Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship


Kayleen Schaefer - 2018
    Text Me When You Get Home is a personal and sociological perspective - and ultimately a celebration - of the evolution of the modern female friendship.Kayleen Schaefer has experienced (and occasionally, narrowly survived) most every iteration of the modern female friendship. First there was the mean girl cliques of the '90s; then the teenage friendships that revolved around constant discussion of romantic interests and which slowly morphed into Sex and the City spin-offs; the disheartening loneliness of "I'm not like other girls" friendships with only men; the discovery of a platonic soul mate; and finally, the overwhelming love of a supportive female squad (#squad).And over the course of these friendships, Schaefer made a startling discovery: girls make the best friends. And she isn't the only one to realize this. Through interviews with friends, mothers, authors, celebrities, businesswomen, doctors, screenwriters, and historians (a list that includes Judy Blume, Megan Abbott, The Fug Girls, and Kay Cannon), Schaefer shows a remarkable portrait of what female friendships can help modern women accomplish in their social, personal, and work lives.A validation of female friendship unlike any that's ever existed before, this book is a mix of historical research, the author's own personal experience, and conversations about friendships across the country. Everything Schaefer uncovers leads to - and makes the case for - the eventual conclusion that these ties among women are making us (both as individuals and as society as a whole) stronger than ever before.

Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse


Jackson MacKenzie - 2019
    His first book, Psychopath Free, explained how to identify and survive the immediate situation. In this highly anticipated new book, he guides readers on what to do next--how to fully heal from abuse in order to find love and acceptance for the self and others.Through his close work with--and deep connection to--thousands of survivors of abusive relationships Jackson discovered that most survivors have symptoms of trauma long after the relationship is over. These range from feelings of numbness and emptiness to depression, perfectionism, substance abuse, and many more. But he's also found that it is possible to work through these symptoms and find love on the other side, and this book shows how. Through a practice of mindfulness, introspection, and exercises using specific tools, readers learn to identify the protective self they've developed - and uncover the core self, so that they can finally move on to live a full and authentic life--to once again feel light, free, and whole, and ready to love again.This book addresses and provides crucial guidance on topics and conditions like: complex PTSD, Narcissistic abuse, Avoidant Personality Disorder, Codependency, Core wounding, toxic shame, Borderline Personality Disorder, and so many more. Whole Again offers hope and multiple strategies to anyone who has survived a toxic relationship, as well as anyone suffering the effects of a breakup involving lying, cheating and other forms of abuse--to release old wounds and safely let the love back inside where it belongs.

How to be a Happier Parent: Raising a Family, Having a Life, and Loving (Almost) Every Minute


K.J. Dell'Antonia - 2018
    In this optimistic, solution-packed book, KJ asks: How can we change our family life so that it is full of the joy we'd always hoped for? Drawing from the latest research and interviews with families, KJ discovers that it's possible to do more by doing less, and make our family life a refuge and pleasure, rather than another stress point in a hectic day. She focuses on nine common problem spots that cause parents the most grief, explores why they are hard, and offers small, doable, sometimes surprising steps you can take to make them better. Whether it's getting everyone out the door on time in the morning or making sure chores and homework get done without another battle, How to Be a Happier Parent shows that having a family isn't just about raising great kids and churning them out at destination: success. It's about experiencing joy--real joy, the kind you look back on, look forward to, and live for--along the way.

Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward


Gemma Hartley - 2018
    In relationships, we initiate the hard conversations. At home, we shoulder the mental load required to keep our households running. At work, we moderate our tone, explaining patiently and speaking softly. In the world, we step gingerly to keep ourselves safe. We do this largely invisible, draining work whether we want to or not—and we never clock out. No wonder women everywhere are overtaxed, exhausted, and simply fed up.In her ultra-viral article “Women Aren’t Nags—We’re Just Fed Up,” shared by millions of readers, Gemma Hartley gave much-needed voice to the frustration and anger experienced by countless women. Now, in Fed Up, Hartley expands outward from the everyday frustrations of performing thankless emotional labor to illuminate how the expectation to do this work in all arenas—private and public—fuels gender inequality, limits our opportunities, steals our time, and adversely affects the quality of our lives.More than just name the problem, though, Hartley teases apart the cultural messaging that has led us here and asks how we can shift the load. Rejecting easy solutions that don’t ultimately move the needle, Hartley offers a nuanced, insightful guide to striking real balance, for true partnership in every aspect of our lives. Reframing emotional labor not as a problem to be overcome, but as a genderless virtue men and women can all learn to channel in our quest to make a better, more egalitarian world, Fed Up is surprising, intelligent, and empathetic essential reading for every woman who has had enough with feeling fed up.

Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls


Mary Pipher - 1994
    Why were so many of them turning to therapy in the first place? Why had these lovely and promising human beings fallen prey to depression, eating disorders, suicide attempts, and crushingly low self-esteem? The answer hit a nerve with Pipher, with parents, and with the girls themselves. Crashing and burning in a “developmental Bermuda Triangle,” they were coming of age in a media-saturated culture preoccupied with unrealistic ideals of beauty and images of dehumanized sex, a culture rife with addictions and sexually transmitted diseases. They were losing their resiliency and optimism in a “girl-poisoning” culture that propagated values at odds with those necessary to survive.    Told in the brave, fearless, and honest voices of the girls themselves who are emerging from the chaos of adolescence, Reviving Ophelia is a call to arms, offering important tactics, empathy, and strength, and urging a change where young hearts can flourish again, and rediscover and reengage their sense of self.

This Is Me: Loving the Person You Are Today


Chrissy Metz - 2018
    The critically acclaimed series became America’s most watched—and most talked about—network show, even building on its fan base in the drama’s second season. As Kate Pearson, Chrissy Metz presents a character that has never been seen on television, yet viewers see themselves in her, no matter what they look like or where they come from. Considered a role model just for being her authentic self, Chrissy found herself on magazine covers and talk shows, walking red carpets, and as the subject of endless conversations on social media “I don’t know what you’ve been through to play her,” she is often told by fans, “but it was something.”In This is Me, Chrissy Metz shares her story with a raw honesty that will leave readers both surprised but also inspired. Infused with the same authenticity she brings to her starring role, Chrissy’s This is Me is so much more than your standard Hollywood memoir or collection of personal essays. She embraces the spirit of Shonda Rhimes’ Year of Yes, and shares how she has applied the lessons she learned from both setbacks and successes. A born entertainer, Chrissy finds light in even her darkest moments, and leaves the reader feeling they are spending time with a friend who gets it.Chrissy Metz grew up in a large family, one that always seemed to be moving, and growing. Her father disappeared one day, leaving her mother to work a series of menial jobs and his children to learn to live with the threat of hunger and the electricity being cut off. When her mother remarried, Chrissy hoped for “normal” but instead experienced a form of mental pain that seemed crafted just for her. The boys who showed her attention did so with strings attached as well, and Chrissy accepted it, because for her, love always came with conditions.When she set out for Los Angeles, it was the first time she had been away from her family and from Florida. And for years, she got barely an audition. So how does a woman with the deck stacked against her radiate such love, beauty and joy? This too is at the heart of This is Me. With chapters that alternate from autobiographical to instructional, Chrissy offers practical applications of her hard-won insights in a series of “Bee Mindful” interstitials. There she invites you to embrace gratitude in “Say Thank You” or to be honest with your partner and yourself in “The Shrouded Supreme.” Blending love and experience, Chrissy encourages us all to claim our rightful place in a world that may be trying to knock us down, find our own unique gifts, and pursue our dreams.

Life Reimagined: The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife


Barbara Bradley Hagerty - 2016
    It’s a myth, an illusion. New scientific research explodes the fable that midlife is a time when things start to go downhill for everybody. In fact, midlife can be a great new adventure, when you can embrace fresh possibilities, purposes, and pleasures. In Life Reimagined, Hagerty explains that midlife is about renewal: It’s the time to renegotiate your purpose, refocus your relationships, and transform the way you think about the world and yourself. Drawing from emerging information in neurology, psychology, biology, genetics, and sociology—as well as her own story of midlife transformation—Hagerty redraws the map for people in midlife and plots a new course forward in understanding our health, our relationships, even our futures.

Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity


Andrew Solomon - 2012
    He writes about families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down's syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, or multiple severe disabilities; with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, who are transgender. While each of these characteristics is potentially isolating, the experience of difference within families is universal, and Solomon documents triumphs of love over prejudice in every chapter.All parenting turns on a crucial question: to what extent should parents accept their children for who they are, and to what extent they should help them become their best selves. Drawing on ten years of research and interviews with more than three hundred families, Solomon mines the eloquence of ordinary people facing extreme challenges.Elegantly reported by a spectacularly original and compassionate thinker, Far from the Tree explores how people who love each other must struggle to accept each other—a theme in every family’s life.

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains


Nicholas Carr - 2010
    He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply?Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind”—from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer—Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways.Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic—a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is that of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption—and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection.Part intellectual history, part popular science, and part cultural criticism, The Shallows sparkles with memorable vignettes—Friedrich Nietzsche wrestling with a typewriter, Sigmund Freud dissecting the brains of sea creatures, Nathaniel Hawthorne contemplating the thunderous approach of a steam locomotive—even as it plumbs profound questions about the state of our modern psyche. This is a book that will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.

The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict


The Arbinger Institute - 2015
    The Anatomy of Peace asks, What if conflicts at home, conflicts at work, and conflicts in the world stem from the same root cause? What if we systematically misunderstand that cause? And what if, as a result, we unwittingly perpetuate the very problems we think we are trying to solve? Through an intriguing story we learn how and why we contribute to the divisions and problems we blame on others and the surprising way that these problems can be solved. Yusuf al-Falah, an Arab, and Avi Rozen, a Jew, each lost his father at the hands of the other's ethnic cousins. The Anatomy of Peace is the story of how they came together, how they help warring parents and children come together, and how we too can find our way out of the struggles that weigh us down. This second edition includes new sections enabling readers to go deeper into the book's key concepts; access to free digital study and discussion guides; and information about The Reconciliation Project, a highly successful global peace initiative based on concepts in The Anatomy of Peace.

Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us


Robert D. Hare - 1993
    With their flagrant criminal violation of society's rules, serial killers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy are among the most dramatic examples of the psychopath. Individuals with this personality disorder are fully aware of the consequences of their actions and know the difference between right and wrong, yet they are terrifyingly self-centered, remorseless, and unable to care about the feelings of others. Perhaps most frightening, they often seem completely normal to unsuspecting targets--and they do not always ply their trade by killing. Presenting a compelling portrait of these dangerous men and women based on 25 years of distinguished scientific research, Dr. Robert D. Hare vividly describes a world of con artists, hustlers, rapists, and other predators who charm, lie, and manipulate their way through life. Are psychopaths mad, or simply bad? How can they be recognized? And how can we protect ourselves? This book provides solid information and surprising insights for anyone seeking to understand this devastating condition.

The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage, Asperger Syndrome, and One Man's Quest to Be a Better Husband


David Finch - 2012
    Five years after he married Kristen, the love of his life, they learn that he has Asperger syndrome. The diagnosis explains David’s ever-growing list of quirks and compulsions, his lifelong propensity to quack and otherwise melt down in social exchanges, and his clinical-strength inflexibility. But it doesn’t make him any easier to live with.Determined to change, David sets out to understand Asperger syndrome and learn to be a better husband—no easy task for a guy whose inability to express himself rivals his two-year-old daughter's, who thinks his responsibility for laundry extends no further than throwing things in (or at) the hamper, and whose autism-spectrum condition makes seeing his wife's point of view a near impossibility.Nevertheless, David devotes himself to improving his marriage with an endearing yet hilarious zeal that involves excessive note-taking, performance reviews, and most of all, the Journal of Best Practices: a collection of hundreds of maxims and hard-won epiphanies that result from self-reflection both comic and painful. They include "Don’t change the radio station when she's singing along," "Apologies do not count when you shout them," and "Be her friend, first and always." Guided by the Journal of Best Practices, David transforms himself over the course of two years from the world’s most trying husband to the husband who tries the hardest, the husband he’d always meant to be.Filled with humor and surprising wisdom, The Journal of Best Practices is a candid story of ruthless self-improvement, a unique window into living with an autism-spectrum condition, and proof that a true heart can conquer all.

Didn't See That Coming: Putting Life Back Together When Your World Falls Apart


Rachel Hollis - 2020
    As the millions who read her Girl, Wash Your Face and Girl, Stop Apologizing, attend her RISE conferences and follow her on social media know, she also wants to see you transform. When it comes to the “hard seasons” of life—the death of a loved one, divorce, loss of a job—transformation seems impossible when grief and uncertainty dominate your days. Especially when, as Didn’t See that Coming reveals, no one asks to have their future completely rearranged for them.But, as Rachel writes, it is up to you how you come through your pain—you can come through changed for the better, having learned and grown, or stuck in place where your identity becomes rooted in what hurt you. With humor, honesty and true-life stories, in Didn’t See that Coming Rachel Hollis shares how to embrace the difficult moments in life for the learning experiences they are, and that a life well-lived is one of purpose and focused on the essentials. This is a small book about big feelings, inspirational, aspirational, and an anchor that shows that darkness can co-exist with the beautiful.

You Are Not Special and Other Encouragements


David McCullough Jr. - 2014
    Children today, says David McCullough, are being encouraged to sacrifice passionate engagement with life for specious notions of success. The intense pressure to excel discourages kids from taking chances, failing, and learning empathy and self-confidence from those failures. In "You Are Not Special" McCullough elaborates on exploring how, for what purpose, and for whose sake, we're raising our kids. By acknowledging that the world is indifferent to them, McCullough takes pressure off of students to be extraordinary achievers and instead exhorts them to roll up their sleeves and do something useful with their advantages. The YouTube video of his speech has been seen by more than two million viewers and counting.

SuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient - Powered by the Science of Games


Jane McGonigal - 2015
    Unable to think clearly, or work, or even get out of bed, she became anxious and depressed, even suicidal—a common symptom for concussion sufferers. But rather than let herself sink further, she decided to get better by doing what she does best: she turned her recovery process into a game. What started as a simple motivational exercise became a set of rules she shared on her blog. These rules became a digital game, then an online portal and a major research study with the National Institutes of Health. Today more than 400,000 people have played SuperBetter to get happier and healthier.But the ideas behind SuperBetter are much bigger than just one game. In this book, McGonigal reveals a decade’s worth of scientific research into the ways all games change how we respond to stress, challenge, and pain. She explains how we can cultivate new powers of recovery and resilience in everyday life simply by adopting a gameful mind-set. Being gameful means bringing the same psychological strengths we naturally display when we play games—such as optimism, creativity, courage, and determination—to real-world situations.McGonigal explores the best ways to harness these gameful skills in the real world not only to experience “posttraumatic growth,” but also to tackle positive life goals, achieving what she calls “postecstatic growth.” To show how, she shares stories and data from players who have followed the SuperBetter rules to get stronger, happier, and braver in the face of depression, anxiety, illness, and injury, as well as to achieve major goals like losing weight, running a marathon, or finding a new job.The SuperBetter method contains seven rules for activating gameful strengths in everyday life, distilled from McGonigal’s own pioneering work and that of others. SuperBetter the book turns these rules into playful challenges anyone can undertake while reading in a series of quests that explain the science behind the benefits. Playing by the seven rules begins to yield life-changing benefits in a matter of days, and eventually they become an ingrained skill set.Read by the author.Description: 12 audio discs (14 1/2 hr.) : digital