One Sunday afternoon, as she unloaded the dishwasher, Gretchen Rubin felt hit by a wave of homesickness. Homesick—why? She was standing right in her own kitchen. She felt homesick, she realized, with love for home itself. “Of all the elements of a happy life,” she thought, “my home is the most important.” In a flash, she decided to undertake a new happiness project, and this time, to focus on home.
And what did she want from her home? A place that calmed her, and energized her. A place that, by making her feel safe, would free her to take risks.
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At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.
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For most of us, traveling means visiting the most beautiful places on Earth—Paris, the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon. It’s rare to book a plane ticket to visit the lifeless moonscape of Canada’s oil sand strip mines, or to set sail for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But in Visit Sunny Chernobyl, Andrew Blackwell embraces a different kind of travel, taking a jaunt through the most gruesomely polluted places on Earth.
Visit Sunny Chernobyl fuses immersive first-person reporting with satire and analysis, making the case that it’s time to start appreciating our planet as-is—not as we wish it to be.
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In this story of perseverance in the face of adversity, Regina Calcaterra recounts her childhood in foster care and on the streets—and how she and her savvy crew of homeless siblings managed to survive years of homelessness, abandonment, and abuse
Regina Calcaterra’s emotionally powerful memoir reveals how she endured a series of foster homes and intermittent homelessness in the shadow of the Hamptons, and how she rose above her past while fghting to keep her brother and three sisters together.
Beautifully written and heartbreakingly honest, Etched in Sand is an unforgettable reminder that regardless of social status,
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As a busy teen star, Reed Alexander’s life is a balancing act. Several years ago, as he juggled career commitments and school, he lost sight of how to eat right, became overweight, and as a result, was exhausted and lethargic. Too tired to keep up with his hectic schedule, he decided to reclaim his health by changing his diet. A can-do guy, his first step was to learn how to cook for himself. Unable to find any recipes suited to a teenager’s tastes, he rolled up his sleeves and set to work in his kitchen, developing healthy versions of the foods he loves.
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Facebook says you have hundreds of friends. So why can you name only two? Friendship today is more confusing than ever, and yet having someone to lean on and confide in is increasingly more important. Enter bestselling author Julie Klam, an expert on friendship—online and off—if there ever was one.
With humor and warmth, Klam shares stories that get to the heart of modern friendships, drawing in particular on her relationships with her four closest friends. From the relative value of secrets to the comfort of a confidant, from exciting social media friends to the ones who come to your party or meet you for lunch or go with you to a horrible doctor’s appointment,
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