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Richard Louv, co-founder of the San Diego-based Children & Nature Network, author Richard Louv adds Vitamin N to his growing list of books encouraging us to get outside. Aimed especially at families eager to share nature with their kids, Louv’s practical guidebook offers "500 Ways to Enrich the Health & Happiness of Your Family & Community." All are appropriate for Earth Day, but they're also fitting throughout the year. Through his 2008 landmark book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, Louv brought international attention to a backyard crisis. We are unnaturally detached from our natural surroundings. A decade later, this clarion call to parents, policymakers, and pediatricians continues to resonate. Sadly, society still suffers from obesity, attention disorders, and depression. Fortunately, however, Louv’s message has galvanized an international back-to-nature campaign to “Leave No Child Inside.” City folks inclined to develop an adversarial relationship with nature find Louv's ideas comforting. For instance, dirt can strengthen immune systems; sticks are perhaps the world’s oldest toys; sunshine and water are for our use and pleasure. Louv invites these urbanites to step beyond their world of concrete and hand sanitizer, and, instead, gather courage as they build resilience and new outdoor skills.  Following Louv’s charge to return to nature, adults report regaining their own sense of wonder. Those stepping outside are feeling a greater sense of work-life balance and freedom from frenzied family schedules. (For more ideas aimed at adults, see The Nature Principle: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age by Richard Louv.)   Just how much "Vitamin N" do we need? Louv believes “Some is good, and more is better.” BUY Vitamin N: The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life Please consider donating to Nonfiction4Life by visiting our Patreon page. RECOMMENDATIONS Check out other titles by Richard Louv: Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder (2008)  The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder (2011) Read our blog about Frederick Law Olmsted, creator of New York’s Central Park. Listen to Angela Hanscom (Episode 104) talk about her book, Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children, then buy the book. Connect with us! Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube  Website Special thanks… Music Credit Sound Editing Credit

Amanda Ellison, a leading neuroscientist and physiologist at Durham University in the UK, explains head pain in her book Splitting: The Inside Story of Headaches. What is the point of pain, especially the kind we suffer from headaches? Ellison addresses this age-old question and, combining humor with wide-ranging research, she also defines all kinds of headaches—from a “brain freeze” to much more serious cluster headaches—and their possible remedies.   Those with a science background will not be disappointed. Ellison serves up loads of research and technical terms (enough to give the less scientific a headache) to explain how different parts of the brain talk to each other. Best of all, her book is packed with practical advice and information any headache sufferer can use. Learn what causes migraines, how sinus pain happens, and whether to reach for the painkillers or try some other remedy. QUOTES FROM ELLISON “Even from [an early age, we seem to attribute our headaches to emotional causes, and the biggest of these is stress.” "The most common fix for minor nagging headache comes out of your tap." “Posture, bad diet, dehydration, alcohol consumption, lack of sleep, and the wrong kind of exercise all put the body and particularly the head, brain, and neck region under stress, leading to tension headache.” “Cluster headache is four times more common in men than women.” “Prodrome symptoms [are] quite obvious, including pronounced yawning, drowsiness, food craving, adversity to light, increased thirst or blurred vision.” RECOMMENDATIONS Avoid headaches by lightening up and getting (back) in touch with your fun side! Listen to Nonfiction4Life Episode #76 with Dave Crenshaw discussing The Power of Having Fun: How Meaningful Breaks Help You Get More Done and buy his book. Read Catherine Price’s latest book, The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again. Connect with us! Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube Website Special thanks… Music Credit Sound Editing Credit  

In her latest book, Thrivers, child psychologist Dr. Michele Borba identifies seven teachable strengths that can safeguard kids for now and the future. To find these traits, Dr. Borba combed scientific studies on resilience, spoke to dozens of researchers and experts in the field, and interviewed more than 100 young people from all walks of life. Each strength is like a superpower that helps protect kids against the depression and anxiety that threatens to derail them. Better yet, when the superpowers are combined, they become even more potent, creating a Multiplier Effect that prepares children to succeed in our fast-paced, ever-changing world. And the best news of all: these strengths aren’t inborn. They can be taught – and Dr. Borba shows parents and educators how to do it so kids cope today and thrive tomorrow. Unlike raising strivers set on top test scores and other resume-packing accolades, parents can learn how to raise thrivers—young people who flourish in a rapidly changing, anxiety-driven, uncertain world. Thrivers is a mix of keen cultural analysis of modern stresses and practical “how-to” strategies and everyday activities that build up kids’ mental strength, resilience, happiness, and success. BUY Thrivers: The Surprising Reasons Why Some Kids Struggle and Others Shine by Dr. Michele Borba RECOMMENDATIONS Listen to other parenting podcasts on Nonfiction4Life: #81: “The Gift of Failure” by Jessica Lahey #90: “Teach Your Children Well” by Dr. Madeline Levine #96: “How to Raise an Adult” by Julie Lythcott-Haims Connect with us! Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube  Website Special thanks… Music Credit Sound Editing Credit

As a Forbes Next 1000 entrepreneur and founder of the mentorship program Etre, Illana Raia connects girls directly to the leaders they want to meet and encourages them to ask the questions that are really on their minds. The result is The Epic Mentor Guide, a treasure trove of never-before-seen work/life advice from 180 boss women, each successful in her own sphere of influence. Raia’s book includes advice from female astronauts, news anchors, CEOs, surgeons, engineers, Olympians, Wall Street wizards, world-renowned chefs, fashion designers, award-winning film directors, and more. QUOTES FROM RAIA "Sometimes it's better to know what's coming even before you start." " We define a mentor as someone who takes an active interest in your future, someone who invests her time and energy to bolster your confidence, challenge your assumptions, and inspire next steps." "Oh, these women. Role models, champions, and rock stars one and all." "Answering girls' questions about diversity and inclusion, raising hands, speaking up and standing out, The Epic Mentor Guide is [the] inside track to the workforce before you get there.” BUY The Epic Mentor Guide: Insider Advice for Girls Eyeing the Workforce from 180 Boss Women Who Know by Illana Raia RECOMMENDATION For a great companion book for women, read Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work (and Why It’s Different Than You Think) by Reshma Saujani. Connect with us! Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube  Website Special thanks… Music Credit Sound Editing Credit

Urban economist Dr. Matthew Kahn in his latest book, “GOING REMOTE: How the Flexible Work Economy Can Improve Our Lives and our Cities,” shows us how the urban landscape is shifting in our favor. Whether we’re working from home, in person, or in a hybrid fashion, Kahn explains how the pandemic has created opportunities for everyone to have more freedom. In fact, according to Kahn, the rise of remote work presents especially valuable chances for flexibility and equity in the lives of women, minorities, and young people. Working from home can significantly improve the standard of living for millions of people by changing the arc of how we live, work, and play. For more, see the Nonfiction4Life website. BUY Going Remote: How the Flexible Work Economy Can Improve Our Lives and our Cities by Matthew E. Kahn. RECOMMENDATION Compare Robert Putnam’s revised and updated book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.

On a dare from his son, author A.J. Jacobs set out to thank everyone who contributed to bringing him a cup of coffee. The result is his book, “Thanks A Thousand,” and a TEDTalk viewed by more than a million people.  Jacobs’s “Gratitude Journey,” a timely exploration of our interconnectedness, illustrates our need to eschew tribalism and recognize the staggering number of people who make our everyday lives wonderful. Read more on our website. BUY Thanks A Thousand: A Gratitude Journey (TED Books) Watch A.J. Jacobs deliver his now-famous TEDTalk with over 1 million views! Connect with us! Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube  Website Special thanks… Music Credit Sound Editing Credit

SUMMARY In "WE GATHER TOGETHER: A Nation Divided, A President in Turmoil, and a Historic Campaign to Embrace Gratitude and Grace," beloved bestselling author Denise Kiernan turns her passion for history and unparalleled research to a topic that couldn’t be timelier: gratitude. Spanning centuries, "WE GATHER TOGETHER" is anchored amid the strife of the Civil War and driven by the fascinating story of Sarah Josepha Hale, a widowed mother with no formal schooling who became one of the 19th century’s most influential tastemakers. Despite personal tragedy and ongoing political conflict, she campaigned for decades to make real an annual day of thanks. For more, see the Show Notes on the Nonfiction4Life website. BUY We Gather Together: A Nation Divided, a President in Turmoil, and a Historic Campaign to Embrace Gratitude and Grace

How have some businesses managed to thrive during the Covid-19 pandemic? New York Times #1 bestselling author Joseph Michelli scours 140-plus businesses worldwide to collect lessons in his latest book, Stronger Through Adversity: World-Class Leaders Share Pandemic-Tested Lessons on Thriving During the Toughest Challenges. With his own life as “proof that you can become stronger through adversity,” Michelli identifies 20 ways organizations have managed to turn breakdowns into breakthroughs during these trying times. Listening with empathy, using a sense of humor, and admitting errors are just a few ways leaders today are moving ahead with success, creating a new normal at work. “There is a link between growth and resistance...Leaders must push through habits and emotional resistance to grow themselves and their teams,” says Michelli. BUY Stronger Through Adversity: World-Class Leaders Share Pandemic-Tested Lessons on Thriving During the Toughest Challenges RECOMMENDATIONS Watch a funny clip about customer service from Meet the Parents. Check out this scene from Love Actually making fun of customer service overperformance.

SUMMARY Dr. Fred Luskin, author of the bestselling book Forgive for Good: A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness, founded and currently serves as Director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Projects. His forgiveness work has been applied the world over in veteran’s hospitals, churches, in resolving legal disputes, with cancer patients as psychoeducation, and in psychotherapy. Luskin has had extraordinary success helping people recover from the murder of their family members as a result of political violence in Northern Ireland, as an aftermath of the attacks on 911, in Sierra Leone after their civil war, and in artic Canada where native populations deal with the loss of their ancestral lands. LESSONS FROM LUSKIN How do grudges start? “Renting too much space in our mind to a problem comes from taking something too personally. Blaming someone else for our feelings then takes away our power, and we progress to forming our grievance story. Behind the process lies our tendency to make unenforceable rules that the world or other people are supposed to follow.” What stops us from forgiving? “The major obstacle to forgiving is a lack of understanding just what forgiveness is. Some of us confuse forgiveness with condoning unkind actions.” What is forgiveness? “Forgiveness is the feeling of peace that emerges as you take your hurt less personally, take responsibility for how you feel, and become a hero instead of a victim in the story you tell.” Why should we forgive? “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it changes the present. Forgiveness means that even though you are wounded you choose to hurt and suffer less. Forgiveness means you become a part of the solution. Forgiveness is the understanding that hurt is a normal part of life. Forgiveness is for you and no one else.” BUY Forgive for Good: A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness RECOMMENDATION Read the book, "Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption." Connect with us on social media! Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube Special thanks… Music Credit Sound Editing Credit

SUMMARY Harvard-trained geriatrician and award-winning author Louis Aronson introduces a revolutionary perspective on growing old in her book, “ELDERHOOD: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life.” Sharing stories from her personal and professional life, and drawing from history, Aronson offers clarity and understanding about “elderhood,” the third and final stage of life after childhood and adulthood and a period that can span up to 40 years or more. With new insights into aging, medicine, and humanity itself, Aronson teaches us how to move beyond wrinkles and baldness and reframe these later decades of elderhood so we can better prepare for and thrive during our final years. QUOTES FROM ARONSON “In medicine, we spend most of most days really dealing with some pretty intense things that fill us with emotions and feelings and thoughts and experiences that are the stuff of literature.” “Elderhood, or the specter of being seen old by others,…pretty much starts somewhere between 60 and 70 for most people…but if you’re in Silicon Valley, and if you’re over age 30 or 35, you’re already old.” “People start getting happy in their late 50s, and their happiest time of life…is, hands down, the 60s and 70s.” “When asked the recipe for a good old age, I often give a list: good genes, good luck, enough money, and one good kid, usually a daughter.” “A majority of the most powerful people in politics and many other industries are people in their 60s and early 70s.” “We have created a society where we do everything possible to stay alive yet dread being old.” BUY Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life RECOMMENDATIONS Enjoy watching a TEDTalk of a mother and son’s tender photographic journey through dementia. For a practical guide to living out the final years with joy and resilience,  BUY Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives by Daniel J. Levitin. Connect with us! Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube  Website Special thanks… Music Credit Sound Editing Credit

SUMMARY Canadian astronaut, author, and CEO Dave Williams in Leadership Moments from NASA: Achieving the Impossible examines the resilient culture and diverse leadership styles at NASA. In an organization where decisions can literally be matters of life and death, leadership styles matter! Using oral histories and interviews, Dave Williams and his co-author Elizabeth Howell help us understand many triumphs and tragedies spanning more than 50 years of space exploration. We learn how NASA was able to send a man to the moon in less than a decade of John Kennedy’s announcement and how it continues to daringly push the limits of space exploration with confidence and courage. Despite all its setbacks, NASA has persisted as a place that continues to attract the best and brightest minds. KEY LEADERSHIP INSIGHTS Listen to your team; encourage people to speak up. Hire a diverse workforce using a competency-based model; empower bright, capable employees to use their expertise. Avoid the pitfall of “not saying we were wrong when we were wrong.” Organizational resilience and agility are critical and are often built through bouncing back from failure. QUOTES FROM WILLIAMS “The NASA culture defies the limits of traditional leadership by creating peak-performing teams where each individual strives relentlessly to build their competency, to build trust and to create strong links in a chain that binds the team together.” “Leadership is the art of influencing others.” “The perspectives on leadership at NASA…have been validated through the results that were achieved with their widespread utilization over the past 60 years of human spaceflight.” BUY Leadership Moments from NASA: Achieving the Impossible RECOMMENDATION Learn of Williams’s personal experiences in space and NASA leadership in his memoir, Defying Limits: Lessons from the Edge of the Universe. Connect with us! Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube  Website Special thanks… Music Credit

SUMMARY "In My Mother's Footsteps" by Mona Hajjar Halaby layers the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict with honest recollections of a Palestinian mother and daughter who both lived in their homeland at different times. Leaving California to spend a year teaching conflict resolution to schoolchildren in Ramallah, Halaby keeps a journal of her observations, feelings, experiences, and impressions of the challenges of living in a militarized, occupied town. This sabbatical gives her a chance to claim a homeland where she'd never lived.: “For me—a Palestinian in the Diaspora, whose mother has been denied the right to return to her home lost in 1948—my coming back and living in Palestine was a way of reinstating my connection to the land of my mother and grandparents. Like a homing pigeon who always returns to its coop, it was a way of saying, 'I might be far away geographically, but I still belong here.'” Then, after 59 years of exile, Mona's mother also returns to Jerusalem where, in a poetic role reversal, Mona would guide her through the narrow cobblestone alleys of the Old City where she grew up. Throughout the book, Halaby recounts seminal political decisions, such as the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate for Palestine, all etching a deep and long-lasting mark on the country and her family. Ultimately, however, she has much deeper reasons for raising her voice: “I cannot turn a blind eye to the injustices perpetrated against the Palestinians, or to any dispossessed or subjugated people. Can I forgive, or forget, what was, and is still being done to the Palestinians? With work, forgiving is doable, but forgetting is unthinkable. I cannot and do not want to forget the tragedies that have shaped my family and my people’s lives. I want to honor the memory of their forced exile and share their story with the rest of the world.” QUOTES FROM HALABY “Jerusalem was known to be one of the most tolerant places in the world, where different cultures and religions lived side by side, and respected one another, living in balance and harmony.” “Mama was larger than life. The puffiness of her palm reminded me of a loaf of warm pita bread, and when she laced her fingers into mine like a pretzel, I felt safe. I would have walked with her to the ends of the earth.” “Refugees are like seeds that scatter in the wind, and land on different soils that become their reluctant homes.” “I kept trying to imagine what the Ramallah siege must have felt like for younger children...I would have anticipated the opposite. I always assumed that children experiencing trauma and military violence grow up too fast.” “Palestinians are strong and tough, like sabir, the cactus plant growing in their indigenous land, and which also means “patience” and “endurance” in Arabic. Not only have they survived the indignity and brutality of the Occupation, but they have also done it with dignity and pride. They will not surrender their struggle for Liberation.” “It’s not a conflict about ancient hatred, or religion, as it is a modern struggle over land and who gets to live on that land.” BUY In My Mother's Footsteps: A Palestinian Refugee Returns Home RECOMMENDATION Watch “Jerusalem, We Are Here,” a virtual tour created by displaced Palestinians, including Mona Halaby as English narrator. Connect with us! Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube Website Special thanks… Music Credit Sound Editing Credit