Arriving Today

Shortlisted for the 2021 Porchlight Business Book Awards, Current Events & Public Affairs The Wall Street Journal technology columnist reveals the fascinating story behind the misleadingly simple phrase shoppers take for granted—“Arriving Today”—in this eye-opening investigation into the new rules of online commerce, transportation, and supply chain management. We are at a tipping point in retail history. While consumers are profiting from the convenience of instant gratification, rapidly advancing technologies are transforming the way goods are transported and displacing workers in ways never before seen. In Arriving Today, Christopher Mims goes deep, far, and wide to uncover how a single product, from creation to delivery, weaves its way from a factory on the other side of the world to our doorstep. He analyzes the evolving technologies and management strategies necessary to keep the product moving to fulfill consumers’ demand for “arriving today” gratification. Mims reveals a world where the only thing moving faster than goods in an Amazon warehouse is the rate at which an entire industry is being gutted and rebuilt by innovation and mass shifts in human labor practices. He goes behind the scenes to uncover the paradoxes in this shift—into the world’s busiest port, the cabin of an 18-wheeler, and Amazon’s automated warehouses—to explore how the promise of “arriving today” is fulfilled through a balletic dance between humans and machines. The scope of such large-scale innovation and expended energy is equal parts inspiring, enlightening, and horrifying. As he offers a glimpse of our future, Mims asks us to consider the system’s vulnerability and its resilience, and who shoulders the burden, as we hurtle toward a fully automated system—and what it will mean when we are there.

In 2012, media outlets from CNN to EWTN announced that Leah Libresco, a gifted young intellectual, columnist, and prolific blogger on the Atheist channel on Patheos, was converting to Catholicism. In Arriving at Amen, Libresco uses the rigorous rationality that defined her Atheism to tell the story behind that very personal journey and to describe the seven forms of Catholic prayer that guided her to embrace a joyful life of faith. As a Yale graduate, Libresco launched her writing career by blogging about science, literature, mathematics, and morality from a distinctively secular perspective. Over time, encounters with friends and associates caused her to concede the reasonableness of belief in God in theory, though not yet in practice. In Arriving at Amen, Libresco uniquely describes the second part of her spiritual journey, in which she encountered God through seven classic Catholic forms of prayer—Liturgy of the Hours, lectio divina, examen, intercessory prayer, the Rosary, confession, and the Mass. Examining each practice through the intellectual lens of literature, math, and art, Libresco reveals unexpected glimpses of beauty and truth in the Catholic Church that will be appreciated by the curious and convinced alike.

America and the Western world are facing an epidemic of disengaged, unhappy, and burnt-out leaders and in Be a Happy Leader, Tia Graham utilizes her knowledge of positive psychology and unique 8-step business methodology to help leaders lead positively, put their people first, and create engaged teams leading to higher productivity and profit.

150 brand-new recipes, party ideas and menus, killer playlists, and inventive beauty projects from How Sweet Eats blogger Jessica Merchant. Jessica Merchant is like your most reliable girlfriend—that is, if your girlfriend was a passionate cook and serious beauty junkie. With her second book, she brings her signature playfulness to the page. It’s filled with 150 brand-new recipes, along with themed menus, party ideas, killer playlists, and inventive beauty projects. She’s the extra hand guiding you in the kitchen giving you the most inventive pizza toppings (crispy kale and summer corn), showing you how to make hibiscus blueberry mint juleps, and telling you the coolest way to make an avocado face mask while you plan your weekly menu on Saturday morning. All her recipes are deliciously indulgent (think: poke tacos, toasted quinoa chocolate bark, pistachio iced latte) and all take 60 minutes or less to make.

A wide range of women—actors, athletes, academics, CEOs, writers, small-business owners, birth workers, physicians, and activists—share their experiences of becoming mothers in this multifaceted, moving, and revealing collection. Throughout her difficult pregnancy and following her frightening labor experience, Amy Schumer found camaraderie and empowerment in hearing birth stories from other women, including those of her friend Christy Turlington Burns. Turlington Burns’s work in maternal health began after she experienced a childbirth-related complication in 2003—an experience that would later inspire her to direct and produce the documentary feature film No Woman, No Cry, about the challenges women face throughout pregnancy and childbirth around the world. It is through Schumer and Turlington Burns’s conversations that the idea for Arrival Stories was born. By sharing their experiences, the contributors to Arrival Stories offer an informative and deeply affecting account of what it feels like when a woman first realizes she is a mother. This beautiful collection features essays by: Serena Williams • Alysia Montaño • Abby G. Lopez • Amber Tamblyn • Shilpa Shah • Christy Turlington Burns • Emily Oster • Emma Hansen • Leslie Feist • Amanda Williams • Angel Geden • Adrienne Bosh • Latham Thomas • Rachel Feinstein • Ashley Graham • Jill Scott • Jennie Jeddry and Kim DeLise • La La Anthony • Shea Williams • Sienna Miller • Katrina Yoder • Amy Schumer Intimate and urgent, Arrival Stories offers a panoramic view of motherhood and highlights the grave injustices that women of color face in maternal healthcare. It is the perfect book for any expectant or new mother, or for anyone who knows and loves one.

Mindfulness opens us up to the possibility of being fully human as we are, and of expressing the humane in our way of being. Mindlessness de facto closes us up and denies us the fullness of our being alive. This book may on the surface appear to be merely another offering in the genre of daily readings. But deep within these 108 selections lie messages of profound wisdom in a contemporary and practical form that can lead to both healing and transformation. We so urgently need to rotate in consciousness in order to safeguard what precious sanity is available to us on this planet. How we carry ourselves will determine the direction the world takes because, in a very real way, we are the world we inhabit. Our world is continuously being shaped by our participation in everything around us and within us through mindfulness. This is the great work of awareness. Welcome to the threshold . . . to the fullness of arriving at your own door!

Discover how to achieve your dream home on an affordable budget using these inspiring pictures, practical tips, and easy-to-implement tutorials. Most of us don’t live in a dream home that was custom built to suit our tastes. We have to work with a house that brings its own style, quirks, and personality to the table. But imagine walking into this house, but it’s perfectly designed and decorated with your style in mind—a home that fits you like a well-tailored outfit and yet is as comfy as your favorite pair of pajamas. What would that home look like exactly? How would it feel to live in a home styled specifically for you? The truth is, every home should feel like a custom home and not have to break the bank. In Feels Like Home, DIY makeover queen Marian Parsons (a.k.a. Miss Mustard Seed) teaches you what she’s learned over the years, sharing budget-friendly practical tips that will inspire you to change your space from “blah” to beautiful, from a builder-grade to character-rich home. Each chapter will guide you through detailed, easy-to-implement tutorials for projects, makeovers, decorating ideas, and tips for handling common challenges. Special note-taking spaces are also included for recording your own design ideas. Room by room, you will be empowered to transform your house into the home of your dreams!

An incendiary tale of sex work from a young literary provocateur Love is a fever dream of a novel about a young sex worker whose life blurs the boundaries between violence and intimacy, objectification and real love. Startlingly vulnerable and lyrically deft, Maayan Eitan’s debut follows Libby as she goes about her work in a nameless Israeli city, riding in cars, seeing clients, meeting and befriending other sex workers and pimps. In prose as crystalline as it is unflinching, Eitan brings us into the mind of her fierce protagonist, as Libby spins a series of fictions to tell herself, and others, in order to negotiate her life under the gaze of men. After long nights of slipping in and out of the beds of strangers, in a shocking moment of violence, she seizes control of her narrative and then labors to construct a life that resembles normalcy. But as she pursues love, it continually eludes her. She discovers that her past nights in cheap hotel rooms eerily resemble the more conventional life she’s trying to forge. A literary sensation in Israel, Maayan Eitan’s debut set off a firestorm about the relationship between truth and fiction, and the experiences of women under the power of men. Compact and gemlike, this is a contemporary allegory of a young woman on the verge.

"What began as a response to a random bulletin board posting would ultimately challenge Sister Marilyn Lacey's life - and the life of countless refugees. Nhia Bee, along with his wife and five children, had been placed for a few weeks at [her] convent upon arriving in California from a refugee camp in Thailand. When the family was moved to permanent housing, Sr. Lacey realized, to her own surprise, just how much the family had lodged itself in her heart. Not long after, she had a dream that changed the course of her life. ..."--Back cover.

"Vaclav Smil is my favorite author… Numbers Don't Lie takes everything that makes his writing great and boils it down into an easy-to-read format. I unabashedly recommend this book to anyone who loves learning."--Bill Gates, GatesNotes From the author of How the World Really Works, an essential guide to understanding how numbers reveal the true state of our world--exploring a wide range of topics including energy, the environment, technology, transportation, and food production. Vaclav Smil's mission is to make facts matter. An environmental scientist, policy analyst, and a hugely prolific author, he is Bill Gates' go-to guy for making sense of our world. In Numbers Don't Lie, Smil answers questions such as: What's worse for the environment--your car or your phone? How much do the world's cows weigh (and what does it matter)? And what makes people happy? From data about our societies and populations, through measures of the fuels and foods that energize them, to the impact of transportation and inventions of our modern world--and how all of this affects the planet itself--in Numbers Don't Lie, Vaclav Smil takes us on a fact-finding adventure, using surprising statistics and illuminating graphs to challenge conventional thinking. Packed with fascinating information and memorable examples, Numbers Don't Lie reveals how the US is leading a rising worldwide trend in chicken consumption, that vaccination yields the best return on investment, and why electric cars aren't as great as we think (yet). Urgent and essential, with a mix of science, history, and wit--all in bite-sized chapters on a broad range of topics--Numbers Don't Lie inspires readers to interrogate what they take to be true.