In My Mind S Eye

Riffing on cats and Brexit, the Royals and the annoyances of aging, the nonagenarian Jan Morris delights with her wickedly hilarious first-ever diary collection. Celebrated as the “greatest descriptive writer of her time” (Rebecca West), Jan Morris has been dazzling readers since she burst on the scene with her on-the-spot reportage of the first ascent of Everest in 1953. Now, the beloved ninety-two-year-old, author of classics such as Venice and Trieste, embarks on an entirely new literary enterprise—a collection of daily diaries, penned over the course of a single year. Ranging widely from the idyllic confines of her North Wales home, Morris offers diverse sallies on her preferred form of exercises (walking briskly), her frustration at not recognizing a certain melody humming in her head (Beethoven’s Pathétique, incidentally), her nostalgia for small-town America, as well as intimate glimpses into her home life. With insightful quips on world issues, including Britain’s “special relationship” with the United States and the #MeToo movement, In My Mind’s Eye will charm old and new Jan Morris fans alike.

In The Mind’s Eye, Oliver Sacks tells the stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and abilities: the power of speech, the capacity to recognize faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read, the sense of sight. For all of these people, the challenge is to adapt to a radically new way of being in the world. There is Lilian, a concert pianist who becomes unable to read music and is eventually unable even to recognize everyday objects, and Sue, a neurobiologist who has never seen in three dimensions, until she suddenly acquires stereoscopic vision in her fifties. There is Pat, who reinvents herself as a loving grandmother and active member of her community, despite the fact that she has aphasia and cannot utter a sentence, and Howard, a prolific novelist who must find a way to continue his life as a writer even after a stroke destroys his ability to read. And there is Dr. Sacks himself, who tells the story of his own eye cancer and the bizarre and disconcerting effects of losing vision to one side. Sacks explores some very strange paradoxes—people who can see perfectly well but cannot recognize their own children, and blind people who become hyper-visual or who navigate by “tongue vision.” He also considers more fundamental questions: How do we see? How do we think? How important is internal imagery—or vision, for that matter? Why is it that, although writing is only five thousand years old, humans have a universal, seemingly innate, potential for reading? The Mind’s Eye is a testament to the complexity of vision and the brain and to the power of creativity and adaptation. And it provides a whole new perspective on the power of language and communication, as we try to imagine what it is to see with another person’s eyes, or another person’s mind.

"In My Mind's Eye" is the first book about family constellations in individual therapy and counselling. The procedures presented rest on a broad range of therapeutic knowledge and experience from various psychological methods and approaches. In the first section, Ursula Franke describes the foundations of her therapeutic work. The second part addresses the inner processes, questions, and decisions leading to interventions, that guide the therapist through the whole process of a constellation. The main focus is on the techniques of constellations in individual therapy, and on constellations in the imagination, which the author has developed over years of experience and observation.

"Tromp weaves a complex historical tale incorporating love, suspense, hurt, and healing--all the elements that keep the pages turning." —Julie Cantrell, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of Perennials Charlotte Anne Mattas longs to turn back the clock. Before her husband, Sam, went to serve his country in the war, he was the man everyone could rely on--responsible, intelligent, and loving. But the person who's come back to their family farm is very different from the protector Annie remembers. Sam's experience in the Pacific theater has left him broken in ways no one can understand--but that everyone is learning to fear. Tongues start wagging after Sam nearly kills his own brother. Now when he claims to have seen men on the mountain when no one else has seen them, Annie isn't the only one questioning his sanity and her safety. If there were criminals haunting the hills, there should be evidence beyond his claims. Is he really seeing what he says, or is his war-tortured mind conjuring ghosts? Annie desperately wants to believe her husband. But between his irrational choices and his nightmares leaking into the daytime, she's terrified he's going mad. Can she trust God to heal Sam's mental wounds--or will sticking by him mean keeping her marriage at the cost of her own life? Debut novelist Janyre Tromp delivers a deliciously eerie, Hitchcockian story filled with love and suspense. Readers of psychological thrillers and historical fiction by Jaime Jo Wright and Sarah Sundin will add Tromp to their favorite authors list.

A stunning tale set in England, Paris, and Moscow, chronicling Blanch's love for an older Russian man and the passionate obsession that takes her to Siberia and beyond. “My book is not altogether autobiography, nor altogether travel or history either. You will just have to invent a new category,” Lesley Blanch wrote about Journey into the Mind’s Eye, a book that remains as singularly adventurous and intoxicating now as when it first came out in 1968. Russia seized Lesley Blanch when she was still a child. A mysterious traveler—swathed in Siberian furs, bearing Fabergé eggs and icons as gifts along with Russian fairy tales and fairy tales of Russia—came to visit her parents and left her starry-eyed. Years later the same man returned to sweep her off her feet. Her love affair with the Traveller, as she calls him, transformed her life and fueled an abiding fascination with Russia and Russian culture, one that would lead her to dingy apartments reeking of cabbage soup and piroshki on the outskirts of Paris in the 1960s, and to Siberia and beyond.

A picture is worth a thousand words, or so they say. Yet our world, our civilisation has grown up on a foundation of words - laws, constitutions, treaties, charters, creeds - words that have tamed and liberated in equal measure. Our education, from earliest childhood, emphasises the importance of words. We take the world before our eyes and define it in a verbal language, and in so doing we capture it, understand it, celebrate it. But there are costs. In our reliance on the cold efficency of language we have neglected the wordless ways of the brain. The uniquely complex human mind is capable of the most exquisite images and visions. But visualisation is not merely about sight and the imagined, it is about the way we interact with the world through our five senses. In THE MIND'S EYE Ian Robertson demonstrates how we are underutilising our brain's powers of visualisation. Taking the lessons of hard science, he explains how the brain works and how important visualisation can be. But more importantly, how we can all unleash the awesome power of our brains. Following simple exercises Ian Robertson describes how visualisation can: improve memory and learning power be the key to creative thinking and problem solving offer powerful ways of combating stress fight physical illness and pain enrich musical and artistic experience enhance sporting skill and strength In his trademark accessible and imaginative style, Ian Robertson brings to life the hidden workings of the brain, and teaches us all how we can best capitalise on our inate abilities. A must read for anyone interested in how the brain works, or unlocking our mind's full potential.

Jan Morris, one of “Britain’s greatest living writers” (Times, UK), returns with this whimsical yet deeply affecting volume on life as a redoubtable nonagenarian. The irrepressible Jan Morris—author of such classics as Venice and Trieste—is at it again: offering a vibrant set of reminiscences that remind us “what a good, wise and witty companion Jan Morris has been for so many readers for so long” (Alexander McCall Smith, New York Times Book Review). “Like Michel de Montaigne” (Danny Heitman, Wall Street Journal), Morris waxes on the ironies of modern life in all their resonant glories and inevitable stupidities—from her daily exercise (a “statutory thousand paces of brisk walk”) to the troubles of Brexit; her enduring yet complicated love for America; and honest reflections on the vagaries and ailments of aging. Both intimate and luminously wise, Thinking Again is a testament to the virtues of embracing life, creativity, and, above all, kindness.

For more than 20 years, Charlie Waite’s images have enthralled lovers of landscape photography everywhere. Now, in a very special collection, he presents the first volume devoted solely to his black-and -white pictures. In the great tradition of Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, he finds in black and white a perfect vehicle for revealing his creative vision. These photographs are rich in reflective surfaces and filled with texture, luminosity, and mystery. Amateur photographers will appreciate the plate index with information on the camera used, the lens, film, exposure, and filter. "…this book explores an exciting and dramatically new aspect of [Waite’s] work...[It] will take your breath away and I highly recommend picking up a copy."—Shutterbug.