Offers a broad and vivid overview of the culture of collecting in France over the long nineteenth-century.

The Year without a Purchase is the story of one family's quest to stop shopping and start connecting. Scott Dannemiller and his wife, Gabby, are former missionaries who served in Guatemala. Ten years removed from their vow of simple living, they found themselves on a never-ending treadmill of consumption where each purchase created a desire for more and never led to true satisfaction. The difference between needs and wants had grown very fuzzy, and making that distinction clear again would require drastic action: no nonessential purchases for a whole year. No clothes, no books, no new toys for the kids. If they couldn't eat it or use it up within a year (toilet paper and shampoo, for example), they wouldn't buy it. Filled with humorous wit, curious statistics, and poignant conclusions, the book examines modern America's spending habits and chronicles the highs and lows of dropping out of our consumer culture. As the family bypasses the checkout line to wrestle with the challenges of gift giving, child rearing, and keeping up with the Joneses, they discover important truths about human nature and the secret to finding true joy. The Year without a Purchase offers valuable food for thought for anyone who has ever wanted to reduce stress by shopping less and living more.

William Schofield presents a classic analysis of mental illness, of professional psychotherapists and their training, and of the elements of psychotherapy. He asserts the need for more rigorous selection of candidates for therapy and for a properly focused training of a new professional specialist: the psychotherapist. In his new introduction to this important critique, Schofield shows why his pleas for a rational training program are still appropriate. "Psychotherapy "is a pioneering critique of modern psychiatric practices. Far too many people see psychotherapy as a cure for every ill from tormenting self-doubt to lack of zest of life. Through failure to attend to careful assessment of the presenting problem, and the nature (and neglect) of the applicant's social resources, the psychotherapist can fall unwittingly into the role of moral counselor or morale coach, and can be seduced into the chronic role of "best friend." Schofield argues that today's overburdened experts--psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, and psychiatric social workers--are not specifically trained to administer therapy through conversation. This book, first published in 1964, is an urgent call for a new specialist, a psychotherapist trained as a specialist in therapeutic conversation. This book is also a call for a more realistic public attitude toward mental disorder--one which distinguishes emotional illness from unhappiness and discontent. Everyone interested in the growth, clarification, and evaluation of psychotherapy and counseling will be challenged by Schofield's arguments.

This collection of short stories is peopled with characters who boldly face the sorrows and strains of everyday life, seeking relief in a smile and redemption in words of compassion and honor

In their personal lives, people consider it essential to separate economics and intimacy. We have, for example, a long-standing taboo against workplace romance, while we see marital love as different from prostitution because it is not a fundamentally financial exchange. In The Purchase of Intimacy, Viviana Zelizer mounts a provocative challenge to this view. Getting to the heart of one of life's greatest taboos, she shows how we all use economic activity to create, maintain, and renegotiate important ties--especially intimate ties--to other people. In everyday life, we invest intense effort and worry to strike the right balance. For example, when a wife's income equals or surpasses her husband's, how much more time should the man devote to household chores or child care? Sometimes legal disputes arise. Should the surviving partner in a same-sex relationship have received compensation for a partner's death as a result of 9/11? Through a host of compelling examples, Zelizer shows us why price is central to three key areas of intimacy: sexually tinged relations; health care by family members, friends, and professionals; and household economics. She draws both on research and materials ranging from reports on compensation to survivors of 9/11 victims to financial management Web sites and advice books for same-sex couples. From the bedroom to the courtroom, The Purchase of Intimacy opens a fascinating new window on the inner workings of the economic processes that pervade our private lives.