A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Great journalism relies on a narrative arc to engage and inform the reader. Stories Can Save Us looks at how the best reporters and writers craft narrative literary journalism. Journalist Matt Tullis uses the material he gathered in the more than seventy-five interviews he conducted with the best narrative and literary journalists in the country through his podcast, Gangrey: The Podcast, to show how these professionals conceive and writesuch compelling stories. Through his podcast, Tullis interviewed Pulitzer Prizewinners, National Magazine Awardwinners, and many authors of books of narrative journalism, including New York Times best-selling authors. He also spoke with reporters of different races and backgrounds, styles and strengths—journalists who have been published in the most prestigious newspapers and magazines—to ask: How do they find story ideas? How do they reach out to potential story subjects? What are their interviewstrategies? How do they conduct other information gathering? How do they come up with their amazing and enticing leads? How do they develop story structure? How does the story change in the revision process? How do they make their stories great and make them into the types of stories that people read and talk about for years? Through Tullis’s conversations with these top-tier journalists, we are offered a window into their methods and practices as well as the motivations behind great journalism and how it speaks to the cultural climate of its time. Tullis’s goal was to expand the power and potential of what amazing reporting and narrative writing can do, believing that it can literally change a reader’s mood and, possibly, a reader’s life.

Are you my enemy? Am I yours? Violent stories surround us. Brutal beginnings, horror-filled middles, despair-inducing endings. We need better stories: stories forged in the furnace of conflict, narratives that kindle compassion and ignite hope. In the pages of I Am Not Your Enemy, writer Michael T. McRay visits divided regions of the world and interviews activists, peacebuilders, former combatants about their personal stories of conflict, justice, and reconciliation. In Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland, and South Africa, he hears from grieving parents who partner together across enemy lines, a woman who meets her father’s killer, and a man who uses theater to counter the oppression of his people, and many more. In a time of heightened alienation and fear, McRay offers true, sacred stories of reconciliation and justice, asking what they can teach us about our own divided states. Must violence be met with violence? Is my belonging complete only when I take away yours? Will more guns, more walls, more weapons keep us safe? We need stories that cultivate empathy and tell the truth. We need stories to save us from our fear.

Nautilus Award Winner In this empowering work, the bestselling author of The Hero Within and Awakening the Heroes Within speaks to the heroine in every woman, offering potent strategies to forge lives of greater happiness and fulfillment—through activating the archetypes inherent in the ancient Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone. Our era of professional and familial pressures, constant connection, and a renewed debate on “having it all” presents unprecedented challenges to contemporary women. In Persephone Rising, celebrated scholar of depth psychology and archetypes Carol S. Pearson brings a fresh vision for meeting those challenges and rising above them, as only she can. Drawing on her profound understanding of myth's enduring power to catalyze transformations, Pearson guides readers on a journey of self-discovery, teaching us how to activate and apply the archetypes of Demeter and Persephone, as well as Zeus and Dionysus, in our own lives— empowering readers to see the unexpected choices and opportunities available to us all. Illuminating ancient wisdom for a modern audience, Persephone Rising offers meaningful and effective strategies to answer the call to heroism in our own lives: to locate and harness the unique potential within each of ourselves, and ultimately to develop our own innate heroic gifts. Just as Demeter and Persephone discovered, in the midst of great difficulty, their own powers, gifts, and abilities for creating a better path not only for themselves, but the world, Persephone Rising teaches that each one of us has more options than choosing whether to lean in or out—we have the power to change ourselves, and thus our world.

As part of the NCTE High School Literature Series, Tim O'Brien in the Classroom focuses on opportunities for classroom discussion and writing assignments, including lessons, open-ended prompts, and student writing samples. Many students, even those who claim to dislike stories of war or violence, are drawn to the writing of Tim O'Brien, especially The Things They Carried. The mysteries and "gray areas" O'Brien explores make his work a perfect addition to units on the fiction of the Vietnam War, first-person narrative, modern stories and novels, war stories, story cycles, and unconventional narrative structures. As part of the NCTE High School Literature Series, Tim O'Brien in the Classroom focuses on opportunities for classroom discussion and writing assignments, including lessons, open-ended prompts, and student writing samples. By teaching Tim O'Brien's works, you can not only make connections with other material in the literary canon, but also initiate broader discussions with your students about the reliability of memory, the purpose of storytelling, and the origins of fiction.