An unusual, searching, and poignant memoir of one man's quest to make sense of depression George Scialabba is a prolific critic and essayist known for his incisive, wide-ranging commentary on literature, philosophy, religion, and politics. He is also, like millions of others, a lifelong sufferer from clinical depression. In How To Be Depressed, Scialabba presents an edited selection of his mental health records spanning decades of treatment, framed by an introduction and an interview with renowned podcaster Christopher Lydon. The book also includes a wry and ruminative collection of "tips for the depressed," organized into something like a glossary of terms—among which are the names of numerous medications he has tried or researched over the years. Together, these texts form an unusual, searching, and poignant hybrid of essay and memoir, inviting readers into the hospital and the therapy office as Scialabba and his caregivers try to make sense of this baffling disease. In Scialabba's view, clinical depression amounts to an "utter waste." Unlike heart surgery or a broken leg, there is no relaxing convalescence and nothing to be learned (except, perhaps, who your friends are). It leaves you weakened and bewildered, unsure why you got sick or how you got well, praying that it never happens again but certain that it will. Scialabba documents his own struggles and draws from them insights that may prove useful to fellow-sufferers and general readers alike. In the place of dispensable banalities—"Hold on," "You will feel better," and so on—he offers an account of how it's been for him, in the hope that doing so might prove helpful to others.

This collection of vividly illustrative sermons by a leading contemporary Episcopalian preacher eloquently heralds the Christian call to faith in the face of modern challenges. Widely known for their up-to-the-minute relevance to modern life, the sermons of Fleming Rutledge are always out on the edge, challenging the boundaries of contemporary thought and experience. No issue is too threatening, no event too shocking, no question too impertinent to be addressed. Following Karl Barth's dictum that sermons should be written with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, Rutledge weaves the changing events of the daily news together with the unchanging rhythms of the church seasons. Her book leads readers through the liturgical year, from All Saints to Pentecost, showing how the biblical story intersects with our own stories.

Two Philosophers Ask and Answer the Big Questions About the Search for Faith and Happiness For seekers of all stripes, philosophy is timeless self-care. Notre Dame philosophy professors Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko have reinvigorated this tradition in their wildly popular and influential undergraduate course “God and the Good Life,” in which they wrestle with the big questions about how to live and what makes life meaningful. Now they invite us into the classroom to work through issues like what justifies our beliefs, whether we should practice a religion and what sacrifices we should make for others—as well as to investigate what figures such as Aristotle, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Iris Murdoch, and W. E. B. Du Bois have to say about how to live well. Sullivan and Blaschko do the timeless work of philosophy using real-world case studies that explore love, finance, truth, and more. In so doing, they push us to escape our own caves, ask stronger questions, explain our deepest goals, and wrestle with suffering, the nature of death, and the existence of God. Philosophers know that our “good life plan” is one that we as individuals need to be constantly and actively writing to achieve some meaningful control and sense of purpose even if the world keeps throwing surprises our way. For at least the past 2,500 years, philosophers have taught that goal-seeking is an essential part of what it is to be human—and crucially that we could find our own good life by asking better questions of ourselves and of one another. This virtue ethics approach resonates profoundly in our own moment. The Good Life Method is a winning guide to tackling the big questions of being human with the wisdom of the ages.

Publisher Description

The cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project and pioneer behind the compassionate care movement shares an inspiring exploration of the lessons dying has to offer about living a fulfilling life. Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight, helping us to discover what matters most. Life and death are a package deal. They cannot be pulled apart and we cannot truly live unless we are aware of death. The Five Invitations is an exhilarating meditation on the meaning of life and how maintaining an ever-present consciousness of death can bring us closer to our truest selves. As a renowned teacher of compassionate caregiving and the cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project, Frank Ostaseski has sat on the precipice of death with more than a thousand people. In The Five Invitations, he distills the lessons gleaned over the course of his career, offering an evocative and stirring guide that points to a radical path to transformation. The Five Invitations: -Don’t Wait -Welcome Everything, Push Away Nothing -Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience -Find a Place of Rest in the Middle of Things -Cultivate Don’t Know Mind These Five Invitations show us how to wake up fully to our lives. They can be understood as best practices for anyone coping with loss or navigating any sort of transition or crisis; they guide us toward appreciating life’s preciousness. Awareness of death can be a valuable companion on the road to living well, forging a rich and meaningful life, and letting go of regret. The Five Invitations is a powerful and inspiring exploration of the essential wisdom dying has to impart to all of us.

In this national bestseller, the most influential layman in the United States reports that the Roman Catholic Church in America must either profoundly reform or lapse into permanent irrelevance.

"A great many of these notes were not written for publication, but for my own self in moments of trouble and in moments of peace and joy." Dorothy Day's reflections-written on the fly over five hectic years-reveal not only the beginnings of the Catholic Worker Movement, but the mind of a heroic woman as she responds to the demands of faith. Now back in print after seventy-five years, House of Hospitality is packed with stories of sacrifice and kindness, strikes and protests, hunger and soup lines, the rough reality of tenement life, and the foul odor of poverty. "I do penance through my nose continually," Dorothy wrote. And yet, as she said, "Our lives are made up of little miracles day by day." Dorothy Day and her fellow workers were "poor for the poor," as Pope Francis has exhorted, and the early years of this Gospel-driven moment have much to teach us about how we can live, today, with a heart for others. "Love and ever more love," Dorothy said, "is the only solution to every problem that comes up."

An African-American writer's concise, heartfelt take on the state of his nation, exploring the war between the values he has always held and the reality with which he is confronted in twenty-first-century America. In the tradition of James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time and Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me comes Clifford Thompson's What It Is. Thompson was raised to believe in treating every person of every color as an individual, and he decided as a young man that America, despite its history of racial oppression, was his home as much as anyone else's. As a middle-aged, happily married father of biracial children, Thompson finds himself questioning his most deeply held convictions when the race-baiting Donald Trump ascends to the presidency—elected by whites, whom Thompson had refused to judge as a group, and who make up the majority in this country Thompson had called his own. In the grip of contradictory emotions, Thompson turns for guidance to the wisdom of writers he admires while knowing that the answers to his questions about America ultimately lie in America itself. Through interviews with a small but varied group of Americans he hears sharply divergent opinions about what is happening in the country while trying to find his own answers—conclusions based not on conventional wisdom or on what he would like to believe, but on what he sees.

A Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Winner of the Kirkus Prize for Fiction • A Recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction • A Finalist for the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction • A Finalist for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction • A Finalist for the Rathbones Folio Prize • Longlisted for an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence • One of New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Book Named a Best Book of the Year by Entertainment Weekly • GQ • The New York Times (Selected by Dwight Garner) • NPR • The Wall Street Journal • San Francisco Chronicle • Refinery29 • Booklist • Kirkus Reviews • Commonweal Magazine "In its poetic splendor and moral seriousness, The Sport of Kings bears the traces of Faulkner, Morrison, and McCarthy. . . . It is a contemporary masterpiece."—San Francisco Chronicle Hailed by The New Yorker for its “remarkable achievements,” The Sport of Kings is an American tale centered on a horse and two families: one white, a Southern dynasty whose forefathers were among the founders of Kentucky; the other African-American, the descendants of their slaves. It is a dauntless narrative that stretches from the fields of the Virginia piedmont to the abundant pastures of the Bluegrass, and across the dark waters of the Ohio River; from the final shots of the Revolutionary War to the resounding clang of the starting bell at Churchill Downs. As C. E. Morgan unspools a fabric of shared histories, past and present converge in a Thoroughbred named Hellsmouth, heir to Secretariat and a contender for the Triple Crown. Newly confronted with one another in the quest for victory, the two families must face the consequences of their ambitions, as each is driven---and haunted---by the same, enduring question: How far away from your father can you run? A sweeping narrative of wealth and poverty, racism and rage, The Sport of Kings is an unflinching portrait of lives cast in the shadow of slavery and a moral epic for our time.