The 25th Anniversary Edition of a modern classic, with a new Introduction by its celebrated author

Is the life I am living the same as the life that wants to live in me? With this searching question, bestselling author Parker J. Palmer begins his insightful and moving meditation on finding our way toward meaning and purpose. As readers of many ages, backgrounds and walks of life will attest, Let Your Life Speak is an elegant and openhearted gift to all who seek to live authentically.

We find a path that's right for us by embracing what gives us life and rejecting what diminishes us, listening more closely to the voice of true self than to what others expect or demand of us. As we live more deeply into our own identity and integrity, we find both personal fulfillment and our place in the community to which we belong. As always, Palmer writes honestly and vulnerably about his own life, including the fumbles and failures that have marked his unconventional vocational journey. He chronicles his deep dives into depression, and his quest for an undivided life that would allow him to offer his best gifts to the world. The details of his story are unique, but the insights he draws from it are universal.

Let Your Life Speak offers no simplistic formulas for finding a meaningful path through life's complexities. Instead, it offers real-life experience, thoughtfully mined for insight and wisdom:

• Learn how to listen to your inner teacher and follow its guidance toward a sense of meaning and purpose
• Reframe your life as a series of experiments with truth, learning from those that fail as well as those that work
• Understand that the doors that close behind you can offer as much guidance as those that open up
• Gain inspiration and resolve from the lives of seekers who have walked this path before you

Enjoy the wisdom, compassion, gentle humor and companionship of a master teacher in a beloved book that has helped hundreds of thousands of people find their way toward meaning and purpose.

How We the People can reclaim our democracy--updated with a discussion guide, author videos, and a new chapter-length Introduction

In this updated edition of his prophetic book, renowned author and activist Parker J. Palmer celebrates the power of We the People to resist the politics of divide and conquer. With the U.S. now on a global list of backsliding democracies, Palmer writes about what we can do to restore civil discourse, reach for understanding across lines of difference, focus on our shared values, and hold elected officials accountable. He explores ways we can reweave the communal fabric on which democracy depends in everyday settings such as families, neighborhoods, classrooms, congregations, workplaces, and various public spaces--including five habits of the heart we can cultivate as we work to fulfill America's promise of human equality.

In the same honest, vulnerable, compelling and inspiring prose that has won Palmer millions of readers, Healing the Heart of Democracy awakens our instinct to seek the common good and gives us the tools to pursue it. With a text enhanced by a Discussion Guide and forty online author videos on key issues, you'll be able to...

• Reflect on the personal implications of the claim that the human heart is the first home of democracy
• Consider everyday actions you can take to restore the infrastructure that supports our democracy
• Transcend the us vs. them mentality and find ways to expand and enrich your life by appreciating the value of otherness
• Reignite your sense of personal voice and agency to resist authoritarian appeals and restore a politics of freedom and responsibility

Healing the Heart of Democracy is for anyone who values the gift of citizenship and wants to make a difference for themselves, their families and communities, and our collective wellbeing. As the late Congressman John Lewis said, We have been trying to bridge the great divides in this great country for a long time. In this book, Parker J. Palmer urges us to 'keep on walking, keep on talking'--just as we did in the civil rights movement--until we cross those bridges together.

This impassioned book invites readers to the deep end of life where authentic soul work and human transformation become pressing concerns. --Publishers Weekly

2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medalist in the Aging/Death & Dying Category

From bestselling author Parker J. Palmer comes a brave and beautiful book for all who want to age reflectively, seeking new insights and life-giving ways to engage in the world. Age itself, he says, is no excuse to wade in the shallows. It's a reason to dive deep and take creative risks.

Looking back on eight decades of life--and on his work as a writer, teacher, and activist--Palmer explores what he's learning about self and world, inviting readers to explore their own experience. In prose and poetry--and three downloadable songs written for the book by the gifted Carrie Newcomer--he meditates on the meanings of life, past, present, and future.

With compassion and chutzpah, gravitas and levity, Palmer writes about cultivating a vital inner and outer life, finding meaning in suffering and joy, and forming friendships across the generations that bring new life to young and old alike.

This book is a companion for not merely surviving a fractured world, but embodying--like Parker--the fiercely honest and gracious wholeness that is ours to claim at every stage of life. --Krista Tippett, New York Times-bestselling author of Becoming Wise

A wondrously rich mix of reality and possibility, comfort and story, helpful counsel and poetry, in the voice of a friend . . . This is a book of immense gratitude, consolation, and praise. --Naomi Shihab Nye, National Book Award finalist

A wise, heartfelt, and compelling guide to our quest for wholeness in a broken world

A Hidden Wholeness--now in its 20th Anniversary Edition, with a new Introduction by bestselling author Parker J. Palmer--has helped people in every walk of life rise to the challenge of living divided no more. What leads us to live divided lives that defy our own sense of identity and integrity? When we do, what price do we and the world pay? How can we recover the wholeness that is our birthright gift? Palmer examines the forces that deflect us from the soul's true north and gives us the tools we need to regain our bearings.

Mapping an inner journey to be taken in solitude and community, Palmer explores perspectives and practices that can help us embody integrity in a world where it often feels risky to be who we are. As we learn how to be present to others in spaces where it's safe for the soul to speak (aka circles of trust), we find ways to rejoin soul and role in our personal, vocational, and public lives.

Inspired by A Hidden Wholeness--and by the work of the Center for Courage & Renewal, a nonprofit Palmer founded in the late 1990s--tens of thousands of people have participated in circles of trust to deepen their sense of true self and contribute to the common good in the places where they live and work. To support readers in developing these practices, the book comes with an online Study Guide for Readers and Group Leaders, including author videos, available free at the Center's website.

In the midst of our broken world, the principles and practices in this book can ground us in the hidden wholeness, giving us a place to stand as we seek to live with deeper integrity at every level of our lives.

Wisdom that's been inspiring, motivating, and guiding teachers for two decades

The Courage to Teach speaks to the joys and pains that teachers of every sort know well. Over the last 20 years, the book has helped countless educators reignite their passion, redirect their practice, and deal with the many pressures that accompany their vital work.

Enriched by a new Foreword from Diana Chapman Walsh, the book builds on a simple premise: good teaching can never be reduced to technique. Good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher, that core of self where intellect, emotion, and spirit converge--enabling 'live encounters' between teachers, students, and subjects that are the key to deep and lasting learning. Good teachers love learners, learning, and the teaching life in a way that builds trust with students and colleagues, animates their daily practice, and keeps them coming back tomorrow.

• Reclaim your own vision and purpose against the threat of burn-out
• Understand why good teaching cannot be reduced to technique alone
• Explore and practice the relational traits that good teachers have in common
• Learn how to forge learning connections with your students and teach across the gap

Whether used for personal study, book club exploration, or professional development, The Courage to Teach is rich with time-honored wisdom, and contemporary clarity about the ancient arts of teaching and learning.

This primer on authentic education explores how mind and heart can work together in the learning process. Moving beyond the bankruptcy of our current model of education, Parker Palmer finds the soul of education through a lifelong cultivation of the wisdom each of us possesses and can share to benefit others.

20th ANNIVERSARY EDITION

The Courage to Teach Guide for Reflection & Renewal is a helpful companion to Parker J. Palmer's classic work on restoring identity and integrity to professional life. A superb resource for those who wish to extend their exploration of the ideas in The Courage to Teach, as individuals or part of a study group, the Guide provides practical ways to create safe space for honest reflection and probing conversations and offers chapter-by-chapter questions and exercises to further explore the many insights in The Courage to Teach.

The bonus online content includes a 70-minute interview with Parker Palmer, in which Palmer reflects on a wide range of subjects including the heart of the teacher, the crisis in education, diverse ways of knowing, relationships in teaching and learning, approaches to institutional transformation, and teachers as culture heroes. Discussion questions related to the topics explored in the interview have been integrated into the Guide, giving individuals and study groups a chance to have a conversation with the author as well as an engagement with the text.

Drawing on eight decades of life - and his career as a writer, teacher, and activist - Palmer explores the questions age raises and the promises it holds. ''''Old, '''' he writes, ''''is just another word for nothing left to lose, a time to dive deep into life, not withdraw to the shallows.'''' But this book is not for elders only. It was written to encourage adults of all ages to explore the way their lives are unfolding. It's not a how-to-do-it book on aging, but a set of meditations in prose and poetry that turn the prism on the meaning(s) of one's life, refracting new light at every turn. From beginning to end, the book is laced with humor as well as gravitas - beautifully enhanced by three free downloadable songs from the gifted singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer, written in response to themes in the book.

A call to advance integrative teaching and learning in higher education.

From Parker Palmer, best-selling author of The Courage to Teach, and Arthur Zajonc, professor of physics at Amherst College and director of the academic program of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, comes this call to revisit the roots and reclaim the vision of higher education. The Heart of Higher Education proposes an approach to teaching and learning that honors the whole human being--mind, heart, and spirit--an essential integration if we hope to address the complex issues of our time. The book offers a rich interplay of analysis, theory, and proposals for action from two educators and writers who have contributed to developing the field of integrative education over the past few decades.

• Presents Parker Palmer's powerful response to critics of holistic learning and Arthur Zajonc's elucidation of the relationship between science, the humanities, and the contemplative traditions

• Explores ways to take steps toward making colleges and universities places that awaken the deepest potential in students, faculty, and staff

• Offers a practical approach to fostering renewal in higher education through collegiality and conversation

The Heart of Higher Education is for all who are new to the field of holistic education, all who want to deepen their understanding of its challenges, and all who want to practice and promote this vital approach to teaching and learning on their campuses.