Self Help

Arnold's stratospheric success happened as part of a process. As the result of clear vision, big thinking, hard work, direct communication, resilient problem-solving, open-minded curiosity, and a commitment to giving back. All of it guided by the one lesson Arnold's father hammered into him above all: be useful. As Arnold conquered every realm he entered, he kept his father's adage close to his heart.

Written with his uniquely earnest, blunt, powerful voice, Be Useful takes readers on an inspirational tour through Arnold's tool kit for a meaningful life. He shows us how to put those tools to work, in service of whatever fulfilling future we can dream up for ourselves. He brings his insights to vivid life with compelling personal stories, life-changing successes and life-threatening failures alike--some of them famous; some told here for the first time ever.

Too many of us struggle to disconnect from our self-pity and connect to our purpose. At an early age, Arnold forged the mental tools to build the ladder out of the poverty and narrow-mindedness of his rural Austrian hometown, tools he used to add rung after rung from there. Now he shares that wisdom with all of us. As he puts it, no one is going to come rescue you--you only have yourself. The good news, it turns out, is that you are all you need.

When a veteran Washington journalist moved to Kansas, he met a new neighbor who was more than a century old. Little did he know that he was beginning a long friendship--and a profound lesson in the meaning of life. Charlie White was no ordinary neighbor. Born before radio, Charlie lived long enough to use a smartphone. When a shocking tragedy interrupted his idyllic boyhood, Charlie mastered survival strategies that reflect thousands of years of human wisdom. Thus armored, Charlie's sense of adventure carried him on an epic journey across the continent, and later found him swinging across bandstands of the Jazz Age, racing aboard ambulances through Depression-era gangster wars, improvising techniques for early open-heart surgery, and cruising the Amazon as a guest of Peru's president.

David Von Drehle came to understand that Charlie's resilience and willingness to grow made this remarkable neighbor a master in the art of thriving through times of dramatic change. As a gift to his children, he set out to tell Charlie's secrets. The Book of Charlie is a gospel of grit--the inspiring story of one man's journey through a century of upheaval. The history that unfolds through Charlie's story reminds you that the United States has always been a divided nation, a questing nation, an inventive nation--a nation of Charlies in the rollercoaster pursuit of a good and meaningful life.

In Build the Life You Want, Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey invite you to begin a journey toward greater happiness no matter how challenging your circumstances. Drawing on cutting-edge science and their years of helping people translate ideas into action, they show you how to improve your life right now instead of waiting for the outside world to change.

With insight, compassion, and hope, Brooks and Winfrey reveal how the tools of emotional self-management can change your life―immediately. They recommend practical, research-based practices to build the four pillars of happiness: family, friendship, work, and faith. And along the way, they share hard-earned wisdom from their own lives and careers as well as the witness of regular people whose lives are joyful despite setbacks and hardship.

Equipped with the tools of emotional self-management and ready to build your four pillars, you can take control of your present and future rather than hoping and waiting for your circumstances to improve. Build the Life You Want is your blueprint for a better life.

Bestselling author Frank Schaeffer offers a passionate political, social, and lifestyle "blueprint" for changes millions of us know are needed to rebalance our work lives with thriving relationships: Fall in Love, Have Children, Stay Put, Save the Planet, Be Happy. Even before everything was disrupted by COVID-19 (not to mention by Trump), millions of Americans were already questioning capitalism's "values." We were already challenging the idea that your job defines you. We already knew something was wrong. Loneliness, frustration, and alienation were already on the rise. Even the most successful of us felt too busy, too preoccupied, and too distracted to enjoy what we intuitively know are life's greatest rewards: vibrant relationships, family life, connection to others, involvement in our community, and the thrilling experience of love.

Fall in Love . . . builds a well-researched and entertaining bridge to living happier lives and to a better future. It shows us that based on a better understanding of our evolutionary selves, we can thrive in family life and in our work life, too. But to do both joyfully--and at the same time--depends on rediscovering the priority of relationships, connections, community, and love.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

*Includes an interview with James Hollis*

"Provocative and appealing . . . Well worth your extremely limited time." --Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal

There's a good reason why everyone has been talking about Oliver Burkeman's New York Times bestseller, Four Thousand Weeks. Nobody needs to be told there isn't enough time. Whether we're starting our own business, or trying to write a novel during our lunch break, or staring down a pile of deadlines as we're planning a vacation, we're obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and ceaseless struggle against distraction. We're deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient and life hacks to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and yet the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks, the average length of a human life.

Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with "getting everything done," Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing that many of the unhelpful ways we've come to think about time aren't inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we've made as individuals and as a society--and that we can do things differently.

In 1995, Hadley Freeman wrote in her diary: "I just spent three years of my life in mental hospitals. So why am I crazier than I was before "

From the ages of fourteen to seventeen, Freeman lived in psychiatric wards after developing anorexia nervosa. Her doctors informed her that her body was cannibalizing her muscles and heart for nutrition, but they could tell her little else: why she had it, what it felt like, what recovery looked like. For the next twenty years, Freeman lived as a "functioning anorexic," grappling with new forms of self-destructive behavior as the anorexia mutated and persisted. Anorexia is one of the most widely discussed but least understood mental illnesses. Through "sharp storytelling, solid research and gentle humor" (The Wall Street Journal), Freeman delivers an incisive and bracing work that details her experiences with anorexia--the shame, fear, loneliness, and rage--and how she overcame it. She interviews doctors to learn how treatment for the illness has changed since she was hospitalized and what new discoveries have been made about the illness, including its connection to autism, OCD, and metabolic rate. She learns why the illness always begins during adolescence and how this reveals the difficulties for girls to come of age. Freeman tracks down the women with whom she was hospitalized and reports on how their recovery has progressed over decades.

Good Girls is an honest and hopeful story of resilience that offers a message to the nearly 30 million Americans who suffer from eating disorders: Life can be enjoyed, rather than merely endured.

The author of the bestselling I Used to Have a Plan is back with more balm for the soul, offering advice, inspiration, and solace for everyone who has lost something or someone special.

After losing her mother to cancer, Alessandra Olanow was overwhelmed by the sadness and uncertainty she felt each day--the shifting tide of emotions that everyone who has suffered loss experiences in their own unique way.

In this wise and intimate book, the artist and writer draws insights from her personal loss and also her training as an end-of-life doula to explore the complex, heart-rending process of grief. Olanow chronicles her journey through pain and how she learned to bear a sorrow that will never leave her. In spare but incisive writing and more than 75 full-color drawings, she shares her own struggle with feelings of loss and longing and shows that with time, grief evolves and we relearn the world changed by that loss.

Hello Grief can be read straight through from cover to cover or can be opened to any page: each spread delivers a warm combination of advice, solace, empathy, and a glint of humor that is direct, helpful, comforting, and profound in its truth. Olanow has distilled the experience of grief and the process of healing into a soothing book that will bring comfort to anyone in mourning.

This "necessary book" (Roxanne Gay, New York Times bestselling author, Bad Feminist and Hunger) shares an essential look at the ways in which Black women are left out of conversations about "diet culture," health, and wellness.

In It's Always Been Ours, eating disorder specialist and storyteller Jessica Wilson challenges us to rethink the politics of body liberation by centering the bodies of Black women in our cultural discussions of self-image, food, health, and wellness. Interrogating a status quo that perpetuates white supremacist ideas about who Black women are, how they live in their bodies, and what Black health means, she creates a context for understanding how whiteness and capitalism have shaped the ways we view and treat our bodies, and how even well-intentioned solutions to this problem continue to center thin white women.

With an incisive blend of historical documents, the work of popular authors, and the narratives of clients, friends, and celebrities, Wilson examines the ways that ideas about respectability and restriction have harmed Black women. With wit and levity, she challenges what it means to have the "right" body, and helps all women understand that a radical reimagining of body narratives is a prerequisite for vibrant wellbeing. It's Always Been Ours is a love letter that encourages Black women to find joy in their bodies and their identities.

"There simply is no better literary voice for this moment in history than Jessica Wilson."--Sonya Renee Taylor, New York Times bestselling author, The Body is Not an Apology

In this profound and personal book, Setiya shows how the tools of philosophy can help us find our way. Drawing on ancient and modern philosophy as well as fiction, history, memoir, film, comedy, social science, and stories from Setiya's own experience, Life Is Hard is a book for this moment--a work of solace and compassion.

Warm, accessible, and good-humored, this book is about making the best of a bad lot. It offers guidance for coping with pain and making new friends, for grieving the lost and failing with grace, for confronting injustice and searching for meaning in life. Countering pop psychologists and online influencers who admonish us to "find our bliss" and "live our best lives," Setiya acknowledges that the best is often out of reach. Instead, he asks how we can weather life's adversities, finding hope and living well when life is hard.

A simple shift in thinking can change everything you believe about your own happiness.

By the time we become adults, most of us have joined the religion of suffering, which preaches that unless circumstances are controlled, life will be a mess. We compare ourselves to others and speculate about an impossible-to-know future, holding out hope for an improved life through getting ahead, fulfilling passion, or finding true love. But the idea that happiness comes from putting effort toward altering one's circumstances is harmful and backward. What if we instead learned to understand that circumstances can rarely be controlled, and that life is, and always will be, messy?

From that starting point, we could learn to use our minds to create happiness despite life's ever-changing circumstances and events. Life's Messy, Live Happy by Cy Wakeman is about dramatically changing the level of happiness you feel in your daily life, by learning to disconnect happiness from external forces, stop worrying about the future, and realize that most of your negative feelings are about things that never even happened.

Wakeman is a credible, relatable teacher--a business owner, mother, and community member who has lived her philosophy and achieved profound happiness and success in a crazy, messy life. Filled with concrete daily practices and true stories that are hilarious, painful, and poignant, this book will change everything: your perspective, your focus, and your energy level for everyday life.

When it comes to love, our actions speak louder than words. Whether you're already in a relationship and looking for ways to keep things fresh, or you're hoping for love to blossom and need some first-date ideas, this book will help you show your special someone just how you feel.

Inside you will find:

Living with Others takes us through the last five of the Big Book's Twelve Steps. Offering guidance for living with others, this workbook helps us understand key concepts like the harmony of working a daily spiritual program through making amends, continuing to take a personal inventory, practicing prayer and meditation, and carrying the message of spiritual awakening to others.

Whether you're new to a Twelve Step program or simply reviewing the Big Book, Living with Others is an excellent resource for working Steps Eight through Twelve for the first time--or any time on your recovery journey.

Created to reinforce important points from the best-selling book, A Program for You: A Guide to the Big Book's Design for Living, this workbook helps you truly live your recovery through the Twelve Steps.