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Joanna recommends the book GHOST CATS OF THE SOUTH by Randy Russell, which Joanna has written an endorsement on the book's back jacket.  In this companion volume to the popular GHOST DOGS OF THE SOUTH, award-winning folklorist Randy Russell presents more than 20 original stories of cats who reach between the worlds of life and death. Each story is birthed from existing folklore, noted incidents of ghost cats, and first-person accounts. No mere compendium of reported incidents and sightings, this ghostly volume introduces the reader to the fuller circumstances and personalities of known encounters with cats who have landed on their feet in the afterlife.
Silverstein's memoir offers a rare glimpse at life as an organ-transplant recipient. She was a young law student when the first signs of a deadly virus in her heart appeared. When her doctor said she merely needed to keep her stress in check and add salt to her diet, she happily complied. At 25, after several months of terrifying symptoms and misdiagnoses, she received a heart transplant. Like all organ recipients, to prevent her body from rejecting her new heart, she depends on high doses of immunosuppressants—bitter poison that leaves her nauseous, trembling, aching, and highly vulnerable to infection—for the rest of her life, which was only expected to last another 10 years. To better her chances, she heeded her doctors' advice, sacrificing everything from coffee to alcohol to pregnancy. Still, it seemed that the best she could hope for was the illusion of a normal life, so she kept her body's punishing blows from her friends, her adopted son and at times even from her loving husband, her ever-confident coach through years of devastating illness. "To make myself 'normal' again would be the most extraordinary feat that I would never quite accomplish.", she writes. Now, more than 17 years after her transplant, Silverstein reflects on the often misunderstood journey through the torments of being saved in a stirring story of survival and unyielding love.
Now that he's gotten us talking about the viral life of ideas and the power of gut reactions, Malcolm Gladwell poses a more provocative question in Outliers: why do some people succeed, living remarkably productive and impactful lives, while so many more never reach their potential? Challenging our cherished belief of the "self-made man," he makes the democratic assertion that superstars don't arise out of nowhere, propelled by genius and talent: "they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot." Examining the lives of outliers from Mozart to Bill Gates, he builds a convincing case for how successful people rise on a tide of advantages, "some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky."

 

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