The capacity to be alone–properly alone–is one of life’s subtlest skills. Real solitude is a contented and productive state that garners tangible rewards: it allows us to reflect and recharge, improving our relationships with ourselves and, paradoxically, with others. Today, the zeitgeist embraces sharing like never before. Fueled by our dependence on online and social media, we have created an ecosystem of obsessive distraction that dangerously undervalues solitude. Many of us now lead lives of strangely crowded loneliness–we are ever-connected but only shallowly so.
Award-winning author Michael Harris examines why our experience of it has become so impoverished, and how we may grow to love it again in the frenzy of our digital landscape. Solitude is an optimistic and encouraging story about discovering true quiet inside the city, inside the crowd, inside our busy and urbane lives. Harris guides readers away from a life of ceaseless pings toward a state of measured connectivity, one that balances solitude and companionship.
Rich with true stories about the life-changing power of solitude, and interwoven with reporting from the world’s foremost brain researchers, psychologists and tech entrepreneurs, Solitude is a beautiful and convincing statement on the benefits of being alone.
If you would like to know more, here is the book review.
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 laboured 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.
Beacon Press, the original English-language publisher of Man’s Search for Meaning, is issuing this new paperback edition with a new Foreword, biographical Afterword, jacket, price, and classroom materials to reach new generations of readers.
Hold Me Tight: ?Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by Dr. Sue Johnson
Emotionally Focused Therapy works because it views the love relationship as an attachment bond.
This idea, once controversial, is now supported by science, and has become widely popular among therapists around the world. In?Hold Me Tight,?Dr. Sue Johnson presents Emotionally Focused Therapy to the general public for the first time. Johnson teaches that the way to save and enrich a relationship is to reestablish safe emotional connection and preserve the attachment bond. With this in mind, she focuses on key moments in a relationship-from “Recognizing the Demon Dialogue” to “Revisiting a Rocky Moment” — and uses them as touch points for seven healing conversations.
Through case studies from her practice, illuminating advice, and practical exercises, couples will learn how to nurture their relationships and ensure a lifetime of love.
A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis was written after his wife’s tragic death as a way of surviving the “mad midnight moments” ?This book is his honest reflection on the fundamental issues of life, death, and faith in the midst of loss. ?This is a beautiful and unflinching record of how even a stalwart believer can lose all sense of meaning in the universe, and how he can gradually regain his bearings.
Invaluable as an insight into the grieving process just as much as it is as an exploration of religious doubt,?A Grief Observed?will continue to offer its consoling insights to a huge range of readers, as it has for over fifty years.
John Gottman’s unprecedented study of couples over a period of years has allowed him to observe the habits that can make?and break?a marriage. Here is the culmination of that work: the seven principles that guide couples on a path toward a harmonious and long-lasting relationship. Straightforward yet profound, these principles teach partners new approaches for resolving conflicts, creating new common ground, and achieving greater levels of intimacy.
Gottman offers strategies and resources to help couples collaborate more effectively to resolve any problem, whether dealing with issues related to sex, money, religion, work, family, or anything else.
Packed with new exercises and the latest research out of the Gottman Institute, this revised edition of?The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work?is the definitive guide for anyone who wants their relationship to attain its highest potential.
Life after Loss: A Practical Guide to Renewing Your Life After Experiencing Major Loss by Bob Deits, M. Th. is a go-to resource for anyone who has suffered a major loss. Loss can be overwhelming, and recovery often seems daunting, if not impossible. With great compassion and insight, Bob Deits provides practical exercises for navigating the uncertain terrain of loss and grief, helping readers to find positive ways to put together a life that is necessarily different but equally meaningful.
