Nonfiction brings insight and advice to you, wherever you're at. These books are messages of love, survival, hope, and reconnection. There's something here for everyone.
Stewards of Humanity
Memoir, Humanitarian Crises, Humanitarian Aid
"A sincere tribute to professionals who do not always receive the recognition and support they deserve, Stewards of Humanity is a memoir about healing through—and from—humanitarian work." —Foreword Reviews
When the world turns away from the horrors of war, genocide, famine, and natural disasters, the stewards of humanity run toward the suffering. They stand as a thin line between life and death for thousands of people who will never know their stories. These stewards are neither heroes nor saints—they are ordinary people with ordinary struggles who rise to extraordinary challenges. They are beacons of light in the darkness of humanitarian crisis.
With an unflinching view into some of the worst humanitarian crises of our lifetime, author Robert Macpherson—US Marine combat veteran turned aid worker—tells the stories of the men and women who have courageously confronted evil and injustice from Somalia to Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Throughout his narrative, Robert challenges us to consider our place in humanity and our own role as stewards.
Climbing Lessons
Collected Essays, Fathers and Sons
“Climbing Lessons stays close to home, with the unflinching discoveries that come from birth, marriage, fatherhood and death, all told with Bascom’s great powers of honesty, humor, and deep sincerity.” –Thomas Fox Averill, Emeritus Creative Writing Professor at Washburn University, O. Henry Award winner, and author of the novel Found Documents from the Life of Nell Johnson Doerr
When Doc Bascom tries to show his grade school sons how to climb a huge sycamore, he ends up dropping 12 feet flat-out on his back. Stunned, he finally gasps, “So that’s how it’s done.” And in that moment, he becomes an emblem for all fathers—trying to lead the way, failing, then getting up and trying again.
This “climbing lesson” is just one of 40 playful, sometimes poignant stories by award-winning author Tim Bascom, who illustrates the special bond between fathers and sons—and how that relationship must change with time. When Tim takes his own turn at fathering, he realizes that his devoted toddlers are turning into unimpressed teenagers. No longer the hero he had hoped to be, he must accept a new, flawed version of himself, not unlike his father before him.
These brief inter-linked stories show that abiding affection can still prevail, bringing fathers and sons closer, even as they tackle the steepest parts of the climb.
Backyard Politics
Political Education, Psychology of Politics
Our political system is fiercely divided. Political differences are fracturing families, separating friends, and even introducing tensions in casual encounters. Many of our elected officials, and national media, are resorting to vilification, accusation, and open hostility as a way to gain control over the political narrative.
Backyard Politics provides a way to understand the seemingly insurmountable political strife currently overtaking our country. Because each political cause believes that their approach will better humanity, it is essential that we understand both points of view to lessen animosity and reach a compromise.
For over forty years, Dr. Craig Wiener, a Clinical Psychologist, has helped individuals and families resolve their difficulties. Rather than look to politicians to diminish our political friction, he proposes a parenting solution that allows family members to resolve their problems in mutually satisfying ways. Learning how to cooperate as a family prepares children to mediate social discord when venturing into the outside world.
Backyard Politics is a must-read for those who want to foster well-being for children and society.
Who Cares What the Numbers Say
Memoir, Cancer, Health Stories
A journey in defying cancer
In this story about her harrowing battle with a rare, aggressive form of breast cancer, Dr. Julia Burns encourages readers to take charge of their own health by seeking multiple medical opinions and fighting for a treatment plan that meets their emotional and spiritual needs as well as their physical needs.
Chapter by chapter Julia shares lessons learned from her own journey through cancer. The numbers were abysmal: her odds of survival were so low some wondered why she should even bother fighting. Julia didn't care what the numbers said—she defied the odds and found a path where few had dared to look.
Julia Burns inspires others who face seemingly insurmountable challenges to take heart, to advocate for themselves, and to pursue the path that makes them feel well and whole—no matter the odds.
Essential Leadership Lessons from the Thin Blue Line
Leadership, Education, Self-Help
A veteran police chief’s hard-won lessons on leading yourself, leading others, and leading an organization.
Essential Leadership Lessons from the Thin Blue Line is just that—lessons learned the old-fashioned way through trial and error, studying, hard work, and experience while on our nation’s front lines to serve and protect. Dean Crisp spent decades leading people where a single misstep could cost a life. Faced with the daily challenges of a police chief, Dean threw himself into learning all he could about effective leadership and applying those lessons in his departments. He shares those hard-won lessons in this book.
Dean lays the book out into three key sections that build on each other to help you become a better leader: Leading Yourself, Leading Others, Leading the Organization. Dean’s approach to leadership is built on his concept of Diamond Leadership, a four-point method that creates a self-perpetuating synergy for positive change. Dean has taught this method in elite conferences to countless rising leaders, and now he brings it to you.
Built on the success of Dean’s debut leadership book, Leadership Lessons from the Thin Blue Line, this new release features a revised approach to the curriculum, expanded information, and a streamlined formula to develop the leader within you.
Essential Leadership Lessons from the Thin Blue Line uses personal anecdotes to drive home the human element of leadership and will connect with you at any point on your journey to becoming a significant leader.
Winter Stars
Caregiving, Memoir, Eldercare, Parkinsons, Dementia
"Winter Stars is a gift — a modern classic of frontier literature documenting the uncertain journey into the country of caregiving." –Michael J. Fox.
Dave Iverson was a busy broadcast journalist recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease when he decided to do something he’d never quite imagined: He moved in to take care of his 95-year-old mom. Winter Stars is the moving story of their ten-year caregiving journey.
By the end of this decade, 74 million Americans will be over the age of 65, including every member of the Baby Boom generation. The pandemic prompted more Americans to consider caring for their parents at home, but as Iverson learned, the gritty, life-changing reality caregiving delivers requires more than good intentions. He didn’t know that his mom’s dementia would pose more challenges than his Parkinson’s. He didn’t know he’d be capable of getting so angry. He didn’t know that becoming a caregiver means experiencing love and loss, anger and insight—usually when exhausted and often on the same day. And he didn’t know that moving in with his mom would challenge and change him more than any other life experience.
For the vast number of families who are confronting —or will soon confront—a caregiving journey, Winter Stars offers an intimate, unvarnished portrait of the challenges, choices, and life lessons that lie ahead.
Where Spirit Touches Matter
Memoir, Osteopathy, Spirituality
Inspired by his immigrant physician mother, who surmounted multiple obstacles in her forty-five year-career, Dr. Friedman worked through a twenty-year battle with depression to realize the life-saving power of committing himself to love, spirit, and service. This story of his personal journey toward wholeness offers thoughtful advice for those who suffer and encouragement for those aspiring to careers in the healing arts.
Where Spirit Touches Matter: A journey toward wholeness is a book about health, healing, and hope by a physician who has spent more than thirty-five years helping patients find relief from pain and suffering.
Dr. Friedman writes: "On a journey to Tibet, while circling what is widely considered the holiest mountain on Earth, Mount Kailash, which sources the five great rivers of Asia with its runoff, I heard the myth that one of the rivers, the Saraswati, existed only in nonmaterial form. In this form, it contributed a spiritual and vitalistic energy to the holy Ganges, which arises at the convergence of four rivers in the Himalayan region of India.
"Eight years later, on my last journey to India, I stood in front of the gorge where the Saraswati River originates, and I wept. I wept because I saw that the nonmaterial had become material, and that the chasm between the mythological and the physically real had been bridged. This is the meeting place of spirit and matter that I have pursued in endless forms throughout my life.
"This book chronicles a sampling of my experiences of that space between. It honors the continuously moving stream running through all of time and space, filled wholly with the presence of a loving consciousness. I am grateful to have been a participant in the flow of that stream and to have been given the opportunity to return whatever love I can into that current."
