For too long, single life has been characterized as a lesser life. As a 70-year-old who has been happily single my whole life, I want that to end. As I said in my book, “In the enlightened world that I envision, every child will understand, as a matter of course, that living single is a life path that can be just as joyful and fulfilling as any other—and for some people, the best path of all. Every adult will forsake forever the temptation to pity or patronize single people and will instead appreciate the profound rewards of single life."
I wrote...
Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life
Drawing from the life stories of people around the world, survey data from more than 20,000 people, and dozens of other studies, This book shows that for the single at heart, single life is their most joyful, meaningful, fulfilling, psychologically rich, and authentic life. They are happy and flourishing because they are single, not in spite of it. As they grow older, they become even happier.
The single at heart have the freedom to design their own lives. They welcome into their lives as many people as they want–The Ones rather than The One. They also savor their solitude and are rarely lonely. They enjoy intimacy on their own terms and understand that love encompasses far more than romantic love.
For years, I read memoirs by single women in search of people who would joyfully and unapologetically own their single lives. I found several who were insightful and engaging but ultimately disappointing. Typically, they hedged–sure, they would say, they were fine with being single, but they were not about to commit to staying single. Some were gobsmacked to discover that single life could be fulfilling as if that were the most amazing thing imaginable.
Then, Keturah Kendrick published this book. Kendrick knew who she was from an early age. She owns her singlehood and all her other choices about how to live her life, such as not having children. She brilliantly shatters stereotypes about single people, and her critiques of popular culture are skillful and searing.
Through eight humorous essays, Keturah Kendrick chronicles her journey to freedom. She shares the stories of other women who have freed themselves from the narrow definition of what makes a "proper woman." Spotlighting the cultural bullying that dictates women must become mothers to the expectation that one's spiritual path follow the traditions of previous generations, Kendrick imagines a world where black women make life choices that center on their needs and desires. She also examines the rising trend of women choosing to remain single and explores how such a choice is the antithesis to the trope of the sorrowful black…
When I first started writing books about single life, I thought my joyful and utterly unapologetic take on it was something fresh and new. Then I discovered Marjorie Hillis’s book–first published in 1936! Full of wit and attitude, it was an instant bestseller and republished in 2008.
Hillis has no patience for people who think a single life is sad, seeing them as hopelessly behind the times. One of the single women described in the book has traveled the world and feels sorry for her married friends tethered to husbands. Hillis feels sorry for the people who have never discovered the joy of being alone, including in bed. Every chapter includes single-at-heart sentiments sure to be treasured.
THE BESTSELLING NOVEL WHICH CREATED A WORLDWIDE PHENOMENON
'A perfect bedside companion for the post-Bridget Jones generation' DAILY TELEGRAPH (CANADA)
'Hillis's book gave rise to "Live Alone" accessories, including cocktail shakers, china dogs and negligees' WALL STREET JOURNAL
'She was boldly leading a vanguard of young women into a self-reliant, judgment-free future' NATIONAL
This 1936 bestseller sold over 100,000 copies in the first two months of its release. Marjorie Hillis, a 1930s Vogue editor, provides a stylish, no-nonsense guide to living and loving single life. Written with wisdom, humour and panache, this is advice that will never go out of…
Much to my surprise and delight, Jhumpa Lahiri’s story collection captures the powerful appeal of freedom and solitude, even for people who are not single at heart. In A Choice of Accommodations, a man who was married with children confided that the moments of his life he savored the most were those he had to himself.
In Going Ashore, a woman in Rome, away from her fiancé in the US, experienced deep fulfillment in spending her days on her own. In the title story, Unaccustomed Earth, a widower from India on his way to stay with his daughter and her family in the US, is not happy to leave behind the freedom and peacefulness of his single life to become part of a family again.
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Interpreter of Maladies: These eight stories take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand, as they explore the secrets at the heart of family life.
“Glorious.... Showcases a considerable talent in full bloom.” —San Francisco Chronicle
In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father who carefully tends her garden–where she later unearths evidence of a love affair he is keeping to himself. In “A Choice of Accommodations,” a couple’s romantic getaway weekend takes a dark turn at…
In Tana French’s brilliant crime novel, a single woman and a single man are detectives who are passionate about the work they do together investigating murders. Their banter is adorned with astute and irreverent commentaries on the ways in which couples flaunt their coupledom and expect single people to stay in their place.
The detectives’ relationship is complex, real, and deep. It is a friendship, and in a true tribute to friendship, it does not morph into romance.
The bestselling novel by Tana French, author of the forthcoming novel The Searcher, is "required reading for anyone who appreciates tough, unflinching intelligence and ingenious plotting" (The New York Times). She "inspires cultic devotion in readers" (The New Yorker) and is "the most important crime novelist to emerge in the past 10 years" (The Washington Post).
"Atmospheric and unputdownable." -People
In bestselling author Tana French's newest "tour de force" (The New York Times), being on the Murder Squad is nothing like Detective Antoinette Conway dreamed it would be. Her partner, Stephen Moran, is the only person who seems glad she's…
The stars of this book are “solitaries,” people who choose to live alone or spend substantial stretches of time alone. Upending the demeaning caricatures of people who spend a lot of time alone, Johson shows that some of the most renowned artists and authors have been solitaries.
They have rich inner lives and contribute meaningfully to society. Even unknown solitaries are artists–they design their own lives. Solitaries value friendship and do not see romantic relationships as sitting atop a relationship hierarchy. Free of a conventional focus on The One, they are more open to more different people and the world.
Fenton Johnson's lyrical prose and searching sensibility explore what it means to choose solitude and to celebrate the notion that solitude is a legitimate and dignified calling. He delves into the lives and works of nearly a dozen iconic solitaries he considers his kindred spirits, from Thoreau at Walden Pond and Emily Dickenson in Amherst, to the fiercely self-protective Zora Neale Hurston. The bright wakes these figures have left behind illuminate Fenton Johnson's journey from his childhood in rural Kentucky to his solitary travels in America, France, and India. Woven into his musings about better-known solitaries are stories of friends…
Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of citations and interviews with more than 250 key protagonists, experts, and witnesses.
So far, the book is the main -- and only -- antidote to a slew of early partisan “Benghazi” polemics, and the first to put the attack in its longer term historical, political, and social context. If you want to understand some of the events that have shaped present-day America, from political polarization and the election of Donald Trump, to January 6, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russian expansionism, and the current Israel-Hamas war, I argue, you need to understand some of the twists and turns of America's most infamous "non-scandal, scandal.”
I was in Benghazi well before, during, and after the attack as a US diplomat and co-director of a medical NGO. I have written three books, and have been a contributor to The NYT, Foreign Affairs, Forbes, Salon, The Financial Times, Newsweek, and others.
On September 11, 2012, Al Qaeda proxies attacked and set fire to the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, killing a US Ambassador and three other Americans. The attack launched one of the longest and most consequential 'scandals' in US history, only to disappear from public view once its political value was spent.
Written in a highly engaging narrative style by one of a few Western experts on Libya, and decidely non-partisan, Benghazi!: A New History is the first to provide the full context for an event that divided, incited, and baffled most of America for more than three years, while silently reshaping…
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