Twenty years ago Kathleen Norris, with her husband, fellow poet David Dwyer, moved from New York City to her late grandmother’s home in Lemmon, South Dakota (population 1,614). Their stay was to be temporary. They are still there. It is clear why, in Norris’s loving descriptions of this vast and starkly beautiful landscape, of its extremes of weather and topography, and of its townspeople and farmers.
She also touts the rewards of monastic life, which leads her to a deeper understanding of herself. This self-knowledge heightens her appreciation of the concept of community, both social and spiritual,
read more
Jacqueline Novogratz left a career in international banking to spend her life on a quest to understand global poverty and find powerful new ways of tackling it. From her first stumbling efforts as a young idealist venturing forth in Africa to the creation of the trailblazing organization she runs today, Novogratz tells gripping stories with unforgettable characters. She shows, in ways both hilarious and heartbreaking, how traditional charity often fails, but how a new form of philanthropic investing called patient capital can help make people self-sufficient and can change millions of lives. More than just an autobiography or a how-to guide to addressing poverty,
read more
Fascinating, insightful, and wholly engrossing, The Peabody Sisters is a landmark biography of three women who made American intellectual history. Though theirs may not be household names, Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody had an extraordinary influence on the thought of their day, the movement of intense creative ferment known as American Romanticism. Megan Marshall adeptly brings to life the sisters and the men they loved and inspired, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Mann, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. In a work filled with startling revelations, Marshall presents a vivid and nuanced psychological portrait of a sisterhood rife with shifting loyalties yet founded on enduring affection.
read more
It all started when fourteen-year-old Hannah Salwen had a eureka moment. Seeing a homeless man in her neighborhood at the same instant she spotted a man driving a glistening Mercedes, she said, “Dad, if that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal.”
Until that day, the Salwens had been caught up like so many of us in the classic American dream–providing a good life for their children, accumulating more and more stuff, doing their part to help others but not really feeling it. So when Hannah was stopped in her tracks by this glaring disparity,
read more
Suzie Gilbert once struggled to find her calling. But when she took a job working at the animal hospital near her home in New York’s Hudson Valley, her passion was born. She began bringing abused and unwanted parrots home and volunteering at a local raptor rehabilitation center.
Then came the ultimate commitment to her cause: turning her home into Flyaway, Inc., a nonprofit wild bird rehabilitation center. Gilbert chronicles the years of her chaotic household-cum-bird-hospital with delightful wit, recounting the confusion that ensued as her husband and two young children struggled to live in a house where parrots shrieked Motown songs,
read more
The Book of Psalms comes to life in this new translation by poet Pamela Greenberg. Restoring the musicality and immediacy of the original Hebrew, the raw emotions of the psalms—from jubilant gratitude and wonder to mortal terror and quiet despair—are newly tangible in every line. Greenberg’s translation restores the unflinching realism of the psalms, as the psalmist or psalmists tremble in fear of real enemies, both outside their doors and within their hearts. God becomes at once the greatest source of hope and a source of unspeakable anger, as flawed men and women navigate the difficult questions of faith and doubt.
read more
