Showing results by narrator "Jean Ann Douglass" in All Categories

A startlingly frank memoir, Quitter documents one woman's struggles with alcoholism and recovery, with essential new insights into addiction and treatment.

When faced with complex challenges or uncertain outcomes, many leaders believe that if they are smart enough, work hard enough, or turn to the best management tools, they will be able to find the right answer, predict and plan for the future, and break down tasks to produce controllable results. But what are leaders to do when this isn't the case? Rather than offering one-size-fits-all tips and tricks drawn from the realm of business as usual, Simple Habits for Complex Times provides three integral practices that enable leaders to navigate the unknown.

“The essay has taught me how to live,” writes Jia Tolentino, this year’s Best American Essays guest editor. In a time of escalating authoritarianism and disinformation, we turn to artists and writers to make sense of the world around us. The twenty-one authors featured in this collection...

A global pandemic, Depression-level unemployment, civil and political unrest - it feels as if the world as we know it is faltering. Through it all, our spirit is being tested. Now more than ever, it's imperative for leaders to demonstrate compassion.

Women are, and have always been, all these things and more. Looking through the ages and across the globe, Anita Sarkeesian, founder of Feminist Frequency, along with Ebony Adams, PhD, have reclaimed 25 stories of remarkable women who dared to defy history and change the world around them.

As the bold daughter of the Raider leader, Lila yearns to transform her people’s plundering ways into something noble. Her dream? To unite the Raiders with dragons as mercenaries defending merchant fleets and kingdoms. But fate has other plans. When Lila bonds with a wild, untamable dragon, their partnership sets her on a path of danger and discovery. A desperate plea from the West Witches sends Lila and Danu, a novice magician, to the Isle of Sebol to uncover a threat looming over the Western Isles. What they find could spell doom for all.

In the storm-swept Western Archipelago where Sea Dragons rule the skies, Lila is destined to inherit her father's plundering ships. But Lila envisions a new path: transforming the Raiders into Dragon Riders who defend the seas instead of ravaging them. When Danu, a young monk on a mysterious quest, arrives with a prophecy, he reveals that Lila is the lost heir of the Sea Crown—a born Dragon Rider. Guided by Danu, she seeks out her destined dragon, an untamed creature as stubborn as she. Together, they must learn to trust each other.

In Thinking with Your Hands, esteemed cognitive psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow argues that gesture is vital to how we think, learn, and communicate. She shows us, for instance, how the height of our gestures can reveal unconscious bias or how the shape of a student’s gestures can track their mastery of a new concept—even when they’re still giving wrong answers. She compels us to rethink everything from how we set child-development milestones to what’s admissible in a court of law to whether Zoom is an adequate substitute for in-person conversation.

Are you ready to live your best life and do your best work? Then it’s time to take a holistic look at your lived experiences and how they affect your thoughts, decisions and actions. We must acknowledge our patterns and habits, accept past hurts and present problems, and work to understand our dreams, fears, and limiting beliefs.

If you find yourself running away from fear, you’re running in the wrong direction. Fear demands that we move toward it, face it, and hear its messages. When we fail to do this, the price is high - chronic anxiety, sleeplessness, damaged relationships, skyrocketing pharmaceutical use, and more.

Business as usual is over. The age of hyper-change is upon us, and technology is at the forefront. Since the dawn of the microchip, exponential growth has defined modern technology. Today, entire industries are being upended by software, sensors, cameras, LiDAR, processors, and optics — all growing smaller by the day.

After a devastating retreat from the Army of the Dead, Lila fears her people will remain nothing more than a ragtag band of Raiders and their dragons. Even with the legendary Crown of Roskilde in her possession, uniting the Raiders seems impossible—it appears she isn't the one to fulfill Danu's cherished prophecy.

Lila knows her people's way of life is dying, but convincing the Raiders to become dragon riders is no easy task. While the world around them changes, many Raiders still cling to their old ways of piracy. When a desperate message arrives from the Western Witches, Lila and her new friend—the eccentric, determined, and untested magician Danu—embark on a perilous mission to the island of Sebol. There, they hope to uncover the nature of a looming threat that endangers all the Western Isles.

A proudly humanist portrayal of sexual impulse and impropriety in the City of Angels, The First 50 is a chronological recapitulation of 50 erotic encounters that take place between the ages of 13 and 33. Columbine, 9/11, the Iraq War, and the Great Recession set the stage as a young woman navigates the ambient decadence that has long defined Los Angeles.

In the early days of the Cold War, a spirit of desperate scientific rivalry birthed a different kind of space race: not the race to outer space that we all know, but a race to master the inner space of the human body. While surgeons on either side of the Iron Curtain competed to become the first to transplant organs like the kidney and heart, a young American neurosurgeon had an even more ambitious thought: Why not transplant the brain?

Lindy Mason is happy to be back at Lincoln High School. As principal, she's faced with the tough decision on how to handle a bullying case involving Maddie Myers, daughter of the boy who made her high school days a misery. Ryan Myers is panicked when he rushes into the principal's office to rescue his daughter and shocked to see Lindy behind the desk. Single parenting means plenty of sleepless nights, time he spends regretting his mistakes and worrying over Maddie's future. Lindy and Ryan have to come to terms with the way life's twists bring change and for the better.

Callie Delgado volunteered to apprentice to Gem City's Soul Charmer. He'd forced the soul magic ability into her, but now it was hers. She'd learn to control her body's reaction to rented souls or go up in flames. She exchanged her chance to escape the darker side of Gem City to save her brother. Now she needs to keep him sober and safe, try to mend family ties, and avoid the mobsters who have too much interest in the magic of borrowing souls. But when bodies begin dropping at the Soul Charmer's door, it's up to Callie and her partner Derek to track down the person killing soul renters.

Callie’s magic is finally her own. She and Derek dispatched Ford. They should have been able to breathe, but layers of sin run deep beneath Gem City. Another mob boss quickly rises, and his sights are firmly set on Callie—and her family. Mobile soul rental shops begin to bite at the Soul Charmer’s business. His retribution is wicked, but the blowback threatens to crush Callie. If she can’t maintain the tenuous balance of souls in Gem City, more lives will be lost. Only the more magic she uses, the more danger finds her.

In the aftermath of the turbulent '60s, unable to reconcile her monastic existence in upstate New York with the plight of the community’s poor, Sister Jude leaves the convent only to become ensnared in her best friend’s crumbling marriage. Intimidated by her talented but overbearing husband, Vincent, a pregnant Connie shows up at Jude’s door with her two children in tow. Jude's mission to feed the hungry and free Connie from her weakness for Vincent is complicated by her own attraction to Matt, a passionate but burned-out activist, back from the inner city to work his family’s farm.

Lexi has always wanted to know more about the mother who passed away when she was only a child. But her dad will barely talk about her. Is it so wrong to want to learn about the mom she never got to know? When Lexi’s grandma dies and secretly leaves her a worn blue chest that belonged to Lexi’s mother, Lexi is ecstatic to find a treasure trove of keepsakes. Her mom held on to letters, pamphlets, flyers, and news articles all from the same beautiful summertime getaway—Mackinac Island—plus a cryptic postcard that hints at a forbidden romance.