Committed: Dispatches from a Psychiatrist in Training


Adam Stern - 2021
    His new and initially intimidating classmates were high achievers from the Ivy League and other elite universities around the nation. Stern pulls back the curtain on the intense and emotionally challenging lessons he and his fellow doctors learned while studying the human condition, and ultimately, the value of connection. The narrative focuses on these residents, their growth as doctors, and the life choices they make as they try to survive their grueling four-year residency. Most importantly, as they study how to help distressed patients in search of a better life, they discover the meaning of failure and the preciousness of success.

Swedish Cakes and Cookies


Melody Favish - 2005
    Modernized and improved over the years, today's full-color edition, with beautiful photographs of each recipe, contains nearly 300 recipes. Some, such as Berry Muffins, Coconut Macaroons, Linzer Torte, and Jelly Doughnuts, may be familiar, while others, such as German Lemon Cake, Almond Meringues, Truffle Tarts, and Toffee Crunch Torte, are deliciously unique. Gluten-free, egg-free, and sugar-free recipes ensure that this book is accessible to all dessert lovers. Beginners and experts will be reminded that baking is both easy and enjoyable when they read the practical advice and step-by-step instructions in each section. Swedish Cakes and Cookies is an essential resource for any home baker, and for anyone who loves to meet with friends for coffee and cake.

Shame Interrupted: How God Lifts the Pain of Worthlessness and Rejection


Edward T. Welch - 2012
    Shame controls far too many of us. Worthless, inferior, rejected, weak, humiliated, failure...it all adds up to wishing we could get away from others and hide. We know what shame feels like. The way out, however, is harder to find. Time doesn't help, neither does confession, because shame is just as often from what others do to you as it is from what you have done. But the Bible is about shame from start to finish, and, if we are willing, God's beautiful words break through. Look at Jesus through the lens of shame and see how the marginalized and worthless are his favorites and become his people. God cares for the shamed. Through Jesus you are covered, adopted, cleansed, and healed.

Not Afraid of the Fall


Kyle James - 2017
    In 114 days, they trekked across 15 countries and 38 cities with nothing but their backpacks, their smartphones, and each other. Not Afraid of the Fall is the unvarnished story of their off-the-cuff journey: From cliff-jumping on Croatia's untouched coasts to bathing with rescued elephants in Thailand; from crashing mopeds on mountainous gravel roads in Santorini, to hitchhiking with strangers in rental cars in Hungary. Part travelogue memoir, part love letter to those staring at the walls of a corporate cubicle, Not Afraid of the Fall is an inspiring book that captures both the sweet mysteries of life on the road as well as an empowering narrative for anyone who has ever uttered the words "maybe next year."

Elle the Thumbelina Fairy


Daisy Meadows - 2016
    Can the girls help their fairy friends put things right?

Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization


Rémi Brague - 1992
    But its roots are not there. They are in Athens and Jerusalem. European culture takes its bearing from references that are not in Europe: Europe is eccentric.What makes the West unique? What is the driving force behind its culture? Remi Brague takes up these questions in Eccentric Culture. This is not another dictionary of European culture, nor a measure of the contributions of a particular individual, religion, or national tradition. The author's interest is especially, with regard to the transmission of that culture, to articulate the dynamic tension that has propelled Europe and more generally the West toward civilization. It is this mainspring of European culture, this founding principle, that Brague calls "Roman".Yet the author's intent is not to write a history of Europe, and less yet to defend the historical reality of the Roman Empire. Brague rather isolates and generalizes one aspect of that history or, one might say, cultural myth, of ancient Rome. The Roman attitude senses its own incompleteness and recognizes the call to borrow from what went before it.Historically, it has led the West to borrow from the great traditions of Jerusalem and Athens: primarily the Jewish and Christian tradition, on the one hand, and the classical Greek tradition on the other. Nowhere does the author find this Roman character so strongly present as in the Christian and particularly Catholic attitude toward the incarnation.At once an appreciation of the richness and diversity of the sources and their fruit, Eccentric Culture points as well to the fragility of their nourishing principle. As such, Brague finds in it notonly a means of understanding the past, but of projecting a future in (re)proposing to the West, and to Europe in particular, a model relationship of what is proper to it.An international bestseller (translated from the original French edition of Europe, La Voie Romaine), this work has been or is presently being translated into thirteen languages.

Birdman: The Many Faces of Robert Stroud


Jolene Babyak - 1994
    Jolene Babyak lived on Alatraz while her father was working there.Meticulously reserched,her book includes never before published prison reports and Stroud's own writing with quotes from prisoners,officers and avian pathologists.It explodes the myth surrounding Robert Stroud.

The Contact Paradox: Challenging Our Assumptions in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence


Keith Cooper - 2020
    What will happen if humanity makes contact with another civilization on a different planet? In The Contact Paradox, space journalist Keith Cooper tackles some of the myths and assumptions that underlie SETI--the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.In 1974 a message was beamed towards the stars by the giant Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, a brief blast of radio waves designed to alert extraterrestrial civilizations to our existence. Of course, we don't know if such civilizations really exist. But for the past six decades a small cadre of researchers have been on a quest to find out, as part of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.The silence from the stars is prompting some researchers, inspired by the Arecibo transmission, to transmit more messages into space, in an effort to provoke a response from any civilizations out there that might otherwise be staying quiet. However, the act of transmitting raises troubling questions about the process of contact. We look for qualities such as altruism and intelligence in extraterrestrial life, but what do these mean to humankind? Can we learn something about our own history when we explore what happens when two civilizations come into contact? Finally, do the answers tell us that it is safe to transmit, even though we know nothing about extraterrestrial life, or as Stephen Hawking argued, are we placing humanity in jeopardy by doing so?In The Contact Paradox, author Keith Cooper looks at how far SETI has come since its modest beginnings, and where it is going, by speaking to the leading names in the field and beyond. SETI forces us to confront our nature in a way that we seldom have before--where did we come from, where are we going, and who are we in the cosmic context of things? This book considers the assumptions that we make in our search for extraterrestrial life, and explores how those assumptions can teach us about ourselves.

Birth of the Chess Queen: A History


Marilyn Yalom - 2004
    It wasn't until chess became a popular pastime for European royals during the Middle Ages that the queen was born and was gradually empowered to become the king's fierce warrior and protector.Birth of the Chess Queen examines the five centuries between the chess queen's timid emergence in the early days of the Holy Roman Empire to her elevation during the reign of Isabel of Castile. Marilyn Yalom, inspired by a handful of surviving medieval chess queens, traces their origin and spread from Spain, Italy, and Germany to France, England, Scandinavia, and Russia. In a lively and engaging historical investigation, Yalom draws parallels between the rise of the chess queen and the ascent of female sovereigns in Europe, presenting a layered, fascinating history of medieval courts and internal struggles for power.

Real Impact: The New Economics of Social Change


Morgan Simon - 2017
    Yet for all the excitement, there is work to do to ensure it actually realizes its potential. Will impact investment empower millions of people worldwide, or will it just replicate the same failures that have plagued the aid and antipoverty industry? Enter Morgan Simon. When she was a twenty-year-old college student at Swarthmore, Simon compelled Lockheed Martin to change their LGBTQ policies by convincing her college to stop investing in the firm. And that was just the beginning. With passion and counterintuitive arguments, Simon shows how impact investing can make real change. But she also illustrates how easy it is to make mistakes, showing how wind farms can lead to land grabs, and how short-term thinking by well-meaning investors can actually lead to more oppression and hardship in the communities they are trying to help. Impact investing, Simon argues, is making the same mistakes the aid industry has been making for years. But there are ways to invest and have real impact: by making sure the communities are involved in the decision-making and ownership of the project, that investors are adding more value than they extract, and that the risk and returns are balanced between the investors and the communities. As an activist, and as a trusted leader in the field, Simon argues that we can work within the system and use capital to effect change. Centered around real, on-the-ground case studies from her decades of investment analysis and offering clear strategies that are proven to work, this book is a clarion call for more effective, socially conscious investing.

New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City


Andrei Codrescu - 2001
    How apt that a refugee born in Transylvania found his home in a place where vampires roam the streets and voodoo queens live around the corner; where cemeteries are the most popular picnic spots, the ghosts of poets, prostitutes, and pirates are palpable, and in the French Quarter, no one ever sleeps. Codrescu's essays have been called "satirical gems," "subversive," "sardonic and stunning," "funny," "gonzo," "wittily poignant," and "perverse"—here is a writer who perfectly mirrors the wild, voluptuous, bohemian character of New Orleans itself. This retrospective follows him from newcomer to near native: first seduced by the lush banana trees in his backyard and the sensual aroma of coffee at the café down the block, Codrescu soon becomes a Window Gang regular at the infamous bar Molly's on Decatur, does a stint as King of Krewe de Vieux Carré at Mardi Gras, befriends artists, musicians, and eccentrics, and exposes the city’s underbelly of corruption, warning presciently about the lack of planning for floods in a city high on its own insouciance. Alas, as we all now know, Paradise is lost.New Orleans, Mon Amour is an epic love song, a clear-eyed elegy, a cultural celebration, and a thank-you note to New Orleans in its Golden Age.

The Blizzard Challenge


Bear Grylls - 2017
    Why should he bother building a shelter or foraging for food with his teammates - he'd rather be at home in the warm and dry, where the sofa and the video games are.But then Olly gets given a compass with a mysterious fifth direction. When he follows it, he's magically transported to a high mountain range where he meets survival expert Bear Grylls. With his help, Olly must learn to survive in sub-zero temperatures, including what to do if the ice cracks when you're crossing a frozen lake, or a blizzard sets in . . .But can his adventure with Bear Grylls change Olly's mind about teamwork and perseverance? And who will Olly give the compass to next?Each book in this fun new 12-book series from BEAR GRYLLS follows a different child on the outdoor activity camp. Once they are given the magical compass, they meet the inspirational adventurer in an amazing place and learn new skills and facts they can take back with them to their real life.

Shackleton's Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer


Margot Morrell - 1998
    Today the public can't get enough of this once-forgotten explorer, and his actions have made him a model for great leadership and masterful crisis management. Now, through anecdotes, the diaries of the men in his crew, and Shackleton's own writing, Shackleton's leadership style and time-honored principles are translated for the modern business world. Written by two veteran business observers and illustrated with ship photographer Frank Hurley's masterpieces and other rarely seen photos, this practical book helps today's leaders follow Shackleton's triumphant example.

Home Sausage Making: How-To Techniques for Making and Enjoying 100 Sausages at Home


Susan Mahnke Peery - 2002
    With simple instructions for more than 100 recipes made from pork, beef, chicken, turkey, poultry, and fish — including classics like Kosher Salami and Italian Cotechino — you’re sure to find a sausage to suit your taste.

Without a Word: How a Boy's Unspoken Love Changed Everything


Jill Kelly - 2010
    It takes the reader into the lives of a celebrity couple, pro football Hall of Famer Jim Kelly and his wife, Jill, to reveal the Kelly family's private struggle.