Seven essays celebrating the beauty of the imperfect marriage. We hear plenty about whether or not to get married, but much less about what it takes to stay married. Clichés around marriage—eternal bliss, domestic harmony, soul mates—leave out the real stuff. After marriage you may still want to sleep with other people. Sometimes your partner will bore the hell out of you. And when stuck paying for your spouse’s mistakes, you might miss being single. In Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, Ada Calhoun presents an unflinching but also loving portrait of her own marriage, opening a long-overdue conversation about the institution as it truly is: not the happy ending of a love story or a relic doomed by high divorce rates, but the beginning of a challenging new chapter of which “the first twenty years are the hardest.” Calhoun’s funny, poignant personal essays explore the bedrooms of modern coupledom for a nuanced discussion of infidelity, existential anxiety, and the many other obstacles to staying together. Both realistic and openhearted, Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give offers a refreshing new way to think about marriage as a brave, tough, creative decision to stay with another person for the rest of your life. “What a burden,” Calhoun calls marriage, “and what a gift.”

The acclaimed author explores the hidden crises of Gen X women in this “engaging hybrid of first-person confession, reportage [and] pop culture analysis” (The New Republic). Ada Calhoun was married with children and a good career—and yet she was miserable. She thought she had no right to complain until she realized how many other Generation X women felt the same way. What could be behind this troubling trend? To find out, Calhoun delved into housing costs, HR trends, credit card debt averages, and divorce data. At every turn, she saw that Gen X women were facing new problems as they entered middle age—problems that were being largely overlooked. Calhoun spoke with women across America who were part of the generation raised to “have it all.” She found that most were exhausted, terrified about money, under-employed, and overwhelmed. And instead of being heard, they were being told to lean in, take “me-time,” or make a chore chart to get their lives and homes in order. In Why We Can’t Sleep, Calhoun opens up the cultural and political contexts of Gen X’s predicament. She offers practical advice on how to ourselves out of the abyss—and keep the next generation of women from falling in. The result is reassuring, empowering, and essential reading for all middle-aged women, and anyone who hopes to understand them.

Write and present a memorable wedding toast with this light-hearted, humorous guide that gives you all the tools you’ll need for a successful speech—the perfect gift for any best man or maid of honor. As much as it’s an honor to be chosen as the best man or maid of honor at a wedding, giving the perfect speech can sometimes be nerve-wracking. Delivering a crowd-pleasing toast at the reception that has the right amount of humor and sentimentality is a daunting undertaking, no matter how advanced your public speaking skills are. Pete Honsberger’s guide to giving the perfect wedding toast provides even the most nervous of public speakers with all the tools and advice they need for writing and presenting the best toast ever. After witnessing speeches both good and bad, Honsberger shares a few bits of wisdom he’s learned along the way, providing building blocks to creating an unforgettable story along with helpful speech prompts, and the perfect checklist that will turn a potentially scary obligation into a golden opportunity. Wedding Toasts 101 presents a fun and simple way to write a successful wedding toast without all the stress so you can spend less time worrying and more time celebrating the happy couple.

Abandon your insecurities. Trust your instincts. Enjoy raising a happy, considerate child. SMART CHILDREARING SENSE FROM THE FOUNDING EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF BABBLE.COM What’s the right way to parent? Any playground or online message board will supply as many opinions as there are adults. Every subject—from sleep training to time-outs to pacifiers—has its supporters and detractors, and every viewpoint can be backed up by a truckload of research and statistics. It’s enough to reduce any new parent to tears, but you can end the madness. Ada Calhoun—a young mother as well as the founding editor-in-chief of Babble .com—provides a complete and completely reassuring guide that will calm your fears and make those precious early years a source of joy. Her simple yet profound advice: find what works for you and your family and ditch the anxiety and judgment. Despite what other parenting books—and other parents—might have you believe, there is no universal “best.” Whether you start solids at four months or eight, whether you co-sleep or Ferberize, whether Junior’s mac ’n’ cheese is Day-Glo orange or 100 percent organic is not nearly as important as providing the few absolute essentials (love, food, shelter) while teaching your little one how to be a kind, responsible human being. With its compelling mixture of entertaining, hilarious firsthand accounts and refreshing common sense, Instinctive Parenting will show you how to do that—and even show you how to retain your sanity, your friends, your sense of humor, and your personal life in the process.

A vibrant narrative history of three hallowed Manhattan blocks—the epicenter of American cool. St. Marks Place in New York City has spawned countless artistic and political movements. Here Frank O’Hara caroused, Emma Goldman plotted, and the Velvet Underground wailed. But every generation of miscreant denizens believes that their era, and no other, marked the street’s apex. This idiosyncratic work of reportage tells the many layered history of the street—from its beginnings as Colonial Dutch Director-General Peter Stuyvesant’s pear orchard to today’s hipster playground—organized around those pivotal moments when critics declared “St. Marks is dead.” In a narrative enriched by hundreds of interviews and dozens of rare images, St. Marks native Ada Calhoun profiles iconic characters from W. H. Auden to Abbie Hoffman, from Keith Haring to the Beastie Boys, among many others. She argues that St. Marks has variously been an elite address, an immigrants’ haven, a mafia warzone, a hippie paradise, and a backdrop to the film Kids—but it has always been a place that outsiders call home. This idiosyncratic work offers a bold new perspective on gentrification, urban nostalgia, and the evolution of a community.

A companion to the popular website APracticalWedding.com and A Practical Wedding Planner, A Practical Wedding helps you sort through the basics to create the wedding you want -- without going broke or crazy in the process. After all, what really matters on your wedding day is not so much how it looked as how it felt. In this refreshing guide, expert Meg Keene shares her secrets to planning a beautiful celebration that reflects your taste and your relationship. You'll discover: The real purpose of engagement (hint: it's not just about the planning) How to pinpoint what matters most to you and your partner DIY-ing your wedding: brilliant or crazy? How to communicate decisions to your family Why that color-coded spreadsheet is actually worth it Wedding Zen can be yours. Meg walks you through everything from choosing a venue to writing vows, complete with stories and advice from women who have been in the trenches: the Team Practical brides. So here's to the joyful wedding, the sensible wedding, the unbelievably fun wedding! A Practical Wedding is your complete guide to getting married with grace.

“Anyone grappling with the bewilderment of midlife…will be at once provoked and comforted by this enormously wise book” (Dani Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author of Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage), from a psychologist who has worked for decades with people struggling to preserve and enhance their marriages and long-term relationships. People today are trying to make their marriages work over longer lives than ever before. But staying married isn’t always easy. In the brilliant, transformative, and optimistic The Rough Patch, clinical psychologist Daphne de Marneffe explores the extraordinary pushes and pulls of midlife marriage, where our need to develop as individuals can crash headlong into the demands of our relationships. “A book of good intentions and helpful advice and a worthy manual for spouses” (Kirkus Reviews), The Rough Patch addresses common problems: money, alcohol and drugs, the stresses of parenthood, sex, extramarital affairs, lovesickness, health, aging, children leaving home, and dealing with elderly parents. Then, de Marneffe offers seasoned wisdom on these difficulties, explaining the psychological, emotional, and relational capacities we must cultivate to overcome them as individuals and as couples. Blending research, interviews, and clinical experience, de Marneffe dives deep into the workings of love and the structures of relationships. Intimate and always illuminating, The Rough Patch is an essential, compassionate resource for people trying to understand “where they are” on the continuum of marriage, giving them a chance to share in other people’s stories and struggles. “De Marneffe writes with poetry, wit, and compassion about the necessity of struggle in the quest for true love. Anyone in any relationship at any stage of life could stand to learn from the wisdom in these pages” (Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of Far from the Tree).