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The Interior Castle
by Ann HulbertAn important moment in American literary history takes life in this stunning biography of Jean Stafford, one of the most successful, admired--and troubled--of the brilliant and influential midcentury circle of writers and critics that included Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon, Peter Taylor, Delmore Schwartz, Randall Jarrell, and Robert Lowell, Stafford's first husband. Ann Hulbert shows us how Stafford, raised in Colorado, the daughter of a failed writer of Westerns, came of literary age in the East, yet fiercely maintained her connection with her provincial background, forging the unique style that marked her highly acclaimed first novel, Boston Adventure; her Masterpiece, The Mountain Lion; her third novel, The Catherine Wheel; and the stories she published in The New Yorker and elsewhere, which were honored in 1970 with a Pulitzer Prize. We follow Stafford through the early experiences to which she returned again and again in her fiction, and which helped shape her disenchanted vision--her father's sudden loss of his fortune; her shame as an adolescent, living in a boardinghouse in Boulder run by her mother; her aesthetic experimentation as a member of the intellectually maverick "Barbarians" at the University of Colorado; her exciting but troubling Wanderjahr in Nazi Germany, where she watched civilization crumbling. We see her take her place as a forceful, attractive, witty, yet also insecure woman among a group of spirited young writers who were learning from and challenging their older mentors--the increasingly powerful Southern critics and the Partisan Review circle in New York. With her marriage to Lowell at twenty-four, she embarked on a feverishly creative but ill-fated coursethat held auguries of his and his fellow poets' tragic paths: she struggled with Catholicism, confronted domestic violence, battled with alcoholism and mental instability, and throughout it all wrote formally impeccable fiction. And we see her as she finds some happiness with her third husband, the writer A. J. Liebling, part of the New Yorker world that had become her home in the late 1940s. Throughout, we are made aware of Stafford's constant search for a bastion of order--a safe place, an escape from the unsettling sense of vulnerability that engulfed her, an interior castle--from which to approach her life and her art.
Oracle of Lost Causes: John Newman Edwards and His Never-Ending Civil War
by Matthew Christopher HulbertJohn Newman Edwards was a soldier, a father, a husband, and a noted author. He was also a virulent alcoholic, a duelist, a culture warrior, and a man perpetually at war with the modernizing world around him. From the sectional crisis of his boyhood and the battlefields of the western borderlands to the final days of the Second Mexican Empire and then back to a United States profoundly changed by the Civil War, Oracle of Lost Causes chronicles Edwards&’s lifelong quest to preserve a mythical version of the Old World—replete with aristocrats, knights, damsels, and slaves—in North America. This odyssey through nineteenth-century American politics and culture involved the likes of guerrilla chieftains William Clarke Quantrill and &“Bloody Bill&” Anderson, notorious outlaws Frank and Jesse James, Confederate general Joseph Orville Shelby, and even Emperor Maximilian I and Empress Charlotte of Mexico. It is the story of a man who experienced Confederate defeat not once but twice, and how he sought to shape and weaponize the memory of those grievous losses. Historian Matthew Christopher Hulbert ultimately reveals how the Civil War determined not only the future of the vast West but also the extent to which the conflict was part of a broader, international sequence of sociopolitical uprisings.
No-Man's Lands: One Man's Odyssey Through the Odyssey
by Scott HulerWhen NPR contributor Scott Huler made one last attempt to get through James Joyce's Ulysses, he had no idea it would launch an obsession with the book's inspiration, the ancient Greek epic: The Odyssey and the lonely homebound voyage of its Everyman hero, Odysseus.
Our Mothers Ourselves: Six women from across the world tell their mothers' stories
by Cathy HullIn a world shaken by the great upheavals of World War and the collapse of Empire, six women from different corners of the world transcend the constraints of their different backgrounds. Their physical and emotional migrations open the way to personal journeys which redefine them and enable their daughters to live lives of greater personal freedom and fulfillment. This book tells the stories of our mothers, six ordinary women who undertook extraordinary journeys. It is a tribute and an expression of love.
Our Man Down in Havana: The True Cold War Story Behind Graham Greene's Espionage Satire
by Christopher HullExploring the backstory that led to the writing of Graham Greene's beloved satirical spy novel, Our Man Down in Havana evokes this pivotal time and place in the author's life. When U.S. immigration authorities deported Graham Greene from Puerto Rico in 1954, the British author made an unplanned visit to Havana and discovered that “every vice was permissible and every trade possible” in a Caribbean fleshpot of mafia-run casinos and nude revues. The former MI6 officer had stumbled upon the ideal setting for a comic espionage story. Three years later, he returned in the midst of Fidel Castro’s guerrilla insurgency against a U.S.-backed dictator to begin writing his iconic novel Our Man in Havana. Twelve weeks after its publication, the Cuban Revolution triumphed in January 1959, soon transforming a capitalist playground into a communist stronghold. Combining biography, history, and politics, Our Man Down in Havana investigates the real story behind Greene’s fictional one. This includes his many visits to a pleasure island that became a revolutionary island, turning his chance involvement into a political commitment. His Cuban novel describes an amateur agent who dupes his intelligence chiefs with invented reports about “concrete platforms and unidentifiable pieces of giant machinery.” With eerie prescience, Greene’s satirical tale had foretold the Cold War’s most perilous episode, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Exploiting a wealth of archival material and interviews with key protagonists, Our Man Down in Havana delves into the story behind and beyond the author’s prophetic Cuban tale, focusing on one slice of Greene’s manic life: a single novel and its complex history.
The Pet Psychic
by Joanne HullJoanne Hull always knew there was something that made her different from other children. Whilst other girls her age were playing with dolls, Joanne was busy collecting any stray animal that came her way, until her parent’s backyard resembled a zoo. As she grew older she realised that she was developing incredible powers that allowed her to psychically connect with, and talk to, animals. For the last ten years Joanne has used the animal spirit world to help owners across the country understand troubled pets, find missing ones and, most amazingly, contact those we’ve lost to the other side. Joanne has given hundreds of spine-chillingly accurate readings – and for the first time she shares the sometimes heart-warming, sometimes heart-breaking, but always extraordinary stories that have formed her life as The Pet Psychic.
Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness
by John M. HullThis calmly eloquent, deeply perceptive memoir of a writer and theologian who lost his vision in his mid-forties conveys the unimaginable and ushers its readers into the world of blindness--a world in which the faces of loved ones recede into memory or speculation, while the presence of God becomes supremely important.
Rosa Parks: Civil Rights Leader (Black Americans of Achievement Legacy Edition)
by Mary Hull Gloria Blakely Dale Evva GelfandOn December 1, 1955, seamstress Rosa Parks took a stand by refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. Her defiance against an unjust system triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped spark the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Parks demonstrated the effectiveness of unified peaceful protests, and throughout her life she advocated an end to violence, discrimination, and injustice, eventually establishing the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. Rosa Parks, Updated Edition, includes fresh insights on the life and legacy of the woman known as the "mother of the civil rights movement."
The Wonder Years: My Life & Times with Stevie Wonder
by Ted Hull Paula L. StahelTed Hull was not a singer or a musician, however he was very involved in Stevie Wonder's life and Motown. Ted was Stevie's teacher, mentor and companion.
All Hell Broke Loose: Experiences of Young People During the Armistice Day 1940 Blizzard
by William H. Hull(Introduction) After going through all the thousands of hours it takes to write a book, an author sometimes asks himself why he did it? That's a fair question. I wasn't even in the state of Minnesota on that fateful day of November 11, 1940. I was a graduate student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and a steady reader of the Dallas Morning News. The story must have been covered by that fine newspaper but, if so, it made no impression on me. Later when I became a Minnesotan I began to hear stories of this horrible storm that killed so many people. Through the 39 years I have considered myself a Minnesotan I have frequently thought what a shame that all of those stories about this particular storm weren't written, so I decided to act for the good of history and before these people died. After all, that storm was 45 years ago at this writing. It seemed to me that people would want to know what it was like to be living on a farm with cattle and chickens to take care of, to be facing possible death on a small island in the Mississippi while duck hunting, to fight for survival in snow that seemed to be up to the armpits in northern Minnesota while deer hunting, and to be immovably caught in the "loop" of a big city like Minneapolis or St. Paul with no place to spend the night and no way to get home. These are the experiences about which these many Minnesotans have written. Speaking for all of them, I hope you enjoy their tales and realize how agonizing it was for many people- those who were fortunate enough to live through it. My only regret is that so many of the 500 + experiences received and edited had to be eliminated to restrict the physical size of the book. After repeatedly selecting from the anecdotes received, the final cutting eliminated sixty percent of those I wished to include. William Hull
Erie Canal Sings, The: A Musical History of New York's Grand Waterway
by Bill HullfishLife working along the banks of the Erie Canal is preserved in the songs of America's rich musical history. Thomas Allen's "Low Bridge, Everybody Down" has achieved iconic status in the American songbook, but its true story has never been told until now. Erie songs such as "The E-ri-e Is a-Risin'" would transform into "The C&O Is a-Risin'" as the song culture spread among a network of other canals, including the Chesapeake and Ohio and the Pennsylvania Main Line. As motors replaced mules and railroads emerged, the canal song tradition continued on Broadway stages and in folk music recordings. Author Bill Hullfish takes readers on a musical journey along New York's historic Erie Canal.
Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir
by Tessa Hulls"Feeding Ghosts reminds us how much the personal is political . . . an audacious, awe-inspiring feat. For me, it was an essential read." —Ling Ma, author of Bliss MontageAn astonishing, deeply moving graphic memoir about three generations of Chinese women, exploring love, grief, exile, and identity.In her evocative, genre-defying graphic memoir, Tessa Hulls tells the story of three generations of women in her family: her Chinese grandmother, Sun Yi; her mother, Rose; and herself.Sun Yi was a Shanghai journalist caught in the political crosshairs of the 1949 Communist victory. After eight years of government harassment, she fled to Hong Kong with her daughter. Upon arrival, Sun Yi wrote a bestselling memoir about her persecution and survival, used the proceeds to put Rose in an elite boarding school—and promptly had a breakdown that left her committed to a mental institution. Rose eventually came to the United States on a scholarship and brought Sun Yi to live with her.Tessa watched her mother care for Sun Yi, both of them struggling under the weight of Sun Yi's unexamined trauma and mental illness. Vowing to escape her mother’s smothering fear, Tessa left home and traveled to the farthest-flung corners of the globe (Antarctica). But at the age of thirty, it starts to feel less like freedom and more like running away, and she returns home to face the history that shaped her family.Extensively researched and gorgeously rendered, Feeding Ghosts is Hulls’s homecoming, a vivid journey into the beating heart of one family, set against the dark backdrop of Chinese history. By turns fascinating and heartbreaking, inventive and poignant, Feeding Ghosts exposes the fear and trauma that haunt generations, and the love that holds them together.
Feeding Ghosts: A Memoir
by Tessa HullsPersepolis meets Crying in H Mart in this astonishing, deeply moving graphic memoir of three generations of women, exploring love, grief, exile, identity, and forgiveness.In her evocative, genre-defying graphic memoir, Tessa Hulls tells the story of three generations of women: her grandmother, Sun Yi; her mother, Rose; and herself.Sun Yi was a Shanghai journalist caught in the political crosshairs of the 1949 Communist victory in China. After fleeing to Hong Kong with her young daughter, Sun Yi wrote a bestselling memoir about her persecution and survival—then promptly had a breakdown that left her committed to a mental institution.Growing up, Tessa watches her mother care for Sun Yi, both of them struggling under the weight of Sun Yi&’s unexamined trauma and mental illness. Vowing to escape her mother&’s smothering fear, Tessa leaves home and travels to the farthest, most remote corners of the globe. But once she turns thirty, her roaming begins to feel less like freedom and more like running away, so she returns to face the history that shaped her family.Extensively researched and gorgeously rendered, Feeding Ghosts is Tessa&’s homecoming, a vivid journey into the beating heart of one family, set against the dark backdrop of modern Chinese history. By turns fascinating and heartbreaking, inventive and poignant, Feeding Ghosts exposes the fear and trauma that haunt generations, and the love that holds them together.
Sex, Love, and Fashion
by Bruce HulseYou may think you've heard everything about the modeling industry from Tyra Banks, but Sex, Love, and Fashion is the real behind-the-scenes scoop, from a true insider who is considered one of the top ten male models of all time. In the glamorous galaxy of modeling, Bruce Hulse was a supernova. Taken under the wing of famed photographer Bruce Weber as a fledgling model, Hulse went on to collaborate with the industry's biggest names as one of the world's top male models. In the 1980s and 1990s, the exciting world of top models was filled with sex, drugs, and countless other indulgences. Bruce Hulse is one of the most recognizable figures of that time; from his iconic Calvin Klein and Levi's ads to his appearance on the cover of GQ, his face defined an era. In Sex, Love, and Fashion, Bruce shares the true stories of his globe-trotting career working with some of the industry's biggest names-Calvin Klein, Janice Dickinson, Herb Ritts, Elle Macpherson, Andie MacDowell, Paulina Porizkova, and Cindy Crawford among them-and also details the exhilarating successes and painful failures he experienced on his way to the top. Bruce Hulse pulls back the curtain on the life of an international supermodel and reveals everything the cameras don't expose. Sex, Love, and Fashion is a dishy, sexy, and honest look at what really happens to beautiful people playing in the often decadent fields of fashion glory.
Three Book Sebald Set: The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, and Vertigo
by Michael Hulse W. G. SebaldThe masterworks of W. G. Sebald, now in gorgeous new covers by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund New Directions is delighted to announce beautiful new editions of these three classic Sebald novels, including his two greatest works, The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn. All three novels are distinguished by their translations, every line of which Sebald himself made pitch-perfect, slaving to carry into English all his essential elements: the shadows, the lambent fallings-back, nineteenth-century Germanic undertones, tragic elegiac notes, and his unique, quiet wit.
Vertigo
by Michael Hulse W. G. SebaldThe beguiling first novel by W. G. Sebald, one of the most enormously acclaimed European writers of our time. Vertigo, W. G. Sebald's first novel, never before translated into English, is perhaps his most amazing and certainly his most alarming. Sebald--the acknowledged master of memory's uncanniness--takes the painful pleasures of unknowability to new intensities in Vertigo. Here in their first flowering are the signature elements of Sebald's hugely acclaimed novels The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn. An unnamed narrator, beset by nervous ailments, is again our guide on a hair-raising journey through the past and across Europe, amid restless literary ghosts--Kafka, Stendhal, Casanova. In four dizzying sections, the narrator plunges the reader into vertigo, into that "swimming of the head," as Webster's defines it: in other words, into that state so unsettling, so fascinating, and so "stunning and strange," as The New York Times Book Review declared about The Emigrants, that it is "like a dream you want to last forever."
Resistance: A Woman's Journal of Struggle and Defiance in Occupied France
by Agnès Humbert Barbara MellorAt the fall of Paris, Humbert verges on despondency until she hears de Gaulle's broadcast calling for all Frenchmen to carry on the struggle. Prompted to action, she begins networking, bringing together some of the key figures of the resistance, including Boris Vildé and Pierre Brossolette, with whose help she and others produce the underground liberation newspaper, "Résistance".
Revelaciones al final de una guerra: Testimonio del jefe negociador del gobierno colombiano en la habana
by Humberto De La CalleNarración de los hechos que vivió y cómo los vivió Humberto de La Calle, jefe negociador del gobierno durante el proceso de paz en La Habana. En medio de los diálogos de La Habana, Humberto de la Calle reunía sus notas de trabajo en rigurosos diarios, consciente de estar registrando en su misma fuente el curso de la historia. En los márgenes de estas notas, redactaba también sus impresiones y dudas, sus meditaciones, a veces miraba en perspectiva y reconstruía la evolución del proceso de paz o simplemente escribía sobre la cotidianidad de unos días difíciles, donde estaban en juego el cambio de todo un país y la vida de muchos. La materia prima de este libro son esos diarios. En él se cuenta de qué manera se desactivó una guerra que duró más de cincuenta años y que arroja la escalofriante cifra de ocho millones de víctimas. Humberto de la Calle narra desde adentro el Acuerdo de Paz de La Habana; presenta su concepción, las distintas estrategias del Gobierno y sus transformaciones, revela las crisis, informes de inteligencia y los eventos públicos y privados que dieron forma a la arquitectura final de lo acordado. Este libro es un referente imprescindible para comprender el proceso en el que terminamos esta guerra y sus efectos. Con la visión ética que lo identificó en la Constitución de 1991, pero sobre todo con la fuerza de un verdadero pacifista, De la Calle presenta los principios que encauzaron el Acuerdo de La Habana. Por medio de sorprendentes anécdotas compone un cuadro realista de los hechos que condujeron al final de una guerra.
Humble by Nature
by Kate HumbleIn 2007, after twenty years of living in London, Kate Humble and her husband Ludo decided it was time to leave city life behind them. Three years later, now the owner of a Welsh smallholding, Kate hears that a nearby farm is to be broken up and sold off. Another farm lost; another opportunity for a young farmless farmer gone. Desperate to stop the sale, Kate contacts the council with an alternative plan - to keep the farm working and to run a rural skills and animal husbandry school alongside it. Against all odds, she succeeds.Here, in Humble By Nature, Kate shares with us a highly personal account of her journey from London town house to Welsh farm. Along the way we meet Bertie and Lawrence the donkeys, Myfanwy and Blackberry the pigs and goats Biscuit and Honey, not forgetting a dog called Badger and his unladylike sidekick Bella. And we are introduced to the tenant farmers Tim and Sarah, the locals who helped and some who didn't, and a whole host of newborn lambs. Full of the warmth and passion for the natural world that makes Kate such a sought after presenter, Humble By Nature is the story of two people prepared to follow their hearts and save a small part of Britain's farming heritage, whatever the consequences.
Humble by Nature
by Kate HumbleIn 2007, after twenty years of living in London, Kate Humble and her husband Ludo decided it was time to leave city life behind them. Three years later, now the owner of a Welsh smallholding, Kate hears that a nearby farm is to be broken up and sold off. Another farm lost; another opportunity for a young farmless farmer gone. Desperate to stop the sale, Kate contacts the council with an alternative plan - to keep the farm working and to run a rural skills and animal husbandry school alongside it. Against all odds, she succeeds.Here, in Humble By Nature, Kate shares with us a highly personal account of her journey from London town house to Welsh farm. Along the way we meet Bertie and Lawrence the donkeys, Myfanwy and Blackberry the pigs and goats Biscuit and Honey, not forgetting a dog called Badger and his unladylike sidekick Bella. And we are introduced to the tenant farmers Tim and Sarah, the locals who helped and some who didn't, and a whole host of newborn lambs. Full of the warmth and passion for the natural world that makes Kate such a sought after presenter, Humble By Nature is the story of two people prepared to follow their hearts and save a small part of Britain's farming heritage, whatever the consequences.
Humble by Nature: Life, lambs and a dog called Badger
by Kate Humble'You'd have to have a heart of stone not to be touched by Kate's enthusiasm for her new way of life' - Daily MailIn 2007, after 20 years of living in London, Kate Humble and her husband Ludo decided it was time to leave city life behind them. Three years later, now the owner of a Welsh smallholding, Kate hears that a nearby farm is to be broken up and sold off. Another farm lost; another opportunity for a young farmless farmer gone. Desperate to stop the sale, Kate contacts the council with an alternative plan - to keep the farm working and to run a rural skills and animal husbandry school alongside it. Against all odds, she succeeds.Here, in Humble by Nature, Kate shares with us a highly personal account of her journey from London town house to Welsh farm. Along the way we meet Bertie and Lawrence the donkeys, Myfanwy and Blackberry the pigs and goats Biscuit and Honey, not forgetting a dog called Badger and his unladylike sidekick Bella. And we are introduced to the tenant farmers Tim and Sarah, the locals who helped and some who didn't, and a whole host of newborn lambs.Full of the warmth and passion for the natural world that makes Kate such a sought after presenter, Humble By Nature is the story of two people prepared to follow their hearts and save a small part of Britain's farming heritage, whatever the consequences.
Humble by Nature: Life, lambs and a dog called Badger (Kate Humble)
by Kate Humble'You'd have to have a heart of stone not to be touched by Kate's enthusiasm for her new way of life' - Daily MailIn 2007, after 20 years of living in London, Kate Humble and her husband Ludo decided it was time to leave city life behind them. Three years later, now the owner of a Welsh smallholding, Kate hears that a nearby farm is to be broken up and sold off. Another farm lost; another opportunity for a young farmless farmer gone. Desperate to stop the sale, Kate contacts the council with an alternative plan - to keep the farm working and to run a rural skills and animal husbandry school alongside it. Against all odds, she succeeds.Here, in Humble by Nature, Kate shares with us a highly personal account of her journey from London town house to Welsh farm. Along the way we meet Bertie and Lawrence the donkeys, Myfanwy and Blackberry the pigs and goats Biscuit and Honey, not forgetting a dog called Badger and his unladylike sidekick Bella. And we are introduced to the tenant farmers Tim and Sarah, the locals who helped and some who didn't, and a whole host of newborn lambs.Full of the warmth and passion for the natural world that makes Kate such a sought after presenter, Humble By Nature is the story of two people prepared to follow their hearts and save a small part of Britain's farming heritage, whatever the consequences.
Humble by Nature: Life, lambs and a dog called Badger (Kate Humble)
by Kate Humble'You'd have to have a heart of stone not to be touched by Kate's enthusiasm for her new way of life' - Daily MailIn 2007, after 20 years of living in London, Kate Humble and her husband Ludo decided it was time to leave city life behind them. Three years later, now the owner of a Welsh smallholding, Kate hears that a nearby farm is to be broken up and sold off. Another farm lost; another opportunity for a young farmless farmer gone. Desperate to stop the sale, Kate contacts the council with an alternative plan - to keep the farm working and to run a rural skills and animal husbandry school alongside it. Against all odds, she succeeds.Here, in Humble by Nature, Kate shares with us a highly personal account of her journey from London town house to Welsh farm. Along the way we meet Bertie and Lawrence the donkeys, Myfanwy and Blackberry the pigs and goats Biscuit and Honey, not forgetting a dog called Badger and his unladylike sidekick Bella. And we are introduced to the tenant farmers Tim and Sarah, the locals who helped and some who didn't, and a whole host of newborn lambs.Full of the warmth and passion for the natural world that makes Kate such a sought after presenter, Humble By Nature is the story of two people prepared to follow their hearts and save a small part of Britain's farming heritage, whatever the consequences.
A Year of Living Simply: The joys of a life less complicated
by Kate Humble'Simply wonderful.' - BEN FOGLE'Kate's book has the warmth and calming effect of a log fire and a glass of wine. Unknit your brow and let go. It's a treat.' - GARETH MALONE'Kate Humble pours her enviable knowledge into attainable goals. It's a winning combination and the prize - a life in balance with nature - is definitely worth claiming.' - LUCY SIEGLE'As ever, where Kate leads, I follow. She has made me reassess and reset.' - DAN SNOWIf there is one thing that most of us aspire to, it is, simply, to be happy. And yet attaining happiness has become, it appears, anything but simple. Having stuff - The Latest, The Newest, The Best Yet - is all too often peddled as the sure fire route to happiness. So why then, in our consumer-driven society, is depression, stress and anxiety ever more common, affecting every strata of society and every age, even, worryingly, the very young? Why is it, when we have so much, that many of us still feel we are missing something and the rush of pleasure when we buy something new turns so quickly into a feeling of emptiness, or purposelessness, or guilt?So what is the route to real, deep, long lasting happiness? Could it be that our lives have just become overly crowded, that we've lost sight of the things - the simple things - that give a sense of achievement, a feeling of joy or excitement? That make us happy. Do we need to take a step back, reprioritise? Do we need to make our lives more simple? Kate Humble's fresh and frank exploration of a stripped-back approach to life is uplifting, engaging and inspiring - and will help us all find balance and happiness every day.(p) 2020 Octopus Publishing Group
A Year of Living Simply: The joys of a life less complicated (Kate Humble)
by Kate Humble'Simply wonderful.' - BEN FOGLE'Kate's book has the warmth and calming effect of a log fire and a glass of wine. Unknit your brow and let go. It's a treat.' - GARETH MALONE'Kate Humble pours her enviable knowledge into attainable goals. It's a winning combination and the prize - a life in balance with nature - is definitely worth claiming.' - LUCY SIEGLE'As ever, where Kate leads, I follow. She has made me reassess and reset.' - DAN SNOW'Kate Humble's new book is a lesson in moving on from a tragedy and finding our place in the world' - WOMAN & HOME'A Year of Living Simply is timely, given that the pandemic has forced most of us, in some way to simplify our lives, whether we planned to or not. Kate wrote it before any of us were aware of the upcoming crisis, but it captures the current moment perfectly... It's not necessarily a "how to" book, more of a "why not try?" approach.' - FRANCESCA BABB, MAIL ON SUNDAY YOU'What I particularly love is her philosophy for happiness, which is the subject of her new book, A Year of Living Simply. The clue is in the title. Remember the basics. Instead of barging through the day on autopilot, really stop to think about the tiniest little things that added a moment of joy. No, of course stopping and smelling the flowers won't cure all our ills and woes. But taking the time to savour the things that bring pleasure, really being in that moment and appreciating it, can remind you that most days have moments that buoy your mood.' - JO ELVIN, MAIL ON SUNDAY YOUIf there is one thing that most of us aspire to, it is, simply, to be happy. And yet attaining happiness has become, it appears, anything but simple. Having stuff - The Latest, The Newest, The Best Yet - is all too often peddled as the sure fire route to happiness. So why then, in our consumer-driven society, is depression, stress and anxiety ever more common, affecting every strata of society and every age, even, worryingly, the very young? Why is it, when we have so much, that many of us still feel we are missing something and the rush of pleasure when we buy something new turns so quickly into a feeling of emptiness, or purposelessness, or guilt?So what is the route to real, deep, long lasting happiness? Could it be that our lives have just become overly crowded, that we've lost sight of the things - the simple things - that give a sense of achievement, a feeling of joy or excitement? That make us happy. Do we need to take a step back, reprioritise? Do we need to make our lives more simple? Kate Humble's fresh and frank exploration of a stripped-back approach to life is uplifting, engaging and inspiring - and will help us all find balance and happiness every day.