Professor John Terrell argues that the ability to make friends is an evolved human trait not unlike our ability to walk upright on two legs or our capacity for speech and complex abstract reasoning. Terrell charts how this trait has evolved by investigating two unique functions of the human brain: the ability to remake the outside world to suit our collective needs, and our capacity to escape into our own inner thoughts and imagine how things might and ought to be.

This is the third book in the Jackson Friends series.

Offering proven advice, this stylish, elegant primer focuses on making and maintaining authentic friendships throughout one's life. Whether the goal is to start a new relationship, cement a developing alliance, or reinvest in a long standing friendship, this volume provides all the help one needs to make the connection.

Friends, make the most of your time together. A thousand Instagram likes don't equal the wellness boost of one friendly hug. In our fast-paced world of glamourized busyness, social media fixation and convenience without human contact, there's nothing like putting down our devices and turning to those few special people who fill our cups, light us up, and embolden us to be our best selves--that is, our closest women friends. Why not make the most of the precious time you have together and plan dates that will heal your body, nourish your spirit, and fuel your desire for personal growth? Acts of Friendship presents 47 activities for you and your friends to connect with each other and help one another change your lives in ways you never expected. Sometimes you need a friend to tell you that you're exceptional or to applaud you when you explore a hidden talent; sometimes only a friend can remind you to slow down or nudge you to expand your concept of who you are. From Take Your Cue (where you connect the dots to a better life) to A Friendly Q&A (where you learn everything you've ever wanted to know about your pals and yourself) to Let's Go Retro (where you time travel with your friends) and more, these meaningful, fun activities are meant to energize, inspire, and rejuvenate you so that, together, you grow. Quality relationships help us live stronger and longer, and the science backs this up. Authors and friends, Lynne Everatt, Deb Mangolt, and Julie Smethurst, looked to the research on what makes a happy, fulfilling life and designed the 47 Acts of Friendship accordingly. From giving to forgiving, being mindful to being active, finding joy to losing grudges, playing to journaling, gratitude to meditation, loving yourself to loving your friends, learning new things to learning new perspectives and new ways of life, these tested and true activities will generate laughter, inspiration, and expanded horizons. Try them out with your friends and experience the benefits of one of the world's greatest healers: connection.

Josephine Pinckney (1895--1957) was an award-winning, best-selling author whose work critics frequently compared to that of Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, and Isak Dinesen. Her flair for storytelling and trenchant social commentary found expression in poetry, five novels -- Three O'Clock Dinner was the most successful -- stories, essays, and reviews. Pinckney belonged to a distinguished South Carolina family and often used Charleston as her setting, writing in the tradition of Ellen Glasgow by blending social realism with irony, tragedy, and humor in chronicling the foibles of the South's declining upper class. Barbara L. Bellows has produced the first biography of this very private woman and emotionally complex writer, whose life story is also the history of a place and time -- Charleston in the first half of the twentieth century. In A Talent for Living, Pinckney's life unfolds like a novel as she struggles to escape aristocratic codes and the ensnaring bonds of southern ladyhood and to embrace modern freedoms. In 1920, with DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen, she founded the Poetry Society of South Carolina, which helped spark the southern literary renaissance. Her home became a center of intellectual activity with visitors such as the poet Amy Lowell, the charismatic presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, and the founding editor of theSaturday Review of Literature Henry Seidel Canby. Sophisticated and cosmopolitan, she absorbed popular contemporary influences, particularly that of Freudian psychology, even as she retained an almost Gothic imagination shaped in her youth by the haunting, tragic beauty of the Low Country and its mystical Gullah culture. A skilled stylist, Pinckney excelled in creating memorable characters, but she never scripted an individual as engaging or intriguing as herself. Bellows offers a fascinating, exhaustively researched portrait of this onetime cultural icon and her well-concealed personal life.