Most of us walk through each day expecting few surprises. If we want to better ourselves or our lives, we map out a path of gradual change, perhaps in counseling or psychotherapy. Psychologists William Miller and Janet C'de Baca were longtime scholars and teachers of traditional approaches to self-improvement when they became intrigued by a different sort of change that was sometimes experienced by people they encountered—something often described...

The American president has come to be the most powerful figure in the world-and back in the nineteenth century, a great man held that office. William Lee Miller's new book closely examines that great man in that hugely important office: Abraham Lincoln as president.Wars waged by American presidents have come to be pivotal historical events. Here Miller analyzes the commander in chief who coped with the profound moral dilemmas of America's bloodiest...

When an overseer named Covey sets out to break his spirit, Frederick Douglass fights back and learns not to think or act like a slave.

Are you a good listener? How well do you really know the people around you? A capacity for empathic understanding is hard-wired in our brains, but its full expression involves particular listening skills that are seldom learned through ordinary experience. Through clear explanation, specific examples, and practical exercises, Dr. Miller offers a step-by-step process for developing your skillfulness in empathic listening. With a solid basis in sixty...

In the 1830s slavery was so deeply entrenched that it could not even be discussed in Congress, which had enacted a "gag rule" to ensure that anti-slavery petitions would be summarily rejected. This stirring book chronicles the parliamentary battle to bring "the peculiar institution" into the national debate, a battle that some historians have called "the Pearl Harbor of the slavery controversy." The campaign to make slavery officially and respectably...

In a quiet suburban town in the summer of 1958, two recently orphaned sisters are placed in the care of their mentally unstable Aunt Ruth (Emmy?-Award-winner Blanche Baker of HOLOCAUST). But Ruth's depraved sense of discipline will soon lead to unspeakable acts of abuse and torture that involve her young sons, the neighborhood children, and one 12-year-old boy whose life will be changed forever. William Atherton (DIE HARD), Catherine Mary Stewart...