You want to be a great mother. But how do you care for yourself without neglecting your kids needs, feeling overwhelmed by guilt, or succumbing under the pressure to be perfect?
Dr. Morgan—a psychotherapist and relationship expert—has helped over 100,000 moms regain their sanity and prevent burnout through her popular courses, coaching, and social media wisdom. In her debut book, Love Your Kids Without Losing Yourself, she offers a proven step-by-step plan that any mom can follow. In this powerful book, she reveals how to rid yourself of mom-guilt for good, identify your needs and express them with confidence, create a self-care plan that goes beyond pedicures and bubble baths, and thrive as a woman after being on the back burner for too long.
Love Your Kids Without Losing Yourself is a must-read book for modern moms. You don’t have to choose between self-abandonment or child-abandonment. You can love yourself and love your kids. Discover how to flourish as a mother, know exactly how to care for yourself in ways that actually make a difference, and finally feel joy in motherhood.
Loving your kids isn’t supposed to mean you completely disappear or get swallowed up by the demands of motherhood.
What if perfectionism isn’t a curse or a character flaw but rather a common state of being that can be harnessed for good? In her eye-opening book, The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power, psychotherapist and former on-site Google therapist Katherine Morgan Schafler posits that perfectionists can live a life of joy rather than feeling perpetually disappointed by imperfection.
Schafler begins by describing the five types of perfectionists, including the classic (not spontaneous, a planner, always ready with a backup plan) and the intense (expresses anger when feeling overwhelmed, imposes standards on those around them). Indeed, this book is like a mirror for anyone who has struggled with perfectionism in any form. This reviewer identified a little uncomfortably closely with the Parisian perfectionist (wants to be liked, hides their deepest ambitions).
Schafler has treated hundreds of perfectionists in her private practice and recognizes that for many, perfectionism is rooted in a childhood of abuse, neglect or conditional love. It’s not as simple as just advising someone to lighten up. “Managing perfectionism by telling perfectionists to stop being perfectionists is like managing anger by telling people to ‘calm down,’” she writes. But the good news, according to Schafler, is that we can make perfectionism a tool in our lives by easing up on self-punishment, which she defines as hurting or denying yourself. We may think we are punishing ourselves to learn or grow, but we are actually just creating more fear and demoralization.
Schafler offers workable strategies to help perfectionists stop overthinking and overdoing and move to a joyful place. She also weaves research and suggestions with insightful vignettes from her clients’ experiences. All of it exudes warmth and empathy. “Until you can meet yourself with some compassion, you’ll reject the good in your life,” she advises.
In addition to being a fascinating look at the many influences that make a perfectionist, The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control is a welcome antidote that will help readers reframe and refocus.
The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control is a warm and welcome antidote to perfectionism that will help readers reframe and refocus.
Throughout our lives, we encounter fraught decisions around love and money: whether to take a better job across the country when our partner wants to stay put; when and whether to marry, buy a house, have a child; if we should work full time with children in the picture. Money and love “are profoundly intertwined, and both are fundamental to living a life of purpose and meaning, health, and well-being,” write Myra Strober and Abby Davisson, co-authors of Money and Love: An Intelligent Roadmap for Life’s Biggest Decisions.
Strober, who was the first female faculty member at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, created a groundbreaking class on work and family and has led thousands of students through it over the years. As a business school student, Davisson took Strober’s class with her then-boyfriend, and for their final paper, the couple chose the topic of living together before marriage. (Now married, the two have returned to the class as guest speakers for a decade.) Money and Love is informed by this popular class.
Organized around issues such as dating, marriage, deciding where to live and dividing household chores, the book’s chapters offer anecdotes, background research and thoughtful commentary, as well as questions and exercises. The authors call their decision-making framework the 5Cs: clarify (define your deep-down preferences), communicate, choices (generate a broad range of choices), check in (consult with friends, family, research) and consequences (categorize possible outcomes over time). This framework may sound simplistic, but the authors emphasize the complexity of each step toward making life decisions. Good communication, for instance, “isn’t always polite and calm. Sometimes it’s incredibly awkward and uncomfortable. Sometimes it involves raised voices and, later, apologies for what was said in the heat of the moment.”
Money and Love offers a readable approach with nuggets of wisdom throughout. “Remember that each new agreement is essentially temporary, changing as different parts of life ebb and flow,” Strober and Davisson note in the chapter on sorting out housework and caregiving. The authors supplement anecdotes from former students and colleagues with their own, and Strober’s stories about the end of her first marriage and her second husband’s Parkinson’s disease, and Davisson’s story of her mother’s devastating brain injury at 68, add depth to the book. Money and Love is a useful guide, particularly for young couples on the verge of big decisions.
Organized around issues such as dating, marriage and deciding where to live, Money and Love is a useful, logical guide for couples on the verge of big life decisions.
After a decade of analyzing the internet’s worst apologies on their blog, SorryWatch, Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy have written the definitive book on how to apologize with Sorry, Sorry, Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies.
The message of Sorry, Sorry, Sorry is a simple one: Accept responsibility for your actions, listen to the grievances of those involved and try to offer recompense based on their needs. However, if following these steps were simple, good apologies would be fairly common, right? Yet they remain elusive. Humans are highly intelligent creatures, smart enough to know that it’s easier to shift blame, procrastinate and politic than to face the consequences of our misdeeds. In fact, most of the book is devoted to examining the ways in which people—from celebrities to politicians to children—often maneuver around the core of an issue and how this avoidance causes more harm than good.
For example, in Chapter 6, Ingall and McCarthy consider the ways that doctors apologize—or, more commonly, the ways they slyly avoid doing so. Ingall recounts the time she went to a doctor’s appointment and had to wait over three hours to be seen. Every time Ingall pursued the issue, both in person and through email correspondence afterward, the doctor and his staff would essentially remix a “that’s just how it is” excuse. She is not alone in this experience, and people who have experienced more serious mishaps than an inconvenient wait have received little more than a pitiless “We regret . . .” statement from a medical professional in response. On the other hand, Ingall also demonstrates the ways that a good apology can prevent many of the legal repercussions that motivate doctors to dodge apologies in the first place. It turns out that when you earnestly take responsibility for your actions, people tend to respect you more than when you avoid the problem.
Good apologies are becoming rarer as disingenuous sorrys become the norm of internet discourse, like a kind of form to fill out after breaking unwritten rules. To avoid falling into this trap in your private or public life, read Sorry, Sorry, Sorry. The writing style is distinctive, if sometimes taxing, with parenthetical statements making up entire paragraphs and more references than your average “Family Guy” episode. That said, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry remains a very well-researched, insightful and useful book.
After a decade of analyzing the internet’s worst apologies, Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy have written the definitive book on how to apologize.
If the viewer count for Robert Waldinger’s TED Talk “What Makes a Good Life” is any indication, a lot of us (43 million and counting) are interested in finding out how to live meaningful and happy lives. In The Good Life: Lessons From the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness, Waldinger and co-author Mark Schulz help readers do just that by sharing with enthusiasm and warm encouragement what they’ve learned as stewards of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, “the longest in-depth longitudinal study of human life ever done.”
The study, which began in 1938 with 724 men and has since grown to include three generations of the original participants’ families, has obtained blood and DNA samples, brain imaging, et al., from its subjects, who have also answered countless questions over the decades. Waldinger is currently the study’s fourth director and Schulz its associate director. In 10 illuminating and wide-ranging chapters, they assert that a truly good life is well within reach if we will acknowledge one straightforward yet profound conclusion: “Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period.”
Chapters like “The Person Beside You” and “Family Matters” explore how romantic and familial connections shape and strengthen us. In “The Good Life at Work,” survey participant Loren exemplifies the benefits of developing office allies: Her stress level lowered and her interactions at home improved thanks to a newly boosted sense of belonging. And “All Friends Have Benefits” argues that we shouldn’t underestimate casual friendships. After all, even if someone isn’t a ride-or-die friend, positive-yet-fleeting interactions still “provide us with jolts of good feeling or energy.” What’s not to like about that?
Those looking for concrete how-tos will appreciate the authors’ W.I.S.E.R. (Watch, Interpret, Select, Engage, Reflect) model for breaking out of confounding relationship patterns. Self-assessment questions such as “Was I willing to acknowledge my role in the situation?” will help readers assess and improve on their roles in interpersonal conflicts.
To do that requires flexibility, of course, and that’s another key lesson of The Good Life: A willingness to consider new perspectives is proven to protect our physical and mental health. So, too, will remembering the authors’ uplifting discovery that “it doesn’t matter how old you are . . . everyone can make positive turns in their life.”
Findings from the Harvard Study of Adult Development reveal that a truly good life is well within reach, and The Good Life will show you how to grasp it.
When was the last time you truly had fun? If you’re like most adults, it’s probably been longer than you care to admit. In the lighthearted and entertaining The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life, psychologist Mike Rucker suggests that fun is as important to human welfare as relationships and exercise—and therefore that we should all take fun a little more seriously.
Rucker argues that we are not experiencing nearly enough fun in our lives due to modern hindrances such as social media addiction, overwork and negative societal views about leisure (always be hustling). According to Rucker, the importance of fun cannot be overstated because it is not only good for us but also one of the most fundamental ways we interact with the world. However, as we age, we forget to make time for playtime, and this is having a detrimental effect on our collective well-being, resulting in widespread worker burnout.
Fun, to be clear, can be anything from dancing to helping others to learning a new language to rock climbing: essentially, any activity that sustains engagement and leaves you feeling like you’ve experienced something positive. But this isn’t a book that promotes “toxic positivity”—the sort of relentless positivity that drives people to ignore the actual problems in their lives. Rucker’s main concern is teaching us to examine how we spend our time so we can be more deliberate in our choices instead of living on autopilot.
Rucker provides a scientific approach to incorporating more fun, satisfaction and spontaneity into daily life, including practical ideas and strategies. For example, he suggests that people schedule fun into their day ahead of time, and that they take photos while they’re having fun so they can be reminded often of a fun moment. Rucker also recommends that, when possible, people prioritize their time over money. After all, time is a resource you can’t get back.
With expertise and a personal, intimate understanding of the subject matter, Rucker backs up his suggestions with scientific research regarding happiness, fun and, most interestingly, how our brains interpret stimuli. This well-researched and impressive guide to finding more meaning in your day-to-day life will offer readers endless rewards.
Psychologist Mike Rucker suggests that fun is as important to human welfare as relationships and exercise—and therefore that we should all take fun more seriously.
There’s only so much of the sweet stuff to go around, and in The Sugar Jar: Create Boundaries, Embrace Self-Healing, and Enjoy the Sweet Things in Life, wellness expert Yasmine Cheyenne helps readers consider their own sugar reserves. Sugar is “all the sweet parts of you—your time, your energy, your attention, your money, your expertise/education, and every single part of you that can be given or exchanged.” Paying attention to one’s own sugar jar entails thinking carefully about where the sugar is going—and how you might better guard it in order to enjoy life.
Cheyenne’s guiding metaphor, the sugar jar, is immediately understandable. Some jars might have cracks. Other jars might not have lids and are therefore susceptible to anyone helping themselves. Cheyenne shows how a lack of boundaries may be holding readers back from understanding and pursuing what really matters to them, and she offers many questions to transform idle observations into deeper reflection and action.
Cheyenne also devotes several chapters to how aspects of identity—such as race, class and family structure—impact our sugar jars. In the chapter “Black Healing,” Cheyenne offers insights specifically for Black readers, noting that the wellness field is often not a welcoming space for people of color. In “Healing as the Parent and as the Child,” Cheyenne acknowledges that parents are, in a sense, continually monitoring the sugar jars of their kids, which can be a unique and draining job. Throughout the book, Cheyenne offers personal stories to bring principles to life and connect with the reader. In all, The Sugar Jar is an accessible and thoughtful discussion of boundaries from a wellness advocate who has both talked the talk and walked the walk.
The Sugar Jar offers an accessible and thoughtful discussion of boundaries from a wellness advocate who has both talked the talk and walked the walk.
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There’s only so much of the sweet stuff to go around, and in The Sugar Jar: Create Boundaries, Embrace Self-Healing, and Enjoy the Sweet Things in Life, wellness expert Yasmine Cheyenne helps readers consider their own sugar reserves. Sugar is “all the sweet parts of you—your time, your energy, your attention, your money, your expertise/education, and every single part of you that can be given or exchanged.” Paying attention to one’s own sugar jar entails thinking carefully about where the sugar is going—and how you might better guard it in order to enjoy life.
Cheyenne’s guiding metaphor, the sugar jar, is immediately understandable. Some jars might have cracks. Other jars might not have lids and are therefore susceptible to anyone helping themselves. Cheyenne shows how a lack of boundaries may be holding readers back from understanding and pursuing what really matters to them, and she offers many questions to transform idle observations into deeper reflection and action.
Cheyenne also devotes several chapters to how aspects of identity—such as race, class and family structure—impact our sugar jars. In the chapter “Black Healing,” Cheyenne offers insights specifically for Black readers, noting that the wellness field is often not a welcoming space for people of color. In “Healing as the Parent and as the Child,” Cheyenne acknowledges that parents are, in a sense, continually monitoring the sugar jars of their kids, which can be a unique and draining job. Throughout the book, Cheyenne offers personal stories to bring principles to life and connect with the reader. In all, The Sugar Jar is an accessible and thoughtful discussion of boundaries from a wellness advocate who has both talked the talk and walked the walk.
The Sugar Jar offers an accessible and thoughtful discussion of boundaries from a wellness advocate who has both talked the talk and walked the walk.
If the viewer count for Robert Waldinger’s TED Talk “What Makes a Good Life” is any indication, a lot of us (43 million and counting) are interested in finding out how to live meaningful and happy lives. In The Good Life: Lessons From the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness, Waldinger and co-author Mark Schulz help readers do just that by sharing with enthusiasm and warm encouragement what they’ve learned as stewards of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, “the longest in-depth longitudinal study of human life ever done.”
The study, which began in 1938 with 724 men and has since grown to include three generations of the original participants’ families, has obtained blood and DNA samples, brain imaging, et al., from its subjects, who have also answered countless questions over the decades. Waldinger is currently the study’s fourth director and Schulz its associate director. In 10 illuminating and wide-ranging chapters, they assert that a truly good life is well within reach if we will acknowledge one straightforward yet profound conclusion: “Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period.”
Chapters like “The Person Beside You” and “Family Matters” explore how romantic and familial connections shape and strengthen us. In “The Good Life at Work,” survey participant Loren exemplifies the benefits of developing office allies: Her stress level lowered and her interactions at home improved thanks to a newly boosted sense of belonging. And “All Friends Have Benefits” argues that we shouldn’t underestimate casual friendships. After all, even if someone isn’t a ride-or-die friend, positive-yet-fleeting interactions still “provide us with jolts of good feeling or energy.” What’s not to like about that?
Those looking for concrete how-tos will appreciate the authors’ W.I.S.E.R. (Watch, Interpret, Select, Engage, Reflect) model for breaking out of confounding relationship patterns. Self-assessment questions such as “Was I willing to acknowledge my role in the situation?” will help readers assess and improve on their roles in interpersonal conflicts.
To do that requires flexibility, of course, and that’s another key lesson of The Good Life: A willingness to consider new perspectives is proven to protect our physical and mental health. So, too, will remembering the authors’ uplifting discovery that “it doesn’t matter how old you are . . . everyone can make positive turns in their life.”
Findings from the Harvard Study of Adult Development reveal that a truly good life is well within reach, and The Good Life will show you how to grasp it.
What if perfectionism isn’t a curse or a character flaw but rather a common state of being that can be harnessed for good? In her eye-opening book, The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power, psychotherapist and former on-site Google therapist Katherine Morgan Schafler posits that perfectionists can live a life of joy rather than feeling perpetually disappointed by imperfection.
Schafler begins by describing the five types of perfectionists, including the classic (not spontaneous, a planner, always ready with a backup plan) and the intense (expresses anger when feeling overwhelmed, imposes standards on those around them). Indeed, this book is like a mirror for anyone who has struggled with perfectionism in any form. This reviewer identified a little uncomfortably closely with the Parisian perfectionist (wants to be liked, hides their deepest ambitions).
Schafler has treated hundreds of perfectionists in her private practice and recognizes that for many, perfectionism is rooted in a childhood of abuse, neglect or conditional love. It’s not as simple as just advising someone to lighten up. “Managing perfectionism by telling perfectionists to stop being perfectionists is like managing anger by telling people to ‘calm down,’” she writes. But the good news, according to Schafler, is that we can make perfectionism a tool in our lives by easing up on self-punishment, which she defines as hurting or denying yourself. We may think we are punishing ourselves to learn or grow, but we are actually just creating more fear and demoralization.
Schafler offers workable strategies to help perfectionists stop overthinking and overdoing and move to a joyful place. She also weaves research and suggestions with insightful vignettes from her clients’ experiences. All of it exudes warmth and empathy. “Until you can meet yourself with some compassion, you’ll reject the good in your life,” she advises.
In addition to being a fascinating look at the many influences that make a perfectionist, The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control is a welcome antidote that will help readers reframe and refocus.
The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control is a warm and welcome antidote to perfectionism that will help readers reframe and refocus.
After a decade of analyzing the internet’s worst apologies on their blog, SorryWatch, Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy have written the definitive book on how to apologize with Sorry, Sorry, Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies.
The message of Sorry, Sorry, Sorry is a simple one: Accept responsibility for your actions, listen to the grievances of those involved and try to offer recompense based on their needs. However, if following these steps were simple, good apologies would be fairly common, right? Yet they remain elusive. Humans are highly intelligent creatures, smart enough to know that it’s easier to shift blame, procrastinate and politic than to face the consequences of our misdeeds. In fact, most of the book is devoted to examining the ways in which people—from celebrities to politicians to children—often maneuver around the core of an issue and how this avoidance causes more harm than good.
For example, in Chapter 6, Ingall and McCarthy consider the ways that doctors apologize—or, more commonly, the ways they slyly avoid doing so. Ingall recounts the time she went to a doctor’s appointment and had to wait over three hours to be seen. Every time Ingall pursued the issue, both in person and through email correspondence afterward, the doctor and his staff would essentially remix a “that’s just how it is” excuse. She is not alone in this experience, and people who have experienced more serious mishaps than an inconvenient wait have received little more than a pitiless “We regret . . .” statement from a medical professional in response. On the other hand, Ingall also demonstrates the ways that a good apology can prevent many of the legal repercussions that motivate doctors to dodge apologies in the first place. It turns out that when you earnestly take responsibility for your actions, people tend to respect you more than when you avoid the problem.
Good apologies are becoming rarer as disingenuous sorrys become the norm of internet discourse, like a kind of form to fill out after breaking unwritten rules. To avoid falling into this trap in your private or public life, read Sorry, Sorry, Sorry. The writing style is distinctive, if sometimes taxing, with parenthetical statements making up entire paragraphs and more references than your average “Family Guy” episode. That said, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry remains a very well-researched, insightful and useful book.
After a decade of analyzing the internet’s worst apologies, Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy have written the definitive book on how to apologize.
When was the last time you truly had fun? If you’re like most adults, it’s probably been longer than you care to admit. In the lighthearted and entertaining The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life, psychologist Mike Rucker suggests that fun is as important to human welfare as relationships and exercise—and therefore that we should all take fun a little more seriously.
Rucker argues that we are not experiencing nearly enough fun in our lives due to modern hindrances such as social media addiction, overwork and negative societal views about leisure (always be hustling). According to Rucker, the importance of fun cannot be overstated because it is not only good for us but also one of the most fundamental ways we interact with the world. However, as we age, we forget to make time for playtime, and this is having a detrimental effect on our collective well-being, resulting in widespread worker burnout.
Fun, to be clear, can be anything from dancing to helping others to learning a new language to rock climbing: essentially, any activity that sustains engagement and leaves you feeling like you’ve experienced something positive. But this isn’t a book that promotes “toxic positivity”—the sort of relentless positivity that drives people to ignore the actual problems in their lives. Rucker’s main concern is teaching us to examine how we spend our time so we can be more deliberate in our choices instead of living on autopilot.
Rucker provides a scientific approach to incorporating more fun, satisfaction and spontaneity into daily life, including practical ideas and strategies. For example, he suggests that people schedule fun into their day ahead of time, and that they take photos while they’re having fun so they can be reminded often of a fun moment. Rucker also recommends that, when possible, people prioritize their time over money. After all, time is a resource you can’t get back.
With expertise and a personal, intimate understanding of the subject matter, Rucker backs up his suggestions with scientific research regarding happiness, fun and, most interestingly, how our brains interpret stimuli. This well-researched and impressive guide to finding more meaning in your day-to-day life will offer readers endless rewards.
Psychologist Mike Rucker suggests that fun is as important to human welfare as relationships and exercise—and therefore that we should all take fun more seriously.
Let me be a voice in passionate support of relishing all things fall: Pile those pumpkins! Bust out the mums! Go big on apples and cinnamon! I am here for it. With From Harvest to Home, lifestyle blogger Alicia Tenise Chew speaks right to the deepest autumnal cravings with recipes, low-key crafts and lists of scary movies and top Thanksgiving TV episodes. Nachos get a fall twist (and healthy upgrade) with sweet potatoes, French 75 cocktails go goth with the addition of activated charcoal, and there’s a pumpkin gnocchi with cinnamon sage brown butter sauce that I most certainly will be requesting of my home-cook husband. Chew provides checklists of activities you might enjoy during each of the three fall months, a welcome inspo tool for us easily overwhelmed types, as well as self-care tips for the return of short days and cold weather. You don’t have to do all the fall things, of course. But you can more deeply delight in a few faves with the help of this book—and feel not a shred of shame for loving flannel and pumpkin spice lattes.
An American in Provence
Perhaps you’ve heard this story: Highly successful urban professional departs the rat race, decamps to the countryside and achieves a slower, simpler, even more beautiful life. But you’ve never seen rustic expatriation evoked quite so lusciously as it is in An American in Provence, artist Jamie Beck’s pictorial memoir. Beck is a photographer, and alongside romantic self-portraits, still lifes, sweeping landscapes and tablescapes, she shares generously of her expertise. There are tips for photographing children, getting the most out of your smartphone camera and working with natural lighting. Along the way Beck writes of settling in the small French town of Apt, giving birth to her daughter, Eloise, and leaning into the seasonal rhythms of the region. Recipes are sprinkled throughout like herbes de Provence: a violet sorbet, daube Provençale, wild thyme grilled lamb. In total, the effect is bewitching and immersive, and quite the motivation to save for one’s own dream trip to the hills, fields and ancient villages of southeastern France.
How to Be Weird
In high school, I was often told that I was weird. I took it as a point of pride, and still do. Weird is a thing to strive for in my book, as it is in Eric G. Wilson’s How to Be Weird, which amounts to an Rx for the rote life, an antidote to crushing mundanity. The small actions and thought experiments compiled here, 99 in total, are intended to disrupt dull thinking, to help us see our world and ourselves in fresh ways. They could be applied usefully in many settings, from classroom to cocktail party to corporate retreat. And as the veteran English professor he is, Wilson connects many of the actions to history, philosophy, literature, the sciences and so on. If you don’t end up weirder in the best ways from sniffing books or inventing new curse words, you’ll at least have gleaned some solid knowledge along the way.
Set up the perfect gourd-themed tablescape, photograph it like a pro, and then invite all your weirdest friends over to partake of autumn’s bounty. If this sounds like your definition of a good time, read on.
In a world unspeakably darkened by crisis, it might seem trifling to even think about appreciating, cultivating or devoting our attention to beauty. Focusing on beauty might even read as an act of oblivious privilege. But perhaps a fuller contemplation of what beauty is, can be and has been, and what it can mean in our everyday lives, is in fact one step toward repairing massive-scale damage. Writer and illustrator Ella Frances Sanders believes it is. In Everything, Beautiful, she envisions learning to see beauty as a curative, even redemptive process, “like putting a delicate, very broken vase back together.” No matter how broken our world, it is nevertheless full of “tiny, beautiful things,” she writes. “Some are so invisible or silent that you may never see or understand them, but they are there.” Through text, illustration and guided prompts, Sanders upends and expands our notions of beauty and urges us to notice the ingredients for beauty that are all around us, such as “light, slowness, and the kind of air temperatures that feel like honey.”
Lost Places
I live in a boomtown where every old structure seems to either meet the wrecking ball or get a second life via adaptive reuse. Paging through the images in Lost Places, I’m swept into another world, one where the vestiges of America’s past are left, silent and uninhabited, to be transformed by weather and time. Heribert Niehues’ photographs of abandoned cars, houses, gas stations and other structures tell a story about our country’s past. They are also suffused with mystery: What lives did these places once contain? Who last passed through these doors? Scenes of decaying diner interiors are among the spookiest, with guests’ checks, condiment containers and fry baskets left behind. Car buffs will enjoy Niehues’ many images of rusted-out, early- to mid-20th-century models. Many of the abandoned edifices captured here fell victim to the interstate system when it rerouted travel in the 1950s and ’60; one wonders what of our present might be left behind a century from now, as climate change remaps the landscape.
Forever Beirut
Forever Beirut, a cookbook with accompanying essays and stunning photographs, was conceptualized by Barbara Abdeni Massaad as a way to help her beloved home country in the aftermath of a terrible 2020 explosion at the port of Beirut. In response to disaster and economic collapse, the book passionately preserves the treasures of Beirut’s culinary heritage, with recipes for favorites such as kibbeh, a dish of ground lamb, beef or vegetables kneaded together with bulgur; man’oushe, a traditional flatbread; mezze, small dishes served together such as chickpeas and yogurt; and semolina cake. This is the stuff of my culinary dreams: food that is aromatically spiced, uncomplicated and yet bursting with flavor, served to the reader within a deep, loving sociocultural context.
Look a little closer, and you’ll find beauty lurking in unexpected places. The three books in this month’s lifestyles column will help you spot it.
This handbook of melancholy is not for the suggestible. Andrew Solomon’s aim with The Noonday Demon is to present the known history of human depression and to examine the array of psychological, chemical and other defenses taken against it. For those who have never been depressed or have been only mildly so, he portrays a world of near unimaginable bleakness.
At the center of this ambitious project is the author’s frank account of his own life-draining depression. “I would have been happy to die the most painful death,” he says of one episode, “but I was too lethargic even to conceptualize suicide.” In another bout with despair, he does attempt self-destruction by trying to infect himself with AIDS.
Solomon contends that depression is so widespread and pervasive that it can no longer be dismissed as a socially negligible affliction. In its chronic form, he reports, depression besets “some 19 million” Americans, including two million children. Its ravages worldwide, he adds, are more devastating than any other health problem except heart disease. “Untreated depression [in the U. S.],” he notes, “has a mortality rate of between 10 and 20 percent.” In searching for his own cure, Solomon leads the reader through a mind-bending maze of prescription drugs, “talking therapies” and alternative treatments. At one point, he even travels to Senegal to partake of a blood-soaked ritual that involves the sacrifice of a ram and a rooster. Besides being unwaveringly honest about himself, Solomon introduces a gallery of tormented friends and acquaintances who personalize the many forms depression can take. His anatomizing of melancholy strikes a balance between the systematic, in which he compartmentalizes historic, scientific and demographic facts, and the anecdotal, through which he conveys the oppressive weight of the malady. Despite the dead-ends that victims and researchers of depression continue to encounter, Solomon ends his book with a chapter bravely called “Hope.” That quality, he shows, resides less in the glacially slow advances of drugs and psychiatry than in a recurring human condition that is as tenacious and mysterious as depression itself: the will to live.
This handbook of melancholy is not for the suggestible. Andrew Solomon's aim with The Noonday Demon is to present the known history of human depression and to examine the array of psychological, chemical and other defenses taken against it. For those who have never been…
s he approached the age of 40, Joe Kita did what many men his age have done: took stock of his life. Despite his successful career as a writer for Men’s Health magazine and a wonderful marriage, Kita realized that he had regrets. So far his story sounds familiar, but then the author took the unusual step of setting out to rectify his life’s regrets. He shares the story of that quest in Another Shot.
Inspired by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, who said he would have regretted not starting the company more than if he had tried and failed, Kita reviewed his own life, identified the things he’d most regret in another 40 years and set out to do something about them. The efforts Kita chronicles in his book make inspiring and thought-provoking reading. He hunts down his first car, the one he wished he hadn’t sold, attempts to regain his sexual vigor and tries to mend fences with his mother. Although not always fully successful, Kita’s yearlong quest to relive his life provides many valuable lessons for people at any stage of their lives. One of the book’s most touching vignettes concerns Kita’s relationship with his father. Although Kita refers to his father’s love, warmth and wisdom throughout Another Shot, he reveals his regret that his father died before he could tell him how much that love meant to him. His quest to ease that regret brought Kita to a clairvoyant who had a reputation for contacting spirits of the departed. The medium helpfully provided Kita with an audiotape of the session. Kita revisited it several times with his family, who agreed that the medium either had some connection to his father or was an incredibly lucky, if not fully accurate, guesser. The emotions Kita conveys from his regret at his father’s sudden death to the awe at possibly contacting him are among the book’s most powerful. Significantly, Kita is not always able to turn his regrets around, but invariably the effort is rewarding. Indeed, Kita’s occasional failures are nearly as inspiring as his successes. Even when he doesn’t achieve his goal, he is enriched by the experience. And this lesson functions both as an example and a caution sometimes you can change things about your life, and sometimes an opportunity comes only once. Readers should seize the opportunity to read Another Shot and take its lessons to heart.
Gregory Harris is a writer and editor living in Indianapolis.
s he approached the age of 40, Joe Kita did what many men his age have done: took stock of his life. Despite his successful career as a writer for Men's Health magazine and a wonderful marriage, Kita realized that he had regrets. So far…
In Edible Plants, Jimmy W. Fike takes native North American plant specimens—such as dandelion, rocket, sassafras, spicebush and pawpaw—out of their natural surroundings and meticulously digitally photographs them against black backdrops. In each image, the stark contrast makes visible the magical potency and potential of these common living things, many of which are often dismissed as weeds. Fike colorizes the edible portions of each plant, while the inedible parts are kept a delicate, even eerie gray. These striking photographs seek to inform, similar to the horticultural photography and illustrations of eras past, perhaps making foragers of us all. But what’s more, they are painstakingly beautiful. This book would make an impressive gift for the naturalist in your life.
Cats & Books
How can we not give a shoutout to Cats & Books, a slim-and-trim, adorable celebration of felines sprawled amid TBR piles and perched on bookshelves? This is a hashtag-to-print project: The photos are crowdsourced from Instagram users worldwide who tagged their photos #CatsandBooks. Now compiled in print, short captions give glimpses of these kitties’ personalities. For example, George from Germany “is a gentle soul and the best office buddy one could ask for.” (Sweet George is shown with a paw flung possessively over a copy of Sally Rooney’s Normal People.) Any person who loves cats and also loves books obviously needs to own this small treasure.
Things You Can Do
Last night at dinner, my daughter complained about the absence of meat in her tacos, which led to a discussion of sustainable eating. She didn’t grasp the connection between a carnivorous diet and climate change, so I brought to the table Things You Can Do and read from Chapter 3, “A Climate-Friendly Diet.” I daresay I got through to her, and I imagine New York Times journalist Eduardo Garcia’s compact, well-sourced guide to fighting climate change and reducing waste will continue to help us play our small but mighty part. Grounded in science, this approachable book offers a 360-degree view of the causes and effects of a warming planet, from reliance on coal to the excesses of modern life, including the overuse of air conditioning, increased meat consumption, car culture and much more. I for one am glad to have this resource, rounded out by beautiful watercolor and gouache illustrations by Sara Boccaccini Meadows, at my fingertips for family meals and beyond.
The natural world and all of its delicate delights take center stage in this month’s roundup of the best and most beautiful lifestyles books.
The losses continue to mount as we enter year three of the COVID-19 pandemic. While this grief is still new, weathering sorrow is as old as humanity. Four authors offer hidden paths toward healing.
★Bittersweet
Like Quiet, Susan Cain’s bestselling book on introversion, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole eschews American cultural norms like mandatory happiness and productivity in favor of other more fertile traditions, such as Aristotle’s concept of melancholia. Cain asks provocative questions like, “What’s the use of sadness?” and seeks answers through academic studies, insightful interviews and vulnerable self-reflection. A standout example is her interaction with Dacher Keltner, a psychologist who helped Pixar understand the crucial role of sadness in Inside Out. Sadness, he says, is what brings people together and adds depth to joy.
Bittersweetness is both a feeling and a disposition. (The book includes a quiz for readers to determine if they are bittersweet by nature.) Experiencing bittersweetness heightens life’s poignancy, opens the door to transcendence and helps people acknowledge the impermanence of existence. It is reasonable to be sad, Cain explains, when one is deeply aware that life can change in an instant. Grief and trauma may even be inherited. But when we explore these bittersweet feelings, we begin to see ourselves and our world a bit differently, with more depth, and can finally find new paths forward. As one of Cain’s sources Rene Denfeld put it, “We have to hold our losses close, and carry them like beloved children. Only when we accept these terrible pains do we realize that the path across is the one that takes us through.”
Marisa Renee Lee focuses on how grief is actually a painful expression of love in Grief Is Love: Living With Loss. When Lee was 25, her mother died of cancer in her arms. Afterward she held a beautiful memorial and started a nonprofit in her mother’s honor, yet she found herself unable to deal with the gnawing grief that clouded her inner life. Every big moment reminded her of her mother’s absence, especially her wedding and her miscarriage. Healing came, but all too slowly.
Grief Is Love is organized around 10 lessons related to grief, touching on topics such as safety, grace and intimacy. Lee carefully considers the impact of identity (gender, race, sexuality, class and so on) on mourning, noting at several points how society’s expectations of Black women—that they’ll be strong and keep their pain to themselves—slowed her own grieving process. Readers of this memoir will get a clear sense of how Lee’s grief rocked her world at 25 and continued to reverberate well into her 30s, but they’ll also appreciate the ways of coping she’s found since then—ones she wouldn’t have allowed or even recognized during those early days. Lee describes the long haul of loss and speaks directly and compassionately to those who are experiencing it. She also takes comfort in her faith and even imagines her mother and unborn child meeting in heaven.
The Other Side of Yet
Media executive and former television producer Michelle D. Hord explores the twin griefs for her mother and her child in The Other Side of Yet: Finding Light in the Midst of Darkness. Hord pulls the word yet from the book of Job, which was a lifeline following her daughter’s horrific murder by Hord’s estranged husband, the child’s father. The Bible describes how Job lost everything and yet still believed. This describes Hord, too, who treasures her “defiant faith.”
In The Other Side of Yet, Hord offers readers a framework for facing life after a traumatic event using the acronym SPIRIT (survive, praise, impact, reflect, imagine, testify). Though Hord’s book is not organized around these directives, her own story does follow this path. To read Hord’s memoir is to witness a mother who lost everything and yet stood to tell the tale and dared to remain vulnerable.
Take What You Need
Jen Crow’s life also fell apart, but not because she lost someone beloved. Instead, the sudden tragedy of a house fire provided the impetus for Take What You Need: Life Lessons After Losing Everything. Crow, a Unitarian minister, may seem an unlikely candidate for a spiritual guide: She loves tattoos and the open road and spent years defying anyone who got in her way as she ran from her difficult childhood. After settling down and finally feeling safe, a literal bolt of lightning changed her life in an instant.
Almost immediately after the fire, Crow realized that the way she and her wife talked about the tragedy would impact their children. “I wanted them to hear our gratitude, not our fear,” she writes. So they took special care in framing the story they told about the fire, never describing it as a form of punishment or “proof that hardship never ends.” As Crow searched for a better way to interpret their situation, she found herself learning from her children, who comforted each other instinctively, crawling into bed together and crying. Observing them, Crow considered that grieving might be as natural to people as any other process in life, and that they might already possess what they need to persevere.
Across these books about suffering and healing, there is a practical and poetic need to surrender to what is overwhelming. Each book points to the power of faith and spiritual traditions to guide people outside of their own perspectives, where they can finally see themselves with lovingkindness, accept their losses and keep going.
Four nonfiction titles offer comfort, empathy and wisdom to those who are reeling from loss.
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Maria Ressa’s book is a political history of the Philippines and an intimate memoir, but it’s also a warning to democracies everywhere: Authoritarianism is a threat to us all.
Sean Adams has dialed down the dystopian quotient from his first satirical novel, The Heap, but that element is still very much present in The Thing in the Snow.
