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NATIONAL BESTSELLER
ADAM GRANT'S NEXT BIG IDEA BOOK CLUB PICK
The anti-hustle guide to getting what you really want
AN OPEN FIELD PUBLICATION FROM MARIA SHRIVER
Most of us think ambition means doing everything in our power to get what we want. But this approach costs us our health and wellbeing, and ultimately upholds oppressive systems. In The Ambition Trap, leadership coach Amina AlTai shows you how to break the cycle of overwork once and for all—and finally create the greatest, most joy-filled work of your life.
The thing is, what most of us really want isn’t money or accolades, but acceptance, security, and belonging. When we use external metrics to fulfill these internal wounds and desires nothing ends up being enough, so we work harder and longer in a never-ending cycle—and therein lies the ambition trap. It turns out, we get to have more of what we want when we anchor our ambition to our purpose and not our pain.
Drawing on her work with Fortune 500 leaders, Olympic gold medalists, start-up founders, and former “girlbosses,” AlTai guides you through the process of reconciling your ambition, starting with healing the core wounds and insecurities currently driving you. Along the way, she introduces actionable strategies for aligning your work with your deepest “why,” leaning into your most natural gifts, nourishing yourself in the long-term pursuit of your goals, setting a sustainable pace, and allowing contentment to guide the way.
It turns out, ambition isn’t a dirty word but an invitation to design your life with even greater purpose, meaning, and joy.
'Compassionate and hopeful' - Pragya Agarwal, author of Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias
'This beautiful curation will be a catalyst to our healing and emancipation' - Seyi Akiwowo, author of How to Stay Safe Online: A Digital Self-Care Toolkit for Developing Resilience and Allyship
A compelling collection of stories, essays, poetry and art that shines a light on the experiences of mental health for people of colour, bringing solace and connection to those with similar stories. A tool for education and advocacy, The Colour of Madness offers a space for those who have been excluded from mainstream health narratives.
For those past and present who were not able to tell their stories.
For those who told their stories but were not heard.
For those who are steeling themselves, waiting for their moment to speak.
A moving tribute to all who have suffered in a prejudiced system, this anthology is both an urgent call for change and a vibrant beacon of hope, compiled by Dr Samara Linton and Dr Rianna Walcott.
'A body of work we should revisit again and again.' - K Bailey Obazee, PRIM
‘A seminal body of work’ - Melissa Cummings-Quarry, co-author of Grown: The Black Girl's Guide to Glowing Up
You don't have to be good at art for art to be good for you.
Being creative is good for us: it lowers our stress hormones, calms our nervous system and can get us into a flow state. Our innate creativity is part of being human, but it's easy to forget, especially since many of us have been told that we are 'no good' at art.
At a time when mental health challenges are on the rise and support systems are stretched, Creative First Aid is your practical guide to taking matters into your own hands, literally. It's about the proven positive effects of making something – a garden, a story, a meal, a drawing – and the powerful interaction this process can have on your mental, emotional and physical state. It's about being curious, playful, creative and full of self-compassion – even more so when life gets messy.
Based on scientific evidence and a program shown to improve mental wellbeing for first responders and traumatized communities, this inspiring book empowers you with awareness and simple creative tools that can open a door to experiencing delight, awe and joy each and every day. It includes stories from those who have found their way through trauma, anxiety, grief and chronic illness, as well as 50 creative prescriptions you can try, with some taking just a couple of minutes.
Creative First Aid is your roadmap for how to look after yourself on tough days, amazing days – and all the days in between.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
“I feel like I’ve been waiting for this book for my entire adult life.” — Anne Helen Petersen
“I loved [The Other Significant Others] and recommend it to everybody.” — Ezra Klein
The Other Significant Others tells the stories of people who make a friendship the central relationship in their lives—owning homes together, raising kids together, or caring for each other for decades. Like romantic couples, these friends form a “we.” At a time of declining marriage rates and a loneliness epidemic, these friends help us imagine alternative models for a fulfilling life and ask us to rethink which relationships matter most.
You can get The Other Significant Others from your favorite bookseller now and find a discussion group guide here.
Explore the healing, transformative power of shedding tears in this vibrant illustrated study of crying, one of the most uniquely human things we do.
What if crying wasn’t just an involuntary reaction to feeling sad, vulnerable, or overwhelmed—but a hidden wellspring of power we could harness to live a fuller life?
In The Art of Crying, Pepita Sandwich makes the case that crying is humanity’s most misunderstood and magical special effect. We are the only animals who shed tears as a result of the emotions we feel. But crying is not our weakness: it’s our superpower. Our tears are a path to growth and healing that leads to deeper and more fulfilling experiences.
In this beautifully illustrated book, Sandwich dives deep into an ocean of research into tears to understand the science and history of this uniquely human phenomenon. And she has emerged with a case for “letting it all out” a little more often, because tears have a powerful magic all their own.
“When truth teller and careful writer bell hooks offers a book, I like to be standing at the bookshop when it opens.” –Maya Angelou
Renowned visionary bell hooks explored the meaning of love in American culture with the critically acclaimed bestseller All About Love: New Visions. She continued her national dialogue with the bestselling Salvation: Black People and Love. Now hooks culminates her triumphant trilogy of love with Communion: The Female Search for Love.
Intimate, revealing, provocative, Communion challenges every woman to courageously claim the search for love as the heroic journey we must all choose to be truly free in a patriarchal culture. In her trademark commanding and lucid language, hooks explores the ways ideas about women and love were changed by the feminist movement, by women's full participation in the workforce, and by the culture of self-help, and reveals how women of all ages can achieve emotional growth and bring love into every aspect of their lives, for all the years of their lives.
Communion is the heart-to-heart talk every woman — mother, daughter, friend, and lover — needs to have.
This landmark book is a profound exploration of women's liberation and the path to love, offering a vision for:
Feminist Theory on Love: Discover how the feminist movement forever changed our ideas about love, partnership, and power, challenging the ideology of domination.
The Path to Self-Love: Understand why claiming the search for love is a heroic journey, and how a woman’s freedom is tied to her capacity for self-acceptance.
Sisterhood and Solidarity: A heart-to-heart talk for every mother, daughter, friend, and lover on building circles of love that nurture and sustain collective female well-being.
Finding Lasting Love: Receive guidance for women of all ages on bringing authentic love into every aspect of their lives, for all the years of their lives.
A renowned sociologist and researcher reveals how women can build the life they really want
The term mental load has become more familiar in recent years, but the popular understanding of the concept often reduces it down to managing a list of household chores and logistics. Sociologist Leah Ruppanner reveals that for women, mental load actually goes much deeper: It’s a complex form of emotional thinking that is invisible, boundaryless, and enduring. In Drained, Ruppanner outlines the eight distinct types of mental load and highlights what makes them so uniquely heavy for women:
Life organization: Staying on top of planning and tasks
Emotional support: Checking in on family, friends, and coworkers
Relationship hygiene: Maintaining strong social connections
Magic making: Carrying on traditions and creating special life moments
Dream building: Helping others fulfill their passions and ambitions
Individual upkeep: Keeping fit and healthy
Safety: Protecting family and loved ones from danger
Meta-care: Raising children who will thrive in the future
The heart of the book is the Mental Load Audit, a powerful, practical tool to help readers assess where they are spending their time and attention, and how they can take steps to recalibrate their energy effectively. Urgent and provocative, Drained will help women stop blaming themselves for never feeling like they are enough and help them create richer, less overwhelming lives filled with more meaning and joy.
A designer, educator, and play expert calls for adults to add more fun, exploration, and imagination to their lives.
We’re all born playful. But when we grow up, we learn to suppress this critical, hardwired instinct and our lives become ruled by “getting things done.” As world-famous designer Cas Holman explains, this disconnection from our playful selves is hazardous to everything from our emotional wellbeing to our ability to problem solve and innovate. The emerging science of play shows that it sparks joy, wonder, creativity, and insight at any age.
Here, Holman explains the power of “free play” through open-ended, unstructured activities that we become absorbed in with no obvious goal or purpose. The ways we can play are endless and what recharges us most is unique to each of us: whether it’s a piece of art we create, an entertaining conversation with a stranger, or an experiment to shake up a routine task. Weaving in inspiring stories and eye-opening research, Holman shows us that adopting a playful mindset is crucial in helping us:
Overcome fear of failure and embrace new ways of thinking
Destress, reset, and connect with each other
Grow our creativity at every stage of our lives
Find joy in bleak times
Playful draws on psychology, history, art, and design thinking to make a powerful case for the vital importance of play for grown-ups in a world obsessed with productivity. Provocative, wise, and full of spirit, it will inspire you to (re) learn how to play.
Harness the power of breathwork with this compassionate, healing guide for Black women.
As a Black woman, Jasmine Marie knows the impact that intergenerational trauma and systemic racism have had—and continue to have—on her community. Those experiences, along with her own journey through chronic stress, are why she created black girls breathing®, a movement dedicated to helping Black women understand the power of the mind‑body connection and its impact on their holistic health, one breath at a time.
Sharing breathwork exercises from her unique somatic philosophies, proven by data and utilized by tens of thousands of participants to date, Jasmine Marie will help you:
Connect more fully to your body
Give yourself permission to rest
Heal the chronic stress you carry in your body and nervous system
Address emotional pain
Rebuild your sense of self and your community
Black Girls Breathing is a long-overdue resource for every Strong Black Woman—the woman ready to break cycles of trauma, heal the internalized beliefs of perfectionism and conditional self‑worth, and follow the wisdom of her inner voice.
“In a time of increasing loneliness, this book provides a steady guide, teaching us how to foster closeness, show up intentionally, and genuinely care for the people in our lives.”—Nedra Glover Tawwab, author of Set Boundaries, Find Peace
From New York Times bestselling author Alexandra Elle comes a vulnerable exploration of the friendships that shape us, stretch us, and sometimes wound us. With her trademark wisdom and storytelling, Alex invites us not only to celebrate but to examine the relationships in our lives, from the ones that matter most to those we should re-evaluate.
This book offers hard-won wisdom on:
Recognizing when people-pleasing and self-silencing have become a pattern.
Understanding that honesty—while sometimes painful—is a bridge to real intimacy or necessary endings.
Letting go of the belief that we earn love by shrinking ourselves.
Honor the sacred friendships that restore and heal us.
The Company We Keep offers readers permission to evolve in their friendships and reminds us that the people we surround ourselves with are not only mirrors, but key companions on the lifelong journey of healing, self-trust, and belonging. Alex shares her unflinching journey of learning to stop abandoning herself in the name of loyalty, to take ownership of the energy she brought into relationships, and to tell the truth—even when it cost her comfort. The Company We Keep is not just about cultivating our most meaningful friendships—it’s about becoming a better friend to ourselves first.
An Invitation to Community and Models for Connection
After almost every presentation activist and writer Mia Birdsong gives to executives, think tanks, and policy makers, one of those leaders quietly confesses how much they long for the profound community she describes. They have family, friends, and colleagues, yet they still feel like they're standing alone. They're "winning" at the American Dream, but they're lonely, disconnected, and unsatisfied.
It seems counterintuitive that living the "good life"--the well-paying job, the nuclear family, the upward mobility--can make us feel isolated and unhappy. But in a divided America, where only a quarter of us know our neighbors and everyone is either a winner or a loser, we've forgotten the key element that helped us make progress in the first place: community. In this provocative, groundbreaking work, Mia Birdsong shows that what separates us isn't only the ever-present injustices built around race, class, gender, values, and beliefs, but also our denial of our interdependence and need for belonging. In response to the fear and discomfort we feel, we've built walls, and instead of leaning on each other, we find ourselves leaning on concrete.
Through research, interviews, and stories of lived experience, How We Show Up returns us to our inherent connectedness where we find strength, safety, and support in vulnerability and generosity, in asking for help, and in being accountable. Showing up--literally and figuratively--points us toward the promise of our collective vitality and leads us to the liberated well-being we all want.
A bestselling author reveals how to prioritize and care for yourself when uncomfortable change is thrust upon you.
Lee guides you through the hard times that arise unexpectedly and disrupt your life for indeterminate periods. Uncertainty and fear impact how you interact with the world and understand your place in it. You manage the loneliness and isolation by convincing others that you are fine. Lee debunks the idea that you must force positivity and, instead, helps you learn how to hold compassion for yourself in hard times.
Through rich, revelatory prose, Lee assists you in navigating life’s unstable and overwhelming moments. Using research and her personal experiences, she argues that self-preservation is necessary when life is at its worst. If you are experiencing pain, chronic stress, or loneliness or are burdened with self-doubt, Waiting for Dawn brings you from a place of instability to hope. Lee shares her two-year journey battling loss and illness—the death of her mother-in-law, ongoing sickness, and the emotional challenges she endured—that taught her that healing is about finding your own unique way through the darkness.
Waiting for Dawn provides a compass to help you rediscover your worth and identify how to live well. These dark periods are necessary for things to grow and transform, but it never stays dark forever.
“Waiting for Dawn is nothing short of a miracle and just what we need right now in our current moment. When times seem to drag us into a grey mist that we don’t know how to navigate out of, her words push us to find our own paths forward into a clear understanding of what we need to feel better and more at ease.” ―Maggie Smith, New York Timesbestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful
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