Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom is a collection of intimate, heartfelt conversations with women spiritual teachers who live and look like ordinary people. They have kids, husbands, jobs, and bills to pay. What makes them extraordinary is that each woman has awakened to her true nature. And while that sounds like enlightenment, it doesn't look like the old stereotype of transcendence, detachment, and bliss. Quite the contrary. This is the feminine half of the spiritual journey--bringing it down to earth and embracing all of what it means to be human.

Extraordinary, Ordinary Women provides an intimate portrait of twenty American expatriate women currently residing in Paris. Pulling back the veil of idealism and romanticism shrouding the women’s migrant lives, the book examines the very real pitfalls and triumphs of life after the “happily ever after.” Extraordinary, Ordinary Women examines the consequences of immigration, biculturalism, and assimilation on the individual identities of modern expatriate women.

The authors featured in this extraordinary book can hardly be called ordinary -- neither can their advice. New York Times best-selling author Dr. Cherie Carter-Scott, acclaimed songwriter Jana Stanfield, and 17 of America's top motivational speakers have created a book by women for women. Book jacket.

This is the story of Condoleezza Rice that has never been told, not that of an ultra-accomplished world leader, but of a little girl--and a young woman--trying to find her place in a sometimes hostile world, of two exceptional parents, and an extended family and community that made all the difference. Condoleezza Rice has excelled as a diplomat, political scientist, and concert pianist. Her achievements run the gamut from helping to oversee the collapse of communism in Europe and the decline of the Soviet Union, to working to protect the country in the aftermath of 9-11, to becoming only the second woman--and the first black woman ever--to serve as Secretary of State. But until she was 25 she never learned to swim, because when she was a little girl in Birmingham, Alabama, Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor decided he'd rather shut down the city's pools than give black citizens access. Throughout the 1950's, Birmingham's black middle class largely succeeded in insulating their children from the most corrosive effects of racism, providing multiple support systems to ensure the next generation would live better than the last. But by 1963, Birmingham had become an environment where blacks were expected to keep their head down and do what they were told--or face violent consequences. That spring two bombs exploded in Rice’s neighborhood amid a series of chilling Klu Klux Klan attacks. Months later, four young girls lost their lives in a particularly vicious bombing. So how was Rice able to achieve what she ultimately did? Her father, John, a minister and educator, instilled a love of sports and politics. Her mother, a teacher, developed Condoleezza’s passion for piano and exposed her to the fine arts. From both, Rice learned the value of faith in the face of hardship and the importance of giving back to the community. Her parents’ fierce unwillingness to set limits propelled her to the venerable halls of Stanford University, where she quickly rose through the ranks to become the university’s second-in-command. An expert in Soviet and Eastern European Affairs, she played a leading role in U.S. policy as the Iron Curtain fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated. Less than a decade later, at the apex of the hotly contested 2000 presidential election, she received the exciting news--just shortly before her father’s death--that she would go on to the White House as the first female National Security Advisor. As comfortable describing lighthearted family moments as she is recalling the poignancy of her mother’s cancer battle and the heady challenge of going toe-to-toe with Soviet leaders, Rice holds nothing back in this remarkably candid telling.

A rare nineteenth-century journal of an everyday woman richly infused with the minutiae of antebellum daily life and work. In 1820, Phebe Orvis began a journal that she faithfully kept for a decade. Richly detailed, her diary captures not only the everyday life of an ordinary woman in early nineteenth-century Vermont and New York, but also the unusual happenings of her family, neighborhood, and beyond. The journal entries trace Orvis’s transition from single life to marriage and motherhood, including her time at the Middlebury Female Seminary and her observations about the changing social and economic environment of the period. A Quaker, Orvis also recorded the details of the waxing passion of the Second Great Awakening in the people around her, as well as the conflict the fervor caused within her own family. In the first section of the book, Susan M. Ouellette includes a series of essays that illuminate Orvis’s diary entries and broaden the social landscape she inhabited. These essays focus on Orvis and, more importantly, the experience of ordinary people as they navigated the new nation, the new century, and the emerging American society and culture. The second section is a transcript of the original journal. This combination of analytical essays and primary source material offers readers a unique perspective of domestic life in northern New England as well as upstate New York in the early nineteenth century. “Ouellette’s chronicle offers the reader a beautifully crafted and richly textured account of ten years in the life of a young woman as she transitions from unmarried to married life on the New York and Vermont frontier. In the hands of Ouellette, the diary of Phebe Orvis is interpreted with skill and grace, and her life experiences are firmly grounded in the vibrant world of post-revolutionary America. This engaging work will be liked by those readers seeking a deeper understanding of the lives of women and family in the Early Republic as well as those interested in the history of New York, Vermont, and the American frontier.” — Jacqueline Barbara Carr, author of After the Siege: A Social History of Boston, 1775–1800 “Unraveling intricate threads from a young woman’s nineteenth-century diary, Ouellette deftly weaves them into a picture of life in northern Vermont and New York during the Early Republic. Themes of life, death, courting, marriage, travels, fears, and yearnings jump off the pages as Ouellette works her magic not only bringing Phebe Orvis to life but also using the diary and other primary sources to place Phebe’s life within the larger context of her times, gender, and social class. A wonderful read.” — Elise A. Guyette, author of Discovering Black Vermont: African American Farmers in Hinesburgh, 1790–1890

North Wind Books bring to the reader a series of biographies, imaginative literature, and popular theology designed to encourage people to follow God's call to purposeful and holy living.