For 98 years, Herb Wisner has lived a remarkable life, from exploits while in the Army Airforce during WWII to a teaching career that stretched from rural New York to Oregon. Told in his unique voice and with gentle humor (and hundreds of photos) this autobiography of a full and meaningful life shares Herb's stories of adventures for nearly a century, with vivid portraits of family and friends whose paths have crossed his. He remembers them all. Born in 1922, he grew up on a 5-acre estate near the Jersey shore, where his family, aunts, uncles, and cousins all lived together, running it as a summer hotel for guests who returned year after. He describes behind-the-scenes situations in Italy, Libya, and Egypt during WWII, where he and fellow meteorologists decided when the weather was safe for pilots to fly. After the war, he meets Ruth Usher, the love of his life, and changes career directions to become a teacher and the lifelong naturalist he still is. Teaching is in Herb's blood, as is a love of birds and the natural world that turned him into a biologist and ornithologist.Travel with Herb and his family across the United States, discovering places both familiar and obscure. Learn lessons in history and natural history. Share Herb's deep appreciation of birds and the natural world, and his life-long love of teaching-from instructing not-always-attentive junior high and high school students in Unadilla, New York, to inspiring hundreds of students in the biology department at the University of Oregon. Many still come up to Herb to exclaim "you were the best teacher I ever had!" This is a man who loves his family and friends, and they love him back. That love shines throughout this book, as his daughter and two sons grow up, yet return again and again to be with him and their mom, Ruth. They share trips, a love of gardening and birding, and numerous family gatherings. Two now-grown grandchildren are part of the family, and a great grandchild is on the way??and still Herb has stories to tell.

In the follow-up to Elisa Medhus’s My Son and the Afterlife—“a heartfelt, deeply moving story” (Eben Alexander, New York Times bestselling author of Proof of Heaven)—her son Erik tells his astounding story directly from the afterlife, describing in detail his death, transition, and spiritual renewal. My Life After Death begins on the tragic day when Erik Medhus took his own life. What follows is a moment-by-moment account of the spiritual life he discovers on the other side—told for the very first time in his own words as channeled by medium Jamie Butler and then transcribed by his mother Elisa. Overflowing with his signature honesty and candor, Erik describes more than just a visit to the afterlife. He personally walks us through the experience of dying, transitioning into spirit form, and reveals a detailed look at the life awaiting us on the other side. In this intimate and provocative memoir, crucial questions will finally be answered, including: What does it feel like to die? What is it like to become a spirit? Why and how do spirits communicate with the living? Is there a heaven? Ultimately, Erik’s story provides the answers that will help readers find solace and remove the fears surrounding death, showing that love has no boundaries and life does not truly end.

Confronts timeless questions concerning what happens to our loved ones and ourselves after death through the communications of a dead son--Galen Stoller--with his father, Dr. K. Paul Stoller.

When she loses a leading role and her leading man to another girl, sixteen-year-old Lucy, a member of the high school drama club, does something completely out of character that has life-altering consequences.

The National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author delivers a collection of essays that serve as the perfect “antidote to mansplaining” (The Stranger). In her comic, scathing essay “Men Explain Things to Me,” Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don’t, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters. She ends on a serious note— because the ultimate problem is the silencing of women who have something to say, including those saying things like, “He’s trying to kill me!” This book features that now-classic essay with six perfect complements, including an examination of the great feminist writer Virginia Woolf’s embrace of mystery, of not knowing, of doubt and ambiguity, a highly original inquiry into marriage equality, and a terrifying survey of the scope of contemporary violence against women. “In this series of personal but unsentimental essays, Solnit gives succinct shorthand to a familiar female experience that before had gone unarticulated, perhaps even unrecognized.” —The New York Times “Essential feminist reading.” —The New Republic “This slim book hums with power and wit.” —Boston Globe “Solnit tackles big themes of gender and power in these accessible essays. Honest and full of wit, this is an integral read that furthers the conversation on feminism and contemporary society.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Essential.” —Marketplace “Feminist, frequently funny, unflinchingly honest and often scathing in its conclusions.” —Salon

Over the past seven years I've lived in more places than I can remember. I lived and worked in Shanghai, New York, Berlin, Bangkok, Munich and a few more places, not including the dozens of places I've stayed at for just a few days or weeks.While writing these lines I'm in a small town in Malaysia.I've basically lived out of a backpack for the past seven years. And the longer I'm doing this, the less stuff I need. Right now I carry less than 10 items around with me in a carry on backpack that weighs less than 10kg. I go wherever I want to go. I currently spend less than $800 a month. Including everything. My most precious possession is a $300 Acer laptop.I've started a clothing company in China, for the Chinese market, which failed miserably. I've launched more than 10 websites, some of them made some money, some of them didn't. I shut down all of them. I've written seven books (this is my eighth). None of them was a bestseller. I write a blog where I published more than 500 articles so far. I've more than 100,000 monthly readers spread across multiple platforms.I'm by no means successful. Or rich. But I have more than enough, by all means. I have access to everything I need. And I can buy and afford everything I need.I'm not a minimalist. Or a digital nomad. Or an entrepreneur. Or a blogger. Or an author.I'm mostly trying to just be myself. I'm trying to be myself in a world where it gets harder and harder every single day to just be yourself.It's not always been easy. As a matter of fact it's probably been hard more often than it's been easy. But every day of struggle and doubt has been worth it. Being yourself and creating your own life instead of just living a life is always worth the struggle.This right here is my story. This is what I've learned about life, myself and the world around me.I'm everywhere and nowhere. And I own nothing and everything...

A New Yorker writer revisits the seminal book of her youth--Middlemarch--and fashions a singular, involving story of how a passionate attachment to a great work of literature can shape our lives and help us to read our own histories. Rebecca Mead was a young woman in an English coastal town when she first read George Eliot's Middlemarch, regarded by many as the greatest English novel. After gaining admission to Oxford, and moving to the United States to become a journalist, through several love affairs, then marriage and family, Mead read and reread Middlemarch. The novel, which Virginia Woolf famously described as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people," offered Mead something that modern life and literature did not. In this wise and revealing work of biography, reporting, and memoir, Rebecca Mead leads us into the life that the book made for her, as well as the many lives the novel has led since it was written. Employing a structure that deftly mirrors that of the novel, My Life in Middlemarch takes the themes of Eliot's masterpiece--the complexity of love, the meaning of marriage, the foundations of morality, and the drama of aspiration and failure--and brings them into our world. Offering both a fascinating reading of Eliot's biography and an exploration of the way aspects of Mead's life uncannily echo that of Eliot herself, My Life in Middlemarch is for every ardent lover of literature who cares about why we read books, and how they read us.