Maybe you always have to finish what you start—from a book to a dismal marriage. Or your mother is always there when you need her—but sometimes you wish she had somewhere else to go. Each of us has a little too much of our own good thing—it's excess baggage that's holding us back. As Judith Sills says in this exceptionally wise and refereshingly pragmatic book, everyone has baggage. It's the aspect of your personality that keeps getting in your way. Excess Baggage shines a light on our blind spots, defining five common obstacles to happiness that we create: • We need to be right • We feel superior • We dread rejection • We create drama • We cherish our anger Life doesn't have to be so hard. Using easy-to-follow but powerful psychological excercises, Dr. Sills helps you discover just what it is about yourself that keeps you from getting what you want. Then you can set your excess baggage down foerever—and get out of your own way.

Tracey Carisch thought she had it all. As a wife, mother, and successful executive, she seemed to be living the modern American dream. But one night, a panic attack sent her tumbling into an existential crisis and questioning everything about her life. That’s when she and her husband made a decision that shocked their family and friends: they sold everything they owned, pulled their three young daughters out of school, and became a family of wandering globetrotters. Loaded with hilarious mishaps as well as deeply meaningful revelations, Excess Baggage chronicles the Carisch family’s extraordinary, eighteen-month adventure across six continents. As they navigate the trials and tribulations of international travel, the family encounters unique people and bizarre situations that teach them about the world—and themselves. Carisch’s candid and insightful account of her family’s journey will have you laughing out loud, shedding a few tears, and bringing the lessons of family travel into your own life . . . without ever having to leave home.

Lately, Anviksha Punjabi can't seem to get anything right. She is in the middle of ending her second marriage, is barely keeping any friends, and repeatedly getting into trouble at work. And as if all that weren't enough, she must put up with her gregarious and over-bearing 67-year-old mother as a housemate. Afraid that if this goes on, she'll finally unravel completely, Anviksha decides that she needs a break - a Bollywood style, solo-trip across Europe kind of break. What she doesn't expect is that her mother, Smita Punjabi, will insist on coming along. The unlikely duo embarks on a journey complete with nudists, an unwelcome blast from the past, a British dog named Bhindi, and several eligible bachelors, and slowly, what was supposed to be a soul-searching journey for one, turns into a life-altering experience for two.

With vivid prose, Karen Ma takes us on a momentous journey with a Chinese family as it tries to grow new roots in a foreign land."-Geling Yan, author of Banquet Bug, White Snake, and The Flowers of War Karen Ma's debut novel chronicles two Chinese sisters, one raised in China during the desolate years of the Cultural Revolution; the other in Japan during the freewheeling years of bubble capitalism. They reunite as adults in Tokyo in the early 1990s, and as the sisters circle warily, their distrust grows, fueled by family lies and secrets. Exploring themes of identity, alienation, love, jealousy, and family obligations in the face of cultural and geographic adversity, ultimately each must confront a fundamental question: what's the meaning of home when your roots aren't secure? Karen Ma is the author of The Modern Madame Butterfly (Tuttle Publishing, 2006). She has lived a combined twenty years in China and Japan working as a writer and journalist."

Based on groundbreaking research on the working conditions of airport check-in workers in two countries, a previously unstudied category of predominantly women workers, Ellen Rosskam describes a form of work characterized as modern-day Taylorism. An occupation greatly affected by new forms of work organization and management practices-caught in the throes of rapid change due to international competition, alliances, mergers, and the application of cost-efficiency strategies-check-in work has been undermined in recent years by the adverse effects of liberalization and technological change.By peeling away the veneer of glamour associated with airport check-in work, Rosskam reveals how changes in work organization in this sector have de-skilled, disempowered, and ultimately demoralized workers. In "Excess Baggage", weaving through the psychological distress, physical pain from musculoskeletal disorders, strain, and violence that check-in workers experience and describe in their own words, a picture emerges of a job perceived to be "safe," "clean," "glamour girl" work, but which is comparable to industrial workplaces that require heavy manual lifting, obligingly performed in skirts, dresses, and pretty little shoes.

When packing for a trip, carrying excess baggage can make your trip more difficult than it should be. Excess baggage in our lives can have the same effects; it can weigh us down and place insurmountable pressure on our lives This guide explores the kind of excess baggage that a Christian may be carrying through life. Author Zebria Coffey has defined it as, among other things, behavior that does not befit a Christian, such as wrath, malice, jealousy, anger, filthy language, evil desires, and a lying tongue. She also includes the challenge of taking on too many activities without considering the time and energy it will take to complete them. We have all been guilty at one time or another of saying yes to too many projects or activities, only to feel burnt out at the end. Excess baggage is burdensome to us. It is necessary to begin to identify and acknowledge it in our lives and then make a conscious decision to lighten our loads. The message in Excess Baggage reminds us of what our most important priority in life should beputting God before all others. When we put God first, He directs our path in life and helps us to determine how best to handle tasks and priorities as they are presented to us.

Excess Baggage investigates how we read modern theory, how we apprehend Latin American culture through that theory, why this approach is flawed, and how our reading could be different. It is a study of modernity's supersessive, paradoxical attempts to outthink thought. This methodology, never autochthonous to any context despite its claims, is traced through one of its more extreme moments, the Enlightenment, and then through the work of Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx (and their more recent postmodern acolytes) to the Reformation. Although these thinkers are self-differentiating, the divisions are artificial, for each, even in present formats, references a preternatural origin that is subsequently projected into the future, disavowing history's ability to perceive itself as anything other than revolutionary. This book traces post-1960 Latin Americanism through readings by its critics-cum-theorists, as dictatorially assigning a univocal reading to a continent's cultural production, regardless of how ethical the theory may itself seem. Though predominantly a metacritical work, a reading of philosophy and its Latin Americanist manifestations, there is also comparative reading of European, North American, and Latin American literature. Meaning has always existed in all such contexts, but is either eradicated or misread by the premises of our critical equipment. In fact or fiction, Excess Baggage appeals for an admission of contextualized mnemotechny, inevitable in thought regardless, and the real danger in the present milieu.