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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 those he treated 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 by the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club 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.

Born in Vienna in 1905 Viktor E. Frankl earned an M.D. and a Ph.D. 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. In 1977 a fellow survivor, Joseph Fabry, founded the Viktor Frankl Institute of Logotherapy. Frankl died in 1997.

Harold S. Kushner is rabbi emeritus at Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts, and the author of several best-selling books, including When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

William J. Winslade is a philosopher, lawyer, and psychoanalyst at the University of Texas Medical School in Galveston..
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On a February day in 2008, Forrest Church sent a letter to the members of his congregation, informing them that he had terminal cancer; his life would now be measured in months, not years. In that remarkable letter, he wrote: "In more than one respect, I feel very lucky." He went on to promise that he would sum up his thoughts on the topics that had been so pervasive in his work—love and death—in a final book.

Church has been justly celebrated as a writer of American history, but his works of spiritual guidance have been especially valued for their insight and inspiration. As a minister, Church defined religion as "our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die." The goal of life, he tells us "is to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for." This last book in his impressive oeuvre is imbued with ideas and exemplars for achieving that goal. The stories he offers—drawn from his own experiences and from the lives of his friends, family, and parishioners—are both engrossing and enlightening. Forrest Church's final work may be his most lasting gift to his readers.

"Forrest Church, a deeply spiritual but always practical visionary, is a minister to us all with this moving and instructive book on the lessons of life and death. A lovely, important book."
—Tom Brokaw

"Truly a gift, one that will echo in my own preaching and teaching, and in my own life as well. Like Moses gazing at the Promised Land he would not enter, Forrest Church blesses us with his eloquence, his faith, and, mostly, his love."
—Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People

"Love & Death is transformative. I was not prepared for the power of this splendid, soaring book. It totally captured me."
—Sylvia Ann Hewlett, author of Creating a Life

"In the midst of an extremity for which there is no euphemism—the prospect of his own imminent death—Forrest Church has written a book that defies the usual adjectives. It is poignant, moving, candid, and eloquent; but it is also so much more. Love & Death, a meditation on the end of life, is really a book about life—a book that shows us how to love ourselves and others, how to know God, how to live. I read it with inexpressible gratitude."
—James Atlas, author of My Life in the Middle Ages

"Forrest Church is one of our great prophetic intellectuals and compassionate voices. His poignant and wise words on the two ultimate realities of our journey—love and death—reveal his grand courage and vision."
—Cornel West, author of Race Matters

"This beautiful book by a matchless preacher, poet, and author is Forrest Church in his finest hour."
—Senator George McGovern.
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There have been more than 250,000 copies sold of this famous introduction to Buddhist meditation. Thich Nhat Hanh's gentle stories and exercises show us how to use the practice of.
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Translated by Mahadev Desai and with a New Preface
The only authorized American edition
Mohandas K. Gandhi is one of the most inspiring figures of our time. In his classic autobiography he recounts the story of his life and how he developed his concept of active nonviolent resistance, which propelled the Indian struggle for independence and countless other nonviolent struggles of the twentieth century.

In a new foreword, noted peace expert and teacher Sissela Bok urges us to adopt Gandhi's "attitude of experimenting, of tesing what will and will not bear close scrutiny, what can and cannot be adapted to new circumstances," in order to bring about change in our own lives and communities. All royalties earned on this book are paid to the Navajivan Trust, founded by Gandhi, for use in carrying on his work..
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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 those he treated 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 by the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club 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.

Born in Vienna in 1905 Viktor E. Frankl earned an M.D. and a Ph.D. 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. In 1977 a fellow survivor, Joseph Fabry, founded the Viktor Frankl Institute of Logotherapy. Frankl died in 1997.

Harold S. Kushner is rabbi emeritus at Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts, and the author of several best-selling books, including When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

William J. Winslade is a philosopher, lawyer, and psychoanalyst at the University of Texas Medical School in Galveston..
Price: $6.66 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Heather is pale and thin, seventeen and pregnant with twins when Patricia Harman begins to care for her. Over the course of the next five seasons Patsy will see Heather through the loss of both babies and their father. She will also care for her longtime patient Nila, pregnant for the eighth time and trying to make a new life without her abusive husband. And Patsy will try to find some comfort to offer Holly, whose teenage daughter struggles with bulimia. She will help Rebba learn to find pleasure in her body and help Kaz transition into a new body. She will do noisy battle with the IRS in the very few moments she has to spare, and wage her own private battle with uterine cancer.

Patricia Harman, a nurse-midwife, manages a women's health clinic with her husband, Tom, an ob-gyn, in West Virginia—a practice where patients open their hearts, where they find care and sometimes refuge. Patsy's memoir juxtaposes the tales of these women with her own story of keeping a small medical practice solvent and coping with personal challenges. Her patients range from Appalachian mothers who haven't had the opportunity to attend secondary school to Ph.D.'s on cell phones. They come to Patsy's small, windowless exam room and sit covered only by blue cotton gowns, and their infinitely varied stories are in equal parts heartbreaking and uplifting. The nurse-midwife tells of their lives over the course of a year and a quarter, a time when her outwardly successful practice is in deep financial trouble, when she is coping with malpractice threats, confronting her own serious medical problems, and fearing that her thirty-year marriage may be on the verge of collapse. In the words of Jacqueline Mitchard, this memoir, "utterly true and lyrical as any novel . . . should be a little classic."

"The many moving stories of the women that Patricia Harman cares for as a nurse-midwife add up to a remarkable account of a life spent listening, helping, and taking care. Inviting us into her clinic in rural West Virginia, she shows us the joys and sorrows of listening to women's stories and attending to their bodies, and she leads us through the complicated life of a healer who is profoundly shaped by her patients and their journeys."
—Perri Klass, author of The Mercy Rule and Treatment Kind and Fair

"Nobody writes with more candor and compassion about women's woes and women's triumphs than nurse-midwife Patricia Harman. Her behind-the-exam-room-door memoir is a bittersweet valentine to every woman—young and old—who has ever donned that thin blue cotton gown, to every dedicated healthcare provider, and to every husband-wife medical team. I couldn't put The Blue Cotton Gown down."
—Sara Pritchard, author of Crackpots and Lately

"This luminescent, ruthlessly authentic, humane, and brilliantly written account of a midwife in rough-hewn Appalachia—a passionate healer plying her art and struggling to live a life of spirit—stands as a model for all of us, doctors and patients alike, of how to offer good care."
—Samuel Shem, M.D., author of The House of God, Mount Misery, and The Spirit of the Place

"Patricia Harman has opened for us a window, a glimpse into her life as a midwife and the lives of those women who have entered her exam room. And as the touch of her careful and caring hands learned the story of their bodies, into her heart they poured their life stories—stories of joy, of sorrow, those bright with promise, those dimmed with grief and pain."
—Sheila Kay Adams, author of My Old True Love

"As the mother of seven children and veteran of eight pregnancy losses, I knew when I ran my bath that I would be unable to resist Patricia Harman's memoir of midwifery. What I didn't realize was that it would cause me, a sensible person, to get into the bath with one sock still on and rise from it when the candle was gone and the water cold. Utterly true and lyrical as any novel, Harman's book should be a little classic."
—Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean and Cage of Stars

"The Blue Cotton Gown is a seductive read! Read it to understand the fragile thinness between the care-giver and the cared-for. Patsy Harman does not shy away from her narrative. She does not shy away from controversial topics. She grabs the reader by the literary throat."
—Judy Schaefer, editor of The Poetry of Nursing.
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"Red bird came all winter / firing up the landscape / as nothing else could." So begins Mary Oliver's twelfth book of poetry, and the image of that fiery bird stays with the reader, appearing in unexpected forms and guises until, in a postscript, he explains himself: "For truly the body needs / a song, a spirit, a soul. And no less, to make this work, / the soul has need of a body, / and I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable / beauty of heaven / where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes, / and this is why I have been sent, to teach this to your heart."

This collection of sixty-one new poems, the most ever in a single volume of Oliver's work, includes an entirely new direction in the poet's work: a cycle of eleven linked love poems—a dazzling achievement. As in all of Mary Oliver's work, the pages overflow with her keen observation of the natural world and her gratitude for its gifts, for the many people she has loved in her seventy years, as well as for her disobedient dog, Percy. But here, too, the poet's attention turns with ferocity to the degradation of the Earth and the denigration of the peoples of the world by those who love power. Red Bird is unquestionably Mary Oliver's most wide-ranging volume to date.

"Mary Oliver has done it again. She has assembled a collection of poems that is moving, intense and evocative in its engagement of the natural world. Yet this latest book by the Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winner is distinctive among her 17 volumes for the dark undercurrent that runs through the poems . . . the hard lesson that this earth is fallen and fragile, now more than ever, and unless we learn to cherish the world, we will destroy it . . . The song Mary Oliver sings in Red Bird is the song she has always sung, but now more urgent, more needful, more true."
—Angela O'Donnell, America magazine, April 28, 2008

"Last April, Book Sense's poetry bestseller list included two titles by Billy Collins. This year the Top 5 can be summed up in six words: Mary Oliver, Mary Oliver, Mary Oliver. Oliver's impressive feat reflects both an enduring popularity and an unparalleled ability to touch readers on a deep, almost primal level."
—Elizabeth Lund, The Christian Science Monitor, April 15, 2008

"Mary Oliver celebrates the creatures she observes on Cape Cod in "Red Bird" (Beacon), her 17th book of poetry. A longtime resident of Provincetown, Oliver, at 72, is among the nation's most popular poets . . . Oliver's grief ripples through the book, as does an unwavering sense of gratitude for the moment, the memories, and her trusty dog, Percy."
—Jan Gardner, Boston Globe, April 13, 2008

"Mary Oliver is 70 years old and still 'in love with life' and 'still full of beans' as she notes in 'Self-Portrait.' She savors the ocean, visits a graveyard, salutes a red bird in winter, heeds the invitation of a group of goldfinches to attend their performance, and finds lessons in teachings of an owl and a mockingbird. We depend on this poet for her hallowings in the animal kingdoms. We look to her for a reverence that lifts up and celebrates the little things in nature."
—Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality & Practice, April 9, 2008

"In Red Bird, Oliver maintains the lyrical connection to the natural world that has made her work so popular. But in the new book she speaks even more loudly than usual against mankind's growing list of abuses of the planet, while celebrating such seemingly ordinary creatures as crows."
—Poets & Writers, March/April 2008

"One of few avidly read living poets, Oliver revels in the beauty of the living world, and takes to heart its lessons in patience and pleasure, cessation and renewal. As piercingly observant as ever in this substantial and forthright collection, Oliver is rhapsodic."
—Donna Seaman, Booklist, March 1, 2008

"Mary Oliver, who won the Pultizer Prize in poetry, is my choice for her joyous, accessible, intimate observations of the natural world . . . She teaches us the profound act of paying attention—a living wonder that makes it possible to appreciate all the others."
—Renee Loth, Boston Globe

"It has always seemed . . . that Mary Oliver might leave us any minute. Even a 1984 Pulitzer Prize couldn't pin her to the ground. She'd change quietly into a heron or a bear and fly or walk off forever."
—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

"'My work is loving the world,' Oliver tells us . . . She has always done that work . . . in poems of considerable beauty. Now she rises, not above the world, but through it."
—Jay Parini, The Guardian.
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The twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of the classic novel that has sold over 250,000 copies

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 again and again for Rufus, yet each time the stay grows longer and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana"s life will end, long before it has even begun.

"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

"[Kindred] is a shattering work of art with much to say about love, hate, slavery and racial dilemmas, then and now."
—Los Angeles Herald Examiner

"Truly terrifying. . . . A book you"ll find hard to put down."
¯Essence

"Butler"s books are exceptional. . . . She is a realist, writing the most detailed social criticism and creating some of the most fascinating female characters in the genre . . . real women caught in impossible situations."
¯The Village Voice

"Butler"s literary craftsmanship is superb."—The Washington Post Book World.
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Now in paperback: the national bestseller from the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet

"To read Thirst, Mary Oliver's most recent book of poems, is to feel gratitude for the simple fact of being alive." —Angela O'Donnell, America Magazine

Thirst, a collection of forty-three new poems from Pulitzer Prize–winner Mary Oliver, introduces two new directions in the poet's work. Grappling with grief at the death of her beloved partner of over forty years, she strives to experience sorrow as a path to spiritual progress, grief as part of loving and not its end. And within these pages she chronicles for the first time her discovery of faith, without abandoning the love of the physical world that has been a hallmark of her work for four decades.

"Mary Oliver moves by instinct, faith, and determination. She is among our finest poets, and still growing."
—Alicia Ostriker, The Nation

"It has always seemed, across her [many] books of poetry, . . . that Mary Oliver might leave us at any minute. Even a 1984 Pulitzer Prize couldn't pin her to the ground. She'd change quietly into a heron or a bear and fly or walk on forever."
—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

"'My work is loving the world,' Oliver tells us….She has always done that work…in poems of considerable beauty. Now she rises, not above the world, but through it."
—Jay Parini, The Guardian, 10/6/2007

"Mary Oliver is, to my mind, one of the most gifted American poets working in English today. In her hands, the language acquires a lucidity approaching translucence; the accuracy of her vision and the precision of her voice are unique in their refreshing simplicity. Perhaps most singular is the tendency of her poems to be at once powerful and appealing; an affection for the natural world and a sympathy toward the reader abide."
—Katherine Hollander, Pleiades, Fall 2007

"To read Thirst is to feel gratitude for the simple fact of being alive. This is not surprising, as it is the effect [Oliver's] best work has produced in readers for the past 43 years."
—Angela O'Donnell, America magazine

"'My work is loving the world.' That first line of 'Messenger,' the first poem in Mary Oliver's new collection Thirst (Beacon Press), names what she does better than any other poet writing today. Just as Joan Didion's memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, which had a similar 'occasion,' was arguably her best work ever, so is Thirst Oliver's."
—Tim Pfaff, Bay Area Reporter, 1/11/07.
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A gripping memoir of America in the '60s, of idealists turned radicals, and of a life lived on the run

In February 2008, in the heat of the Democratic primary elections, speculations began circulating in the media about a connection between presidential hopeful Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, a former member of the radical 1960s group the Weather Underground. In Fugitive Days, Ayers tells the real story of the defining events of the radical '60s. The book is an eyewitness account of a young pacifist who helped found one of the most radical political organizations in U.S. history, and who consequently lived for ten years as a fugitive. In a new era of antiwar activism and suppression of protest, Fugitive Days is more poignant and relevant than ever.

"For anyone who wants to think hard about the social conflagration the Vietnam War produced in the U.S., and more generally about a citizen's obligations in troubled times, Ayers's powerful, morally charged account of a life and a society in the political balance is provocative reading."
—David Farber, Chicago Tribune

"A memoir that is, in effect, a deeply moving elegy to all those young dreamers who tried to live decently in an indecent world. Ayers provides a tribute to those better angels of ourselves."
—Studs Terkel, author of Working and The Good War.
Price: $8.18 [Notify me when price goes down.]