Years Into Lives

In his new book, Stephen Levine, author of the perennial best-seller Who Dies?, teaches us how to live each moment, each hour, each day mindfully--as if it were all that was left. On his deathbed, Socrates exhorted his followers to practice dying as the highest form of wisdom. Levine decided to live this way himself for a whole year, and now he shares with us how such immediacy radically changes our view of the world and forces us to examine our priorities. Most of us go to extraordinary lengths to ignore, laugh off, or deny the fact that we are going to die, but preparing for death is one of the most rational and rewarding acts of a lifetime. It is an exercise that gives us the opportunity to deal with unfinished business and enter into a new and vibrant relationship with life. Levine provides us with a year-long program of intensely practical strategies and powerful guided meditations to help with this work, so that whenever the ultimate moment does arrive for each of us, we will not feel that it has come too soon.

Evangelical pastor Dobson chronicles his year of living like Jesus and obeying his teachings. As he discovers, living like Jesus is quite different from what Christians imagine.

A beautiful invitation to discover your place in God's heart and let him set the pace for your life—from a wife and mother, singer-songwriter, and worship leader for Passion Conferences and IF:Gathering “Christy Nockels is a gentle, strong voice shepherding us into a fuller life with Jesus at the very center. This book will restore your weary soul.”—Jennie Allen, New York Times bestselling author of Get Out of Your Head and founder and visionary of IF:Gathering Christy Nockels knows firsthand how easily our desire to serve God—even when using the gifts He has given us—can overshadow our delight in simply being with Him. When God called her to lay down her ministry for a season, Christy was forced to confront how her sense of purpose and worth had become tangled up in her work. God then lovingly invited her to discover true rest in His presence as she learned to live as the Beloved. In The Life You Long For, Christy shows us how to let go of hustle and achievement and instead find our identity in the quiet center of God’s love. As we delight in being with Him, we are filled to overflowing with contentment and love that propel us into an entirely new way of being, one in which every act of service and every encounter with the people around us arise from a heart at rest. With irresistible warmth and grace, this book calls you to step fully into the life you didn’t even realize you’ve been seeking, as you find your highest calling not in a duty to uphold but in a beautiful identity to live out.

In Twenty Years of Life, Suzanne Bohan exposes the ugly truth that health is largely determined by zip code. Life expectancies in wealthy versus poor neighborhoods can vary by as much as twenty years. Bohan chronicles a bold experiment to challenge that inequity. The California Endowment, one of the nation's largest health foundations, is upending the old-school, top-down charity model and investing $1 billion over ten years to help distressed communities advocate for their own interests. With compassion and insight, Bohan shares stories of students and parents, former street shooters, urban farmers, and a Native American tribe who are tapping into their latent political power to make their neighborhoods healthier. Their stories will fundamentally change how we think about the root causes of disease and the prospects for healing.

The Ancient Secret to Longevity, Vitality, and Life Transformation

One Year in the Life of a Dog By LTC Clifton H. Deringer Jr. USA (Ret.) “Tip” One Year in the Life of a Dog follows the story of Friend, a dog that can hear the thoughts of humans and respond telepathically. There are humans who are gifted with understanding the telepathy in animals and a university student who interviews Friend is blessed with such a gift. The book follows their interactions and various events that occur within their world. Intrigue, deception, kidnapping, and prejudice are woven seamlessly with love, understanding, sympathy, and acceptance. Barney and Jeff, Friend’s owners, are a homosexual, bi-racial couple. Seeing their lives from Friend’s point of view speaks on many levels to how ridiculous and outdated prejudice is. Barney and Jeff are just as loving and fulfilled as any other happy couple. Many of the characters with whom Friend interacts are not open to the couple’s way of life, but quickly realize their mistake when they see how lovely Barney and Jeff truly are. There are harrowing situations that breed a deeper understanding of the differences between people; this book is truly a tool to teach readers to love all, despite the different ways the characters live their lives.

Despite its importance to the life of the nation and all its citizens, the Supreme Court remains a mystery to most Americans, its workings widely felt but rarely seen firsthand. In this book, journalists who cover the Court—acting as the eyes and ears of not just the American people, but the Constitution itself—give us a rare close look into its proceedings, the people behind them, and the complex, often fascinating ways in which justice is ultimately served. Their narratives form an intimate account of a year in the life of the Supreme Court. The cases heard by the Surpreme Court are, first and foremost, disputes involving real people with actual stories. The accidents and twists of circumstance that have brought these people to the last resort of litigation can make for compelling drama. The contributors to this volume bring these dramatic stories to life, using them as a backdrop for the larger issues of law and social policy that constitute the Court’s business: abortion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech, the right of privacy, crime, violence, discrimination, and the death penalty. In the course of these narratives, the authors describe the personalities and jurisprudential leanings of the various Justices, explaining how the interplay of these characters and theories about the Constitution interact to influence the Court’s decisions. Highly readable and richly informative, this book offers an unusually clear and comprehensive portrait of one of the most influential institutions in modern American life.