Scott Simon

Wonder meets Three Times Lucky in a story of empowerment as a young woman decides to help solve the mystery of multiple suspicious deaths in her group home. Sally Miyake can't read, but she learns lots of things. Like bricks are made of clay and Vitamin D comes from the sun. Sally is happy working in the kitchen at Sunnyside Plaza, the community center she lives in with other adults with developmental disabilities. For Sally and her friends, Sunnyside is the only home they've ever known. Everything changes the day a resident unexpectedly dies. After a series of tragic events, detectives Esther Rivas and Lon Bridges begin asking questions. Are the incidents accidents? Or is something more disturbing happening? The suspicious deaths spur the residents into taking the investigation into their own hands. But are people willing to listen? Sunnyside Plaza is a human story of empowerment, empathy, hope, and generosity that shines a light on this very special world.

Sunnyside Plaza

Now available in paperback! Most books are meant to be read. This one is meant to be lived. It's not easy to be courageous. Feelings of fear and uncertainty often stop us dead in our tracks. But what if you had the courage to take action anyway? What changes would you make to transform your current reality into the life of your dreams? Here's the good news -- like a muscle, courage grows stronger the more you exercise it. And Scare Your Soul will not only teach you how to exercise courage but will guide you in taking small, boundary-pushing actions to expand your comfort zone (so that you feel less fear and more confidence with each action). By combining research on positive psychology with real-life stories of Scare Your Soul participants, international thought leader and happiness entrepreneur Scott Simon challenges you to confront your limiting beliefs. With writing prompts, activities, and real-world challenges, Scare Your Soul is an interactive roadmap to building bravery. Scare Your Soul teaches you that the greatest antidote to much of what ails you in your life isn't achievement, it's action. So if you crave an extraordinary life but feel like you don't know how to take "extra" ordinary action, this book is for you. It's time to Scare Your Soul.

7 Powerful Principles to Harness Fear and Lead Your Most Courageous Life

Scare Your Soul

Most books are meant to be read. This one is meant to be lived. It’s not easy to be courageous. Feelings of fear and uncertainty often stop us dead in our tracks. But what if you had the courage to take action anyway? What changes would you make to transform your current reality into the life of your dreams? Here’s the good news — like a muscle, courage grows stronger the more you exercise it. And Scare Your Soul will not only teach you how to exercise courage but will guide you in taking small, boundary-pushing actions to expand your comfort zone (so that you feel less fear and more confidence with each action). By combining research on positive psychology with real-life stories of Scare Your Soul participants, international thought leader and happiness entrepreneur Scott Simon challenges you to confront your limiting beliefs. With writing prompts, activities, and real-world challenges, Scare Your Soul is an interactive roadmap to building bravery. Scare Your Soul teaches you that the greatest antidote to much of what ails you in your life isn’t achievement, it’s action. So if you crave an extraordinary life but feel like you don’t know how to take “extra” ordinary action, this book is for you. It’s time to Scare Your Soul.

a novel of politics

Windy city

NPR's Scott Simon's personal, heartfelt reflections on his beloved Chicago Cubs, replete with club lore, memorable anecdotes, frenetic fandom and wise and adoring intimacy that have made the world champion Cubbies baseball's most tortured—and now triumphant—franchise. Heartbreak and hope. Charmed and haunted. My Cubs is Scott Simon’s love letter to his Chicago Cubs, World Series winners for the first time in over a century. Replete with personal reflections, club lore, memorable anecdotes, and tales of frenetic fandom, My Cubs recounts the franchise’s pivotal moments with the wise and adoring intimacy of a long-suffering devotee and Chicago native. Simon illustrates how the condition of “Cubness” has defined the life of so many Chicagoans and how the team’s fortunes became intertwined with the aspirations of its faithful. With the curse finally broken on November 2, 2016, My Cubs is the perfect portrayal of paradise lost and found.

A Love Story

My Cubs

The universally respected NPR journalist and bestselling memoirist Scott Simon makes a dazzling fiction debut. In Pretty Birds, Simon creates an intense, startling, and tragicomic portrait of a classic character–a young woman in the besieged city of Sarajevo in the early 1990s. In the spring of 1992, Irena Zaric is a star on her Sarajevo high school basketball team, a tough, funny teenager who has taught her parrot, Pretty Bird, to do a decent imitation of a ball hitting a hoop. Irena wears her hair short like k. d. lang’s, and she loves Madonna, Michael Jordan, and Johnny Depp. But while Irena rocks out and shoots baskets with her friends, her beloved city has become a battleground. When the violence and terror of “ethnic cleansing” against Muslims begins, Irena and her family, brutalized by Serb soldiers, flee for safety across the river that divides the city. If once Irena knew of war only from movies and history books, now she knows its reality. She steals from the dead to buy food. She scuttles under windows in her own home to dodge bullets. She risks her life to communicate with an old Serb school friend and teammate. Even Pretty Bird has started to mimic the sizzle of mortar fire. In a city starved for work, a former assistant principal offers Irena a vague job, “duties as assigned,” which she accepts. She begins by sweeping floors, but soon, under the tutelage of a cast of rogues and heroes, she learns to be a sniper, biding her time, never returning to the same perch, and searching her targets for the “mist” that marks a successful shot. Ultimately, Irena’s new vocation will lead to complex and cataclysmic consequences for herself and those she loves. As a journalist, Scott Simon covered the siege of Sarajevo. Here, in a novel as suspenseful as a John le Carré thriller, he re-creates the atmosphere of that place and time and the pain and dark humor of its people. Pretty Birds is a bold departure, and the auspicious beginning of yet another brilliant career for its author.

A Novel

Pretty Birds

A moving meditation on the NPR host's relationship with his mother, inspired by the popular tweets he shared during her death, traces their shared love of family while profiling his mother's heroic work as a dedicated single parent.

A Son, a Mother, and the Lessons of a Lifetime

Unforgettable

A widower transplanted from India with two Americanized daughters, Sonny Roopini, an alderman in Chicago's city government, finds himself thrust into the limelight thanks to the sudden death of the mayor.

A Novel of Politics

Windy City

Este es un libro centrado en prácticas místicas. Aquí el lector encontrará prácticas y meditaciones místicas que le ayudarán a establecer una rutina mística adecuada, desde la configuración básica hasta la práctica más avanzada, mediante la cual un estudiante puede lograr esta última realización divina. La encarnación física de lo divino también es relevante, y esta se describe en el libro. El libro también lo ilustrará sobre los grandes beneficios que la meditación puede brindar a su salud, y cómo la meditación le ayudará a tener éxito en la vida en sus tareas diarias. Lea "Meditación para Todos: Cómo Hacer que sea Parte de su Vida Cotidiana". Conozca los principios y la información que se encuentran en el libro y póngalos en práctica. Esto es todo lo que necesitará para hacer que la meditación forme parte de su sistema. Así que manténgase en calma, viva una vida más productiva y más fructífera con la meditación diaria. Sea más consciente de sí mismo, de su entorno y de sus emociones meditando diariamente. Esto no quiere decir que tendrá que sentarse en una habitación oscura con las piernas cruzadas. De hecho, la meditación se puede personalizar para que se adapte a lo que usted quiera. Puede tener diferentes objetivos con la meditación y aun así alcanzar sus objetivos a través de los diversos tipos de meditación que están a su alcance. Conviértase en una persona más saludable a través de la meditación y descubra algo más de felicidad en su vida. ¡Compre hoy su libro!

Cómo Meditar para Eliminar la Ansiedad y la Depresión (Técnicas de Consciencia Plena para Todos)

Meditación: Cómo Meditar Para Eliminar La Ansiedad Y La Depresión (Técnicas De Atención Plena Para Las Personas)

In this warm, funny, and wise new book, NPR’s award-winning and beloved Scott Simon tells the story of how he and his wife found true love with two tiny strangers from the other side of the world. It’s a book of unforgettable moments: when Scott and Caroline get their first thumb-size pictures of their daughters, when the small girls are placed in their arms, and all the laughs and tumbles along the road as they become a real family. Woven into the tale of Scott, Caroline, and the two little girls who changed their lives are the stories of other adoptive families. Some are famous and some are not, but each family’s saga captures facets of the miracle of adoption. Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other is a love story that doesn’t gloss over the rough spots. There are anxieties and tears along with hugs and smiles and the unparalleled joy of this blessed and special way of making a family. Here is a book that families who have adopted—or are considering adoption—will want to read for inspiration. But everyone can enjoy this story because, as Scott Simon writes, adoption can also help us understand what really makes families, and how and why we fall in love.

In Praise of Adoption

Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other

Tanners of Taiwan is an ethnography of identity construction set in the leather-tanning communities of Southern Taiwan. Through life history analysis and ethnographic observation, Simon examines what it means to be Chinese - or alternatively Taiwanese - in contemporary Taiwan. Under forty years of martial law from 1947 to 1987, the Chinese Nationalist Party tried to create a Chinese identity in Taiwan through ideological campaigns that reached deep into families, schools and workplaces. They justified their rule through a development narrative that Chinese culture and good policy contributed to the prosperity of the Taiwan miracle. These ideological claims and cultural identities, however, have never been fully accepted in Southern Taiwan. This ethnography is the first to document from the ground level how those claims have been contested, and how a new Taiwanese identity has been constructed since democratization. Tanners of Taiwan provides more than a description of workplaces in Taiwan. Looking at the different perspectives of tanners, women managers, and workers, it demonstrates how cultural and other identities are constructed through dynamics of power and political economy. A small, affordable case studies book to be assigned with a core textbook in introductory anthropology courses. Shows how the US reader is connected to the seemingly distant lives of Taiwanese tanners. Simon follows hides from the US to tanneries in Taiwan, then elsewhere to be made into shoes and other leather goods, and then back to the consumer in the US - demonstrating concretely the notion of "global interconnectedness." Anchored in personal observation and ethnographic detail, the book makes very tangible such otherwise abstract notions as "national identity" and "global integration."

Life Strategies and National Culture

Tanners of Taiwan

The #1 Los Angeles Times bestseller from the host of NPR's Weekend Edition -- "absolutely spectacular-wise and intimate, often funny, always touching" (Scott Turow) -- now in paperback. In a beautifully written narrative that runs from childhood to adulthood through times of war and peace, Scott Simon movingly tracing his life as a fan -- of sports, theater, politics, and the people and things he holds dear. Sports Illustrated columnist Ron Fimrite says of Home and Away, "Rarely do you find in books of this genre a clearer look into mysteries and confusions of childhood . . . moving and often amusing portraits . . . insights into the complex and often corrupt world of Chicago politics, the city being this book's true protagonist. There are compelling scenes from Simon's years as a war correspondent, roving reporter, and political operative . . . There is also an emotional account of Michael Jordan's last championship season with the Bulls that is a book within a book . . . "The writing is uniformly superb. This is, in fact, a memoir of such breadth and reach it compares favorably with another book that is allegedly about the nature of sports allegiance, Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes. And that, believe me, is saying something."

Memior of a Fan

Home and Away

Sweet and Sour is the first in-depth anthropological study of Taiwanese women entrepreneurs, their career ambitions, their family relations, and their projects of self-identity. Focusing on the voices and perspectives of the women themselves, Scott Simon draws from life-narratives of women from various ages, ethnic groups, social classes, and occupations to provide a diverse set of rarely heard native voices speaking out on gender and entrepreneurship in Taiwan. This rich collection of life histories provides a unique understanding of Taiwanese society and the place of women within it.

Life-worlds of Taipei Women Entrepreneurs

Sweet and Sour

Tony Bennett

At ninety, musician and singer Tony Bennett is as vibrant and productive as ever. In addition to his prodigious musical output, including albums, concerts, and personal appearances, this beloved and enduring artist has written his second book. In 2012’s Life Is a Gift, Tony reflected on the lessons he has learned over the years. Now, in Just Getting Started, he pays homage to the remarkable people who inspired those lessons. In his warm and inviting voice, Tony talks about who and what have enriched his own life, including Charlie Chaplin, Judy Garland, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Cole Porter, Amy Winehouse, Fred Astaire, Lady Gaga, members of his family, significant places, and more. Just Getting Started chronicles the relationship Tony has enjoyed with each one of these legends, entertainers, humanitarians, and loved ones, and reveals how the lessons and values they imparted have invaluably shaped his life. As enchanting and unforgettable as his music, Just Getting Started is a beautiful compilation of reflections every Bennett fan will treasure, and a perfect introduction for those just getting to know this remarkable star and humanitarian.

Just Getting Started

Maya Angelou

Mike Farrell

Paula Poundstone

Neal Wiegman

Nancy Wiegman

This book is a selection of conversations between radio host Nancy Wiegman and writers who were guests on "Nancy's Bookshelf," a weekly author interview show produced by Northstate Public Radio, KCHO 91.7 FM Chico / KFPR 88.9 FM Redding. Nancy interviews mostly local and regional writers, but some who come to Chico are nationally known, such as Maya Angelou and Scott Simon.

Scott Simon

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