Provides poems to give voice to Bridges' grandparents and great-grandparents to make their stories relevant to today. Demonstrates how families, memories, and cultural histories are quietly built, forming the foundations of the "where we came from" aspect of ourselves, and lending promise to the towering "where we're going" structure of our future.

Why Does God Punish Good People and Reward the Bad Guys?A relative of mine recently told me: "Uday, my husband has cancer - that too diagnosed in a very advanced stage. He is a good and pious man. He has helped everybody, loved everybody and done nothing wrong in his life. Still God has punished him..."When an innocent good student was brutally raped in Manipal, one of my friends told me "There are lots of girls who are frequently out at night spending time in pubs drinking and smoking till wee hours of morning - nothing happens to them. God is blind and there is no justice..."Once, a father of a newlywed daughter told me that his son-in-law was found to be totally immoral, drunkard, cheat and corrupt, with some diseases too. Whereas his daughter was a real gem of a human and he never ever thought God would cheat his daughter like this..."Such sad news always upsets me."Why is God so cruel?" they ask."World is unfair to me" is a popular complaint. Recently another friend of mine, Joyson Abraham, raised the same complaint."I understand that you follow certain set of principles in life. I know you follow all do's and don'ts as per your religion..." I said."Yes- still I had this shocking setback in life. My only son is suffering from Multiple Myeloma, bone-marrow cancer. We have been living a pious life..." his eyes welled up with tears. Every time when somebody cries or when I hear sad stories I can't control myself, it makes me cry.I told him: "I empathize with you. I can also feel the pain and pangs in you. So I also cry. But I recover fast. I know that you are a good man. But being good socially, legally, and spiritually (means religion-wise or cult-wise) doesn't necessarily mean you are cosmically good. Unfortunately we know nothing about cosmic rules and laws...""But the God told us how to live""The statements like 'God wants us to behave a certain way to receive rewards from him. Or God wants us to live in a certain way, else we will be sent to rotten hell' are either just fallacies of human mind or hallucinations of the very people who created such statements. No God would ever have come and told such things.""You mean to say there is no point in such beliefs of good and bad?""Joyson, it is good to have beliefs. Beliefs have placebo effects. But beliefs cannot be truth. The concept of 'God commands' is really poetic and philosophical imagination of some brilliant people, who must have considered themselves as prophets or God-sent-messengers. There is some truth in it. But mostly, all those set of principles are based on their CONCEPT of God. And the concepts are developed by the conditioning and learning that they had. Most of the concepts regarding God are similar to the story of the blind men and an elephant. Of course, they may have touched some part of cosmic secrets as 'God's words' but may not be in its entire form. Had they revealed the actual cosmic laws on good and bad, we would have had clear explanation to whatever happens in life...""So being good is no guarantee to...""When you say, being good, you have to add this: "I am being good based on the conditioning that I have about the good." It is subjective good but not cosmic good....""Life is so unfair and uncertain..." he said."The inconsistency of life makes it most beautiful. We do not know why bad things happen to good people like you. Our ego needs reasoning, so we find some stupid reasons to satisfy our ego. There could be many obvious reasons for bad things to happen, like genetic diseases, harm inflicted by others, natural calamities, accidents, financial losses. There may be intangible reasons like result of bad karma in this life or past. We do not know. It rains on everyone, irrespective of you being good or bad. Things happen whether you are good or not. There are ups and downs in life, irrespective of you being good or bad. Why should you associate it with your beliefs?"

A New York Times bestseller about how cats conquered the world and our hearts in this “deep and illuminating perspective on our favorite household companion” (Huffington Post). House cats rule bedrooms and back alleys, deserted Antarctic islands, even cyberspace. And unlike dogs, cats offer humans no practical benefit. The truth is they are sadly incompetent mouse-catchers and now pose a threat to many ecosystems. Yet, we love them still. In the “eminently readable and gently funny” (Library Journal, starred review) The Lion in the Living Room, Abigail Tucker travels through world history, natural science, and pop culture to meet breeders, activists, and scientists who’ve dedicated their lives to cats. She visits the labs where people sort through feline bones unearthed from the first human settlements, treks through the Floridian wilderness in search of house cats-turned-hunters on the loose, and hangs out with Lil Bub, one of the world’s biggest celebrities—who just happens to be a cat. “Fascinating” (Richmond Times-Dispatch) and “lighthearted” (The Seattle Times), Tucker shows how these tiny felines have used their relationship with humans to become one of the most powerful animals on the planet. A “lively read that pounces back and forth between evolutionary science and popular culture” (The Baltimore Sun), The Lion in the Living Room suggests that we learn that the appropriate reaction to a house cat, it seems, might not be aww but awe.

"This is one stirring account of one stirring journey: the trek of a fellow creature through a hostile, man-made world--and through our imaginations." --Bill McKibben, author of EAARTH: MAKING A LIFE ON A TOUGH NEW PLANET Late one June night in 2011, a large animal collided with an SUV cruising down a Connecticut parkway. The creature appeared as something out of New England's forgotten past. Beside the road lay a 140-pound mountain lion. Speculations ran wild, the wildest of which figured him a ghostly survivor from a bygone century when lions last roamed the eastern United States. But a more fantastic scenario of facts soon unfolded. The lion was three years old, with a DNA trail embarking from the Black Hills of South Dakota on a cross-country odyssey eventually passing within thirty miles of New York City. It was the farthest landbound trek ever recorded for a wild animal in America, by a barely weaned teenager venturing solo through hostile terrain. William Stolzenburg retraces his two-year journey--from his embattled birthplace in the Black Hills, across the Great Plains and the Mississippi River, through Midwest metropolises and remote northern forests, to his tragic finale upon Connecticut's Gold Coast. Along the way, the lion traverses lands with people gunning for his kind, as well as those championing his cause. Heart of a Lion is a story of one heroic creature pitting instinct against towering odds, coming home to a society deeply divided over his return. It is a testament to the resilience of nature, and a test of humanity's willingness to live again beside the ultimate symbol of wildness.

Renowned primatologist Robert Sapolsky offers a completely revised and updated edition of his most popular work, with over 225,000 copies in print Now in a third edition, Robert M. Sapolsky's acclaimed and successful Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers features new chapters on how stress affects sleep and addiction, as well as new insights into anxiety and personality disorder and the impact of spirituality on managing stress. As Sapolsky explains, most of us do not lie awake at night worrying about whether we have leprosy or malaria. Instead, the diseases we fear-and the ones that plague us now-are illnesses brought on by the slow accumulation of damage, such as heart disease and cancer. When we worry or experience stress, our body turns on the same physiological responses that an animal's does, but we do not resolve conflict in the same way-through fighting or fleeing. Over time, this activation of a stress response makes us literally sick. Combining cutting-edge research with a healthy dose of good humor and practical advice, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers explains how prolonged stress causes or intensifies a range of physical and mental afflictions, including depression, ulcers, colitis, heart disease, and more. It also provides essential guidance to controlling our stress responses. This new edition promises to be the most comprehensive and engaging one yet.

(back cover) Everyone knows that lions don't like lettuce, but can you guess who does? Lift the first flap to find the answer and the second flap to find a surprise! This delightful play book is full of fun and perfect for sharing. With bright, cheerful illustrations from well-known children's book illustrator Sonia Canals and lively text from author Moira Butterfield, this book is ideal for younger children.