Miracles are possible.

An accomplished storyteller with a refreshing, humorous voice, Rabbi Zedek draws on a range of materials including biblical tales, Indian and Japanese folklore, the works of St. Augustine, Einstein, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Groucho Marx to take readers on a truly original search for spiritual sustenance in everyday life. Readers will learn how to identify and appreciate the miraculous in an often mundane world; how to take God seriously when much of the intellectual world doesn’t; and how to make the most out of underutilized spiritual resources such as poetry and prayer. Heartfelt and amusing, Taking Miracles Seriously is a master course on how to craft an enriched and enriching spiritual life.

People who met the inevitable with elan, unflappability, dignity, or physical courage

Will our future imitate our past? 

"The purpose of this book is threefold: to explain what makes civilization civilization what it is; to show what we are in danger of losing in the event of collapse, and to point the way toward renewal."

There is a consensus in the West that something is wrong. Many people have the uneasy feeling that the liberal democratic order is in danger, and that civilization itself hangs in the balance. This feeling could be dismissed as alarmism, but the present moment of pandemic, political instability, and rioting is a startling reminder of the fragility of civilization everywhere. And we should never forget that empires and societies have collapsed many times before.

But history shows that human civilization also has extraordinary powers of recuperation, writes Michael R.J. Bonner in this bracing tour de force. Drawing on such examples as the revival of Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and the ebb and flow of civilization in China despite repeated foreign conquest, he shows how humankind's quest for clarity, order, and beauty—the crucial elements of civilization—does not necessarily succeed through innovation or a futuristic orientation, but by thoughtful examination and imitation of past experience.

Sir John A. Macdonald had been in politics for four decades and prime minister of Canada for three terms, but he’d never seen anything like the apocalyptic year of 1885.

The issues cascaded relentlessly: threats to the sovereignty of Canada from London and Washington; armed resistance in the North-West; the spectre of starvation among Indigenous peoples; financial crises that endangered the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR); protests over Chinese immigration to British Columbia; nationalist dissent in Quebec; a smallpox epidemic that would claim over 5,000 victims in Montreal; and fierce opposition to Macdonald’s drive to expand the right to vote. It was a year like no other in Canadian history.

In this fascinating and authoritative study of a skilled politician at the peak of his powers, political historian Patrice Dutil shows how Macdonald navigated persistent threats to public order, anchored the stability of his government, and ensured the future of his still fragile nation.

What emerges is a compelling portrait of a man who, notwithstanding his personal failings and the sins of his times, was the most enlightened and constructive public figure of early Canadian history.

John, Paul, George, and Ringo were more than great musicians: they were the quintessential fashion icons of one of the most exciting and memorable fashion eras of all time. From their starts in black leather through Sgt. Pepper to Nehru collars and psychedelia, the Beatles used clothing to express their individual and group identities and, especially, to grow their following. 

They did it without benefit of stylists or consultants, making their own rules and changing their looks as many as five times a year to keep a few steps ahead of the crowd in the tumultuous, fashion-obsessed sixties. More than fifty years after their break-up, their style continues to animate the collections of some of the world’s leading designers, including Thom Browne, John Varvatos, Anna Sui, Tom Ford, Gucci’s Alessandro Michele and, yes, Stella McCartney. Fashioning the Beatles, the first in-depth look at their sartorial legacy, demonstrates that their inimitable style was not an incidental by-product of their fame but an integral part of their act and a key to their globe-spanning success.

Are we sometimes too strong for our own good?

Amid epidemics of anxiety and depression,threats of ecological and economic disaster, not to mention a pandemic, resilience has been the buzzword of the decade, the answer to every challenge we face as individuals, organizations, and communities. We seldom stop to ask if our insistence on persevering is really in our long-term interest. Does it trap us in patterns of behavior that no longer make sense, foreclose too soon on better opportunities, and stifle positive development? With examples ranging from overly optimistic thinking habits to risk-averse descisions by corporations and governments, Michael Ungar, one of the world’s leading resilience experts, explores how even the most resilient among us can fail catastrophically. The Limits of Resilience is a witty, compassionate argument that true resilience lies not so much in always bouncing back but in our ability to self-disrupt and embrace occasional but much-needed failure.

For two days in late September 1988, Canada’s Ben Johnson was the most celebrated athlete on the planet.

Winner of the 100-meter sprint at the Seoul Olympics in a world record 9.79 seconds, he’d just had time to say, “A gold medal—that’s something no one can take away from you,” before testing positive for a performance enhancing drug and giving back his medal.

Later admitting to steroid use, Johnson has lived in ignominy ever since, but there’s much more to his incredible story. The sprint he won in Seoul has since been called “the dirtiest race in history,” with six of the eight competitors linked to doping infractions. The steroid for which Johnson tested positive was not the steroid he believed he was using. His drug screening was riddled with irregularities and crucial testing evidence was withheld by Olympic officials in Seoul, circumstances that credible experts now say denied Johnson his right to due process and should have prevented his disqualification.

With unprecedented access to Johnson, sportswriter Mary Ormsby now tells his whole story for the first time: how a shy Jamaican kid descended from enslaved African plantation workers became a Canadian sprinting superstar; how a disgraced former athlete came to coach Diego Maradona and the son of a Libyan dictator while fighting tirelessly to determine exactly what happened to him on that fateful day in 1988.

The last decade has seen an explosion of urban beekeeping in the US, Canada, and Europe, a well-intentioned response to perceived threats to the global honey bee population. Many thousands of people have taken up this seemingly environmentally friendly hobby, tending backyard and rooftop hives (or paying a company to do so) and encouraging honey bees to make honey and pollinate flowers. What could be wrong with that?

Quite a lot, in fact. In The Honey Trap, scientist and author Dana Church demonstrates that despite reports to the contrary, honey bees are nowhere near extinction. Rather, their nurturing by urban beekeepers is having far-reaching and potentially devastating consequences for the 19,999 other species of bees on the planet, with knock-on effects for plants, both cultivated and wild, and our ecosystems more generally.

With engaging storytelling and a wealth of knowledge about bees and their ways, Church unravels the complexities of human interactions with our winged friends and demonstrates how dangerously selfish our thinking can be. It's a wake-up call for humanity to embrace sustainable practices and protect these vital pollinators before it's too late.

A joyful, beautifully written tribute to Canada's most salient features—hockey and highways.

In the waning days of the pandemic, sportswriter Ronnie Shuker stuffed his skates, sticks, and backpack into his faithful automobile, Gumpy, named for legendary goaltender Gumpy Worsley, and set off on a 30,000-mile, coast-to-coast-to-coast investigation of the many ways hockey touches the lives of Canadians.

From St. John's, home of hockey's most colorful father-son combo, to a frigid barn in Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, and the world's largest hockey stick in Duncan, British Columbia, Shuker finds the people and places that make hockey an indelible part of the Canadian experience. He hits famous sites of hockey lore, from the cradle of the game in Windsor, Nova Scotia, to Brantford, Ontario, where streets, highways, schools, and much else bear the name Gretzky, to Vancouver, site of the infamous 1994 and 2011 Canucks riots. But he also finds the game in unlikely places—crash sites, greenhouses, houseboats, memorials, backyard halls of fame, even a Hutterite colony—where a seemingly endless and always engaging cast of characters, including pros, semipros, beer-league veterans, family, and fans, share unforgettable stories of how pucks have dented their lives.

For most people, their twenties and thirties are the busiest times of their life, a period of new careers, new friends, new cities, new families. What few count on is that they might also be called to additional responsibilities as caregivers of parents, grandparents, or other family members.

Rachael Piltch-Loeb was juggling a young family and a flourishing academic career when her father was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Her experience was the inspiration for The Millennial Caregiver, a heartfelt and practical guide for millennials balancing early adulthood with the demands of caregiving. The book explores challenges unique to the millennial generation—from emotional strain and financial pressures to social isolation and role reversal—and provides insightful strategies to manage these issues. It also highlights the role technology can play for digital natives in caregiving, offering tips for utilizing digital tools and building support networks.

Millennials represent a large and growing portion of today’s caregiving population. The Millennial Caregiver is a beacon of hope and a valuable resource for younger people navigating the complex terrain of caring for loved ones while forging their own path.

Miracles are possible.

An accomplished storyteller with a refreshing, humorous voice, Rabbi Zedek draws on a range of materials including biblical tales, Indian and Japanese folklore, the works of St. Augustine, Einstein, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Groucho Marx to take readers on a truly original search for spiritual sustenance in everyday life. Readers will learn how to identify and appreciate the miraculous in an often mundane world; how to take God seriously when much of the intellectual world doesn’t; and how to make the most out of underutilized spiritual resources such as poetry and prayer. Heartfelt and amusing, Taking Miracles Seriously is a master course on how to craft an enriched and enriching spiritual life.

People who met the inevitable with elan, unflappability, dignity, or physical courage

Will our future imitate our past? 

"The purpose of this book is threefold: to explain what makes civilization civilization what it is; to show what we are in danger of losing in the event of collapse, and to point the way toward renewal."

There is a consensus in the West that something is wrong. Many people have the uneasy feeling that the liberal democratic order is in danger, and that civilization itself hangs in the balance. This feeling could be dismissed as alarmism, but the present moment of pandemic, political instability, and rioting is a startling reminder of the fragility of civilization everywhere. And we should never forget that empires and societies have collapsed many times before.

But history shows that human civilization also has extraordinary powers of recuperation, writes Michael R.J. Bonner in this bracing tour de force. Drawing on such examples as the revival of Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and the ebb and flow of civilization in China despite repeated foreign conquest, he shows how humankind's quest for clarity, order, and beauty—the crucial elements of civilization—does not necessarily succeed through innovation or a futuristic orientation, but by thoughtful examination and imitation of past experience.

Sir John A. Macdonald had been in politics for four decades and prime minister of Canada for three terms, but he’d never seen anything like the apocalyptic year of 1885.

The issues cascaded relentlessly: threats to the sovereignty of Canada from London and Washington; armed resistance in the North-West; the spectre of starvation among Indigenous peoples; financial crises that endangered the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR); protests over Chinese immigration to British Columbia; nationalist dissent in Quebec; a smallpox epidemic that would claim over 5,000 victims in Montreal; and fierce opposition to Macdonald’s drive to expand the right to vote. It was a year like no other in Canadian history.

In this fascinating and authoritative study of a skilled politician at the peak of his powers, political historian Patrice Dutil shows how Macdonald navigated persistent threats to public order, anchored the stability of his government, and ensured the future of his still fragile nation.

What emerges is a compelling portrait of a man who, notwithstanding his personal failings and the sins of his times, was the most enlightened and constructive public figure of early Canadian history.

John, Paul, George, and Ringo were more than great musicians: they were the quintessential fashion icons of one of the most exciting and memorable fashion eras of all time. From their starts in black leather through Sgt. Pepper to Nehru collars and psychedelia, the Beatles used clothing to express their individual and group identities and, especially, to grow their following. 

They did it without benefit of stylists or consultants, making their own rules and changing their looks as many as five times a year to keep a few steps ahead of the crowd in the tumultuous, fashion-obsessed sixties. More than fifty years after their break-up, their style continues to animate the collections of some of the world’s leading designers, including Thom Browne, John Varvatos, Anna Sui, Tom Ford, Gucci’s Alessandro Michele and, yes, Stella McCartney. Fashioning the Beatles, the first in-depth look at their sartorial legacy, demonstrates that their inimitable style was not an incidental by-product of their fame but an integral part of their act and a key to their globe-spanning success.

Are we sometimes too strong for our own good?

Amid epidemics of anxiety and depression,threats of ecological and economic disaster, not to mention a pandemic, resilience has been the buzzword of the decade, the answer to every challenge we face as individuals, organizations, and communities. We seldom stop to ask if our insistence on persevering is really in our long-term interest. Does it trap us in patterns of behavior that no longer make sense, foreclose too soon on better opportunities, and stifle positive development? With examples ranging from overly optimistic thinking habits to risk-averse descisions by corporations and governments, Michael Ungar, one of the world’s leading resilience experts, explores how even the most resilient among us can fail catastrophically. The Limits of Resilience is a witty, compassionate argument that true resilience lies not so much in always bouncing back but in our ability to self-disrupt and embrace occasional but much-needed failure.

For two days in late September 1988, Canada’s Ben Johnson was the most celebrated athlete on the planet.

Winner of the 100-meter sprint at the Seoul Olympics in a world record 9.79 seconds, he’d just had time to say, “A gold medal—that’s something no one can take away from you,” before testing positive for a performance enhancing drug and giving back his medal.

Later admitting to steroid use, Johnson has lived in ignominy ever since, but there’s much more to his incredible story. The sprint he won in Seoul has since been called “the dirtiest race in history,” with six of the eight competitors linked to doping infractions. The steroid for which Johnson tested positive was not the steroid he believed he was using. His drug screening was riddled with irregularities and crucial testing evidence was withheld by Olympic officials in Seoul, circumstances that credible experts now say denied Johnson his right to due process and should have prevented his disqualification.

With unprecedented access to Johnson, sportswriter Mary Ormsby now tells his whole story for the first time: how a shy Jamaican kid descended from enslaved African plantation workers became a Canadian sprinting superstar; how a disgraced former athlete came to coach Diego Maradona and the son of a Libyan dictator while fighting tirelessly to determine exactly what happened to him on that fateful day in 1988.

The last decade has seen an explosion of urban beekeeping in the US, Canada, and Europe, a well-intentioned response to perceived threats to the global honey bee population. Many thousands of people have taken up this seemingly environmentally friendly hobby, tending backyard and rooftop hives (or paying a company to do so) and encouraging honey bees to make honey and pollinate flowers. What could be wrong with that?

Quite a lot, in fact. In The Honey Trap, scientist and author Dana Church demonstrates that despite reports to the contrary, honey bees are nowhere near extinction. Rather, their nurturing by urban beekeepers is having far-reaching and potentially devastating consequences for the 19,999 other species of bees on the planet, with knock-on effects for plants, both cultivated and wild, and our ecosystems more generally.

With engaging storytelling and a wealth of knowledge about bees and their ways, Church unravels the complexities of human interactions with our winged friends and demonstrates how dangerously selfish our thinking can be. It's a wake-up call for humanity to embrace sustainable practices and protect these vital pollinators before it's too late.

A joyful, beautifully written tribute to Canada's most salient features—hockey and highways.

In the waning days of the pandemic, sportswriter Ronnie Shuker stuffed his skates, sticks, and backpack into his faithful automobile, Gumpy, named for legendary goaltender Gumpy Worsley, and set off on a 30,000-mile, coast-to-coast-to-coast investigation of the many ways hockey touches the lives of Canadians.

From St. John's, home of hockey's most colorful father-son combo, to a frigid barn in Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, and the world's largest hockey stick in Duncan, British Columbia, Shuker finds the people and places that make hockey an indelible part of the Canadian experience. He hits famous sites of hockey lore, from the cradle of the game in Windsor, Nova Scotia, to Brantford, Ontario, where streets, highways, schools, and much else bear the name Gretzky, to Vancouver, site of the infamous 1994 and 2011 Canucks riots. But he also finds the game in unlikely places—crash sites, greenhouses, houseboats, memorials, backyard halls of fame, even a Hutterite colony—where a seemingly endless and always engaging cast of characters, including pros, semipros, beer-league veterans, family, and fans, share unforgettable stories of how pucks have dented their lives.

For most people, their twenties and thirties are the busiest times of their life, a period of new careers, new friends, new cities, new families. What few count on is that they might also be called to additional responsibilities as caregivers of parents, grandparents, or other family members.

Rachael Piltch-Loeb was juggling a young family and a flourishing academic career when her father was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Her experience was the inspiration for The Millennial Caregiver, a heartfelt and practical guide for millennials balancing early adulthood with the demands of caregiving. The book explores challenges unique to the millennial generation—from emotional strain and financial pressures to social isolation and role reversal—and provides insightful strategies to manage these issues. It also highlights the role technology can play for digital natives in caregiving, offering tips for utilizing digital tools and building support networks.

Millennials represent a large and growing portion of today’s caregiving population. The Millennial Caregiver is a beacon of hope and a valuable resource for younger people navigating the complex terrain of caring for loved ones while forging their own path.