"In July 2013, Oliver Sacks turned eighty and wrote [a] ... piece in The New York Times about the prospect of old age and the freedom he envisioned for himself in binding together the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime. Eighteen months later, he was given a diagnosis of terminal cancer--which he announced publically in another piece in The New York Times. Gratitude is Sacks's meditation on why life [continued] to enthrall him even as he [faced] the...

A deeply moving testimony and celebration of how to embrace life. No writer has succeeded in capturing the medical and human drama of illness as honestly and as eloquently as Oliver Sacks. During the last few months of his life, he wrote a set of essays in which he movingly explored his feelings about completing a life and coming to terms with his own death.
“A series of heart-rending yet ultimately uplifting essays….A...

In July 2014, Jenny Diski was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and given "two or three years" to live. She didn't know how to react. All responses felt scripted, as if she were acting out her part. To find the response that felt wholly her own, she had to face the cliches and try to write about it. And there was another story to write, one she had not yet told: that of being taken in at age fifteen by the author Doris Lessing, and the subsequent...

An essential toolkit to help teachers and parents foster wellbeing in kids and teens In this book, you'll find fun, practical activities and strategies to develop an attitude of gratitude: the positive mindset that kids and teens need to successfully weather ups and downs, successes and setbacks. Growing with Gratitude outlines simple steps that you can start to action immediately, whether in the classroom, the whole school or at home. Drawing on...

A pioneering psychologist reveals how three emotions can provide the surest, quickest route to success in any realm. A string of bestsellers have alerted us to the importance of grit - an ability to persevere and control one's impulses that is so closely associated with greatness. But no book yet has charted the most accessible and powerful path to grit: our prosocial emotions. These feelings - gratitude, compassion and pride - are easier to generate...

This fascinating inquiry into all aspects of gratitude ranges from the unusual determination with which parents teach their children to thank, to the difference between speaking the words and feeling them, to the ways different cultures handle the complex matters of giving, receiving, and returning favors and presents. It also illuminates the modern battle of social scientists to pin down the notion of thankfulness and discover its biological and...

Workers want and need to know their work is appreciated. Showing gratitude to employees is the easiest, fastest, most inexpensive way to boost performance. New research shows that gratitude boosts employee engagement, reduces turnover, and leads team members to express more gratitude to one another--strengthening team bonds. Studies have also shown that gratitude is beneficial for those expressing it and is one of the most powerful variables in predicting...