SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE

People call it downshifting, decluttering, voluntary simplicity, or simply cutting back. Whatever they call it, more and more people are simplifying their lives. The reasons for this are many: environmental or financial concerns, spiritual or therapeutic reasons. Three recent books from independent publishers provide information for people who want to embark on a simpler lifestyle or who are looking for new ideas on how to continue.

Each of these books has the potential to make readers look closely at their lives and the decisions they make.

In The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community (Nolo, 978-1-4133-1021-4) attorneys Janelle Orsi and Emily Doskow offer ways for readers to save time and money and reduce their carbon footprint by sharing.

“We first learn about sharing as children, when we are taught to share our toys with others,” the authors write. “Over time, most of us share less--even though most of us also have more ‘toys’ now than we did when we were young.”

The book’s opening chapters help readers think about why they want to share, and what they could share. For example, to save money, readers could share child care with a neighbor; to save time they could start a neighborhood home improvement group; to help save the planet they could start a community food garden. The book then lists tangible items that can be shared, including bicycles, kayaks, expensive jewelry, season tickets to sports games or the theater, storage space, and magazine subscriptions.

Next, Orsi and Doskow talk about how to get started. Readers who hope to share with their neighbors must first get close to them. The authors provide a sample survey to distribute and instructions for planning a block party so neighbors can get to know each other.

The book also covers the language that should be included in every sharing agreement regarding the size of the sharing group, ownership issues, costs, and time limits. Chapters cover specific sharing arrangements including co-housing, sharing household goods, sharing care, sharing transportation, and sharing at work.

Simpler Living, Compassionate Life: A Christian Perspective (Morehouse Publishing, 978-0-8192-2369-2) is a collection of essays and articles from writers including Wendell Berry, Terry Tempest Williams, and Cecile Andrews. The pieces, which are written from a Christian worldview, discuss a variety of topics, from ways to reduce consumption and increase free time to developing food shopping habits that are more in tune with nature.

In “The Big Economy, the Great Economy,” Michael Schut, who compiled and edited this anthology, contrasts the “Great Economy” of the world to the “Big Economy” of human life, showing readers that they are out of line with each other. The Great Economy is highly local and a closed system. A tree, Schut writes, “does not and cannot usurp nutrients from soil thousands of miles away.” Nature also reuses everything it consumes. “All sloughed off life-forms become food for another life-form,” he writes. Human waste, however, is not food and is “released” rather than reused. In nature, nothing can be “thrown away,” because there is no “away.”

Another piece, by Juliet Schor, deals with the fact that although people--Americans in particular--have more possessions than we did in past decades, we work longer hours to afford them. Although we take vacations and personal days, we require them after the stress of working.

The book will help readers go beyond recycling and smart commuting, and encourage them to change the way they think about their place in the world and how God intended them to conduct their lives.

Less is More: Meditations on Simplicity, Balance, and Real Abundance (Conari Press, 978-1-57324-453-4) is a gift book with photography by Daniel Talbott and short pieces by author Mina Parker that reflect on some of the principles of simplicity: quiet, frugality, resourcefulness.

Parker uses anecdotes and examples from her own life to illustrate each point, which allows each reflection to translate into real life. In “Just Enough,” the author writes about how overwhelmed she becomes by long to-do lists and multiple committee meetings. “Do what you can do. No more, no less. That’s my new mantra,” she writes. She recommends that readers take on only projects that mean something to them, or that they want to do. Elsewhere, she discusses how running errands and performing chores at a slower pace can produce better results than rushing through them.

This lovely book would make a thoughtful gift for a loved one who needs to be reminded to take time to smell the roses.

by Whitney Hallberg, Managing Editor

TOOLS OF CHANGE IN FRANKFURT

The Frankfurt Book Fair and O’Reilly Media are teaming up to bring the most important US conference on publishing innovation to Europe, the Tools of Change Conference. On 13 October 2009, just one day before the start of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the international publishing industry will gather in Frankfurt to discuss the latest technological developments and sustainable business models. For a full list of speakers and to register, please visit www.tocfrankfurt.com.

BOOK REVIEW

The End of Fear: A Spiritual Path for Realists
by Richard Schaub
(Hay House, 978-1-4019-2184-2)

The plaintive cry, “Is this all there is?” may come, according to authors Richard and Bon-ney Schaub, when the uneasy realization that “we live on borrowed time” brings with it the aching reminder that something that was “supposed to have happened” has not yet occurred; a significant, symbolic birthday may give notice to the fact that “life no longer stretches out into an end-less horizon of possibilities.” Daily events point to the fact of life’s fragility and imperma-nence, and the “assumption of immortality,” so common to the adolescent years, has become a faint memory. The Buddha himself was shocked into his spiritual quest by such awareness.

The authors have identified the predominant Western world-views that attempt to deny impermanence and vulnerability, and offer cogent reasoning as to why these attempts must fail. The first, religion, says that “Change, loss, and death happen, yes—but they are all happening within God’s world, so there is ultimately nothing to fear.” The Schaubs describe this as “a supremely attractive view, one that captivates the hearts and minds of millions around the world.” But, they say, this view only holds up as long as one can continue to believe in a “benevolent God,” a belief that is of-ten eroded by world, or personal, events; in Europe, the horrors of World War II and the deaths of over 40 million people posed a challenge to the belief in a protective God. The second world-view, that of the skeptic, holds that one’s own mind has the power to perceive the truth about life. This view is also flawed be-cause it ignores the limits imposed by one’s subjectivity, lack of knowledge, and faulty perceptions. The third, that of the materialist, collapses when one observes that those who have created shelter for them-selves in their wealth may see their vast fortunes wiped out; those who hide in relationships may lose lovers and friends; those obsessed with physical beauty and fitness also age, suffer, and die.

The Schaubs ask, “Where do you turn when your primary defense has left you and the answers it gave you have failed?” Although they recognize that one could not function if overwhelmed by awareness of the fragility of one’s own life, they assert that the instinct to deny one’s vulnerability takes another kind of toll, resulting in failed relationships and self-soothing addictions to food, alcohol, drugs, or sex. They suggest taking a close, compassionate, and grateful look at one’s own fear, recognizing that it is part of the survival mechanism of the species, and an honest response to the fact that one’s life is “subject to change and loss at any moment.” Rather than offering magical solutions or illusory protection, the Schaubs offer the “Way of Vulnerability,” a practice that faces the fact of the fragility and impermanence of all living beings with courage and serenity. They offer an exercise to help soften and strip away defenses and denial of one’s impermanent state, suggesting that one go about the day looking at each human being as “a soul briefly here.” Such practice leads to the realization that one inhabits a community of impermanence, and that accepting one’s full membership in this community allows one to feel “more human, more soulful, more real,” and ex-perience the world as at once more painful and more precious.

The authors present research that gives evidence of a brain-state called “absolute unitary being,” and confirms that one’s innate awareness that “there is more to life” is accurate; further research may take the mystery out of higher-level brain functioning and demonstrate how one can access it to enhance one’s life. Sharing stories of people who have experienced life-threatening or near-death events and have come to the realization that, “Beyond all the change and loss in life, the ground of being is love.” The authors suggest that death has no power over one who has experienced this love, and that even a momentary taste of it can change a life.

Richard Schaub, PhD, and his wife Bonney Gulino Schaub, RN, MS, are international teachers of professional and self-development, and serve as guides on sacred art and meditation retreats. They co-founded the New York Psychosynthesis Institute and are on the faculty of the Italian Society for Psychosynthesis Therapy in Florence. They are the authors of Dante’s Path, and Healing Addictions: The Vulnerability Model of Recovery; Bonney Schaub is a contributor to Holistic Nursing: A Handbook for Practice. (March)

Reviewed by Kristine Morris

Read more reviews at www.forewordmagazine.com.

AUTHOR PAGES: CLARE V. MCKANNA, JR.

The Author Pages feature nearly 100 interviews with authors whose work has been reviewed in ForeWord magazine. Clare V. McKanna, Jr., author of The Court Martial of the Apache Kid (Texas Tech University Press, 978-0-89672-652-9) writes:

Normally, I will sit down and write from five to ten pages at a time. Back in 1985, when I first tried this approach, I was able to write eleven pages the first day and complete a rough draft of the article on “The Trial of ‘Indian Joe’” in three days. My feeling is you cannot write until you have the information fixed firmly in your mind. I have used this method for every book I have ever written and it works for me. I have always loved the writing process probably because my system makes it easy.

Visit ForeWord’s Author Pages to read more about the authors reviewed in the pages of ForeWord.

This week at Shelf Space, Pam Coughlan sorts through the Book Buzz.

At Publishing Matters, Eugene Schwartz talks about Google and the future for bookstores and libraries.

At Publishing Insider, Sara Dobie answers questions from readers in her fourth and final blog post at Publishing Insider.

Visit www.forewordmagazine.com for publishing news, book reviews, and the ForeWord Book Club.

FOREWORD FOOTNOTES

Art/ Nature/Botany. RARE BOTANICAL LEGACY: THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF RUBY AND ARTHUR VAN DEVENTER edited by Rick Bennett and Susan Calla (Heyday Books, 154 pages, hardcover, $35.00, 978-1-59714-116-1): Ruby and Arthur Van Deventer, encouraged by botanist Willis Linn Jepson, collected thousands of botanical specimens from Del Norte County in northwest California from the 1930s to the 1970s. Ruby completed a manuscript of the first comprehensive guide to flora from the area, and Arthur illustrated it with watercolor paintings. This book includes 120 of Arthur’s paintings, with a long historical essay by David Rains Wallace.

Biography & Autobiography. TROTSKY: A BIOGRAPHY by Robert Service (Harvard University Press, 608 pages, hardcover, $35.00, 978-0-674-03615-4): the third book in Service’s trilogy on the founding figures of the Soviet Union. Using new sources, Service offers new insight into Trotsky’s personality and historical role. Perhaps the least studied of Soviet revolutionaries, Trotsky has long been seen as a “pure” revolutionary and intellect. This book rounds out our knowledge of him.

Body, Mind & Spirit/Religion. KABBALAH FOR INNER PEACE: IMAGERY AND INSIGHTS TO GUIDE YOU THROUGH YOUR DAY by Gerald Epstein (ACMI Press, 174 pages, softcover, $20.00, 978-1-883148-08-9): author and pioneer in the medical use of mental imagery, Epstein writes, “the anxiety, pain, self-doubt, indecisiveness, regret, and other imbalances that we experience daily…contribute to our emotional, mental, and physical suffering.” This book offers mental imagery exercises to use throughout the day to increase awareness, balance, and peace. Based on the mystical Jewish tradition of Visionary Kabbalah.

Education. TEACHING WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW by Therese Huston (Harvard University Press, 314 pages, hardcover, $24.95, 978-0-674-03580-5): what everyone in academia knows but hates to admit: you end up teaching topics you never gave any thought to. This book encourages faculty to think of themselves as learners, and offers strategies for preparation, delivery, and engaging students in a new topic.

Family & Relationships. PIECES OF ME: WHO DO I WANT TO BE? VOICES FOR AND BY ADOPTED TEENS edited by Bert Ballard (EMK Press, 176 pages, softcover, $24.95, 978-0-972624442): a collection of articles, poetry, prose, and artwork from adoptees and the people who love them. This is meant for the adopted teen, who may be struggling with issues of identity, personal history, cultural differences, and fitting in with a new family, in addition to the usual challenges of being a teenager.

Health & Fitness. SURVIVING THE CANCER SYSTEM: AN EMPOWERING GUIDE TO TAKING CONTROL OF YOUR CARE by Mark Fesen (AMACOM, 288 pages, softcover, $18.95, 978-0-814413562): an experienced oncologist, Fesen’s work in rural Kansas has informed his view of the cancer patient’s entire experience, including uncooperative insurance carriers and long travel distances to obtain treatment. As Fesen writes, “Cancer is not only a disease. It is a highly sophisticated, multifaceted, multibillion dollar system.” This book is his advice on how to navigate the system for better care.

Health & Fitness. NANA, WHAT’S CANCER? By Beverlye Human Fead and Tess Hamermesh (American Cancer Society, 64 pages, hardcover, $14.95, 978-1-60443-010-3): written by a cancer survivor and her granddaughter, this is an illustrated conversation between the two about the illness, its impact, and about communication. This is part of American Cancer Society’s Books for Children series, and its intended audience is children ages 8-12 and adults who need a gentle but forthright teaching tool.

Philosophy. WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER IRREVERENT ESSAYS by Mark Twain, edited by S.T. Joshi (Prometheus Books, 230 pages, softcover, $16.95, 978-1-59102-685-3): unique collection of Twain’s essays, previously available in various academic publications, concerning the nature of man and religion. The editor’s introduction gives an overview of Twain’s perspectives on religion and its various metaphysical, moral, and political claims. The title essay, “What is Man?” (1906) is written as a dialogue between Old Man and Young Man, and is drenched in Twain’s inimitable satiric wit. Enjoyable and thought-provoking as only Twain can be.

Photography. THE GHOSTS OF HARLEM: SESSIONS WITH JAZZ LEGENDS by Hank O’Neal (Vanderbilt University Press, 488 pages, CD included, hardcover, $xx, 978-0-8265-1627-5): Photographer O’Neal interviewed forty-two jazz legends from 1985 to 2007; this book presents those interviews and photos, and other photographic memorabilia of Harlem and jazz history. Includes a CD with recordings of seventeen artists. The musicians include Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Tate, Doc Cheatham, and others.

Poetry. IN PRAISE OF FALLING by Cheryl Dumesnil (University of Pittsburgh Press, 88 pages, softcover, $14.95, 978-0-8229-6041-6): winner of the press’s 2008 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, this collection’s theme is encapsulated in its epigraph, the Zen proverb, “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” Written in contemporary, accessible language, Dumesnil’s poems address the beauty and heartbreak of the lives around her in clear image and generous impulse. Perhaps the reader, like the subjects in Dumesnil’s poems, is “Yes, chosen. Yes, saved.”

Religion. CHRISTIAN AMERICA AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD by Richard T. Hughes with foreword by Brian McLaren (University of Illinois Press, 232 pages, hardcover, $29.95, 978-0-252-03285-1): a careful consideration of the idea of Christian America, comparing U.S. culture, religion, and politics to the biblical vision of the kingdom of God. Analyzing Scripture and U.S. history, Hughes explores the distance between Biblical values and the values of an empire that promotes war, oppression, and wealth. Hughes also encourages Christians to act in ways that are consistent with their faith, especially in the public realm.

Sports & Recreation. JEET KUNE DO: THE ARSENAL OF SELF-EXPRESSION by Teri Tom with Foreword by Ted Wong (Tuttle Publishing, 208 pages, softcover, $29.95, 978-0-8048-3932-7): the late Bruce Lee created Jeet Kune Do (JKD), an original martial art founded on a few basic principles, inspired both by Eastern martial arts and Western fighters. “Refined mechanics, exacting execution, incredible power—this is JKD,” writes Ted Wong, who now teaches the art. This is Teri Tom’s second book on the art. Its detailed explanations and photographic illustrations make this a valuable teaching tool.

by Teresa Scollon, Book Review Editor

RECENTLY RELEASED IN AUDIO

Fiction. 2666 by Roberto Bolaño. Unabridged. Blackstone Audio, 978-1-4332-7948-5.

Fiction. THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES by Tom Wolfe. Unabridged. Blackstone Audio, 978-1-4332-8841-8.

Fiction. BROTHERS by Yu Hua. Unabridged. Recorded Books, 978-1-4361-7050-5.

Fiction. ROUND ROBIN by Jennifer Chiaverini. Unabridged. Recorded Books, 978-1-4281-7641-6.

Fiction/Mystery. THE DARK HORSE by Craig Johnson. Unabridged. Recorded Books, 978-1-4407-1599-0.

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