"A wry and compassionate selection of essays reflecting on mortals and mortality, from the acclaimed author of The Undertaking. For nearly four decades, poet, essayist, and small- town funeral director Thomas Lynch has probed relations between the literary and mortuary arts. His life's work with the dead and the bereaved has informed four previous collections of nonfiction, each exploring identity and humanity with Lynch's signature blend of memoir,...

"This fresh perspective on crucial questions of history identifies the root metaphors that cultures have used to construct meaning in their world. It offers a glimpse into the minds of a vast range of different peoples: early hunter-gatherers and farmers, ancient Egyptians, traditional Chinese sages, the founders of Christianity, trail-blazers of the Scientific Revolution, and those who constructed our modern consumer society. Taking the reader on...

Trent Shelton seemed to have it all together--until everything fell apart. A college football standout, his NFL dreams died when he was cut from multiple teams. With no job and no prospects, learning he had a child on the way and numbing himself with whatever he could find, Trent then found out one of his closest friends had killed himself. Life seemed without hope--until Trent discovered the secret to finding promise in the darkest of times. And...

"the story of two single, thirty-something men who still live with their parents and who are . . . nice. They take care of their parents and play board games together. They like to read. They take satisfaction from their work. They are resolutely kind. And they realize that none of this is considered . . . normal. Leonard and Hungry Paul is the story of two friends struggling to protect their understanding of what's meaningful in life. It is about...

By profiling 30 creatives, the author explores how making by hand is the key to discovering one's passion--whether that means spinning natural fibers, carving a wooden bowl, or creating elaborate papercuts.

Ten years after graduating with a degree in philosophy from UC Berkeley, filmmaker Tao Ruspoli returned to visit his one-time professor, world-renowned philosopher Hubert Dreyfus. That visit led to meetings with a whole generation of philosophers whom Dreyfus had taught, which subsequently sparked the inspiration for this film. Being in the World raises the question of whether we have forgotten what it means to be truly human in today's technological...

"In the aftermath of a heartbreaking tragedy, a scholar and writer uses Dante's Divine Comedy to shepherd him through the dark wood of grief and mourning--a rich and emotionally resonant memoir of suffering, hope, love, and the power of literature to inspire and heal the most devastating loss.Where do we turn when we lose everything? Joseph Luzzi found the answer in the opening of The Divine Comedy: "In the middle of our life's journey, I found myself...

Zen monk Jikisai Minami takes the things we are supposed to strive for and turns them on their head. The 35 short, thought-provoking essays in this book are divided into four chapters about our sense of self, our hopes and dreams, our personal relationships and how to face death. Each essay begins with a deliberately controversial point of view to help us look at life's problems through fresh eyes. Each chapter features a number of short, thought-provoking...