Le milieu des lettres lui prête tous les pouvoirs : elle peut faire ou défaire les carrières, inventer les auteurs, découvrir les talents. On parle d'elle comme d'une prêtresse ou d'une diva. Au fil des années, Françoise Verny s'est taillée une réputation à la mesure des paradoxes de son personnage, elle qui - dans sa jeunesse - a conjugué le militantisme communiste, et une foi catholique fervente. On la redoute. On l'aime passionnément. Elle fascine. Elle inquiète. Elle a tout connu, tout fait, ou presque. Côtoyé les monstres sacrés d'hier : François Mauriac, André Malraux, Louis Aragon, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Clavel. Accouché les célébrités d'aujourd'hui : Françoise Sagan, Lucien Bodard, Françoise Mallet-Joris, Bernard-Henri Lévy, André Glucksmann, François de Closets, Yann Queffelec, Alexandre Jardin... Elle a participé aux grandes manœuvres des "Prix". Lancé la "nouvelle philosophie". Nul ne maîtrise mieux qu'elle les rouages de la réussite, les arcanes d'un monde magique et mystérieux, où les affres de la création se marient sans cesse aux faiblesses humaines. Vingt-cinq ans de vie intellectuelle française défilent à travers les pages de ces Mémoires. Un univers décrit avec tendresse et fermeté. Où le portrait acéré, côtoie l'anecdote savoureuse. Du comité de lecture de Grasset, à celui de Gallimard, des soirées chaleureuses autour d'un prix Goncourt, aux relations glacées avec Simone de Beauvoir, se découvrent les coulisses de la comédie littéraire. L'édition, le plus beau métier du monde, est peut-être le dernier refuge du rêve.

Après avoir lancé le groupe de pop louange Glorious avec ses frères, Benoît décide de s'engager, tout jeune et plein d'enthousiasme, sur le chemin de la prêtrise. S'ouvre alors pour lui une vie de mission en paroisse passionnante, dans laquelle il ne cesse d'exercer ses talents et de s'épanouir personnellement. Comblé bien au-delà de ses espérances, il découvre que mettre ses pas dans ceux du Christ est source d'un bonheur qui surpasse les difficultés inévitables de la vie. Un parcours captivant à mettre entre les mains de tous les jeunes (et moins jeunes). Ils découvriront les heureuses péripéties du " plus beau métier du monde " et la joie de suivre l'appel du Seigneur, quel qu'il soit, dans la liberté des enfants de Dieu.

"Your Mindful Compass" takes us behind the emotional curtain to see the mechanisms regulating individuals in social systems. There is great comfort and wisdom in knowing we can increase our awareness to manage the swift and ancient mechanisms of social control. We can gain greater flexibility by seeing how social controls work in systems from ants to humans. To be less controlled by others, we learn how emotional systems influence our relationship-oriented brain. People want to know what goes on in families that give rise to amazing leaders and/or terrorists. For the first time in history we can understand the systems in which we live. The social sciences have been accumulating knowledge since the early fifties as to how we are regulated by others. S. Milgram, S. Ashe, P. Zimbardo and J. Calhoun, detail the vulnerability to being duped and deceived and the difficulty of cooperating when values differ. Murray Bowen, M.D., the first researcher to observe several live-in families, for up to three years, at the National Institute of Mental Health. Describing how family members overly influence one another and distribute stress unevenly, Bowen described both how symptoms and family leaders emerge in highly stressed families. Our brain is not organized to automatically perceive that each family has an emotional system, fine-tuned by evolution and "valuing" its survival as a whole, as much as the survival of any individual. It is easier to see this emotional system function in ants or mice but not in humans. The emotional system is organized to snooker us humans: encouraging us to take sides, run away from others, to pressure others, to get sick, to blame others, and to have great difficulty in seeing our part in problems. It is hard to see that we become anxious, stressed out and even that we are difficult to deal with. But "thinking systems" can open the doors of perception, allowing us to experience the world in a different way. This book offers both coaching ideas and stories from leaders as to strategies to break out from social control by de-triangling, using paradoxes, reversals and other types of interruptions of highly linked emotional processes. Time is needed to think clearly about the automatic nature of the two against one triangle. Time and experience is required as we learn strategies to put two people together and get self outside the control of the system. In addition, it takes time to clarify and define one's principles, to know what "I" will or will not do and to be able to take a stand with others with whom we are very involved. The good news is that systems' thinking is possible for anyone. It is always possible for an individual to understand feelings and to integrate them with their more rational brains. In so doing, an individual increases his or her ability to communicate despite misunderstandings or even rejection from important others. The effort involved in creating your Mindful Compass enables us to perceive the relationship system without experiencing it's threats. The four points on the Mindful Compass are: 1) Action for Self, 2) Resistance to Forward Progress, 3) Knowledge of Social Systems and the 4) The Ability to Stand Alone. Each gives us a view of the process one enters when making an effort to define a self and build an emotional backbone. It is not easy to find our way through the social jungle. The ability to know emotional systems well enough to take a position for self and to become more differentiated is part of the natural way humans cope with pressure. Now people can use available knowledge to build an emotional backbone, by thoughtfully altering their part in the relationship system. No one knows how far one can go by making an effort to be more of a self-defined individual in relationships to others. Through increasing emotional maturity, we can find greater individual freedom at the same time that we increase our ability to cooperate and to be close to others.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Giver of Stars and the forthcoming Someone Else's Shoes, discover the love story that captured over 20 million hearts in Me Before You, After You, and Still Me. They had nothing in common until love gave them everything to lose . . . Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has barely been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is. Will is acerbic, moody, bossy—but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living. A Love Story for this generation and perfect for fans of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, Me Before You brings to life two people who couldn’t have less in common—a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart?