Atul Gawande’s latest (and fourth) book, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, has been on countless 2014 'best-of' lists. His three previous titles have all been bestsellers, he's a 1987 Rhodes Scholar, a 2006 MacArthur "Genius" Fellow, and a TED favorite. He's also a...
Gail Gutradt is not a journalist. She is not a nurse or doctor, and actually has no training in the medical profession. She is not a mother. She is not a Buddhist. She speaks very little Khmer. For everything she is not, Gutradt is a...
George and Elizabeth Chast were born 10 days apart in 1912. They grew up two blocks from each other in East Harlem, and were in the same fifth grade class. "They never dated, much less anything else'd, anyone besides each other." They married in 1938. Their...
A girl is born: "She is perfect, down to her tiny, grasping fingers." But here's what her life will probably look like: "...
If I were to choose the one book that affected me most this year – the one that ran the entire spectrum from giddiest to maddest, from eye-opening in wonder to eye-scrunching in horror – this is it. Bad Feminist has forever changed the way I read,...
"As the biggest, [Boniface] had to care for the littlest." He's one of the older boys living in a Kenyan orphanage, known for his gentleness and patience. "[A]ll the children in the orphanage were like a family." On one of their outings to fetch water at...
Toronto-based Elaine Lui, better known as Lainey, has built one of the most powerful careers in entertainment by harvesting gossip; her immensely successful blog, LaineyGossips, is a leading industry standard, she's seen regularly on Canadian screens (and beyond) as a reporter for etalk and co-host...
Thanksgiving approach-eth! Don’t you want to know what will be on the Urban Forager’s table? Read on! Ava Chin, author of recently published Eating Wildly: Foraging for Life, Love and the Perfect Meal, chats about family, motherhood, writing, and the art of foraging – complete with...
Eating Wildly for the Belly and Soul with Ava Chin These days, Ava Chin is living her happy beginnings: she’s the mother to an energetic toddler, wife to the man of her dreams, professor of creative nonfiction and journalism at her undergrad alma mater, and – whenever...
Confession: I've actually never seen The Mindy Project; I've never watched an episode of The Office (for which Kaling was a writer and star for some eight seasons). Yes, I live under a rock (surrounded by a lot of books). But I have ventured out enough to have seen Kaling in...
Western children's songs and nursery rhymes with their upbeat tempo and easy rhythms often mask unpleasant, even frightening, scenarios: "Ring Around the Rosie" is widely considered to be a reference to England's 17th-century Great Plague, "Rock-a-bye, Baby" ends with a warning about the possibility of violent...
Thanksgiving is just two weeks away ...
To not stick this one in your ears would be such the missed opportunity. At just over four hours, this is undoubtedly longer than your usual theater performance, but with Eve Ensler herself so passionately narrating, her memoir transforms into a spectacular aural extravaganza. At 57, the woman...
A fatally injured 9-year-old girl, a third-grade boy labelled by teachers as "‘mentally retarded,’" a restless doctor burnt out from overwork in refugee camps, are saving the world. Rachel Beckwith didn't survive a highway collision, but her ninth birthday wish to raise $300 to build a faraway...
Dizzy Gillespie. Billie Holiday. Quincy Jones. Duke Ellington. They're all household names, right? The list goes on: Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and so many more. So why is Melba Doretta Liston, who not only played with, but also composed and arranged music...
You might not recognize her name immediately, but if you click here (and happen to have children of a certain age, and/or like to browse the kiddie sections of libraries and bookstores), you'll definitely recognize Cece Bell’s literally artful creations. This, her first graphic title, is...
The title of Paula Young Lee's latest book (her fifth) is Deer Hunting in Paris. The subtitle, which announces it's a memoir (her first), includes two very loaded words, "God" and "Guns." The sub-subtitle explains further: "How a preacher's daughter refuses to get married, travels...
Earlier this month, 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai made world history by becoming the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. She shares the award for 2014 with India's Kailash Satyarthi: the pair were cited "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the...
Even as a child, Muhammad Yunus recognized inequity: a story of an 8-year-old Yunus giving his meal to a hungry woman and her daughter opens multi-media author/screenwriter/television producer Paula Yoo’s latest picture book. Into this inspiring biography of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning contemporary hero, Yoo also manages to weave...
Sometimes, whispers can speak more loudly than any shouts and screams ...
