How do we respond to the immensity of suffering that confronts us and overwhelms us without losing our compassion or sanity? This week, we revisit Roxanne Coady's conversation with Tim Desmond as they discuss his book, How to Stay Human in a F*cked-Up World: Mindfulness Practices for Real Life. Tim Desmond is a psychotherapist, student of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, and author of Self-Compassion in Psychotherapy. He has dedicated his life to creating peace and compassion in the world through meditation, psychotherapy, conflict resolution and nonviolent social change.

This episode is sponsored by Care/Of. For 50% off your first Care/of order, go to TakeCareOf.com and enter the code book50.

Dr. Beverly Tatum's 1997 book on race relations, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, has become a modern classic found in many classrooms. In this week's episode of Just the Right Book Podcast, the former Spelman College president joins Roxanne for a live event at Wesleyan RJ Julia to talk about the 20th anniversary edition of her time-honored book and how race relations has evolved in the past two decades.

This week, we revisit our conversation with Mitchell Jackson.

The legacy of growing up black in a state whose original constitution stated "no free negro or mulatto not residing in the state at the time of the adoption of this constitution shall come, reside or be within the state or hold any real estate or make any contracts or maintain any suit therein. And the Legislative Assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such negroes and mulattoes, and for their effectual exclusion from the state and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state or employ or harbor them." This legacy is explored with brutal honesty and humor, poetry, and above all, with love for the family that is Mitchell Jackson's American family. It is a memoir that uses original storytelling methods to encompass a vibrant personal journey of race, violence, manhood and tragedy. But it is defined by survival within that chaos.

No birth certificates, no school, no doctors, no registered existence, and abuse at the hands of one of her brothers. Westover’s first book “Educated” describes how she escaped a traumatic childhood to graduate from Brigham Young, Harvard, and Cambridge University with a PhD. Also in this episode, Roxanne discusses some of her favorite memoirs and some of yours!

Joseph J. Ellis is the author of many works of American history including Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, which won the National Book Award. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with his wife and is the father of three sons.

Julia Samuel’s first book Grief Works: Stories of Life, Death, And Surviving is organized by the type of loss; losing a parent, losing a child, and confronting your own death. Is the way which someone grieves different by the loss or is it more defined by who they are? Samuel, a psychotherapist specializing in grief who spent the last 25 years working with bereaved families describes grief as a process that's unique to every person, but universal in the need to be experienced and discussed.

The Galvins looked like the manifestation of the post-World War II American Dream. Hard work. Upward mobility. A handsome, accomplished dad. A remarkable mother of twelve. But all was hardly what it seemed. Shockingly, six of the ten boys were diagnosed with schizophrenia, creating chaos of breakdowns, violence, abuse, and secrets. How could this happen to one family? How could this family even remain a family in the midst of such disruption and damage? And scientifically, what does this kind of concentration of this disease teach us?

According to the NIH, there has been a seventy-percent decline annually in the death rate from cardiovascular disease in the last fifty years and a one percent decline annually in the death rate from cancer over the last fifty years. How can this be when we keep hearing about great new drug discoveries and immunotherapy advances? And if true, isn't there another way to approach the nightmare that is cancer? 

This week on Just the Right Book, Dr. Azra Raza join Roxanne Coady to discuss her latest book, The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last, out now from Basic Books.

During our time practicing social distancing, in between new conversations we are revisiting some of our favorite interviews from our archives.

In 2018, 200 years since the birth of Frederick Douglass, we received the first major biography of Douglass in a quarter century. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by prize-winning historian and Yale Professor David Blight is based on nearly a lifetime of research as well as letters and private documentation to which no biographer has previously had access. It’s this revealing collection that helped shed new light on Douglass, particularly in the latter third of his life. 

Today's episode is brought to you by Skylight Frames. As a special holiday offer for Just the Right Book listeners, you can get $10 off your purchase of a Skylight Frame when you go to SkylightFrame/BOOK and enter the code BOOK.

Peggy Orenstein is the New York Times bestselling author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Waiting for Daisy, Flux, and Schoolgirls. A contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, she has been published in USA Today, Parenting, Salon, the New Yorker, and other publications, and has contributed commentary to NPR's All Things Considered. She lives in Northern California with her husband and daughter.

Today's episode is brought to you by Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui, out now from Algonquin Books, and Skylight Frames. As a special holiday offer for Just the Right Book listeners, you can get $10 off your purchase of a Skylight Frame when you go to SkylightFrame/BOOK and enter the code BOOK.