Family Culture

In the ever more competitive race to secure the best possible future, today’s students face unprecedented pressure to succeed. They jam-pack their schedules with AP classes, fill every waking hour with resume-padding activities, and even sabotage relationships with friends to “get ahead.” Family incomes and schedules are stretched to the breaking point by tutoring fees and athletic schedules. Yet this drive to optimize performance has only resulted in skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, and even self-harm in America’s highest achieving schools.

Chaya Lindner is a teenager living in Nazi-occupied Poland. Simply being Jewish places her in danger of being killed or sent to the camps. After her little sister is taken away, her younger brother disappears, and her parents all but give up hope, Chaya is determined to make a difference. Using forged papers and her fair features, Chaya becomes a courier and travels between the Jewish ghettos of Poland, smuggling food, papers, and even people. Soon Chaya joins a resistance cell that runs raids on the Nazis' supplies. But after a mission goes terribly wrong, Chaya's network shatters.

Disguised as a peasant, Cecilia has been hiding for years from the evil people who killed her parents. Now the time has come to reclaim her title. There's just one problem. Princess Desmia - supposedly Cecilia's decoy - believes a different version of the story.

The only thing Lucas loves more than football is his Uncle Benny, his dad's best friend at the fire department where they both work. Benny taught Lucas everything about football. So when Lucas' parents decide the sport is too dangerous and he needs to quit, Lucas has to talk to his biggest fan. So the next morning, Lucas takes the train to the city instead of the bus to school. It's a bright, beautiful day in New York. But just as Lucas arrives at his uncle's firehouse, everything changes - and nothing will ever be the same again.

With feudal wars raging through the Japanese countryside, it is no place for children, particularly homeless orphans like six-year-old Saru, who grow up fast and hard in the cold city. When begging does not fill his stomach, stealing and cunning do the trick. The only warmth Saru knows is from a kindly priest who allows him to sleep under his little Shinto shrine in the winter, and Neko, his adopted kitten. Living day-by-day, Saru gives little thought to the future or the course his life might take. But Saru’s fortunes change overnight....

For fifteen years, Steve Chou has run two successful seven-figure businesses in twenty hours a week or fewer, leaving plenty of time for family, friends, and leisure. In The Family-First Entrepreneur, he shares profound insights and practical advice on business and life, demonstrating that you can, in fact, pursue your dream without sacrificing what matters most. Chou offers a series of simple principles that can guide every decision you make, helping you establish a solid foundation upon which you can build the life you’ve dreamed of while comfortably supporting those you love.

Drawing on comprehensive interviews with young men, psychologists, academics, and experts in the field, Boys & Sex dissects so-called locker room talk; how the word "hilarious" robs boys of empathy; pornography as the new sex education; boys’ understanding of hookup culture and consent; and their experience as both victims and perpetrators of sexual violence. By surfacing young men’s experience in all its complexity, Orenstein is able to unravel the hidden truths, hard lessons, and important realities of young male sexuality in today’s world.

The free-spirited Anne Shirley has a beautiful way of looking at the world and touching our hearts. In this, the third volume of the Anne of Green Gables series, the irrepressible Anne dreams of the woman she hopes to be when she decides to leave Green Gables and her beloved Prince Edward Island for college. She is eager for new adventure.

Life is harsh in Chennai's teeming streets, so when runaway sisters Viji and Rukku arrive, their prospects look grim. Very quickly, 11-year-old Viji discovers how vulnerable they are in this uncaring, dangerous world. Fortunately, the girls find shelter - and friendship - on an abandoned bridge. With two homeless boys, Muthi and Arul, the group forms a family of sorts. But when illness strikes, Viji must decide whether to risk seeking help from strangers or to keep holding on to their fragile, hard-fought freedom.

Willy Freeman's life changes forever when she witnesses her father's death at the hands of the Redcoats and returns home to find that the British have taken her mother as a prisoner to New York City. Willy, disguised as a boy, begins her long search for her mother and luckily finds a haven at the famous Fraunces Tavern. But even with the help of Sam Fraunces and her fellow worker, Horace, Willy knows that to be Black, female, and free leaves her open to danger at every turn. What will tomorrow bring?

Germany, 1945. The soldiers who liberated the Gross-Rosen concentration camp said the war was over, but nothing feels over to 18-year-old Zofia Lederman. Her body has barely begun to heal; her mind feels broken. And her life is completely shattered: Three years ago, she and her younger brother, Abek, were the only members of their family to be sent to the right, away from the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Everyone else—her parents, her grandmother, radiant Aunt Maja—they went left.

In the rich turbulence of English history, one day stands magnificently apart: June 15, 1215, the day of the signing of the Magna Charta. On this day, the first blow for English freedom was struck and forever affected the Western world. Here is the story of three true men, Stephen Langton, Williams Marshall, and Hubert de Burgh, whose heroic deeds are set against those of the ever deceitful and crafty King John.

In 1942, when Mahatma Gandhi asks Indians to give one family member to the freedom movement, 10-year-old Anjali is devastated to think of her father risking his life for the freedom struggle. But it turns out he isn't the one joining. Anjali's mother is. And with this change comes many more adjustments designed to improve their country and use "ahimsa" - non-violent resistance - to stand up to the British government. First the family must trade in their fine foreign-made clothes for homespun cotton, so Anjali has to give up her prettiest belongings.

Some events that transform a nation are frozen in time. Others pass with little public awareness and we only appreciate their momentous nature long after they occurred. Regardless, these events are few and - almost always - far between. But 50 years ago, in 1969, four such events took place within the span of only 100 days. In this book, cultural historian Harlan Lebo looks back at the first Moon landing, the Manson family murders, Woodstock, and the birth of the Internet to tell the story of how each event shaped the nation and how we perceive ourselves.

Why is it that research suggests people who don’t have kids are happier than people who do? Olivia Scobie provides practical solutions for parents who find themselves pushing beyond their capacity to meet impossible standards, and she challenges parents to shift their thinking from child-centered to family-centered. By naming today’s unrealistic parenting expectations as impossible from the get-go, Impossible Parenting creates the space to acknowledge harmful expectations for new parents and begins a conversation that focuses on healing....

"My life is dust and rocks and rude boys and skinny babies, and long days of searching for my mother when I don’t have the faintest idea where she might be". Parvana is alone. Her father is dead. A refugee in a land full of dangers, she must travel across Afghanistan to find her mother and sisters. As she travels, Parvana finds friends - a starving, orphaned baby; a strange, hostile boy; a solitary girl who darts in and out of the minefields to find food. Perhaps, with their help, she may one day be reunited with her family...

Life is quiet and ordinary in Amal's Pakistani village, but she has no complaints, and besides, she's busy pursuing her dream of becoming a teacher one day. Her dreams are temporarily dashed when - as the eldest daughter - she must stay home from school to take care of her siblings. Amal is upset, but she doesn't lose hope and finds ways to continue learning. Then the unimaginable happens - after an accidental run-in with the son of her village's corrupt landlord, Amal must work as his family's servant to pay off her own family's debt.

After bottoming out, being institutionalized, and getting sober all by the tender age of fifteen, Moshe Kasher found himself asking: “What’s next?” Over the ensuing decades, he discovered the answer: a lot. There was his time as a boy-king of Alcoholics Anonymous, a kind of pubescent proselytizer for other teens getting and staying sober. He was a rave promoter turned DJ turned sober ecstasy dealer in San Francisco’s techno warehouse party scene of the 1990s.

Starting in 1997, Bob Chapman and Barry-Wehmiller pioneered a dramatically different approach to leadership that creates off-the-charts morale, loyalty, creativity, and business performance. The company utterly rejects the idea that employees are simply functions to be moved around, "managed" with carrots and sticks, or discarded at will. Instead Barry-Wehmiller manifests the reality that every single person matters, just like in a family. That's not a cliché on a mission statement; it's the bedrock of the company's success.

The four Melendy children live with their father and Cuffy, their beloved housekeeper, in a worn but comfortable brownstone in New York City. There's thirteen-year-old Mona, who has decided to become an actress; twelve-year-old mischievous Rush; ten-year-old Randy who loves to dance and paint; and thoughtful Oliver, who is just six-years-old.