Throughout history we have told ourselves stories to try and make sense of our place in the universe. Richard Holloway takes us on a personal, scientific and philosophical journey to explore what he believes the answers to the biggest of questions are. He examines what we know about the universe into which we are propelled at birth and from which we are expelled at death, the stories we have told about where we come from, and the stories we tell to get through this muddling experience of life. Thought-provoking, revelatory, compassionate and playful, Stories We Tell Ourselves is a personal reckoning with life’s mysteries by one of the most important and beloved thinkers of our time.

When a young writer enters into an affair with a charming foreign correspondent, she has no idea that an uncharacteristic moment of spontaneity will change her life forever.Twenty-two-year-old Georgina Park dreams of being a hard-hitting journalist, but to pay the bills she's covering the red carpet for a celebrity magazine. Her world is turned upside down when a chance meeting with Simon Grant, an Australian TV reporter who is 20 years her senior--and married--leads to an intense, sexually charged relationship that continues even after he returns home to Sydney. But when some compromising photos from Georgina's past come back to haunt her years later, it appears Simon is to blame. Now a prolific newspaper columnist and college instructor, Georgina must use her investigative reporting skills to save herself--and revisit the affair that started it all. Set in Los Angeles, The Things We Tell Ourselves takes readers from the klieg lights of Hollywood to the dark corners of the Internet, exploring love, marriage and technology along the way. At its heart, the novel is a literary examination of the damage one generation can inflict on the next and the compromises we make between our ideals and life's realities, between what we desire and doing the right thing.

Includes questions for discussions and an excerpt from another novel.

"In The Lies We Tell Ourselves, psychotherapist Jon Frederickson reveals the ways we fool ourselves and how to get unstuck. Through dozens of stories and examples, he demonstrates that the apparent cause of our problems is almost never the real cause. In addition, he reveals what we really fear and how to face it. In the spirit of Stephen Grosz and Irving Yalom, Frederickson shows how to recognize the lies we tell ourselves and face the truths we have avoided--and stop saying yes when we really mean no."--Amazon.com.

The two thought-provoking, extended essays that make up Stories We Tell Ourselves draw from the author’s richly diverse experiences and history, taking the reader on a deeply pleasurable walk to several unexpectedly profound destinations. A steady accumulation of fascinating science, psychoanalytic theory, and cultural history—ranging as far and wide as neuro-ophthalmology, ancient dream interpretation, and the essential differences between Jung and Freud—is smoothly intermixed with vivid anecdotes, entertaining digressions, and a disarming willingness to risk everything in the course of a revealing personal narrative. “Dream Life” plumbs the depth of dreams—conceptually, biologically, and as the nursery of our most meaningful metaphors—as it considers dreams and dreaming every whichway: from the haruspicy of the Roman Empire to contemporary sleep and dream science, from the way birds dream to the way babies do, from our longing to tell them to the reasons we wish other people wouldn’t. “Seeing Things” recounts a journey of mother and daughter—a Holmes-and-Watson pair intrepidly working their way through the mysteries of a disorder known as Alice in Wonderland Syndrome—even as it restlessly detours into the world beyond the looking glass of the unconscious itself. In essays that constantly offer layers of surprises and ever-deeper insights, the author turns a powerful lens on the relationships that make up a family, on expertise and unsatisfying diagnoses, on science and art and the pleasures of contemplation and inquiry—and on our fears, regrets, hopes, and (of course) dreams.

Change the story. Change your life. From imagined catastrophes to play-by-play interpretations of others' behavior, we are expert storytellers, quick to fill in the blanks. Unfortunately, all too often our behavior is determined by baseless suspicions, which trigger needless pain. Real life passes us by as we fall for powerful fantasies of our own creation. It doesn't have to be this way. In The Stories We Tell Ourselves, author and therapist Scott Gornto shows us how to break the cycle of false assumptions that lead to unnecessary anxiety. By taking control of our reactions to the people around us, we can learn how to be truly present in our lives as we nurture the relationships that matter most. Based on more than 20 years of research and experience, Gornto demonstrates how family narratives, media, and past experiences shape compelling story lines that blind us to reality and wreak havoc on our relationships. Through persuasive examples, he models fresh, life-enhancing approaches to engaging with friends, business associates, and loved ones alike. Don't waste your life making up stories. The Stories We Tell Ourselves is a wake-up call and a compassionate, accessible guide to transforming your relationships-and your life.

Publisher description

Learn how to reverse the effects of negative self-talk and embrace a more positive, optimistic outlook on life

A colorful compendium of little white lies, based on the award-winning, “bitingly honest” blog (Imprint). From the diet you’re going to start tomorrow to that call you were about to make when something (anything) else came up—life is full of little lies that get us through the day. With Daily Dishonesty, designer and blogger Lauren Hom pays homage to the (mostly) innocent foibles that make us human. With 150+ hilariously common lies, beautifully illustrated by Hom, Daily Dishonesty touches on topics from breakups, friendship, and growing up to slacking off and guilty pleasures, in hand-lettered mantras that are all too honest about our untruths. Praise for the Daily Dishonesty blog “Simply wonderful!” —SwissMiss “Cleverly and adorably displays lies.” —Complex Magazine “Really inspiring for those of you who want to dabble in hand lettering.” —Miss Moss

How new biomedical technologies—from prenatal testing to gene-editing techniques—require us to imagine who counts as human and what it means to belong. From next-generation prenatal tests, to virtual children, to the genome-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9, new biotechnologies grant us unprecedented power to predict and shape future people. That power implies a question about belonging: which people, which variations, will we welcome? How will we square new biotech advances with the real but fragile gains for people with disabilities—especially when their voices are all but absent from the conversation? This book explores that conversation, the troubled territory where biotechnology and disability meet. In it, George Estreich—an award-winning poet and memoirist, and the father of a young woman with Down syndrome—delves into popular representations of cutting-edge biotech: websites advertising next-generation prenatal tests, feature articles on “three-parent IVF,” a scientist's memoir of constructing a semisynthetic cell, and more. As Estreich shows, each new application of biotechnology is accompanied by a persuasive story, one that minimizes downsides and promises enormous benefits. In this story, people with disabilities are both invisible and essential: a key promise of new technologies is that disability will be repaired or prevented. In chapters that blend personal narrative and scholarship, Estreich restores disability to our narratives of technology. He also considers broader themes: the place of people with disabilities in a world built for the able; the echoes of eugenic history in the genomic present; and the equation of intellect and human value. Examining the stories we tell ourselves, the fables already creating our futures, Estreich argues that, given biotech that can select and shape who we are, we need to imagine, as broadly as possible, what it means to belong.