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Suppressed: Confessions of a Former New York Times Washington Correspondent by Robert M. Smith Four million people in nearly 200 countries read The New York Times. Of these, many are opinion-leaders. Journalists everywhere read the paper to get a supposedly objective view of the news and to learn what The Times thinks is important. But they aren’t getting that kind of view – despite the ads The Times runs proclaiming its attachment to rock-solid truth. A Times former White House and investigative correspondent, Robert M. Smith, discloses how some stories make it to print, some do not, how the filters work, and how the paper may have suppressed the most important U.S. political story of the day—Watergate. Smith shows how the paper stepped into the ring and begun slugging it out with President Trump, instead of staying outside the ring and neutrally reporting what it saw. The book argues that the paper would have been far more effective in countering and exposing the President if it had remained true to its nearly two-hundred-year-old tradition and remained neutral — that is, remained credible (as it so loudly maintains that it is). The book contends that objectivity on the part of the press might have made people believe the unfavorable things reported about Trump instead of dismissing them as the predictable product of leftist partiality. The book explains how to read the press like an insider. It discloses that The Times assigned Smith to hire a reporter of a particular partisan stripe; that the paper’s business journalists refused to cover negative stories about business, and that its Pentagon correspondent refused to cover the My Lai massacre committed by American troops in Vietnam. Written with candor and humor, Suppressed traces a young investigative reporter’s arc from naïveté to cynicism, from covering the White House to leaving the paper for Yale Law School and ultimately becoming a barrister in London and teaching at Oxford.

Happy Not Perfect: Upgrade Your Mind, Challenge Your Thoughts, and Free Yourself from Anxiety by Poppy Jamie A clear path to overcoming uncertainty, perfectionism, and fears of rejection so you can finally find peace with the past and create a happier, healthier future “Poppy’s powerful approach will help you take control of your thoughts so they don’t control you.”—Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Even before the pandemic brought on a crushing wave of stress, anxiety, isolation, life change, and financial struggle, there was already a growing mental health crisis. Due to a culture that encourages perfection, hustle, and fictional life/work balance, many are burning out. Behind her Instagram-projected image of “happy wellness founder,” Poppy Jamie was also struggling mightily with perfectionism and life purpose. She began working with mental health experts and researchers to find practical tools to overcome her inner critic and rewire her mind. She discovered that it is possible to create new neural pathways in your brain to break patterns of avoidance, challenge fears of not being good enough, and turn failure around by stretching the mind with new, healthier thought habits. The old wiring (and habits) that you’ve been stuck with can be written-over. You can actually upgrade your headspace to make curiosity, vulnerability, compassion, and emotional flexibility your default settings. In the emphatic and trusted voice of Bridget Jones meets neuroscience, Poppy shares her Flexy Thoughts approach for changing how you react to emotional triggers and think of yourself while improving your mental and physical health, relationships, and vision of the future. Our emotional resilience may continue to be tested, but the new perspectives and strategies in Happy Not Perfect will help us bring confidence, adaptability, and acceptance to whatever comes next.

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Freedom on Trial: The First Post-Civil War Battle Over Civil Rights and Voter Suppression by Scott Farris The Confederacy lost the Civil War but quickly began to win the peace when a mysterious organization arose called the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux, as it was then called, sought to restore white supremacy by terrorizing the formerly enslaved to prevent them from voting or owning firearms. To support Black resistance to the KKK’s campaign of murder and mayhem, President Ulysses S. Grant suspended the writ of habeas corpus in large portions of South Carolina and sent the famed 7th Cavalry to make mass arrests. Grant’s new attorney general, the first former Confederate to serve in a presidential Cabinet and an ardent advocate for Black equality, Amos T. Akerman, aggressively prosecuted the Ku Klux in a series of sensational trials that shocked the nation and forced a reckoning regarding just how much the Civil War and the recently enacted Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution had changed America and its notions of citizenship. Highlighting forgotten Black and white civil rights pioneers and weaving in the story of the author’s own great-grandfather’s crimes as a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Freedom on Trial tells a gripping story of a moment pregnant with promise when race relations in the United States might have taken a dramatically different turn. It is a story that also offers a sober lesson for those engaged in the ongoing work of fulfilling the American promise of equality for all.

Unleash Your Primal Brain: Demystifying How We Think and Why We Act by Tim Ash Timash.com Understand what makes us human! Unleash Your Primal Brain is about the commonalities all 8,000,000,000 people on earth share. Our ancestors were molded by ruthless survival pressures from the earliest days of life on the planet. Adaptations which worked long ago are still inside of us – also shared with insects and reptiles. Later additions are common to all mammals from the tiniest shrews to the most massive whales. Some capabilities were bolted on relatively recently and are only shared with our primate cousins. And the runaway explosion of humans on the planet can only be explained by our own bizarre species-level evolution. The only way to understand how our brains work is to examine the complete evolutionary arc. The lie of rationality The big picture of brain evolution How we learn and remember The chemistry of happiness The power of pain Demystifying risk Safer in the herd Good night, sweet dreams Monkey see, monkey do Big babies Sexy apes Let me tell you a story How we evolved to be cultural creatures Ownership, fairness, and favors Conformity and integrity Get ready, it’s going to be a wild ride with Unleash Your Primal Brain!

The P.E.O.P.L.E. Programme: How to Overcome Your Blocks to Success by John Kenny Johnkennycoaching.com We create our thoughts, we trigger our emotions, and this determines the ways in which we act and behave. How we react or respond leads to our outcomes, both positive and negative. We all see things in our own way and act accordingly based on our perceptions and the meaning we give to events that have happened and will happen in our lives. Most of us remain in the world of our subconscious, making choices and fulfilling needs based on the things that we learnt many years ago. The most important relationship that we ever have is the one we have with ourselves as it drives the direction of our lives. This book has been written to help you to understand what that relationship is. Do you know where your thoughts come from? Why you feel like you do sometimes? Why you have a compulsion to act in certain ways when you know you may want to act differently? What has been holding you back for all of these years from having the relationships that you want, from achieving in life when you know that you can? The P.E.O.P.L.E. Programme will not only help you to understand all of these things but will give you the tools to ensure you can overcome your blocks to success. Come on a journey with me: see how I managed to change my life. John Kenny was born in 1970 and grew up in Ilford, Essex until his early twenties. He didn’t know what he wanted to do as a career until his early 30’s as he competed as an athlete, to international standard until he was 25 and found himself at a bit of a loss. He became a firefighter in 2001, after working as a Personal Trainer, but realised that although he wanted to work in a profession that helped people, these were not the right ones for him. He then trained as a counsellor in 2004 and took his first step into the world of personal development. For well over a decade he has worked with thousands of clients, firstly qualifying as a counsellor and then as a coach and hypnotherapist. He founded Interpersonal Relationship Coaching in 2016 which is a fusion of his experiences, knowledge and what he has noticed works most effectively for his clients and creates sustainable change in their lives. He is known as The Relationship Guy. His first book – The P.E.O.P.L.E. Programme, tells the story of his life, how he learnt to see himself and relate to people based on his upbringing and subsequent life experiences. The second half of the book asks you the questions so that you can really understand yourself in the same way and allows you to overcome your blocks to living a successful life. John is also a professional speaker and runs his own personal development workshops to help people be the best versions of themselves and live their best lives.

Virus: Vaccinations, the CDC, and the Hijacking of America’s Response to the Pandemic by Nina Burleigh Ninaburleigh.com The only close analysis of our pandemic year revealing how the confluence of key government missteps, behind-the-scenes deal brokering, staggering dismissal of decades of scientific progress, conspiracy theories, and further malfeasance were behind hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. “A fast-paced narrative that captures the spirit of our dystopian times.”—Craig Unger, author of American Kompromat A few months before the virus slammed the world, global public health experts declared the United States the most prepared for a possible pandemic. Instead, we watched as the disease killed half a million Americans. A stunned nation has been too busy grieving and doing damage control to ask why, or to comprehend just how much of the blundering and chaos of the pandemic response was either deliberate or entirely predictable. New York Times bestselling author Nina Burleigh weaves together the key narrative strands to create an uncompromising and highly informed expose about our shared global pandemic experience and what it means for our future. Here readers will learn: • How the Trump administration packed public health agencies with right wing Christians and their political allies who cared more about gender norms and policing morality than a possible pandemic. • How another branch of the Trump administration, the anti-government ideologues, were so enamored of extreme free market principles that they treated the pandemic as a business opportunity. • How America’s anti-expertise culture, long nurtured by right wing media and conservative politicians, and now at its apogee, has left countless millions of Americans doubting the efficacy and safety of vaccines. • How the phenomenal success of childhood vaccines on extending average lifespan since the early 20th century has left many Americans so ignorant about how much vaccines have already improved their lives that they’re willing to reject them. • How our metastasizing national security state and the “bad science” of the Cold War from the A-bomb to bioweapons and beyond explains the credulity of vast numbers of Americans who subscribe to wild conspiracy theories about Covid. • How a growing number of mainstream scientists now actually accept the “lab leak hypothesis” about the origins of the virus. About Nina Burleigh Nina Burleigh is a New York Times best-selling author of seven lively, acclaimed works of creative nonfiction. Her latest book, VIRUS, five essays on the pandemic, will be published in May 2021. She has written hundreds of works of journalism, essays and book reviews, on a wide array of topics including culture, politics, gender issues, science, and the environment. Her books share a theme of examining the tension between belief and science, religion and rationality in post-Enlightenment life, including 1830s American politics, among post-revolutionary French scientists in Egypt, Cold War era CIA conspiracy theories, fake Biblical archaeology in Jerusalem today, and the role of faith versus science in an Italian courtroom. Two books explore the relationship between art, nature, history, and science. In Mirage, she told the story of the scientists and artists behind the first great study of modern Islam and ancient Egypt, Description de l’Egypte, a landmark work of art and publishing produced by the scientists who went to Egypt with Napoleon in 1800. Her book Unholy Business is a Maltese Falcon style crime caper about a gang of forgers accused of applying new technology to alter and sell archaeological relics. A fellow of the Explorers Club, she has covered stories on six continents. She has published works about the Arctic and the Antarctic, the Amazon, where she wrote an essay about women, nature, and the human culture along the Amazon River in Peru and ayahuasca culture in Iquitos, posh Lagos, racism and rhino poaching in South Africa. She has written cover stories for Newsweek on Trump and Women, Trump as a tool of the New York billionaires, Trump and Evangelicals, Trump and the Law, Facebook and political big data mining, the #metoo movement, the melting of Antarctica, sea level rise in Florida, asteroid defense schemes and other current events. She has judged the J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards for nonfiction, and won several awards for her journalism and books. She was writer in residence at the Siena Art Institute in 2013 attached to the Above/Below Ground project with Mark Dion and Amy Yoes, including a symposium on the Art and Science of The Expedition. She was a Dora Maar Fellow in the arts in Menerbes, France, in 2014, where she worked on a novel. Mirage was selected by The New York Times as an editors’ choice and won the Society of Women Educators’ Award. Her writing can be found in numerous publications including Newsweek, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Time, New York, The New York T

Welcome Home: A Guide to Building a Home for Your Soul by Najwa Zebian Najwazebian.com From the celebrated poet, speaker, and educator comes a powerful blueprint for healing by building a home within yourself. “A master class in self-actualization and compassion.”—Mari Andrew, New York Times bestselling author of Am I There Yet? In her debut book of inspiration, poet Najwa Zebian shares her revolutionary concept of home—the place of safety where you can embrace your vulnerability and discover your self-worth. It’s the place where your soul feels like it belongs, where you are loved for who you are. Too many of us build our homes in other people in the hope that they will deem us worthy of being welcomed inside, and then we feel abandoned and empty when those people leave. Building your home inside yourself—and never experiencing inner homelessness again—begins here. In Welcome Home, Zebian shares her personal story for the first time, powerfully weaving memoir, poetry, and deeply resonant teachings into her storytelling, from leaving Lebanon at sixteen, to coming of age as a young Muslim woman in Canada, to building a new identity for herself as she learned to speak her truth. After the profound alienations she experienced, she learned to build a stable foundation inside herself, an identity independent of cultural expectations and the influence of others. The powerful metaphor of home provides a structure for personal transformation as she shows you how to construct the following rooms: Self-Love, Forgiveness, Compassion, Clarity, Surrender, and The Dream Garden. With practical tools and prompts for self-understanding, she shows you how to build each room in your house, which form a firm basis for your self-worth, sense of belonging, and happiness. Every human deserves their own home. Written with her trademark power, candor, and warmth, Welcome Home is an answer to the pain we all experience when we don’t feel at peace with ourselves. About Najwa Zebian Najwa Zebian is a Lebanese-Canadian activist, author, speaker, and educator. Her search for a home was central to her early years as she struggled to find her place in the world. She became a teacher and a doctoral candidate in educational leadership and as Najwa began to write in an effort to connect with and heal her first students, a group of young refugees, she found that she was also writing to heal herself. After self-publishing her first collection of poetry and prose in 2016, she went on to sell over 250,000 copies of her three books. She recently launched a digital school, Soul Academy, and a podcast, Stories of the Soul. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Glamour, Elle Canada, HuffPost, and more. Her TEDx talk “Finding Home Through Poetry” has been viewed over more than 100,000 times.

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I’m So Effing Tired: A Proven Plan to Beat Burnout, Boost Your Energy, and Reclaim Your Life by Dr. Amy Shah MD A guide to conquering burnout and increasing your energy from a leading medical doctor and nutrition expert EXHAUSTION DOESN’T HAVE TO BE YOUR NEW NORMAL Does it feel like your life is too busy, your days are too short, and you’re feeling overworked, overstressed, and overtired? Chances are you’ve asked your doctor for help, only to be told that it’s because of your age, or your workload, or, worse, that it’s just “normal.” If so, you’re not alone. Women of all ages are suffering from an epidemic of fatigue and burnout. But exhaustion doesn’t have to be your new normal. Inspired by her personal wellness journey, integrative medical doctor Amy Shah has created this program so that you can regain your energy and reclaim your life. The key is tapping into the powerful energy trifecta: the complex relationship between your gut, your immune system, and your hormones. Drawing on the latest science and her work helping thousands of clients, Dr. Shah explains how to transform your life by changing: What You Eat: Increase your vegetable intake and sip Dr. Shah’s hormone-balance tea recipe to tamp down inflammation and heal your gut, without giving up your wine and chocolate! When You Eat: Changing when you eat and practicing intermittent fasting—the right way—will help you feel energized all day long. How you manage stress: Simple, stress-busting exercises and herbs like Ashwagandha and Amla berry help calm the Adrenal system and ease anxiety. In just two weeks, you’ll feel your energy surge. In three months, you’ll feel like a whole new person. It’s time to regain the energy you’ve lost, so you can get back to the life you want to live.

Midnight Meditations: Calm Your Thoughts, Still Your Body, and Return to Sleep by Courtney E. Ackerman Stop chasing sleep and start welcoming rest with these 150 peaceful, nighttime meditations to make falling back to sleep easier than ever. There’s nothing worse than waking up in the middle of the night and being unable to fall back asleep. Now with Midnight Meditations, you can be gently guided back to sleep faster than ever. These 150 peaceful, soothing meditations help you welcome and embrace the rest, relaxation, and restorative sleep every night has to offer. With these simple, guided meditations you can tune out distractions that hinder your rest and tap into the tranquility of the night. In Midnight Meditations, you will discover how to calm your racing thoughts, stop chasing sleep, and start receiving an undisturbed night’s rest so you can make the most of your days.

Pack Up the Moon by Kristan Higgins Every month, a letter. That’s what Lauren decides to leave her husband when she finds out she’s dying. Each month, she gives Josh a letter containing a task to help him face this first year without her, leading him on a heartrending, beautiful, often humorous journey to find happiness again in this new novel from the New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins. Joshua and Lauren are the perfect couple. Newly married, they’re wildly in love, each on a successful and rewarding career path. Then Lauren is diagnosed with a terminal illness. As Lauren’s disease progresses, Joshua struggles to make the most of the time he has left with his wife and to come to terms with his future–a future without the only woman he’s ever loved. He’s so consumed with finding a way to avoid the inevitable ending that he never imagines his life after Lauren. But Lauren has a plan to keep her husband moving forward. A plan hidden in the letters she leaves him. In those letters, one for every month in the year after her death, Lauren leads Joshua on a journey through pain, anger, and denial. It’s a journey that will take Joshua from his attempt at a dinner party for family and friends to getting rid of their bed…from a visit with a psychic medium to a kiss with a woman who isn’t Lauren. As his grief makes room for laughter and new relationships, Joshua learns Lauren’s most valuable lesson: The path to happiness doesn’t follow a straight line. Sometimes heartbreaking, often funny, and always uplifting, this novel from New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins illuminates how life’s greatest joys are often hiding in plain sight.

The Inside Track: An Inspirational Guide To Conquering Adversity by Peter Sage Free Book from Peter Sage for Listeners: PeterSage.com/Voss Prisoner – Or Secret Agent Of Change? What happens when you put a non-criminal and one of the world’s top experts in personal growth, into one of the toughest prisons in the UK? In 2017, that’s exactly what happened to Peter Sage when, during a civil matter, he was found in contempt of court. What unfolded next has become a masterclass in how to turn adversity to your advantage. The Inside Track is the collection of 11 private letters that Peter sent to his elite coaching groups throughout his 6-month sentence. Written in a conversational style, each one breaks down the actual tools, techniques and insights he uses and shows you how to face any problem in your life from a place of power, not force. How to stay calm and positive when life hits you with a bat and turn your biggest challenges into your greatest achievements. As you follow this unique and incredible story, you’ll discover not only how Peter was able to thrive in a place where angels fear to tread, but also leave a lasting mark that is now helping thousands of lives. About Peter Sage Peter Sage is a well-known international serial entrepreneur, best-selling author and expert in human behaviour. He is a highly sought-after speaker and coach and has spoken on five continents, sharing the stage with the likes of Sir Richard Branson and President Bill Clinton. Due to his depth of experience, teaching style and unique way of looking at the world, Peter’s seminars and programmes have frequently been ranked amongst the most impactful in the world. In 2013 he was awarded the distinguished Brand Laureate Award from the Asian Pacific Brands Foundation for extraordinary individuals. Previous winners include Nelson Mandela, Steve Jobs, Hilary Clinton & Tiger Woods. In 2015 he was named one of the greatest leaders and entrepreneurs by Inspiring Leadership Now alongside Sir Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Peter is an accomplished athlete having completed several marathons and the formidable Marathon des Sables – widely recognized as the toughest footrace in the world. He also competed at British Championship level indoor rowing, is a qualified open water diver, an experienced skydiver, national champion marksman and a long-standing member of the infamous Dangerous Sports Club. In addition, he has been patron of 2 registered charities and has personally raised over $1m dollars for good causes all over the world.

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It’s All The Same To Me: A Torah Guide To Inner Peace and Love of Life by Moshe Gersht After spending a decade and a half studying the depths of Torah, Kaballah, Chasidus, and Spirituality, Moshe Gersht has gifted us with a new lens on life. With his spiritual guide It’s All The Same To Me, Moshe Gersht inspires readers to discover the freedom and joy of a life lived in the deep connection of “sameness.” Gersht introduces the powerful kaballistic idea of Hishtavus to explain how getting beyond our ego is not only essential to your happiness, but is also the key to loving the life you experience. Gersht makes the most esoteric concepts seem like an easy read and every page is an enjoyable moment. It’s All The Same To Me has been compared to Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now,” as author of “Mastering Life,” Dov Ber Cohen, says “The next level! The Power of Now meets The Power of Torah. Awesome guide to real inner work and exactly what the world needs right now.”Illuminating, enlightening, and uplifting, Moshe Gersht’s It’s All The Same To Me is a joyful spiritual guide for a better way to live and for building a better world.

Breaking Ice and Breaking Glass: Leading in Uncharted Waters by Vice Admiral Sandra Stosz Uscg (Ret) “A prime resource for any leader’s library.” -James Mattis, General, US Marines (ret), and 26th Secretary of Defense Today, our nation is like a ship being tossed in tumultuous seas. The winds and waves of change have divided and distanced our society, threatening to wash away the very principles our nation was founded upon. Now more than ever, our nation needs leaders with the moral courage to stand strong and steady-leaders capable of uniting people in support of a shared purpose by building the trust and respect necessary for organizations and their people to thrive. In Breaking Ice and Breaking Glass, Admiral Sandy Stosz draws upon her forty years of extensive experience and wisdom to provide tools that will help leaders reach their goals and succeed at every level. Character-centered, proven leadership principles emerge from these engaging, personal stories that teach leaders how to find, and then become, an inspiring mentor; implement successful diversity, inclusion, and equity programs; successfully lead in a complex environment; and much more. Leaders eager to make a difference by helping people and organizations be their best will find Breaking Ice and Breaking Glass: Leading in Uncharted Waters their go-to resource. About Vice Admiral Sandra Stosz Uscg (Ret) Admiral Sandy Stosz started out in the US Coast Guard as an ensign serving aboard polar icebreakers, conducting national security missions from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Her forty-year career was filled with leadership lessons gleaned while breaking ice and breaking glass as the first woman to command an icebreaker on the Great Lakes and to lead a US armed forces service academy. Along the way, Sandy served for 12 years at sea, commanding two ships, and led large Coast Guard organizations during times of crisis and complexity. She finished her career as the first woman assigned as Deputy Commandant for Mission Support, directing one of the Coast Guard’s largest enterprises. She has lectured widely on leadership, and has been featured on CSPAN and other media outlets. In 2012, Newsweek’s “The Daily Beast” named Sandy to their list of 150 Women who Shake the World.

Bending Reality: How to Make the Impossible Probable by Victoria Song Bending Reality is the innovative process used by billionaires, tech leaders, and the world’s most successful people to make the impossible . . . probable. Victoria Song teaches readers how to unlock the hidden power within their bodies to get what they want. After achieving success but lacking fulfillment as a student at Yale University and Harvard Business School, and then as a Forbes 30 Under 30 Venture Capitalist, Victoria set off on an unusual quest to study, train, and work with more than 24 of the best coaches, therapists, and healers in the world. She then deployed the skills and tools she’d learned with a diverse group of the world’s highest performers. Through it all, she’s discovered the codes that enable her clients to bend reality toward the directions they want. By accessing this extraordinary ability, Victoria’s clients have sold a company for 4 billion dollars, grown revenue 1,000% during a pandemic, and pivoted to design a more effective COVID-19 vaccine. Victoria reveals the meta-framework behind peak performance, self-development, therapy, and meditation that is accessible for all. Whether you’ve studied these areas closely or this is the first book you’ve read on this topic, you’ll have a front row seat to how the world’s elite use this knowledge to achieve more while doing less. In this fast-paced guide to success, you will learn how to: Bend reality by mastering two states of being that most people aren’t even aware of. Navigate change and face the unknown like the greatest leaders. Access creative downloads that artists, musicians, and geniuses receive. Make your own luck—there’s literally a recipe! Find your unique “zone of genius” and live from it every day. Packed with powerful tools and exercises, Bending Reality will move you beyond intellectual understanding to embodiment. This is not another mindset book. You’re ready for Bending Reality if you realize it’s time to go beyond the mind and harness the full capacity of your consciousness to make quantum leaps in every area of your life. After learning how to bend reality, you will no longer need to memorize rules, tips, or tricks, but you will embody the essence of a remarkable leader who can make the impossible—probable. 2020 – Victoria Song

North by Shakespeare: A Rogue Scholar’s Quest for the Truth Behind the Bard’s Work by Michael Blanding The true story of a self-taught Shakespeare sleuth’s quest to prove his eye-opening theory about the source of the world’s most famous plays, taking readers inside the vibrant era of Elizabethan England as well as the contemporary scene of Shakespeare scholars and obsessives. Acclaimed author of The Map Thief, Michael Blanding presents the twinning narratives of renegade scholar Dennis McCarthy, called “the Steve Jobs of the Shakespeare community,” and Sir Thomas North, an Elizabethan courtier whom McCarthy believes to be the undiscovered source for Shakespeare’s plays. For the last fifteen years, McCarthy has obsessively pursued the true origins of Shakespeare’s works. Using plagiarism software, he has found direct links between Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and other plays and North’s published and unpublished writings—as well as Shakespearean plotlines seemingly lifted straight from North’s colorful life. Unlike those who believe someone else secretly wrote Shakespeare, McCarthy’s wholly original conclusion is this: Shakespeare wrote the plays, but he adapted them from source plays written by North decades before. Many of them, he believes, were penned on behalf of North’s patron Robert Dudley, in his efforts to woo Queen Elizabeth. That bold theory addresses many lingering mysteries about the Bard with compelling new evidence, including a newly discovered journal of North’s travels through France and Italy, filled with locations and details appearing in Shakespeare’s plays. North by Shakespeare alternates between the enigmatic life of Thomas North, the intrigues of the Tudor court, the rivalries of English Renaissance theater, and academic outsider Dennis McCarthy’s attempts to air his provocative ideas in the clubby world of Shakespearean scholarship. Through it all, Blanding employs his keen journalistic eye to craft a captivating drama, upending our understanding of the beloved playwright and his “singular genius.” Michael Blanding is a Boston-based investigative journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, WIRED, Slate, The Boston Globe, and other publications. He is the author of North by Shakespeare: A Rogue Scholar’s Quest for the Truth Behind the Bard’s Work (2021), and The Map Thief: The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps (2014), which was a New York Times-bestseller and an NPR Book of the Year. He has also been a journalism fellow at Brandeis University and Harvard University, and taught writing at Tufts University, Emerson College, and GrubStreet Writers.

Two Beats Ahead: What Musical Minds Teach Us About Innovation Panos A. Panay, R. Michael Hendrix Discover what the musical mind has to teach us about innovation in this fascinating book, featuring interviews with Justin Timberlake, Pharrell Williams, T Bone Burnett, Gloria Estefan, Imogen Heap, and many more. Musicians may just hold the keys to innovation in business. They don’t think like we do, and in the creative process, they don’t act like we do. It’s no coincidence that some of the world’s most respected creators are also entrepreneurs. In Two Beats Ahead, Panos A. Panay, senior vice president for strategy at Berklee College of Music, and R. Michael Hendrix, global design director at IDEO, interview some of the nation’s top musicians and business leaders about how they approach innovation differently. They speak with hit maker Desmond Child about the importance of demoing and with industry legend Jimmy Iovine about listening and knowing your audience. Readers will learn the secrets of collaboration from Beyoncé and Pharrell Williams, about “daring to suck” from Justin Timberlake, about the power of reinvention from Gloria Estefan, and the importance of experimentation from Imogen Heap and Radiohead. And they’ll learn the value of finding and producing talent with T Bone Burnett and Hank Shocklee, cofounder of Public Enemy. A window into these brilliant mindsets, this book equips any entrepreneur or innovative thinker with tools they can put into practice to thrive in an evolving world.

Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power by Susan Page https://susanpagedc.com/ The definitive biography of Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful woman in American political history, written by New York Times bestselling author and USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page. Featuring more than 150 exclusive interviews with those who know her best—and a series of in-depth, news-making interviews with Pelosi herself—MADAM SPEAKER is unprecedented in the scope of its exploration of Nancy Pelosi’s remarkable life and of her indelible impact on American politics. Before she was Nancy Pelosi, she was Nancy D’Alesandro. Her father was a big-city mayor and her mother his political organizer; when she encour­aged her young daughter to become a nun, Nancy told her mother that being a priest sounded more appealing. She didn’t begin running for office until she was forty-six years old, her five children mostly out of the nest. With that, she found her calling. Nancy Pelosi has lived on the cutting edge of the revolution in both women’s roles and in the nation’s movement to a fiercer and more polarized politics. She has established herself as a crucial friend or for­midable foe to U.S. presidents, a master legislator, and an indefatigable political warrior. She took on the Democratic establishment to become the first female Speaker of the House, then battled rivals on the left and right to consolidate her power. She has soared in the sharp-edged inside game of politics, though she has struggled in the outside game—demonized by conservatives, second-guessed by progressives, and routinely underestimated by nearly everyone. All of this was preparation for the most historic challenge she would ever face, at a time she had been privately planning her retirement. When Donald Trump was elected to the White House, Nancy Pelosi became the Democratic counterpart best able to stand up to the disruptive president and to get under his skin. The battle between Trump and Pelosi, chronicled in this book with behind-the-scenes details and revelations, stands to be the titanic political struggle of our time. Susan Page is the Washington Bureau chief of USA TODAY, where she writes about the White House and national politics. She is the author of Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Arc of Power, a biography being published in April 2021. She also wrote The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty, a New York Times bestseller published in 2019. Susan has covered eleven presidential elections, from 1980 through 2020, and is now covering her seventh presidential administration. She has interviewed the past ten presidents, from Richard Nixon through Joe Biden, and reported from six continents and dozens of foreign countries. As a reporter — first for Newsday and then for USA TODAY — she drove to Three Mile Island hours after the nuclear mishap was reported, traveled across Southeast Asia to chronicle the exodus of Vietnamese ‘boat people,’ and interviewed physicist Stephen Hawking through his computerized ‘voice.’ She has won every journalism award given specifically for coverage of the White House, including the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency, the Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence in White House Coverage, and the Merriman Smith Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure. She has served as president of the White House Correspondents Association and as president of the Gridiron Club, the oldest association of journalists in Washington. She was the moderator of the vice-presidential debate in 2020 between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris. A native of Wichita, Kansas, she received a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University, where she was editor-in-chief of The Daily Northwestern. She received a master’s degree from Columbia University, where she was a Pulitzer Fellow. She is married to Carl Leubsdorf, a columnist with The Dallas Morning News. They have two sons, Ben and Will.

Age-Decoded by Mark P Ryall What could possibly go wrong with the advent of CRISPR genetic engineering? This is the story of Nobel-winning genomicist Dr. Frieda Sengmeuller, who invents “age-decoding” – a genetic engineering method that stops human aging. When most humans are age-decoded in the year 2053, Authority leaders secretly use CRISPR to also remove people’s “propensity to dissent”. They fake Frieda’s suicide, containing her for two centuries as she is forced to research “reverse-aging”. Frieda’s daughter Ximena teams up with Authority insider Tavon Brooks to try to rescue her. This book depicts the moral challenges humanity could face with the impending tsunami of genetic engineering.

Bee People and the Bugs They Love by Frank Mortimer “A successful and funny book that is sure to swell the ranks of the world’s beekeepers.” —New York Times A fascinating foray into the obsessions, friendships, scientific curiosity, misfortunes and rewards of suburban beekeeping—through the eyes of a Master Beekeeper . . . Who wants to keep bees? And why? For the answers, Master Beekeeper Frank Mortimer invites readers on an eye-opening journey into the secret world of bees, and the singular world of his fellow bee-keepers. There’s the Badger, who introduces Frank to the world of bees; Rusty, a one-eyed septuagenarian bee sting therapist certain that honey will be the currency of the future after the governments fail; Scooby the “dude” who gets a meditative high off the awesome vibes of his psychedelia-painted hives; and the Berserker, a honeybee hitman who teaches Frank a rafter-raising lesson in staving off the harmful influences of an evil queen: “Squash her, mash her, kill, kill, kill!” Frank also crosses paths with those he calls the Surgeons (precise and protected), the Cowboys (improvisational and unguarded) and the Poseurs, ex-corporate cogs, YouTube-informed and ill-prepared for the stinging reality of their new lives. In connecting with this club of disparate but kindred spirits, Frank discovers the centuries-old history of the trade; the practicality of maintaining it; what bees see, think, and feel (emotionless but sometimes a little defensive); how they talk to each other and socialize; and what can be done to combat their biggest threats, both human (anti-apiarist extremists) and mite (the Varroa Destructor). With a swarm of offbeat characters and fascinating facts (did that bee just waggle or festoon?), Frank the Bee Man delivers an informative, funny, and galvanizing book about the symbiotic relationship between flower and bee, and bee and the beekeepers who are determined to protect the existence of one of the most beguiling and invaluable creatures on earth. “A very entertaining book.” —American Bee Journal “A playful storyteller… A compelling memoir.” —Foreword Reviews “A useful how-to guide as well as an affectionate ode to nature’s pollinators and honey makers.” —Publishers Weekly “This book includes great humor and a use of allegory that reveals tremendous background knowledge.” —San Francisco Book Review “Frank’s personal stories of his beekeeping journey are entertaining, well written, and will quickly have you happily lost in the world of bees.” —Paleo Magazine “Bee People and the Bugs They Love is the bee’s knees and getting a ton of buzz. Bee smart, people, and read this un-BEE-lievably interesting look at the quirky world of beekeeping.” —Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author “A delightful portrayal for non-beekeepers of what life is like for those of us who are always thinking about bees.” —Tom Seeley, author of The Lives of Bees “A fun and exciting tale of the wonder-filled world of beginner beekeeping.” —Noah Wilson-Rich, author of Bee: A Natural History , and CEO and partner The Best Bees Company

Making Contact: Preparing for the New Realities of Extraterrestrial Existence by Alan Steinfeld “I feel it is one of the best approaches I have found to grasp the most jarring enigma humanity has ever faced.” ―George Noory, host of Coast to Coast AM “We cannot separate the earth from its greater cosmic environment. What is needed is a new story and Alan Steinfeld’s Making Contact is part of that story.” ―Deepak Chopra, Author, Total Meditation How can we prepare for an event that is literally beyond anything humanity has ever faced? Making Contact presents multiple perspectives on what no longer can be denied: UFOs and their occupants are visiting our world. The book answers questions which remain in the wake of the recent Pentagon’s disclosures as to who and why these beings are here. The volume contains original writings by the leading experts of the phenomena such as: Linda Moulton Howe, Earthfiles reporter, Whitley Strieber best-selling author of Communion, Professor John E. Mack, former head of the Harvard Medical school of psychiatry and an alien abduction investigator, Darryl Anka internationally known for his communication with the extraterrestrial Bashar, Nick Pope, former UK Ministry of Defense UFO investigator, Grant Cameron expert on American presidents and UFOs, Drs. J.J. and Desiree Hurtak, globalists and founders of the worldwide organization, The Academy for Future Science, Caroline Cory, director of Superhuman and ET: Contact, Mary Rodwell, author of the New Human about star-seed children, Henrietta Weekes, actress and writer, expressing the poetic aspects of making contact. Alan Steinfeld, contributes and curates the collection with 30 years of experience with the subject. The Foreword by George Noory of Coast to Coast AM kicks off the volume with his veteran overview of the need to wake up to the “new realities of extraterrestrial existence.” At this critical juncture in the government’s official acknowledgement of the reality of UFOs/UAPs, scientists, politicians and mainstream news outlets have no idea what to make of these startling revelations or the outpouring of sightings and “contact” experiences currently being reported on a global scale. The book stands as the most comprehensive clarification to date on the intent and intelligence behind the phenomena. The variety of viewpoints expressed in the volume provide a solid foundation for the “preparation” of the greatest challenge to ever face humankind. Making Contact stands as the essential handbook for embracing the most exalted moment in history: Meeting the cosmic others.

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Remote, Inc.: How to Thrive at Work . . . Wherever You Are by Robert C. Pozen, Alexandra Samuel You can thrive and excel when you’re working remotely, if you adopt the mindset, habits and tech tools of professionals who are even more productive outside the office: Learn to think like a “business of one,” and that entrepreneurial mindset will transform your experience of remote work. Remote work can be satisfying and productive—once you craft a strategy that taps into the unique advantages of working from home. After a year in which many of us plunged into remote work overnight, we finally have a chance to make thoughtful choices about how to combine remote and office work, and how to make the most of our days at home. Remote, Inc. gives you the strategies and tools you need to make remote work a valuable part of your renewed working life. Learn how to… Gain control over how and when you work by focusing on objectives, not the 9-to-5 workday. Wow your managers by treating them like valued clients. Beat information overload by prioritizing important emails and messages. Make online meetings purposeful, focused and engaging. Build great relationships with your colleagues—whether at the next desk, or another city. Find a balance between work from home, and life at home. Make a remote work plan that lets you get the best from time at the office—and the best of home. Remote, Inc. takes you inside the mindset and habits of people who flourish while working outside the office some or all of the time: people who function like a “business of one”. That’s how productivity experts Robert C. Pozen and Alexandra Samuel describe the mindset that lets people thrive when they’re working remotely, whether full-time or in combination with time at the office. You can follow their lead by embracing the work habits and independence of a small business owner—while also tapping into the benefits of collegiality and online collaboration.

Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done by Adrian Gostick, Chester Elton Executive coaches and #1 bestselling authors of All In and The Carrot Principle offer insight and advice in this practical eight-step guide both managers and employees can use to reduce work anxiety in the office and at home. Have you ever dreaded Sunday night, got a pit in your stomach on the way to work, or had your heartbeat speed up at the sound of your boss’s voice? If so, you may have had anxiety at work. In this empathetic and wise guide, executive coaches and gurus of gratitude Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton explore the causes of workplace stress and anxiety and the management practices that have proven successful in reducing tension and cultivating calm. If you’re a manager, how do you keep up with demands while creating a stress-free work atmosphere? How can you spot rising anxiety levels in your people? If your employees feel overwhelmed or worried about the future, what can you do to ease their concerns? How do you engage in productive conversations about emotions in uncertain times? Anxiety at Work builds on the authors’ vast knowledge and experience working with the leadership teams of some of the world’s most successful organizations to offer effective strategies that can make any workplace better, helping supervisors and their employees: Weather uncertainty Balance overload Beat perfectionism Build confidence Create and sustain an environment that fosters resilience Strengthen strong social bonds In today’s volatile, fast-paced, and ever-changing global climate, organizations and their employees are under more pressure than ever to perform. Anxiety at Work shows how everyone at all levels can work together to build an environment that fosters camaraderie, productivity, and calm.

Children Under Fire: An American Crisis by John Woodrow Cox One of The New York Times’ 16 New Books to Watch for in March One of Publishers Weekly’s Most Anticipated Books of the Year One of Newsweek’s Most Highly Anticipated Books of The Year One of Buzzfeed’s Most Anticipated Books the Year Based on the acclaimed series—a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—an intimate account of the devastating effects of gun violence on our nation’s children, and a call to action for a new way forward In 2017, seven-year-old Ava in South Carolina wrote a letter to Tyshaun, an eight-year-old boy from Washington, DC. She asked him to be her pen pal; Ava thought they could help each other. The kids had a tragic connection—both were traumatized by gun violence. Ava’s best friend had been killed in a campus shooting at her elementary school, and Tyshaun’s father had been shot to death outside of the boy’s elementary school. Ava’s and Tyshaun’s stories are extraordinary, but not unique. In the past decade, 15,000 children have been killed from gunfire, though that number does not account for the kids who weren’t shot and aren’t considered victims but have nevertheless been irreparably harmed by gun violence. In Children Under Fire, John Woodrow Cox investigates the effectiveness of gun safety reforms as well as efforts to manage children’s trauma in the wake of neighborhood shootings and campus massacres, from Columbine to Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Through deep reporting, Cox addresses how we can effect change now, and help children like Ava and Tyshaun. He explores their stories and more, including a couple in South Carolina whose eleven-year-old son shot himself, a Republican politician fighting for gun safety laws, and the charlatans infiltrating the school safety business. In a moment when the country is desperate to better understand and address gun violence, Children Under Fire offers a way to do just that, weaving wrenching personal stories into a critical call for the United States to embrace practical reforms that would save thousands of young lives.

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR PEOPLE’S #1 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Named a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, TIME, Slate, Smithsonian, The New York Post, and Amazon The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science’s great hope in the quest to understand the disease. Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don’s work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins–aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony–and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family? What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations. With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family’s unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope.

The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self by Martha Beck “This radiant book will not only change your life, but perhaps even save it.”–Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author “Martha Beck’s genius is that her writing is equal parts comforting and challenging. A teacher, a mother, a sage, she holds our hand as she leads us back home to ourselves.”–Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author Bestselling author, life coach and sociologist Martha Beck explains why “integrity”–needed now more than ever in these tumultuous times–is the key to a meaningful and joyful life As Martha Beck says in her book, “Integrity is the cure for psychological suffering. Period.” In The Way of Integrity, Beck presents a four-stage process that anyone can use to find integrity, and with it, a sense of purpose, emotional healing, and a life free of mental suffering. Much of what plagues us–people pleasing, staying in stale relationships, negative habits–all point to what happens when we are out of touch with what truly makes us feel whole. Inspired by The Divine Comedy, Beck uses Dante’s classic hero’s journey as a framework to break down the process of attaining personal integrity into small, manageable steps. She shows how to read our internal signals that lead us towards our true path, and to recognize what we actually yearn for versus what our culture sells us. With techniques tested on hundreds of her clients, Beck brings her expertise as a social scientist, life coach and human being to help readers to uncover what integrity looks like in their own lives. She takes us on a spiritual adventure that not only will change the direction of our lives, but bring us to a place of genuine happiness.

42 Today: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy by Michael G. Long Explores Jackie Robinson’s compelling and complicated legacy Before the United States Supreme Court ruled against segregation in public schools, and before Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, Jackie Robinson walked onto the diamond on April 15, 1947, as first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers, making history as the first African American to integrate Major League Baseball in the twentieth century. Today a national icon, Robinson was a complicated man who navigated an even more complicated world that both celebrated and despised him. Many are familiar with Robinson as a baseball hero. Few, however, know of the inner turmoil that came with his historic status. Featuring piercing essays from a range of distinguished sportswriters, cultural critics, and scholars, this book explores Robinson’s perspectives and legacies on civil rights, sports, faith, youth, and nonviolence, while providing rare glimpses into the struggles and strength of one of the nation’s most athletically gifted and politically significant citizens. Featuring a foreword by celebrated directors and producers Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon, this volume recasts Jackie Robinson’s legacy and establishes how he set a precedent for future civil rights activism, from Black Lives Matter to Colin Kaepernick.

The Women of Chateau Lafayette by Stephanie Dray Named one of 2021’s Most Anticipated Historical Novels by Oprah Magazine ∙ PopSugar ∙ SheReads ∙ Parade ∙ and more! An epic saga from New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Dray based on the true story of an extraordinary castle in the heart of France and the remarkable women bound by its legacy. Most castles are protected by men. This one by women. A founding mother… 1774. Gently-bred noblewoman Adrienne Lafayette becomes her husband, the Marquis de Lafayette’s political partner in the fight for American independence. But when their idealism sparks revolution in France and the guillotine threatens everything she holds dear, Adrienne must renounce the complicated man she loves, or risk her life for a legacy that will inspire generations to come. A daring visionary… 1914. Glittering New York socialite Beatrice Chanler is a force of nature, daunted by nothing—not her humble beginnings, her crumbling marriage, or the outbreak of war. But after witnessing the devastation in France firsthand, Beatrice takes on the challenge of a lifetime: convincing America to fight for what’s right. A reluctant resistor… 1940. French school-teacher and aspiring artist Marthe Simone has an orphan’s self-reliance and wants nothing to do with war. But as the realities of Nazi occupation transform her life in the isolated castle where she came of age, she makes a discovery that calls into question who she is, and more importantly, who she is willing to become. Intricately woven and powerfully told, The Women of Chateau Lafayette is a sweeping novel about duty and hope, love and courage, and the strength we take from those who came before us.

The Postscript Murders by Elly Griffiths “This droll romp is a latter-day Miss Marple.” —Washington Post Murder leaps off the page when crime novelists begin to turn up dead in this intricate new novel by internationally best-selling author Elly Griffiths, a literary mystery perfect for fans of Anthony Horowitz and Agatha Christie. The death of a ninety-year-old woman with a heart condition should not be suspicious. Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur certainly sees nothing out of the ordinary when Peggy’s caretaker, Natalka, begins to recount Peggy Smith’s passing. But Natalka had a reason to be at the police station: while clearing out Peggy’s flat, she noticed an unusual number of crime novels, all dedicated to Peggy. And each psychological thriller included a mysterious postscript: PS: for PS. When a gunman breaks into the flat to steal a book and its author is found dead shortly thereafter—Detective Kaur begins to think that perhaps there is no such thing as an unsuspicious death after all. And then things escalate: from an Aberdeen literary festival to the streets of Edinburgh, writers are being targeted. DS Kaur embarks on a road trip across Europe and reckons with how exactly authors can think up such realistic crimes . . . About Elly Griffiths Thank you for visiting my Amazon author page! I’m the author of two crime series, the Dr Ruth Galloway books and the Brighton Mysteries. Last year I also published a stand-alone, The Stranger Diaries, and a children’s book, A Girl Called Justice. I have previously written books under my real name, Domenica de Rosa (I know it sounds made up). The Ruth books are set in Norfolk, a place I know well from childhood. It was a chance remark of my husband’s that gave me the idea for the first in the series, The Crossing Places. We were crossing Titchwell Marsh in North Norfolk when Andy (an archaeologist) mentioned that prehistoric people thought that marshland was sacred ground. Because it’s neither land nor sea, but something in-between, they saw it as a bridge to the afterlife; neither land nor sea, neither life nor death. In that moment, I saw Dr Ruth Galloway walking towards me out of the mist… I live near Brighton with Andy. We have two grown-up children. I write in a garden shed accompanied by my cat, Gus.

The Last Thing to Burn: A Novel by Will Dean “Immediate, intense, gripping, taut, terrifying, moving, and brilliant.” —Lisa Jewell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Invisible Girl A woman being held captive is willing to risk everything to save herself, her unborn child, and her captor’s latest victim in this claustrophobic thriller in the tradition of Misery and Room. On an isolated farm in the United Kingdom, a woman is trapped by the monster who kidnapped her seven years ago. When she discovers she is pregnant, she resolves to protect her child no matter the cost, and starts to meticulously plan her escape. But when another woman is brought into the fold on the farm, her plans go awry. Can she save herself, her child, and this innocent woman at the same time? Or is she doomed to spend the remainder of her life captive on this farm? Intense, dark, and utterly gripping The Last Thing to Burn is a breathtaking thriller from an author to watch.

Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by Colin Bryar, Bill Carr Working Backwards is an insider’s breakdown of Amazon’s approach to culture, leadership, and best practices from two long-time Amazon executives. Colin started at Amazon in 1998; Bill joined in 1999. In Working Backwards, these two long-serving Amazon executives reveal and codify the principles and practices that drive the success of one of the most extraordinary companies the world has ever known. With twenty-seven years of Amazon experience between them, much of it in the early aughts―a period of unmatched innovation that brought products and services including Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Studios, and Amazon Web Services to life―Bryar and Carr offer unprecedented access to the Amazon way as it was refined, articulated, and proven to be repeatable, scalable, and adaptable. With keen analysis and practical steps for applying it at your own company―no matter the size―the authors illuminate how Amazon’s fourteen leadership principles inform decision-making at all levels and reveal how the company’s culture has been defined by four characteristics: customer obsession, long-term thinking, eagerness to invent, and operational excellence. Bryar and Carr explain the set of ground-level practices that ensure these are translated into action and flow through all aspects of the business. Working Backwards is a practical guidebook and a corporate narrative, filled with the authors’ in-the-room recollections of what “Being Amazonian” is like and how it has affected their personal and professional lives. They demonstrate that success on Amazon’s scale is not achieved by the genius of any single leader, but rather through commitment to and execution of a set of well-defined, rigorously-executed principles and practices―shared here for the very first time. About Colin Bryar Colin Bryar joined Amazon in 1998 — four years after its founding — and spent the next 12 years as part of Amazon’s senior leadership team as Amazon grew from a domestic (US-only) seller of books to a global, multi-dimensional powerhouse and innovator. Colin served as a Vice President at Amazon, and for two of his years he was “Chief of Staff” to Jeff Bezos, AKA “Jeff’s shadow”, during which he spent each day attending meetings, traveling with, and discussing business and life with Jeff. After Amazon, he and his family relocated to Singapore for two years where Colin served as Chief Operating Officer of e-commerce company RedMart, which was subsequently sold to Alibaba. Colin is co-founder of Working Backwards LLC where he coaches executives at both large and early-stage companies on how to implement the management practices developed at Amazon. Colin holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Engineering degrees in Operations Research from Cornell University.

The Power of Pivoting: How to Embrace Change and Create a Life You Love by Monica Ortega Finding yourself mid-pivot? I mean who isn’t these days? The Power of Pivoting is here to teach you how to not only deal with unexpected life changes, but embrace the crap out of them! Relationships? Career? Pivoting during a global crisis, yep covered! It’s time to use your pivots to create a life you actually love! In this book you’ll learn how to: ★ Discover the source of your fear and learn how to let it go. ★ Build stepping stones towards reaching your goals. ★ Create your personal mental health tool kit. ★ Shift your mindset to see setbacks as setups. From her journey of wanting to be a country singer, to creating the travel show Monica Goes, to the unexpected divorce that rocked her world, Monica uses humor and wisdom to show you how you can lean into your own pivots, even when they suck. You’ll learn how to create opportunities from any situation, even the unexpected ones, and to trust that the universe has amazing plans for you. Harness the power of pivoting, go forth, and create the life of your dreams! YOU’RE A FREAKING ROCKSTAR!

The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos by Judy Batalion One of the most important stories of World War II, already optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture: a spectacular, searing history that brings to light the extraordinary accomplishments of brave Jewish women who became resistance fighters―a group of unknown heroes whose exploits have never been chronicled in full, until now. Witnesses to the brutal murder of their families and neighbors and the violent destruction of their communities, a cadre of Jewish women in Poland―some still in their teens―helped transform the Jewish youth groups into resistance cells to fight the Nazis. With courage, guile, and nerves of steel, these “ghetto girls” paid off Gestapo guards, hid revolvers in loaves of bread and jars of marmalade, and helped build systems of underground bunkers. They flirted with German soldiers, bribed them with wine, whiskey, and home cooking, used their Aryan looks to seduce them, and shot and killed them. They bombed German train lines and blew up a town’s water supply. They also nursed the sick and taught children. Yet the exploits of these courageous resistance fighters have remained virtually unknown. As propulsive and thrilling as Hidden Figures, In the Garden of Beasts, Band of Brothers, and A Train in Winter, The Light of Days at last tells the true story of these incredible women whose courageous yet little-known feats have been eclipsed by time. Judy Batalion―the granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors―takes us back to 1939 and introduces us to Renia Kukielka, a weapons smuggler and messenger who risked death traveling across occupied Poland on foot and by train. Joining Renia are other women who served as couriers, armed fighters, intelligence agents, and saboteurs, all who put their lives in mortal danger to carry out their missions. Batalion follows these women through the savage destruction of the ghettos, arrest and internment in Gestapo prisons and concentration camps, and for a lucky few―like Renia, who orchestrated her own audacious escape from a brutal Nazi jail―into the late 20th century and beyond. Powerful and inspiring, featuring twenty black-and-white photographs, The Light of Days is an unforgettable true tale of war, the fight for freedom, exceptional bravery, female friendship, and survival in the face of staggering odds.

The Kindest Lie: A Novel by Nancy Johnson Named a Most Anticipated book by O Magazine * GMA * Elle * Marie Claire * Good Housekeeping * NBC News * Shondaland * Chicago Tribune * Woman’s Day * Refinery 29 * Bustle * The Millions * New York Post * Parade * Hello! Magazine * PopSugar * and more! “The Kindest Lie is a deep dive into how we define family, what it means to be a mother, and what it means to grow up Black…beautifully crafted.” —JODI PICOULT “A fantastic story…well-written, timely, and oh-so-memorable.”—Good Morning America “The Kindest Lie is a layered, complex exploration of race and class.” —The Washington Post A promise could betray you. It’s 2008, and the inauguration of President Barack Obama ushers in a new kind of hope. In Chicago, Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy-League educated Black engineer, is married to a kind and successful man. He’s eager to start a family, but Ruth is uncertain. She has never gotten over the baby she gave birth to—and was forced to leave behind—when she was a teenager. She had promised her family she’d never look back, but Ruth knows that to move forward, she must make peace with the past. Returning home, Ruth discovers the Indiana factory town of her youth is plagued by unemployment, racism, and despair. As she begins digging into the past, she unexpectedly befriends Midnight, a young white boy who is also adrift and looking for connection. Just as Ruth is about to uncover a burning secret her family desperately wants to keep hidden, a traumatic incident strains the town’s already searing racial tensions, sending Ruth and Midnight on a collision course that could upend both their lives. Powerful and revealing, The Kindest Lie captures the heartbreaking divide between Black and white communities and offers both an unflinching view of motherhood in contemporary America and the never-ending quest to achieve the American Dream. About Nancy Johnson A native of Chicago’s South Side, Nancy Johnson worked for more than a decade as an Emmy-nominated, award-winning television journalist at CBS and ABC affiliates in markets nationwide. A graduate of Northwestern University and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she lives in downtown Chicago and manages brand communications for a large nonprofit. The Kindest Lie is her first novel.

Philip Roth: The Biography by Blake Bailey Named one of the Most Anticipated Books of 2021 by Oprah Magazine, Chicago Tribune, the Guardian, Literary Hub, The Times (UK), Financial Times, and more. The renowned biographer’s definitive portrait of a literary titan. Appointed by Philip Roth and granted independence and complete access, Blake Bailey spent years poring over Roth’s personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and engaging Roth himself in breathtakingly candid conversations. The result is an indelible portrait of an American master and of the postwar literary scene. Bailey shows how Roth emerged from a lower-middle-class Jewish milieu to achieve the heights of literary fame, how his career was nearly derailed by his catastrophic first marriage, and how he championed the work of dissident novelists behind the Iron Curtain. Bailey examines Roth’s rivalrous friendships with Saul Bellow, John Updike, and William Styron, and reveals the truths of his florid love life, culminating in his almost-twenty-year relationship with actress Claire Bloom, who pilloried Roth in her 1996 memoir, Leaving a Doll’s House. Tracing Roth’s path from realism to farce to metafiction to the tragic masterpieces of the American Trilogy, Bailey explores Roth’s engagement with nearly every aspect of postwar American culture. 100 photographs

Skip the Line: The 10,000 Experiments Rule and Other Surprising Advice for Reaching Your Goals by James Altucher The entrepreneur, angel investor, and bestselling author of Choose Yourself busts the 10,000-hour rule of achieving mastery, offering a new mindset and dozens of techniques that will inspire any professional—no matter their age or managerial level—to pursue their passions and quickly acquire the skills they need to succeed and achieve their dreams. We live in a hierarchical world where experience has traditionally been the key to promotion. But that period is over! Straight, clear-cut career trajectories no longer exist. Industries disappear, job descriptions change, and people’s interests and passions evolve. The key to riding this wave, entrepreneur James Altucher advises, is to constantly be curious about what’s next, to be comfortable with uncertainty so you can keep navigating the rough waters ahead, and most important, to pursue the things that interest you. In Skip the Line, he reveals how he went from struggling and depressed to making his personal, financial, and creative dreams come true, despite—and perhaps due to—his many failures along the way. Altucher combines his personal story with concrete—and unorthodox—insights that work. But Skip the Line isn’t about hacks and shortcuts—it’s about transforming the way you think, work, and live, letting your interests guide your learning, time, and resources. It’s about allowing yourself to do what comes naturally; the more you do what you love, the better you do it. While showing you how to approach change and crisis, Altucher gives you tools to help easily execute ideas, become an expert negotiator, attract the attention of those around you, scale promising ideas, and improve leadership—all of which will catapult you higher than you ever thought possible and at a speed that everyone will tell you is impossible. About James Altucher James Altucher is a successful entrepreneur, angel investor, chess master, and prolific writer. He has started and run more than 20 companies and is currently invested in over 30. He is the author of 18 books, including WSJ best-sellers: ‘The Power of No’ and ‘Choose Yourself’. His latest book, “Reinvent Yourself” was #1 in the Amazon store shortly after its release. His writing has appeared in major media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, The New York Observer, Techcrunch, The Financial Times, Yahoo Finance and others. His blog, JamesAltucher.com, has attracted more than 20 million readers since its launch in 2010. He hosts a successful podcast, “The James Altucher Show” with guests of the caliber of Tony Robbins, Mark Cuban, Pieter Thiel, Arianna Huffington, Coolio, etc. His podcasts have had over 30 million downloads. Join him at JamesAltucher.com or on Twitter @Jaltucher on Instagram @altucher You can also text him questions on his personal cell phone (203) 512-2161.

Blanca Cobb, M.S. Psy, Body Language Expert & Media, How To Know When Someone Is Lying

Chairman at the Board: Recording the Soundtrack of a Generation by Bill Schnee Chairman at the Board is an intimate, funny, and absorbing look at the music business by an insider who has recorded a host of the greatest musical artists from the 1970s to today. Bill Schnee takes the reader inside the studio—behind the curtain—and through the decades with a cavalcade of famous artists as he helped them to realize their vision. After his high school band was dropped by Decca Records, Schnee began his quest to learn everything he could about making records. Mentored by technical guru Toby Foster, mastering guru Doug Sax, and recording legend Richie Podolor at his American Recording Studio, he immediately began recording the top acts of the day as a freelance engineer/producer in Hollywood. Clive Davis soon hired him to work for CBS where he partnered with famed music producer Richard Perry. Schnee went on to record and/or mix many of Perry’s biggest albums of the ’70s and ’80s, including those by Barbra Streisand, Carly Simon, Ringo Starr, Art Garfunkel, and the Pointer Sisters. With his deft personal touch with musicians, he continued to engineer and/or produce the likes of Marvin Gaye, Thelma Houston (the Grammy-nominated, direct-to-disc album I’ve Got the Music in Me), Pablo Cruise, Neil Diamond, Boz Scaggs, the Jacksons, Huey Lewis and the News, Dire Straits, and Whitney Houston. With over 125 gold and platinum records, and two Grammys for Steely Dan’s Aja and Gaucho, Schnee has been called a living legend—recognized and respected in the industry as the consummate music man with an incomparable career that he lovingly shares with his readers in humorous detail.

The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President’s Black Family by Bettye Kearse “A Roots for a new generation, rich in storytelling and steeped in history.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review “A compelling saga that gives a voice to those that history tried to erase…Poignant and eye-opening, this is a must-read.” —Booklist In The Other Madisons, Bettye Kearse—a descendant of an enslaved cook and, according to oral tradition, President James Madison—shares her family story and explores the issues of legacy, race, and the powerful consequences of telling the whole truth. For thousands of years, West African griots (men) and griots (women) have recited the stories of their people. Without this tradition, Bettye Kearse would not have known that she is a descendant of President James Madison and his slave, and half-sister, Coreen. In 1990, Bettye became the eighth-generation griotte for her family. Their credo—“Always remember—you’re a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president”—was intended to be a source of pride, but for her, it echoed with abuses of slavery, including rape and incest. Confronting those abuses, Bettye embarked on a journey of discovery—of her ancestors, the nation, and herself. She learned that wherever African slaves walked, recorded history silenced their voices and buried their footsteps: beside a slave-holding fortress in Ghana; below a federal building in New York City; and under a brick walkway at James Madison’s Virginia plantation. When Bettye tried to confirm the information her ancestors had passed down, she encountered obstacles at every turn. Part personal quest, part testimony, part historical correction, The Other Madisons is the saga of an extraordinary American family told by a griot in search of the whole story. About Bettye Kearse In 1990, Bettye Kearse became the family griotte when her mother brought the box of family memorabilia to her. Bettye asked, “Why now?” The answer was: “I want to give you plenty of time to write the book.” In recounting the struggles, perseverance, and contributions of eight generations of Bettye’s family, THE OTHER MADISONS discovers, discloses, and embraces a more inclusive and complete American story. Her writings have appeared in the BOSTON HERALD, RIVER TEETH, ZORA, MENTAL FLOSS, IMAGEMAKERS & INFLUENCERS MAGAZINE, OpEdNEWS, TIME MAGAZINE and the anthology BLACK LIVES HAVE ALWAYS MATTERED. THE OTHER MADISONS earned an International Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Book Award. Bettye’s research received extensive coverage in the WASHINGTON POST: www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/lifestyle/dna-madison/ Bettye was born in Tucson, Arizona and grew up in California. She has a B.A. in Genetics from the University of California, a Ph.D. in Biology from New York University, and an M.D. from Case Western Reserve University. Before retiring and moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico, Bettye practicedB pediatrics in Boston for 31 years. Bettye’s favorite foods are nuts and truffles. When a choice must be made, it depends on her level of self-indulgence. Website: bettyekearse.com

Savage Road: A Thriller by Chris Hauty NATIONAL BESTSELLER Hayley Chill descends even deeper into the dangerous political web of Washington, DC, in this thrilling sequel to the “propulsive, page-turning, compelling” (C.J. Box, #1 New York Times bestselling author) national bestseller Deep State. When a series of devastating cyber attacks rock the United States, Hayley Chill is tasked by the “deeper state” to track down their source. NSA analysts insist that Moscow is the culprit, but that accusation brings plenty of complications with Hayley directing the president as a double agent against the Russians. With increasing pressure on the president to steer him towards a devastating war, it’s up to Hayley to stop the mysterious computer hacker and prevent World War III—while also uncovering some shocking truths about her own life. Magnificently crafted and superbly unpredictable, Savage Road is an edge-of-your-seat political thriller ideal for our times. Biography Chris Hauty was born in San Antonio, Texas, and is a graduate of Reed College. He began his professional writing career with “Don Coyote”, a contemporary interpretation of Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” with Jonathon Lynn attached to direct. Projects in the family film genre followed, including Disney’s “Homeward Bound: Lost In San Francisco”. To broaden and further define himself as a screenwriter, Hauty wrote the original screenplay, “Arena”, a dark, gladiator epic. Subsequent credits include “Moby Dick” at Dreamworks Animation, “Beautiful Killer” at Universal Pictures with Jessica Alba attached, “Land of Legend”, a Viking saga at Walden Media with Renny Harlin set to direct, “Vigilante” at Studio Canal with Ed Burns to star and direct, and “Colosseum” at Icon Pictures, with Mel Gibson to direct. He sold the pitch for “The Eternals”, a supernatural thriller set on a college campus, to CBS Films. Recent produced credits include “Never Back Down”, directed by Jeff Wadlow and starring Djimon Hounsou and “Sniper: Ghost Shooter” staring Billy Zane for Sony Pictures Entertainment. Hauty lives in Venice, California, with his feral cat and a Triumph motorcycle. Deep State is his first novel. Visit him at chrishauty.com and follow along on Instagram, Twitter at @ChrisHauty and on Facebook at @hautywriter.

Tktrailerparts.com Tyler Bray, Founder of TK Trailer Parts & INC 5000 Entrepreneur

Sunflower Sisters: A Novel by Martha Hall Kelly Martha Hall Kelly’s million-copy bestseller Lilac Girls introduced readers to Caroline Ferriday. Now, in Sunflower Sisters, Kelly tells the story of Ferriday’s ancestor Georgeanna Woolsey, a Union nurse during the Civil War whose calling leads her to cross paths with Jemma, a young enslaved girl who is sold off and conscripted into the army, and Anne-May Wilson, a Southern plantation mistress whose husband enlists. “An exquisite tapestry of women determined to defy the molds the world has for them.”—Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours Georgeanna “Georgey” Woolsey isn’t meant for the world of lavish parties and the demure attitudes of women of her stature. So when war ignites the nation, Georgey follows her passion for nursing during a time when doctors considered women on the battlefront a bother. In proving them wrong, she and her sister Eliza venture from New York to Washington, D.C., to Gettysburg and witness the unparalleled horrors of slavery as they become involved in the war effort. In the South, Jemma is enslaved on the Peeler Plantation in Maryland, where she lives with her mother and father. Her sister, Patience, is enslaved on the plantation next door, and both live in fear of LeBaron, an abusive overseer who tracks their every move. When Jemma is sold by the cruel plantation mistress Anne-May at the same time the Union army comes through, she sees a chance to finally escape—but only by abandoning the family she loves. Anne-May is left behind to run Peeler Plantation when her husband joins the Union army and her cherished brother enlists with the Confederates. In charge of the household, she uses the opportunity to follow her own ambitions and is drawn into a secret Southern network of spies, finally exposing herself to the fate she deserves. Inspired by true accounts, Sunflower Sisters provides a vivid, detailed look at the Civil War experience, from the barbaric and inhumane plantations, to a war-torn New York City, to the horrors of the battlefield. It’s a sweeping story of women caught in a country on the brink of collapse, in a society grappling with nationalism and unthinkable racial cruelty, a story still so relevant today. About Martha Hall Kelly Martha is a native New Englander who lives in Litchfield County Connecticut. She worked as an advertising copywriter for many years, and raised three wonderful children who are now mostly out of the nest. Her debut novel Lilac Girls, about Connecticut socialite Caroline Ferriday who championed a group of Ravensbruck Concentration Camp survivors known as The Rabbits who survived WWII Nazi experiments, was her first novel and an instant New York Times bestseller. The prequel to Lilac Girls, Lost Roses, was also an instant NYTimes bestseller. It features Caroline’s mother Eliza Ferriday and her fight to save a group of Russian women, former aristocrats who lost everything in the Russian Revolution. The Lost Roses paperback published March 3rd, 2020 and the third book in the series, a Civil War novel about Caroline’s great grandmother’s family, arrives spring 2021. You’ll find more info about both books on Martha’s website: www.marthahallkelly.com and on Pinterest.

The Devil’s Hand: A Thriller by Jack Carr NEW YORK TIMES AND USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR “Take my word for it, James Reece is one rowdy motherf***er. Get ready!”—Chris Pratt, star of The Terminal List, coming to Amazon Prime The fourth thriller in the “so powerful, so pulse-pounding, so well-written” (Brad Thor, #1 New York Times bestselling author) Terminal List series follows former Navy SEAL James Reece as he is entrusted with a top-secret CIA mission of retribution twenty years in the making. It’s been twenty years since 9/11, two decades since the United States was attacked on home soil and set out to make the guilty pay with their lives. In the shadows, the enemy has been patient—learning, and adapting. And the enemy is ready to strike again. A new president offers hope to a country weary of conflict. He’s a young, popular, self-made visionary…but he’s also a man with a secret. Halfway across the globe a regional superpower struggles with sanctions imposed by the United States and her European allies, a country whose ancient religion spawned a group of ruthless assassins. Faced with internal dissent and extrajudicial targeted killings by the United States and Israel, the Supreme Leader puts a plan in motion to defeat the most powerful nation on earth. Meanwhile, a young PhD student has gained access to a bioweapon thought to be confined to a classified military laboratory known only to a select number of officials. A second-generation agent, he has been assigned a mission that will bring his adopted homeland to its knees. With Jack Carr’s signature “absolutely intense” (Chuck Norris) writing and “gripping authenticity” (The Real Book Spy), The Devil’s Hand is a riveting and timely thriller that will leave you gasping for breath.

Kids on the March: 15 Stories of Speaking Out, Protesting, and Fighting for Justice by Michael Long From the March on Washington to March for Our Lives to Black Lives Matter, the powerful stories of kid-led protest in America. Kids have always been activists. They have even launched movements. Long before they could vote, kids have spoken up, walked out, gone on strike, and marched for racial justice, climate protection, gun control, world peace, and more. Kids on the March tells the stories of these protests, from the March of the Mill Children, who walked out of factories in 1903 for a shorter work week, to 1951’s Strike for a Better School, which helped build the case for Brown v. Board of Education, to the twenty-first century’s most iconic movements, including March for Our Lives, the Climate Strike, and the recent Black Lives Matter protests reshaping our nation. Powerfully told and inspiring, Kids on the March shows how standing up, speaking out, and marching for what you believe in can advance the causes of justice, and that no one is too small or too young to make a difference. About Michael G. Long Michael G. Long ([email protected]) has a Ph.D. from Emory University and is the author or editor of numerous books on nonviolent protest, civil rights, LGBTQ+ rights, politics, and religion. He’s currently working on picture books and books for young readers, with subjects ranging from civil rights leader Bayard Rustin to the 1917 Silent Protest Parade to nonviolent protests led by kids. Long’s coauthored biography of transgender rights pioneer Phyllis Frye is under contract. Long’s first YA nonfiction biography–a coauthored book titled Troublemaker for Justice: The Story of Bayard Rustin, the Man Behind the March on Washington (City Lights Books)–earned starred reviews in Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and the School Library Journal. The Bank Street Center, Kirkus, and SLJ selected Troublemaker as a best book of the year. Long has also written on civil rights and protest for the Los Angeles Times, The Undefeated (ESPN), the Progressive, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the New York Daily News, the Afro, USA Today, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Huffington Post. His work has been featured in or on MSNBC, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, USA Today, The Root, The Nation, The Undefeated (ESPN), Mother Jones, Huffington Post, Salon, CNN, Book Forum, Ebony/Jet, and many other places. Long has spoken at City Lights Bookstore, Fenway Park, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Library of Congress, the National Museum of American History, the National Archives, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the City Club of San Diego, the Schomberg Center of the New York Public Library, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the New-York Historical Society, among other places, and he has appeared on PBS, C-Span, and National Public Radio. Long lives in Lower Allen Township (PA) with Karin, Nate, and their Boston terrier, George Abner. His older son Jack is a firefighter.

Chris Dreyer, President & Founder, Rankings.io Rankings.io Chris Dreyer is the CEO and Founder of Rankings.io, an agency that specializes in personal injury lawyer SEO. His agency ranks personal injury firms for the most lucrative keywords in your industry with end-to-end SEO, from content creation to technical optimization.

I Want to Thank You: How a Year of Gratitude Can Bring Joy and Meaning in a Disconnected World by Gina Hamadey An inspiring guide to saying thank you, one heartfelt note at a time. We all know that gratitude is good for us–but the real magic comes when we express it. Writer Gina Hamadey learned this life-changing lesson firsthand when a case of burnout and too many hours on social media left her feeling depleted and disconnected. In this engaging book, she chronicles how twelve months spent writing 365 thank-you notes to strangers, neighbors, family members, and friends shifted her perspective. Her journey shows that developing a lasting active gratitude practice can make you a happier person, heal complicated relationships, and reconnect you with the people you love–all with just a little bit of bravery at the mailbox. How can we turn an often-dreaded task into a rewarding act of self-care that makes us feel more present, joyful, and connected? Whether we’re writing to a long-lost friend, a helpful neighbor, or a child’s teacher, this inspiring book helps us reflect on meaningful memories and shared experiences and express ourselves with authenticity, vulnerability, and heart. Informed by Hamadey’s year of discovery as well as interviews with experts on relationships, gratitude, and more, this deceptively simple guide offers a powerful way to jump-start your joy. Hamadey found herself thanking not only family members and friends, but less expected people in her sphere, including local shopkeepers, physical therapists, long-ago career mentors, favorite authors, and more. Once you get going, you might find yourself cultivating an active gratitude practice, too–one heartfelt note of thanks at a time.