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THE AWAKENED BRAIN

THE NEW SCIENCE OF SPIRITUALITY AND OUR QUEST FOR AN INSPIRED LIFE

Potent, profound, and accessible.

A compelling examination of the correlations between spirituality and mental health.

“This book is the story of how I discovered the awakened brain, why it matters, and how we can cultivate it in daily life,” writes clinical psychology professor Miller, founder of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Columbia. In a landmark 2012 study, she demonstrated that spirituality contributes to preventing depression. Participants, all at genetic risk for depression, were asked how personally important spirituality or religion were to them; subsequent MRI scans showed that “the high-spiritual brain was thicker and stronger in exactly the same regions that weaken and wither in depressed brains.” Miller critiques popular psychological treatments, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, as bound by limiting assumptions. In 1998, when she presented her epidemiological research to colleagues, she was met with skepticism. The overwhelming majority of scientists “accepted that biology was real, and spirituality was not real.” The author has spent much of her career addressing this dichotomy by evidencing a biological basis for spirituality. She interweaves stories of her own struggles with depression and infertility into her professional findings. Her work shows depression and spirituality as two sides of the same physiological coin and that engagement with awakened attention and connection is “a matter of choice.” Every human, she notes, “is endowed with a natural capacity to perceive a greater reality and consciously connect to the life force that moves in, through, and around us.” When we put that capability to good use, we access “unsurpassed psychological benefits: less depression, anxiety, and substance abuse; and more positive psychological traits such as grit, resilience, optimism, and tenacity.” Miller’s 2016 study of 5,500 participants representing the most popular global religious traditions revealed “that people shared five spiritual phenotypes,” including altruism and sense of oneness. With a more definitive way to ascribe meaning to spirituality, the author examines which phenotype is most effective in thwarting depression.

Potent, profound, and accessible.

Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-984855-62-6

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021

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TANQUERAY

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.

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A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.

Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.

Pub Date: July 12, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022

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LOVE, PAMELA

A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.

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The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.

According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.

A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.

Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023

ISBN: 9780063226562

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023

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