Some are new, some are veteran crew. These are a handful of Beacon’s bestsellers of 2023! Let’s raise a glass of bubbly to the authors and to another year of bestsellers! Which ones were your favorites?
Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex
Nonsexual romantic love sounds like an oxymoron. Almost all definitions of the feeling of romantic love—separate from the social role of married partners or romantic acts like saying “I love you”—fold in the sexual dimension. People might not be having sex, but wanting sex is the key to recognizing that feelings are romantic instead of platonic. Sexual desire is supposed to be the Rubicon that separates the two. It’s not. Aces prove this. By definition, aces don’t experience sexual attraction and plenty are apathetic or averse to sex. Many still experience romantic attraction and use a romantic orientation (heteroromantic, panromantic, homoromantic, and so on) to signal the genders of the people they feel romantically toward and crush on.
—Angela Chen
Being Heumann: An Repentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist
At camp, I was not seen as a sick kid, excluded from dances and dates and kissing boys behind the football stadium. Nor was I seen as a crippled girl never expected to marry, for whom motherhood was not even a question. No one had told me that no boy would ever give me a second look. At camp we had parties, played loud rock music, and snuck off into the dark to make out. The counselors were young and fun. They strummed the guitar while we sang and danced to the likes of Elvis Presley, Chubby Checker, Buddy Holly, Sam Cooke, and the Shirelles. We knew all the words to “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” and “Chantilly Lace” by the Big Bopper, and we danced in a way we never danced anywhere else. Camp was the only place we weren’t self-conscious about how we looked.
—Judith Heumann with Kristen Joiner
I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that I have heard a sermon on the meaning of religion, of Christianity, to the man who stands with his back against the wall. It is urgent that my meaning be crystal clear. The masses of men live with their backs constantly against the wall. They are the poor, the disinherited, the dispossessed. What does our religion say to them? The issue is not what it counsels them to do for others whose need may be greater, but what religion offers to meet their own needs. The search for an answer to this question is perhaps the most important religious quest of modern life.
—Howard Thurman
I had seen people beaten on television and in the movies. I had seen the too-red blood substitute streaked across their backs and heard their well-rehearsed screams. But I hadn’t lain nearby and smelled their sweat or heard them pleading and praying, shamed before their families and themselves. I was probably less prepared for the reality than the child crying not far from me. In fact, she and I were reacting very much alike. My face too was wet with tears. And my mind was darting from one thought to another, trying to tune out the whipping.
—Octavia E. Butler
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.
—Viktor E. Frankl
On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World
Let’s face it: It’s deeply uncomfortable to confront the fact that we have caused harm. Research has shown that feelings of guilt can impact how we feel in our bodies; it makes us feel literally weighed down, causing even basic tasks to require more effort than usual. And, of course, guilt—the awareness or belief that I have done something bad—can easily trigger, or morph into, shame, the belief that I am bad. It may be tempting to look for ways to hack the process, to get to that place where we no longer feel burdened by our conscience, where things feel better. Crossing that bridge over into reckoning with what we have done seems like the agonizing opposite of removing this heavy awareness. Instead of getting to the white, we have to walk straight into the crimson? That doesn’t seem right! It’s easy to panic, to try to figure out if there’s a way around the system. But the only way out is through. And trying to skip to the end without all the work in the middle means that, instead of making different choices, we repeat variations on that same crimson harm.
—Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
Our breath is such a fragile piece of thread. But once we know how to use it, it can become a wondrous tool to help us surmount situations which would otherwise seem hopeless. Our breath is the bridge from our body to our mind, the element which reconciles our body and mind and which makes possible one-ness of body and mind. Breath is aligned to both body and mind and it alone is the tool which can bring them both together, illuminating both and bringing both peace and calm.
—Thich Nhat Hanh
Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
On a December morning, two years ago, I brought a young, injured black-backed gull home from the beach. It was, in fact, Christmas morning, as well as bitter cold, which may account for my act. Injured gulls are common; nature’s maw receives them again implacably; almost never is a rescue justified by a return to health and freedom. And this gull was close to that maw; it made no protest when I picked it up, the eyes were half-shut, the body so starved it seemed to hold nothing but air.
—Mary Oliver, from “Bird”
We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom
To begin the work of abolitionist teaching and fighting for justice, the idea of mattering is essential in that you must matter enough to yourself, to your students, and to your students’ community to fight. But for dark people, the very basic idea of mattering is sometimes hard to conceptualize when your country finds you disposable. How do you matter to a country that is at once obsessed with and dismissive about how it kills you? How do you matter to a country that would rather incarcerate you than educate you?
—Bettina L. Love
“You Just Need to Lose Weight”: And 19 Other Myths About Fat People
Nearly every cultural message about fatness and weight loss insists that anyone can choose to lose weight, and many of us deeply believe that to be true. In truth, some fat people do choose fat bodies; some do not. But this cultural insistence that fatness is a choice isn’t about the veracity of that claim: it’s about minimizing fat people’s experiences, dismissing our needs, and perpetuating anti-fat bias. And in its determination to do so, it steamrolls over copious evidence that challenges the belief that thinness is a choice that’s always available to fat people.—Aubrey Gordon
About the Author
Christian Coleman is the digital marketing manager at Beacon Press and editor of Beacon Broadside. Before joining Beacon, he worked in writing, copy editing, and marketing positions at Sustainable Silicon Valley and Trikone. He graduated from Boston College and the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. Follow him on Twitter at @coleman_II and on Bluesky at @colemanthe2nd.bsky.social.
You’ve heard of that elf on the shelf, but have you heard of word count at a discount? That’s really pushing it, but there are books we’re talking about. Now’s the time to hunt for gifty books for the loved ones in your life. Save 30% on everything at beacon.org through December 31 using code HOL30!
Scroll down and you’ll see some selections to give you ideas. This is just a handful of our catalog.
Remember that USPS media mail takes 7-10 business days. Also, the Penguin Random House warehouse will be closed from December 23 to December 25 and then on December 31. So, plan accordingly while placing your orders during this time.
And remember to support your local independent bookstore this holiday season!
All Is Not Lost: 20 Ways to Revolutionize Disaster
“Despair needn’t create paralysis. To the contrary, it can motivate you to risk everything, to find courage wherever you can, to trust the democratic resources available to you, and to never back down. Power can be forged among the dispossessed. Solidarity can be found in the darkest of places. Always resist and make resistance into a tradition. It will inspire you. And those who come after.”
—Alex Zamalin
Boyz n the Void: a mixtape to my brother
“[T]here were aspects of punk culture that offered more appealing models for manhood . . . I also associated the sonic textures of punk music with freedom. I wanted to be around people and in proximity with music and art that encouraged pliability and elasticity in how masculinity was performed and understood.”
—G’Ra Asim
“The shards of heartbreak cannot simply be thrown away. They have to be reworked. This requires a careful examination, a tender holding. Of whoever is broken, whether it is you or someone you love.”
—Imani Perry
Butter: Novellas, Stories, and Fragments
“Call me pied piper woman. There I was reading the Lorca poem about the barren orange tree and the tower, and there she was with oranges painted on her leather satchel. And there I was riding on the Boston subway from Back Bay to Mass. Avenue. And so I saw this little girl, and I’m a candymaker and it was easy. I always smell like chocolate and caramel and peppermint.”
—Gayl Jones, from “Mirabeau”
Homeland of My Body: New and Selected Poems
Melodies heard are sweet, just as I heard them
in the rhythm of Keats, who thought unheard
melodies were sweeter. And so they are here, in
the silences of this musician’s still hands, as if
clenched in prayer, ecstasy, or forgiveness that
his fingers, solid as pillars, can’t yet release into
music, not yet strumming a guitar whispering
stars across my ears, or pounding piano keys
into my heart, not yet blowing sax smoke for
my soul, or stroking a bow across a violin like
a lover resting on his shoulder as if on mine.
—Richard Blanco, from “Music in Our Hands, after Paul Cordes’s photo The Musician”
“A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.”
—Viktor E. Frankl
No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating
“For me, all stories about food are stories about appetite and nostalgia—even when we’re talking about global warming, and even when we’re talking about the ways in which the state enables systemic oppression of humans, animals, and land. Talking about what we eat cannot just be rooted in the political; by its very nature, eating is personal. This is why a delicate balance must be struck when we discuss ideas of ethical consumption in an unethical global food system that interacts with other systems of oppression, from white supremacy to patriarchy to capitalism.”
—Alicia Kennedy
“It has always been much easier (because it has always seemed much safer) to give a name to the evil without than to locate the terror within. And yet, the terror within is far truer and far more powerful than any of our labels: the labels change, the terror is constant. And this terror has something to do with that irreducible gap between the self one invents—the self one takes oneself as being, which is, however and by definition , a provisional self—and the undiscoverable self which always has the power to blow the provisional self to bits.”
—James Baldwin
One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race
“We have also seen that there is seemingly no certitude in how racial categories are established or recognized abroad. While many countries throughout the African Diaspora construct Blackness distinct from Mixedness, do all people of mixed ancestry in those countries similarly construct their own identities as mutually exclusive to Blackness? In the absence of a definitive framework through which to designate race, how do people in these countries understand their own racial identities, if at all? Furthermore, what happens when people of African descent migrate to the United States from these various global locales? Do they maintain culturally specific conceptualizations of self? Do they conform to American ideations of race and simply become Black? Or do they negotiate between the two and create melded identities?”
—Yaba Blay
If you open the door, the light
blue light is watery as girls in those
limp posters, overhead. I am listening
to your memory and it sounds like
unlimited access. I call your name,
tenderly. We live in a world
with few headboards, left.
—Alisha Dietzman, from “Love Poem by the Light of the Refrigerator”
A Treasury of African American Christmas Stories
Ed. Bettye Collier-Thomas
“Why is it that lots of white people always grin when they see a Negro child? Santa Claus grinned. Everybody else grinned, too, looking at little black Joe—who had no business in the lobby of a white theatre. Then Santa Claus stooped down and slyly picked up one of his lucky number rattles, a great big loud tin-pan rattle like they use in cabarets. And he shook it fiercely right at Joe. That was funny. The white people laughed, kids and all. But little Joe didn’t laugh. He was scared. To the shaking of the big rattle, he turned and fled out of the warm lobby of the theatre, out into the street where the snow was and the people.”
—Langston Hughes, from “One Christmas Eve”
About the Author
Christian Coleman is the digital marketing manager at Beacon Press and editor of Beacon Broadside. Before joining Beacon, he worked in writing, copy editing, and marketing positions at Sustainable Silicon Valley and Trikone. He graduated from Boston College and the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. Follow him on Twitter at @coleman_II and on Bluesky at @colemanthe2nd.bsky.social.
You’ve heard the news. Now’s the time to jump on your holiday book buying. Supply chain delays are affecting many industries, including the book industry. Some new books you’ve been waiting for may not make it to bookstores in time for the holiday, and hot sellers may be sold out by December and not reprinted in time. On top of that, what’s thrown a wrench into the works is—wait for it—the pandemic. Who saw that plot twist coming? (We’d probably be in less of this mess if everyone got vaccinated, but hey, let’s not digress.) So, gifts you would typically start buying in December may not be available. That’s why we, along with your favorite authors and bookstores, are recommending that you get started now if you haven’t already while bookstores are stocked up with your favorite titles.
October is the new December. Trust us: This is not like seeing Christmas decorations in Walmart before Halloween.
We’re starting you off with some selections for the season from our catalog. Take a look!
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Breathe: A Letter to My Sons
Imani Perry
“Breathe is what is says it is, a letter from a mother to her sons, but it is more than that. It’s a meditation on child-rearing, world-building, fire-starting, and peace-building. Imani Perry combines rigor and heart, and the result is a magic mirror showing us who we are, how we got here, and who we may become.”
—Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage
Dance We Do: A Poet Explores Black Dance
Ntozake Shange
“A gorgeous last offering from one of our most gifted and multifaceted artists. Her passion for dance, just like her passion for words, is among the many reasons she will be missed, though these insightful interviews, ruminations, and reflections will continue to be a balm, across generations, from her to us.”
—Edwidge Danticat, author of Everything Inside
How to Love a Country: Poems
Richard Blanco
“This clear-seeing and forthright volume marks Blanco as a major, deeply relevant poet.”
—Booklist, Starred Review
Man’s Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl
“This is a book I reread a lot . . . it gives me hope . . . it gives me a sense of strength.”
—Anderson Cooper, Anderson Cooper 360/CNN
One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race
Yaba Blay
“One Drop presents a nuanced exploration of racial identity that serves as a practical guide for thinking critically about what it means to be Black in the twenty-first century.”
—Tarana J. Burke, author, activist, and founder of the MeToo movement
Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
Mary Oliver
“Oliver has gained enormous popularity in recent years for the accessible yet highly articulate and profound treatment she gives each poem . . . This title will bring much pleasure to the many readers who claim Oliver as their favorite poet, as well as to people new to her work.”
—Library Journal
Palmares
Gayl Jones
“This story shimmers. Shakes. Wails. Moves to rhythms long forgotten . . . in many ways: holy. [A] masterpiece.”
—The New York Times Book Review
The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction: 1948-1985
James Baldwin
“With burning passion and jabbing, epigrammatic acuity, Baldwin fearlessly articulates issues of race, democracy, and American identity.”
—Toni Morrison
Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, a Graphic Novel
David Lester with Marcus Rediker and Paul Buhle
“David Lester’s raw, expressive visual approach perfectly delivers. Prophet Against Slavery is a crucial account of abolitionism’s religious framework, its courage and moral clarity often recast as sin or insanity, and the necessity of taking outside risks in pursuit of justice and equality.”
—Nate Powell, National Book Award–winning artist of the March trilogy about US congressman John Lewis
The Radiant Lives of Animals
Linda Hogan
“Linda Hogan’s work is rooted in truth and mystery.”
—Louise Erdrich
A Treasury of African American Christmas Stories
Compiled and edited by Bettye Collier-Thomas
“Here was a veritable who’s who of Black writers, whose powerful stories and poems ran the gamut of literary expressions—from the tragic to the comic, fables to romance. A book for all seasons, these stories are bound to amuse, educate, and inspire all kids, from one to ninety-two.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams
Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America
Keisha N. Blain
“[A] riveting and timely exploration of Hamer’s life. . . . Brilliantly constructed to be both forward and backward looking, Blain’s book functions simultaneously as a much needed history lesson and an indispensable guide for modern activists.”
—New York Times Book Review
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Here’s what you can do as we get through this season.
Which brings us to the next point. Speaking of indies, we need to really show up for them and for venues like Bookshop, Indiebound, and our personal favorite, InSpirt UU Book and Gift Shop. Publishing delays are likely to hit them harder than large chain bookstores. Holiday season keeps indies afloat during the slower seasons. The pandemic hasn’t made this any easier for them.
We’re all in this together. We thank you, your authors thank you, and your indie bookstores thank you.
Hats off to all students graduating this season! Because whew! This is no easy time to finish up school. The ideal graduation ceremony would be outdoors, filled with the company and applause of loved ones. Most will be held online, some outside within the parameters of social distancing. It won’t be the same, and frankly, nothing has been since March last year. But isn’t that what graduating is all about? Growing into the next new phase, whatever that phase happens to be? Before we get all misty-eyed and sob into our masks, here’s a list of recommended reads for the occasion.
Boyz n the Void: a mixtape to my brother
Vivid, honest, and thoughtfully rendered as a Black self-portrait might be, it is competing for real estate in the imaginations, white and otherwise, which are largely monopolized by the phantom projections of ethnocentrism. . . . To be a Black artist of any consequence, you must not only untether yourself from essentialized notions of Blackness but create with such fluency as to move your audience to jettison the same constraints.
—G’Ra Asim
We cannot make of our lives a nightmarish Fortnite game with the guns cocked and ready for you as a target and our hands inexplicably empty of self-protection. Sons, I will not allow that to be your life. Your testimony is living with the passionate intensity of one whose presence matters despite the violence of this world towards your beautiful flesh.
—Imani Perry
Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want
Every day seems to bring yet more worrisome, frightening news, putting millions on the edge of despair. At the same time, we’ve come to see that despair itself is ultimately our only enemy, and we’ve become ever-more clear that there’s an effective antidote: meaningful action we take together. But we realize that to take action—and more, to join with others you do not know—requires courage. So in this moment of extreme threat, we may come to see that the opposite of evil is no longer goodness. It is courage. Goodness without action isn’t good enough.
—Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen
It does not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.
—Viktor E. Frankl
Nothing Personal
with a foreword by Imani Perry and an afterword by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
To be locked in the past means, in effect, that one has no past, since one can never assess it, or use it; and if one cannot use the past, one cannot function in the present, and so one can never be free.
—James Baldwin
The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys’ Club
If female scientists are weighted with the responsibility of mentoring younger female scientists, they will have even less time to carry on their research. It’s the larger society that needs to change. No American of either gender will want to become a scientist if studying science or math makes a middle schooler so nerdy he or she becomes undatable, or if science and math are taught in such a way as to seem boring or irrelevant. Focusing on facts and tests is not the best way to convey the beauties of a subject or the reasons anyone would want to study it. The lowly status teaching is accorded in our society, combined with the unreasonable demands on most teachers, makes it difficult for anyone to impart high-level skills to our children while instilling in them a love for whatever is being taught. Changing such deeply ingrained cultural patterns might be difficult, but the barriers are not insurmountable.
—Eileen Pollack
One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race
“If we can recalibrate our lenses to see Blackness as a broader category of identity and experience, perhaps we will be able to see ourselves as part of a larger global community. As a professor of Africana Studies in the United States, I believe that it is becoming increasingly important for all people, not just people of African descent, to recognize the existence of a global Black community. In my experience teaching students about issues related to the African Diaspora, I find that they have a particular level of difficulty assigning the category and thus the identity of Blackness to people throughout the world, even when those people themselves identify as Black . . . . [T]here are Black people all over the world. We are not a minority—we comprise a global community.”
—Yaba Blay
Pregnant Girl: A Story of Teen Pregnancy, College, and Creating a Better Future for Young Families
We erroneously build interventions that define young people by a single moment in their lives. This is especially true for teen mothers and fathers. We begin with the pregnancy as the thing that started a cascade of struggles in their lives, ignoring all that came before because it allows us to overlook all the ways we have failed them. But if we begin at the true beginning, the pregnancy is no longer the singular issue. It’s just a symptom of larger, often systemic, issues. Larger issues in a family. Larger issues in a country.
—Nicole Lynn Lewis
What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine
No matter how it’s portrayed, and no matter how many high-tech tools enter the picture, the doctor-patient interaction is still primarily a human one. And when humans connect, emotions by necessity weave an underlying network. The most distant, aloof doctor is subject to the same flood of emotions as the most touchy-feely one. Emotions are in the air just as oxygen is. But how we doctors choose—or choose not—to notice and process these emotions varies greatly. And it is the patient at the other end of the relationship who is affected most by this variability.
—Danielle Ofri
Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything
To say yes to life is not only meaningful under all circumstances—because life itself is—but is also possible under all circumstances.
—Viktor E. Frankl
Can you taste it? The taste of joy when quarantine ends, the panic shopping eases up, and we can get on with the new reality of civilian life. The coronavirus pandemic will change the way we live. However the new reality takes shape, we’ll be ready and eager to get back outside. Not to mention delirious with relief. Until then, safety first. But at least we have plenty of books to turn to as resources and for escape as we shelter in place!
We pulled together a list of titles from our catalog that speak to our homebound times. Whatever your fancy, there are three categories to choose from. Inspiring books to help find meaning and solace during this period of stress and despair. Books on remaking society to show how the pandemic affects many aspects of our day-to-day living and what we want to make better when this whole situation is behind us. And books to get lost in, because we could use a breather from the COVID-19 craziness, right? Scroll down to take a look! You can check out our website to see more titles as well.
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Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything
Viktor E. Frankl
Introduction by Daniel Goleman
“This slim, powerful collection from Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning) attests to life’s meaning, even in desperate circumstances.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
Man’s Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl
“This is a book I reread a lot . . . it gives me hope . . . it gives me a sense of strength.”
—Anderson Cooper, Anderson Cooper 360/CNN
The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
Thich Nhat Hanh
“Thich Nhat Hanh’s ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”
—Martin Luther King Jr.
The Stars in Our Pockets: Getting Lost and Sometimes Found in the Digital Age
Howard Axelrod
“Poetic, ruminative, and never preachy, this book is a game changer for readers who yearn to see beyond 240 characters.”
—Booklist, Starred Review
Marching Toward Coverage: How Women Can Lead the Fight for Universal Health Care
Rosemarie Day
“Day makes the case for why activism by women for our health and healthcare is the path forward for a resilient nation.”
—Juliette Kayyem, former assistant secretary, Department of Homeland Security, author of Security Mom
Natural: How Faith in Nature’s Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science
Alan Levinovitz
“Explores the power of that word and the often highly consequential ways in which it has been appreciated, appropriated, distorted, hyped, commodified, consecrated, and weaponized.”
—Robert M. Sapolsky, John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Neurology and of Neurosurgery, Stanford University, and author of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination
Alexandra Minna Stern
“An important study that extends the knowledge from other recent books that have demonstrated a stubbornly pervasive network of white nationalists.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Don’t Knock the Hustle: Young Creatives, Tech Ingenuity, and the Making of a New Innovation Economy
S. Craig Watkins
“An insightful guide to the humane potential of new ways of working and sharing. Ignore this book at your peril.”
—Juliet Schor, professor of sociology, Boston College
Why I Wake Early
Mary Oliver
“The gift of Oliver’s poetry is that she communicates the beauty she finds in the world and makes it unforgettable.”
—Miami Herald
Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest
Ian Zack
“A thoughtful portrait of an artist who never quite became as famous as she deserved to be . . . A much needed biography of a crucial American artist and activist.”
—Booklist, Starred Review
Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist
Judith Heumann and Kristen Joiner
“Judy’s vision of a society that embraces all aspects of the human condition and where we face adversity with wisdom is truly transformative. . . . All who read her book will be better for it.”
—Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, author of Lean In
Me Dying Trial
Patricia Powell
“Powell shows us the living within the dying, the foreigner within the native born, the male within the female. Her tales unfold like dreams spread out on a table.”
—Danzy Senna, author of Caucasia
With the diploma in hand and the graduation cap thrown jubilantly into the air, the question remains: What’s the next step? Graduation heralds new beginnings and transition. But where and how to start? How should we prepare for the future when the world around us changes on a compulsory basis? In his book Don’t Knock the Hustle, S. Craig Watkins asks the same question and says we should plan to be future-ready. “What should schools be doing? Instead of preparing students to be college-ready or career-ready, schools must start producing students who are what I call ‘future-ready.’ The skills associated with future readiness are geared toward the long-term and oriented toward navigating a world marked by diversity, uncertainty, and complexity . . . a future-ready approach prepares students for the world we will build tomorrow.”
Inspired by Watkins, we put together this inexhaustive list of book recommendations from our catalog for the graduate in your life. Remember that you can always browse our website for more inspirational and future-ready titles.
For Graduates Getting Science Degrees
Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong—and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story
Angela Saini
“If you have ever been shouted down by a male colleague who insists that science has proven women to be biologically inferior to men, here are the arguments you need to demonstrate that he doesn’t know what he is talking about.”
—Eileen Pollack, author of The Only Woman in the Room
Superior: The Return of Race Science
Angela Saini
“Deeply researched, masterfully written, and sorely needed, Superior is an exceptional work by one of the world’s best science writers.”
—Ed Yong, author of I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
For Graduates Gearing Up for Activism
Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want
Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen
“This book, perhaps better than any other, shows Americans that the democracy they want is possible.”
—Lawrence Lessig, author of Republic, Lost
Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements
Charlene A. Carruthers
“This brilliant and powerful book is a clarion call to keep alive the Black radical tradition in these reactionary times.”
—Dr. Cornell West
For Graduates Getting an Education Degree
Lift Us Up, Don’t Push Us Out!: Voices from the Front Lines of the Educational Justice Movement
Mark R. Warren with David Goodman
“A bold and exciting book that presents the stories we never hear—powerful stories of successful grassroots organizing in schools and communities across the nation led by parents, students, educators, and allies.”
—Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union
We Want To Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Reform
Bettina L. Love
“This book is a treasure! With rigorous intersectional theory, careful cultural criticism, and brave personal reflection, We Want To Do More Than Survive dares us to dream and struggle toward richer and thicker forms of educational freedom.”
—Marc Lamont Hill, author of Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond
For Graduates Seeking Other Future-Ready Paths
Don’t Knock the Hustle: Young Creatives, Tech Ingenuity, and the Making of a New Innovation Economy
S. Craig Watkins
“A compulsively readable ethnographic study of new innovation spaces that shows how young creatives—especially youth of color—are excelling at difference-making endeavors, from hip hop, coding, and game design to activism.”
—Juliet Schor, professor of sociology, Boston College
Man’s Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl
“One of the great books of our time.”
—Harold S. Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People
The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
Thich Nhat Hanh
“Thich Nhat Hanh’s ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”
—Martin Luther King Jr.
How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide
Crystal M. Fleming
“For those looking for a distinctly smart, humorous, and intellectually challenging read on a much-needed complex racial conversation, How to Be Less Stupid About Race is essential reading.”
—Angela Nissel, author of The Broke Diaries and Mixed
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
Robin DiAngelo
“This is a necessary book for all people invested in societal change through productive social and intimate relationships.”
—Claudia Rankine
With a book on the New York Times bestsellers list, it’s been an amazing year for Beacon. Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility has been on the list for twenty-four weeks in a row! This may be a record for us. It just goes to show you how the need for Robin’s critical analysis of whiteness and white supremacy isn’t fading any time soon. But White Fragility wasn’t our only bestseller this year. We’ve got such classics as Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning and Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred as well as recent books, like Jeanne Theoharis’s A More Beautiful and Terrible History and Charlene A. Carruthers’s Unapologetic, keeping Robin’s book company in this roundup. Check out all our bestsellers!
For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood . . . and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education
Christopher Emdin
“Filled with exceptional intellectual sophistication and necessary wisdom for the future of education.”
—Imani Perry, author of Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry
The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism
Howard Bryant
“It may make people uncomfortable, but I’m pleased that Howard Bryant has chosen to tell the story of our heritage.”
—Henry Aaron, Major League Baseball Hall of Famer
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
“A must-read for anyone interested in the truth behind this nation’s founding.”
—Veronica E. Velarde Tiller, PhD, Jicarilla Apache author, historian, and publisher of Tiller’s Guide to Indian Country
Jesus and the Disinherited
Howard Thurman
“[Jesus and the Disinherited] is the centerpiece of the Black prophet-mystic’s lifelong attempt to bring the harrowing beauty of the African-American experience into deep engagement with what he called ‘the religion of Jesus.’”
—Vincent Harding, from the Foreword
Kindred
Octavia E. Butler
“Octavia Butler is a writer who will be with us for a long, long time, and Kindred is that rare magical artifact . . . the novel one returns to, again and again.”
—Harlan Ellison
Man’s Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl
“An enduring work of survival literature.”
—New York Times
The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
Thich Nhat Hanh
“Thich Nhat Hanh writes with the voice of the Buddha.”
—Sogyal Rinpoche
A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History
Jeanne Theoharis
“An important book that sheds new light on our recent past and yields a fresh understanding of our tumultuous present.”
—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
Notes of a Native Son
James Baldwin
“A straight-from-the-shoulder writer, writing about the troubled problems of this troubled earth with an illuminating intensity.”
—Langston Hughes
Race Matters, 25th Anniversary Edition
Cornel West
“Cornel West is one of the most authentic, brilliant, prophetic, and healing voices in America today. We ignore his truth in Race Matters at our personal and national peril.”
—Marian Wright Edelman
The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear
The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
“A remarkable story about a great justice movement, led by an American prophet. Everyone interested in justice should read this book.”
—James H. Cone, Charles Augustus Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology, Union Theological Seminary
Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements
Charlene A. Carruthers
“She offers us a guide to getting free with incisive prose, years of grassroots organizing experience, and a deeply intersectional lens.”
—Janet Mock, author of Redefining Realness and Surpassing Certainty
What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine
Danielle Ofri
“A fascinating journey into the heart and mind of a physician struggling to do the best for her patients while navigating an imperfect health care system.”
—Boston Globe
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“In this book—his last grand expression of his vision—he put forward his most prophetic challenge to powers that be and his most progressive program for the wretched of the earth.”
—Cornel West
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
Robin DiAngelo
“The value in White Fragility lies in its methodical, irrefutable exposure of racism in thought and action, and its call for humility and vigilance.”
—The New Yorker
Why I Wake Early
Mary Oliver
“The gift of Oliver’s poetry is that she communicates the beauty she finds in the world and makes it unforgettable”
—Miami Herald
Are you ready for the holiday season and on the hunt for gifts to inspire someone in your life? Our holiday sale is back! Save 30% on everything at beacon.org through December 31 using code HOLIDAY30.
This year, Beacon Press is also donating 10% of our web sales in December to Unitarian Universalist Assocation Disaster Relief Fund to the help the communities in California recover from the wildfires.
Here are our holiday picks for the year. Drum roll, please:
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
Robin DiAngelo
“An indispensable volume for understanding one of the most important (and yet rarely appreciated) barriers to achieving racial justice.”
—Tim Wise, author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son
A New York Times Best Seller!
The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism
Howard Bryant
“This is the book for explaining our times, whether you give a damn about sports or not.”
—Dave Zinn, sports editor, The Nation, and author of Jim Brown: Last Man Standing
A Library Journal Best Book of 2018, a Boston Globe Best of 2018 pick, and longlisted for the PEN America Literary Award in literary sports writing!
Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry
Imani Perry
“I didn’t know how hungry I was for this intimate portrait until now.”
—Jacqueline Woodson, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and National Book Award Winner for Brown Girl Dreaming
Longlisted for the PEN America Literary Award in biography!
The Trials of Nina McCall: Sex, Surveillance, and the Decades-Long Government Plan to Imprison “Promiscuous” Women
Scott W. Stern
“In our own era, when harassment is a great national topic, this book could not be more timely.”
—Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia and Women Rowing North
A Boston Globe Best of 2018 pick!
When I Spoke in Tongues: A Story of Faith and Its Loss
Jessica Wilbanks
“Jessica Wilbanks’s memoir of faith’s loss and her efforts to comprehend its significance is no less than an illuminating exploration of how to live meaningfully.”
—Claire Messud, author of The Burning Girl
Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements
Charlene A. Carruthers
“Charlene gives us not just a manual but a prayer, an intention, a critical path forward, and a deep analysis on where we’ve been.”
—Patrisse Khan Cullors, coauthor of When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
Thich Nhat Hanh
“Thich Nhat Hanh’s ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”
—Martin Luther King Jr.
How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide
Crystal M. Fleming
“This book will leave you thinking, offended, and transformed.”
—Nina Turner, former Ohio state senator
New and Selected Poems, Volume One
Mary Oliver
“Her special gift is to connect us with our sources in the natural world, its beauties and terrors and mysteries and consolations.”
—Stanley Kunitz
Man’s Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl
“One of the great books of our time.”—Harold S. Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People
Kindred
Octavia E. Butler
“In Kindred, Octavia Butler creates a road for the impossible and a balm for the unbearable.”
—Walter Mosley
An African American and Latinx History of the United States
Paul Ortiz
“An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a gift.”
—Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
“Places the issue of factory farming in the context of human progress and presents compelling arguments on how we should deal with it today.”
—Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now
Notes of a Native Son
James Baldwin
“He named for me the things you feel but couldn’t utter . . . articulated for the first time to white America what it meant to be American and a black American at the same time.”
—Henry Louis Gates Jr.
A Treasury of African-American Christmas Stories
Ed. Bettye Collier-Thomas
“A Treasury of African American Christmas Stories gives us all the gift of engaging our hearts and minds in the true stories of Christmas.”
—Nikki Giovanni
If you’re tracking down a specific kind of book, poke around in our categories. For those concerned about the lives of immigrants and the policies that affect them, browse our titles in Immigration Reform. For those eager to see what’s really at stake with regard to reproductive justice and abortion laws, look at our titles in Women’s Lives. And for those looking to up their game on discussing issues of race and systemic oppression, check out our books in Race and Ethnicity in America. You can always browse our website to see all the others and search our whole catalog!
Oh, and our staff members are here to help you out, too! Check out what some of them are recommending. They’re also suggesting their favorite things to gift for the holidays.
“Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows that I am obsessed with all things animal (particularly dogs, but cows and goats and pretty much everything else too). Mousy Cats and Sheepish Coyotes dives deep into the science behind animal personalities and John Shivik’s own experiences as a pet-owner and wildlife expert. It also has one of the best first lines I’ve ever read: ‘My cat, for all practical purposes, is an asshole.’
Another thing I’m loving this season is all kinds of lights! I hate the constant darkness of winter and this is my new sun lamp at my desk that I use every single morning. I also recently got an alarm clock that mimics the sunrise, so instead of being jolted awake in the pitch dark, you wake up gradually with light. It’s AMAZING.”
—Emily Powers, associate marketing manager
“My favorite Beacon book is The Art of Misdiagnosis, which I recommend to anyone who has used the gifts of art, creativity, and storytelling to process complicated family and personal situations. My favorite ‘thing(s)’ to gift at the holidays are prints, cards, totes, and all sorts from local artisan fairs. I recently fell in love with the work of talented local artist Amanda Williams Galvin (a.k.a REVEL REVEL) and purchased many of her New England–themed delights to send to friends near and far. And, ’tis the season to treat oneself too, right? I bought this delightful Somerville, MA, print as a gift to me.”
—Marcy Barnes, production director
“With the recent uptick in discussion about immigrant detention centers, Margaret Regan’s Detained and Deported is a crucial read for anyone who wants to dig deeper into our country’s history of separating and incarcerating migrant families. The stories and statistics are heart-wrenching, but they really helped me get a better understanding of this issue when it took over US headlines back in September. On a lighter note, this is Tyra, the design department’s pet crocodile. I’m not sure what brand she is, but she’s one of those toys that starts out small and grows in a bowl of water. A great holiday gift for anyone in your life who may need some companionship this winter.”
—Louis Roe, designer
Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the passing of neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl. He left us an incredible gift, his book Man’s Search for Meaning, whose message of finding hope and greater meaning in the midst of suffering has touched the lives of many. Such celebrities as Jimmy Fallon, Michael Phelps, Chris Martin, Emma Watson, Jenny Slate, and Dan Rather have paid homage to the power the book has had on their lives.
With the original version and a young readers’ edition available to the public, his influence will continue to live on across the generational divide. In honor of the twentieth anniversary of his passing, we’d like to take the occasion to commemorate his life and legacy.
***
When Francine and David Wheeler lost their son Ben in the Sandy Hook tragedy nearly five years ago, one book they turned to for guidance was Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Speaking with Oprah Winfrey last year, David Wheeler said he connected with Frankl’s message because “so much of what he writes resonates with me . . . . Because man’s salvation—and he means that not only in the religious sense, but actual survival—is found in and through love.” The Wheelers were able to take that spirit of love, and turn it into force that nurtured them through immense grief. It is a story as powerful as it is familiar to followers of Frankl’s teachings.
Fifty-eight years after the original US publication of Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl’s timeless wisdom has helped generations of readers cope with hardship and overcome adversity, and his life-affirming vision continues to resonate today. In 1991, the book was listed by the Library of Congress as one of the top ten most influential books in the US, while more recently, Amazon listed it as one of its 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime. Writing in The Atlantic, Emily Esfahani Smith notes that Frankl, an Austrian Jew who survived a prolonged ordeal in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps, devised wisdom there, “in the middle of unimaginable human suffering, [that] is just as relevant now as it was then.”
Like the Wheelers and many others who come to Frankl’s writings, Frankl himself experienced devastating personal loss. In a letter written to friends shortly after his liberation, Frankl reveals the extent of his grief:
I have only sad news to communicate: shortly before my departure from Munich, I learned that my mother was sent to Auschwitz a week after me. What that means, you know all too well. And I had scarcely arrived in Vienna when I was told that my wife is also dead . . . . So now I’m all alone. Whoever has not shared a similar fate cannot understand me. I am terribly tired, terribly sad, terribly lonely. I have nothing more to hope for and nothing more to fear.
Remarkably in the same letter, Frankl not only finds a way to carry on, but reasserts his belief in attaining meaning at all cost:
I take nothing away from my former affirmation of life, when I experience the things I have described. On the contrary, if I had not had this rock-solid, positive view of life—what would have become of me in these last weeks, in those months in the camp? But I now see things in a larger dimension. I see increasingly that life is so very meaningful, that in suffering and even in failure there must still be meaning.
To celebrate Frankl’s enduring legacy, and the powerful impact his ideas still bear, we have collected several photographs that provide a glimpse into Frankl’s extraordinary life—both public and personal.
About Viktor Frankl
Born in Vienna in 1905, Viktor E. Frankl earned an MD and a PhD from the University of Vienna. He published more than thirty books on theoretical and clinical psychology and served as a visiting professor and lecturer at Harvard, Stanford, and elsewhere. Frankl died in 1997.
For further information on logotherapy and other works by Frankl, visit www.viktorfrankl.org.
The results of the 2016 presidential election have left many people in shock and disappointment. In a time where people are fearing that a new administration will work to reverse much of the progress made in the last eight years, we are left wondering what the future holds. How do we continue to fight against climate change, fight for reproductive rights, LGBTQ protections, and racial and economic justice?
Some people are turning to different voices to learn how to step up to the task of movement-building. Some are looking for advice to help them process their post-electoral grief. Others are looking for expert analysis and critique on the current issues affecting our society. At Beacon, publishing books on these issues is our mission. Now, more than ever, these books are relevant and timely, and we need our authors’ wisdom and expertise. Below we offer a non-exhaustive list of post-election reading recommendations from our catalog.
Books to Inspire Action
The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear
The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
Modern-day civil rights champion Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II tells the stirring story of how he helped start a movement to bridge America’s racial divide.
You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
Howard Zinn
In his classic memoir, influential teacher and activist Howard Zinn gives us reason to hope that by learning from history and engaging politically, we can make a difference in the world.
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
Martin Luther King, Jr.
In his final book, Dr. King lays out his reflections after a decade of civil rights struggles. With a universal message of hope, he demands an end to global suffering.
Playbook for Progressives: 16 Qualities of the Successful Organizer
Eric Mann
In this comprehensive guide for the twenty-first century, Eric Mann articulates pragmatically what’s required in the often mystifying and rarely explained on-the-ground practice of organizing.
Powered By Girl: A Field Guide for Supporting Youth Activists
Lyn Mikel Brown
Drawing from a diverse collection of interviews with women and girl activists, Lyn Mikel Brown’s playbook shows how to work with and train girls to be activists of their own social movements.
Bridging the Class Divide and Other Lessons for Grassroots Organizing
Linda Stout
Linda Stout tells the inspiring story of how she founded one of this country’s most successful and innovative grassroots organizations, the Piedmont Peace Project.
Books to Find Meaning
Man’s Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl
Based on his experiences of surviving Nazi death camps and his patients’ experiences, psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s timeless memoir continues to help us find meaning in the midst of suffering.
Poems to Live By in Troubling Times
Joan Murray, editor
In the wake of September 11, editor and poet Joan Murray brought together sixty poems by an international group of distinguished writers to address our need for wisdom in dark times.
The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
Thich Nhat Hanh
Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh’s classic book on meditation offers gentle anecdotes and practical exercises to guide us in working toward greater self-understanding and peacefulness.
For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey
Richard Blanco
2013 inaugural poet Richard Blanco shares his journey as a Latino immigrant and openly gay man discovering a new understanding of what it means to be an American in his memoir.
Baldwin for Our Times: Writings from James Baldwin for an Age of Sorrow and Struggle
James Baldwin with an introduction by Rich Blint
This e-book collection of James Baldwin’s writings speaks urgently to our current era of racial injustice and the renewed spirit of activism represented by the Black Lives Matter movement.
MLK on “The Other America” and “Black Power”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
In this e-book collection, two of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s most radical works examine inequality, police brutality, and black power, and speak to our most pressing social issues of today.
Books on American Society
Clair Conner, the daughter of one of the John Birch Society’s founding fathers, offers an intimate history of the infamous ultraconservative organization.
Family Pride: What LGBT Families Should Know About Navigating Home, School, and Safety in Their Neighborhoods
Michael Shelton
Community activist Michael Shelton lays out concrete strategies LGBT families can use to intervene in and resolve difficult community issues, teach their children resiliency skills, and find safe and respectful programs for them.
Faith Ed: Teaching About Religion in an Age of Intolerance
Linda K. Wertheimer
Education journalist Linda K. Wertheimer reveals a public education system struggling with the debate over religion in the classroom and offers a roadmap for raising a new generation of religiously literate Americans.
“Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People” And Other Myths About Guns and Gun Control
Dennis A. Henigan
Gun law advocate Dennis Henigan debunks the lethal logic and behind the persuasive myths and pro-gun slogans that continue to frame the gun control debate.
Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America
Eboo Patel
Interfaith leader Eboo Patel offers a primer for Americans to defend the values of inclusiveness and pluralism to rise up and confront the prejudices of our era.
What We’re Fighting For Now Is Each Other: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Climate Justice
Wen Stephenson
Journalist Wen Stephenson gives us an urgent, on-the-ground look at some of the “new American radicals” who have laid everything on the line to build a stronger climate justice movement.
“They Take Our Jobs!” And 20 Other Myths About Immigration
Aviva Chomsky
History professor Aviva Chomsky illustrates how the parameters and presumptions of the immigration debate distort how we think and have been thinking about immigration.
Detained and Deported: Stories of Immigrant Families Under Fire
Margaret Regan
Journalist Margaret Regan shares a rare and intimate look at the people ensnared by the US detention and deportation system, the largest in the world.
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz radically reframes more than four hundred years US history and reveals how Native Americans have actively resisted expansion of the US empire.
Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Costs of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us
Carole Joffe
Sociologist Carole Joffe brings together surprising firsthand accounts from the front lines of abortion provision to uncover the persistent cultural, political, and economic hurdles to access.
The Stranger Next Door: The Story of a Small Community’s Battle over Sex, Faith, and Civil Rights
Arlene Stein
Arlene Stein sets out to discover why a small town with no apparent queer population became the site of a bitter battle over gay rights.
We Are All Suspects Now: Untold Stories from Immigrant Communities after 9/11
Tram Nguyen
Tram Nguyen reveals the human cost of the domestic war on terror and examines the impact of post-9/11 policies on people targeted because of immigration status, nationality, and religion.
Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War
Artemis Joukowsky
This official companion to the Ken Burns PBS documentary tells the little-known story of the Sharps, an ordinary couple that undertook the dangerous rescue and relief missions across war-torn Europe, saving the lives of refugees, political dissidents, and Jews on the eve of World War II.
What’s your News Years resolution? To read more books, of course! But where to start? Why not with our bestsellers? For your perusal, we’ve put together a list of our bestsellers this year. We are so thrilled that some of these titles that have appeared on best-of lists, have won and have been nominated for awards! You can get these titles, as well as all our other titles, for 30% off using code HOLIDAY30 through December 31st. You still have time. Check out our website.
Nancy Ellen Abrams, philosopher of science, lawyer, and lifelong atheist, explores a radically new way of thinking about God in A God That Could Be Real. The omniscient, omnipotent God that created the universe and plans what happens is incompatible with science, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a God that can comfort and empower us. In her paradigm-shifting blend of science, religion, and philosophy, Abrams imagines a higher power in the new science of emergence. God, she argues, is an “emergent phenomenon” that arises from the staggering complexity of humanity’s collective aspirations and is in dialogue with every individual. This God created the meaning of the universe and helps us change the world.
After a freak accident during a pick-up game of basketball in his junior year at Harvard, writer Howard Axelrod became permanently blind in his right eye. His perception of the world and of himself lost its sense of balance and solidity. The distance between how others saw him and how he saw himself widened into a gulf. Desperate for a stable sense of orientation, and reeling from a failed romance with a woman in Italy, Axelrod retreated to a jerry-rigged house in the Vermont woods, where he lived without a computer or television, and mostly without human interaction, for two years. His lyrical memoir The Point of Vanishing, named as one of Laura Miller’s 10 favorite books of 2015 on Slate.com and selected for many other best book lists, follows him in his search for identity and the stabilizing beauty of nature.
In his biography One Righteous Man, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Arthur Browne not only chronicles the life of Samuel Battle, an unjustly forgotten civil rights pioneer, he also creates an important and compelling social history of New York. Samuel Battle, the New York Police Department’s first ever black officer, broke the color line as early as the second decade of the twentieth century. The son of former slaves in the South, Battle led an against-all-odds journey to the top of his career, facing racism from his own colleagues, further hostility from criminals, and death threats. He had to be three times better than his white peers and many times more resilient. His smarts, strength, and outsized personality carried him through the trajectory of his career and the bustling cultural milieu of the first half of the twentieth century. One Righteous Man has been nominated for the NAACP Image Award.
Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s American Book Award-winning An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States has truly resonated with readers. Covering four centuries of Native Americans actively resisting expansion of the US empire, colonialism, and the attendant systemic injustices against them, it is the first book of its kind—a history of our country told from the perspective of Indigenous nations. It challenges the pervasive mythos of our colonial heritage and gives a voice to the participants in American history that for long stretches of time were silenced.
First published in 1959, psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning continues to be relevant to this day. Based on his own experiences in Nazi death camps and the stories of his patients, his memoir argues that while suffering is unavoidable, we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward. This year, his book helped late-night talk show host Jimmy Fallon through his ring avulsion accident and Chris Martin, lead vocalist of the English rock back Coldplay, through his breakup with actress Gwyneth Paltrow. Indeed, the enduring influence of Man’s Search for Meaning is broad and far-reaching.
Renowned as the ambassador for nonviolent protest and celebrated as one of the greatest orators in our history, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. isn’t usually recognized for his radical thinking. As Cornel West informs us in The Radical King from our King Legacy Book Series, the FBI and the US government knew just how radical he was. West edited and wrote an introduction to this collection that showcases Dr. King’s revolutionary vision: his identification with the poor, his crusade against global imperialism, his unapologetic opposition to the Vietnam War. The Radical King shows one of the most recognizable leaders of the civil rights movement to be every bit as radical as Malcolm X.
Sometimes Nature’s salvation comes in the form we least expect. In The New Wild, named one of the best books of 2015 by The Economist, environmental journalist Fred Pearce explains how invasive species are crucial in helping nature regenerate. His provocative exploration of this new ecology scrutinizes our misconceptions—and misgivings—about alien species. His travels across six continents show how the rewilding of the earth owes itself to the alien species that settle down and become model eco-citizens. In an era of climate change and widespread ecological damage, Pearce argues that we need to let go of our idea of reengineering ecosystems and embrace Nature’s helpful invaders.
Hailed by the Washington Post as one of the notable nonfiction books of 2015, Eileen Pollack’s The One Woman in the Room asks why science is still a boys’ club, even in the twenty-first century. Part memoir and part case study, her book compiles her personal experiences with those of young women today, and honestly explores the most recent findings about why women often choose not to pursue careers in STEM (sciences, technology, engineering, mathematics). Pollack herself, novelist, short story writer, and professor of creative writing, was one of the first two women to earn a Bachelor of Science in physics from Yale in 1978. Her book not only documents the subtle disincentives women in the sciences still face, but also provides hope for changing attitudes and behaviors in ways that could bring far more women in the fields where they’re underrepresented.
There is such a thing as too much medical care, which can become excessive, ineffective, and sometimes harmful. Dr. H. Gilbert Welch’s provocative Less Medicine, More Health diagnoses seven widespread assumptions that have convinced the American public that seeking medical care is one of the most important steps to maintain wellness. Drawing from fascinating stories and compelling data, Dr. Welch proves that it’s not always better to fix the problem, that sooner (or newer) isn’t always better, that getting more information can actually be detrimental. Too many people are made to worry about diseases and afflictions they don’t have. Medical care, surprisingly, is not well correlated with good health. Dr. Welch’s book could save you money and, more importantly, improve your health outcome.
Chanukah begins at sundown tonight. Though it was fun to light the first candle while also carving the Thanksgiving turkey in 2013, I think it is safe to say that, for those who include gift-giving as a part of their holiday celebration, it’s nice to have a few extra shopping days this year.
As if the extra time weren’t helpful enough, I’m going to make shopping even easier, dear blog readers, by compiling a list of eight reading recommendations (one for each night!) that would make wonderful gifts for the book lovers in your life.
My selections fall into three favorite categories—health, food, and Judaism—each sure to ignite lively conversations between family and friends.
And, as a special treat, I’m including my favorite Chanukah recipe for “Bourbon Pear and Apple Sauce.” It’s the perfect, grown-up accompaniment to latkes.
Happy holidays, everyone!
READING!
HEALTH AND MEDICINE:
The Good Doctor: A Father, a Son, and the Evolution of Medical Ethics
By Barron H. Lerner
This book is both a thoughtful look at the evolution of modern patient care, and the heartwarming story of a dedicated and beloved doctor, as told by his son (also a doctor). The New York Times called it, “Exquisitely insightful.”
Marketplace of the Marvelous: The Strange Origins of Modern Medicine
By Erika Janik
An entertaining look back at 19th century quacks, snake-oil salesmen, and charlatans, whose bizarre cures and remedies laid the groundwork for modern medicine.
What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine
By Danielle Ofri, MD.
The author examines how a doctor’s feelings of shame, fear, anger, anxiety, empathy, and even love, can impact and influence patient care. The Boston Globe called the book, “Rich and deeply insightful. . . . A fascinating journey into the heart and mind of a physician struggling to do the best for her patients while navigating an imperfect health care system.”
FOOD AND FOOD CULTURE:
White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf
By Aaron Bobrow-Strain
Thoroughly entertaining and meticulously researched, this book explores America’s century-long love-hate relationship with white bread, the companies that make it, and the people who buy it. It’s a smart and accessible look at food politics.
The Lost Art of Feeding Kids: What Italy Taught Me about Why Children Need Real Food
By Jeannie Marshall
A journalist living in Italy explores the many ways that food culture and traditions are being lost to an over-processed world. Though there are no specific recipes, the reader is introduced to a variety of meals and ingredients that will have your mouth watering and inspire you to get back into the kitchen.
JUDAISM and JUDAISM-ADJACENT:
Being Both: Embracing Two Religions in One Interfaith Family
By Susan Katz Miller
Almost a third of all married Americans have a spouse from another religion, and there are now more children in Christian-Jewish interfaith families than in families with two Jewish parents. This book explores and celebrates the growing number of American interfaith families, where parents are choosing to raise their children in two religions, instead of picking one, or giving up on both.
The Crooked Mirror: A Memoir of Polish-Jewish Reconciliation
By Louise Steinman
In Steinman’s beautifully written literary memoir she travels to Poland to explore the past, and uses her own family’s experiences as the lens to explore how Jews of Polish descent are trying to reconnect with their families’ Polish roots today.
Man’s Search For Meaning (new Gift Edition)
By Viktor E. Frankl
First published in 1959, this book has sold more than four million copies, and continues to be a source of hope to readers. Part memoir, self-help manual, Frankl writes about surviving three years in Nazi concentration camps, and uses his training as a psychiatrist to reflect on how people can transcend suffering and find meaning in their lives. O, the Oprah Magazine called the book, "[O]ne of the most significant books of the 20th century.”
EATING!
Bourbon Pear and Apple Sauce for Chanukah
(makes 6-8 servings, but can easily be doubled)
Ingredients:
2 tsp grated ginger, fresh or frozen
2 tbs butter
1/3 cup bourbon (you can go up to a ½ cup if you want to get crazy)
6 tbs brown sugar
4 large apples peeled, cored, and sliced (not chopped)—softer apples, McIntosh or Cortland work best
2 large or 3 small pears, ripe or semi-ripe, cored and sliced
1/2 cup water, or as needed
Directions:
Peel, core, and slice apples and pears. Set aside. Set stove to medium high.
In an enamel pot, melt the butter and then sauté the ginger until fragrant (2-3 minutes). Add brown sugar and cook until dissolved, stirring frequently. Add in the bourbon and cook until reduced by half.
Add in apples and pear, spreading them evenly along the bottom of the pot Bring the ingredients to a bubble.
Reduce heat to low and simmer uncovered for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally and breaking apart fruit as it softens. Add water, as needed, to thin out the consistency and keep the sauce from sticking to the pot.
Mash with a potato masher to desired consistency. Let cool slightly and serve warm alongside potato pancakes.
Caitlin Meyer is a senior publicist at Beacon Press. Meyer previously worked at Facing History and Ourselves as Public Relations and Communications Manager before joining Beacon in 2008. She is a graduate of Emerson College.
When Francine and David Wheeler lost their son Ben in the Sandy Hook tragedy nearly two years ago, one book they turned to for guidance was Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Speaking with Oprah Winfrey last year, David Wheeler said he connected with Frankl’s message because “so much of what he writes resonates with me . . . . Because man’s salvation—and he means that not only in the religious sense, but actual survival—is found in and through love.” The Wheelers were able to take that spirit of love, and turn it into force that nurtured them through immense grief. It is a story as powerful as it is familiar to followers of Frankl’s teachings.
Fifty-five years after the original US publication of Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl’s timeless wisdom has helped generations of readers cope with hardship and overcome adversity, and his life-affirming vision continues to resonate today. In 1991, the book was listed by the Library of Congress as one of the top ten most influential books in the US, while more recently, Amazon listed it as one of its 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime. Writing in The Atlantic, Emily Esfahani Smith notes that Frankl, an Austrian Jew who survived a prolonged ordeal in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps, devised wisdom there, “in the middle of unimaginable human suffering, [that] is just as relevant now as it was then.”
Like the Wheelers and many others who come to Frankl’s writings, Frankl himself experienced devastating personal loss. In a letter written to friends shortly after his liberation, Frankl reveals the extent of his grief:
I have only sad news to communicate: shortly before my departure from Munich, I learned that my mother was sent to Auschwitz a week after me. What that means, you know all too well. And I had scarcely arrived in Vienna when I was told that my wife is also dead . . . . So now I’m all alone. Whoever has not shared a similar fate cannot understand me. I am terribly tired, terribly sad, terribly lonely. I have nothing more to hope for and nothing more to fear.
Remarkably in the same letter, Frankl not only finds a way to carry on, but reasserts his belief in attaining meaning at all cost:
I take nothing away from my former affirmation of life, when I experience the things I have described. On the contrary, if I had not had this rock-solid, positive view of life—what would have become of me in these last weeks, in those months in the camp? But I now see things in a larger dimension. I see increasingly that life is so very meaningful, that in suffering and even in failure there must still be meaning.
To celebrate Frankl’s enduring legacy, and the powerful impact his ideas still bear, we have collected several photographs that provide a glimpse into Frankl’s extraordinary life—both public and personal.
ABOUT VIKTOR FRANKL
Born in Vienna in 1905, Viktor E. Frankl earned an MD and a PhD from the University of Vienna. He published more than thirty books on theoretical and clinical psychology and served as a visiting professor and lecturer at Harvard, Stanford, and elsewhere. Frankl died in 1997.
Read more about Viktor Frankl, and the new gift edition of Man’s Search for Meaning from which these photos are excerpted, on our website. For further information on logotherapy and other works by Viktor Frankl, visit www.viktorfrankl.org.
Viktor Frankl, the psychotherapist and author of the hugely influential book Man’s Search for Meaning, died seventeen years ago this week.
Frankl had already begun to establish himself as a prominent neurologist and psychiatrist in Vienna—heir to the legacies of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler—when the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938. For a time, Frankl was able to maintain his practice as the anti-Semitic climate continued to grow in Austria. But in September 1942, he and his wife and parents were arrested and deported to Theresienstadt, the “model ghetto” and concentration camp where Frankl’s father would later perish. That would begin a tragic odyssey for Frankl, who was transferred with his wife and mother to Auschwitz in 1944. Only Frankl would survive.
Originally intending to publish his book anonymously, Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Meaning in just nine days shortly after his liberation. In it, he details the initial psychological responses the prisoners experienced upon entering the camp—shock, apathy, and depersonalization—and for those that survived, their readjustment to the world combined with deep-seated bitterness and disillusionment. Yet Frankl argues that life never ceases to have meaning, even in suffering and death. “Frankl’s survival,” writes William J. Winslade in the book’s afterword, was a “combined result of his will to live, his instinct for self-preservation, some generous acts of human kindness, and shrewdness.”
The book was an immediate success, and a triumph for Beacon Press, who published the first English-language edition in 1959. Man’s Search for Meaning has since sold more than 12 million copies in over twenty-four different languages, and the Library of Congress has heralded it as “one of the ten most influential books in America.” Now, a gift edition coming in October promises to bring new appreciation for this enduring classic, and fitting remembrance for a remarkable man. This hardcover edition will feature previously unpublished letters, speeches, and essays (some translated here in English for the first time), as well as an eight-page insert showing rare photographs from Frankl’s personal and professional life.
From a heartbreaking letter Frankl wrote his friends in 1945 upon his release from the camps detailing his anguish over the death of his wife and parents, to a memorial speech he delivered in Vienna to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Hitler’s invasion in 1988, the new materials provide an even greater understanding of the man who wrote that “life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones.”
For Viktor Frankl, “life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths,” but even more than that, it revealed to him that “the salvation of man is through love and in love.”
With a new school year just around the corner, students are stocking up on supplies and teachers are polishing their curriculum plans. To help the latter, Beacon offers guides to help in teaching many of our most popular titles. Find these and other teachers guides at our Scribd page and at Beacon.org.
Psst: if you're not a teacher, these guides can still be great tools for reading and comprehending some great books!
Geoffrey Canada
Teachers' Guide: Fist Stick Knife Gun
Teacher Patricia Rigley shares ideas for lesson plans, discussion questions, and sample assignments.
Long before the avalanche of praise for his work—from Oprah Winfrey, from President Bill Clinton, from President Barack Obama—long before he became known for his talk show appearances, Members Project spots, and documentaries like Waiting for "Superman", Geoffrey Canada was a small boy growing up scared on the mean streets of the South Bronx. His childhood world was one where "sidewalk boys" learned the codes of the block and were ranked through the rituals of fist, stick, and knife. Then the streets changed, and the stakes got even higher. In his candid and riveting memoir, Canada relives a childhood in which violence stalked every street corner.
A Teachers' Guide for Geoffrey Canada's Fist Stick Knife Gun by Beacon Press
Viktor E. Frankl
Teachers' Guide: Man's Search for Meaning
High school teacher Aimee Young provides ideas for teaching Frankl's classic work in different contexts; resources for teaching about the Holocaust; classroom discussion questions, and more.
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.
At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, Man's Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. A 1991 reader survey for the Library of Congress that asked readers to name a "book that made a difference in your life" found Man's Search for Meaning among the ten most influential books in America.
A teachers' guide for Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning by Beacon Press
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Teachers' Guide: Why We Can't Wait
Kimberly N. Parker, Ph.D., provides discussion questions, critical thinking activities, and resources for teaching this vital document of American Civil Rights History.
Often applauded as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s most incisive and eloquent book, Why We Can’t Wait recounts the Birmingham campaign in vivid detail, while underscoring why 1963 was such a crucial year for the civil rights movement. During this time, Birmingham, Alabama, was perhaps the most racially segregated city in the United States, but the campaign launched by Fred Shuttlesworth, King, and others demonstrated to the world the power of nonviolent direct action. King examines the history of the civil rights struggle and the tasks that future generations must accomplish to bring about full equality. The book also includes the extraordinary “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which King wrote in April of 1963.
A Teachers' Guide for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Why We Can't Wait by Beacon Press
Yom HaShoah began this past Sunday at sundown, beginning Holocaust Remembrance Week. The following books explore the Holocaust and its impact through different perspectives: from inside the camps to the Jewish neighborhoods in New York City, recounting personal history and contemplating how to move forward from tragedy.
by Lillian Faderman
A story of love, war, and life as a Jewish immigrant in the squalid factories and lively dance halls of New York's Garment District in the 1930s, My Mother's Wars is the memoir Lillian Faderman's mother was never able to write. The daughter delves into her mother's past to tell the story of a Latvian girl who left her village for America with dreams of a life on the stage and encountered the realities of her new world: the battles she was forced to fight as a woman, an immigrant worker, and a Jew with family left behind in Hitler's deadly path.
The story begins in 1914: Mary, the girl who will become Lillian Faderman's mother, just seventeen and swept up with vague ambitions to be a dancer, travels alone to America, where her half-sister in Brooklyn takes her in. She finds a job in the garment industry and a shop friend who teaches her the thrills of dance halls and the cheap amusements open to working-class girls. This dazzling life leaves Mary distracted and her half-sister and brother-in-law scandalized that she has become a "good-time gal." They kick her out of their home, an event with consequences Mary will regret for the rest of her life.
Eighteen years later, still barely scraping by as a garment worker and unmarried at thirty-five, Mary falls madly in love and has a torrid romance with a man who will never marry her, but who will father Lillian Faderman before he disappears from their lives. America is in the midst of the Depression, Hitler is coming to power in Europe, and New York's garment workers are just beginning to unionize. Mary makes tentative steps to join, despite her lover's angry opposition. As National Socialism engulfs Europe, Mary realizes she must find a way to get her family out of Latvia, and she spends frenetic months chasing vague promises and false rumors of hope. Pregnant again, after having submitted to two wrenching back-room abortions, and still unmarried, Mary faces both single motherhood and the devastating possibility of losing her entire Eastern European family.
Drawing on family stories and documents, as well as her own tireless research, Lillian Faderman has reconstructed an engrossing and essential chapter in the history of women, of workers, of Jews, and of the Holocaust as immigrants experienced it from American shores.
Buy from Beacon Press | Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Indiebound
Watch Lillian Faderman read about her mother's attempts to rescue her family from the Holocaust
by Viktor Frankl
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.
At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, Man's Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. A 1991 reader survey for the Library of Congress that asked readers to name a "book that made a difference in your life" found Man's Search for Meaning among the ten most influential books in America.
Read the Teachers' Guide for Man's Search for Meaning
Buy from Beacon Press | Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Indiebound
by Rena Kornreich Gelissen and Heather Dune Macadam
Sent to Auschwitz on the first Jewish transport, Rena Kornreich survived the Nazi death camps for over three years. While there she was reunited with her sister Danka. Each day became a struggle to fulfill the promise Rena made to her mother when the family was forced to split apart--a promise to take care of her sister.
One of the few Holocaust memoirs about the lives of women in the camps, Rena's Promise is a compelling story of the fleeting human connections that fostered determination and made survival a possibility. From the bonds between mothers, daughters, and sisters, to the links between prisoners, and even prisoners and guards, Rena's Promise reminds us of the humanity and hope that survives inordinate inhumanity.
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Visit the Rena's Promise website.
Visit the Rena's Promise Facebook page.
Follow Heather Dune Macadam on Twitter.
by Cordelia Edvardson (translated by Joel Agee)
This unusual memoir is the story of a self-described "dark, pudgy, mean, defiant little brat," born in Berlin in 1929 of a half-Jewish mother and a Catholic father and sent to a concentration camp almost, it seems, as a bureaucratic formality. Raised Catholic, Cordelia Edvardson had little in common with her fellow inmates, some of whom despised her as a "German swine." Singled out for punishment, she was selected to act as a secretary for the monstrous "angel of Auschwitz," Josef Mengele. Impressionistic and naïve, Edvardson's third-person memoir retains a highly effective childlike quality ("she had learned that anything can happen, no matter what and no matter when, and for inexplicable reasons") that holds even in the most horrifying episodes. After World War II ended, Edvardson moved to Sweden, where this book was first published. She then converted to Judaism and moved to Israel.
Read Cordelia Edvardson's obituary at the Jerusalem Post.
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Today's must read: The Atlantic posted this piece by Emily Esfahani Smith on the debate over happiness vs. a meaningful life, using the work of Viktor Frankl as inspiration:
In 1991, the Library of Congress and Book-of-the-Month Club listedMan's Search for Meaning as one of the 10 most influential books in the United States. It has sold millions of copies worldwide. Now, over twenty years later, the book's ethos -- its emphasis on meaning, the value of suffering, and responsibility to something greater than the self -- seems to be at odds with our culture, which is more interested in the pursuit of individual happiness than in the search for meaning. "To the European," Frankl wrote, "it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.'"
According to Gallup , the happiness levels of Americans are at a four-year high -- as is, it seems, the number of best-selling books with the word "happiness" in their titles. At this writing, Gallup also reports that nearly 60 percent all Americans today feel happy without a lot of stress or worry. On the other hand, according to the Center for Disease Control, about 4 out of 10 Americans have not discovered a satisfying life purpose. Forty percent either do not think their lives have a clear sense of purpose or are neutral about whether their lives have purpose. Nearly a quarter of Americans feel neutral or do not have a strong sense of what makes their lives meaningful. Research has shown that having purpose and meaning in life increases overall well-being and life satisfaction, improves mental and physical health, enhances resiliency, enhances self-esteem, and decreases the chances of depression. On top of that, the single-minded pursuit of happiness is ironically leaving people less happy, according to recent research. "It is the very pursuit of happiness," Frankl knew, "that thwarts happiness."
Did you unwrap an e-reader this holiday season? Or did you treat yourself to one? (Don't worry, we won't judge.) Here are Beacon's most popular e-book titles for 2012 along with a few suggestions for titles sure to be on next year's bestseller list. Download one or two and see why they've inspired people to click and read.
Kindle | Nook | Kobo | Apple iBookstore
View the Table of Contents. Read the Foreword. Online Teacher's Guide
At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, Man's Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. A 1991 reader survey for the Library of Congress that asked readers to name a "book that made a difference in your life" found Man's Search for Meaning among the ten most influential books in America.
"One of the great books of our time."
—Harold S. Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People
"One of the outstanding contributions to psychological thought in the last fifty years."
—Carl R. Rogers (1959)
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Read the first two chapters on Scribd.
View the reading group guide: HTML or PDF.
View the discussion guide for UU communities: HTML or PDF.
Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.
"Octavia Butler is a writer who will be with us for a long, long time, and Kindred is that rare magical artifact . . . the novel one returns to, again and again."
—Harlan Ellison
"One cannot finish Kindred without feeling changed. It is a shattering work of art with much to say about love, hate, slavery, and racial dilemmas, then and now."
—Sam Frank, Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
"In Kindred, Octavia Butler creates a road for the impossible and a balm for the unbearable. It is everything the literature of science fiction can be."
—Walter Mosley
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In this beautiful and lucid guide, Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh offers gentle anecdotes and practical exercise as a means of learning the skills of mindfulness--being awake and fully aware. From washing the dishes to answering the phone to peeling an orange, he reminds us that each moment holds within it an opportunity to work toward greater self-understanding and peacefulness.
"Thich Nhat Hanh's ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
"He has immense presence and both personal and Buddhist authority. If there is a candidate for 'Living Buddha' on earth today, it is Thich Nhat Hanh."
-Roshi Richard Baker, author of Original Mind: The Practice of Zen in the West
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View the teachers' guide: PDF or HTML
View the readers' guide: HTML or community guide:PDF
A breakaway bestseller since its first printing, All Souls takes us deep into Michael Patrick MacDonald's Southie, the proudly insular neighborhood with the highest concentration of white poverty in America. Rocked by Whitey Bulger's crime schemes and busing riots, MacDonald's Southie is populated by sharply hewn characters like his Ma, a miniskirted, accordion-playing single mother who endures the deaths of four of her eleven children. Nearly suffocated by his grief and his community's code of silence, MacDonald tells his family story here with gritty but moving honesty.
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Read an excerpt on Scribd
In The Cure for Everything, health-policy expert and fitness enthusiast Timothy Caulfield debunks the mythologies of the one-step health crazes, reveals the truths behind misleading data, and discredits the charlatans in a quest to sort out real, reliable health advice. He takes us along as he navigates the maze of facts, findings, and fears associated with emerging health technologies, drugs, and disease-prevention strategies, and he presents an impressively researched, accessible take on the production and spread of information in the health sciences.
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Read an exerpt on Scribd
Drawing on twenty-five years of medical practice and research, Dr. H. Gilbert Welch and his colleagues, Dr. Lisa M. Schwartz and Dr. Steven Woloshin, have studied the effects of screenings and presumed preventative measures for disease and "pre-disease." Welch argues that while many Americans believe that more diagnosis is always better, the medical, social, and economic ramifications of unnecessary diagnoses are in fact seriously detrimental. Unnecessary surgeries, medication side effects, debilitating anxiety, and the overwhelming price tag on health care are only a few of the potential harms of overdiagnosis.
Kindle | Nook | Kobo | Apple iBookstore
When Hella Winston began talking with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn for her doctoral dissertation in sociology, she was surprised to be covertly introduced to Hasidim unhappy with their highly restrictive way of life and sometimes desperately struggling to escape it. Unchosen tells the stories of these "rebel" Hasidim, serious questioners who long for greater personal and intellectual freedom than their communities allow. In her new Preface, Winston discusses the passionate reactions the book has elicited among Hasidim and non-Hasidim alike.
"Winston . . . builds fascinating case studies, inviting readers into her interviewees' conflicted, and often painful, lives . . . show[ing] us a Hasidic underworld where large families and a lack of secular education have resulted in extreme poverty and some serious at-risk behavior among youth. Her story of courage and intellectual rebellion will inspire anyone who has ever felt like a religious outcast."
-Publishers Weekly, starred review
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Read an excerpt.
Readers' Guide for Dark Tide
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Joe Mackall has lived surrounded by the Swartzentruber Amish community of Ashland County, Ohio, for over sixteen years. They are the most traditional and insular of all the Amish sects: the Swartzentrubers live without gas, electricity, or indoor plumbing; without lights on their buggies or cushioned chairs in their homes; and without rumspringa, the recently popularized "running-around time" that some Amish sects allow their sixteen-year-olds.
Over the years, Mackall has developed a steady relationship with the Shetler family (Samuel and Mary, their nine children, and their extended family). Plain Secrets tells the Shetlers' story over these years, using their lives to paint a portrait of Swartzentruber Amish life and mores. During this time, Samuel's nephew Jonas finally rejects the strictures of the Amish way of life for good, after two failed attempts to leave, and his bright young daughter reaches the end of school for Amish children: the eighth grade. But Plain Secrets is also the story of the unusual friendship between Samuel and Joe. Samuel is quietly bemused—and, one suspects, secretly delighted—at Joe's ignorance of crops and planting, carpentry and cattle. He knows Joe is planning to write a book about the family, and yet he allows him a glimpse of the tensions inside this intensely private community.
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Read an excerpt on Scribd
“I was born male and now I’ve got medical and government documents that say I’m female—but I don’t call myself a woman, and I know I’m not a man. . . .”
Scientologist, husband and father, tranny, sailor, slave, playwright, dyke, gender outlaw—these are just a few words which have defined Kate Bornstein during her extraordinary life. For the first time, it all comes together inA Queer and Pleasant Danger, Kate Bornstein’s stunningly original memoir that’s set to change lives and enrapture readers.
Wickedly funny and disarmingly honest, this is Bornstein’s most intimate book yet. With wisdom, wit, and an unwavering resolution to tell the truth (“I must not tell lies”), Bornstein shares her story: from a nice Jewish boy growing up in New Jersey to a strappingly handsome lieutenant of the Church of Scientology’s Sea flagship vessel, and later to 1990s Seattle, where she becomes a rising star in the lesbian community. In between there are wives and lovers, heartbreak and triumph, bridges mended and broken, and a journey of self-discovery that will mesmerize readers.
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Read an excerpt on Scribd
From the time she is nine years old, biking to the farmland outside her suburban home, where she discovers a disquieting world of sleeping cows and a "Private Way" full of the wondrous and creepy creatures of the wild-spiders, deer, moles, chipmunks, and foxes-Lauren Slater finds in animals a refuge from her troubled life. As she matures, her attraction to animals strengthens and grows more complex and compelling even as her family is falling to pieces around her. Slater spends a summer at horse camp, where she witnesses the alternating horrific and loving behavior of her instructor toward the animals in her charge and comes to question the bond that so often develops between females and their equines. Slater's questions follow her to a foster family, her own parents no longer able to care for her. A pet raccoon, rescued from a hole in the wall, teaches her how to feel at home away from home. The two Shiba Inu puppies Slater adopts years later, against her husband's will, grow increasingly important to her as she ages and her family begins to grow.
The $60,000 Dog is Lauren Slater's intimate manifesto on the unique, invaluable, and often essential contributions animals make to our lives. As a psychologist, a reporter, an amateur naturalist, and above all an enormously gifted writer, she draws us into the stories of her passion for animals that are so much more than pets. She describes her intense love for the animals in her life without apology and argues, finally, that the works of Darwin and other evolutionary biologists prove that, when it comes to worth, animals are equal, and in some senses even superior, to human beings.
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Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of black life and black thought at the dawn of the civil rights movement and as the movement slowly gained strength through the words of one of the most captivating essayists and foremost intellectuals of that era. Writing as an artist, activist, and social critic, Baldwin probes the complex condition of being black in America. With a keen eye, he examines everything from the significance of the protest novel to the motives and circumstances of the many black expatriates of the time, from his home in "The Harlem Ghetto" to a sobering "Journey to Atlanta."
Notes of a Native Son inaugurated Baldwin as one of the leading interpreters of the dramatic social changes erupting in the United States in the twentieth century, and many of his observations have proven almost prophetic. His criticism on topics such as the paternalism of white progressives or on his own friend Richard Wright's work is pointed and unabashed. He was also one of the few writing on race at the time who addressed the issue with a powerful mixture of outrage at the gross physical and political violence against black citizens and measured understanding of their oppressors, which helped awaken a white audience to the injustices under their noses. Naturally, this combination of brazen criticism and unconventional empathy for white readers won Baldwin as much condemnation as praise.
Notes is the book that established Baldwin's voice as a social critic, and it remains one of his most admired works. The essays collected here create a cohesive sketch of black America and reveal an intimate portrait of Baldwin's own search for identity as an artist, as a black man, and as an American.
Pre-order this title sure to be a hit in 2013
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Read an excerpt on Scribd
Melanie Hoffert longs for her North Dakota childhood home, with its grain trucks and empty main streets. A land where she imagines standing at the bottom of the ancient lake that preceded the prairie: crop rows become the patterned sand ripples of the lake floor; trees are the large alien plants reaching for the light; and the sky is the water’s vast surface, reflecting the sun. Like most rural kids, she followed the out-migration pattern to a better life. The prairie is a hard place to stay—particularly if you are gay, and your home state is the last to know. For Hoffert, returning home has not been easy. When the farmers ask if she’s found a “fella,” rather than explain that—actually—she dates women, she stops breathing and changes the subject. Meanwhile, as time passes, her hometown continues to lose more buildings to decay, growing to resemble the mouth of an old woman missing teeth. This loss prompts Hoffert to take a break from the city and spend a harvest season at her family’s farm. While home, working alongside her dad in the shop and listening to her mom warn, “Honey, you do not want to be a farmer,” Hoffert meets the people of the prairie. Her stories about returning home and exploring abandoned towns are woven into a coming-of-age tale about falling in love, making peace with faith, and belonging to a place where neighbors are as close as blood but are often unable to share their deepest truths.
In this evocative memoir, Hoffert offers a deeply personal and poignant meditation on land and community, taking readers on a journey of self-acceptance and reconciliation.
This week, our authors' words have been quoted, posted, and commented on throughout the online community on a wide range of urgent topics. They're going viral and we invite you to continue the conversation. Here are a few highlights:
Mark Hyman's book, Until It Hurts, is a central topic for Jane Brody's recent article in the New York Times. Documenting the history and facts of overworked young athletes, Brody's piece delves into the Phelps family and other fascinating examples of the abuses of our obsession with youth sports.
Author David Chura sits down with Midweek Politics to discuss the inspiration for his book I Don't Wish Nobody to Have a Life Like Mine, kids trapped in a cycle of crime and punishment. Catch his two-part filmed radio interview here and here.
From its highly lucrative revenue to its inherent racial biases, the adult film industry continues to thrive and affect many. Marie Claire addresses five shocking facts from Gail Dines's book, Pornland, set to release this July.
For his in-depth analysis of the Indian emperor, Ashoka, Bruce Rich's book To Uphold the World is mentioned in American Buddhist Perspective, a popular blog on "Buddhism, philosophy, ecology, life, teaching & politics."
In an interview with WBUR, U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner is described as "push[ing] for better science, better evidence and convictions that she can have more faith in." Gertner's new book, In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate, is due spring 2011.
Andrew Sullivan, blogger for The Atlantic's The Daily Dish, quoted Salon.com's interview with Amie Klempnauer Miller, author of She Looks Just Like You. Daring to ask the question "so what's my role here?" as a nonbiological lesbian mother, Miller expresses her opinion on maternity leave and her connection with stay-at-home dads.
In an article on Grist correlating falling birthrates to sexism, Fred Pearce author of The Coming Population Crash, is quoted for his research on the conservative ideals of Italy and the Vatican versus the flexibility of Swedish gender roles.
Finally, we close honoring a writer whose teachings still inspire conversation today. In a 1972 lecture titled "Why to Believe in Others" (recently posted on Ted.com), Viktor Frankl, author of Man's Search for Meaning, expresses the psychiatry behind reaching human potential through his use of insight and humor. Frankl states with zeal: "If we take man as he is, we make him worse; but if we take man as he should be, we make him capable of becoming what he can be!"