Stacey Simms' parenting philosophy is "not perfect, but safe and happy." Does that make her the world's worst diabetes mom? Some people on social media thought so. But her stories and the lessons they impart show that diabetes laughs in the face of perfection. Raising a happy and healthy child with type 1 diabetes, as well as any siblings, requires flexibility, planning, and a great sense of humor above all else. It's a journey full of challenges, but you are not alone!
Winner Best Cover Design: Nonfiction 2021 Best Book Awards
Finalist Nonfiction: General 2021 Best Book Awards
The COVID-19 pandemic. The Great Recession. The dot-com bust. The early '90s recession. Every decade or so a disaster hits the United States and reminds us that many American families live one calamity away from financial ruin.
But what if there were a better way to help families protect themselves from life's risks? And what if that way did not further bloat large government bureaucracies and inflate even more their obscene budgets?
Fortunately, author, economist, policy entrepreneur, and Independent Institute Senior Fellow John C. Goodman, Ph.D., has forged just such a path.
In New Way to Care: Social Protections That Put Families First, Goodman offers a bold strategy for giving Americans more control over their destiny, while still promoting—at far less expense—the important social goals that gave rise to government safety-net programs in the first place.
Finalist Best New Nonfiction 2021 Best Book Awards
Finalist Best Cover Design: Nonfiction 2021 Best Book Awards
Featured by Yahoo! Finance, Advertising Week, Thrive Global, Booklist Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Market Watch and multiple affiliates of CBS, Fox and NBC awarded BlueInk Review Notable Book Seal and IndieReader Approved Designation, this non-fiction business and self-help creativity guide encourages innovation in aspiring entrepreneurs and business leaders. Have you ever looked at a product and thought, 'Why didn't I think of that?' or, 'I'm just not a creative person!' Improve problem-solving skills and increase the effectiveness of knowledge management in your organization to come up with the next game-changing idea to hit the market!
In this book you will:
Learn how others innovate by examining the world around them
Practice asking questions, and see how to recognize details in observations
Complete creative exercises to get into the right mindset
Understand the importance of sharing ideas, and assess their feasibility
Fueling You to Find: Your Next Big Idea
Are you ready? Click the purchase button above to get started.
In 1918, Rebecca Goldberg—a Jewish immigrant from the Russian Empire living in rural Wilmington, Massachusetts—lost her husband, Nathan, to a railroad accident, a tragedy that left her alone with six children to raise. To support the family after Nathan’s death, Rebecca continued work she’d done for years: keeping chickens. Once or twice a week, with a suitcase full of fresh eggs in one hand and a child in the other, she delivered her product to relatives and friends in and around Boston.
Then, in 1920—right at the start of Prohibition—one of Rebecca’s customers suggested that she start selling alcoholic beverages in addition to her eggs to add to her meagre income. He would provide his homemade raw alcohol; Rebecca would turn it into something drinkable and sell it to new customers in Wilmington. Desperate to feed her family and keep them together, and determined to make sure her kids would all graduate from high school, Rebecca agreed—making herself a wary participant in the illegal alcohol trade.
Almost overnight a virus has brought into question America’s nearly 200-year-old government-run K-12 school-system—and prompted an urgent search for alternatives. But where should we turn to find them?
Enter James Tooley’s Really Good Schools.
A distinguished scholar of education and the world’s foremost expert on private, low-cost innovative education, Tooley takes readers to some of the world’s most impoverished communities located in some of the world’s most dangerous places—including such war-torn countries as Sierra Leone, Liberia, and South Sudan.
And there, in places where education “experts” fear to tread, Tooley finds thriving private schools that government, multinational NGOs, and even international charity officials deny exist.
Why? Because the very existence of low-cost, high-quality private schools shatters the prevailing myth in the U.S., U.K., and western Europe that, absent government, affordable, high-quality schools for the poor could not exist.
Winner Nonfiction: Cross-Genre 2021 Best Book Awards
Want to reignite your inner spark? Feel more in charge of your pathway through life? So long, Self-Help. Hello, Self-Hope, an inspired process of doable action steps that lead to an exponentially more dynamic life. Once you learn how to fill yourself up with hope, you can do just about anything. Giulietta Nardone’s journey toward self-hope began with the unexpected loss of her voice, due to a rare neurological condition. Doctors said she’d never sing again and be rendered mute. Faced with surrendering to sadness or seeking fulfillment off stage, she seized the opportunity to challenge the naysayers and embrace the cards she’d been dealt. Triumphant in singing, writing and painting , she launched a life-enhancing adventure called Feel More Alive! Bursting with thirty relatable stories, this gem is divided into five “ALIVE” sections: Awaken, Liberate, Improvise, Visualize, Express, each illustrated with one of Giulietta’s award-winning, magical paintings. Part memoir, part art gallery, part feel-better guide, this unique book will reignite your zest for living and transform your life into a glorious adventure.
Winner Nonfiction: Inspirational 2021 Best Book Awards
A guide to working through the inner obstacles of late life and embracing the spiritual gifts of aging
Offers shadow-work and many diverse spiritual practices to help you break through denial to awareness, move from self-rejection to self-acceptance, repair the past to be fully present, and allow mortality to be a teacher
Reveals how to use inner work to uncover and explore the unconscious denial and resistance that erupts around key thresholds of later life
Includes personal interviews with prominent Elders, including Ken Wilber, Krishna Das, Fr. Thomas Keating, Anna Douglas, James Hollis, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Ashton Applewhite, Roshi Wendy Nakao, Roger Walsh, and Stanislav Grof
With extended longevity comes the opportunity for extended personal growth and spiritual development. You now have the chance to become an Elder, to leave behind past roles, shift from work in the outer world to inner work with the soul, and become authentically who you are. This book is a guide to help get past the inner obstacles and embrace the hidden spiritual gifts of age.
Finalist Best Cover Design: Nonfiction 2021 Best Book Awards
The true story of a soldier, a pacifist, and the woman who loved them both
In June 1964, Ann Garretson skips her college commencement to tour Europe with Lieutenant Jack Sigg, a tank commander on the German-Czech border, with the hope of returning as his fiancée. A month into their rendezvous, her best friend, Terry, proposes marriage--by mail--throwing all their lives into turmoil.
Jack offers the military life Ann knows as an army brat. Terry, a conscientious objector, will leave for the Peace Corps at summer's end, unless the draft board intervenes and sends him to jail. Her dilemma: she loves them both.
Caught between the old mores and winds of change, Ann must make an agonizing choice.
In alternating voices, A Rendezvous to Remember presents firsthand accounts by the two who eventually married, enriched by letters from the rival, whose path led him elsewhere. Provocative and delightfully uncensored, this coming-of-age memoir is a tribute to the enduring power of love and family.
Finalist Best Cover Design: Nonfiction 2021 Best Book Awards
It could happen to anyone. One afternoon coming home from the gym, Diane Wilson pulled to a stop at a red light. In an instant, her life changed in ways that could never be reversed. What unfolded was a vexing journey into a health care system with few insights or tools. Diane became a person with an invisible injury, that no one would talk about, that affected every second of her life and eventually birthed a new vocation, as an applied neuroscientist.
Brain Dance is a captivating, and touchingly candid true story. It traces Diane's journey through random and sometimes humorous events which shed light on how her brain kept her injury from her, the loss of focus, mobility and sense of self, an obsession of day-trading retirement funds, and finally holistic therapies-including a retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh, acupuncture, singing and neurofeedback. She chronicles the gift of recovery and her incredible journey to now help people around the world and make the most of their amazing brain. This book is for anyone who is curious about the brain, has had even a bump on the head or has felt totally lost in life and a need to start over.
Finalist Best Cover Design: Nonfiction 2021 Best Book Awards
“My struggle wasn’t unique by any stretch of the imagination, but it was silent.” —Angel G. Henry, Dents in the Ceiling
Dents in the Ceiling is a first-hand account from more than 30 women of color working in tech and Corporate America about their experiences navigating sexism and racism, forging allies, and rebounding resiliently throughout their careers.
Through the narratives, Angel G. Henry affirms women and helps them reclaim their voices. Dents in the Ceiling is a playbook for emerging minority women in tech and assists active allies with tools to break non-inclusive corporate norms.
Finalist Nonfiction: General 2021 Best Book Awards
Finalist Best Cover Design: Nonfiction 2021 Best Book Awards
The revised and expanded third edition of Hot Talk, Cold Science forms the capstone of the distinguished astrophysicist Dr. S. Fred Singer's lucid, yet hard scientific look at climate change. And the book is no less explosive than its predecessors—and certainly never more timely.
Singer explores the inaccuracies in historical climate data and the failures of climate models, as well as the impact of solar variability, clouds, ocean currents, and sea levels on global climate—plus factors that could mitigate any human impact on world climate.
Singer's masterful analysis decisively shows that the pessimistic, and often alarming, global-warming scenarios depicted in the media have no scientific basis. In fact, he finds that many aspects of increased levels of CO2, as well as any modest warming, such as a longer growing seasons for food and a reduced need to use fossil fuels for heating, would have a highly positive impact on the human race.
Finalist Best Cover Design: Nonfiction 2021 Best Book Awards
A wayward descendant of Mexico's national hero, a femme fatale who recites poems in cantinas, a Tunisian prostitute in Barcelona, a Spanish psychiatrist who fights brave bulls, the wise owner of the world's oldest restaurant. They are just a handful of the characters portrayed in VIDAS: Deep in Mexico and Spain, the first travel memoir to explore Mexico and Spain with the perspective of an American and the knowledge of an insider.
VIDAS: Deep in Mexico and Spain is a passage from adolescence to maturity, a tribute to nature and the open road, an exaltation of love, food and wine, a journey from the tender, mortal flesh to the luminous world of the spirit. It is also travel writing at its best, an evocation of peoples, places and rituals seldom glimpsed by natives or foreigners.
"If you are seventeen, at large in Mexico, seeing new things and learning every hour, any cheap dive, any impulse or encounter is pure as the snows on Popocatepetl, stained by hot ashes."
Finalist Best New Nonfiction 2021 Best Book Awards
Letters to My People is a story of hope and redemption for those finding themselves lost in addiction. It’s a collection of letters chronicling over time the journey of the author. His hope is something he wishes to share with the world, so all might break free from their shackles and break away from the demons of addiction.
Finalist Best New Nonfiction 2021 Best Book Awards
Conquest is murder and theft. Conquerors are vicious criminals. Vicious criminals become kings. Kings designed civilization.
We are the products of civilization.
What if, before the modern period, all civilization was true crime?
Despite our romantic traditions, monarchs were never wise, just, nor generous. The briefest review of history shows that, without exception, kings were the most vicious criminals who ever lived. They were serial killers who preyed upon nations.
And the only path for survival in the ancient world required unquestioningly obeying— and blindly believing— anything the king said.
Finalist Best New Nonfiction 2021 Best Book Awards
Nobody’s Child: A Biography is an urban drama. It takes place in the Brooklyn, Queens & Harlem sections of New York City, from the beginning of the Second Great Migration to the present day. It is a family drama rooted in the life experiences of a mother, my mother Brenda. It’s about overcoming drug addiction, complicated black family dynamics, surviving domestic violence, and the healing of family trauma. It’s about choices parents make and how those choices affect their children and everyone else around them. And, It’s also about secrets kept and the far-reaching, dysfunctional affects those secrets have on families. Finally, it’s about LOVE. Love between mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, love between women, sisters and friends, husbands and wives and fathers and their daughters.One thing is certain… no life is perfect. This story is about imperfect lives, the ones lived by my family, mainly my mother – a most beautiful, God-fearing soul.
Finalist Best New Nonfiction 2021 Best Book Awards
What if remembering one simple choice is all it takes to lead the life you want?
In The Forgotten Choice: Shift Your Inner Mindset, Shape Your Outer World, global leadership coach and motivational author Brenda Bence reminds you of a little-known decision you make every moment that either holds you back or opens doors to unlimited possibility.
In this groundbreaking mindset book, Brenda opens up about how her life transformed dramatically once she started remembering this choice. She then shared her discovery with friends, family, employees, and eventually with coaching clients and thousands of audience members around the world--resulting in incredible outcomes for people from all walks of life. Now, she makes this same, proven wisdom available to you in this powerful, step-by-step book that will change your mindset and motivate you to change your life.
Finalist Best New Nonfiction 2021 Best Book Awards
It's 1973. Our nation is torn apart by the Vietnam War, and the massacre of unarmed students at Kent State. The Vice President has resigned for bribery and tax evasion. The President is being investigated for engaging in criminal activity. At twenty-three, David Reed has become embittered by political strife and corruption. Disenchanted with his future, he wants out. Along with new friends Rusty and Susie, David leaves everything he knows to cross the United States with little more than his bicycle and camera. The trio gets more than they bargain for, with menacing animals, extreme weather, and astonishing encounters. Uphill and Into the Wind recounts an odyssey that spans 5420 miles on bicycles. It chronicles the sudden and surprising glories of nature, the raw beauty of the land, and the majesty of the mountains. But that is just the start. Through it all, the three are changed forever, in ways they did not expect, by their long journey into the unknown.
Finalist Nonfiction: General 2021 Best Book Awards
Finalist Best Interior Design 2021 Best Book Awards
In 1999, a 49-year-old woman tended her garden outside of the Chicago suburban home she shared with her husband, daughter and pet dogs. Extended family lived close by. She had a job that she loved. Life didn’t get any better than this. One phone call changed everything.
A random blood test had just revealed that she had hepatitis C. She’d never heard of it before. Not only did she have it, but it had been swimming in her bloodstream for 30 years, contracted from a blood transfusion in 1969. Tests would reveal that her liver was engulfed in chronic active liver disease – almost cirrhotic. Hepatitis C in 1999 was a degenerative, often incurable and deadly disease. Something had to be done.
The only treatment at the time offered less than a 50% chance for cure and came with a plethora of nasty side effects. It was a yearlong regimen of chemotherapy that could trigger flu-like symptoms. And those patients who didn’t respond to this difficult protocol frequently found themselves immunocompromised when it was over and sicker than before. The “wonder drugs” were still a long way off.
While waiting 15 years for a cure, Labar Laskie took extraordinary measures – except the chemotherapy – to keep her symptoms at bay, calm her fears, and lift her spirits. Above the Din is her story.
Finalist Best Interior Design 2021 Best Book Awards
Under the orders of French Emperor Napoleon III, French troops arrive in Mexico in 1861 with a dual purpose: to help the Confederacy win the war against the United States and to conquer Mexico. As President Benito Juárez suspends payment of Mexico's foreign debts, the French drop their façade of debt negotiations and head for Puebla, where they are soundly defeated in their attempt to capture the city.
The French withdraw from their stunning setback and spend the summer of 1862 nursing their wounds and awaiting reinforcements in Orizaba. This gives the Mexicans ample time to highly fortify Puebla against a future attack. During spring of 1863 French troops head for Puebla and Mexico City in what they hope will be a pair of easy victories.
Finalist Best Interior Design 2021 Best Book Awards
Given the changes in our climate and growth in human population, animals are increasingly forced to adapt to human behavior in unexpected ways. Whether it’s crocodiles using pool noodles as flotation devices, coyotes becoming more nocturnal to avoid people, or a huddle of walruses sinking a research vessel that invaded their territory, animals are figuring our how to navigate the world we have created. The Field Guide to Animal Adaptations, which identifies and illustrates 16 examples of this phenomenon, providing both hope and despair for the coexistence of people and animals in the future.
Finalist Best Interior Design 2021 Best Book Awards
As you delve into this poetic and photographic masterpiece, you are in for an inspiring double journey into the mysteries of Love and life. Outwardly you will travel through New England via the visual images of the mountain vistas, the riverbanks, and the coastlines. This stunning visual imagery captures all four seasons in New England as well as the whole diurnal and nocturnal span.
Finalist Nonfiction: Creative 2021 Best Book Awards
Long interested in the ancient (though still utterly modern) art of astrology, W. Nikola-Lisa uses an old natal chart he had cast in the late 1980s to delve into the history, philosophy, and practices of astrology. And he does so in true Gemini—actually, double Gemini—fashion, dragging two foils along for the ride: Castor and Pollux, the Gemini twins. Hovering somewhere between a Galilean dialogue and a Seinfeld episode, Circles, Lines, and Squiggles will both inform and entertain you. But how to end such a ride: where else but with an exploration of the author's life as a writer as seen through the indicators in his natal chart.
Finalist Nonfiction: Creative 2021 Best Book Awards
"A raw and honest journey of addiction, love, trauma, and redemption—grounded in a deep love of place and all things mustang." —LAURA PRITCHETT, author of Stars Go Blue
Kathryn Wilder's powerful story of grief, motherhood, and return to the desert entwines with the story of America's mustangs as Wilder makes a home on the Colorado Plateau, her property bordering a mustang herd. Desert Chrome illuminates these controversial creatures—their complex history in the Americas, their powerful presence on the landscape, and ways to help both horses and habitats stay wild in the arid West—and celebrates the animal nature in us all.
Finalist Nonfiction: Creative 2021 Best Book Awards
God's Part in Our Art explores the intersection of creativity and spirituality from an author who is both a practicing artist and a theologian. Dr. Linda Seger has studied and experienced the nuances and intricacies of the creative process and also how the Holy Creative Spirit moves us and guides us in our lives and in our art.
This book is both reflective and practical. Each chapter begins with a Bible verse about the process of creation and creating, analyzes the connotations and meanings of the verse, then discusses how it can be applied to the reader’s own creativity. The book slants Christian and Jewish, but Linda believes the concepts are universal.
Finalist Nonfiction: General 2021 Best Book Awards
A Global Consciousness of Conscious Love can change the world
Dr. Kashonia Carnegie will show you how
What is Love? is one of Google’s most asked questions. And based on the wisdom of the ages, that question will be answered in Conscious Love when you discover the three umbrella forms of love—Love-as-an-Emotion, Spiritual Love, and Love-as-a-Virtue or Conscious Love—and the power and beauty that unfolds when they’re integrated.
But it’s Conscious Love that the ancient masters, mystics, philosophers, religious leaders, and visionaries spoke of, and modern-day spiritual leaders like the Dalai Lama teach. And it’s Conscious Love that can change the world.
In Conscious Love, the 5th book in the Conscious Change Series of Books, Philosopher and Award-Winning Conscious Change Ethicist, Dr. Kashonia Carnegie, will show you how living a loving life, an ethical life, or a conscious life are all exactly the same, and why living a conscious loving life matters.
Finalist Nonfiction: General 2021 Best Book Awards
With Barely TWO NICKELS To Rub Together is a straight-forward American story, both interesting and instructive, that is neither simple nor complex. It puts a face to the success of a small company that built commercial fishing vessels that were the pride of the fleet during the 1970s. It is a story about how a person’s word once given is a contract, and much more.
“It shouldn’t be surprising that I became fascinated by a new book that recently crossed my path. In With Barely Two Nickels to Rub Together, author Bo Shindler tells the remarkable story of Ed Freeman and his son Dugie, who in the 1970s in Gold Beach, Oregon, would build the largest aluminum commercial fishing boat constructed in the United States. It is a colorful story that blends all that was and is iconic about life on the Oregon coast — timber, fishing, boats, the call of the Pacific, creativity, persistence, colorful personalities, and hard work. At 350 pages with 280 photographs and illustrations, it is a true coffee table book that will provide many hours of enjoyment.”—Kerry Tymchuk, Executive Director, Oregon Historical Society
Finalist Nonfiction: Inspirational 2021 Best Book Awards
One woman’s dark night leads her on a journey to find her light.
Butterfly Awakens depicts the story of the extraordinary transformation of a forty-something Italian American attorney as she moves through unimaginable grief and sadness watching her beloved mother lose her battle to breast cancer. This tumultuous life experience shifts her world, causing her to question her life choices and opening her up to her soul’s calling. Nocero brings readers along on her journey through a dark night of the soul as she deals with the grieving process, a toxic work environment, and intense stress that results in depression, anxiety, and an acquired somatic nervous disorder called tinnitus. Through it all, she never gives up, instead looking for the help she needs to start to heal and find her light. In the end, like the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly, this story is a beautiful love letter that honors Nocero’s mother’s legacy while detailing the awakening of her own.
Finalist Nonfiction: Inspirational 2021 Best Book Awards
ONE SIMPLE LIFE-CHANGING SKILL IS WAITING FOR YOU
There’s more to gratitude than just saying thank you. But saying thank you is a great place to start. And developing a genuine attitude of Conscious Gratitude will change your life and the lives of those around you. Conscious Gratitude is the handbook to guide you on that journey
In this sixth book in the Conscious Change Series of Books, Conscious Change ethicist, philosopher, and Award-Winning author, Dr. Kashonia Carnegie combines real-life examples, personal life experiences, stories, activities, diagrams, philosophical analyses, and scientific research, all shared in a casual, down-to-earth manner, to explain what conscious gratitude is all about and how it can indeed change your life, and the lives of those around you.
Finalist Nonfiction: Inspirational 2021 Best Book Awards
Heartbreak, Humor and, ultimately, Hope... That's the message that comes through loud and clear in My Pineapples Went to Houston, Lee Gaitan's personal and powerful tale of surviving a decade of relentless chaos and loss. The "shock and awfulness" began in 2002 when her father died, her mother teetered on the brink of a coma and her husband of 22 years secretly lost all their money and ran off with a stripper. And it was all downhill from there! Then one day in the midst of all the chaos-somewhere between loud cursing and crying-she recalled an amusing anecdote she'd heard about pineapples that spoke to her circumstances in such an unexpectedly humorous way that she couldn't help but laugh out loud. "That moment of laughter was a small epiphany for me. I realized that I had allowed my sense of humor, which had always mitigated the bad breaks in my life and enhanced the good ones, to fall victim to the machete my ex-husband had taken to my life.
Finalist Nonfiction: Inspirational 2021 Best Book Awards
"PLAYING FOR KEEPS” in business is a self-help memoir that provides a “cheat sheet” for your career success.
Best-Selling and Award-Winning Author, Mom and Mentor Therese Allison is recognized as a groundbreaking pioneer and female executive, who broke the glass ceiling in a mostly male business niche (insurance brokerage). Her goal now is to empower women (and men) to “WIN” in business and life by landing a dream job, building business allies, achieving financial success and creating a work/life balance.
Based on 35 years of years of success in business and life, Allison uncovers how she became financially independent at age 38 when her company (McKenna & Associates) was sold to AON, and then retired early at age 43 to spend quality time with her children.
Finalist Nonfiction: Inspirational 2021 Best Book Awards
Being trusted is the foundation of our greatest personal freedoms.
In a time of deepening divisions and “alternative facts”, trust and authenticity grow more precious by the hour. More and more people find themselves driven to overcome the personal, professional and social pressures for ignoring what is right in favor of what passes for ‘success.’ They want:
Truth in their decisions
Authenticity in their relationships, and
Solid ground for making tough, ethical choices in business and life
Finalist Nonfiction: Inspirational 2021 Best Book Awards
Lisa's world collapsed the year she turned 58. Her 25-year marriage ended; the only home her children had ever known fell into foreclosure; and her last child left the nest. Her financial lifeline, her career in advertising, had gone stagnant.
From under the crushing realities a wild idea popped into her head. What if she went away for 30 days, all alone to New York City and took a crash course to learn the new digital ways of her business? After class she could sneak in a 1-mile walk, each day treating herself to a different neighborhood of Manhattan, the place she'd always dreamed of living. Using the lessons she'd learn, she could share stories and photos from her daily walks, all in hopes of reinventing herself professionally.
What does a free-spirited, fifty-something professional do when she breaks up with her non-committal Buddhist boyfriend and longs for a life partner? She holds a ‘letting go’ ceremony with the boyfriend, challenges herself to go on 50 dates, takes a few lovers, and voila! Finding Mr. Right becomes a sexy dating project.
Set in the SF Bay Area world of personal growth workshops and spiritual ceremonies, Fifty First Dates after Fifty traces the adventurous path of Carolyn’s universal quest for love. The goal of fifty pulls her forward through the highs and lows of dating—magical and ecstatic, pining and painful—while her heart soars, falls, and keeps on going. Buoyed by her dating project, she avoids settling for the wrong guy, discovers the type of man she wants, reconciles a love of independence and sex with her desire for commitment and emotional connection, and finds the unique partner for her.
Everyone has a COVID pandemic story to tell. Dr. Andrew Duxbury has many: stories of a veteran geriatric physician caring for the most fragile patients in a university health system and in rural homes in the Deep South; stories of his concern for family, friends, fellow practitioners, and the state of our healthcare system nationwide; stories of his own isolation, of the loss of simple pleasures and passionate pastimes; stories of policies and politics that contributed to tens of thousands of needless deaths as well-known preventative measures were actively discouraged by state and local governments and exacerbated by cultural divides. This is a rare account of a rare time in American history, a contemporaneous record from the end of "normal", and the anxiety and despair felt by all, to the beginning of fragile hope for a better future.
“Society gave us a script to follow based on our postal code and skin colour, but we ripped that stuff up and made a script of our own."
Curtis Carmichael is an award-winning STEM educator, Team Canada Duathlete, and the founder of Ride for Promise. He was three-quarters of the way through his cross-Canada charity bike ride when the realization struck him: he wanted to help the teens coming up in the hood now... but first, he needed to help himself.
Butterflies in the Trenches is the candid story of Curtis' life in the public housing projects in Scarborough, Ontario, where he grew up surrounded by trap houses, attending underfunded schools, and avoiding drive-by shootings. He shares raw and intimate stories from his childhood as a drug dealer and hustler and explores the effects of poverty, systemic racism, and police brutality on Black and low-income communities.
The Wind Blows and the Flowers Dance is an Award-Winning Finalist in the Health: Death & Dying category of the 2021 International Book Awards. When a beloved husband dies after decades of marriage, his artist wife must redefine herself in order to go on. Now living alone, but not eager to think of herself as "a widow"— with the baggage of loneliness that term carries—Terre struggles to adapt from a life built for two. Blossoming as an artist, Terre reclaims her late husband's space in the home in order to use painting and poetry to grow anew. She also re-invents herself in the larger community, exploring opportunities newly available even as she grieves the loss of her former life. Terre's heartfelt story, complete with humorous anecdotes and touching reminiscences, is an inspiration to all those who know the best way to honor the deceased is to use the energy of grief to rise, renewed.
2021 AML Creative Nonfiction Winner 2021 International Book Awards Finalist 2021 Author Elite Finalist
What happens when an ambitious girl grows up to be a mother?
Maleah thinks being a stay-at-home mom makes her inferior to women with paying jobs. Plagued with unrelenting thoughts of inadequacy, she struggles to heal from postpartum depression without medication. Her search to save her body, her marriage, and her family leads to an unexpected revelation.
Lies of the Magpie sweeps readers into the heart and mind of an accomplishment-driven woman who worries that being a mother isn’t enough. Flowing with humor, witty observation, and sensitivity, the narrative escorts readers to a surprising epiphany of the liberating and healing power of motherhood.
A stunning, funny, and heartbreaking memoir, Welcome to California recalls one woman's diagnosis with bipolar disorder, which ultimately leads to her wrongful and traumatic incarceration in the Los Angeles County jail system.
At age thirty-one, Sandra Boszko leaves her Winnipeg home for Hollywood with two secrets: her desire to perform and her mental illness. Although her health has already twice sent her packing from L.A.'s world of acting schools, auditions, and stunt work, she's determined to succeed this time. But shortly after her arrival, Sandra's mind clicks into a manic state, and within twenty-four hours she finds herself in the worst hell imaginable: detained and manic in a system that refuses to follow protocol for inmates with mental illness.
As an only child isolated within a troubled family, F. Scott Service found solace in fantasy and imagination, until a fateful day led to the discovery of his father's Korean War field jacket hidden in a closet. What began as innocent emulation and approval, eventually spiraled into the calamitous loss of everything he had built as an adult. Faced with a grievous divorce, post-traumatic stress, homelessness, substance abuse, and the failure of everything he had willed himself to believe was truth, one night communing with a loaded pistol became the mechanism for self-clarity. From that darkest time, only elemental deconstruction and reconstruction of identity would allow him to forge a reclamation with his true, original self.
Visceral, with breathtaking candor, Playing Soldier powerfully captures the unlearning of expectation, the celebration of individuality, and the nourishing of self-acceptance once buried by cultural stamps of approval and societal convention. Braided with humor, courage, fear, despair, and hope, his unflinching, evocative story of passage into adulthood, the Iraq War, and beyond, speaks to anyone who has confronted adversity from without and grappled for their dreams from within.
Dealing with life's problems both with your usual coping mechanisms and God? Learn techniques to open your imagination and command God's promises into your reality!
Surviving through any means necessary while still going to God simultaneously, hoping something will work? This easy-to-read, uplifting, and enjoyable story entertains while including explained step-by-step self-help encouragement toward a victorious life. It is full of understanding, life lessons, simple applications, and empathy. Engage in a journey that provides choice and superior love when the oppressive narrowness of hardships teaches the very opposite.
Life is constantly changing, and Teri is struggling to keep up with the various demands of her new realities. The stability of her career is questionable, as her employer focuses on restructuring. Motherhood is altered with an impending divorce. Climaxing within the hardest lows of her existence, a misrepresentation loosens the thread that was keeping everything together. Catapulted into uncertainty, Teri crumbles under the pressure. But with the help of Sister Kelly, Teri uncovers new realities, fueling her imagination. Refocusing her energy to create positive possibilities and new perspectives is working, but can simple instructions really fix everything?
Unlock Your Feminessence® Code - a must read for every woman who wants to reclaim their power.
Somewhere along the way it got lost. Was it between jobs, or between marriage and kids ... or maybe it was both!
Your 'Feminessence®' (as we like to call it) is your true essence that makes you who you are. It's the juicy, deliciousness that forms part of every fibre of your being. It's your uniqueness that endears people to you - if you haven't felt that for a while, then you definitely need this book!
The women in this book have boldly and bravely poured their heart and soul into sharing the moments when they unlocked their own Feminessence®.
For more than a century, the University of Kentucky Wildcats men's basketball team has built a winning tradition that feeds the Big Blue Nation. The history of the winningest program in college basketball is peppered with unforgettable moments and personalities.
In Kentucky Passion, Del Duduit and John Huang help fans reexperience some of the most memorable seasons and shots and meet key players and coaches. Readers will learn how they too can rise to challenges and find success through the inspiring stories from Wildcat history. Weekly stories showcasing legendary coaches including Adolph Rupp, Joe B. Hall, Rick Pitino, Tubby Smith, and John Calipari, standout players including John Wall, Kyle Macy, DeAndre Liggins, Goose Givens, and Aaron Harrison, and indelible highs and lows (yes, the BBN still hates Laettner) illustrate the value of persistence, hard work, resiliency, teamwork, and more.
Finally, as an author, I have written the book which I personally wish I had had much earlier in my own life. As a road map, this book reveals how to discover your true calling, expand your capacity to dream, and maximize your acquirement of human hope. In plain language, it explains how to begin and continue to sustain a life of gratifying contentment. Unlike most self-help books, it contains none of the usual long list of dos and don'ts. Instead, it recommends very precise exercises and practical daily routines that are easy to follow and remember--including self-administered metrics for monitoring your own progress.
Compelling reading for anyone seeking the courage to make more conscious choices and live fully awake, The Necktie and The Jaguar is a memoir with thought-provoking questions that encourage self-exploration. Author Carl Greer-businessman, philanthropist, and retired Jungian analyst and clinical psychologist-offers an illuminating roadmap to individuation and personal transformation. Greer found security in conforming to the cultural expectations of a postwar, midwestern, middle-class upbringing after a childhood tragedy taught him to constrict his emotions. Becoming president of an independent oil and gas company, he drove his team to success and built his wealth only to find in midlife that his spiritual self was crying out for expression. Undergoing Jungian analysis and becoming an analyst himself offered some soul nourishment. So did studying and practicing martial arts, whose principles helped him navigate challenges in the world of work. Still, it wasn't until Greer took a deep dive into shamanic training and practice that he was able to embody the qualities and emotions he had long denied and turn his attention to philanthropy.
The Universal Gravity Code placed as a Finalist in the “Spirituality” & “New Age” categories of the 2021 International Book Awards.
AH the “Gravity” of it all!
A normal everyday discussion with my husband planted the seed for this book. I don’t recall exactly what we were talking about, but I do remember saying in a sarcastic tone, “Ah, the gravity of it ALL.” In that moment I felt the correlation between the Earth’s gravitational pull and the gravitational pull of our morose thoughts. This realization came with an extreme rush of “Eureka!” which permeated every cell in my body. I instinctively knew that THIS WAS BIG!
Now we are in the midst of the most significant global awakening ever known to man.
As for the challenges we are facing now, well, this is gravity, folks. God is gravity! Not in the sense of punishment, but in the spirit of the gentle, kind demonstration that regardless of external circumstances, we are Love.
This is the story of an American C-47 ‘Dakota’ pilot who earned three Air Medals, seven Battle Stars and flew twenty-seven combat missions during the Second World War. As a young U.S. pilot, Harry Watson, arrived in Britain as the Battle of Normandy was reaching its crescendo. Thrown immediately into the fray, Harry, along with more than 200 aircraft, set off to carry supplies to the troops fighting in France. But with visibility reduced to zero, the aircraft were ordered to turn back – all did except Harry, who successfully delivered his life-saving cargo of blood and US Army nurses.
Harry continued to take risks, which resulted in many hair-raising episodes. This included almost being caught on the ground, while on an urgent fuel resupply mission for a platoon of General Patton’s tanks, by a German Mk.IV panzer and a battalion of supporting infantry.
We are all born with a unique gift. Humanity needs you to find yours, now more than ever. Ocean Eagle discovered that when inspiration happens, a new beacon of light shines within, and his "True Self" is called back home to M.E. . . . My Essence!
We are all meant for great things, and that includes You!
As you travel along this journey with Ocean Eagle, you might find yourself searching within for that teacher, friend, parent, child, relative, spiritual guide, or mentor who said something that you never forgot. Turn inward and ask yourself . . . Why does that word or phrase inspire me to create change in my way of thinking and in my life?
The Prophetess speaks about her life growing up with Deaf parents in a hearing world. While growing up, she encounters many oppositions such as: the spirit of rejection; physical and mental abuse; sexual abuse; depression and Cancer.These obstacles in her life kept her under an ugly mask and in bondage for years. However, knowing the hand of God was always in her life-He protected her under the shadow of His wings. After years of seeking an intimate relationship with the Lord, it is now time for the ugly mask to come off. The truth will be exposed in order to set her free of the chains that kept her bound for years. The Prophetess exposes the lies, deceit and deception of the enemy. Her soul now walks with the mask off and dwells in the marvelous light. Her powerful testimony can help others understand that the enemy wants to keep the hidden, dark secrets unexposed and buried inside in order to keep you in bondage forever.
Ancient Wisdom Reveals the Deep Mystery of Who We Really Are Ancient wisdom found in one of the oldest, most revered pieces of literature of all time that maps out who each of us really is at our core. Now, for the first time ever, we go deeper as David B Whitacre unpacks this wisdom and gives us an intimate view into the Seven Gifts.
Who are you, truly?
What is the motivating undercurrent in your life?
Is there a different, better way to view humanity?
Whitacre entertains as he takes us on a compelling journey through his upbringing and beyond, leading to how he discovered his connection to this life-changing knowledge, and demonstrates along the way that he is a Master (American) Storyteller.
I Had A Secret for Seventeen Years is the redemptive life story of Tori Shaw, centered around her abortion as a teenager. She spent years covered by guilt and shame while enduring continual abandonment and rejection. Childhood experiences taught her to hide hardship, so she silently dealt with depression, fear, anxiety, self-loathing, and addictions. After hiding her dark secret for seventeen years, Tori shares her story with the world. A woman who once walked in fear and self-doubt is now willing to go wherever God wants her to go. Through Tori’s story, God builds a ministry that helps abortion-minded women choose life for their babies and shares God’s forgiveness and love with post-abortive women. I Had a Secret for Seventeen Years enables the reader to see a post-abortive woman come full circle and embrace the world of possibilities God makes available to those who are willing.
This book picks up where Rose’s last book left off. If Go Forward, Support! was all about staying a child as long as possible, this book is all about being an adult. Started many years ago and finished in 2020, with the world on the brink of a global pandemic, this book’s messages of hope and happiness are perhaps needed now more so than ever before. The Happy Clam scales the realms of happiness - physical, intellectual, emotional, relational, spiritual - bringing together findings from across the fields of psychology and philosophy, with practical advice on how to apply them and be happier. It turns out there are a thousand little things we can do to invite a little more happiness into our lives, to nudge the needle a tick or two, but only a few things that really make a difference. Why happy clam? Just as clams are filter feeders, taking in nourishment from what’s in the passing current, Rose has taken in all the bits and bytes of daily news, research, and experience, and stitched them together to create a delicately-crafted mosaic rich in hope and inspiration. The book also shares deeply personal experiences, with both humor and gravity in the face of loss, along with serving up some favorite family recipes.
Do Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms? Or is this power vested solely in government? Recent years have seen a sea change in scholarship on the Second Amendment. Beginning in the 1960s, a view emerged that individuals had a “right” to bear arms only in militia service—a limited, "collective" right. But in the late 1980s Dr. Stephen Halbrook and a handful of other scholars began producing an altogether persuasive analysis that changed thinking on the matter, so that today, even in canonical textbooks, bearing arms is acknowledged as an individual right.
Stephen Halbrook’s The Founders’ Second Amendment is the first book-length account of the origins of the Second Amendment, based on the Founders’ own statements as found in newspapers, correspondence, debates, and resolutions. Dr. Halbrook investigates the period from 1768 to 1826, from the last years of British rule and the American Revolution through to the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the passing of the Founders’ generation. His book offers the most comprehensive analysis of the arguments behind the drafting and adoption of the Second Amendment, and the intentions of the men who created it.
The small things that had great historical consequences…
“Heart-stopping, compelling, and fun!”—Win Blevins, New York Times Bestselling Author
How often does it happen that a single tiny mistake causes an entire civilization to collapse? More often than you think! Readers of Jared Knott's book, Tiny Blunders/Big Disasters, will be amazed at the little things that changed history in a big way. Here are a few examples:
A single document poorly designed by one single clerk in one single county changed the outcome of a presidential election and led directly to a major war.
A soldier accidentally kicks a helmet off of the top of a wall and causes an empire to collapse.
A small mechanical device several inches long fails to function, which changes the outcome of WWII and leads to the death of millions of people.
A man fails to gather his army in time to defend against an attack because of the temptation of opium and a young slave woman.
More than nine million soldiers died in World War I. At the same time, a US-led effort saved nearly ten million civilians from starvation behind the lines during the German occupation, yet one of America’s greatest humanitarian efforts is virtually unknown today. In this gripping book, Jeffrey B. Miller tells the remarkable history of two American and Belgian citizen-created organizations that led a massive food relief program for civilians trapped in German-occupied Belgium and northern France.
Herbert Hoover, then a successful international businessman, was the driving force behind the effort, coercing and bullying the governments of Germany, Great Britain, France, and the United States to allow a group of idealistic young volunteers to organize in occupied Belgium and coordinate the distribution of tons of food and clothing to desperate Belgians. These crusaders, known as CRB delegates, had to maintain strict neutrality as they watched the Belgians suffer under the harsh German regime. Miller tells compelling stories of German brutality, Belgian relief efforts, and the idealistic Americans who went into German-occupied Belgium from October 1914 up to May 1917, when they were forced to leave after the April entry into the war of the United States.
This book has been awarded a Certificate of Merit by the Illinois State Historical Society.
Moral treatment, the vogue of early American psychology, freed the mentally ill of their chains. They were, however, still relegated to separate institutions, commonly called asylums, for at least a brief respite from the stressors that were thought to cause their madness. Did it work? Were the patients actually treated more humanely? The Untold History of the First Illinois State Hospital for the Insane tells the stories of the people who were subjected to this new treatment on the American Frontier. As author Dr. Joe Squillace shows, the institution first had great difficulty in getting established, but the town of Jacksonville, Illinois, where the Hospital was built, rallied to make it a more humane and person-centered institution. The Hospital’s leaders, too, attempted, within the constraints of their time, to treat their patients with respect. But, at a time when mental illness was still not well understood some patients were tortured and imprisoned, even though they were not insane, even by 19th century standards. What is revealed in Untold History is an institution that struggled, much like today’s institutions do, to address the needs of those living with mental illness, in a culture that did not understand it fully.
Approximately 80 percent of Americans admit they haven't read the Bible. If they did, they'd be pleasantly surprised by its impressive quantity of sex and poop jokes.
David danced naked. Noah was basically a moonshining hillbilly. Ezekiel baked poop bread. Herod was eaten by worms. Jesus cursed a fig tree, just to prove he could. Mark went streaking. Hosea married a prostitute. Lot was date-raped by his own daughters.
It turns out, there's a lot of weird stuff in the Bible. Murder-Bears, Moonshine, and Mayhem is a tongue-in-cheek look at all of it. From Elisha, who loosed homicidal bears on some kids because they called him bald (it's a long story), to the story of Ehud, who gets away with assassinating a tyrannical king because his servants think said king is taking a dump (also a long story), this book examines and casts new light on some of the Bible's stranger moments.
Organized by topic (poop, genitalia, weird violence, prostitution, gratuitous nudity, seemingly pointless miracles, and other fun stuff), Murder-Bears, Moonshine, and Mayhem is a thoroughly researched (really!), reverent, and insightful look at the best-selling book in history.
