WHERE TO BUY
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C916PZL5
Audiobooks: https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/695467
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/after-the-worst-day-ever-duane-r-bidwell/1143678548?ean=2940159941664
Libro.fm: https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9780807035191

ABOUT
For those who care for chronically ill children, a new understanding of hope that equips adults to better nurture pediatric hope among sick kids—articulated by the children themselves

As anyone with a chronic illness knows, hope can sometimes be hard to come by. For parents and caregivers of children with serious illness, there can be a real struggle to move beyond one's own grief, fear, and suffering to see what hope means for these kids.

Duane Bidwell, a scholar, minister, and former hospital chaplain who has struggled with serious illness himself, spent time with 48 chronically ill children in dialysis units and transplant clinics around the United States. Chronically ill kids, he found, don’t adhere to popular or scholarly understandings of hope. They experience hope as a sense of well-being in the present, not a promise of future improvement, an ability to set goals, or the absence of illness and suffering. With this mindset, these kids suggest a new understanding of pediatric hope, saying hope becomes concrete when they

1. realize community,
2. claim power,
3. attend to Spirit,
4. choose trust, and
5. maintain identity.

Offering textured portraits of children with end-stage kidney disease, After the Worst Day Ever illustrates in their words how sick children experience, maintain, and turn toward hope even when illness cannot be cured and severely limits quality of life. Their insights reveal how the adults in a sick child’s world—parents, chaplains, medical professionals, teachers, and others—can nurture hope. They also shift our understanding of hope from an internal resource located “inside” an individual to a shared, communal experience that becomes a resource for individuals.

Rich and moving, Bidwell’s work helps us imagine anew what it means to sustain hope despite inescapable suffering and the limits of chronic illness.

A Selection from "After the Worst Day Ever"

WHERE TO BUY
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DGRT37B4
Audiobooks: https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/814393?qId=182da433797b64fbcb4d7257abdeaeb8&pos=6
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/beyond-limits-shelley-sella/1146395955?ean=2940191250175
Libro.fm: https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9780807020807-beyond-limits

ABOUT
Profound stories of third-trimester abortion care, told by an ob-gyn hailed as “a hero of the abortion field” (Diana Greene Foster, author of The Turnaway Study)

A compassionate perspective on late-term abortion that challenges preconceived notions of who gets abortions and why

Within both the anti-abortion and pro-choice movements, third-trimester abortion is often stigmatized and misunderstood. For 20 years, Dr. Shelley Sella saw patients whose diverse backgrounds and circumstances led them to the same difficult decision: to end their pregnancies.

Now, interweaving her own journey as a provider, Dr. Sella invites readers into a typical week at her clinic to demystify the experience. She shares the stories of people like

*Clarissa, a mother of 2 whose third suffered a massive stroke in utero with no chance of recovery
*Mary, a devoted Catholic whose fourth round of IVF offered a late-in-life chance at motherhood, only to be dashed by anomalous test results
*Laura, a mother to 4 already whose bruised arms tell a painful story, one she couldn’t bring herself to write a fifth child into

Beyond Limits is not just a testament to a standard of care grounded in competence, compassion, and sensitivity. It is also a call for a paradigm shift that moves beyond Dobbs, beyond Roe, beyond limits to provide care. And it is a tribute to the real people whose hearts, reasons, and stories are more complex than politicized conversations about abortion lead us to believe.

A Selection from "Beyond Limits: Stories of Third-Trimester Abortion Care"

WHERE TO BUY
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DGYZR28Q
Audiobooks: https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/816303?qId=62db604ac96607689ef70d661a857d88&pos=1
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/art-above-everything-stephanie-elizondo-griest/1146395987?ean=2940191316369
Libro.fm: https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9780807020760

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Meet queer, BIPOC, and women artists around the world as they discuss the gifts, costs, and redemptive power of pursuing a creative life

Is the all-encompassing quest to become a self-sustaining artist worth the sacrifices it often requires? Throughout her 20s and 30s, Stephanie Elizondo Griest could not help worrying if constantly prioritizing her writing over everything else—from postponing children to living nomadically to save on rent—was leading her to fulfillment or regret. After a break-up and serious health crisis in her early 40s, she decided to turn to other women artists for their perspectives on that perennial question: is art enough?

Art Above Everything introduces us to legendary writers, visual artists, dancers, and musicians across the globe, who talk intimately about their art, what it requires, what it gifts them, and what it costs them. Opening in a classical Indian dance village, Elizondo Griest goes on to meet 100+ artists in Rwanda, Romania, Qatar, Iceland, Mexico, New Zealand, Cuba, and the United States. She discovers artists from Rwandan playwright Hope Azeda, who navigated ethnic tensions as she attempted to bring about reconciliation through theater in the aftermath of genocide; to Romanian painter Florica Prevenda, who got assigned to a provincial factory during Ceauşescu’s dictatorship but never relinquished her brushes.

Art is inheritance, dissent, devotion, revenge, celebration, and more. Yet though each artist’s relationship to their craft is different, their need to create in the face of economic hardship, misogyny, sexual violence, and family ostracization is wholly akin.

Bold and inspiring, Art Above Everything never pretends that the artist’s path is easy—but it illuminates the infinite ways we can wield creativity as a vitalizing force.

A Selection from "Art Above Everything: One Woman's Global Exploration of the Joys and Torments of a Creative Life"

WHERE TO BUY
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCZW361W
Audiobooks: https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/806873
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/before-gender-eli-erlick/1146138264?ean=2940191272542
Libro.fm: https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9780807018255-before-gender

ABOUT
Explore the trailblazing lives of 30 trans people who radically change everything you’ve been told about transgender history

Highlighting influential individuals from 1850–1950 who are all but unknown today, Eli Erlick shares 30 remarkable stories from romance to rebellion and mystery to murder. These narratives chronicle the grit, joy, and survival of trans people long before gender became an everyday term.

Organized into 4 parts paralleling today’s controversies over gender identity (kids, activists, workers, and athletes), Before Gender introduces figures whose forgotten stories transform the discussion:

*Mark and David Ferrow, 2 of the first trans teens to access gender-affirming medical treatment following overwhelming support from their friends, family, and neighbors
*Gerda von Zobeltitz, a trans countess who instigated an LGBTQ+ riot 40 years before Stonewall
*Frank Williams, a young trans man who was fired from over a dozen jobs for his gender
Frances Anderson, the world’s greatest female billiards player of the 1910s

Bold and visionary, Erlick’s debut uncovers these lost stories from the depths of the archives to narrate trans lives in a way that has never been attempted before.

A Selection from "Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950"

WHERE TO BUY
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DJ3DYQ7M
Audiobooks: https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/819515
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cyber-citizens-heidi-boghosian/1146332909?ean=2940191291130
Libro.fm: https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9780807020845

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A grounding exploration of how our online prowess shapes the very essence of democracy

The electronic age compels us to confront the delicate balance between the convenience of constant connectivity and the protection of personal privacy, security, and democracy itself. Presented as a two-fold concern of digital and civic literacy, surveillance and privacy expert Heidi Boghosian argues that our fight to uphold democracy must extend to the online world.

As “smart” citizens, our best chance of thriving in the digital era lies in taking care of our “smart” selves as diligently as we maintain our smart devices. In the same way that smart devices can disclose private information when not adequately secured, our online presence can lead to unintentional data exposure or identity theft. That entails a commitment to learning digital literacy and cyber hygiene from the first moment we engage with technology. Mastering the fundamentals of civics—the rights and responsibilities of citizens—rounds out the democratic assignment. With AI and machine learning poised to play a transformative role in our 21st-century lives, we, as humans, have our own generative learning journey to master.

Drawing parallels between Americans and their “smart” devices, Cyber Citizens sheds light on the delicate balance between connectivity and privacy to uphold a truly democratic society.

A Selection from "Cyber Citizens: Saving Democracy with Digital Literacy"

Dr. Melody Glenn was a burned-out emergency physician who had grown to resent the large population of opioid dependent patients passing through her ER. While working at a methadone clinic, she realized how effective harm reduction treatments could be and set out to discover why they weren’t used more broadly. That’s when she found Dr. Marie Nyswander.

In the 1960’s, Nyswander defied the DEA and medical establishment to co-develop methadone maintenance as a treatment for heroin addiction. According to some addiction specialists, its discovery could be considered as monumental as the discovery of penicillin. Yet, it still carries a stigma today.

Deftly weaving together interviews, media coverage, and historical documents, Glenn recovers Nyswander’s important legacy and reveals how the forces of racism, fearmongering politicians, and misinformation colluded to set us back decades in our understandings of opioids.

With Nyswander as her guide, Glenn also shares her journey through addiction medicine as she confronts her own personal and philosophical quandaries around bias, ambition, and saviorism in the medical field.

As the US continues to struggle with opioid and fentanyl use in communities, Mother of Methadone is a powerful reminder of the ways biases have prevented doctors from saving countless lives.

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The U.S. has some of the highest rates of STIs and teen pregnancies in the industrialized world. A comprehensive sex education curriculum—which teaches facts on contraception, prophylactics, consent, and STIs—has been available since the 90s. Yet the majority of states require that sex education stress abstinence, and 22 states do not require sex ed in public schools at all.

In The Fight for Sex Ed, writer, advocate, and historian Margaret Myers shows us how we got here. While the earliest calls for sex ed came from a coalition of religious leaders and doctors at the turn of the century who sought to control the prevalence of STIs, the advent of antibiotics and modern condoms meant that abstinence was no longer good public health policy. The religious right, however, continued to frame it as such, using its impressive machinery to replace scientific facts with conservative Christian values.

Because sex ed is not mandated at the federal level, these battles have played out locally throughout the decades: through rigged school boards, administrative oustings, court cases, unjust firings, scare tactics, and threats. Myers also shows how the religious right has worked to narrow the discourse around sex ed, often dictating the terms of debate almost entirely.

What we teach young people has serious ramifications for reproductive justice, LGBTQ+ rights, gender equality, and public health. Sex education lies at the intersection of these hugely important cultural forces, yet it has been largely invisible. This book illuminates its potential—and its power.

A Selection from "After the Worst Day Ever"

Beacon Press Audio

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