"A fascinating, revelatory portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard"--

800 years ago a Persian Poet named Rumi wrote the words, "Beauty Surrounds Us".In this stunning book of words and images, Suzette McIntyre and Kerrie Flanagan illuminate this thought, portraying beauty in all its aspects through striking photography and thought-provoking poetry.From the tender touch of a child to the deep lines of old age, a simple reflection in a pond to the streets of Florence, this book captures the idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that beauty is everywhere, but we must open our eyes and let it reveal itself.Settle in and immerse yourself in a fresh new view of the world.Beauty Surrounds Us also features the award winning art and poetry of the 2015 Words and Images Competition.

Examines some of the early inventions and innovations used by women in their quest for beauty including bustles and brassieres, makeup to enhance the eyes and lips, treatments for the body and hair, and ways to flatter the hips and derriere.

Zahnd issues a challenge to Christians to discover new vitality through re-envisioning, reimagining, and reforming the church according to the pattern of the cruciform. Using stories from the lives of St. Francis of Assisi and from his own life, he teaches believers to stay on the journey to discover the kingdom of God in a fuller, richer way.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A New York Times Notable Book “Riveting, heartbreaking, sometimes difficult, always inspiring.” —The New York Times Book Review “An incredibly moving memoir about what it means to be a doctor.” —Ellen Pompeo As seen/heard on Fresh Air, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, Weekend Edition, and more An emergency room physician explores how a life of service to others taught her how to heal herself. Michele Harper is a female, African American emergency room physician in a profession that is overwhelmingly male and white. Brought up in Washington, D.C., in a complicated family, she went to Harvard, where she met her husband. They stayed together through medical school until two months before she was scheduled to join the staff of a hospital in central Philadelphia, when he told her he couldn’t move with her. Her marriage at an end, Harper began her new life in a new city, in a new job, as a newly single woman. In the ensuing years, as Harper learned to become an effective ER physician, bringing insight and empathy to every patient encounter, she came to understand that each of us is broken—physically, emotionally, psychically. How we recognize those breaks, how we try to mend them, and where we go from there are all crucial parts of the healing process. The Beauty in Breaking is the poignant true story of Harper’s journey toward self-healing. Each of the patients Harper writes about taught her something important about recuperation and recovery. How to let go of fear even when the future is murky: How to tell the truth when it’s simpler to overlook it. How to understand that compassion isn’t the same as justice. As she shines a light on the systemic disenfranchisement of the patients she treats as they struggle to maintain their health and dignity, Harper comes to understand the importance of allowing ourselves to make peace with the past as we draw support from the present. In this hopeful, moving, and beautiful book, she passes along the precious, necessary lessons that she has learned as a daughter, a woman, and a physician.

From celebrated Hollywood starlets to the covers of Cosmo, our society seems obsessed with beauty. Actress and Main Floor host Nancy Stafford (best known for her starring role as Michelle Thomas on Matlock) digs below our culture's fixation on outward appearance to show you that true beauty is more than skin-deep. "Every woman has beauty," says Stafford, "but not everyone sees it. I want you to see it." In Beauty by the Book she bares her heart to readers, laying out the Scriptures, promises, and truths women need to know to find their true value. Her liberating reflections will help you see yourself as God sees you -- worthy, lovable, and beautiful.“Mirror, Mirror, on the W all…” What do you see when you look in the mirror? Do you see a unique individual created in the image of Beauty itself—one chosen, Cherished, and valued in the eyes of God? If not, you may be looking in the wrong mirror—one distorted by emotional wounds, lies from your past, or the unrealistic standards of our culture. “Everyone has beauty and worth,” says Nancy Stafford, “but not everyone sees it. I want you to see it.” Nancy shares her own poignant story and holds up the true mirror of God’s Word—inviting you to see yourself as God sees you, to absorb His truth, and to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the King is enthralled by your beauty!

A FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, SMITHSONIAN, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed "the taste for the beautiful"—create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world. In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin's theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature? Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum—reviving Darwin's own views—thinks not. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus Pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. In thirty years of fieldwork, Prum has seen numerous display traits that seem disconnected from, if not outright contrary to, selection for individual survival. To explain this, he dusts off Darwin's long-neglected theory of sexual selection in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons—for the mere pleasure of it—is an independent engine of evolutionary change. Mate choice can drive ornamental traits from the constraints of adaptive evolution, allowing them to grow ever more elaborate. It also sets the stakes for sexual conflict, in which the sexual autonomy of the female evolves in response to male sexual control. Most crucially, this framework provides important insights into the evolution of human sexuality, particularly the ways in which female preferences have changed male bodies, and even maleness itself, through evolutionary time. The Evolution of Beauty presents a unique scientific vision for how nature's splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.