Walking Backward

When Josh's mother dies in a phobia-induced car crash, she leaves two questions for her grieving family: how did a snake get into her car and how do you mourn with no faith to guide you? Twelve-year-old Josh is left alone to find the answers. His father is building a time machine. His four-year-old brother's closest friend is a plastic Power Ranger. His psychiatrist offers nothing more than a blank journal and platitudes. Isolated by grief in a home where every day is pajama day, Josh makes death his research project. He tests the mourning practices of religions he doesn't believe in. He tries to mend his little brother's shattered heart. He observes, records and waits—for his life to feel normal, for his mother's death to make sense, for his father to come out of the basement. His observations, recorded in a series of journal entries, are funny, smart, insightful—and heartbreaking. His conclusions about the nature of love, loss, grief and the space-time continuum are nothing less than life-changing.

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Ben Montgomery, the story of a Texas man who, during the Great Depression, walked around the world -- backwards. Like most Americans at the time, Plennie Wingo was hit hard by the effects of the Great Depression. When the bank foreclosed on his small restaurant in Abilene, he found himself suddenly penniless with nowhere left to turn. After months of struggling to feed his family on wages he earned digging ditches in the Texas sun, Plennie decided it was time to do something extraordinary -- something to resurrect the spirit of adventure and optimism he felt he'd lost. He decided to walk around the world -- backwards. In The Man Who Walked Backward, Pulitzer Prize finalist Ben Montgomery charts Plennie's backwards trek across the America that gave rise to Woody Guthrie, John Steinbeck, and the New Deal. With the Dust Bowl and Great Depression as a backdrop, Montgomery follows Plennie across the Atlantic through Germany, Turkey, and beyond, and details the daring physical feats, grueling hardships, comical misadventures, and hostile foreign police he encountered along the way. A remarkable and quirky slice of Americana, The Man Who Walked Backward paints a rich and vibrant portrait of a jaw-dropping period of history.

Walking backward in the wind was often a child's game. But in West Texas during the Great Depression, whether you were child or grownup, it was a method of moving ahead by backing through the legendary windstorms which swept the landscape, the same winds that covered beds, furniture and even food with a thick layer of dust. Helen Mangum Field's account opens and closes with the winds - one a nameless windstorm, the other the fabled Black Duster. But Walking Backward in the Wind is about more than the winds - they are only bookends, a blustery literary device. What occurs between the winds - the rhythms of farm families and communities in the 1920s - is the heart of this narrative. Cleaning the stove, daily dusting or shoveling dirt, planting, killing hogs, box suppers, dipping snuff, candling eggs, wringing chickens' necks and drawing names at Christmas are all richly detailed without sentimentality. In spite of gusts which grabbed and tore at the fabric of life, Helen Mangum Fields proves how successful walking backward in the wind was.

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Over 35 mindful walking exercises for finding balance, building awareness, and reducing stress—from a wellness teacher and fitness expert Glenn Berkenkamp invites us to discover how we sense, move, think, and feel in our bodies. By reframing the joys and opportunities presented to us by the act of walking, he shows us how to become reflective and inwardly directed, even as we take in the world around us. With 35 different walks, and with the help of a “Which Walks to Do When” user guide, Glenn gives us options for every occasion and emotion. Feeling off-center? Try a centering walk. Feeling down? Lift your spirit with a gratitude walk or a prayer walk. There are walks for listening, grounding, and grieving, as well as rain walks, full moon walks, mindful dog walks, and more. He includes walks for all ability levels, including fun walks for children. As we walk with Glenn, we settle, clarify, and balance our bodies, minds, and spirits—opening to new perspectives and possibilities we didn’t know were there.

The Buddhist philosophical tradition is vast, internally diverse, and comprises texts written in a variety of canonical languages. It is hence often difficult for those with training in Western philosophy who wish to approach this tradition for the first time to know where to start, and difficult for those who wish to introduce and teach courses in Buddhist philosophy to find suitable textbooks that adequately represent the diversity of the tradition, expose students to important primary texts in reliable translations, that contextualize those texts, and that foreground specifically philosophical issues. Buddhist Philosophy fills that lacuna. It collects important philosophical texts from each major Buddhist tradition. Each text is translated and introduced by a recognized authority in Buddhist studies. Each introduction sets the text in context and introduces the philosophical issues it addresses and arguments it presents, providing a useful and authoritative guide to reading and to teaching the text. The volume is organized into topical sections that reflect the way that Western philosophers think about the structure of the discipline, and each section is introduced by an essay explaining Buddhist approaches to that subject matter, and the place of the texts collected in that section in the enterprise. This volume is an ideal single text for an intermediate or advanced course in Buddhist philosophy, and makes this tradition immediately accessible to the philosopher or student versed in Western philosophy coming to Buddhism for the first time. It is also ideal for the scholar or student of Buddhist studies who is interested specifically in the philosophical dimensions of the Buddhist tradition.

When it comes to looking and feeling your best, less really can be more. Discover how to maximize your sleeping, eating, exercising—even thinking and breathing—with minimum effort. The truth is most people don’t actually need grueling, extreme workouts or aggressively limited diets to lose weight and feel proud to flaunt their bodies in bathing suits. What they need is a plan that is focused on efficiency—the best results for the least amount of time and effort—and one that is actually designed to be maintained for more than 30 days. In The Minimum Method, by nutrition expert and celebrity fitness trainer Joey Thurman, you’ll learn a wealth of practical advice, simple nutrition truths, minimal-effort recipes, and how to exercise smarter, not harder. Instead of unrealistic workouts and time-consuming meal plans, Thurman’s science-backed method is based on getting the maximum benefit out of things like quick and simple “exercise snacks” and sleep hygiene hacks. Thurman doesn’t shy away from the shortcomings of the mainstream health/fitness/diet industry—in fact, he acknowledges and apologizes for his own past experience in perpetuating the harmful myth that everyone should be pushing their bodies to the limit in order to improve. Now, he’s on a mission to help others prioritize genuine health instead of some imaginary and unattainable standard of perfection. Ultimately, The Minimum Method teaches how to adopt a healthier mindset and lifestyle: feeling your best when you don’t get enough sleep, working fitness into your busiest days, getting back on track when you slip up, and celebrating your progress. With The Minimum Method, you’ll have the key to better health, using small, easy changes that add up to huge, life-altering results.