Relationship Politics

Most people want to avoid thinking about death, but Caitlin Doughty - a 20-something with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre - took a job at a crematory, turning morbid curiosity into her life’s work. With an original voice that combines fearless curiosity and mordant wit, Caitlin tells an unusual coming-of-age story full of bizarre encounters, gallows humor, and vivid characters (both living and very dead).

Today's parents are constantly pressured to be perfect. But in striving to do everything right, we risk missing what children really need for lifelong emotional security. Now the simple, powerful "Circle of Security" parenting strategies that Kent Hoffman, Glen Cooper, and Bert Powell have taught thousands of families are available in self-help form for the first time. Filled with vivid stories and unique practical tools, this book puts the keys to healthy attachment within everyone's reach - self-understanding, flexibility, and the willingness to make and learn from mistakes.

Over decades of research and work with thousands of families, Russell A. Barkley has become a leading authority on attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in kids and teens. He has learned what a huge difference parents can make in supporting their children's success - as well as how overwhelming it can be. This concise guide presents 12 key parenting principles for dealing with common behavioral, emotional, and school challenges.

People with borderline personality disorder (BPD) can be intensely caring, warm, smart, and funny, but their behavior often drives away those closest to them. If you're struggling in a tumultuous relationship with someone with BPD, this is the book for you. Dr. Shari Manning helps you understand why your spouse, family member, or friend has such out-of-control emotions and how to change the way you can respond.

In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. And it's that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope - the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman....

All of us are faced countless times with the challenge of persuading others, whether we're trying to win a trivial argument with a friend or convince our coworkers about an important decision. Instead of relying on untrained instinct - and often failing as a result - we'd win more arguments if we learned the timeless art of verbal persuasion, or rhetoric.

Discovering that a partner has been unfaithful hits you like an earthquake. Long after the first jolt, emotional aftershocks can make it difficult to be there for your family, manage your daily life, and think clearly about your options. Whether you want to end the relationship or piece things back together, Getting Past the Affair guides you through the initial trauma so you can understand what happened and why before deciding how to move forward.

Are you too nice for your own good? Do family members manipulate you? Do coworkers take advantage of you? If this sounds familiar, listen to The Nice Girl Syndrome. In this breakthrough guide, renowned author and therapist Beverly Engel, who has helped thousands of women recognize and leave emotionally abusive relationships, can show you how to take control of your life and take care of yourself.

"I was one of 28 children born to my dad and his three wives. Indoctrinated to believe that the outside world was evil, and that I resided among the righteous, I was destined to marry a man chosen for me by the Prophet. I would then live in harmony with my sister-wives, bear many children, and obey and serve my future husband in this life and throughout eternity. But my innocence didn't last long." Flora goes on from there to tell the dramatic true story of how she ultimately escaped and has been rescuing women and children from the FLDS.

An intelligent and comprehensive guide to polyamory, open relationships, and other forms of alternative love, The Smart Girl's Guide to Polyamory offers relationship advice radically different from anything you'll find on the magazine rack. This practical guidebook will help women break free of the mold of traditional monogamy, without the constraints of jealousy, possessiveness, insecurity, and competition. If you're curious about exploring group sex, opening up your current monogamous relationship, or ready to "come out" as polyamorous, this book covers it all.

One person talks; the other listens. It's so basic that we take it for granted. Unfortunately, most of us think of ourselves as better listeners than we actually are. Why do we so often fail to connect when speaking with family members, romantic partners, colleagues, or friends? How do emotional reactions get in the way of real communication? This thoughtful, witty, and empathic book has already helped over 100,000 people break through conflicts and transform their personal and professional relationships.

In his essay On Anger, the Roman Stoic thinker Seneca argues that anger is the most destructive passion. This splendid new translation of essential selections from On Anger, presented with an enlightening introduction, offers listeners a timeless guide to avoiding and managing anger. Drawing on his great arsenal of rhetoric, including historical examples, anecdotes, quips, and soaring flights of eloquence, Seneca builds his case against anger with mounting intensity.

From intimate relationships to global politics, Sarah Schulman observes a continuum: that inflated accusations of harm are used to avoid accountability. Illuminating the difference between conflict and abuse, Schulman directly addresses our contemporary culture of scapegoating. This deep, brave, and bold work reveals how punishment replaces personal and collective self-criticism, and shows why difference is so often used to justify cruelty and shunning.

Best-selling author, cultural commentator, and popular theologian Christopher West is one of the world's most recognized teachers of John Paul II's Theology of the Body. He specializes in making this teaching accessible to all Christians, with particular attention to evangelicals. As West explains, from beginning to end the Bible tells a story of marriage. It begins with the marriage of man and woman in an earthly paradise and ends with the marriage of Christ and the church in an eternal paradise.

Although a mother's mortality is inevitable, no book has discussed the profound lasting and far reaching effects of this loss until Motherless Daughters. More than 20 years later, it is still the go-to book that women of all ages look to for comfort, help, and understanding when their mother dies. Building on interviews with hundreds of mother-loss survivors, Edelman's personal story of losing her mother, and recent research in grief and psychology, Motherless Daughters reveals the shared experiences and core identity issues of motherless women.

"It takes an entire lifetime to learn how to die", wrote the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca (c. 4 BC-65 AD). He counseled readers to "study death always", and took his own advice, returning to the subject again and again in all his writings, yet he never treated it in a complete work. How to Die gathers in one volume, for the first time, Seneca's remarkable meditations on death and dying. Edited and translated by James S. Romm, How to Die reveals a provocative thinker who speaks with a startling frankness about the need to accept death or even, under certain conditions, to seek it out.

Here is Trump in action—how he runs his organization and how he runs his life—as he meets the people he needs to meet, chats with family and friends, clashes with enemies, and challenges conventional thinking. But even a maverick plays by rules, and Trump has formulated time-tested guidelines for success. He isolates the common elements in his greatest accomplishments; he shatters myths; he names names, spells out the zeros, and fully reveals the deal-maker's art. And throughout, Trump talks—really talks—about how he does it.

Natural Hospital Birth, Updated Edition shows how to apply the guidelines and tactics of natural birth in a hospital setting, where 99 percent of births take place. Doula Cynthia Gabriel shows expectant mothers what they can do to avoid unnecessary medical interventions and how to take initiative and consciously prepare for the kind of birth they want to have. Also included are inspiring stories from other women who know firsthand that natural birth in the hospital is possible.

If life with your teen has become a battleground, it's time to take action. This empathic book shows how. Trusted psychologists who have worked with thousands of families give you the tools you need to overcome defiance and get teen behavior back on track. Vivid stories and answers to frequently asked questions help you put the techniques into action. The updated second edition incorporates new scientific research on why some teens have more problems with self-control than others.

Is there a pill for love? What about an "anti-love drug", to help us get over an ex? This book argues that certain psychoactive substances, including MDMA - the active ingredient in Ecstasy - may help ordinary couples work through relationship difficulties and strengthen their connection. Others may help sever an emotional connection during a breakup. These substances already exist, and they have transformative implications for how we think about love.