The Other Side Of Impossible

"True stories about people who triumphed over seemingly impossible medical diagnoses using untraditional, inventive therapies and perseverance--and about what scientists are discovering on the psychology of healing and the mind-body connection--from the author of the New York Times Magazine article about her own son, 'The Boy with the Thorn in his Joints,' which led to this book about other families"

A beautifully wrought modern fairy tale from master storyteller and award-winning author Nancy Werlin Inspired by the classic folk ballad “Scarborough Fair,” this is a wonderfully riveting novel of suspense, romance, and fantasy. Lucy is seventeen when she discovers that she is the latest recipient of a generations-old family curse that requires her to complete three seemingly impossible tasks or risk falling into madness and passing the curse on to the next generation. Unlike her ancestors, though, Lucy has family, friends, and other modern resources to help her out. But will it be enough to conquer this age-old evil?

"On the Other Side of Freedom reveals the mind and motivations of a young man who has risen to the fore of millennial activism through study, discipline, and conviction. His belief in a world that can be made better, one act at a time, powers his narratives and opens up a view on the costs, consequences, and rewards of leading a movement."--Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Named one of the best books of the year by NPR and Esquire Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award From the internationally recognized civil rights activist/organizer and host of the podcast Pod Save the People, a meditation on resistance, justice, and freedom, and an intimate portrait of a movement from the front lines. In August 2014, twenty-nine-year-old activist DeRay Mckesson stood with hundreds of others on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, to push a message of justice and accountability. These protests, and others like them in cities across the country, resulted in the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. Now, in his first book, Mckesson lays down the intellectual, pragmatic, and political framework for a new liberation movement. Continuing a conversation about activism, resistance, and justice that embraces our nation's complex history, he dissects how deliberate oppression persists, how racial injustice strips our lives of promise, and how technology has added a new dimension to mass action and social change. He argues that our best efforts to combat injustice have been stunted by the belief that racism's wounds are history, and suggests that intellectual purity has curtailed optimistic realism. The book offers a new framework and language for understanding the nature of oppression. With it, we can begin charting a course to dismantle the obvious and subtle structures that limit freedom. Honest, courageous, and imaginative, On the Other Side of Freedom is a work brimming with hope. Drawing from his own experiences as an activist, organizer, educator, and public official, Mckesson exhorts all Americans to work to dismantle the legacy of racism and to imagine the best of what is possible. Honoring the voices of a new generation of activists, On the Other Side of Freedom is a visionary's call to take responsibility for imagining, and then building, the world we want to live in.

“Inspired and inspiring . . . By telling his remarkable story, Bill Strickland shows us that an impossible notion is just an idea nobody had the guts to try.”—Daniel H. Pink, New York Times bestselling author of A Whole New Mind “Make the Impossible Possible will show you how you can achieve even your wildest dreams.”—Jeff Skoll, first president of eBay and founder and chairman of the Skoll Foundation Bill Strickland has spent over thirty years transforming the lives of thousands of people through Manchester Bidwell, the jobs training center and community arts program he founded in Pittsburgh. Working with corporations, community leaders, and schools, he and his staff strive to give disadvantaged kids and adults the opportunities and tools they need to envision and build a better, brighter future. In Make the Impossible Possible, he shows how each of us, by adopting the attitudes and beliefs he has lived by every day, can reach our fullest potential and achieve the impossible in our lives and careers—and perhaps change the world a little in the process. Through lessons from Strickland’s own life experiences and those of countless others who have overcome challenging circumstances and turned their lives around, Make the Impossible Possible teaches us how to build on our passions and strengths, dream bigger and set the bar higher, achieve meaningful success, and inspire the lives of others.

This is an expanded and updated version of Nan Goldin's seminal book The Other Side, originally published in 1993. There will be a revised introduction by Goldin, and for the first time the voices of those whose stories are represented. Now being released at a time when the discourse around gender and sexual orientation is evolving, The Other Side traces some of the history that informs this new visibility. The first photographs in the book are from the 1970s, when Goldin lived in Boston with a group of drag queens and documented their glamour and vulnerability. In the early eighties, Goldin chronicled the lives of transgender friends in New York when AIDS began to decimate her community. In the nineties, she recorded the explosion of drag as a social phenomenon in New York, Berlin and Bangkok, photographing their public personas while showing their real lives backstage. Goldin's newest photographs are intimate portraits, imbued with tenderness, of some of her most beloved friends. The Other Side is her homage to the queens she's loved, many of whom she's lost, over the last four decades. The pictures in this book are not of people suffering gender dysphoria but rather expressing gender euphoria... - Nan Goldin

In a class for the newly deaf, former musician Simon meets G and his quest to create an entirely new form of music helps him better understand her, himself, and his relationship to the hearing world.

You’re faced with a difficult health condition. You have exhausted medicine’s answers. What do you do? Susannah Meadows tells the real-life stories of seven families who persisted when traditional medicine alone wasn’t enough. Their adventures take us to the outer frontiers of medical science and cutting-edge complementary therapies, as Meadows explores research into the mind’s potential to heal the body, the possible role food may play in reversing disease, the power of agency, perseverance, and hope—and more. When journalist Susannah Meadows noticed her three-year-old son, Shepherd, shying away from soccer practice, she had no idea it was the first sign of juvenile idiopathic arthritis. The diagnosis was the first step of a long journey, physically painful for Shepherd and emotionally wrenching for Susannah and her family. But they pressed on, and using a combination of traditional and complementary medicine they beat the disease, and the odds. Meadows chronicles her own story, and takes you into the lives of other remarkable people, exploring their heartbreaks and triumphs. One boy who has severe food allergies undergoes an unconventional therapy and is soon eating everything. An organic farmer in Washington State tries to solve the puzzle of her daughter’s epileptic seizures. A physician with MS creates her own combination of treatments and goes from a wheelchair to riding a bike again. A child diagnosed with ADHD refuses to take medication and instead improves his life, and the life of his family, after changing his diet. Other families take on rheumatoid arthritis and autistic behaviors. Meadows includes new information about traditional and nontraditional medicine and the latest science on how the health of our gut bacteria is connected to wellness—and how the right foods play a key role in helping this microscopic population thrive. She also talks with scientists who study the traits and circumstances that may make some people keep going when others feel helpless. These researchers are illuminating the psychology of healing—how the mind, and asserting control over your body and health, can play a part in recovery. Fascinating, moving, and profoundly inspiring, The Other Side of Impossible gives us people driven by love, desperation, and astonishing resolve—a community of the defiant who share an extraordinary talent for hope and for fighting the battle for healing in today’s world and tomorrow’s.

In this moving, wry, and candid novel, widely acclaimed novelist Ayelet Waldman takes us through one woman’s passage through love, loss, and the strange absurdities of modern life.Emilia Greenleaf believed that she had found her soulmate, the man she was meant to spend her life with. But life seems a lot less rosy when Emilia has to deal with the most neurotic and sheltered five-year-old in New York City: her new stepson William. Now Emilia finds herself trying to flag down taxis with a giant, industrial-strength car seat, looking for perfect, strawberry-flavored, lactose-free cupcakes, receiving corrections on her French pronunciation from her supercilious stepson – and attempting to find balance in a new family that’s both larger, and smaller, than she bargained for. In Love and Other Impossible Pursuits Ayelet Waldman has created a novel rich with humor and truth, perfectly characterizing one woman’s search for answers in a crazily uncertain world.

Lacy Johnson's rich and poetic memoir, The Other Side, chronicles her brutal kidnapping and imprisonment at the hands of an ex-boyfriend, her dramatic escape, and her hard-fought struggle to recover. Lacy Johnson bangs on the glass doors of a sleepy local police station in the middle of the night. Her feet are bare; her body is bruised and bloody; U-bolts dangle from her wrists. She has escaped, but not unscathed. The Other Side is the haunting account of a first passionate and then abusive relationship; the events leading to Johnson’s kidnapping, rape, and imprisonment; her dramatic escape; and her hard-fought struggle to recover. At once thrilling, terrifying, harrowing, and hopeful, The Other Side offers more than just a true crime record. In language both stark and poetic, Johnson weaves together a richly personal narrative with police and FBI reports, psychological records, and neurological experiments, delivering a raw and unforgettable story of trauma and transformation.

After an injury forces Ria off the diving team, an unexpected friendship with Cotton, a guy on the autism spectrum, helps her come to terms with the abusive relationship she’s been in with her former coach. Ria Williams was an elite diver on track for the Olympics. As someone who struggled in school, largely due to her ADHD, diving was the one place Ria could shine. But while her parents were focused on the trophies, no one noticed how Coach Benny’s strict rules and punishments controlled every aspect of Ria’s life. The harder he was on her, the sharper her focus. The bigger the bruise, the better the dive. Until a freak accident at a meet changes everything. Just like that, Ria is handed back her life, free of Benny. To fill her now empty and aimless days, Ria rekindles a friendship with Cotton, a guy she used to know back in elementary school. With Cotton, she’s able to open up about what Benny would do to her, and through Cotton’s eyes, Ria is able to see it for what it was: abuse. Then Benny returns, offering Ria a second chance with a life-changing diving opportunity. But it’s not hers alone—Benny’s coaching comes with it. The thought of being back under his control seems impossible to bear, but so does walking away. How do you separate the impossible from possible when the one thing you love is so tangled up in the thing you fear most?