Jen Crow's transformation was triggered, quite literally, by a bolt of lightning. That jolt, which destroyed her home in a subsequent fire, forced her to consider what she really needed as she looked to rebuild her life. In Take What You Need Crow opens new perspectives for all of us looking to understand our past, our unexpected suffering, our failures, so we too can begin charting a course forward--one drawn from resilience and hope. We see with the immediacy of someone who nearly lost it all that our possessions won't carry us. Our responses to the regrets, losses, separations, addictions, and unexpected twists and turns of our lives are shaped by the spiritual values that sustain us and the people who support us. Crow invites us to explore the expected and unexpected turns our lives can take--and all the ways we can pay attention to what we truly need to survive the painful moments and live lives of meaning. Survival guide, spiritual companion, and a light in the dark, Take What You Need offers hope, humor, and real-life spiritual tools to meet the hardest moments of our lives.

From the author of the wildly controversial books Liar and Paul's Case comes one of the most anticipated — and perhaps, in some quarters, feared — books of the year. This is author Lynn Crosbie at her most honest, most cutting, most hilarious, and most heartbreaking. The stories told here are at once a cache, a repository, of a seven-year period in the author's life; and, too, a gymnasium, a place where she can flex her prodigious wit and her dazzling stash of literary tricks Deft with matters both low- and highbrow (here are stories about 80s big-hair bands and the lasting, theological value of the Rocky series; here, too are stories contemplating critical theory and fine art), Life is About Losing Everything speaks with manic yet grave authority about risking and losing everything, and then sorting through the remains to discover what is beautiful, what is trash, and what, ultimately, belongs.

A refreshing and thought-provoking look at athletes whose legacies have been reduced to one defining moment of defeat—those on the flip side of an epic triumph—and what their experiences can teach us about competition, life, and the human spirit. Every sports fan recalls with amazing accuracy a pivotal winning moment involving a favorite team or player—Henry Aaron hitting his 715th home run to pass Babe Ruth; Christian Laettner’s famous buzzer beating shot in the NCAA tournament for Duke. Yet lost are the stories on the other side of these history-making moments, the athletes who experienced not transcendent glory but crushing disappointment: the cornerback who missed the tackle on the big touchdown; the relief pitcher who lost the series; the world-record holding Olympian who fell on the ice. In Losing Isn’t Everything, famed sportscaster Curt Menefee, joined by bestselling writer Michael Arkush, examines a range of signature "disappointments" from the wide world of sports, interviewing the subject at the heart of each loss and uncovering what it means—months, years, or decades later—to be associated with failure. While history is written by the victorious, Menefee argues that these moments when an athlete has fallen short are equally valuable to sports history, offering deep insights into the individuals who suffered them and about humanity itself. Telling the losing stories behind such famous moments as the Patriots’ Rodney Harrison guarding the Giants' David Tyree during the "Helmet Catch" in Super Bowl XLII, Mary Decker’s fall in the 1984 Olympic 1500m, and Craig Ehlo who gave up "The Shot" to Michael Jordan in the 1989 NBA playoffs, Menefee examines the legacy of the hardest loses, revealing the unique path that athletes have to walk after they lose on their sport’s biggest stage. Shedding new light some of the most accepted scapegoat stories in the sports cannon, he also revisits both the Baltimore Colts' loss to the Jets in Super Bowl III, as well as the Red Sox loss in the 1986 World Series, showing why, despite years of humiliation, it might not be all Bill Buckner's fault. Illustrated with sixteen pages of color photos, this considered and compassionate study offers invaluable lessons about pain, resilience, disappointment, remorse, and acceptance that can help us look at our lives and ourselves in a profound new way.

Learn the best-kept secret of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs: EXECUTION!Kim Perell made headlines for her amazing transformative story of a startup entrepreneur to an internationally renowned CEO and prominent angel investor. From her modest beginnings at her kitchen table, she went from broke to multi-millionaire in just a few short years. Today, she has investments in over 70 startups many of which have been sold to some of the largest Fortune 500 companies. Now, in The Execution Factor, she offers indispensable wisdom as she shares her personal journey and proven program for achieving success. The Execution Factor offers a straightforward approach to success—deliberately designed in a way that anyone can master. Perell flips the notion on its head that success is all about having a great idea, an advanced degree or a high IQ. Because people around the world have achieved their dreams without any of those things. Perell believes the ability to execute is the difference between success and failure. The Execution Factor is for anyone looking to transform themselves from a “dreamer” to a “doer” and will make you feel like you have a success coach by your side. Perell teaches her unique 5 traits of execution: vision, passion, action, resilience, and relationships. By the time you’ve completed the book you will have a have a blueprint to achieve your dreams in business and in life. Don’t settle for ordinary when you can have extraordinary. Master execution and change your life.

In Losing Everything, his first book of nonfiction, acclaimed novelist David Lozell Martin tells his wildest, most outlandish story yet—his own. One evening in the mountainous forest of his isolated West Virginia farmhouse, Martin became disoriented when searching for a horse who had wandered off the property. Wading through the dark and guiding his horse with a belt around its neck, Martin felt as though every step was taking him deeper into the mountains. Instead, he unknowingly spent the night walking in a wide circle that brought him back to where he started. This quickly became a metaphor for Martin's life. "The more lost I get, the closer to home I come." After growing up with a violent father who nearly killed Martin's clinically insane mother, Martin pursued a writer's life with a vengeance, becoming vulnerable to struggles with alcohol, financial ruin, and legal feuds. Then, after a betrayal by his soul mate, Martin's sanity was in as much jeopardy as his mother's had ever been -- a state of mind that in his case led to gunfire, divorce, and at least one trip to the emergency room. But Losing Everything is less about getting lost and more about finding your way home again. In his pursuit of stability, Martin uncovered lessons that might help others who have encountered loss: take pleasure in something as small as an ampersand, keep a list of people you know who have died, meet your own death like a warrior, and be glad you don't own a monkey. Deeply personal yet surprisingly universal, Martin's story is for anyone who has wandered astray. If not a road map, his journey is a guide, providing hard-earned wisdom to illuminate the path home.

Losing Everything: A Family's Journey with Alzheimer's Disease is written about our long journey with Mom and her illness, as well as how this disease has impacted our lives. Alzheimer's is a thief that slowly robs families of loved ones, long before their lives end. This book is in memory of the mother we once knew, and even though she is still alive, she was stolen by this disease and is now forever lost to us. Mom is sick and getting sicker each day. Once Mom became ill, I began keeping a journal with the idea that it might help Mom's memory. Of course, it did not. Instead, the journal is a series of anecdotes that touches on all the core emotions that we feel: anger, frustration, laughter, and most importantly, love.

When everything sucks, change everything . . . And that's exactly what Hannah Friedman set out to do in an ambitious attempt to bust out of a life of obscurity and absurdity and into an alternate world of glamour, wealth, and popularity. Being dubbed 'That Monkey Girl' by middle school bullies and being pulled out of sixth grade to live on a tour bus with her agoraphobic mother, her smelly little brother, and her father's hippie band mates convinces Hannah that she is destined for a life of freakdom. But when she enters one of the country's most prestigious boarding schools on scholarship, Hannah transforms herself into everything she is not: cool. By senior year, she has a perfect millionaire boyfriend, a perfect GPA, a perfect designer wardrobe, and is part of the most popular clique in school, but somehow everything begins to suck far worse than when she first started. Her newfound costly drug habit, eating disorder, identity crisis, and Queen-Bee attitude lead to the unraveling of Hannah's very unusual life. Putting her life back together will take more than a few clicks of her heels, or the perfect fit of a glass slipper, in this not-so-fairy tale of going from rock bottom to head of the class and back again.