Stewart's captivating missives from her homestead in Wyoming bring to full life the beauty, isolation, and joys of working the prairie.

    The editor who discovered the book said, "When I first read Prather's manuscript it was late at night and I was tired, but by the time I finished it, I felt rested and alive. Since then I've reread it many times and it says even more to me now." The book serves as a beginning for the reader's exploration of his or her own life and as a treasury of thoughtful and insightful reminders.

    The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien sheds much light on Tolkien's creative genius and grand design for the creation of a whole new world: Middle-earth. Featuring a radically expanded index, this volume provides a valuable research tool for all fans wishing to trace the evolution of THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

    Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

    In his letters the author of The Prophet,The Broken Wings, The Voice of the Master & other 20th-century classics bared his soul completely, & their strange magic inspired in his correspondents a like self-revelation. The letters in this book span 1904 to 1930, & truly constitute a self-portrait of the poet in the time of his greatest productivity. These are Gibran's Boston & New York years, with an interlude in Paris, during which he studied under the sculptor Auguste Rodin. There are touching letters here to his sister Miriana & other members of his family; there are thoughtful letters to such influential men as Ameen Guraieb, rhe editor who introduced the Arabic-American public; & above all, there are impassioned letters to May Ziadeh, the Lebanese writer with whom Gibran had formed an extraordinary "literary & love relationship" entirely through correspondence.

    When Regina Brett turned 50, she wrote a column on the 50 lessons life had taught her. She reflected on all she had learned through becoming a single parent, looking for love in all the wrong places, working on her relationship with God, battling cancer and making peace with a difficult childhood. It became one of the most popular columns ever published in the newspaper, and since then the 50 lessons have been emailed to hundreds of thousands of people. Brett now takes the 50 lessons and expounds on them in essays that are deeply personal. From "Don't take yourself too seriously-Nobody else does" to "Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift," these lessons will strike a chord with anyone who has ever gone through tough times--and haven't we all?

    In a series of penetrating essays, Chomsky cuts through the confusion and prejudice that has infected the study of language and mind, bringing new solutions to traditional philosophical puzzles and fresh perspectives on issues of general interest, ranging from the mind-body problem to the unification of science. Using a range of imaginative and deceptively simple linguistic analyses, Chomsky defends the view that knowledge of language is internal to the human mind. He argues that a proper study of language must deal with this mental construct. According to Chomsky, therefore, human language is a biological object and should be analyzed using the methodology of the sciences. His examples and analyses come together in this book to give a unique and compelling perspective on language and the mind.

    Champagne drunk. My mouth was stretched in a smile so wide, that my jaw hurt. The sky had the colours of a bruise.' When Nick Johnstone got drunk for the first time at the age of fourteen he discovered a cure for the depression and anxiety that had been humming in his head since childhood. Over the next ten years he drank to overcome shyness, to make the world bearable, to get through the days and to get through the nights. He also began to cut himself and he began to lie. Intelligent, sensitive, from a loving family, neither he nor his countless doctors, psychiatrists, counsellors and therapists could understand where his disorders came from. Then, when he was twenty-four he was admitted into hospital. Stripped of his 'cure', Nick Johnstone painfully began the process of recovery. Although love proves to be the strongest 'cure' of all, this is a story with no tidy or happy endings. Honest and gripping, by turns stark and lyrical, "A Head Full of Blue" powerfully evokes the often unfathomable psychology and behaviour that drives addiction, examining self-harm as a coping mechanism rather than a taboo. It is an unusual, moving and thought-provoking memoir.

    Its introduction examines the circumstances that brought the author and Nietzsche together and the ideological conflicts that drove them apart.

    It’s a good thing to strive for more kindness and compassion. But wishing that humanity becomes entirely inoffensive is pointless because there’s always something that offends someone. Fortunately, there’s another path... The ancient Stoics observed that some things are in our control and others are not. We cannot control the foul language of people, opinions that oppose our own, and that there will always be a bunch of trolls that intend to trigger us for fun. What happens in our environment isn’t up to us. But what is up to us, is the way we handle it. Many choose to spend heaps of time and energy on the mere words of others, which withholds them to pursue meaningful goals and to be at peace in an unruly universe. What a waste! Unoffendable explores philosophical ideas backed by personal anecdotes to figure out how we can thrive in a world full of jerks, bullies, and people we simply don’t agree with.

    Sexually and physically abused by her father, Eve has struggled her whole life from this betrayal, longing for an honest reckoning from a man who is long dead. After years of work as an anti-violence activist, she decided she would wait no longer; an apology could be imagined, by her, for her, to her. The Apology, written by Eve from her father's point of view in the words she longed to hear, attempts to transform the abuse she suffered with unflinching truthfulness and compassion and an expansive vision for the future. Remarkable and original, The Apology is an acutely transformational look at how, from the wounds of sexual abuse, we can begin to re-emerge and heal. It is revolutionary, asking everything of each of us: courage, honesty, and forgiveness.

    He says the only reality is this world of life and death, conflict and change, creation and destruction. For centuries, religious ideas have given meaning to life in the western world; but as they now collapse, humanity faces a grave crisis of nihilism and despair. The basic character of life in this world is to exhibit a primal tendency he calls "will to power." He glorifies those who are strong enough to face this reality: for they alone can live joyfully, without God and without any hope of ultimate salvation. The "overman" is his new ideal, the symbol of creativity incarnate. Man is fundamentally only an animal that has developed in an unusual way. Yet a "higher humanity" can emerge if the most talented, creative and strongest individuals flourish and prevail, rising above the life of the "common herd" that typifies mankind. Nietzsche rejects democratic ideals, believing that they ignore human differences and hinder the exceptionally talented. Conflict, mastery and creativity are essential to life and its development. The "will to power" brings about new forms of competition and superiority, as artists and other creative types pave the way for the "enhancement" of human life.

    One day that possibility became a reality, and it was simple and ordinary, magnificent and revolutionary. It is the open secret that reveals itself in every part of our lives. But realisation does not emerge through our attempts to change our lives, it comes as a direct rediscovery of who it is that lives. "The Open Secret" is a singular and radical work which speaks of the fundamental liberation that is absolutely beyond effort, path, process or belief.

    What these people don’t understand is how exhausting it feels to make it look that way. The pressure to keep it all going is intense. You feel unfulfilled and don’t believe you measure up to others. You’re constantly searching for the secret to experience confidence in your own skin. Despite your have-it-all-together life, you can’t figure out how to accept or perfect yourself. You’ve tried diets, intense exercise, shopping, and stuffing brownies in your face. Yet nothing fills the hole deep inside, and you worry, Will I ever be enough? You’ve come to the right place. In Letting Go of Leo, Simi Botic gets personal about what she’s experienced and learned. She shares stories about eating a jar of peanut butter without choking to death. Stories about her thighs rubbing together. Stories of living a fantasy where she would marry Leo DiCaprio and win an Oscar. Stories of realizing that real life can be better than any fantasy, that she could show up for the good stuff and the hard stuff and, most importantly, for herself. Simi used to freak out about food, her body, and not being perfect enough. She freaks out a lot less now. In Letting Go of Leo, she shares how she broke up with perfection—and how you can too.

    Funny, touching, and delightfully quirky, Billy's letters cover a broad range of subject matter:Operation Drop-Out: Considering dropping out of elementary school, Billy writes to serial killers and celebrities seeking their wise counsel.Billy's Law: Which Supreme Court Justice prefers the Big Mac to the Whopper? Who is Janet Reno's favorite crime fighter? What does Robert Shapiro say is the best defense for being framed for murder? Billy finds out.The Making of the Class President: Billy runs for class president and collects "endorsements" from Nancy Reagan, Dick Cheney, George HW Bush, Gerald Ford, Bob Dole, Ken Starr, and Colin Powell.Choosing My Religion: Billy asks representatives from the Catholic, Presbyterian, Mormon, Raelian, Satanic, Scientologist, Hare Krishna and Unification Church (Moonies) what is "cool" or "easy" about their religion.Presidents, Supreme Court Justices, Celebrities, Heads of Corporations, Serial Killers, Robot Makers, and the NesQuick Bunny have all replied to "Little Billy's" scrawled questions.