A life-transforming encounter with colorful characters on a train lead to a spiritual awakening. Odyssey to the heart is guide to finding inner peace. Short stories point to an inward journey towards the heart where lasting contentment resides.

Written in a personal, story-telling style, Odyssey weaves excerpts of actual relationships with current and classic research to provide a better perspective on our own experiences in light of the principles of relationships. Highlights of its comprehensive coverage include the classic research on personal attraction, dating and meeting others for closeness, and the maintenance and dissolution of relationships. "Recommendations for Growth" provides an opportunity for readers to directly apply current research and theory to their own relationships. Features new to this edition include the latest research and therapeutic techniques on maintaining and enhancing relationships; a new chapter on the family with recent demographic changes and a look at the ongoing debates about the impact of cohabitation, divorce, and blended families; and new chapters on same sex relationships and the dark side of relationships, including why women stay in abusive relationships. Odyssey of the Heart serves as a text for courses on close and/or interpersonal relationships. Its accessibility and inclusion of many actual experiences will engage the general reader.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and his longtime cardiologist, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, share the story of Cheney’s thirty-five-year battle with heart disease—providing insight into the incredible medical breakthroughs that have changed cardiac care over the last four decades. For as long as he has served at the highest levels of business and government, Vice President Dick Cheney has also been one of the world’s most prominent heart patients. Now, for the first time ever, Cheney, together with his longtime cardiologist, Jonathan Reiner, MD, shares the very personal story of his courageous thirty-five-year battle with heart disease, from his first heart attack in 1978 to the heart transplant he received in 2012. In 1978, when Cheney suffered his first heart attack, he received essentially the same treatment President Eisenhower had had in 1955. Since then, cardiac medicine has been revolutionized, and Cheney has benefitted from nearly every medical breakthrough. At each juncture, when Cheney faced a new health challenge, the technology was one step ahead of his disease. Cheney’s story is in many ways the story of the evolution of modern cardiac care. Heart is the riveting, singular memoir of both doctor and patient. Like no US politician has before him, Cheney opens up about his health struggles, sharing harrowing, never-before-told stories about the challenges he faced during a perilous time in our nation’s history. Dr. Reiner provides his perspective on Cheney’s case and also gives readers a fascinating glimpse into his own education as a doctor and the history of our understanding of the human heart. He masterfully chronicles the important discoveries, radical innovations, and cutting-edge science that have changed the face of medicine and saved countless lives. Powerfully braiding science with story and the personal with the political, Heart is a sweeping, inspiring, and ultimately optimistic book that will give hope to the millions of Americans affected by heart disease.

"Being the second voyage of the NACS odyssey."

A Christy Award finalist from the best-selling author of War Room! Desperate to escape haunting memories, J. D. Jessup travels from Nashville to Tucson and volunteers on an organic farm. The hardened landowner has one prevailing rule: If J. D. sees an “illegal,” call the border patrol. But when an early morning ride along the fence line leads him to a beautiful young woman named Maria, near death in the desert, his heart pulls him in another direction. Longing to atone for the choices that drove him to Tucson, J. D. hides her and unleashes a chain of deadly events he could never have imagined. Soon they are running from a killer and fighting for their lives. As secrets of their pasts emerge, J. D. realizes that saving Maria may be the only way to save himself.

At the age of 43, writer Allen Abel decided to move home to Brooklyn, stay with his mother (in the same apartment in which he grew up), and explore and write about the borough of his birth. For several months he wandered along Flatbush Avenue, the thoroughfare that runs like a spine through Brooklyn. The result is a delightful family memoir and exploration of a unique place. He hobnobs with Mohawk high-steel workers, tries to learn voodoo secrets from Haitian immigrants, commiserates with policemen detailed to the subway, and chats with an ex-zookeeper in Prospect Park. He revisits the scenes of his childhood, samples social life in distant Flatlands, and hunts for horseshoe crabs on the shoreline. "Flatbush Odyssey is a revelation, and in it Allen Abel has produced a marvellous piece of storytelling.

For Readers of Ray Kurzweil and Michio Kaku, a New Look at the Cutting Edge of Artificial Intelligence Imagine a robotic stuffed animal that can read and respond to a child’s emotional state, a commercial that can recognize and change based on a customer’s facial expression, or a company that can actually create feelings as though a person were experiencing them naturally. Heart of the Machine explores the next giant step in the relationship between humans and technology: the ability of computers to recognize, respond to, and even replicate emotions. Computers have long been integral to our lives, and their advances continue at an exponential rate. Many believe that artificial intelligence equal or superior to human intelligence will happen in the not-too-distance future; some even think machine consciousness will follow. Futurist Richard Yonck argues that emotion, the first, most basic, and most natural form of communication, is at the heart of how we will soon work with and use computers. Instilling emotions into computers is the next leap in our centuries-old obsession with creating machines that replicate humans. But for every benefit this progress may bring to our lives, there is a possible pitfall. Emotion recognition could lead to advanced surveillance, and the same technology that can manipulate our feelings could become a method of mass control. And, as shown in movies like Her and Ex Machina, our society already holds a deep-seated anxiety about what might happen if machines could actually feel and break free from our control. Heart of the Machine is an exploration of the new and inevitable ways in which mankind and technology will interact. The paperback edition has a new foreword by Rana el Kaliouby, PhD, a pioneer in artificial emotional intelligence, as well as the cofounder and CEO of Affectiva, the acclaimed AI startup spun off from the MIT Media Lab.

In 2001, The Voice of the Heart began a steady journey into the lives of those looking for more. Since its initial release, The Voice of the Heart has been handed one friend to another and has helped thousands of people begin to speak the truth of their story and to live more fully from the heart. Answer the call to full living.

1. The world of particle physics 2. Voyage into the atom 3. The structure of the atom 4. The extraterrestrials 5. The cosmic rain 6. The challenge of the big machines 7. The particle explosion 8. Colliders and image chambers 9. From charm to top 10. The 'whys' of particle physics 11. Futureclash 12. Particles at work Table of particles Further reading/acknowledgements Picture credits Index

After losing a loved one, "pay attention to the ways in which your relationship continues." So advised Sarah Horowitz in an interview she gave the day before her unexpected death. In A Cracking of the Heart, David Horowitz explores the legacy of his extraordinary daughter's short life, and narrates his quest for a deeper understanding of the child he lost. A remarkable woman and gifted writer, Sarah was afflicted with a birth condition that, while complicating and ultimately shortening her life, never affected her dreams. From an early age, she displayed inspiring courage in facing her own difficulties and boundless compassion. Alternately searing and uplifting, this book reconciles what could have been with what is, taking the reader through a father's love, frustration, admiration, and grief, to what lies beyond.