Cherish This Life

Often far from home and loved ones, famed anthropologist Margaret Mead was a prolific letterwriter, always honing her writing skills and her ideas. To Cherish the Life of the World presents, for the first time, her personal and professional correspondence, which spanned sixty years. These letters lend insights into Mead's relationships with interconnected circles of family, friends, and colleagues, and reveal her thoughts on the nature of these relationships. In these letters -- drawn primarily from her papers at the Library of Congress -- Mead ruminates on family, friendships, sexuality, marriage, children, and career. In midlife, at a low point, she wrote to a friend, "What I seem to need most is close, aware human relationships, which somehow reinstate my sense of myself, as no longer living 'in the season of the narrow heart." This collection is structured around these relationships, which were so integral to Mead's perspective on life. With a foreword by her daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson, a renowned author and anthropologist in her own right, this volume of letters from Mead to those who shared her life and work offers new insight into a rich and deeply complex mind.

From the incomparable David Rakoff, a poignant, beautiful, witty and wise novel in verse whose scope spans the 20th Century. David Rakoff, who died in 2012 at the age of 47, built a deserved reputation as one of the finest and funniest essayists of our time. This intricately woven novel, written with humour, sympathy and tenderness, proves him the master of an altogether different art form. Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die; Cherish, Perish leaps cities and decades as Rakoff, a Canadian who became an American citizen, sings the song of his adoptive homeland--a country whose freedoms can be intoxicating, or brutal. Here the characters' lives are linked to each other by acts of generosity or cruelty. A critic once called Rakoff "magnificent," a word which perfectly describes this wonderful novel in verse.

Where are you going? Where have you been? What are you doing about it NOW? As you think through these questions, I encourage you to make your move and reclaim the life you've always dreamed about. It's yours if you really want it. But you'll need more than just a burning desire. You'll need a game plan that is built on a rock-solid foundation of core values. Values lead us toward the journey of our destiny. Our generation has lost its way. In the fast-paced, instant-gratification world we live in, we've lost our direction. Values provide us direction, leading us to bold new opportunities and life-changing relationships. Values like confidence, faith, courage and hard work are key to living life on your terms. Know this my friend-it's not only about the end goal. It's the journey you take to get there. Because it is the journey that defines us in the end. The Value of You is a journey into the core values that give light to our human experience. Values lead us to interior freedom, peace of mind, happiness and success. Every chapter contains a value that is filled with creative stories of famous people like J.K. Rowling, Simone Biles, Captain Charles "Sully" Sullenberger and Amy Schumer, as well as lesser known, yet remarkable heroes such as Dr. Liviu Librescu, Chris Singleton and Welles Crowther. Each value has a description of its core features, as well as obstacles to living the value, results of living the value and a personal game plan with practical guidance to help you make the value your own. We live in an ever-changing world with adversity and challenges. Values are the constant that position us for happiness and success. Values are a way of life. Start your journey today!

This book is meant to exhort children to cherish life and diminish any thoughts of suicide. It is a story of how a puppy loses her good friend and becomes very despondent. The puppy even considers suicide. Fortunately, wise animals and people on the farm help her regain life-sustaining hope. In time, the puppy regains joy in her life. The story ends when she is an old dog reflecting on her life and the value of cherishing life each day.

Though she has known hardships in her life, Ingeborg Bjorklund chooses to focus on all she has been given. Blessed with children and grandchildren, she enjoys the friendship and support of the entire Blessing, North Dakota, community. And after several years of widowhood, she has reached a place of contentment with her life. Meanwhile, her stepson Thorliff is raising two children alone since his beloved Elizabeth died. But there is a new schoolteacher in town, Louisa Gutenburg, and Thorliff doesn't seem to be himself whenever she's around. It isn't just his obvious fascination with Louisa, but the fact that he seems completely oblivious to it that makes Ingeborg smile. How long before Thorliff realizes what everyone else can see a mile away? But not everything is comfortable for Ingeborg. One of her dearest friendships is changing--and she will have to decide if her settled, predictable life is worth more to her than a future she hardly dares to imagine.

In a long, splendid life rich with struggles and satisfaction, above all Brandon Halloran treasured family. So the proud patriarch had meddled shamelessly in his darling brood's love lives…until finally the tables had turned! For the merry widower harbored a secret from the his nearest and dearest: cherished memories of sparkling, scandalous Elizabeth Forsythe, who'd once put wings to his flyboy's heart, only to vanish when he'd soared home from the war. And with Lizzy at long last on his horizon again, the one thing that could prevent his long-overdue second chance at happiness was…family! Vows: Love, Honor and Cherish—words that three generations of Halloran men vowed to live by.