Non-fiction

OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease.

Reads like a medical detective journey and sheds light on a topic so many of us face: mental illness. --Oprah Winfrey

 

Named a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, TIME, and more

 

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins--aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony--and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?

 

What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.

 

With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope.

-The ultimate insider's guide to Chicago, fully illustrated with 111 full-page color photographs -Features interesting and unusual places not found in traditional travel guides -Part of the international 111 Places/111 Shops series with over 170 titles and 1 million copies in print worldwide -Appeals to both the local market (9,5 million people call Chicago home) and the tourist market (over 60 million people visit Chicago every year!) Chicago. City of the Big Shoulders. What started off as a small fur-trading settlement is today a bustling metropolis. Once considered the hog butcher of the world, stacker of wheat, player with railroads and the nation's freight handler, Chicago's colorful past remains hidden in the nooks and crannies of this wonderful windy city. Adventures await, from the glamorous to the gritty. Sip dirty martinis in an elegant, underground, 1920's bank vault. Paddle a kayak down the infamous Bubbly Creek of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. While away an afternoon in a salt cave, or smoke a classic cigar in the oldest family-run tobacco shop in the U.S. Snorkel a 32-acre, limestone sheet shoal, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the Midwest. Dine outdoors in a 23rd floor Beaux-Arts cupola overlooking the Chicago River. Whether you're an out-of-towner or a diehard Chicago dweller who thinks you've seen it all, these 111 hidden places are waiting for you to discover them.

Discover the love of Christ with your children every day of the year through inspirational readings, bright illustrations, and a selection of traditional and original prayers. Share adaptations of favorite Bible stories like Noah building an ark to survive the flood, how David defeats Goliath, Jesus's story from birth to betrayal to resurrection, and everything in between. Mix a sweet prayer into the daily routine of reading from the Cottage Door Press children's Bible to give thanks to God for our wonderful world, family and friends, or to ask for guidance. This sturdy padded board book is a wonderful introduction to faith for kids of all ages, boy or girl, and a perfect addition to the family library of Christian books!

Includes more than 200 stories from the Bible retold in simple language which helps make it easy for toddlers to understand

Beautiful illustrations in the padded, yet sturdy board book will help keep your baby or toddler engaged

Introduce the story of Jesus, as well as Christian beliefs, to little boys and girls

This adaptation of the Bible for kids encourages religious curiosity and bonding between parents and children through prayer

If you're looking for Christian gifts, this is great for baby showers, baptisms, birthdays, first communions, Easter basket stuffers, and Christmas

A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making--from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post - Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times - NPR - The Guardian - Marie Claire

In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency--a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation's highest office.

Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizon blowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune's Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden.

A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective--the story of one man's bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of "hope and change," and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible.

This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama's conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves--and our world today.

"One of the most accurate and beautiful depictions of what it is like to be inside the mind of a writer that I've ever read."--Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.

In his introduction, Saunders writes, "We're going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn't fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art--namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?" He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.