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Renowned conservationist Aldo Leopold once wrote, "e;A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it does otherwise."e;Few have taken Leopold's vision more to heart than Steven I. Apfelbaum, who has, over the last thirty years, transformed his eighty-acre Stone Prairie Farm in Wisconsin into a biologically diverse ecosystem of prairie, wetland, spring-fed brook, and savanna. In healing his land, Apfelbaum demonstrates how humans might play a starring role in healing the planet.

From the American Poetry Society's 2018 Wallace Stevens Awardwinner, this is an epic poem on kin estranged, the death of a brother from AIDS, and the possibility of reconciliation and love in the face of loss.

After an angry confrontation with his son on a hiking trip intended to restore their relationship, Scott Sanders realizes that his own despair has darkened his son's world. In Hunting for Hope he sets out to gather his own reasons for facing the future with hope, finding powers of healing in nature, in culture, in community, in spirit, and within each of us.

Originally published in 1976, with more than 75,000 copies in print, this collection of poems by fifteenth-century ecstatic poet Kabir is full of fun and full of thought. Columbia University professor of religion John Stratton Hawley has contributed an introduction that makes clear Kabir's immense importance to the contemporary reader and praises Bly's intuitive translations.By making every reader consider anew their religious thinking, the poems of Kabir seem as relevant today as when they were first written.

In Closing the Food Gap, food activist and journalist Mark Winne poses questions too often overlooked in our current conversations around food: What about those people who are not financially able to make conscientious choices about where and how to get food? And in a time of rising rates of both diabetes and obesity, what can we do to make healthier foods available for everyone?To address these questions, Winne tells the story of how America's food gap has widened since the 1960s, when domestic poverty was "e;rediscovered,"e; and how communities have responded with a slew of strategies and methods to narrow the gap, including community gardens, food banks, and farmers' markets. The story, however, is not only about hunger in the land of plenty and the organized efforts to reduce it; it is also about doing that work against a backdrop of ever-growing American food affluence and gastronomical expectations. With the popularity of Whole Foods and increasingly common community-supported agriculture (CSA), wherein subscribers pay a farm so they can have fresh produce regularly, the demand for fresh food is rising in one population as fast as rates of obesity and diabetes are rising in another. Over the last three decades, Winne has found a way to connect impoverished communities experiencing these health problems with the benefits of CSAs and farmers' markets; in Closing the Food Gap, he explains how he came to his conclusions. With tragically comic stories from his many years running a model food organization, the Hartford Food System in Connecticut, alongside fascinating profiles of activists and organizations in communities across the country, Winne addresses head-on the struggles to improve food access for all of us, regardless of income level. Using anecdotal evidence and a smart look at both local and national policies, Winne offers a realistic vision for getting locally produced, healthy food onto everyone's table.

Americans have fallen for the ticker tape. We watch our portfolios, happily or nervously. We know there were a few bad apples at Enron and World Com, but we also know:* The advent of mutual funds, low-cost brokerages, and the Internet has meant that the stock market is now more transparent, honest, and accessible to the small investor than ever before;* 401(k)s give the individual responsibility and control over their retirement savings, and that makes us more responsible citizens;* Federal deficits are bad for the economy, especially, somehow, when they're linked to social spending; and* Controlling inflation is the most important task of our economic policy.But as economist Ellen Frank shows us, what we know is wrong. Over the past twenty years, Americans have been fed a mash of confusing financial and economic information. This information has distorted popular understanding of how the economy really operates and camouflaged the transformation of economic policy from a tool for improving the living standards of all to a tool for securing the perquisites of those with financial wealth.

1998 National Jewish Book Award finalistPamela S. Nadell mines a wealth of untapped sources to bring us the first complete story of the courageous and committed Jewish women who passionately defended their right to equal religious participation through rabbinical ordination.

For All of Us, One Todayis a fluid, poetic story anchored by Richard Blanco's experiences as the inaugural poet in 2013, and beyond. In this brief and evocative narrative, he shares for the first time his journey as a Latino immigrant and openly gay man discovering a new, emotional understanding of what it means to be an American. He tells the story of the call from the White House committee and all the exhilaration and upheaval of the days that followed. He reveals the inspiration and challenges behind the creation of the inaugural poem, ';One Today,' as well as two other poems commissioned for the occasion (';Mother Country' and ';What We Know of Country'), published here for the first time ever, alongside translations of all three of those poems into his native Spanish. Finally, Blanco reflects on his life-changing role as a public voice since the inauguration, his spiritual embrace of Americans everywhere, and his vision for poetry's new role in our nation's consciousness. Like the inaugural poem itself, For All of Us, One Today speaks to what makes this country and its people great, marking a historic moment of hope and promise in our evolving American landscape.In 2017, U2 isfeaturing ';One Today' during their Joshua Tree tour throughout the United States and Europe. The poem will be projected on the stage screens as people enter the stadium to reflect and discuss America and the American experience.2014 International Latino Awards Winner: Best Biography Spanish or Bilingual

In 2005, famed civil rights leader and education activist Robert Moses invited one hundred prominent African American and Latino intellectuals and activists to meet to discuss a proposal for acampaignto guarantee a quality education for all children as a constitutional righta movement that would ';transform current approaches to educational inequity, all of which have failed miserably to yield results for our children.' The response was passionate, and the meeting launched a movement.This bookemerging directly from that effortreports on what has happened since and calls for a new scale of organizing, legal initiatives, and public definitions of what a quality education is. Essays include Robert Moses's historically rooted call for citizens, especially young people, to make the demand for quality education Ernesto Cortes's view from decades of work organizing Latino communities in Texas Charles Payne's interview with students from the Baltimore Algebra Project, who organized to make historic demands on their district Legal scholar Imani Perry's nuanced analysis of the prospects of making a case for quality education as a right guaranteed by the Constitution Perspectives from scholars Lisa Delpit and Joan T. Wynne, and by teachers Alicia Caroll and Kim Parker, who provide examples of what quality education is, describing its goal, and how to guide practice in the meantime

Developing a concept briefly introduced in Counterrevolution and Revolt, Marcuse here addresses the shortcomings of Marxist aesthetic theory and explores a dialectical aesthetic in which art functions as the conscience of society. Marcuse argues that art is the only form or expression that can take up where religion and philosophy fail and contends that aesthetics offers the last refuge for two-dimensional criticism in a one-dimensional society.

On September 24, 2009, Forrest Church succumbed to a three-year battle against esophageal cancer. As his final gift, the beloved minister and acclaimed author wrote one last book, leaving behind a clear statement of his universalist theology and liberal faith.The Cathedral of the Worlddraws from the entire span of Church's life's work, recasting public addresses and adapted book chapters, articles, and several previously unpublished pieces into a single argument. Giving new voice to the power of liberal religion, Church invites all seekers to enter the Cathedral of the World, home to many windows but only one Light.

A stunning new book about the role of animals in our lives, by a popular and acclaimed writerFrom the time she is nine years old, biking to the farmland outside her suburban home, where she discovers a disquieting world of sleeping cows and a ';Private Way' full of the wondrous and creepy creatures of the wildspiders, deer, moles, chipmunks, and foxesLauren Slater finds in animals a refuge from her troubled life. As she matures, her attraction to animals strengthens and grows more complex and compelling even as her family is falling to pieces around her. Slater spends a summer at horse camp, where she witnesses the alternating horrific and loving behavior of her instructor toward the animals in her charge and comes to question the bond that so often develops between females and their equines. Slater's questions follow her to a foster family, her own parents no longer able to care for her. A pet raccoon, rescued from a hole in the wall, teaches her how to feel at home away from home. The two Shiba Inu puppies Slater adopts years later, against her husband's will, grow increasingly important to her as she ages and her family begins to grow. Slater's husband is a born skeptic and possesses a sternly scientific view of animals as unconscious, primitive creatures, one who insists ';that an animal's worth is roughly equivalent to its edibility.' As one of her dogs, Lila, goes blind and the medical bills and monthly expenses begin to pour in, he calculates the financial burden of their canine family member and finds that Lila has cost them about $60,000, not to mention the approximately 400 pounds of feces she has deposited in their yard. But when Benjamin begins to suffer from chronic pain, Lauren is convinced it is Lila's resilience and the dog's quick adaptation to her blindness that draws her husband out of his own misery and motivates him to try to adjust to his situation. Ben never becomes a true believer or a die-hard animal lover, but his story and the stories Lauren tells of her own bond with animals convince her that our connections with the furry, the four-legged, the exoskeleton-ed, or the winged may be just as priceless as our human relationships. The $60,000 Dog is Lauren Slater's intimate manifesto on the unique, invaluable, and often essential contributions animals make to our lives. As a psychologist, a reporter, an amateur naturalist, and above all an enormously gifted writer, she draws us into the stories of her passion for animals that are so much more than pets. She describes her intense love for the animals in her life without apology and argues, finally, that the works of Darwin and other evolutionary biologists prove that, when it comes to worth, animals are equal, and in some senses even superior, to human beings.

In today's world, it is more acceptable to be depressed than to be lonely-yet loneliness appears to be the inevitable byproduct of our frenetic contemporary lifestyle. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, one out of four Americans talked to no one about something of importance to them during the last six months. Another remarkable fact emerged from the 2000 U.S. Census: more people are living alone today than at any point in the country's history—fully 25 percent of households consist of one person only. In this crucial look at one of America's few remaining taboo subjects—loneliness—Drs. Jacqueline Olds and Richard S. Schwartz set out to understand the cultural imperatives, psychological dynamics, and physical mechanisms underlying social isolation.In The Lonely American, cutting-edge research on the physiological and cognitive effects of social exclusion and emerging work in the neurobiology of attachment uncover startling, sobering ripple effects of loneliness in areas as varied as physical health, children's emotional problems, substance abuse, and even global warming. Surprising new studies tell a grim truth about social isolation: being disconnected diminishes happiness, health, and longevity; increases aggression; and correlates with increasing rates of violent crime. Loneliness doesn't apply simply to single people, either—today's busy parents "cocoon" themselves by devoting most of their non-work hours to children, leaving little time for friends, and other forms of social contact, and unhealthily relying on the marriage to fulfill all social needs. As a core population of socially isolated individuals and families continues to balloon in size, it is more important than ever to understand the effects of a culture that idealizes busyness and self-reliance. It's time to bring loneliness—a very real and little-discussed social epidemic with frightening consequences-out into the open, and find a way to navigate the tension between freedom and connection in our lives.

The first collection of literary writing on raising a child with special needs, Love You to Pieces features families coping with autism, deafness, muscular dystrophy, Down syndrome and more. Here, poets, memoirists, and fiction writers paint beautiful, wrenchingly honest portraits of caring for their children, laying bare the moments of rage, disappointment, and guilt that can color their relationships. Parent-child communication can be a challenge at the best of times, but in this collection we witness the struggles and triumphs of those who speak their own language-or don't speak at all-and those who love them deeply.