Soul of a People is about a handful of people who were on the Federal Writer's Project in the 1930s and a glimpse of America at a turning point. This particular handful of characters went from poverty to great things later, and included John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Studs Terkel. In the 1930s they were all caught up in an effort to describe America in a series of WPA guides. Through striking images and firsthand accounts, the book reveals their experiences and the most vivid excerpts from selected guides and interviews: Harlem schoolchildren, truckers, Chicago fishmongers, Cuban cigar makers, a Florida midwife, Nebraskan meatpackers, and blind musicians. Drawing on new discoveries from personal collections, archives, and recent biographies, a new picture has emerged in the last decade of how the participants' individual dramas intersected with the larger picture of their subjects. This book illuminates what it felt like to live that experience, how going from joblessness to reporting on their own communities affected artists with varied visions, as well as what feelings such a passage involved: shame humiliation, anger, excitement, nostalgia, and adventure. Also revealed is how the WPA writers anticipated, and perhaps paved the way for, the political movements of the following decades, including the Civil Rights movement, the Women's Right movement, and the Native American rights movement.

Finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction * New York Times Bestseller * A Huffington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the Year * One of the Best Books of the Month on Goodreads * Library Journal Best Sci-Tech Book of the Year * An American Library Association Notable Book of the Year “Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus does for the creature what Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk did for raptors.” —New Statesman, UK “One of the best science books of the year.” —Science Friday, NPR Another New York Times bestseller from the author of The Good Good Pig, this “fascinating…touching…informative…entertaining” (The Daily Beast) book explores the emotional and physical world of the octopus—a surprisingly complex, intelligent, and spirited creature—and the remarkable connections it makes with humans. In pursuit of the wild, solitary, predatory octopus, popular naturalist Sy Montgomery has practiced true immersion journalism. From New England aquarium tanks to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico, she has befriended octopuses with strikingly different personalities—gentle Athena, assertive Octavia, curious Kali, and joyful Karma. Each creature shows her cleverness in myriad ways: escaping enclosures like an orangutan; jetting water to bounce balls; and endlessly tricking companions with multiple “sleights of hand” to get food. Scientists have only recently accepted the intelligence of dogs, birds, and chimpanzees but now are watching octopuses solve problems and are trying to decipher the meaning of the animal’s color-changing techniques. With her “joyful passion for these intelligent and fascinating creatures” (Library Journal Editors’ Spring Pick), Montgomery chronicles the growing appreciation of this mollusk as she tells a unique love story. By turns funny, entertaining, touching, and profound, The Soul of an Octopus reveals what octopuses can teach us about the meeting of two very different minds.

Death is not an ending, but a transition of the soul. Here are true-life stories of ordinary men, women, and children who no longer fear death or grieve for deceased loved ones. Why? Because they know the human spirit survives death--and lives on. But how do they know this with such certainty? The proof lies in what they have seen with their own eyes and felt with their own hearts. Each was present when a grandmother, best friend, spouse, or child appeared to them in a luminous visitation to ease their grief and to show them that no one had really died. They were graced to witness angels, or Jesus, or other spiritual beings who came to announce the well-being of their recently passed dear ones. Here, told in simple but emotionally rich words, are seventy-eight unforgettable tales of grief allayed and solace attained. Housewives, mechanics and mothers, sons and daughters, truck drivers and nurses, young and old--all attest to the survival of the spirit after death. What is remarkable is that many of them had no previous mystical experiences or even beliefs that such occurrences were possible. Read their miraculous stories and you'll begin to understand why Nick Bunick, subject of The Messengers, assures us that with every transition of the soul, grief dissolves and it is only death that dies.

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Billy Graham & Me contains 101 fascinating stories from all the living U.S. presidents, well-known pastors, country singers and other celebrities, and world leaders, relating their personal experiences with Billy Graham. Renowned Evangelical preacher Billy Graham has touched tens of millions of lives, inspiring faith and hope around the world. And you will get to know the beloved preacher better in these inspiring, personal stories by the people who know him best. You will meet the real Billy Graham, the man behind the public figure.

Home for the Soul is about creating a considerate and sustainable home that sparks happiness and reflects the spirits, passions and tastes of its inhabitants.

One young woman learns the true nature of power—both her own and others’—in the riveting conclusion to The Waking Land Trilogy. “Bates brilliantly concludes an impressive high fantasy trilogy with this tale of scheming and magic.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) Sophy Dunbarron—the illegitimate daughter of a king who never was—has always felt like an impostor. Separated from her birth mother, raised by parents mourning the loss of their true daughter, and unacknowledged by her father, Sophy desires only a place and a family to call her own. But fate has other ideas. Caught up in Elanna Valtai’s revolution, Sophy has become the reigning monarch of a once-divided country—a role she has been groomed her whole life to fill. But as she quickly discovers, wearing a crown is quite a different thing from keeping a crown. With an influx of magic-bearing refugees pouring across the border, resources already thinned by war are stretched to the breaking point. Half the nobility in her court want her deposed, and the other half question her every decision. And every third person seems to be spontaneously manifesting magical powers. When Elanna is captured and taken to Paladis, Sophy’s last ally seems to have vanished. Now it is up to her alone to navigate a political maze that becomes more complex and thorny by the day. And worse, Sophy is hiding a huge secret—one that could destroy her tenuous hold on the crown forever. “Sophy is truly a feminist hero: she embraces equality and justice for all—a theme running throughout the novel—while challenging societal norms.”—Booklist Don’t miss any of Callie Bates’s magical Waking Land trilogy: THE WAKING LAND • THE MEMORY OF FIRE • THE SOUL OF POWER