Review: 'The Wild Horses of Shackleford Banks'

After my daughter and I had the good fortune of seeing a horse on Shackleford Island last week, I wanted to know more about these horses. The one we came across looked very unlike any horse we had seen before. Back in Beaufort, I found this book in a gift shop and was happy to buy it.

Author Carmine Prioli discusses the folklore that has become the common local knowledge about these animals. He discusses the ways contemporary politics, attempts at conservation, science, and the locals' passion for the horses has shaped their wildly not-so-wild lives on the island. The book is as much local history as it is a history of the Shackleford horses. Prioli is a great storyteller.

Ultimately and ironically, these animals together have become a symbol of the spirit of America--rugged and independent and happily defying the odds over and over again.

Scott Taylor's photography is wonderful, too. I look at this book a week after leaving North Carolina, and I feel a little bit like I'm still there.

Review: 'Lone Survivor' by Marcus Luttrell

I never have served in the military, but I sure do like the people I know who have. To a man, they are honest, direct, clear, courteous, true, and good. They are people of integrity who don't mess around and who genuinely honor life.

Lone Survivor is a book by a person who embodies integrity along with substantial doses of courage and strength and intelligence. Author Marcus Luttrell is the sole survivor of Operation Redwing, a military mission involving four U.S. Navy Seals tasked with finding, capturing, or killing a Taliban leader in the lunar terrain of Afghanistan.

Luttrell's book takes ample time to describe the intense, rigorous training of SEALs and to describe the operation itself. In a nutshell: you do what your told, you give it everything. No bullshit.

This resonated with me. It made me think of all those men I know who have served in the armed forces. They are not afraid of saying right is right and wrong is wrong and saying which is which lest anybody become confused. They are not men who ponder the nuances of grey.

Until they have to. Which is what happened to Luttrell more than once in the miserable, unyielding mountains of Afghanistan. Faced with grey, with choices that are not clear cut, Luttrell and his colleagues think through to the most logical choice. In seconds.

These guys face the complexity of all their interactions with others on the battlefield with the same concise, direct courage. Luttrell finds good guys amid the shale. Sweet kids. Honorable people who help him survive. He finds evildoers. And he's not afraid to tell you he hates them.

Reading this book, I realized that a good piece of what I admire about Luttrell and basically the men I know who have served is that they don't make excuses for evil. They get rid of it. That's exciting.

I have thought a lot about this book since I have read it. And I think that is what I like best because it gives me hope and teaches me courage.

Finally, I am grateful to Luttrell for making sense of what makes no sense to me when I read the paper. I am grateful for his honesty and his very clear vision.

Review: 'Play' by Stuart Brown, MD

There were days at the middle school where I teach when I just wanted to fold paper with my students to see them interact with me and each other. These are inner-city toughies who really don't respond to much that passes for standard curriculum. They are angry and antsy and difficult and disrespectful. To watch them transform scraps of paper into sublime objects of beauty. To watch them as they reached outside their usual way of thinking to do something very different.

Most days, I just wanted to play. But how to justify this? I am expected to help kids read and write and do well on standardized tests. The kids very often hate me for my troubles. I don't blame them. The dank workbooks of generations gone by are of no relevance to them. Or me. At the end of the school year, I taught my kids origami as a break from the norm. They relaxed and loved it and were delighted with themselves that they could turn scrap paper into beautiful things. They helped each other by explaining--by taking the story--the instructions--and putting it in their own words to help a peer. And they were playing.

This experience brought me to Brown's book. He talks about the importance of play in problem solving, social interaction, and, to use a broad brush, surviving this world in a healthy way. Letting go and relaxing through play free the mind to reach beyond itself and thus find answers. Serendipity.

Brown's book is full of examples of serendipity in action in the science lab, the corporate conference room, the home sweet home. Play unlocks the mind, lets it sample possibilities, lets it seek and find a new level of possibilities. Play makes dreams come true. Brown makes the statement that we start dying when we stop playing. He's right. His book makes the truth of the statement abundantly clear.

Book Review: A Lion Called Christian

A Lion Called Christian is the true story of a lion whom two young Australian men purchahsed from Harrods Department Store in 1969, kept as a roommate for a while in London, and then rehabilitated and returned to the wild in Kenya in 1971.

Young and footloose travelers in 1969, Anthony Bourke and John Rendall bought the lion almost on a lark. The truth is, they gave it some though and spent time visiting the creature in the zoo section of the department store (back in the day when nobody thought twice about trading in exotic animals). They also thought they could give it a better life than it might otherwise have if it were purchased and confined to a cage in a zoo.

For as long as they could, they kept Christian in their home and in Sophisticat, the antiques store where they worked. For quite some time, Christian was good for business. He brought in business as well as gawkers. He was a cheerful, loving, fun animal--almost more dog than cat though he was most supremely a king cat.

As Christian grew and his need for more space and more food and more exercise grew, his friends quite by chance hooked up with George Adamson, who was at the time trying to establish a pride of rehabilitated lions in Kenya. Adamson agreed to take on Christian. Many months would roll by before Christian would touch Kenyan soil, but he would return to the land of his forebears and successfully integrate himself there. He would make friends among his own kind and lose them in the unforgiving wilderness.

In 1971, when Bourke and Rendall returned to Kenya to see their former flatmate, they would be greeted by a thriving lion who learned to live in the wild without forgetting that he had once been a housepet fed a steady diet of teddy bears.

When the men would return a year later, their friend would remember them, though another year in the wild would put him at another remove from his teddy bear days.

Eventually, the men would lose track of Christian. So it goes.

Christians early life and his rehabilitation to the wild made him a much filmed and photographed celebrity. He was the subject of a movie, documentary, news stories, and photographic essays. A Lion Called Christian first appeared in print in 1971; the 2009 version is not a reprint but a revision following the meteoric popularity of an archival film clip recounting the 1971 reunion of man and feline friend. YouTube created the platform for the book.

Christian finds his place in the wildnerness, but so do Bourke and Rendall. This book is a profound statement about the nature of love: it is not exclusively a human feeling or experience. It is also a profound statement about our place in nature: we have a place there if we have a heart for it.

Book Review: The 7 Great Prayers

When Connecticut residents Paul & Tracey McManus took a financial dive after the 2000 dot-com bust, they caught themselves mid-tumble, grabbed onto a branch, and thought of all that they had not lost. Their family. Their love for each other. Their health. Their ability to believe that life here and now is beautiful.

Building on this abundance--counting their blessings and embracing the richness of their radically changed lives--the McManus family found themselves helping themselves and others and rebuilding their lives.

Their inspiring story and the practical steps each of us can take to live abundant, rewarding lives this very moment is avaiable in their new book The Seven Great Prayers, for a Lifetime of Hope and Blessings.

Their book, they say, is for people of any faith. Define God as you will or do and go from there. 

As a self-published book the popularity of which spread by word of mouth, The Seven Great Prayers traveled to 163 countries to persons of various faiths. 

First and last, the book is about accepting the beauty and possibility of life and accepting that each of us has the potential to shape our world as much as our world shapes us. The key is to be positive, affirmative, proactive.

The book includes a 21-day program that the McManuses say will transform the prayers from words on a page to habits of thought that will enrich our lives with countless blessings. 

Visit their website here. 

Book Review: The Midwife

Who would ever think a memoir about midwifery could read like an action adventure? Not me. Nevertheless, Jennifer Worth's book The Midwife, a Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times, does just that--at the same time it is as personal as journal and as informative as a social history of everyday life in the East End of London in the 1950s.

Worth writes with wit and insight as she brings to life the challenge of helping women lying at home on sagging beds bring into this world new life. She often did so without the benefits of indoor plumbing, telephones, or maternity technology.

At the age of 22, Worth left home to live with nuns and work as an apprentice midwife. Worth says, "The Work of the Midwives of St. Raymund Nonnatus [a pseudonym] was based upon a foundation of religious discipline. I have no doubt that this was necessary at the time because the working conditions were so disgusting and the work so relentless that only those with a calling from God would wish to undertake it."

White says even though she could have pursued any number of careers, she felt called to midwifery. Indeed, the work engulfed her and swept her way with joy, pain, fun, and a relentless curiosity that brought her into the homes of the poorest of the poor, climbing around prams and wet laundry, small, diaperless other children, and husbands who stayed well away from their laboring wives until called to see their progeny to do her work. That work involves treating families as families, respecting their authority over their lives, believing in the sanctity of life, and giving with heart--a heart of compassion and grace.

Midwives of London helped save countless lives; they filled a gap left by a medical establishment that for centuries had not considered delivering children to be a job for doctors. Women were on their own.

Whether she is writing about a non-English-speaking wife from Spain who is delivering her 25th baby or about a confused runaway Irish prostitute who loses her mind after her baby is taken away for adoption, White brings the reader right into the room and straight into the wonder of birth.

The road to becoming a midwife brings White to a new beginning where she takes the advice the aged Sister Monica Joan: "Her constant phrase, 'Go with God,' had puzzled me a good deal. Suddenly it became clear. It was a revelation--acceptance. It filled me with joy. Accept life, the world, Spirit, God, call it what you will, or at least to come to terms with the meaning of life. These three small words, 'Go with God,' were for me the beginning of faith.

"That evening, I started to read the Gospels."

I delivered my baby 10 years ago with the help of a midwife. I chose a midwife instead of a hospital because I respected my own body and it's ability to do what it was designed to do. I wanted to be in the company of a woman who saw my pregnancy as a fact of life rather than a medical condition. During the hours of waiting, Cathy talked about feeling called to be a midwife. After years of accumulating college credits, the light dawned that she should become a midwife. Without medication, medical equipment, or a doctor, my baby came. I felt that experience over and over as I read White's book. Every night after I read a few chapters, I slept on the though that life is beautiful all by itself.

Stress Paul, Dead Fred, Hanging Harry...

I am a sick individual. Sometimes the darkest of jokes makes me laugh out loud until I am out of control. Yes, gallows humor speaks to my heart.

I am indeed sick. I have known this for a long time.

The good news came yesterday, though, when I found out that I am not alone. At the Yale Center for British Art museum store, I met my match in Paul and Fred--Stress Paul and Dead Fred, to be exact.

Paul is a stress reliever, a man curled up in a ball and ready to take whatever bit of abuse might come his way from the stressed out and frustrated giant who holds him in hand.

Fred, being dead, is beyond worrying about himself. He is the homicide victim whose figure has been chalked out. Cause of death? A pen through the heart. Poor guy.

Paul and Fred have friends elsewhere in the likes of Hanging Harry and Splat Stan. Their names tell the story. They are not in a position to talk, either.

I spent a ridiculous $14.95 on Paul because I had to. Anything that kills me like that needs to be within reach, needs to be made a gift to--well, Paul.

Now, if this product line isn't unbelievable enough, consider the public response to these rubber dudes.

The clerk there said that many customers complain about these figures because they are in poor taste. Oh my. Poor taste at a museum shop. Imagine.

Some people don't have a sense of humor, I remarked.

Ah, but some do, said the clerk, who added that she is amazed by the kind of people who buy these things. One purchaser of Dead Fred is a woman who is in charge of maintaining the morbidity statistics for the State of--well, I won't say because maybe she'd like to remain anonymous. Just her and Fred all alone. And others who deal with life and death most graphically.

The dreary and righteous can complain all they want, though. These guys are the best-sellers in the shop, and they are staying.

This is not a paid blog post. I am not a blogging ho (although a miniature rubber night-shifter in this line-up might be just the thing). I just thought the thing was too darn funny to let go. And that the very stressed out people who could use these toys to maybe regain their sense of humor are shunning these dead boys.

Not me, though. I'm hanging with Paul.

'Queen of the Supermarket'--Maybe She Ain't a Beauty, but her Song's All Right

A sight to behold at the tender age of 42: Three men of the same age on their feet, drinking glasses in hand, defending the romance of the lyrics "You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright" from Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road."

The romance?

Yes, they would argue, the romance.

Somehow, if you're imaginative enough and your glass is as full as theirs and sure to remain that way, this line is meant to be seductive, the extended hand in the halflight of a warm night that leads to--well, you know. Sex.

Because you'll do for now. And it is so romantic to suffice for now (which, to most female ears, means until someone better [looking] comes along).

The men on their feet defending this unfortunate line were addressing two women who insisted that any man who could utter such a line was telling the woman "you're ugly, but you'll do because I want to get laid." What he says he's "here for." Except there's no music in saying it quite like that.

But no, wait. Shakespeare says kinda the same thing in sonnet such-and-such. Yes, the Bard also says you're ugly but you'll do. But let's face it; he is thought of nowadays as more of a man's man (ahem) than a ladies' man, anyway. Besides, let's not send Shakespeare the bill for someone else's train wreck, for goodness sake.

That good-natured co-ed exchange between New Year's revelers came to mind as I was listening to Springsteen's latest offering, Working on a Dream--specifically, "Queen of the Supermarket."

Indeed, this ode to the girl grocery bagger is a clear and true expression of unrequited love, unexpressed passion, and the clearest depiction of the very ordinary nature of our unfulfilled lives that I have ever heard. It is a true, gritty, eloquent song. I love it right down to the F-word in this stanza:

As I lift my groceries into my car
I turn back for a moment and catch a smile
That blows this whole fucking place apart

Maybe she ain't a beauty, but her song's all right.

Defiance

Defiance is about the power of the human soul to find the best in itself and survive despite the odds, despite, indeed, what would seem to be common sense. Despite the crushing strength of the ever-encroaching Nazis, the civilian traitors who sell out their neighbors, the lack of resources of any kind, the relentless cold--and despite the infighting and the spiritually disfiguring hunger--a group of Polish Jews who have fled Nazi persecution manage to come together in the Belorussian forest, form a community, and even to thrive.

They do so under the leadership of Tuvia Bielski (Daniel Craig), one of four brothers whose parents the Nazis killed. Tuvia has sought and found revenge, discovered the taste of blood to be bitter, and determined that the greatest act of defiance is to survive, to insist on life at every turn and to the last breath.

The burden of leadership shows in Tuvia's face even as it strengthens his resolve. He must deal with infighting, the greed that only dire hunger can breed, and the cantankerousness of people who tire of living like wild creatures. His strength of character provides the leadership this group $needs. They find within themselves the will to survive, to defy the odds and to survive.

In the end, they do. This movie based on a true story is a portrait of human nature under the worst of circumstances. The community loses faith but finds it again thanks to the quality of leadership of a man who refuses to accept that the worst in human nature is not the sum of human nature. That it can get better. That survival is a beautiful thing.

Gran Torino

As Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood takes you straight to the heart of a hard-working, honest as hell, decorated Korean War veteran who works as hard to contain his seething rage as he does to maintain his patch of lawn in a crumbling Detroit suburb as he does to take care of his 1972 Gran Torino. He's an old man who has worked hard to do right by his family since he came home from the War with a Silver Star and the deep psychological wounds it might at glorify if it wasn't in a box in the basement.

Walt came home knowing how precious life is; he doesn't mess around even while so many of the people around him--including his children--do.

The movie opens at his wife's funeral. The repast back at the house gives us a glimpse of his unlovely, unloving family who barely disguise their disinterest in and disrespect for him. To his grandsons, he is a mere curiosity whose Silver Star and other wartime memorabilia in a box in the basement are fun to sneak a peak at. To his granddaughter, he is an old man who won't die soon enough to leave her the Gran Torino and maybe some furniture for her dorm. To his sons, he is a bore, an obligation they'd like to stuff in a retirement home and forget about completely.

Beside him live a large Hmong family whose affection for and support of each other stand in stark contrast to the quality of Walt's family life. There is love in that house that ultimately spills over and touches Walt's life, even if he's not so happy about it at first.

Ironically, that family wouldn't be there if it weren't for US involvement in conflicts in their part of the world. They were not the enemy but the ally. It takes Walt a while to see that, though. When Thao, a teenaged boy who lives there, tries to steal his car as a condition of inititation into a gang, he's the enemy. When his sister Sue tells him Thao will work for him for free to make amends and restore the family's honor, he begins to see that. A relationship between Walt and Thao and Sue develops that defines loyalty, commitment, honor--in short, everything a family should be.

If Walt has to get over his anger at Thao for trying to steal his car, Thao and his family have to get past Walt's racist attitudes. He has no compunction about calling the family gooks and zipper heads and slopes.

Curse words and racial slurs are as natural to Walt's way of speaking as nouns and verbs are to the rest of us. He has no problem about calling a bunch of African-American thugs loitering on a corner and harassing Sue spooks any more than he minds calling her a gook.

The name-calling was nothing alongside the meanness of the streets that was as much a part of Walt's life as the pain he brough home from the War. Eastwood's character all but explodes on the screen. He marshals every bit of strength he has--and he has plenty--to contain himself when he is angry with the petty thieves and the gang punks undermining the quality of life in his neighborhood. When that rage manifests itself in a racial epithet or a hard look, this is understatement at its very best. And it is frightening.

In the end, Walt satisfies his wife's dying wish that he attend Confession. And then he makes of himself a sacrfice for the children he loves by bringing justice to the petty gangsters who compromise freedom with their thuggery. In the end, somehow, America works. In the end, it is not glorious but sad. And strangely beautiful.

Love in the Time of Cholera

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel Love in the Time of Cholera is a story the power of text to create and sustain both love and life over a lifetime.

Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza are childhood sweethearts whose romance is interrupted by fifty years--during which time Florentino Ariza pursues one romance after another with a number of widows and his goddaughter to stave off her loneliness, and Fermina Daza lives the life of a proper housewife and mother whose husband, Juvenal Ubrino, is a respected doctor in their claustrophobic South American community.

Juvenal Urbino's death from falling off a ladder while trying to capture his parrot creates the opportunity for Florentino Ariza to reintroduce himself to Fermina Daza. Over time, he wins her friendship and her heart in the most agreeable presentation of love in this novel.

Both the romance and the lifetime of waiting are sustained by the stories Florentia Ariza creates. After he hd fallen in love with her while delivering a telegram to her father, he courted her solely by letter. When her father, who disapproved of the romance, sent her to into the countryside to stay with family for a few years, the romance continued via letter. Whens she sees him three years later, she dismisses him with a shrug.

A lifetime passes during which the ardent young man fills his free time by writing love letters for men and women of the servant class. In some instances, he writes the letters for both parties in the romance, in effect falling in love with himself. The lovers not only survive the fiction but believe it, marry, and, in one instance, name their first child after the author of their relationship.

After Florentino Ariza's visit to the Widow Urbino's home following the death of the doctor, she sends him a scathing, incoherent letter that troubles the frustrated lover but does not stop him. He begins a one-way correspondence that over time helps the widow emerge from her grief to begin her life anew. In gratitude, she renews a relationship that never existed in reality but thrived in story.

The power of story--and the storyteller as power broker--becomes a part of the conversation between these two when Florentino Ariza asks the widow to return an unread letter. She gives him the letter, remarking that any letter actually belongs to its writer. He responds that this is perhaps why the love letters are the first items to be returned when a romance ends.

This conversation can take place now that life has mellowed the Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza into senior citizens who accept themselves, their lives, their bodies--in short, their stories--as they are and are grateful for the companionship and the love that insists on itself in the life of the human heart as well as the imagination.

Ultimately, the fictitious love story is a lie that tells a truth of love that the protagonists grow into and run away with, leaving the past behind. Some things are worth the wait.

Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book

I raised my daughter on the Flower Fairies of Mary Cicely Barker. I made her flower fairy costumes for Halloween. Bought the books, greeting cards, accessories; went the website; believed in them, too. The sweet innocence of the botanically correct poems and the whimsy of the fairies themselves marked her early childhood with pure innocence.

So I laughed myself silly when I sat down with Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book by Brian Froud and Terry Jones, which came to me by way of a dear friend at Christmas. What a send up! Here the flower fairies are the voices inside the head of one disturbed little Angelica, who smashes them inside her book--for years. These fairies represent her unrealized sexual desires, which fact is lost on her but not on her suitors--a cousin, members of the clergy, and other nobility. The dramatic irony is delightful--though far from the innocent sweetness of the little children of Barker's mind.

The volume comes with a DVD in which one Lady Angelica describes how she used to catch fairies, how she managed to photograph one, and how she lived her life with this tortuous creatures. The video clip is every bit as funny as the book. Madness abounds, and it's a delightful romp.

Bedtime Stories

Bedtime Stories is the story of a ne'er-do-well whose life turns around when the bedtime stories he tells his niece and nephew come true. Like any decent kids' story, it has a moral: accept the possibilities your dreams present with childlike faith and, darn it all, you just might realize them. Shut down to the possibilities, and you're sunk. Like any decent kids' story (especially of the Disney variety), there's a hero; even the lowliest of underdogs stands a chance at success with as much sincere effort as honest faith. Like any decent kids' story, there's an animal (a bug-eyed guinea pig), pretty damsels in need of rescuing (whether they know it or not), kids who catalyze the adventure through their imaginative offering, and a likeable good guy (in the form of Skeeter, the hotel handyman.)

So it is a decent story. Phew.You can take the kids without fielding any awkward questions.

Above and beyond and better than that, it's a downright funny movie from start to finish.Adam Sandler excels as the ordinary, unremarkable Skeeter. He's my hero as soon as he puts in place the stuck-up, environmentally and politically correct school teacher, his sister, and his uppity coworkers. Skeeter says all the things I wish I had thought of when I stood exactly where he stood up with the likes of these characters. So it's cathartic as well as amusing.

When his sister goes to Arizona to interview for a job, she leaves him to watch her elementary-school-aged children on the night shift. Skeeter survives this adventure in temporary part-time parenting with bedtime stories the plots of which reflect the challenges in his own life. As he spins his yarns, the kids chime in with plot twists and turns that shape the course of Skeeter's life. Right away.When Skeeter discovers the cause and effect relationship between stories and reality, he attempts to harness the stories to shape his life. Which is exactly what he should do--dream a little, believe a little, make it happen a little.

Oh--and like any decent kids' story, the dark is very dark and only our hero can bring the light. Skeeter does. He saves the day for the entire community and makes a whole new life for himself by happily being true to himself.

Watch it and laugh out loud from start to finish.

'Walking Through Walls' by Phil Smith

Walking Through Walls
A Memoir
By Philip Smith
Published by Atria Books
May 2008;$24.00US/$28.00CAN; 978-1-4165-4294-0

I thought my family was quirky until--well, until last week when I read Philip Smith's memoir Walking Through Walls about growing up with his decorator-psychic-healer father Lew Smith in 1960s Miami.

The former managing editor of GQ and an artist, Smith takes quirky to a new level in this true story that is as hilarious as it is poignant.

Lew Smith is a successful interior decorator with the help of his wife, a business partner whose social graces help him navigate celebrity social circles in Miami. Nevertheless, Smith changes course when he discovers his ability to communicate with the spirit world, to heal, and to exorcise. The metaphysical world comes to dominate his life as spirits communicate through him and help him develop his psychic abilities. His marriage ends and his relationship with his son suffers as Phil Smith struggles to live whatever passed for a normal adolescence in the 1960s.

Smith says: "Overnight, our Miami home became like Lourdes as people arrived with blind babies, in crutches or with bottles of medication only to leave seeing, walking and drug-free. Over the years, my father healed thousands of people, many of whom wrote testimonial letters detailing their cures. Needless to say, the presence of such a miracle man put a strain on our family."

All of this sounds kind of crazy and not at all like a book I would read, yet I read it. And loved it. And wondered why.

I think it's this: Phil Smith doesn't ask his readers to believe him; he tells them the truth he lived and the truth he continues trying to understand. His is the story of a young man growing up with a father who could literally know and see all things. If the son got away with anything, it was because the father let him. Still, the bond of family love keeps them together as the young man grows to respect his father and his father's work to improve the lives of anyone who would accept his help.

If the Smith family paid a price for Lew Smith's work, the healer paid, too. Smith says: "The FDA sent agents to harass and hopefully jail him, the police were constantly knocking on our door with complaints of 'voodoo and witchcraft' and doctors had him thrown out of hospitals and threatened to have him arrested for 'practicing medicine without a license' even though he never charged a dime for any of his healings. He felt that he given a special gift that was meant to be shared and not used to line his pockets."

Today doctors are looking at ways to incorporate the ideas Smith promoted 50 years ago. "Some are installing healing touch workers on their ward, others are admitting that medicine can only go so far and that successfully healing the patient may involve subtle and unseen spiritual methods and beliefs. While my father generated these ideas almost fifty years ago, they seem to be finally taking root and provide us with hope of a new day in medicine. I have no doubt that he is satisfied with our slow and incremental progress."

Walking Through Walls is startling, strange, and oh so good. Read it and see.

Now You Can "Know It All"

So you think you know it all? Or maybe you want to?

Want to know what all there is to know?

Then get your hands on Know It All: The Little Book of Essential Knowledge by Susan Aldridge, Elizabeth King Humphrey, and Julie Whitaker (Reader's Digest; 978-0-7621-0933-3).

Spend some time between the covers and you'll find the scoop on "understanding the universe," "the story of the Earth," "the story of life," "conflicts of the modernage,""the structure of society," "religion and thought," "artistic endeavor," and more.

When you want to know what you know, you can take the quizzes at the end of the book.

No article is too long or complicated. It's a great little book. Here is an excerpt from the book so you can see for yourself.

The Religions of the World

The map of world religions reflects the political and social history of humankind. Eternal quests for meaning, along with conquests, migration, trade, and evangelistic fervor have helped to shape the beliefs of nations and peoples alike.

Every human society has had some form of religious belief or practice. In simplest terms, religion is the belief that the world is inspired and directed by a superhuman power of some type.

Christianity, with some 2.1 billion followers, is the largest of the world's religions. Though it originally began in the Middle East, Christianity is no longer the dominant faith there. It is, however, the predominant religion in much of Europe and in North and South America.

Like some other religions, Christianity is divided into a number of different churches: In Russia, Orthodox Christianity is the leading religion. In South America, most Christians are Roman Catholics, and the same holds true in southern Europe.

Protestantism is more prevalent in both northern Europe and North America. With more than 1.5 billion adherents, Islam is the world's second most popular faith. Following the faith are most people of the Middle East and North Africa, a significant number in South and Southeast Asia, and long-standing minorities in the Balkans and eastern Europe. An influx of immigrants from former European colonies has seen the number of Muslims in Western Europe rise in recent decades.

Hinduism, the world's third largest religion, is prevalent in India, though large populations of Sikhs and Muslims can also be found on the Indian subcontinent.

Although Buddhism originated in India, the countries with the largest Buddhist populations are now China, Japan, and Southeast Asian states such as Vietnam and Thailand. Buddhism also has many followers in the Western world.

A notable exception to the dominance of Islam throughout the Middle East is Israel. Large populations of Jews are also found across Europe and North America, the latter home to more than 40 percent of the world's Jews. In fact, New York City has the second largest population of Jews of any city in the world, after Tel Aviv.

The United States is unusual for a developed nation in that a greater than usual proportion of its population holds religious beliefs, most commonly Protestant Christianity.

South America is predominantly a Catholic Christian continent. This is a legacy of the Spanish and Portugese Conquistadors, who brought the continent under colonial rule.

Africans retain many traditional religious practices in some regions. Christianity arrived more than two millennia ago, and Islam is the dominant religion of North Africa and West Africa.

India is a country of many religions. Four in every five Indians are Hindu, but there are also significant numbers of Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains.

Australia is primarily Christian; however, its indigenous religions, centered around a belief in the ancient "Dreamtime" of creation, are key to its culture.

The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

The above is an excerpt from the book Know It All
A Reader's Digest book published in association with Quid Publishing. Copyright © Quid Publishing 2008.

Author Bios

Susan Aldridge has been a freelance science and medical writer for more than 15 years and has contributed to a number of magazines and websites. She lives in London.

Elizabeth King Humphrey has been a contributing writer, editorial advisor, copy editor, and co-designer for several magazines, books, and PBS documentaries. She lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Julie Whitaker has a master’s degree in anthropology and American studies. Whitaker has contributed to many books, including several encyclopedias. She lives on Vancouver Island, Canada.

Black Watch

This week's blessing is the play Black Watch, which I had the pleasure of seeing at St. Anne's Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York, on Friday evening. It is a beautiful, complex work of political art. Black Watch is a production of the National Theater of Scotland written by Gregory Burke and directed by John Tiffany.

On one level, the drama captures the real experience of soldiers of the Black Watch regiment in Iraq. On another, it is about the problem of transforming the myriad ineffable experiences of being a soldier into a story--something that can be communicated to a world that often sits in judgment of soldiers as otherwise unemployable fools.

The story begins in a Scottish pub when a writer begins interviewing a handful of soldiers who have left the regiment about their experiences. The soldiers are not able to communicate their memories through language; discourse immediately dissolves into sentences broken up with the F word--or with streams of the F-word interrupted by poor attempts at complete sentences--as the soldiers struggle to get to the heart of their lives as soldiers, which is to say to get to the heart of themselves.

Black Watch dissolves the line between time and space, your reality and mine, as it merges TV monitors, documentary footage, letters, dialog, soliloquy, ballads, song, and dance to get to that unique and private place at the heart of these fighting men.

In the end, the soldiers do not retell the story but relive it in a sequence of vignettes that include an elegantly choreographed retelling through narrative and costuming of the history of the regiment and an equally elegant parade in which the soldiers march, fall, lift each other up, march, fall, lift each other up, without ever missing a beat or forgetting what they're about.

The combination of history, community, hunger, and a desire for adventure cause the young men of the Black Watch Regiment to sign up and fight. They whys and wherefores are complicated, but they come down to young men making deliberate choices. They are not victims. They are individuals with personalities and strengths of character--despite the boredom and the adolescent tomfoolery that often overtakes them even in Iraq.

"When the soldiers of Scotland used to fight, they would have people who stood in front of the soldiers and recite the names of their ancestors. In the end, our soldiers don't fight for Britan or for the government or for Scotland. They fight for their regiment. Their company. Their platoon. Their mates," says Black Watch author Gregory Burke in the playbill.Watching this play, you can see this makes perfect sense even when war makes no sense at all.

This 110-minute non-stop performance made me think of all the men in my family who have served in the military. I thought especially of my great-uncle who came home from World War II when the thing ended. He had placed his cap on a pipe in the basement of his mother's home. It stayed there for 50 years, when his niece bought the family home and renovated it. My uncle tucked the cap into a dresser drawer at his nursing home and that was that. My uncle was a meticulous man who didn't leave things laying around and who was never at a loss for words. When I was a young girl, he once showed me a stamp that depicted the kind of ordnance he used to fix when he served in the South Pacific. "When you test fire, you are all by yourself," was his commentary on the war. That was it. What happened over there? It never seemed right for this young girl to ask. Black Watch took me inside his silence.

Review: Melissa Etheridge in Danbury, Connecticut

A look at my music collection could leave you with the impression that I like a broad range of music--Celtic, New Age, Classic Rock, Chant, 70s Crooners with Guitars, Swing, Blues, Jazz. I like all of that. Consecutively.

My relationship with each of these genres has been one of serial monogamy rather than a big happy love-in.

It's a way of being I trace to my childhood, when I would save long and hard to buy a $10 John Denver album. Once it was mine, I played the grooves right off the vinyl. So much effort went into getting the albums I wanted that I stayed with an artist until I had memorized his repertoire.

Just as John Denver provided the music to my life when I was younger, so Melissa Etheridge does the job now. Like the Country Boy, she has been my most recent long-term love affair. The others come and go, but that's about it.

On Sunday, my husband and I attended Etheridge's concert at the Ives Concert Park of Western Connecticut State University in Danbury.She sang for 2 hours, 50 minutes, presenting songs from her 20-year career and only skimming the surface of her vast repertoire. Every song was impressive.

She framed her selection with a narrative about her personal and artistic life from the 80s until she learned she had breast cancer. From that point on the personal and artistic took on a universal hue. She sang about cancer, the earth, and peace.

Guitarist Philip Sayce's riffs took the songs deeper inside themselves. (Check out the links below and experience it for yourself.) Though my husband and I sat on the lawn and couldn't actually see the concert,we felt every note through the hillside. It was a magical night; she was beautiful.

An Unexpected Rain
Kingdom of Heaven
I Run for Life

'The Sunflower' by Simon Wiesenthal

The Sunflower

Summoned to the bedside of a dying Nazi who had willingly participated in the systematic annihilation of Europe's Jews, concentration camp inmate Simon Wiesenthal found himself the captive, solitary witness to this 21-year-old SS man's confession of responsibility for committing acts of unspeakable cruelty.

Karl had asked a nurse to bring him a Jew (any Jew would do); quite by chance the nurse selected Wiesenthal from the work detail assigned to the hospital that day. Against his will, he listened to this man recount his experience of packing a house full of Jewish men, women, and children and then setting the house on fire while lobbing grenades into the inferno and shooting at anyone who had attempted to escape this hell. Karl watched a father, mother, and small boy leap from a window to their certain death. Before the leap, the father had shielded the child's eyes.

The image haunted Karl, who was unable to fight again. Instead, he froze on the battlefield and suffered and injury that first cost him his sight and then took his life. Before he died, though, he wanted to confess his sins to a Jew that he might be forgiven and die in peace.

Wiesenthal, who was about the same age as this soldier, heard him out but refused to forgive. Instead, he offered silence in response to the story and returned to the concentration camp.

The experience haunted Wiesenthal; soon after it happened, he discussed it with his friends back at the camp, with a Polish Catholic seminarian. Much later, he presented the story to theologians, political leaders, Holocaust survivors, and victims of other attempted genocides and asked each of these persons what he or she would have done in the same situation.

The Symposium

The story itself is first book of The Sunflower; the responses to the question, "The Symposium," are the text of the second book in this volume. Broadly grouped, the respondents are Jews and Christians, primarily. There are two Buddhist respondents and one Chinese respondent who makes no reference to religion though his response is in keeping with Buddhist thinking. Within these broad categories respondents reflect on different facets of the experience Wiesenthal describes and facets of their faith and life experiences and knowledge to make a response.

The Jewish respondents point to the fact that only the person against whom a sin has been committed has the right to forgive the sinner. Therefore, Karl cannot be forgiven; his victims are dead. The Christian respondents point out, first, that they feel they have no right to address the question because they have never been on the receiving end of genocide. Then they point out that God alone can forgive and that it is incumbent on each of us sinners to find forgiveness in our hearts for others. The Buddhists respond, as Buddhists do, in the present tense and with an eye on enlightenment--a release from suffering. Each perspective reflects a different concept of individuality and therefore of the nature of accountability.

The Invitation

For this reader, The Sunflower accomplishes the important task of bringing the reader into the concentration camp alongside one of its victims, into the hospital room of the dying SS man, and into the heart of the questions the Holocaust raises about responsibility, accountability, forgiveness, restitution, and grace. These are questions that refuse pat answers and therefore remain alive and active in our minds. Wiesenthal's book challenges our ability to empathize with those who suffer and our ability to think about how and why we believe what we do about ourselves and each other. It is a humble and beautiful tribute to those who suffered and died in the Holocaust. We too can honor their memory by participating in the conversation this book presents.

You are invited to visit The Sunflower, On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness blog. We'll be discussing this story and the symposium there, and we'd love your input!

Review: Reading Like a Writer

Author Francine Prose's latest non-fiction book Reading Like a Writer, a Guide for People who Love Books and for Those who Want to Write Them, brings to the study to literature exactly what the study of literature needs: literature. She reads a text for what it offers as a unique assemblage of words into sentences into paragraphs into chapters into volumes. The author of a great work of literature creates carefully, deliberate placing each word for meaning and effect.

To study literature this way, one needs time. Time to read slowly, to savor the words, to appreciate the gift of literature. One might also need a dictionary. And of course Strunk and White's Elements of Style--a textbook developed early in the last century to set out in the clearest, most direct terms the basic rules of grammar and punctuation and how these things combined with our carefully chosen words create style.

In its pithy way, USA Today called Prose's book "A love letter to the pleasures of reading." That's exactly what it is. It is also a love letter to the pleasure of learning to write. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of writing that makes an author's work unique--words, sentences, paragraphs, narration, character, dialogue, details, gesture. The closing two chapters offer insights into "Learning from Chekhov" and "Reading for Courage." Prose draws on works of great writers and models reading to write. That is, by reading great works carefully, a student of literature who wishes to write develops a personal database of who does what well and learning to turn to specific writers for specific help.

For example, a writer struggling to effectively communicate character through dialogue might turn to authors he knows does that well--or to Chapter 6 in Prose's book. There the writer will find a close reading of passages from Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility in which she does just that. The writer can take from that reading an example of just how to.

Prose's book unhooks literature from the life-support of the classroom full of sartorial know-it-all professors with their one and only way of reading a work and their critical methods--feminist, Marxist, Freudian, sociological, and on and on--to show that the life-support is totally unnecessary; the patient breathes quite independently, thank you.

To anyone whose parents suggest he or she study something other than English in college the better to secure a good job, I say take that advice. If you love literature and want to read it well, all you really need is Prose's book.

Book Review: 'Ask the Cow' by Rita M. Reynolds

There are dog people--out-going, plain-speaking, and down-to-earth--and there are cat people--reticent, removed, watching carefully from the shadows. And there are fish people--silent observers who delight in the mysteries of the deep--and there are bird people--dreamers enchanted by all that is or seems to be exotic.

And there are donkey people, goat people, chicken people, insect people, cow people....

Author Rita M. Reynolds is a cow person. And a dog person and a cat, donkey, goat, chicken, insect, person. In fact she's an every-living-thing person whose animal sanctuary in Batesville, Virginia contains so much life, she could populate a Compassion Zodiac.

Animal people respect animals as friends, companions, fellow-travelers in this magical world, and as teachers. Who doesn't spend some time playing ball with the dog after a long day at work? Who doesn't mark the beginning, middle, and end of every day by walking the dog? Who doesn't introduce their baby to a puppy so that the child can learn kindness, warmth, empathy? Oops, there I go. I'm a dog person and I'm speaking for myself. The point is, though, that we choose the animals in our lives--or, more accurately, they choose us--based on our dispositions and our needs and our capacity to love. Animal people know, and delight in knowing, that we are part of this world, not keepers of it.

Rita's tremendous capacity to love led her to Batesville so many years ago to care for animals in need of care for any reason at all. She provides them with a safe and loving place. Her previous book, Blessing the Bridge, is her story of the lessons on living and dying that animals have taught her over the years. Her quarterly magazine, LaJoie & Co., shares the lessons she and others learn from our animal companions. These works are lessons in grace.

She met her bovine friend Christina when Christina came calling at the sanctuary. This friendship was the cow's choice. The farmer who had felt he owned the cow saw things differently, though, and he brought the cow back to his place against Christina's wishes after she walked away the first time. The farmer had yet to learn: it was the cow's choice; Christina made her way back to Rita. Happily, the farmer caught on and gave up, and Rita and Christina have been together ever since.

Ask the Cow is Rita's story of their time together so far. This lovely, delightfully insightful book is Rita's spiritual memoir of her relationship with her special friend and teacher. By spending time with Christina and being open to Christina's beautiful way of seeing the world, Rita has learned even greater kindness, compassion, humility, love. (I have known Rita for 10 years and have been reading her work for as long; I would not have thought it was possible for any person to love more--but it is.) Each of the 30 chapters describes in clear, honest prose one of Christina's lessons on living humbly and compassionately. The book is full of gentle humor and imagery that places the reader right in the barn with these two faithful companions.

I found myself slowing down as I approached the end of the book only to defer ending it. I was happy in that barn, and I was learning plenty. But an important lesson of the book is to take the lessons out of the barn and into the larger world and to live in, with, for, from, by, and out of love in everything. Anyway, the barn will be there, and so will Rita and Christina, should I come back to learn again the lessons of this bovine sage and the gentle woman who has given her wisdom to the world.

Review: The New Rules of Marketing and PR

As with life so with blogging: it's about showing up.

Create a blog; fill it with solid, credible content; and make it accessible--and visitors will come. Consumers will come. The curious will come. Reporters, researchers, and writers will come. Be authentic, consistent, and persistent, and you will succeed as a blogger and as a merchant. You will sell your product--merchandise, an idea, a conversation, what have you--because they will come.

The same holds true if you create a podcast, website, or online video instead of or in addition to a blog.

All of this applies whether you are a businessperson, a non-profit organization, or an artist. The Web is replacing old school marketing via press releases, press conferences, press kits.... In fact, the press is largely out of the marketing picture nowadays.

Why? People turn to the Web for information about everything. Everthing. Cars. School. Real Estate. God. Making yourself highly visible in this electronic marketplace of merchandise and ideas is essential to success, no matter what your game is.

Such is the premise of David Meerman Scott's new book The New Rules of Marketing & PR.

Scott's first bit of advice is to create a solid, credible Web presence. Do well whatever it is you do. Excercise "thought leadership" in this way. Do whatever that is with the consumer in mind because one of the key "new rules" is that we can communicate directly with consumers rather than indirectly through news media.

This offers a tremendous advantage because we have complete control over the content, presentation, and distribution of our messages. This leads to another key new rule: do everything with the consumer in mind. Writing a press release? Write to the consumer and post it on the Web. Writing a new blog post? Write in terms your reader will understand. Creating a video? Present images that are relevant to your audience.

With your audience in mind, consider making a range of media available online--forums, wikis, and downloadable print documents, for examples, in addition to video, podcasts, and text.

A key step to making all of this stuff work is to step out and visit other blogs and forums online and to participate in them by commenting on the works of others and inviting others as guests on your own blog. The social media are called that because they are about two-way communication. As you do so, you create a Web persona that consumers will associate with your product. In this age of virtual reality, your best tool is your authentic voice.

Scott's book breaks apart the old idea of bloggers and other surfers as oddball loners living in complete isolation. Instead, the book suggests a vibrant, interactive community of people who care about ideas and about using those ideas to improve products and information.

Another of Scott's premises is that people search the Web for the information you want. Your audience comes to you for what they want; you needn't interrup them and persuade them that you have a good product.

If you're new to blogging or intimidated by the idea of living an electronic life, then Scott's book is a must. His anecdotes and vignettes of online marketing successes make the concept understandable. His very readable book it concludes with very doable how-to information.

If you're newer than new to the world of blogging, I suggest reading The Blog Ahead by R. Scott Hall. It is a very readable history of the blogosphere.

Review: Prince Caspian

I will brag. My nephew Alex is brilliant. He reads it and he knows it. He watches it move and he has ever step down pat. He heard it and he can repeat it word for word. His mind has a limitless capacity for data, and his mind can hold it in tact.

When the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire rolled onto the screen, Alex sat beside me and told me the story. He identified and described characters, linked one to the other, described the motives and family history of each to the extent it could be known, and told me what happened next in the book. Watching the movie and listening to him was like reading parallel texts with two sets of eyes.

Did I mention my nephew is brilliant?

When the movie is over, Alex was able to tell me where the film deviated from the text, which chapters of the book were omitted, and whether or not this was a good thing.

Alex is the ultimate reviewer. He is a walking set of Cliff Notes. He is brilliant.

But I said that and I really shouldn't repeat myself so much, especially since I haven't even begun to write the review of the movie Prince Caspian, which was my purpose when I turned on the computer. All this is to say Alex was there and he pronounced it better than Narnia but not quite the book.

Like me, he missed Aslan, whose presence was always a source of hope and excitement in Narnia. This time around, the gloom and doom of the bad guys was all the stronger because the heroes were on their own with them. As usual, even the good guys with the best of intentions nevertheless needed to be led to the light by a child--Lucy--whose faith had wavered but had not failed.

The point? That depending on yourself and putting your ego ahead of the greater good can't make good things happen. Quite the opposite. The equally important other point? That only with the Big Guy can goodness prevail. There's no other way.

Whereas the violence in Narnia was more psychological--the White Witch was the sadistic mistress of the head game--than physical thought it was very physical, the violence in Prince Caspian is primarily physical. Boys do things differently, after all.

This was essentially in keeping with the book, according to Alex.

What else was good? The effects were incredible. Seamless. And the dialogue. That was good, too.

That's according to Alex, who, I forgot to mention, is nine and knows the difference between good and bad--in books as well as movies.

Francine Prose: Read Well, Write Well

Geniuses are geniuses because they see what is right in front of them--in front of each of us--and name it in the clearest of terms.

They stand still. They observe. They unabashedly state the obvious.

"Of course," we say after they draw us a picture. And we walk away as if we knew it forever.

Such was my experience of author Francine Prose at Wisdom House last weekend. Prose led a workshop based on the ideas of her latest book, Reading Like a Writer.

Prose advocates close readings of text, of reading word by word across the page and noticing how an author uses each word. The process is illuminating, she says, because through it the reader can discover layers of nuance and depths of meaning in a text. Authors of great literature trust the intelligence of their readers; such writers choose each word carefully and place each word deliberately to create an effect and to suggest meaning.

Literature is not an accident of an excited imagination. By accepting this and following the close reading process, readers come to see the difference between a great, carefully crafted work, and everything else. By developing the practice of close reading, a would-be writer develops a personal data bank of techniques to face personal writing challenges. For example, the writer struggling with writing a party scene could turn to James Joyce's short story "The Dead" to determine how this giant of 20th century literature handled multiple perspectives and simultaneous action. For another example, a writer might turn to Flannery O'Connor and carefully read her works to discover how she handles the grotesque.

Close reading is also a lifelong process of rereading because reading a familiar text anew with different question in mind transforms the text into something new. Such a strategy is as personal as the writing process itself, Prose points out.

Unlike the writing workshop, it protects the writer from writing for the approval of his or her audience rather than from his or her unique idea. Great literature comes from talent, and this can't be taugh, Prose argues. Techniques such as editing can be taught, but the best teachers for a person who will write are the giants who have gone before.

Here she says it for herself:
From her book
and during a presentation.

Are you familiar with the poetry of Mary Oliver?" I asked a student once in the hope of beginning a conversation on the poem "Wild Geese," a gem that contains the lines

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

en route to the statement "Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,/the world offers itself to your imagination." This was the line I wanted in the hope of beginning a conversation on inspiration.

"I think so," the young woman squinted, the better to scan a distant memory. "I think that's the lady who writes about, like, her dog, Percy, I think and trees. That her?"

"You can start there," I said. "And you will get to Mary Oliver."

Because Mary Oliver's poetry is about this moment in this world in this light in this weather, alone or with the dog or on the way to something or nothing. It's about being here and loving it.

I believe there is nothing worth saying about Mary Oliver. Better to spend the time reading her work, or revisiting the magic of the landscape of your life.

Her new collection Red Bird is her 12th volume of published poems. Here she speaks to the beauty of the ordinary, the environment, and the people of the world who suffer at the hands of those who love power.

The world offers itself to your imagination. Accept the invitation and walk with this wonderful woman from Provincetown, Massachusetts.

May these 13 lines tantalize you:

1. "I am a God-fearing feeder of birds./I know he has many children,/not all of them bold in spirit." (from "Red Bird")
2. "I see you in all your seasons/making love, arguing, talking about God/as if he were an idea instead of the grass,/insteadof the stars, the rabbit caught/in one good teeth-whacking hit and brought/home to the den." (From "Straight Talk from Fox")
3. "...I will live/nowhere except here, by Ocean, trusting/equally in all the blast and welcome/of her sorrowless, salt self." (From "Ocean")
4. "Because, Sir, you have given [the panther],/for your own reasons,/everything that he needs:/leaves, food, shelter;/a conscience/ that never blinks." (From "With the Blackest of Inks")
5. "It is a serious thing/just to be alive/on this fresh morning/in this broken world." (From "Invitation")
6. "The ripeness/of the apple/is its downfall." (From "The Orchard")
7. "How many small, available things/are in this world/that aren't/pieces of gold/or power--/that nobody owns/or could buy even/for a hillside of money--/that just float around the world...." (From "Summer Story")
8. "I listen hard/to the exuberances/of the mockingbird and the owl,/the waves and the wind./And then, like peace after perfect speech,/ such stillness." (From "The Teachers")
9. "Books? says Percy. I ate one once, and it was enough./Let's go." (From "Percy and Books (Eight)")
10."Let the world/have its way with you,/luminous as it is/with mystery/and pain--/graced as it is/with the ordinary." (From "Summer Morning:)
11. "About tomorrow, who knows anything,/Except that it will be time, again,/for the deepening and quieting of the spirit."(From "Swimming, One Day in August")
12. "So come to the pond,/or the river of your imagination,/or the harbor of your longing,/and put your lips to the world./And life/your life." (From "Morning at Blackwater")
13. “I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable/beauty of heaven/where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes/and this is why I have been sent, to teach this to your heart.” (From “Red Bird Explains Himself”)

Review: I Will Not Be Broken

When he was a college student in Israel in the mid-1980s, a landmine--leftovers of the 1967 War--blew Jerry White's world apart, taking a leg but leaving him with a big choice. Would he become a victim of an accident and live in bitterness and self-pity, or would he choose life?

First with the help of the do-or-die Israelis who had no time for self-pity or any other form of self-destructive self-indulgence, and then with the help of family and friends and countless wise others, White chose life and transformed his traumatic experience into his life's work. Today he is the leader of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (for which he was corecipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1997), and cofounder of Survivor Corps. He describes his journey from victim to survivor to "thriver" in his new book I Will Not Be Broken.

The book outlines a program of five steps for coping with disaster. He draws on his experiences as well as those of famous persons such as Lance Armstrong; Diana, Princess of Wales; Christopher Reeve, the American Psychological Association, and the not so famous--his college roommate, his mom, Bosnians who survived the warn in their country, a little Cambodian girl who also lost a leg to a landmine. His drawing on the wisdom of persons from all walks of life underscores he beliefs that wisdom is a collective resource as well as an individual one and that all life is interconnected. White's book approaches the challenge of trauma positively by focusing on individual strengths rather than dwelling on what went wrong and why.

I Will Not Be Broken is an earthy, conversational, and real testament of the beauty and wonder of all life. Here are some highlights of the book in White's words.

"Each of us has seeds of victimhood, survivorship, and thriving potential within us."

"The challenge we face is integrating our experiences--sorrowful and joyful--to help us evolve from victimhood to thriving."

"For many people, there isn't one precise moment of crisis [but an accumulation]--a few unpleasant things overlap, and a crisis sneaks up from behind."

To prevent being broken by crisis,

First, face the facts. "Great teachers and prophets admonish us to get real with ourselves, no matter how humiliating the facts."

"None of us will get very far without first examining our circumstances, relationships, and feelings. We will need to be ruthless in our self-assessment."

Second, we need to choose life. "We must consciously choose for our lives to go on in a positive way."

We can accomplish this by "nurturing a positive view of ourselves, keeping things in perspective, and maintaining a hopeful outlook."

Having crossed the threshold to survivorship, we can take the third step of reaching out because no one thrives in isolation.

"We have to let people in our life into our life." As Albert Schweizer has said, "'At times our own light goes out an dis rekindled by a spark form another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.'"

Next, we need to get moving, to think of the future and develop a plan for achieving goals, though "the speed at which [we] move is less relevant than the belief that [we]will move."

Finally, we must take Step Five and give back. "You must give to a community in order to belong to a community. You can become a volunteer, a community leader, a donor, a social change agent, a future peer supporter. You get outside yourself and, by doing so, get away from your suffering. It's not charity. It's not pity. It's gratitude in motion. It is belonging in action."

Taking these steps is the best way to avoid falling into the trap of victimhood, a stagnant state of being that includes living in the past, wallowing in self-pity, resenting others, blaming others, and taking from others.

Taking these steps can lead to resilience, "our capacity to bounce back and resume function and health after a confrontation with disruptive or traumatic events...Resilient people are somehow able to draw on past experiences and find inner strength to navigate their troubles and make the transition to a healthy, flourishing future."