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Recommended by Oprah Daily

A moody and melodic memoir--much like the great actor himself. (from Amazon)

Walking with Ghosts book cover

by Gabriel Byrne·You?

“Make no mistake about it: Walking with Ghosts is a masterpiece. A book that will wring out our tired hearts. It is by turns poetic, moving, and very funny. You will find it on the shelf alongside other great Irish memoirs including those by Frank McCourt, Nuala O'Faolain and Edna O’Brien.” —Colum McCann As a young boy growing up in the outskirts of Dublin, Gabriel Byrne sought refuge in a world of imagination among the fields and hills near his home, at the edge of a rapidly encroaching city. Born to working class parents and the eldest of six children, he harbored a childhood desire to become a priest. When he was eleven years old, Byrne found himself crossing the Irish Sea to join a seminary in England. Four years later, Byrne had been expelled and he quickly returned to his native city. There he took odd jobs as a messenger boy and a factory laborer to get by. In his spare time, he visited the cinema where he could be alone and yet part of a crowd. It was here that he could begin to imagine a life beyond the grey world of 60s Ireland. He reveled in the theatre and poetry of Dublin’s streets, populated by characters as eccentric and remarkable as any in fiction, those who spin a yarn with acuity and wit. It was a friend who suggested Byrne join an amateur drama group, a decision that would change his life forever and launch him on an extraordinary forty-year career in film and theatre. Moving between sensual recollection of childhood in a now almost vanished Ireland and reflections on stardom in Hollywood and Broadway, Byrne also courageously recounts his battle with addiction and the ambivalence of fame. Walking with Ghosts is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking as well as a lyrical homage to the people and landscapes that ultimately shape our destinies.

Recommended by Oprah Daily

Sharing what you’re most ashamed of is frightening and cathartic—and, it turns out, a powerful connector. (from Amazon)

An Inc. Non-Obvious Book Awards Best Book of 2023 Heal yourself to heal the world: The Power of Empathy is an informative and inspirational guide to building a better world through compassion, connection, and curiosity. With this thirty-day approach, you can develop your empathy skills as tools for self-love and empowerment. Empathy expert and entrepreneur Michael Tennant weaves together scholarly research with his personal journey of loss, substance use, anxiety, and depression to explore how empathy can benefit both our inner lives and our larger community. Filled with heartfelt personal stories, techniques for mindfulness, and engaging journaling prompts, this book grounds the abstract concept of empathy with an actionable and intersectional framework. Learn to compassionately support, courageously confront, gracefully model, effectively resolve, and masterfully connect—all through the power of empathy! VITAL AND TIMELY: For everyone looking to reconnect and build bridges in response to the stressful and traumatic events of our modern times, this book provides an encouraging, conversational, and accessible introduction to the basics and benefits of empathy. Psychologists, social justice activists, and business leaders alike have found empathy to be an important tool in strengthening relationships and boosting mental health, morale, and even productivity. INSPIRING EXPERT AUTHOR: In 2018, Michael Tennant launched Actually Curious, a conversation card game that helps people create safe spaces to be vulnerable and share their views on personal issues and current events. The game went viral and sold out immediately, leading to features in the New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Goop, Refinery29, and other major media. Tennant has since led talks and workshops on empathy and leadership with top companies and organizations, including NASA, Bumble, Stanford Law School, Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, and the Innocence Project. ACTION-DRIVEN SELF-CARE: This insightful book is a perfect gift for fans of Brené Brown, Alex Elle, Alok Vaid-Menon, Rachel Cargle, Esther Perel, and Brittany Packnett, and other speakers whose values emphasize compassion, vulnerability, and empathy. For anyone who has felt inspired by these speakers’ social justice and relationship content and is hungry for more resources, this thirty-day guidebook offers an inclusive perspective that will help transform these values into a consistent day-to-day practice. Perfect for: Anyone interested in developing healing and self-care practices Mental health and wellness enthusiasts looking for new approaches Activists, community organizers, and compassionate connectors Business leaders, managers, and nonprofit professionals Black men and other BIPOC interested in self-improvement People on a journey of recovery from grief, addiction, anxiety, or depression Anyone looking to strengthen their relationships with family members or friends Readers of psychology and self-help books like Think Again and Set Boundaries, Find Peace Fans of Alex Elle, Alok Vaid-Menon, Rachel Cargle, Brittany Packnett, Yung Pueblo, and the Nap Ministry Fans of the Actually Curious decks and other conversational card games like We’re Not Really Strangers and Esther Perel’s Where Should We Begin

Recommended by Oprah Daily

Histories, biographies, and behind-the-scenes narratives about the news biz typically idolize swaggering, chain-smoking, tough-talking dudes who tower over testimonies with testosterone-infused personalities. But with Susan, Linda, Nina Cokie, Napoli honors not the dog-eat-dog variety of journalist, but the fortitude of sisterhood, of women supporting each other. (from Amazon)

A national bestseller, Susan, Linda, Nina, & Cokie is journalist Lisa Napoli’s group biography of four beloved women who fought sexism, covered decades of American news, and whose voices defined NPR. “Particularly moving. . . . Their solidarity was inspiring and sometimes intimidating. . . . [Susan, Linda, Nina, & Cokie] offers a powerful lesson on what can happen when we carry as we climb.” —Washington Post, Best Nonfiction Book of the Year In the years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, women in the workplace still found themselves relegated to secretarial positions or locked out of jobs entirely. This was especially true in the news business, a backwater of male chauvinism where a woman might be lucky to get a foothold on the “women’s pages.” But when a pioneering nonprofit called National Public Radio came along in the 1970s, and the door to serious journalism opened a crack, four remarkable women came along and blew it off the hinges. Susan, Linda, Nina, & Cokie is journalist Lisa Napoli’s captivating account of these four women, their deep and enduring friendships, and the trail they blazed to becoming icons. They had radically different stories. Cokie Roberts was born into a political dynasty, roamed the halls of Congress as a child, and felt a tug toward public service. Susan Stamberg, who had lived in India with her husband who worked for the State Department, was the first woman to anchor a nightly news program and pressed for accommodations to balance work and home life. Linda Wertheimer, the daughter of shopkeepers in New Mexico, fought her way to a scholarship and a spot on-air. And Nina Totenberg, the network's legal affairs correspondent, invented a new way to cover the Supreme Court. Based on extensive interviews and calling on the author’s deep connections in news and public radio, Susan, Linda, Nina, & Cokie will be as beguiling and sharp as its formidable subjects.

Recommended by Oprah Daily

A stunning and revelatory memoir. (from Amazon)

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “It’s a hell of a story.” —The New York Times “A stunning and revelatory memoir.” —Oprah Daily From MSNBC anchor and instant New York Times bestselling author Katy Tur, a shocking and deeply personal memoir about a life spent chasing the news. When a box from her mother showed up on Katy Tur’s doorstep, months into the pandemic and just as she learned she was pregnant with her second child, she didn’t know what to expect. The box contained thousands of hours of video—the work of her pioneering helicopter journalist parents. They grew rich and famous for their aerial coverage of Madonna and Sean Penn’s secret wedding, the Reginald Denny beating in the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and O.J. Simpson’s notorious run in the white Bronco. To Tur, these family videos were an inheritance of sorts, and a reminder of who she was before her own breakout success as a reporter. In Rough Draft, Tur writes about her eccentric and volatile California childhood, punctuated by forest fires, earthquakes, and police chases—all seen from a thousand feet in the air. She recounts her complicated relationship with a father who was magnetic, ambitious, and, at times, frightening. And she charts her own survival from local reporter to globe-trotting foreign correspondent, running from her past. Tur also opens up for the first time about her struggles with burnout and impostor syndrome, her stumbles in the anchor chair, and her relationship with CBS Mornings anchor Tony Dokoupil (who quite possibly had a crazier childhood than she did). Intimate and captivating, Rough Draft explores the gift and curse of family legacy, examines the roles and responsibilities of the news, and asks the question: To what extent do we each get to write our own story?

Recommended by Oprah Daily

Adichie unflinchingly gazes into the black hole of grief as through a telescope, exposing intimate moments and public convulsions while tapping her roots to channel a spectrum of emotions . . . Candid, elegant . . . The writer meets the moment. (from Amazon)

Notes on Grief book cover

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie·You?

From the globally acclaimed, best-selling novelist and author of We Should All Be Feminists, a timely and deeply personal account of the loss of her father: “With raw eloquence, Notes on Grief … captures the bewildering messiness of loss in a society that requires serenity, when you’d rather just scream. Grief is impolite ... Adichie’s words put welcome, authentic voice to this most universal of emotions, which is also one of the most universally avoided” (The Washington Post). Notes on Grief is an exquisite work of meditation, remembrance, and hope, written in the wake of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's beloved father’s death in the summer of 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic raged around the world, and kept Adichie and her family members separated from one another, her father succumbed unexpectedly to complications of kidney failure. Expanding on her original New Yorker piece, Adichie shares how this loss shook her to her core. She writes about being one of the millions of people grieving this year; about the familial and cultural dimensions of grief and also about the loneliness and anger that are unavoidable in it. With signature precision of language, and glittering, devastating detail on the page—and never without touches of rich, honest humor—Adichie weaves together her own experience of her father’s death with threads of his life story, from his remarkable survival during the Biafran war, through a long career as a statistics professor, into the days of the pandemic in which he’d stay connected with his children and grandchildren over video chat from the family home in Abba, Nigeria. In the compact format of We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, Adichie delivers a gem of a book—a book that fundamentally connects us to one another as it probes one of the most universal human experiences. Notes on Grief is a book for this moment—a work readers will treasure and share now more than ever—and yet will prove durable and timeless, an indispensable addition to Adichie's canon.

Recommended by Oprah Daily

Ali’s strength and passion for food and her culture shines through. Ali passed away in 2019 from bone cancer, and this memoir is a tribute to the extraordinary life and impact she made in 29 years. (from Amazon)

Savor: A Chef's Hunger for More book cover

by Fatima Ali, Tarajia Morrell·You?

JAMES BEARD AWARD WINNER • A young chef whose dreams were cut short savors every last minute as she explores food and adventure, illness and mortality in Savor, an “inspiring” (The New York Times Book Review) memoir and family story that sweeps from Pakistan to Manhattan and beyond. “Ali’s strength and passion for food and her culture shines through. . . . This memoir is a tribute to the extraordinary life and impact she made in twenty-nine years.”—Oprah Daily (Best Books of the Year) Fatima Ali won the hearts of viewers as the Fan Favorite of Bravo’s Top Chef in season fifteen. Twenty-nine years old, she was a dynamic, boundary-breaking chef and a bright new voice for change in the food world. After the taping wrapped and before the show aired, Fati was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer. Not one to ever slow down or admit defeat, the star chef vowed to spend her final year traveling the world, eating delicious food, and making memories with her loved ones. But when her condition abruptly worsened, her plans were sidelined. She pivoted, determined to make her final days count as she worked to tell the story of a brown girl chef who set out to make a name for herself, her food, and her culture. Including writing from Fatima during her last months and contributions by her mother, Farezeh, and her collaborator, Tarajia Morrell, Savor is a deftly woven account and an inspiring ode to the food, family, and countries Fatima loved so much. Alternating between past and present, readers are transported back to Pakistan and the childhoods of both Fatima and Farezeh, each deeply affected by cultural barriers that shaped the course of their lives. From the rustic stalls of the outdoor markets of Karachi to the kitchen and dining room of Meadowood, the acclaimed three-star Michelin restaurant where she apprenticed, Fati reflects on her life and her identity as a chef, a daughter, and a queer woman butting up against traditional views. Savor is a triumphant memoir, at once an exploration of the sense of wonder that made Fatima so special and a shining testament to the resilience of the human spirit. At its core, it is a story about what it means to truly live, a profound and exquisite portrait of savoring every moment.

Recommended by Oprah Daily

The imagination within this book lends itself to so much baking fun. (from Amazon)

Double the cookie, double the fun. Ice cream sandwiches, whoopie pies, macarons, homemade Oreos—this irresistible baking book has recipes for all these delicious sandwich cookies and plenty more. From Browned Butter Blondie blog creator Heather Mubarak, Stuffed features 65 mix-and-match cookie sandwiches for every occasion and craving, including both sweet and savory bakes that range from childhood classics with a twist (Nutter Butters! Chipwiches!) to sophisticated, party-ready treats (Strawberry Shortcake Macarons, Parmesan Polenta Crackers with Chive Cream Cheese). A whole chapter dedicated to swirly buttercreams, smooth ganache, fruity jams, and more lets you experiment with different cookie-filling pairings to your heart's content. Or leave out the filling altogether for a super simple bake—the possibilities are endless! Home bakers of all levels will appreciate the flexible, choose-your-own-adventure format, while fans of Snacking Cakes, Dessert Person, and 100 Cookies will delight in a new trove of crave-worthy recipes. In a chunky package with a puffy case and a photo of every cookie sandwich, this book is stuffed with all the cookie recipes you'll ever need. EVERYONE LOVES COOKIES! Cookies are easy to bake and they're delicious. They're the perfect weeknight activity/dessert, a top seller at bake sales, a holiday favorite, and an all-around crowd pleaser. This book offers 65 original recipes that feature not one, but TWO cookies apiece. More is more! GREAT VALUE: Stuffed offers great overall value: 65 cookie sandwich recipes with recommended fillings + more than 30 filling recipes (frostings, jams, ice creams, curds, ganaches) in a separate chapter = endless possibilities for variation. Home bakers can follow the recipe exactly, mix and match cookies and fillings, or skip the filling altogether. With more than 80 photos, including a photo of every cookie sandwich, Stuffed delivers a lot of delicious bang for your buck. BUZZWORTHY AUTHOR: Heather is the creator of Browned Butter Blondie, a popular baking blog whose Instagram was named by BuzzFeed as one of the "30 Best Instagram Food Accounts You Should Be Following" alongside Nik Sharma's, Smitten Kitchen's, Molly Yeh's, and others'. She's a serious, experienced baker known for delicious recipes and beautifully styled photos. Her first book reflects all of this: well-tested, indulgent bakes with tons of gorgeous visuals to feast your eyes on. UNIQUE OFFERING: Despite the numerous cookie recipe books on the market, the sandwich cookie angle has never been done before. Unique in its versatility, Stuffed makes an excellent gift for home bakers no matter how many baking books they already own—you can be sure they don't have anything like this! Perfect for:Cookie lovers of all agesHome bakers of all levels: recipes are accessible and flexible, allowing for experimentationFans of Dorie's Cookies, 100 Cookies, Snacking Cakes, Dessert Person, or Zoë Bakes CakesFollowers of the Browned Butter Blondie blog or Instagram accountShoppers looking for a fun birthday, hostess, or holiday gift alongside a baking utensil, apron, or bars of chocolate

Recommended by Oprah Daily

For those who want to understand what’s happening to them and why grief is so confounding, this is a fascinating and comforting read. (from Amazon)

NPR SciFri Book Club Pick Next Big Idea Club's "Top 21 Psychology Books of 2022" Behavioral Scientist Notable Books of 2022 A renowned grief expert and neuroscientist shares groundbreaking discoveries about what happens in our brain when we grieve, providing a new paradigm for understanding love, loss, and learning. In The Grieving Brain, neuroscientist and psychologist Mary-Frances O’Connor, PhD, gives us a fascinating new window into one of the hallmark experiences of being human. O’Connor has devoted decades to researching the effects of grief on the brain, and in this book, she makes cutting-edge neuroscience accessible through her contagious enthusiasm, and guides us through how we encode love and grief. With love, our neurons help us form attachments to others; but, with loss, our brain must come to terms with where our loved ones went, or how to imagine a future without them. The Grieving Brain addresses: Why it’s so hard to understand that a loved one has died and is gone foreverWhy grief causes so many emotions—sadness, anger, blame, guilt, and yearningWhy grieving takes so longThe distinction between grief and prolonged griefWhy we ruminate so much after we lose a loved oneHow we go about restoring a meaningful life while grievingBased on O’Connor’s own trailblazing neuroimaging work, research in the field, and her real-life stories, The Grieving Brain combines storytelling, accessible science, and practical knowledge that will help us better understand what happens when we grieve and how to navigate loss with more ease and grace.

Recommended by Oprah Daily

If keeping up with chores feels like a full-time job, licensed therapist and How to Keep House While Drowning author KC Davis has a subtle, but radical, approach to help you manage the demands of housekeeping... In fact, she says homes do not have to look like the cover of an interior design magazine to serve their function—so embrace the mess. (from Amazon)

An NPR Best Book of 2022 USA TODAY Bestseller This revolutionary approach to cleaning and organizing helps free you from feeling ashamed or overwhelmed by a messy home. If you’re struggling to stay on top of your to-do list, you probably have a good reason: anxiety, fatigue, depression, ADHD, or lack of support. For therapist KC Davis, the birth of her second child triggered a stress-mess cycle. The more behind she felt, the less motivated she was to start. She didn’t fold a single piece of laundry for seven months. One life-changing realization restored her sanity—and the functionality of her home: You don’t work for your home; your home works for you. In other words, messiness is not a moral failing. A new sense of calm washed over her as she let go of the shame-based messaging that interpreted a pile of dirty laundry as “I can never keep up” and a chaotic kitchen as “I’m a bad mother.” Instead, she looked at unwashed clothes and thought, “I am alive,” and at stacks of dishes and thought, “I cooked my family dinner three nights in a row.” Building on this foundation of self-compassion, KC devised the powerful practical approach that has exploded in popularity through her TikTok account, @domesticblisters. The secret is to simplify your to-do list and to find creative workarounds that accommodate your limited time and energy. In this book, you’ll learn exactly how to customize your cleaning strategy and rebuild your relationship with your home, including: -How to see chores as kindnesses to your future self, not as a reflection of your worth -How to start by setting priorities -How to stagger tasks so you won’t procrastinate -How to clean in quick bursts within your existing daily routine -How to use creative shortcuts to transform a room from messy to functional With KC’s help, your home will feel like a sanctuary again. It will become a place to rest, even when things aren’t finished. You will move with ease, and peace and calm will edge out guilt, self-criticism, and endless checklists. They have no place here.

Recommended by Oprah Daily

A gorgeous collage of history and family lore, a revelatory window onto a Götterdämmerung that transformed the world forever. (from Amazon)

The INSTANT New York Times Bestseller Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award Winner of the Chautauqua Prize Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award Finalist for the Plutarch Award A New York Times Notable Book of 2021 A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A New York Times Critics' Top Pick of 2021 Wall Street Journal 10 Best Books of 2021 Time Magazine 100 Must-Read Books of 2021 Publishers Weekly Top Ten Books of 2021 An Economist Best Book of the Year A New York Post Best Book of the Year A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Best Book of the Year Oprah Daily Best New Books of August A New York Public Library Book of the Week In this “stunning literary achievement,” Donner chronicles the extraordinary life and brutal death of her great-great-aunt Mildred Harnack, the American leader of one of the largest underground resistance groups in Germany during WWII—“a page-turner story of espionage, love and betrayal” (Kai Bird, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography) Born and raised in Milwaukee, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment—a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin. She recruited working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution. Her coconspirators circulated through Berlin under the cover of night, slipping the leaflets into mailboxes, public restrooms, phone booths. When the first shots of the Second World War were fired, she became a spy, couriering top-secret intelligence to the Allies. On the eve of her escape to Sweden, she was ambushed by the Gestapo. At a Nazi military court, a panel of five judges sentenced her to six years at a prison camp, but Hitler overruled the decision and ordered her execution. On February 16, 1943, she was strapped to a guillotine and beheaded. Historians identify Mildred Harnack as the only American in the leadership of the German resistance, yet her remarkable story has remained almost unknown until now. Harnack’s great-great-niece Rebecca Donner draws on her extensive archival research in Germany, Russia, England, and the U.S. as well as newly uncovered documents in her family archive to produce this astonishing work of narrative nonfiction. Fusing elements of biography, real-life political thriller, and scholarly detective story, Donner brilliantly interweaves letters, diary entries, notes smuggled out of a Berlin prison, survivors’ testimony, and a trove of declassified intelligence documents into a powerful, epic story, reconstructing the moral courage of an enigmatic woman nearly erased by history.

Recommended by Oprah Daily

This book may have you believing in magic—and that you could be capable of it. Auryn, a professional witch and psychic, provides techniques, exercises, and ritual work that deepens intuition. (from Amazon)

Discover how to be a powerful psychic witch with this book on wielding energy and awakening your psychic senses. Psychic Witch explores the relationship between psychic ability and magick, interweaving them to create a strong foundation for accessing the full potential of your mind, body, and spirit. Mat Auryn reveals some of his most closely guarded tips, secrets, practices, and meditations so that you can master the perception and manipulation of energy. Featuring over ninety exercises and the inner tools you need to perform magick anywhere and at any time, Psychic Witch helps you tune in to yourself and the subtle energies of the world.

Recommended by Oprah Daily

Sanneh brings a contagious zeal for genres and cross-fertilizations to artists and records that are now playlists for an increasingly diverse America. (from Amazon)

One of Oprah Daily's 20 Favorite Books of 2021 • Selected as one of Pitchfork's Best Music Books of the Year “One of the best books of its kind in decades.” —The Wall Street Journal An epic achievement and a huge delight, the entire history of popular music over the past fifty years refracted through the big genres that have defined and dominated it: rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance music, and pop Kelefa Sanneh, one of the essential voices of our time on music and culture, has made a deep study of how popular music unites and divides us, charting the way genres become communities. In Major Labels, Sanneh distills a career’s worth of knowledge about music and musicians into a brilliant and omnivorous reckoning with popular music—as an art form (actually, a bunch of art forms), as a cultural and economic force, and as a tool that we use to build our identities. He explains the history of slow jams, the genius of Shania Twain, and why rappers are always getting in trouble. Sanneh shows how these genres have been defined by the tension between mainstream and outsider, between authenticity and phoniness, between good and bad, right and wrong. Throughout, race is a powerful touchstone: just as there have always been Black audiences and white audiences, with more or less overlap depending on the moment, there has been Black music and white music, constantly mixing and separating. Sanneh debunks cherished myths, reappraises beloved heroes, and upends familiar ideas of musical greatness, arguing that sometimes, the best popular music isn’t transcendent. Songs express our grudges as well as our hopes, and they are motivated by greed as well as idealism; music is a powerful tool for human connection, but also for human antagonism. This is a book about the music everyone loves, the music everyone hates, and the decades-long argument over which is which. The opposite of a modest proposal, Major Labels pays in full.

Recommended by Oprah Daily

One of the most accessible, practical, and interesting books on the topic to emerge since Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. (from Amazon)

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical—and accessible—plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.