|
|
Spirituality and Religion July 2026 |
|
|
|
|
|
Curious Coffins and Riveting Rituals: Death Practices Around the World
by Yy Liak
Death comes for us all. But how do we meet it? What do we do with the bodies of our dead, and how do we grieve for or celebrate our loved ones after they die? In the pages of this modern-day memento mori, you will discover some of the world's most fascinating death rituals, rendered in colorful and compelling detail. From mummification in ancient Egypt and post-mortem photography in Victorian England to Ghana's fantasy coffins and the rise of the lucrative embalming industry in the United States, the vibrant visual profiles in this book explore how humans throughout time have buried, preserved, mourned, honored, and remembered our dead. Author-illustrator YY Liak tackles this thorny theme with a deep compassion for the universal experiences of loss and grief, and an intrepid interest in the unique mortuary practices that have arisen across continents, cultures, and millennia. Whether you're casually curious about the macabre, or intimately experienced with death and its attendant customs, experiencing the sheer diversity of rituals and traditions can help you develop and deepen your own. After all, death rituals aren't actually for the dead; they're for the living--
|
|
|
|
Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being
by Manoush Zomorodi
A compelling, necessary and hopeful read for our busy, burned out, overwhelming and tech-addicted times. This book will make you want to move Brigid Schulte, New York Times bestselling author of Over Work From award-winning journalist and host of NPR's TED Radio Hour Manoush Zomorodi, a timely investigation into how screens and sitting are reshaping our bodiesand how a simple shift can change everything. In today's world, a perfectly normal day means sitting in front of a screen for eight to ten hours. Meeting after meeting. Task after task. Email after email. If we're not chained to our chairs, we're attached to our devices, looking down at our phones and plugging in headphones. And then we go home, sit down on the couch, and scroll some more before going to bed and doing it all over again. Even children are not exempt: Many hours of their social and academic lives are spent on a screen. We all know there has to be a better way--but what is it? In Body Electric, Manoush Zomorodi, host of NPR's TED Radio Hour and the Body Electric podcast, draws on expert interviews, cutting-edge research, and real experiences from tens of thousands of everyday participants in her own citizen experiment to reveal the surprising physiological costs of our digital existences, from posture problems and dwindling eyesight to disrupted breathing and weight gain, and shares scientifically-backed, easy-to-manage tactics and solutions for better health and well-being. Along the way, she also debunks myths and misconceptions about what helps and hurts us, offers useful insights into the labs, offices, schools, and homes where small shifts are making big difference, culminating in an easy-to-apply protocol that will get us all moving.
|
|
|
|
Unshaming: A Memoir of Recovery, Relapse, and What Comes After
by Jowita Bydlowska
From the national bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Drunk Mom, a powerful and transformative memoir exploring the intersection of addiction and shame. It's been over a decade since Jowita Bydlowska published her bestselling lightning rod of a memoir on overcoming alcohol addiction as a young mother. Both hailed and criticized for its no-holds-barred transparency, Drunk Mom was--and continues to be--refreshing and revelatory in its gritty exploration of addiction and relapse in the context of new parenthood, specifically from the experience of a woman. But what happens after the last page is turned, after the happy ending of an addiction the world assumes is safely in the rearview? When Bydlowska relapses after the success of her book, her overwhelming sense is one of shame. She struggles to reconcile the knowledge that she's helped bring comfort and hope to countless readers with her own frustration and mounting fear that the truth will only let others down. In prose that is by turns harsh and beautiful, tender and devastating, she writes about her ensuing spiral into alcoholism--and the climb back up and out. Unshaming is a raw, unsparing navigation of the intricacies of shame. With the same generosity and grim humour that made Drunk Mom such a standout, Bydlowska uses her own story as a vehicle to interrogate and challenge the narrative surrounding addiction, exploring the ways in which the conversation has both evolved and stayed the same over the last decade. Told with breathtaking narrative immediacy, Unshaming transcends the typical self-help memoir and punches through every expectation about what the perfect woman, mother, and writer in recovery should look like.
|
|
|
|
The Work of Our Hands: A Cree Meditation on the Real World
by Adrian Sutherland
In a world yearning for meaning, the path to spiritual renewal may lie through the discipline and freedom that only hard work can show us. Life is hard in Attawapiskat. Outsiders see the poverty and despair, the sagging, mold-filled houses with generations packed into each one. The substance abuse and the suicides. The decaying water system, that has come to symbolize the everyday injustice faced by First Nations communities. So why does Juno-nominated Cree musician Adrian Sutherland live there? The Work of Our Hands reveals a dimension of his own experience that headlines cannot capture and outsiders cannot see. The answer to why? is the answer to how? By exploring his world through the concrete experience of his hands, as they hold a guitar, a hammer, a rifle, or a cannister used to carry water to his family home, and the materials from which the traditional Cree sweat lodge is constructed, Sutherland not only paints a portrait of a world few of us have ever seen, he also lays out the way the world itself can teach us right and wrong as clearly as we can detect a musical note that is off-key. Everyday life in Attawapiskat means choosing a difficult path, learning from the contours and hard edges of the world, and striving to do what is right. That is freedom. How many of us can say we are free? Gritty, personal, and above all attuned to the meaning that we can discern only when we carefully hold the physical world in our hands, Sutherland's story pulls us away from the abstractions and false promises of the disembodied reality we have stumbled into to approach deeper truth and meaning.
|
|
|
|
How to Try Again: An Approachable Guide to Navigating Chaos and Making Change That Sticks
by Steve Kamb
Founder of Nerd Fitness, Steve Kamb's How To Try Again, a guide to help readers transform their lives by giving up more often, failing faster, and mastering the art of starting over.Some people wake up at 4 AM, run fifteen miles barefoot, and then meditate in an ice bath. THIS BOOK IS FOR THE REST OF US. Transform your life by quitting unhealthy expectations.Transform your life by failing compassionately. Transform your life by trying again differently. The false promises of optimized wellness and productivity are a recipe for personal blame and frustration. Fortunately, escaping this doom loop is Steve Kamb's superpower. Kamb has helped tens of millions make sustainable progress, even when life happens. Blending empathy, humor, and REAL advice, How to Try Again will help you navigate everyday chaos, restart without guilt, and make change that sticks. All while being delightfully, forgivably human.
|
|
|
|
The Snag: A Mother, a Forest, and Wild Grief
by Tessa McWatt
Winner of the 2026 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, NonfictionFinalist for the 2025 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Non-Fiction PrizeA Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year In her memoir The Snag, the acclaimed, award-winning author of Shame on Me, Tessa McWatt, takes on personal and collective grief, and the solace and inspiration to be found in connecting with nature--and each other. Every day, we hear about and experience griefs, large and small, in our families, friendships, communities, and worldwide. The grief of a loved one passing. The grief of a way of life ceasing to exist. The grief of global pandemic, war, climate collapse. As her mother's dementia advances and she can no longer live independently, Tessa McWatt confronts personal and political losses, and finds herself wandering in a forest asking, how do we grieve? And what can we learn from nature and those whose communities are rooted in nature about not only how to grieve but also how to live? From the newest seedling to the oldest snag in the forest, there is meaning to be found in every stage of a tree's life, all of which contribute to a thriving forest community. In this forest thinking, Tessa begins to find answers to her questions about how to live (for each other), how to grieve (radically), and how to die (with love and connection). The Snag is an essential book about living and dancing and singing and praying, even in the face of unimaginable sadness, and in this way, growing together and supporting one another, like the trees in the forest.
|
|
|
|
The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning
by Robert Wright
From bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Robert Wright comes a sweeping new view of artificial intelligence--as an evolutionary force that will pose deep political and spiritual challenges and could, in the process, give our species a unifying sense of purpose. The God Test is the first book to capture the power behind the AI revolution--to clearly explain the breakthroughs that sparked the current wave of advance and compellingly show why this wave will grow in magnitude and meaning. Written by one of our foremost public intellectuals, and informed by his decades of chronicling the digital age, the book argues that we are about to witness the most abruptly dramatic social transformation in the history of our species. Wright says that to truly understand this moment in technological history, we need to expand our perspective beyond the last century or even the whole history of technology and look back across billions of years of life on Earth. The advance of AI, he argues, is driven by evolutionary dynamics like those that led to intelligent life in the first place. And understanding those dynamics can empower us to confront our climactic challenge: Can we muster the political, moral, and even spiritual resources needed to guide this technology wisely? If we fail, the consequences for the whole planet could be grave. But if we meet the challenge--if we pass the God test--we can live in a world where humanity thrives, finding not just happiness but deeper meaning and purpose. The very machines that might otherwise imperil or oppress us can enrich us, helping us transcend the psychological impediments to human concord and fulfillment.
|
|
|
|
A History of Astrology, Divination and Prophecy
by DK
Traces the journey of astrology from its roots in the 3rd century BCE, when ancient Mesopotamians studied celestial bodies with the aim of predicting the future, and its development into the distinct branches of Eastern astrology, Hindu (Vedic) astrology, and Western astrology that we know today. Learn about the numerous techniques that have been devised over the centuries to predict the future--from the use of yarrow stalks in the I Ching more than 2,500 years ago to methods still practiced today, such as tarot, crystals, palmistry, and numerology. Discover the story of influential and learned seers, from the oracles of ancient Greece to the 16th-century French philosopher and mystic Nostradamus, ... and explore how our fear of and fascination with astrology, divination, prediction, and prophecy have been depicted in art and literature--
|
|
|
|
Forgotten: Searching for Palestine's Hidden Places and Lost Memorials
by Raja Shehadeh
A profound meditation on memory and the preservation of Palestinian heritage, from the award-winning author of We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I. Forgotten uncovers the hidden or neglected memorials and places in historic Palestine--now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories--and what they might tell us about the land and the people who live on our small slip of earth between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. From ancient city ruins to the Nabi 'Ukkasha mosque and tomb, acclaimed writers and researchers Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson ask: what has been memorialized, and what lies unseen, abandoned, or erased--and why? Whether standing on a high cliff overlooking Lebanon or at the lowest land-based elevation on earth at the Dead Sea, they explore lost connections in a fragmented land. In elegiac, elegant prose, Shehadeh and Johnson grapple not only with questions of Israeli resistance to acknowledging the Nakba--the 1948 catastrophe for Palestinians--but also with the complicated history of Palestinian commemoration today--Provided by publisher.
|
|
Contact your librarian for more great books!
|
|
|
|
|
|