Bent Northrop Memorial Library

In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending. Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes,...

"Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called 'calorie restriction,' eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, 'Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?'...

The best-selling author of The 4-Hour Workweek outlines a program for healthy living that draws on 15 years of research and interviews with leading doctors and health-care experts to offer insight into genetic factors, nutrition requirements and fitness practices.

"No matter what you eat, how much you exercise, how resilient your genes are, how skinny or young or wise you are, none of it matters if you're not breathing properly. There is nothing more essential to our health and wellbeing than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat 25,000 times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. Science journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure...

"The first sleep book by a leading scientific expert--Professor Matthew Walker, Director of UC Berkeley's Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab--reveals his groundbreaking exploration of sleep, explaining how we can harness its transformative power to change our lives for the better. Sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life, wellness, and longevity. Until very recently, science had no answer to the question of why we sleep,...

A revised and updated edition of Emily Nagoski's game-changing New York Times bestseller Come As You Are, featuring new information and research on mindfulness, desire, and pleasure that will radically transform your sex life.
For much of the 20th and 21st centuries, women's sexuality was an uncharted territory in science, studied far less frequently—and far less seriously—than its male counterpart.

That...

Emotions are like a rainbow--there is a color for every one we feel. And when the angry feeling starts to take over the rainbow, it's time for The Red Book! Simple activities, tips, and tricks help young readers whose angry red shines brightest in the rainbows of their colorful minds. They can turn the pages from front to back or back to front. They can use every single page or open the book to just one random page. Soon, the other colors of their...

Schaub challenged her family to join her on a quest to eat no added sugar for an entire year. Along the way, she uncovered the real costs of our sugar-heavy American diet-- including diabetes, obesity, and other health problems. Here is what "kicking the sugar addiction" looks like for a real American family.

"As women grow older, they contend with ageism, misogyny, and loss. Yet as Mary Pipher shows, most older women are deeply happy and filled with gratitude for the gifts of life. Their struggles help them grow into the authentic, empathetic, and wise people they have always wanted to be. In Women Rowing North, Pipher offers a timely examination of the cultural and developmental issues women face as they age. Drawing on her own experience as daughter,...

After his nationally televised panic attack on Good Morning America, Dan Harris knew he had to make some changes. He realized that the source of his problems was the very thing he always thought was his greatest asset: the incessant, insatiable voice in his head, which had propelled him through the ranks of a hypercompetitive business, but had also led him to make the profoundly stupid decisions that provoked his on-air freak-out. Eventually Harris...