Separating the fats and facts (Instant Youth and other fitness myths foiled)

But it's Crusader's Cross Orion by that grand master of American fiction, James Lee Burke, that had me sitting up all night savouring his beautiful, elegiac prose and the intoxicating evocation of what is now, sadly, the lost world of New Orleans. Burke is a genius - this novel, complex, deeply mystical and violent, is another triumph.

CD Wright just won a big award called the MacArthur, which is awarded to people for being original thinkers and doing good things. Wright has been doing very idiosyncratic and always passionate work for a long time, and Cooling Time: It's a sort of manifesto that explains why and how she writes, and why poetry is necessary.

But it's not pedantic, or dull, or in any way expected. It feels very Whitman-esque to me at least , fast and soaring like that; it's so inspiring that it's hard to sit still while reading it. Both Economist writers, they combine scholarly rigour with journalistic verve to tell what is an extraordinary political success story - one that goes a long way to explaining the shape of today's world.

I had some very severe opinions about fiction set in a concentration camp, but Imre Kertesz has forced me to eat my words. He won the Nobel in , but we have had to wait until this summer for a new translation of his novel Fatelessness Harvill. Utterly unlike the work of Primo Levi, Kertesz's voice is that of dispassionate wonder and enquiry, demonstrating that happiness and the inviolability of the self can survive the worst horrors imaginable.

And immediately before that I read the paperback of Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One Pocket Books , twice and would have read it again had my handbag not been stolen in Selfridges. Sebastian Haffner's Defying Hitler Orion - an urgent account of the day-by-day corruption of public and private life in Nazi Germany. It should also be read as an alert call, not just this is how it happened, but this is how it happens. Jung Chang's and Jon Halliday's biography of the world's greatest mass murderer, Mao: The Unknown Story Cape , which is perhaps the most horrible and certainly one of the most educative books I've ever read.

Nice to recall two novels, Stephanie Merritt's Real Faber , eloquent and witty on what's wrong with men, and Julian Barnes's Arthur and George Cape , a look in cool and courteous prose, at a squalid English injustice rectified by obstinate English decency. The rediscovery of Richard Yates, America's lost novelist, year after year gives a guarantee of a wonderful read. Revolutionary Road Methuen is now seen as a great novel of suburban America and, for me, Easter Parade Methuen is no less fine. All credit, then, to Politico's, for this year giving us Young Hearts Crying, one of the author's last books before his death in It's an agonising study of artistic mediocrity, of post-war men and women who would like to be artists without being much good at anything.

Over the madness, the drink and the moving resilience falls the long shadow of the second world war. Nobody combines the powerful passage of history with complete accuracy of emotion like Yates. I loved Barbara Caine's Bombay to Bloomsbury: A Biography of the Strachey Family OUP for the way it used family history to illuminate 50 years or so of British public - and, at times, very private - life. Also outstanding was Evelyn Welch's Shopping in the Renaissance Yale which showed that there's nothing new about getting into debt at this time of year, especially if you're a girl in need of a new party dress.

Both books qualify as being "academic" history, but they're written with such pace that you're hooked before you have a chance to feel scared by the scholarship. Why is it danger always seems a necessary concomitant of greatness? In the great anniversary tussle - Guy Fawkes versus Lord Nelson - I firmly side with the former. Antonia Fraser's The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in Phoenix remains the most poignant account, but James Sharpe came through strong on the day with his Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot.

David Miles's Tribes of Britain Weidenfeld peels back the early history of the British Isles, and shows how modern it really is. We have always been a most complicated of nations. It proves that, of all eras in British history, the past half century has seen the most total upheaval. Several books this year unexpectedly found new fuel in seams of material considered over-mined.

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Can there be anything fresh to say about Shakespeare? James Shapiro offers brilliant new readings of the writer's work and world in A Year in the Life of Shakespeare Faber. Is there anything new to be done with the tricksy, post-modern novel in which the writer teases the reader about what's real and what's not? Bret Easton Ellis proved that there is, in his best work of sort of fiction, Lunar Park Picador , which is the terrifying story of one "Bret Easton Ellis", celebrity, junkie, husband, father and being stalked by his own characters.

And two veteran English crimewriters managed to at least equal their previous best: PD James's The Lighthouse Faber is a classic closed-community murder mystery filled with a tender wisdom about life and death, while Reginald Hill's The Stranger House HarperCollins , a working holiday from his Dalziel and Pascoe, is an Yorkshire-Australian tragi-comedy about religion and a scandalous political act.

And I read with painful pleasure two remarkable pieces of life-writing out of Ireland, John McGahern's Memoir Faber , a story of cruelty, bereavement and childhood torment told in McGahern's peculiarly luminous, calm, and humorous voice, intensely and vividly local; and Patrick Cockburn's The Broken Boy Cape , an impressively unselfpitying and informed analysis of the s Cork polio epidemic of which he was a victim, with a sprightly account of Anglo-Irish Cork life and the radical Cockburn household thrown in.

Two very differently very English books impressed me: John McGahern is one of the finest living writers, and his Memoir Faber is a book his admirers have been waiting for. It casts light on all his fiction, but if you didn't know his work you could begin here, with a book about his Irish childhood which by turns makes you angry and sad, but uplifts you by the beautiful line of his sentences, by mean of pure cadences which make the rest of us look clumsy.

Why is John Cooke not a radical hero, and why are we not listening to the contemporary resonances of his efforts to use the law to combat tyranny? A friend marched me into a bookshop and demanded I buy the complete short stories of Flannery O'Connor, for which I bless him. Her mid-century stories of race, religion and rural Dixieland loserdom are mindburning wonders of image and speech which I come to annoyingly late. The energy, simplicity and sensuousness of his descriptions of the Middle East isn't something I associated with Victorian prose. Why did he really go to Cairo, when he knew the plague was raging there?

A beautifully wrought account of human vileness and the banal corruption of sacrifice. I've been a historian since school and I decided to go back to the subject this year. I'm particularly interested in military history because I cannot imagine what it is like to have fought in battle. I've read two enthralling books about different types of war in the 19th century. Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow by Adam Zamoyski Perennial , vividly describes one of the most horrific episodes in warfare.

And Men of Honour: Trafalgar and the Making of the English Hero by Adam Nicolson HarperCollins brings together a very original portrait of Nelson the hero and gives another vivid depiction of a battle, this time Trafalgar, set in an illuminating political, social and cultural context. I savoured every paragraph of Orhan Pamuk's masterful Istanbul Faber. A three-pronged book, this: I read "just one more" of the stories in Michel Faber's The Fahrenheit Twins Canongate until it was three o'clock in the morning, the book was finished and the next day a write-off.

By turns crepuscular, buoyant, delicate, wry, horrific, otherworldly, this wordly and organ-rupturingly funny collection is a vitamin boost for the British short story. James Shapiro's Faber depicts a pivotal year in the theatres, courts, streets and provinces Shakespeare's England. The author loves his subject and writes erudite, undumbed-down history that none the less reads as fluidly as a good novel. Among the diaries and essays in Alan Bennett's Untold Stories Faber , it's the family reminiscences that stand out, with images such as that of his Aunty Myra scattering her husband's ashes among stunned picnickers on Ilkley Moor: For those not already acquainted with the American poet Sharon Olds , her Selected Poems Cape is the perfect opportunity: So did Alice Oswald's new collection of poems, Woods Etc.

Bookstores should have a new category for their stock, something that combines short story and essay and poetry, tragedy and humor, fiction and non-fiction. Maybe there should be one shelf labelled just "Truth" or "Beauty". And sitting alone on that shelf would be Amy Hempel's books, especially this year's collection of stories: The Dog of the Marriage Scribner. Every story reminds you how badly love can end, yet why we always sign on for another round of that torture.

These three books give the food-minded reader something to chew on. The most straightforward of the set is Superfood Nuts: In addition to dozens of recipes for creations such as Hazelnut Rosemary Skillet Bread and Walnut-Topped Braised Mushrooms and Market Vegetables, this book is packed with kitchen lore, such as how to make your own almond milk and tips for making yeast-based breads.

But as its subtitle, Journeys in Healthy, Delicious, and Ethical Eating , suggests, this book takes a philosophical approach to eating. Many of us treat our bodies as simply the admittedly elaborate bags we carry our minds and personalities around in. That benign neglect works, most of the time for most people, until we hit the wall of trauma. Suzanne Scurlock-Durana has been there.

Scurlock-Durana explains that many people think of their bodies as being obstinate and willful. The book presents a transcript of these exercises, which are available as downloadable audio files. Being aware and present is also the foundation for Start Here: As presented in the book, Life Cross Training involves three stages: In turn, Stage 1, which occupies its own section, consists of three practices: The more scientists examine the links between childhood experiences and adult health, the more it becomes clear that dealing with issues sooner than later can save people a lot of misery.

A Penn Medicine study found that women who had traumatic childhoods, including adolescence, were significantly more likely to suffer from depression during the period leading up to menopause, according to results published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. That makes a well-adjusted childhood crucial for well-being long past graduation day. Written by Genevieve Howland, founder of the website mamanatural.

In addition, it expounds on ever-popular subjects such as sex during pregnancy generally not a problem. Issues in four common areas of concern—behavior, school, sex and dating, and social interactions—receive their own chapters. Becoming the parent of a teenager is often a sometimes-scary, sometimes-exhilarating experience. Crazy-Stressed can provide a useful map to this uncharted territory. Ever since the human genome—the complete blueprint for building and maintaining a human being, as encoded in our DNA—was successfully sequenced in , doctors have looked to genetics as a key pathway to treatment breakthroughs.

But your genetic inheritance is only one side of the equation; the other is how your genes interact with your environment and lifestyle, a science known as epigenetics. This delicate interplay is the subject of two recently published books. As a physician, Jennifer Stagg believes genetic profiling can empower patients to make necessary lifestyle changes. Stagg shows how genes and lifestyle interrelate in five key areas: As a major contributor to health, diet receives extensive coverage in Unzip Your Genes. In another book, Deep Nutrition: Catherine Shanahan, MD, started researching diets from around the world in an effort to deal with her own medical issues, and wrote Deep Nutrition based on her findings.

Instead, you should eat what she calls the Human Diet, based on fresh foods, fermented and sprouted foods, meat cooked on the bone and organ meats. Using genetics to design cutting-edge therapies for life-threatening diseases is a promising idea. But as Unzip Your Genes and Deep Nutrition show, using genetics to prevent these diseases from happening in the first place is an even better idea.

Life After the Diagnosis. But now that your worst fears have been confirmed, where do you go from here? Steven Pantilat, MD, a professor at UC San Francisco and an expert in palliative care, has been contacted by all sorts of people having the worst days of their lives. To extend the reach of his counsel, he has written Life After the Diagnosis: The idea is to move through fear instead of being stonewalled by it.

One chapter is dedicated to caregiving, including when to call in professional help. And the entire last part is dedicated to the endgame: Sometimes, despite the direst of diagnoses, people do step back from the brink. Monte says that those who do recover from life-threatening illnesses tend to follow a seven-step process: Each step gets a chapter in Unexpected Recoveries.

Like Pantilat, Monte uses stories to engage the reader and impart information. But then her brother introduced Marlene to the vegetable-based macrobiotic diet and a doctor who specialized in it.

Eulis! the History of Love/Part 1: Affectional Alchemy

Eventually, a scan showed Marlene to be cancer-free. No one could, or should, guarantee that following the seven steps outlined in Unexpected Recoveries will cure any serious illness. Like raindrops gathering to make a river that carves rock into a canyon, the cumulative effect of your everyday choices—grilled versus fried, stairs versus elevator—can make a crucial difference in your physical and mental well-being over time.

Cardoza, a Chinese medicine physician, realizes that many readers will immediately turn to Part 2, in which he presents therapeutic options such as acupressure, herbs and qigong as well as prescribed practices for such common complaints as arthritis, fatigue and insomnia. However, he urges the reader to first delve into Part 1, which explains such underlying concepts as qi , or life energy, yin and yang, and the system of energy meridians that both acupuncture and acupressure operate on.

Overcoming Acute and Chronic Pain. For far too many people, pain is an everyday fact of life. It is estimated that million Americans suffer from chronic pain—more than those with diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined. Each of the three presented here approach pain relief from slightly different angles. Most people with an interest in natural healing will be familiar with the rough outlines of the system presented in Heal Your Pain Now: Diet is the main focus of No Grain, No Pain: But Osborne, clinical director of a Texas healthcare clinic, believes that eating any grains, whether they contain gluten or not, can lead to nutritional deficiencies and leaky gut, in which the lining of the digestive tract allows foreign substances access to the bloodstream.

In addition, he asks the reader to give up a number of other foods, including nightshade veggies such as eggplant too inflammatory and legumes peas and beans. If it seems overwhelming, Osborne does provide meal plans and recipes. If changing your dietary and exercise patterns has only lowered but not eliminated your pain, Overcoming Acute and Chronic Pain may help you find additional relief. In Making Life Easy: A Simple Guide to a Divinely Inspired Life , Northrup explains how attending to your spiritual needs can not only improve your health but help you get out of your own way.

Start Right Where You Are. Clearing the clutter or getting a more powerful light is the subject of three recently published books. The chapters are short, which makes it easy to read one a day and start implementing the Action Step at the end. Mindfulness, the ability to live in the moment without regret about the past or fear for the future, has been a powerful source of illumination for centuries.

Joseph Emet grounds Finding the Blue Sky: A Mindful Approach to Choosing Happiness Here and Now in his deep-rooted Buddhism, but his advice can help people of any faith or no faith at all. Appreciate your wholeness this moment, for this moment is all you have. One way mindfulness encourages inner peace is by help people live more balanced lives.

Finding such equilibrium is the subject of The Well Life: Eastern medicine practitioners Briana and Dr. Peter Borten say that to feel sane and whole, all of us need to find that balance point between sweetness—the playfulness that gives life its joy—and structure—the discipline required for the accomplishment of goals—within space—the spiritual connection that allows for self-reflection and personal growth.

That allows life to be lived in dynamic balance: What do you want to explore more deeply? One stereotypical view of adolescent well-being sees it all as a matter of roiling hormones and facial breakouts. This attitude fails to thoughtfully address the serious health threats teenagers routinely face. Milosavljevic, who founded the Integrative Health Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, wrote Holistic Health for Adolescents as a primer for parents, counselors and practitioners on the use of integrative healing practices. Each chapter focuses on a problem common among teenagers—stress, fatigue, low mood, sleep disruptions, concentration concerns, headache and substance abuse—by providing background information on the problem at hand along with specific therapies that might help, such as the yoga postures Fish Pose, Legs Up Wall and Downward-Facing Dog for mood problems or pressing an acupressure point called HT7, located on the wrist, to encourage better sleep.

Each chapter starts with a case history that gives the material which follows a human context. Adolescents often find themselves grappling with the same kinds of medical difficulties adults must contend with. Holistic Health for Adolescents allows the reader to act as a trusted health resource for the teens in his or her life. As we go barreling into the holidays—otherwise known as the eating season—it helps to have a source of advice on how to avoid making January 1st a day of dietary regret.

In the case of these two books, that means building on known brands in the world of weight control publishing. Today it is the foundation of an entire Wheat Belly empire, including the Wheat Belly Lifestyle Institute and a line of books. He offers a three-step solution: Like Davis, certified sports nutritionist Melissa Hartwig has her own dietary franchise. Its cornerstone is The Whole30 , which asks participants to eschew all grain-based foods as well as sugar, alcohol, legumes, dairy and the food additives carrageenan, MSG and sulfites for 30 days, substituting a Paleo-like diet featuring foods such as grass-fed beef, wild-caught salmon, nuts, seeds and greens.

The Whole30 is enjoying its own run on the Times list and, like Wheat Belly , has spawned a growing shelf of books; the newest addition is Food Freedom Forever: But there they are, floating in the air between you and a spouse, a parent, a sibling, a friend. What do you say now? When Stan Goldberg heard those words from someone he cared about nearly two decades ago, he responded: Goldberg asks the reader to understand that having cancer is like entering a new country, one with few signposts and road markers. The book consists of specific tips organized under several different topics.

Goldberg explains that the man wanted several months relatively free of symptoms so he would have time to try reconciling with his estranged daughter. Other topics, such as dealing with uncertainly, having potentially uncomfortable conversations and providing end-of-life support, receive the same sensitive, thoughtful treatment.

Loving, Supporting and Caring for the Cancer Patient can help you provide a gracious, generous reply. The Paleo Diabetes Diet Solution. Diabetes, in which the body cannot properly manage blood sugar glucose , is one of the most common diseases in the US, affecting more than 29 million people. One of the newer approaches to eating for diabetes is paleo.

Quite a bit, actually. Hillhouse favors grass-fed or free-range meats and game meats , fish and seafood, eggs, nonstarchy vegetables along with lesser amounts of fresh fruit, nuts and seeds, and fats such oils taken from avocado, coconut, flax seed and olive extra virgin along with animal-based fats such as beef and duck fat.

The Paleo Diabetes Diet Solution provides a healthful, flavorful answer. The Autoimmune Wellness Handbook. In multiple sclerosis it causes brain lesions that lead to numbness, weakness and walking problems. In rheumatoid arthritis it causes joint damage, which results in pain, swelling and stiffness. Instead, he advocates a diet based on not only fresh produce, nuts and seeds, but also grassfed, locally sourced animal protein when possible organic if not and fermented foods.

The greatest strength of The Autoimmune Wellness Handbook lies in its easygoing approach. For some, it brings to mind an increase in wisdom and understanding. However, for far too many people, the concept of age is inexorably entwined with notions of disease and decline. Helen Vlassara, MD, has spent years studying another type of age—as an acronym for advanced glycation end products.

To combat this largely underappreciated threat, Vlassara has written Dr. The reason AGEs are most commonly associated with diabetes is that these substances result from glucose, or blood sugar, attaching itself to protein through a process called glycation. As a result, Vlassara says, joints stiffen and blood vessels become blocked, and, oxidation and inflammation—both of which accelerate the damage caused by aging—increase. Vlassara and her coauthors explain that the foods which produce the most AGEs happen to be among those that people love the most, such as fried chicken and bacon.

The idea is to eat foods that are lower in AGEs to start with—those with animal-based proteins and fats are among the worst offenders—and to use moist-heat cooking methods, such as poaching, steaming, stewing and braising, along with acid-based marinades and dressings acids reduce AGE formation. The book provides recipes to help the reader get started. How to Transform Yourself from the Inside Out. Chopra and Snyder base their Radical Beauty system on six basic principles.

The goal of vegan beauty blogger Sunny Subramanian and natural health author Chrystle Fiedler is to help you not only protect your own well-being but also that of lab animals. In addition to such standard DIY beauty ingredients as coconut and jojoba oils, plant butters and vegetable waxes, the recipes employ fresh fruits and vegetables.

Some, like a smoothie mask made with baby spinach, banana, agave syrup and hemp seed oil, sound good enough to eat. Over-the-counter meds only suppress symptoms without addressing the root problem and you may not be ready for allergy shots just yet. So what do you do now? Yoga, which promotes strength combined with flexibility, is just another fitness alternative like weight lifting or running for some people.

For others, however, yoga is a lifestyle with ramifications that go well beyond attending a weekly class. And the results often come quicker and bigger than we can even imagine. That attitude informs The Yoga Lifestyle: For some people, a yoga lifestyle includes a spiritual component as well. Not everybody wants to dive this deeply into a yoga practice. For those who do seek greater depth, however, Yoga Beyond the Mat provides a map for the journey. Three books tackle this subject from three different vantage points. Her father, Keith Jesperson, was convicted of murdering eight women in the early s.

Fortunately for Moore, she was able to turn away from the darkness of her past to the light of healing, an effort that resulted in Whole. This practice is the focus of Super Mind: Fibromyalgia—marked by profound pain, severe fatigue and poor sleep—can be challenging to deal with. Naturopathic physician David Brady has been investigating FM for more than two decades.

In The Fibro Fix: Throughout the book Brady presents case studies that illustrate various aspects of FM treatment, including the fact that some people who think they may suffer from fibromyalgia actually have other ailments that FM often mimics such as Lyme disease and thyroid dysfunction. Being properly diagnosed with, and treated for, fibromyalgia can be a frustrating experience. Isaacson, MD, and Christopher N. Herbs and Nutrients for Neurologic Disorders. That makes prevention crucial. Isaacson and Ochner explore that evidence, looking at such possible factors as how diet interacts with genes, a concept known as nutrigenomics , and with the beneficial microbes within the intestines, known as the microbiome.

For each condition, authors Sidney Kurn, MD, a neurologist, and Sheryl Shook, PhD, a neuroscientist, examine the evidence regarding nutritional factors that may play a role in disease development. But if you are dealing with one of these illnesses, it can be a valuable resource for you and your practitioner. Once upon a time, vegans—vegetarians who eschew all animal products, such as eggs and dairy—were seen by most people as part of a decidedly fringe dietary movement. Evidence of this development is supported by two books that no sizable publisher would have thought worth the effort of producing a few decades ago.

In Vegan Under Pressure , self-styled Veggie Queen Jill Nussinow combines a plant-only diet with that easy-meal magic carpet known as the pressure cooker. Nussinow even finds ways to make desserts in a pressure cooker, as in Peaches Poached in Red Wine. The recipes combine flavors in such a way to tempt even a non-vegan into the seagan lifestyle, such as a Brazilian Fish Stew redolent with ginger and saffron or a rich Smoked Sardine Dip.

One factor in the broadening of the American palate has been the culinary contributions made by immigrants such as Helene An from Vietnam. Alongside increased interest in foods from other lands has grown a movement towards diets that hark back to our roots as a hunting, foraging species, a concern reflected in Cooking Wild: More than Recipes for Eating Close to Nature.

Some, such as the dandelions in Creamed Dandelion Greens, are probably already familiar to readers with an interest in natural cooking. Others, such as the boar in the Wild Boar Teriyaki Meatballs, are strangers to most American palates, prepared in comfortingly familiar ways. A large factor in all this hidden angst is the sense many people have of not being able to get past the submerged psychological obstacles that keep them from being happy, free and fulfilled. Pyschotherapist Donald Altman believes mindfulness, a state of deliberate attunement to the present, can unlock full human potential by helping people overcome their fears.

Altman says he wrote Clearing Emotional Clutter: For example, the chapter on reducing distractions contains a time inventory, a chart in which one logs time spent on self-care, face-to-face conversation, technology use and other activity categories for a week; the questions that follow encourage the reader to ponder whether the charted results reflect time well-spent. In other words, if your parent experienced trauma that stress can affect you, both genetically and in terms of how your mother or father interacted with you.

When it comes to the hip dining scene, plates are out and bowls—as in everything-in-a-single-dish meals—are in. Soup is one of the original one-bowl meals, the kind moms have been serving to hungry families for generations. In addition to being counted among the comfort foods, soup has also had a reputation for being therapeutic.

From teens trying out for JV to seniors running in marathons, a significant number of people take their athletic endeavors seriously. But in Step Up Your Game: You may never achieve the heights of sports greatness. But Step Up Your Game may help you wring every drop out of your own athletic abilities. Many people see creativity and intuition as gifts of nature, bestowed on individuals by the whims of genetics. Others, though, believe that these products of our complex body-minds can be consciously nurtured, including the authors of two recently published books.

Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind. The title itself seems to be a contradiction in terms: What would food, with its connotations of earthy physicality, have to do with such a seemingly ineffable concept as intuition? It comforts you with the reassurance that the worst is behind you, and now you only have positive things ahead. Nutrition for Intuition may make that effort easier.

The graying of the US population has brought an epidemic of arthritic joints, especially those of the lower body. But will all those new hips and knees really be needed? The authors of two books, one for each joint, believe their programs may be able to at least delay surgery while greatly reducing pain. The idea is to delay surgery if at all possible. This book was first published in ; the authors say a second edition was needed because of large-scale changes in the way hip problems are diagnosed and treated.

Exercise is so important to hip health that simple pool and land workouts, each 15 minutes long, are at the very beginning of the book, even before the chapter that explains what can go wrong with this large joint. Should surgery be required, Klapper discusses possible options as well as post-op rehab. The basic message of Heal Your Hips is empowerment. We all endure wide ranges of emotions: At times it can be overwhelming—flooding, if you will. In The Road to Calm Workbook: Life-Changing Tools to Stop Runaway Emotions, Carolyn Daitch and Lissah Lorberbaum help you recognize your emotions, what triggers them, and how to identify and understand them.

Excellent written exercises are included that can help you achieve balance by prompting you to acknowledge emotional issues, then address them by writing and working through a program. The user-friendly Road to Calm Workbook is written so anyone reading it can understand it.

It is written for the layman, but professional therapists can use the book with their clients. This is about you. This book could help. Dormoy explains guided imagery—relaxation and mental visualization methods that help children with stress, low self-esteem, anxiety and other emotional stressors—and includes plenty of examples.

Speaking volumes

Guided imagery can help bring a child to a place of safety, where they feel comfortable enough to open up and not be judged—and to know they matter. These tools can also be effective when the child leaves the doctor and can take themselves mentally to that safe place no matter where they are. This is a great natural approach to use with children. Children need to know that their thoughts and emotions and who they are as individuals matters. In the right professional hands, this book could help enable those healthy conditions, benefiting children as they get older because they have learned better coping skills.

Do you feel elated in the presence of fast-moving water? The Positive Benefits of Negative Ions. Mindell explains that when water molecules slam into each other with enough force—under a waterfall, at the beach—those molecules lose electrons. The freed electrons, which have a negative charge, then attach to oxygen molecules, turning them into negative ions.

The Happiness Effect enumerates health benefits Mindells says are attributable to negative ions, such as removal of allergens from the air and enhanced immunity, as well as ways to generate your own ions without having to spend all your time in natural settings as appealing as that might be. This book provides a reader-friendly introduction to a little-known topic. A Short Path to Change.

Meditations on Intention and Being. Sometimes a little well-considered advice, such as that offered by the authors of the following books, is just what you need to get the ball rolling. Many people find that negative inner chatter blocks change. Finally, if you are someone whose forward motion is stalled by resentment and bitterness, you may want to read The Power of Forgiveness: Forgiving as a Path to Freedom.

The Anatomy of a Calling. One thing the holiday season throws into high relief is the contradiction between our surface cravings, often for that which can be bought and gift-wrapped, and our deepest desires. But Dickens was writing years ago, before the Industrial Age his work criticized eventually lead to the socially atomizing Digital Age and what is, for too many people, a toxic mix of profound insecurity and soul-deadening isolation.

Discovering and Sustaining Your Passion for Life fills that bill, and then some. In so doing he presents dozens of examples, from Pat Henry, the first American woman to sail solo around the world, to Dan Rhodes, the pseudonym Levoy uses for a closeted gay professor at a conservative school who went on a yearlong quest for self-understanding after being forced out of his job. Lissa Rankin was a busy obstetrician and gynecologist when she became pregnant two weeks after getting married—and then learned that her father had been diagnosed with metastatic cancer.

We live in a world that seems to actively fight our efforts to live deeply, freely, passionately. Vital Signs and The Anatomy of a Calling can help us fight back. Written by a gastroenterologist and two clinical dietitians, this book provides everything you need to understand why the microbiome is important and how you can keep it in top shape. The authors discuss probiotics , which supply gut microbes in supplemental form, and how these microbes are nurtured by types of fiber that function as prebiotics.

This information supports a program for microbiome health based on a fiber- and iron-rich vegetarian diet. Keeping your gut flora healthy is a major step in keeping you healthy. Many Americans can remember when most meals were prepared and eaten at home or brought to school or the workplace; eating out was a treat reserved for special occasions.

Nowadays most people eat out at least five times a week, according to one survey, and earlier this year, the US Department of Commerce reported that sales at restaurants and bars have surpassed those at grocery stories for the first time. Two recently published books tackle this question in two very different ways.

In a world where celebrity chefs are seen creating complex masterpieces every night on TV, some people are a little intimidated by the idea of cooking for themselves. Integrative medicine pioneer Andrew Weil, MD, takes a more light-hearted approach. And the Spiced Couscous with Slivered Almonds requires less than 15 minutes to prepare. The Slow Down Diet: The Complete Brain Exercise Book. But for many people, the more worrisome markers of age involve trouble thinking and remembering.

These exercises are bolstered by a brain-healthy lifestyle that covers physical activity and proper diet, including menu plans and recipes. Novelty literally wakes up the brain and gives it the input it needs for optimal performance. Those two ever-popular culprits—poor diet and lack of exercise—are part of the problem, says Dow, as are too many meds, exposure to environmental toxins and lives that are overloaded with digital everything but short on human and spiritual contact.

Besides the standard food, activity and sleep advice, The Brain Fog Fix includes getting rid of mental ruts such as pessimism and seeing life in strictly black and white, as well as spending less time on Twitter and Facebook and more time cultivating a positive outlook and connecting with others. The Neuroscience of Self-Transformation through Story , sees narrative a key to healing.

Mehl-Madrona places these anecdotes in the context of studies showing badly we need to tell our stories, and how those tales can become talismans of healing: One thing leading-edge research in neuroscience and other fields has done is exploded many of the old, established beliefs about human nature and its capacity for change. Take, for example, willpower: At one time you were either strong-willed or weak-willed and falling into the second group was seen as a basic character flaw, difficult if not impossible to correct.

Finding Personal Strength in Critical Times. Freedom, however, exposes them to the risks and responsibilities they shirk. Instead of regarding lack of will as a permanent defect, Ferrucci sees willpower as a muscle that can be developed with work. Ferrucci quotes a Latin proverb, Per aspera ad astra: Through hardship we reach the stars.

Relaxation, greater flexibility, overall well-being. While many yoga forms—fitness-oriented power yoga, for example—concentrate on active poses, Yapana Yoga focuses on supported passive poses. Yapana makes extensive use of blocks, bolsters and other yoga props to encourage a deep sense of ease. Restorative Yoga Therapy also includes tips for expectant mothers and sequences for specific goals, such as dealing with stiff shoulders or a cranky lower back, or quieting the mind under stressful conditions.

Judith—a writer, therapist, spiritual teacher and certified yoga instructor—uses the seven chakras, which run along the spine, as the spine of her book, taking each one in turn and recommending appropriate poses. For example, the third chakra manipura , located between the navel and the solar plexus, is concerned with matters of energy, willpower and mastery, and is responsible for the adrenal glands and digestive organs.

Martin Blank, who has been studying how electromagnetic fields EMF —which power cell phones in particular and the world in general—affect human health for more than 30 years, says that concern is well-founded. Blank shows that the science on EMF health hazards has been subject to obfuscation by the wireless industry. Fortunately, there are steps people can take to reduce EMF risk. Instead, I want you to realize that EMF poses a real risk to living creatures and that industrial and product safety standards must and can be reconsidered.

Overpowered can give you the knowledge you need to not only protect yourself and your loved ones but also become a proponent for change. In Meaning, the reader learns to identify the underlying expectations that can make or break a fitness routine. Awareness helps the reader understand the science of motivation and how to put that knowledge to practical use.

Strategy helps the reader pull all this information together into a program tailored to his or her specific needs. Performance Nutrition for Your Young Athlete. In Eat Like a Champion , Castle provides information on everything a parent needs to know about feeding a budding athletic star, from major nutrients such as protein to vitamins and minerals to hydration. She then helps the reader use this data to prepare healthy meals eaten together—and promotes family mealtime as worth the effort in an everyone-doing-their-own-thing world.

The Wheel of Healing with Ayurveda. The Essential Ayurvedic Cookbook. One thing renewed interest in non-conventional medicine has done is introduced Americans to healing systems from other parts of the world. That awareness is reflected in two recently published books dedicated to this ancient system of well-being. An Easy Guide to a Healthy Lifestyle.

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Fondin compares the Ayurvedic wheel to a bicycle wheel. If that sounds familiar, you may want to examine The Essential Ayurvedic Cookbook: The idea is to eat in such a way that your unique VPK constitution stays in balance. For example, a person in whom vata—light, cold, dry—predominates should use foods such as avocado, lemons and nuts as garnishes, while someone with a predominantly kapha—heavy, slow, cool—constitution should use chili peppers, horseradish and sprouts. We love seeing salmon on our plates. Seattle filmmaker and fishing guide Mark Titus, who has been casting for salmon since his youth, set out to discover why these fish are disappearing.

What he learns is a tale poetically told in The Breach , which weaves together stories from five Pacific Northwest locations. All salmon require clear freshwater streams at the beginning, when they hatch, and at the end, when they return to their birthplace waters to breed. But there are no easy fixes in the battle to restore wild salmon to their previous levels. The forces that have degraded salmon runs throughout the region have money and political influence on their side. Bristol is now under threat from the proposed Pebble copper mining project and what would be an immense waste pool, to be hemmed in by a dam.

Unlike the breaching of the dam on the Elwha, however, a breach of the Pebble dam could be catastrophic for Bristol Bay, the salmon and the people who live and work there. Global diabetes rates have risen by nearly half over the past 20 years, according to a recent study, fueled by an increase in obesity that is, in large measure, fueled by increased consumption of refined carbohydrates—with sugar playing a major role.

If the sugar monster has you in its deadly grip, Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum believes he can help set you free. Eliminating my sugar addiction was an important part of my recovery. In the first part, Teitelbaum lays out evidence for four different kinds of sugar addiction: A quiz at the beginning of each chapter allows the reader to see which profile he or she fits best. The second part then presents plans tailored to each type of addiction, such as using supplements to support pooped adrenals or natural therapies to deal with menopausal symptoms.

The book also presents recipes developed by holistic nutritionist Deirdre Rawlings. Crystal and Stone Massage. But ancient healers discovered that each stone had its own unique energetic properties, allowing crystals to play a role in human well-being. Today, these remarkable objects are again being employed for their therapeutic properties. An Illustrated Guide to Crystals and Gemstones. Each richly illustrated entry provides a history along with information on how that stone can be used for healing and other purposes. She also discusses crystal practice in general, including information on how to use them with bodily energy centers known as the chakras.

Energy Healing for the Vital and Subtle Bodies may be of interest. The late Michael Gienger, a European crystal expert who wrote nearly two dozen books on the subject, explains several different styles of stone massage along with coauthors Hildegaard Weiss and Ursula Dombrowsky. In the face of a healthcare system facing significant challenges, many Americans—more than a third of all adults, according to a government survey—are taking matters into their own hands by using a complementary and alternative medicine CAM approach to health, which includes everything from vitamins and other dietary supplements to yoga and massage.

The use of herbal remedies, one of the oldest forms of medicine, falls squarely under the CAM umbrella. As the subtitle, Discover the Amazing Spirit of 12 Healing Herbs , makes clear, Jirsa is less interested in providing an herbal encyclopedia than in exploring several common herbs in depth. The fresh young greens pair well with stuffed mushrooms while the roots can be roasted and ground as a coffee substitute or cut for their sap, which Jirsa recommends for burns, stings and acne.

Herbal Goddess provides this lore in a useful, accessible format. A recent San Diego State University study showing a marked drop in religious involvement among American Millennials, those born between the late 70s and early 90s, has generated a blizzard of blogosphere commentary. These results represent the intensification of a pre-existing trend in which each new generation shows less religious affiliation than those that came before. Perhaps not coincidentally, sizeable portions of the population suffer from anxiety, depression and other emotional ills.

In the fourth case, a bitter, poignant remorse haunts the self-sinner day and night, for sometimes weeks together; and the results of his dreadful sin stands by him like an accusing goblin from the deeps. Remember, we suppose, what is true, that weights and measures are the same in all four instances; that the exact amount of fluid life is lost: The physiologists have not answered that question. In case first, the normal one, waste is occasioned by the magnetic action of the electric lymph, the absorption of which by the masculine compensates the vital loss on one side; and the absorption by the feminine parietes of the exudation from Cowper's gland compensates on the other side; and here I give the doctors a new discovery—to them, not me—which is, that just within the vulva are two little glands, called glands of Duvernay, from their French discoverer.

That much the doctors were aware of. But they did not know that those glands are the seat of all vaginal and uterine life; nor that trouble seals them up; Love only keeps them open. When sealed there is no exudation of magnetic lymph, which must be present, else marital rites mean death to her sooner or later. That's what ails half the wives of Christendom. Now another new thing for the doctors. Just forward of the prostate gland is what is known as Cowper's gland; but they know not its use.

I have just explained it. It is to collect, store up, and discharge the magnetic fluid of the body in liquid form. It precedes both the semen and prostatic lymph: I hope this thought will be carefully studied and understood. Now in the case of the solitaire there is but one force at work. The result is from imaginative and mechanical forces: Love resides in the soul; the basic law of that soul he deliberately prostitutes, wherefore his soul, as well as his body, must and does suffer.

One day as I went walking up and down the town in soliloquent mood, I met a man, whose woe-begone countenance betokened great griefs tugging at his heart-strings; and that soul-pangs were racking the very foundations of his being. I met the man. No, I did not say that—it was my alter ego encountering myself! As I lay there I thought of the man,—a lone, and lonely man; for she whom he loved and trusted, many years younger than himself, was afar off, among strange people, where amid the rounds of gayety, in fashion's tide, she had no time to think of him,—the delving toiler; and far too many follow the example of that thoughtless girl.

She was wondrously fair, and heedless as beautiful; with fashions to air and conquests to achieve; poor, sweet little lady! And as I pictured her beauty and bloom, I could but justify her vanity, and on that basis condone her apparent heartless coldness in never deigning to write to him, who was suffering daily deaths by reason of her cold silence—and—contempt.

And so I lay upon the lounge and quaffed the sweet, delicious milk, and I drought about the Woman and the Man; and, as I did so, I fell into a sort of magnetic trance and clairvoyance—a habit familiar, seeing that the power to do so was born with me; and by its means I have a thousand times been able to see afar off, and to glimpse things denied to mortal vision.

On this occasion I fell into it from having incidentally cast my eyes upon a third class triune, or magic mirror, such as for years I have used expressly to induce the state of psycho-vision. It hung over the table against the wall, where I had placed it after polishing it, preparatory to sending it to a lady in Brooklyn, N. It was a fine one, though not the best or most costly; yet was capable of mighty things when in the humor; for, be it known, they, like watches, razors, locomotives and women, are very set in their ways, and will not work unless well treated, and coaxed besides; then they operate well enough, as did the one alluded to.

Its power ranged to the aerial spaces above, and to the vaulted deeps below; and on its surface the dead could, and often did, cast cognizable pictures of themselves and surroundings then and then again. On the morning alluded to, as I breathed upon it, a thick, heavy, black, portentous cloud obscured its face, followed by a silvery sheen, indicative of coming trouble, hatred, folly, error, succeeded by happiness and contentment; but I actually forgot all that, nor recalled it till after the approaching drama was ended,—a drama strange and weird, fraught with pain unutterable, inexpressible, almost unendurable; yet whose results or fruitage was as ripe pomegranates are to the thirsty pilgrims, or the cool, bubbling waters to the parched lips of the Arab on the burning sands of Sahara.

Little did I dream that the strange experience was full of true light to others than myself; yet such it is, and was; and with grateful heart I thank the Most Compassionate God, the Ineffable Lord, that I was found worthy to become the vessel for the conveyance of so grand a lesson to my brethren of the wide and wasteful world.

Child, table, chairs, lounge—all were gone and unheeded, and on the face of that marvellous glass I beheld a scene which at the time, and for six weeks afterwards, I religiously believed was at that very instant being enacted far away, in, to the man in Toledo, dreadful reality. The sequel—far along in this book—will show whether it was the shadow of an enacted fact , or a figment of fancy woven of mist, and conjured up out of the cellars of suspicion.

I loved the man, at all events; hence what I saw froze my blood with horror, and made my nerves fairly tingle with excitement and pain. I saw the lady, whom the man loved so well, and for whom he yearned, and mourned, and wept bitter tears, revealed before the eyes of my soul. She was just emerging from a dormitory, evidently, judging by appearances, both a dishonest and dishonored wife and woman. She was gaily chatting with her paramour, a gallant young fellow, who stood near her, and on whom she gazed with unutterable tenderness, volupty and love.

I shuddered with mortal anguish; for I loved my friend, and that woman bore his name. Until that hour I and he had believed her to be pure as an angel from heaven; and now did I, through sympathy for him, suffer,—ay, the agonies of the nether hell. Presently you will see whether the vision was a lesson or a fact; and whether jealousy is, and is not, sometimes based on solid ground, sometimes empty air. On the day I met the man; he had told me that she had asked him very singular questions: Can he find it out without seeing or hearing of it? Subsequently she had written to say that her yearnings were great, and she was dying from the mere fact of prolonged absence; yet within a week wrote that she was supremely happy, and longed for nothing.

This was ground for suspecting her to be a truant wife, and my friend a deceived husband; and all the more in that she was thrown in contact with some very popular agitators of the marriage and fidelity questions,—on what I regarded as the wrong side. As I gazed on the scene upon the mystic mirror's face, I saw the lady and her lover as before, and beheld his burning kisses fall thick and fast upon her rich, ripe, and alluring lips; saw her languish in voluptuous death in his strong arms, and watched her return his fiery salutation.

I heard his love expressions, and her warm replies; but the most cruel thing of all was their combined laugh and "joke" they were playing on my friend, by making his slender purse bear the cost of their guiltful amours. He loved that woman as mothers love the babes God sends through wailing agony to their longing hearts.

I leaped from the couch; rushed to my friend's place; told him the tragic tale; fired his soul with vengeance dire; and, putting a loaded revolver in his pocket, bade him swiftly traverse the 1, miles intervening betwixt him and his deep revenge. This done, I went to a grocery hard by, to drink beer to drown out the agony felt for the man,—the detestation of the woman. So now, on my way to Grambrins Halle, I encountered my little friend, the German child, at play. She strangely interested me; and I left the Halle with but one glass, where I had intended to drink at least a dozen. The child saved me!

Returning, I caught her up, seated her jauntily on my head, and marched back to the lonely house on the hill, where I threw myself on the lounge, kissed this little child goodby, and, as she ran off trippingly home, at her little brother's call, who was just then having dreadful trouble with his rabbits, I caught sight of a scintillant flash of white light issuant from her head, like the radiant gleam of a peerless diamond, when all the lamps are brightly burning; and a glowing, streaming iridescence flowed from her lips.

I had drawn her to me, and pressed her rosy, childish face to mine, inhaling the balmy aroma of her pure, fresh, joyous soul; and a portion of the roseate fire of her sweet lips had clung to mine. I saw it, like a thin cloud of opalescence, waving gently to and fro, as I moved my head, or breathed. I began to study the meaning of a kiss. There are but few among the many who know the meaning of a kiss: While pondering on this, and marvelling at the beautiful irradiation alluded to above, I chanced to recur in thought to the mirror scene, and to the woman and the man, the weirdly strange phantorama already described; again that strange numbness of the outer being came over me, and in another instant I lay there, rapt, entranced, transfigured, and for the time being was as are the newly dead.

Clearly, distinctly, did my soul's vision penetrate the spaces and localize itself in that far-off room, where still stood the recalcitrant wife and her new-found lover, and the woman stood on this side, the man upon that, hands on shoulders, and mutual kisses, accompanied with glowing red passion-fires from lip to lip; and as I thought of my friend, her husband, I exclaimed, "Guilty!

I put myself in my friend's, her husband's place, by means of the three principles, Posism, Volantia and Decretism, hereinafter alluded to, and then, far more clearly comprehending the situation, I would not, as before, have slain her, spattered his heart's blood upon the walls and floor, or have sent a leaden bullet crashing through his brains, for the whole world, or millions more just like it; for whereas before I had observed effects, I now beheld their producing, hidden causes.

It is but one of millions, this very day, transpiring in thousands of places the wide world over, and is the legitimate result of the wrong relations subsisting between the mated, or rather, mismated marriagees of the earth! Love only can keep souls, and the bodies they wear, true and faithful! Where it does not mutually exist there can be, and is, no guaranty of fidelity. Wherefore, it is incumbent on you to face the facts; call to your aid the rare philosophy of common sense ; struggle manfully against this dreadful, appalling, yet perfectly natural catastrophe; accept the situation; hush the throbbings of your tortured heart; ask God for strength to bear the heavy burden, and be wise.

Still representing my friend, my soul said on: Perchance what you see is, after all, but a fevered dream, begotten of your depressed nervous state, morbidity of fancy and loneliness, combined with the suspicions kindled by the strange questions asked upon the eve of her departure many days ago, and greatly strengthened by unwisely worded letters sent back by her; and made still stronger by her six weeks' utter silence—in itself good cause for suspicion, for every husband has a right to know his wife's whereabouts, her surroundings and the company she keep; and if she does not keep him thus informed, he has fair and just grounds to infer that her actions are such as ought to be hidden from his gaze, and also from that of humanity at large.

If innocent, she is still guilty of a great folly: Let justice rule on both sides; for she was unwise, while your illness tortures things out of shape, till mere phasmas assume forms as solid in appearance as the very truth itself; and it mav be that your anxiety and sympathy may have conjured up a lie; and this apparently recusant woman really be as unsoiled as the down upon the ring-dove's breast, or the spotless plume of an angel's wing!

Oh, how my heart, for my friend, clung to that hope! My soul to my soul went on: They twain, the far-off couple, are young; are adapted to each other: You had no right to subject her to the terrible temptation of being away from your side for months together, in the midst of gay people, where everything appealed to and impressed her young heart and fancy, and made a wider gulf between herself and you. I know your heart is bleeding, that hot tears are streaming down your face, that your poor soul is sweltering amidst the tortuous flames of the fiercest hell of jealousy; yet why?

If she has fallen, it is the fault of her husband, not altogether her own. She admires him, but probably loves this distant Adonis, and, tempted beyond her strength, she may have forgotten and neglected duty, at the urgence and call of love; the facts of which came rushing through the air to you and took form and shape through the vision of the seer. Guilty, or not guilty, forget and forgive.

Voluntarily free this simpleton from the chafing thrall that binds her to one whose purse, not person, is all on earth she cares for.

Let her go at the call of affection, and, forsaking you and duty, yield her to the better and nobler law of love. Free her, and they twain will likely wed. Hold her, and she is that nameless thing—a wedded harlot. My soul had, still as my friend, not myself, gotten thus far in its just reasonings when methought I heard a sweet and silvery voice say, "Behold!

I put myself in his place, and for the first time in my life not only realized the luxury of forgiveness, but felt capable of even dying a lingering death that the woman so loved might be happy with him she so loved; and greater affection than that can no man show, in that he would lay down his life for a friend.

I talked with the husband; persuaded him to lay by the pistols and revenge. He did so, and ceased to be jealous from that hour, caring but little whether the vision was of actual fact or a delirious dream. And I beheld an ineffably pure, pearly-hued effulgence playing about her little head, undulating in billowy movement all about her infantile shoulders, streaming from her hair, glowing round her waist, and in loving wavelets all around. I watched this with astonishment. It was but the prelude to the celestial cantata that followed. I saw her mother gently chide her, and soon she went to bed, and slept the sweet, delicious slumber of absolute innocence; and as she thus lay I saw the gossamic cloud of pearly aura expand till it filled the room, penetrated the ceiling, the roof, swelling and lengthening out clear into the starlight, and forming to a point shot out and afar off into the very depths of space till I could follow it no more.

Then I turned me again to the sleeping child; and what was my astonishment at beholding literally hundreds of bright shining and divinely beautiful forms, as of young children and the virgin dead, come trooping down the lane of pearly light, and, entering the house, gather and dance and play at the bedside of the slumbering little one. That child had enabled me to stave off a fit of jealous rage in sympathy with my friend; and now I was, through her again, about to learn one of the most important lessons of my life. I had kissed that child, and had become suffused with a portion of her own sweet aromal aura or atmosphere, and was, therefore, en rapport with the same bright beings as she was herself, and was played upon by the same celestial, pure and divine influences, whereof Love was the dominant or major clement.

A portion of these purer, better, and hyperphysical auras displaced and occupied the room of the grosser aura, earth-born and turbid. I found myself cleaner, better, than before, and comprehended Christ's "Suffer little children to come unto me. Love in very deed lies at the foot of all, and its mystic and ideal meaning outweighs the material and popular ones by as many degrees as the pure soul of that baby-girl outweighs the corrupt body of the low-lived debauchee.

We may be hugged, embraced, kissed into heavenly states, or into their exact opposites! Hence, aside from common relational lip-contacts, they are worse than unwise who touch lips unless love be the underlying prompter; for if the kissed or kisser be bad, just so much of that specific evil is sure to flow from the magnetic poles of either pair of lips to the soul of him or her upon whose mouth they arc laid.

I have said the moist lips are batteries charged with our very inmost good or evil. It is utterly impossible for a negress having borne a child to a white father ever to give birth to one perfectly negro,—even though its father, like herself, has never a drop of other blood in him,—for the reason that the blood of the white man, through his child, has mingled in the mother's veins. More than that, her blood under the microscope will not show the same crystalline forms after the birth of the mixed child as it did before.

Just so is it impossible for us not to be made better or worse by lip touching. Harlots invariably descend unless snatched from ruin by a miracle. It is because of the many forms of hell struggling in their veins, combating in their nerves; and as heaven or its opposite attends the kiss so also is it with every other sort of human contact —even the ordinary shaking of the hands. Gloves, therefore, have new uses. I awoke from my slumber a wiser, and, I trust, a better man. I went out and found my soul-harried and victimized friend. I reasoned with him just as I had with my own soul a while before.

I told him it was clear as sunlight that the absent woman really cared not a straw for him, but only for what current funds she could extract from him; and that, although to lose her was a bitter draught of gall, yet he had better swallow it, for that he was only loving his own sphere wherewith he had embalmed her. I asked what right had he to hold a woman in duress convert or non-couvert, whose soul was not attached by love to his; whose compliance, duty only , not affectional. It was clear he ought to give her up at once even if the effort snapped his heart-strings, because the making of her child was a doubtful question.

Why should he pursue a heartless phantom? They were disunited in soul. Behold the folly of continuance! As previously remarked herein, writers upon the general topics of love and its offices, uses, abuses, nature, moods, and modes, have, in the main, been content with the merely superficial or external view thereof, and have, as a general thing, utterly ignored most, if not all, of the other and deeper significances attached thereunto; and not one of them has even attempted to tell mankind any more of the principles underlying sex, Love, and their copula passion, or desire, than any one's personal experience suggests; but we have plenty of hard, dry, pseudo-scientific flummery, else a long row of medical platitudes wholly useless, because totally indigestible by the average intellectual stomach.

Who of them all has given us the rationale of the orgasm—the why and wherefore, or the cause of its being a thing of apparently no moment whatever at certain times, and under circumstances: Which of them all has explained what every one ought to, but does not know to be a fact, i. The philosophers never even guessed at this truth. Who of them has told, or can tell, why the nuptium fairly laps the very soul itself, of each participant, too, in the tenderest, softest, truly human, because strictly human , joy at one time; yet at another gives naught but cruel pain; else is but a nervous spasm, unsatisfactory to one party, and injurious to both; and yet the same people in both instances?

Why is it, O learned anthropologists, that the generative rite will at one time wholly unman one, yet at another—same ones too—will fill him with the most exquisite, manly, gallant sensibility; inspire him with the most lofty virtue and high resolve; charge him to the lips with true and royal courage; yet at another time transmute him into an errant coward and miserable poltroon?

And, mirabile dictu —same parties still,—bring pain, keen mental agony, shame-facedness, and suicidal thought; yet at another, result in pride, joy, gratefulness, generosity, and mental summer, with physical springtime? Why will this mysterious duty—for such it is in God's sight, who by its means peoples the worlds, and stocks the starry spaces—plunge us into the deepest "blues," and fang our souls with remorse cruel as the grave, relentless as the Hadean gulf of Milton, and the other poets; yet at another induce a state of feeling in soul and spirit quite approaching the supposed angelic; why?

Dixon, of " The Scalpel " printed his great and warning essay on "The organic Law" of sex , and the anonymous author of "Satan in Society" faintly echoed those stirring notes, nothing has been given to the world on the mighty subject worthy of attention or record. Neither essay filled the required bill, and for that reason I print this series of salvatory counsels.

I may, and probably shall, ere long, be numbered with the armies of the dead; and who then will give Randolph's thoughts to the world? I don't know, and therefore give at least a part of them before I leave for good and all; consequently, I shall now convey certain brief and concise forms of certain knowledges, which, if abided by, will prolong many a life, and add immeasurable happiness to mankind.

I wish to be clearly understood, and yet not to offend the most delicate or fastidious; for God is my judge that my sole aim is to teach certain truths, whose mission is to stop the tide of crime, misery and wretchedness now devastating our land. I am forced to use similes, but trust to be fully and entirely understood. Now for the answer to the loud "Whys? The states resulting happily from human fusion were because there really was a human fusion , and that's just it!

In all the other cases there was either too much body, too much spirit, and too little or no soul at all. They were violations of the love-law, and the suffering was the penalty. It is a pity that ten thousand times the pain was not the direct result of every violation of the organic law; and if every proposed debauchee could or would but die in the attempt, the world would soon be a great deal better off. Where love sits enshrined over the married man's chamber door, and reason guides his conduct towards his wife therein, peace will reign, and the sale of syphilitic remedials vastly decrease.

No pangs follow the celebration of the rites of holy love, nor judicious use of the divine, but abused, faculties of our nature. Unless love equals passion, marriage rites are never right; that's all! The grand mistake made by physiologists and other essayists, writing on the current topic, consists in their persistent overlooking of the fact that man and woman are not the same.

The male is an incarnation, so to speak, of one side of Deity; one hemisphere of the Imperial Over Soul ; one section of Nature, matter , the Superlative and Infinite Mind of Minds; while the human female represents and is an embodiment of the other; for there is a male and female side to all these, and the two genders correspond to, represent, affiliate with, derive their respective powers from, and are attracted to, those respective sides.

Thus either, alone, is an Incompleteness; they belong to opposite sides of nature, and it requires a bridge to span the amazing gulf that rolls between them. The magnetic materials for said bridge exists in nearly all human beings. Its name is Love. Bridges are in great demand. There's room for more. No true man can help loving all true women; not in the grosser sense, but in the higher one of soul.

Not such as lie a man out of his manhood, run him in debt, empty his purse, and rob him of his peace, until he actually jeopardizes his soul's salvation,—pretending to love him, but meaning not one word of it,—laughing at him in the sleeve, and triumphing in the knowledge of how smart she was, how great a fool was he. That's the sort of women who, from the year one, have driven hard bargains with the masculine portion of the race, and rushed many a good man down the hills of ruin and gloom, and horrid, blank despair. Nor are they all dead yet. I have neither time, assistance, or inclination for moralizing: But I feel quite as much indignant contempt for that large class of women who are ever ready to use their beauty as a trap to catch male gudgeons; who look on all men as fair game, to be lied to, and played on, generally to the tune of rustling silks, and crisp bank notes; and whose utter heartlessness belies the index of their sex.

There's quite as many heartless shes as hes in the world; only that one soulless woman is a greater danger to the world than a dozen scoundrelly men; for her sex gives her points of advantage denied to all of the opposite gender. A good, true woman is a diamond; a bad and heartless one worse than Milton's Satan. Sitting near me in the eating-house where I dined yesterday, were four grave men, deliberately traducing their mother's sex. They went into paroxysms of what they called "Fun" anent pregnancy, menstruation, and sexive matters generally.

They, and millions like them everywhere, in every bar-room, hotel, stable, store, grocery, consider it "smart" and manly to, even before young boys, habitually blaspheme Deity and dishonor the mothers that bore them, by irreverent, flippant and obscene speech concerning the sex. Poor wretches who disgrace the forms they bear by speaking of woman as if she were nothing but a target for filthy tongues to hurl their venom at; or, at best, as destined victims to their own abominable lubricity; mere extinguishers of the bale-fires rioting in their own veins,—the venomous fever-passions of their own gross natures, and far more ignoble than those of the four-footed dogs that run our streets.

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It made me sick; it always did—to listen to the outrageous talk going on everywhere about women, whenever two or more human males of the "civilized" kind happen to get together for an hour. Even stately officials, fathers of families, do; and if not, at least often allow it in their presence, which is almost as bad. So almost universal is this foul talk, to be heard everywhere, at any time,—ribald, coarse, obscene, and altogether devilish,—that it is no wonder that the public mind is debauched and totally demoralized.

It is a curious fact that people will talk smut, laugh heartily at coarse jokes and improbable stories concerning the eternal God's method of peopling the worlds, and filling up the starry domes beyond the grave, when of all human deeds it is the most sacred, serious, and laughless. No human being laughs then ; for the weight of worlds rests upon human shoulders. It is a bad sign any man hangs out when he makes "fun" of what ought to challenge his holiest emotions and most profound respect.

There was a young man of the fun-making genus,—a fellow whose nature was inflamed nearly a year before his birth, and who kept it up to boiling-point by food and drink, and the secret books he first read, and then so artfully concealed, that the servant-girls were sure to find them,—read, get detected,—of course, by the owner. Well, this Lothario's eyes used to fairly glisten when they rested upon any young female form, and the burden of his talk was the victories he had won over too confiding women. It so happened that he was one of a jury of inquest over the dead body of poor Maria Lee, a child of sixteen summers, whom a rich merchant of Loudon had betrayed, and then procured a double murder at the hands of an abortionist.

The rich merchant paid some money;—some more in charity: The medical practitioner went to jail for six months; was pardoned out in five weeks; and the babe went back to heaven in the arms of its slaughtered mother. But there she lay, poor child, upon the long work-table of good Simon Scott, the carpenter, all pale and delicate as finest Parian marble or wax-work, and beautiful! O God, how immortally beautiful! Well, the autopsy went on; the facts were disclosed: He carefully examined lungs, brain, stomach, breasts, heart, uterus—all; and as he laid down the glass he muttered—and I—with the womb in my hand, and the knife between my teeth echoed, from the floor of my soul, his words—" Murdered, by God!

If I could, I certainly would have every male over fifteen witness just such a redemptive and impressive scene; and would take every boy through the wards of a hospital for syphilides.

Eulis! the History of Love/Part 1: Affectional Alchemy - Wikisource, the free online library

I would have every girl taught the long-forgotten truth that her soul is worth, at least, quite as much as her body; something they little dream of, so ardent is their worship at the shrine of Saint Frivole. Had I been so instruded long years agone, I had escaped very many subsequent mistakes, and consequent misery; but I. I learned it at last; hence this, and my later books, which I trust will seive as beacons to warn mankind off sunken rocks and reefs long after these hands have returned to primal dust, and the soul that animates them is kneeling at the feet of the Redeeming God.

From the earliest historical ages an unnatural custom has prevailed; and its results have been fearful,— sub rosa mainly, for the victims generally grieve, mourn, and die in silence. I refer to the abominable practice of old men marrying young girls. I know that the temptations,—youth and freshness on one side; influence, society, position, money, on the other,—are great indeed; but for all that, it is a something against which that same society ought to turn; and one that God Himself frowns down; for never a marriage among them all produced other fruits than discontent, jealousy, madness and despair.

Campbell, in that odd book "Hermippus, or the Sage's Triumph," lays it down that the old can regain many months or even years of life by consorting and cohabiting with the young.