covered--in suds!

 

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Artfully Transforming Bottles & Plates

Petra Knoblauch

"Say yes to reclaiming creativity--environmentally friendly, beautiful, and innovative! Here are 75 projects that upcycle and elevate your discards. Transform not only wine bottles and teacups, but your living spaces--indoors and out. Use a wide assortment of craft materials and techniques, from marbling to chalkboard paints to kintsugi, to upcycle the bottles in your recycling bin or the plates that were dropped on the way to the table. Make lovely decorative and useful items that may even become heirlooms. Bring new treasures to life from discards and feel great about your crafting as you reclaim and upcycle. The first projects focus on glass bottle use; learn how to make elegant olive bowls, cocktail glasses, cookie jars, gorgeous illumination for your outdoor dining, and much more. The second group of projects transforms your china, porcelain, and other ceramic tableware, whether it's showing signs of wear, is broken, or just doesn't match. Learn to make clocks, charming signs, neon-marbled chargers, wedding keepsakes, and much more." --publisher's website.

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The 30-Minute Gardener

Greg Loades

"There are lots of aspiring gardeners out there. But a large number of them-especially younger ones, with demanding jobs, growing families, and limited space-either don't have the time to garden traditionally, or are scared off from the very notion and have no idea where to start. Greg Loades comes to the rescue in this detailed, inspiring book. He shows the reader how much can actually be accomplished in no more than 30 minutes a day, from simple tasks such as renovating a rose bush or planting a layered bulb display to more complex ones like laying a patio or building a green roof. By laying out the details of the projects-which include both in-the-ground ornamental and vegetable gardening as well as container projects-he shows the reader exactly how to create a welcoming, rewarding haven that will quickly become an indispensable part of their family's lifestyle"--

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Macramé

Nghi Ho

Learn and Master the Art of Macramé

"A wonderful resource for beginning and advanced macramé artists." ―Elizabeth Majka, Library Journal

#1 New Release in Ribbons, Knots, Macrame & Rope Work

Learn the art of macramé and craft beautiful and practical creations such as wall hangings, plant hangers, jewelry, and much more.

Develop a new creative hobby or just improve your macramé skills. New to macramé or an accomplished macramé artist? Either way, with the expert guidance of author Nghi Ho, online macramé community star and founder of Miss Knottie Macramé supplies, you'll discover new macramé patterns and projects and a whole world of enjoyment and satisfaction.

Relax with macramé DIY crafts. Having a stressful day? Unwind with a macramé project that can be both gratifying and fun. If you are new to macramé, Nghi Ho will show you how to get started, explain the basic materials you'll need, and give you a good grounding in macramé knots.

Inside find:

  • Tutorials on starting your own macramé projects, macrame kits, and basic knots
  • Crafts to do at home and fun activities for the whole family
  • Macramé projects that are unique and personalized

 

If you have read books like Macramè For Beginners, Statement Macramé, or Modern Embroidery, you'll love Nghi Ho's Macramè The Power of Knots.

 

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Polymer Clay Jewelry

Rachael Skidmore

Learn to make fun, colorful, modern, on-trend earrings from polymer clay.

In Polymer Clay Jewelry, Author Rachael Skidmore—owner of the popular online shop and social-media channels Made by Maeberry—takes a fresh, contemporary approach to this classic craft. Through her easy-to-follow photographic steps and clear instructions, you can make your own contemporary earrings in a variety of colors and styles.

Among the topics covered in the book:
 

  • Tools and materials
  • Clay conditioning
  • Color mixing
  • How to choose a color palette
  • Clay curing and baking
  • Painting clay
  • How to add earring backs


Once you’re familiar with these important introductory topics, learn to make colorful abstract earrings, hoops of various sizes and styles, rainbows, shells, hammered “metal,statement jewelry, and much more—all from polymer clay! Also included in the book are beautiful photographs of all of the pieces, suggestions for customizing colors and styles, images of color palettes and alternative ideas, and so much more.

Polymer clay is lightweight, inexpensive, and infinitely customizable. Polymer Clay Jewelry is perfect for makers and jewelry enthusiasts of all skill levels!


The Art Makers series is designed for beginning artists and arts-and-crafts enthusiasts who are interested in experiencing fun hands-on mediums, including polymer clay and embroidery.

Also available from the series: Polymer Clay for Beginners, Papier Mache, Empowered Embroidery, and Make Cute Stuff with Polymer Clay.

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The Beginner's Guide to Decorating Pottery

Emily Reinhardt

Join ceramic artist Emily Reinhardt to learn how to decorate pottery surfaces with glazes, gold luster, patterns and marks, inlay designs, dimensional shapes, and much more.

With an emphasis on learning new skills, having fun, and embracing imperfection, The Beginner’s Guide to Decorating Potterysupports your creative process as you explore:
 

  • Basic information on working with clays as well as materials used for decorating.
  • Tutorials on color theory, combining form and function, and the importance of keeping a sketchbook.
  • Beginner-friendly projects that show how to apply surface-design techniques to simple pieces such as coasters, a cheeseboard, a wall hanging, plates, tumblers, vases, planters, and more.


Throughout the book, skill-building is front and center, with tips and tricks to help you crack the code and make pieces you’re proud of. Gallery work from some of today’s top ceramics artists is sure to inspire potters of all levels. What will you make first?

For beginners and those returning to ceramics, the Essential Ceramics Skills series from Quarry Books offer the fundamentals along with fresh, contemporary, and simple projects that build skills progressively.

Explore even more ceramics techniques with:The Beginner’s Guide to Wheel Throwing and The Beginner’s Guide to Hand Building.

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Making Wooden Toys

Studio Tac Creative, in partnership with Craft & Co., Ltd.

Learn to make fresh, fun, and whimsical wooden toys! Perfect for beginner to advanced scrollers, this must-have project guide will walk you through how to scroll saw 15 interactive wooden toys kids will love. Using minimal tools and food-safe finishes, the featured scroll saw projects have a contemporary aesthetic and are truly unique to engage children in new and exciting ways. Also included are helpful overviews on materials and tools, including how to use sandpaper, drills, a square, a plane, and more. With easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions and expert tips and tricks to assist you in accomplishing each exciting project, Making Wooden Toys is the ultimate guide to making one-of-a-kind interactive toys that are just as fun to make as they are to play with!

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A Sweet Floral Life

Natasja Sadi

Learn how to create exquisite, lifelike sugar flowers to pair with fresh blooms in the floral arrangements of your dreams—regardless of season or availability.

Rising Instagram star Natasja Sadi's floral arrangements have a sumptuous, old-world look straight out of a classical painting. But the secret is that they often contain a surprise twist: handmade sugar flowers (traditionally used in cake decorating) that are indistinguishable from real ones and last forever.

A former fashion designer, Sadi began making flowers out of sugar to honor her African and Indonesian ancestors who worked in the sugarcane fields of Suriname. In A Sweet Floral Life, Sadi provides steps for sculpting sugar flowers, a versatile medium with limitless possibilities—they can be used in fresh floral arrangements, displayed on their own, or used to adorn cakes for weddings, anniversaries, or parties. And whether it’s the middle of summer or the dead of winter, sugar flowers are always in season and always in perfect full bloom.

In addition, Sadi guides you through the creative process of fresh flower arranging and developing a personal style, along with tutorials for seasonal arrangements, living and entertaining with flowers, and how to photograph flowers. Capture the romance, set the mood, and be swept away by gorgeous and inspiring floral art with A Sweet Floral Life.

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Botanical Dyes

Babs Behan

Botanical Dyes features recipes and top tips on everything you need to know to make your own natural dyes.

The process of turning plants into print can help you reconnect with nature, find a creative outlet and develop a mindful sense of presence. It also promotes an awareness of sustainable practices and how to reduce our impact on the planet.

Extracting from and updating her book Botanical Inks, Babs talks the home crafter through everything from foraging for dyes, making mordants, creating an array of colors and then putting your new knowledge to the test through some simple projects.

With more than 10 dye recipes, clear step-by-step instructions, troubleshooting tips and explanations of what works and why, Botanical Dyes is the accessible handbook that modern makers everywhere have been waiting for.

  • By Hand is a new, how-to slow craft series that celebrates craft techniques
  • Explores an on-trend craft that's part of the 'slow-living' movement
  • Will appeal to people interested in foraging and sustainable practices
  • A comprehensive guide that covers making the dyes and application techniques

 

 

 

 

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Crochet Cute Forest Friends

Sarah Zimmerman

Stitch Up Your Newest Cuddle Companions

Crochet the cutest, cuddliest, coziest creatures of the forest with this beginner-friendly guide to amigurumi animals from Sarah Zimmerman, bestselling author of Crochet Cute Critters and creator of Repeat Crafter Me. These 26 simple patterns will transport you to a whimsical world of woodland animals begging to be snuggled and squeezed. Each endearing pattern requires only the simplest stitches, straightforward assembly and widely-accessible yarn so you can stitch up your squishiest new companion in record time.

From forest floor friends and treetop dwellers to riverside animals and nocturnal critters, there’s a pattern for every cherished creature of the woods. Sweeten your space with a smiling green Frog, or liven up your nest with a lovable Owl. Create a not-so-rascally Raccoon, a friendly Fox or a darling Deer to invite playful cheer into your everyday. Why not complete the whole collection by crocheting them all! Even if you’re new to crochet, these easiest-ever patterns are guaranteed to bring you boundless joy.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Urban Sketching

Taria Dawson

Taria Dawson, creator of Urban Sketching World, makes it easy to join the ever-growing community of urban sketchers--artists who draw on location to document loose, colorful impressions of where they live and travel. Her beginner's guide is packed with everything you need to know about urban sketching principles, drawing fundamentals and tips for creating captivating art with just a few basic supplies!

Each chapter breaks down a popular location into smaller subject lessons and practical exercises using the art form's most popular method: ink and watercolor. Learn to draw your morning breakfast at a local café, recreate the changing leaves at the neighborhood park, or report on the industrialization of your cityscape. Then practice putting these components together to tell a full visual story with Taria's "Sketching a Scene" walkthroughs featured at the end of every chapter. What's more, Taria shares different approaches such as beginning by blocking in shapes with watercolor vs starting with an ink outline, so you can really find a style that feels authentic to you.

Full of helpful techniques, detailed instructions, and plenty of visual examples, this book is the perfect guide to help you record your adventures no matter where you are (or where you go)!

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Made to Measure

Elisalex Jewell

Learn to draft and sew your own customized clothes that fit you perfectly and make you feel fantastic.

You no longer need to feel confined by the boundaries of a sewing pattern in order to make clothes that fit beautifully and represent your style in a way that store-bought clothes never can. Designer and founder of popular pattern brand By Hand London Elisalex Jewell is known for designing beautiful, fun garments that look fabulous on women of all sizes. In Made to Measure, she guides sewers to create stylish garments while empowering them to learn new skills, be creative, and feel confident. Following an overview of essential sewing tools, a primer on fabrics, and a guide to essential sewing techniques, you will learn how to:
 

  • Draft simple patterns based on your measurements
  • Take a pattern from an existing garment
  • Identify and fix common fit issues

 
The sixteen pattern-free projects for dresses, skirts, tops, a pantsuit, and more are a springboard for creating a versatile, personalized wardrobe. The designs include:
 

  • Sweet Shirred Top and Dress
  • Faux-Cute Jumpsuit
  • Paneled Wrap Skirt
  • Prairie Dress
  • Not Your Grandma's Quilted Circle Skirt
  • Siren Slip Dress
  • Refashioned Sweater Dress

 
In today’s world of “fast fashion,” sewing your own clothes is a wonderful way to slow down and create garments that are sustainable and unique. While most sewing books show you how to create garments from specific patterns, Made to Measure takes sewing clothes to the next level by allowing you to customize the designs to fit you.

Whether you’re new to sewing clothes or want to add to your garment-making skills, Made to Measure guides you to create a dream wardrobe that is tailored just for you.

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The Encyclopedia of Cut Flowers

Calvert Crary

From Calvert Crary and Bruce Littlefield, The Encyclopedia of Cut Flowers is a comprehensive, gorgeously visual guide that answers every question you've ever had (and a few you didn't know to ask!) about buying, caring for, and prolonging the lives of more than 140 different varieties of commonly available cut flowers.

The Encyclopedia of Cut Flowers dives deep into the world of fresh-cut flowers, featuring unique entries for 143 different varieties of commonly available cut flowers that readers can buy at their local grocery store or flower market. Each flower entry offers authoritative tips for conditioning methods (eg-cut flowers should never be put near fresh fruit because fruit produces ethylene gas which will shorten the flowers' life), as well as scientific and common names, best seasons for buying (eg-lilies in spring, dahlias in summer) and fascinating facts about each bloom. An introductory section offers basic tips for styling arrangements at home, and for keeping flowers hydrated and alive for as long as possible. By the time readers are done flipping through the pages of The Encyclopedia of Cut Flowers, which features more than 150 gorgeous colour photographs of flowers, they'll be experts in the field!

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The Garden Maker's Book of Wonder

Allison Vallin Kostovick

The joy and wonder of a garden-inspired lifestyle is captured in this colorfully photographed, through-the-seasons sourcebook filled with recipes, gardening wisdom, craft and wellness projects, and nature-based activities.

Each season in the garden brings new joy and fresh inspiration for connecting with the wonders of the natural world. In The Garden Maker's Book of Wonder, popular gardening lifestyle influencer Allison Vallin Kostovick (Finch + Folly) invites fans of cottagecore, gardening, and nature-based living to share her journey as she crafts, cooks, dreams, and creates. Drawing on decades of gardening experience, and illustrated with vibrant photography from her own home and garden, The Garden Maker's Book of Wonder offers sage advice on growing bountiful harvests of favorite vegetables, herbs, and flowers. All levels of gardeners, from dreamers to the experienced, will delight in the variety and creativity of Kostovick's projects, activities, and recipes for enjoying the magic and whimsy of the natural world--no matter what season. From planting a pollinator playground to building a rustic trellis from tree branches, cooking with freshly picked peas and mint to making a sweet viola tub soak, and growing a bird seed mix to crafting one-of-a-kind jewelry beads from the husks of the Job's Tears plant, the inventive ideas in this rich treasury are sure to make it a favorite to keep and to give to anyone who aspires to a more nature-connected lifestyle.

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Stitching through the Seasons

Yumiko Higuchi

Beautiful guided stitchwork for every season—featuring fall pumpkins and mushroom wreaths, winter skiers, spring blossoms, summer vegetables, and more!

​​With 56 unique embroidery pieces to reflect the seasons, this next book from beloved author Yumiko Higuchi takes creatives on a month-by-month exploration of colorful motifs that can be used on a variety of fabrics and surfaces. Each month starts with an emblem of the month number, such as a vibrant poppy wreath for May, a viny pumpkin for October, and sprigs of mistletoe and Christmas roses for December. Each emblem perfectly captures the spirit of the month, and the subsequent patterns for each month follow the seasonal theme.

​Each design in the book is accompanied by step-by-step instructions for recreating it, including stitch types, thread colors by number, and thread type. There is also a detailed section on how to perform certain stitches and knots to guide beginners.

Whether embroidering a new dress, a pillowcase, a bag, or even a jar cover for jam, Stitching through the Seasons has charming patterns that are sure to spark creativity and festivity for embroiderers both experienced and just starting out. ​

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Handmade Books at Home

Chanel Ly

Timeless Stitches & Beautiful Bindings to Craft Your Perfect Book

You don’t need to be an experienced bookbinder to create one-of-a-kind books. Chanel Ly, founder of Bitter Melon Bindery, is here to guide you through 12 practical projects that you can personalize to show off your creative side. All you need are a few basic tools and materials to get started.

Learn to craft a Minimal Journal that is not only sleek and stunning but sturdy enough to withstand everyday use. Looking for a Lay-Flat Sketchbook that feels as unique as your art? Make your own with a gorgeous exposed spine that is unlike anything you’ll buy off the shelves. Create an unforgettable gift for someone you love such as a wraparound Travel Diary bound in sentimental fabric or a custom-made Photo Album to hold treasured memories. And once you’ve mastered these projects, you’ll have the necessary skills to design your very own book or give new life to an old favorite.

Full of helpful tips, solutions to troubleshoot common mistakes and plenty of visual examples, this resource will fulfill all your bookish dreams for years to come!

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Tools

Theodore Gray

The international bestselling author of The Elements celebrates 118 individual categories of tools found in the home workshop--from crescent wrenches to miter saws, from levels to cordless drills--all exquisitely photographed in Nick Mann's inimitable style.

Includes a bonus poster of Theodore Gray's PERIODIC TABLE OF TOOLS!

Tools is arguably Theodore Gray's most personal book yet. Hand tools and power tools have been a central part of his life for as long as he can remember. Using them, collecting them, and appreciating them is as much a part of his DNA as his passion for the periodic table. This book is the story of those tools, from Gray's personal favorites that have stuck with him through to years, to new and exciting antiques and modern inventions that he's discovered along the way. Organized into 118 categories, (and cleverly arranged into a periodic table of tools where each tool in a column shares properties and builds from lightest to heaviest) each tool is featured in a great big beautiful photograph on the left-hand side of the spread. On the right side of the page, Theo regales us with history and personal stories and shows us multiple variations on the theme. Tools is an unprecedented collection featuring 500 stunning examples of the world's most wonderful workshop implements. It's the must-have book for every tool lover.

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52 Weeks of Easy Knits

Laine

52 Weeks of Easy Knits is a contemporary collection of 52 uncomplicated knitting patterns, ranging from beanies, mittens and scarves to sweaters, socks and cardigans, from Nordic knitting experts Laine.

For people who are picking up needles for the very first time, or for experienced knitters who are looking for an effortless comfort project, this gorgeous book contains a fun, cosy and modern knitting pattern for every week of the year - each one a pleasure to knit. The 52 projects have been contributed by leading knitwear designers from across the world. The book uses a 'super easy' label to mark the patterns that are perfect for your very first knitting adventure, and each project is accompanied by beautiful and helpful photography, and supported by extra material on the Laine website.

Following on from the bestselling 52 Weeks of Socks and 52 Weeks of Scarves, 52 Weeks of Easy Knits is a classic book to return to again and again, not just for weeks but for years to come. Knitting is more than just knit, knit, purl. It is a feeling.

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G-Man (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

Beverly Gage

Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Biography

Winner of the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography, the 2023 Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy, and the 43rd LA Times Book Prize in Biography | Finalist for the 2023 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

Named a Best Book of 2022 by The Atlantic, The Washington Post and Smithsonian Magazine and a New York Times Top 100 Notable Books of 2022


“Masterful…This book is an enduring, formidable accomplishment, a monument to the power of biography [that] now becomes the definitive work”—The Washington Post

“A nuanced portrait in a league with the best of Ron Chernow and David McCullough.”—The Wall Street Journal

A major new biography of J Edgar Hoover that draws from never-before-seen sources to create a groundbreaking portrait of a colossus who dominated half a century of American history and planted the seeds for much of today's conservative political landscape.


We remember him as a bulldog--squat frame, bulging wide-set eyes, fearsome jowls--but in 1924, when he became director of the FBI, he had been the trim, dazzling wunderkind of the administrative state, buzzing with energy and big ideas for reform. He transformed a failing law-enforcement backwater, riddled with scandal, into a modern machine. He believed in the power of the federal government to do great things for the nation and its citizens. He also believed that certain people--many of them communists or racial minorities or both-- did not deserve to be included in that American project. Hoover rose to power and then stayed there, decade after decade, using the tools of state to create a personal fiefdom unrivaled in U.S. history.

Beverly Gage’s monumental work explores the full sweep of Hoover’s life and career, from his birth in 1895 to a modest Washington civil-service family through his death in 1972. In her nuanced and definitive portrait, Gage shows how Hoover was more than a one-dimensional tyrant and schemer who strong-armed the rest of the country into submission. As FBI director from 1924 through his death in 1972, he was a confidant, counselor, and adversary to eight U.S. presidents, four Republicans and four Democrats. Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson did the most to empower him, yet his closest friend among the eight was fellow anticommunist warrior Richard Nixon. Hoover was not above blackmail and intimidation, but he also embodied conservative values ranging from anticommunism to white supremacy to a crusading and politicized interpretation of Christianity. This garnered him the admiration of millions of Americans. He stayed in office for so long because many people, from the highest reaches of government down to the grassroots, wanted him there and supported what he was doing, thus creating the template that the political right has followed to transform its party.

G-Man places Hoover back where he once stood in American political history--not at the fringes, but at the center--and uses his story to explain the trajectories of governance, policing, race, ideology, political culture, and federal power as they evolved over the course of the 20th century.

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An Immense World

Ed Yong

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “thrilling” (The New York Times), “dazzling” (The Wall Street Journal) tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong
 
“One of this year’s finest works of narrative nonfiction.”—Oprah Daily

ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time, People, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, Reader’s Digest, Chicago Public Library, Outside, Publishers Weekly, BookPage

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Economist, Smithsonian Magazine, Prospect (UK), Globe & Mail, Esquire, Mental Floss, Marginalian, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal

The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world.

In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile’s scaly face is as sensitive as a lover’s fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved.

Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called “the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes.”

WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON AWARD

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Red Memory

Tania Branigan

"It is impossible to understand China today without understanding the Cultural Revolution," Tania Branigan writes. During this decade of Maoist fanaticism between 1966 and 1976, children turned on parents, students condemned teachers, and as many as two million people died for their supposed political sins, while tens of millions were hounded, ostracized, and imprisoned. Yet in China this brutal and turbulent period exists, for the most part, as an absence; official suppression and personal trauma have conspired in national amnesia.

Red Memory uncovers forty years of silence through the stories of individuals who lived through the madness. Deftly exploring how this era defined a generation and continues to impact China today, Branigan asks: What happens to a society when you can no longer trust those closest to you? What happens to the present when the past is buried, exploited, or redrawn? And how do you live with yourself when the worst is over?

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Fire Weather

John Vaillant

A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION • A stunning account of a colossal wildfire and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind from the award-winning, best-selling author of The Tiger and The Golden Spruce • Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, TIME, NPR, Slate, and Smithsonian

“Grips like a philosophical thriller, warns like a beacon, and shocks to the core." —Robert Macfarlane, bestselling author of Underland

“Riveting, spellbinding, astounding on every page.” —David Wallace-Wells, #1 bestselling author of The Uninhabitable Earth


In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration—the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina—John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event, but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world.

Fire has been a partner in our evolution for hundreds of millennia, shaping culture, civilization, and, very likely, our brains. Fire has enabled us to cook our food, defend and heat our homes, and power the machines that drive our titanic economy. Yet this volatile energy source has always threatened to elude our control, and in our new age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in previously unimaginable ways.

With masterly prose and a cinematic eye, Vaillant takes us on a riveting journey through the intertwined histories of North America’s oil industry and the birth of climate science, to the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern forest fires, and into lives forever changed by these disasters. John Vaillant’s urgent work is a book for—and from—our new century of fire, which has only just begun.

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Trees

Kelsey Oseid

Discover the wonder of trees—one of the most essential life forms on the planet—in this beautifully illustrated, entertaining, and educational guide from the acclaimed author of What We See in the Stars.

Trees are fascinating: The oldest living organism on Earth is a tree, and forest biomes cover one-third of the Earth’s surface. Trees provide fruit, spices, nuts, timber, shade, habitats, and oxygen, as well as absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They can tap into fungal networks in the soil to care for each other by trading water and nutrients and to warn one another of drought and disease.

In Trees: An Illustrated Celebration, celebrated artist and author Kelsey Oseid shows us just how vital trees are to the health and beauty of our planet. Her striking naturalistic art is accompanied by fun scientific facts: Some trees have thinner root hairs than human hairs; tree rings provide important information on supernovae and climate change; and you can identify many trees from their leaf shape alone. The world's most stunning, strange, and noteworthy trees—from mangroves and redwoods to baobabs and dragon trees—come to life in Oseid's elegant and playful style.

Filled with captivating information and vivid, colorful illustrations, Trees: An Illustrated Celebration will delight and inspire nature lovers of all ages.

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The Journey's End

Michael D. Connelly

In the tradition of Atul Gawande's Being Mortal, this compassionate work helps individuals develop a more accepting view of dying while teaching them what to expect and how to navigate the healthcare system at the end of life.

In elderhood, the health care system has a narrow view of how to provide care. It focuses on extending a patient's life at all costs, with an over-reliance on machines and procedures, instead of caring holistically for the person. Accordingly, many of us will likely spend our final weeks in long-term care facilities or an ICU.

Dying at home, peacefully, and surrounded by family is almost impossible in our world--and our fear of death is a major contributor to this impossibility. Fittingly, the central idea of this book is that in old age, or when facing a terminal diagnosis, it is more important to understand your life rather than to extend it. While this may seem simple, its implications are profound.

A natural death means accepting that, at some point, we are old enough or sick enough to die. In our cynical and overly clinical age, it is difficult to reflect on the meaning of one's life, but that kind of honest introspection is exactly what we need. Accordingly, The Journey's End seeks to help people manage their healthcare, their expectations, and their decisions in the final phase of life.

 

 

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A.K.A. Lucy

Sarah Royal

This stunning package offers a rich, intimate, and highly entertaining look at the remarkable life and work of the television pioneer, the First Lady of Comedy, the legend, Lucille Ball-AKA Lucy.

Full of fresh perspective, gorgeously designed, and richly informative, this is a book on Lucille Ball like none other. With profiles spotlighting the many different facets of the woman, AKA Lucy details how Ball changed the face of comedy and the entertainment industry. It sheds new light on the star's history, from her childhood through hard-scrabble days trying to make it in show business, falling head over heels in love and embarking on one of the great romances of the twentieth century, to becoming the biggest star in the world, a pioneer in television, and an icon for the ages. Filled with photos and highlighted by bright illustration and design, this is a volume almost as vivid and entertaining as the woman herself.

AKA Lucy is officially authorized by the estate of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

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The Sun Over the Mountains

Suzie Fletcher

A memoir of hope, healing and restoration, from star of The Repair Shop, Suzie Fletcher.

Suzie Fletcher is the warm and friendly face on The Repair Shop that viewers look forward to watching every week. But while she tends to be the one repairing and offering a gentle kindness to others - she has also been in a process of change, reflection, and healing.

In her first book Suzie looks back over her life - which moves from England to Colorado and back again - and the places, people and experiences that have shaped the person she is today.

A self-confessed hippy with a deep connection to nature, Suzie's exceptional warmth and zest for life shine through on every page, making The Sun Over the Mountain a truly inspiring read that will resonate with anyone who has faced uncertainty but has the courage and power within them to overcome it.

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Hidden Potential

Adam Grant

#1 New York Times Bestseller

“This brilliant book will shatter your assumptions about what it takes to improve and succeed. I wish I could go back in time and gift it to my younger self. It would’ve helped me find a more joyful path to progress.”
—Serena Williams, 23-time Grand Slam singles tennis champion

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again illuminates how we can elevate ourselves and others to unexpected heights.


We live in a world that’s obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distance we ourselves can travel. We underestimate the range of skills that we can learn and how good we can become. We can all improve at improving. And when opportunity doesn’t knock, there are ways to build a door.

Hidden Potential offers a new framework for raising aspirations and exceeding expectations. Adam Grant weaves together groundbreaking evidence, surprising insights, and vivid storytelling that takes us from the classroom to the boardroom, the playground to the Olympics, and underground to outer space. He shows that progress depends less on how hard you work than how well you learn. Growth is not about the genius you possess—it’s about the character you develop. Grant explores how to build the character skills and motivational structures to realize our own potential, and how to design systems that create opportunities for those who have been underrated and overlooked.

Many writers have chronicled the habits of superstars who accomplish great things. This book reveals how anyone can rise to achieve greater things. The true measure of your potential is not the height of the peak you’ve reached, but how far you’ve climbed to get there.

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How to Know a Person

David Brooks

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A practical, heartfelt guide to the art of truly knowing another person in order to foster deeper connections at home, at work, and throughout our lives—from the author of The Road to Character and The Second Mountain

As David Brooks observes, “There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.”

And yet we humans don’t do this well. All around us are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us do better, posing questions that are essential for all of us: If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them? What kind of conversations should you have? What parts of a person’s story should you pay attention to?

Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity and his determination to grow as a person, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and from the worlds of theater, philosophy, history, and education to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. How to Know a Person helps readers become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way it offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misperception.

The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is profoundly creative: How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them, and in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How to Know a Person is for anyone searching for connection, and yearning to be understood.

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The Woman in Me

Britney Spears

“In Britney Spears’s memoir, she’s stronger than ever.” —The New York Times

The Woman in Me is a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope.

In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.

Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love—and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.

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My Name Is Barbra

Barbra Streisand

The long-awaited memoir by the superstar of stage, screen, recordings, and television


Barbra Streisand is by any account a living legend, a woman who in a career spanning six decades has excelled in every area of entertainment. She is among the handful of EGOT winners (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) and has one of the greatest and most recognizable voices in the history of popular music. She has been nominated for a Grammy 46 times, and with Yentl she became the first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major motion picture. In My Name Is Barbra, she tells her own story about her life and extraordinary career, from growing up in Brooklyn to her first star-making appearances in New York nightclubs to her breakout performance in Funny Girl on stage and winning the Oscar for that performance on film. Then came a long string of successes in every medium in the years that followed. The book is, like Barbra herself, frank, funny, opinionated, and charming. She recounts her early struggles to become an actress, eventually turning to singing to earn a living; the recording of some of her acclaimed albums; the years of effort involved in making Yentl; her direction of The Prince of Tides; her friendships with figures ranging from Marlon Brando to Madeleine Albright; her political advocacy; and the fulfillment she’s found in her marriage to James Brolin.
 
No entertainer’s memoir has been more anticipated than Barbra Streisand’s, and this engrossing and delightful book will be eagerly welcomed by her millions of fans.

 

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Already Toast

Kate Washington

The story of one woman’s struggle to care for her seriously ill husband—and a revealing look at the role unpaid family caregivers play in a society that fails to provide them with structural support.

Already Toast shows how all-consuming caregiving can be, how difficult it is to find support, and how the social and literary narratives that have long locked women into providing emotional labor also keep them in unpaid caregiving roles. When Kate Washington and her husband, Brad, learned that he had cancer, they were a young couple: professionals with ascending careers, parents to two small children. Brad’s diagnosis stripped those identities away: he became a patient and she his caregiver.

Brad’s cancer quickly turned aggressive, necessitating a stem-cell transplant that triggered a massive infection, robbing him of his eyesight and nearly of his life. Kate acted as his full-time aide to keep him alive, coordinating his treatments, making doctors’ appointments, calling insurance companies, filling dozens of prescriptions, cleaning commodes, administering IV drugs. She became so burned out that, when she took an online quiz on caregiver self-care, her result cheerily declared: “You’re already toast!”

Through it all, she felt profoundly alone, but, as she later learned, she was in fact one of millions: an invisible army of family caregivers working every day in America, their unpaid labor keeping our troubled healthcare system afloat. Because our culture both romanticizes and erases the realities of care work, few caregivers have shared their stories publicly.

As the baby-boom generation ages, the number of family caregivers will continue to grow. Readable, relatable, timely, and often raw, Already Toast—with its clear call for paying and supporting family caregivers—is a crucial intervention in that conversation, bringing together personal experience with deep research to give voice to those tasked with the overlooked, vital work of caring for the seriously ill.

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Travelers to Unimaginable Lands

Dasha Kiper

These “moving and often surprising” (The Wall Street Journal) case histories meld science and storytelling to show that caregivers don’t just witness cognitive decline in their loved ones with dementia—they are its invisible victims.
 
“This book will forever change the way we see people with dementia disorders—and the people who care for them.”—Lori Gottlieb, author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

 
Inspired by Dasha Kiper’s experience as a caregiver and counselor and informed by a breadth of cognitive and neurological research, Travelers to Unimaginable Lands dispels the myth of the perfect caregiver. In these compassionate, nonjudgmental stories of parents and children, husbands and wives, contending with dementia disorders, Kiper explores the existential dilemmas created by this disease: a man believes his wife is an impostor; a woman’s imaginary friendships with famous authors drive a wedge between her and her devoted husband; another woman’s childhood trauma emerges to torment her son; a man’s sudden, intense Catholic piety provokes his wife.
 
Kiper explains why the caregivers are maddened by these behaviors, mirroring their patients’ irrationality, even though they’ve been told it’s the disease at work. By demystifying the neurological obstacles to caregiving, Kiper illuminates the terrible pressure dementia disorders exert on our closest relationships, offering caregivers the perspective they need to be gentler with themselves.

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The Caregiver's Guide to Diabetes

Amanda Ciprich

Care for yourself while caring for a loved one with diabetes

Taking care of someone with diabetes can be tiring and emotionally draining at times. As a caregiver, you may overlook your own health and well-being because you're so focused on your loved one. This book helps empower you to be an attentive caregiver for your friend or family member with diabetes—while also taking good care of yourself.

Give your loved one the support they need with guidance for everything from medications and treatments to financial and legal decisions. You'll also find practical advice for meeting your own physical and emotional needs, and dealing with the unique challenges you face as a caregiver.

  • Understanding diabetes—Learn what diabetes is and isn't, how the condition affects the body, and how your role as caregiver fits in.
  • Relatable stories—Read examples of real situations you might encounter as a diabetes caregiver.
  • What to do, say, and ask—Explore questions to ask your healthcare provider, and get suggestions for what to do and say in specific situations, like if your loved one is having trouble managing their blood sugar or medication side effects.


Attend to your own needs while being a supportive diabetes caregiver with help from this compassionate guide.

 

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The Caregiver's Guide to Cancer

Victoria Landes

Care for a loved one with cancer while caring for yourself

Looking after someone with cancer can be complex, overwhelming, and emotionally draining all at once. As a caregiver, you may also overlook your own well-being while you focus on your loved one. This book empowers you to be an attentive, thoughtful, and compassionate caregiver for your friend or family member with cancer. You'll also find practical everyday advice for meeting your own physical and emotional needs while dealing with the unique challenges you face.

  • Understanding cancer—Learn how cancer affects the body at every stage, determine the steps that come after diagnosis, and examine cancer treatments and side effects.
  • Knowledge caregivers need—Find info on navigating health care, financial and legal decisions, and much more.
  • What to say and ask—Find questions to ask your loved one's care team and health providers, and discover how to be an advocate in different situations.


Support your loved one while also practicing self-care with the help of this compassionate choice in caregiving and cancer books.

 

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The Busy Caregiver's Guide to Advanced Alzheimer Disease

Jennifer R. Stelter

The only guide to caring for those with advanced Alzheimer disease.

Winner of the IPPY Book Award Health/Medicine/Nutrition by the Independent Publisher

Caring for someone living with advanced Alzheimer disease is a challenge. It can make you feel like you're on a hamster wheel—running in circles, trying the same things over and over with no effect on your loved one. You may also find it difficult to connect with your loved one and to understand what those living with Alzheimer disease are going through. In The Busy Caregiver's Guide to Advanced Alzheimer Disease, Dr. Jennifer Stelter, a psychologist working in memory care, shares a new model designed to help caregivers understand, cope with, and handle some of the most challenging behaviors associated with the disease while encouraging and reinforcing independence and quality of life for their loved ones. Her Dementia Connection Model, which is based on current scientific research, will aid you in forging a positive bond with your loved one with less frustration. Win-win!

Follow along, step by step, as Dr. Stelter outlines the three main elements of the Dementia Connection Model and learn how to put these elements into practice to help with

• communication problems
• eating difficulties
• mobility concerns
• memory deficits
• behavioral issues
• toileting trouble
• and other common complications of Alzheimer disease.

The evidenced-based, practical interventions and strategies in The Busy Caregiver's Guide will help you stay emotionally, mentally, and physically involved in your loved one's life. Special dedicated worksheets help you practice the skills and keep track of what is working. You'll also read stories about other caregivers who face the same struggles.

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The Caregiver's Guide to Stroke Recovery

Lucille Jorgensen

Learn how to care for a loved one after a stroke, and care for yourself, too

A stroke changes the life of more than just the survivor. Becoming a caregiver for a stroke patient means increased responsibilities, hard decisions, and new emotional stresses—especially when the patient is a loved one. This stroke recovery book will help you through these challenging times with knowledge, compassionate guidance, and reaffirming stroke rehabilitation anecdotes. Topics such as medications and treatments, financial and legal decisions, and work-life balance are also covered, as well as:

  • Understanding stroke—Discover the signs and symptoms of a stroke, explained in layperson's terms, as well as the steps to prevent a stroke from occurring.
  • Care and recovery—Find helpful advice to restore the best health and function possible and be an advocate for a stroke patient with doctors and their support team.
  • Caring for yourself—Uncover practical tips, guidance, and resources for supporting a caregiver's mental and physical health, which are just as important to patient recovery.


Ease the challenges on your shared path to healing through The Caregiver's Guide to Stroke Recovery.

 

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