New Releases by Stephen Mitchell

How couples with kids can transform 13 common relationship fights into closer connection, from popular Instagram counselors Erin and Stephen Mitchell (@couples.counseling.for.parents). Parenting changes a couple’s relationship in fundamental ways, but most parents are too exhausted from the demands of life, work, and engaging their kids to prioritize their relationship. This can lead to repeated conflict and an overwhelming sense of anxiety, anger, hurt, and loneliness…just when you need your partner’s support the most. The good news: conflict is actually a sign that you are trying to connect with your partner—you’re just stuck in an old pattern of communication. In Too Tired to Fight, Erin and Stephen Mitchell use their 20-plus years of counseling experience to walk couples through the 13 conflicts that are not just normal but necessary to keep a partnership strong once kids enter the picture, including: The “Your Parenting Is Wrong” Conflict The “I’m More Tired Than You” Conflict The “Stop Choosing Your Family Over Ours” Conflict The “Sex Life? What Sex Life?” Conflict In each scenario, they show how this conflict plays out—and offer scripts, questions for reflection, and their tried-and-true Conflict to Connection Equation that couples can use in the moment to communicate true repair and resolution. Their secret: by expressing your feelings and intentionally listening to your partner—not just venting or reacting to your stress-response system—you can work through the “pain points” of parenthood together and actually make your relationship happier and healthier as a result.

The towns and villages of Phrygia, a predominantly rural region of inner Asia Minor, provide richer documentation of their early Christian communities than any other part of the Roman empire. This includes the earliest lengthy Christian funerary text, coin types depicting Noah and the Flood introduced by Christians at the Phrygian emporium of Apamea, the famous ‘Christians for Christians’ inscriptions, and more than a hundred other pre-Constantinian grave monuments, The abundant evidence for the Christian presence up the Turkish invasions throws new light on continuity between Late Antiquity and the Middle Byzantine period, and on the warfare between the Byzantines and Turks in the 11th century. This is the first exhaustive regional study since 1897.

A sweeping historical account of the Later Roman Empire incorporating the latest scholarly research In the newly revised 3rd edition of A History of the Later Roman Empire, 284-700, distinguished historians Geoffrey Greatrex and Stephen Mitchell deliver a thoroughly up-to-date discussion of the Later Roman Empire. It includes tables of information, numerous illustrations, maps, and chronological overviews. As the only single volume covering Late Antiquity and the early Islamic period, the book is designed as a comprehensive historical handbook covering the entire span between the Roman Empire to the Islamic conquests. The third edition is a significant expansion of the second edition—published in 2015—and includes two new chapters covering the seventh century. The rest of the work has been updated and revised, providing readers with a sweeping historical survey of the struggles, triumphs, and disasters of the Roman Empire, from the accession of the emperor Diocletian in AD 284 to the closing years of the seventh century. It also offers: A thorough description of the massive political and military transformations in Rome’s western and eastern empires Comprehensive explorations of the latest research on the Later Roman Empire Practical discussions of the tumultuous period ushered in by the Arab conquests Extensive updates, revisions, and corrections of the second edition Perfect for undergraduate and postgraduate students of ancient, medieval, early European, and Near Eastern history, A History of the Later Roman Empire, 284-700 will also benefit lay readers with an interest in the relevant historical period and students taking a survey course involving the late Roman Empire.

“I love The First Christmas. What a charming way Stephen Mitchell has found to tell my favorite story of all, the Nativity, character by character (I love the donkey and the ox), with wise and thrilling interludes about God, reality, truth.” –Anne Lamott In The First Christmas, Stephen Mitchell brings the Nativity story to vivid life as never before. A narrative that is only sketched out in two Gospels becomes fully realized here with nuanced characters and a setting that reflects the culture of the time. Mitchell has suffused the birth of Jesus with a sense of beauty that will delight and astonish readers. In this version, we see the world through the eyes of a Whitmanesque ox and a visionary donkey, starry-eyed shepherds and Zen-like wise men, each of them providing a unique perspective on a scene that is, in Western culture, the central symbol for good tidings of great joy. Rather than superimposing later Christian concepts onto the Annunciation and Nativity scenes, he imagines Mary and Joseph experiencing the angelic message as a young Jewish woman and man living in the year 4 bce might have experienced it, with terror, dismay, and ultimate acceptance. In this context, their yes becomes an act of great moral courage. Readers of every background will be enchanted by this startlingly beautiful reimagining of the Christmas tale.

"One of our oldest stories of grace . . . The heart cannot help but be moved and healed by the treasure to be found in these pages." —Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times–bestselling author Stephen Mitchell''s gift is to breathe new life into ancient classics. In The Way of Forgiveness, he offers us his riveting novelistic version of the Biblical tale in which Jacob''s favorite son is sold into slavery and eventually becomes viceroy of Egypt. Tolstoy called it the most beautiful story in the world. What''s new here is the lyrical, witty, vivid prose, informed by a wisdom that brings fresh insight to this foundational legend of betrayal and all-embracing forgiveness. Mitchell''s retelling, which reads like a postmodern novel, interweaves the narrative with brief meditations that, with their Zen surprises, expand the narrative and illuminate its main themes. By stepping inside the minds of Joseph and the other characters, Mitchell reanimates one of the central stories of Western culture. The engrossing tale that he has created will capture the hearts and minds of modern readers and show them that this ancient story can still challenge, delight, and astonish. "A beautiful ''retelling'' of one of the most profound and moving passages in the Bible. Stephen Mitchell has fashioned a deceptively simple version of the story of Joseph and his brothers, and given it back to the world in luminous prose that the authors of the King James Version would applaud. A unique and special kind of masterpiece." —John Banville, Booker Prize–winning author "Stephen Mitchell has offered us a lovely treat, a creative and heartfelt way to re-inhabit this biblical story full of wisdom and healing." —Jack Kornfield, author of The Wise Heart

Internationally acclaimed, bestelling author Byron Katie’s most anticipated work since Loving What Is We live in difficult times, leaving far too many of us suffering from anxiety and depression, fear and anger. In her new and most anticipated work since Loving What Is, beloved spiritual teacher Byron Katie provides a much-needed beacon of light, and a source of hope and joy. In A Mind at Home with Itself, Byron Katie illuminates one of the most profound ancient Buddhist texts, The Diamond Sutra (newly translated in these pages by Stephen Mitchell) to reveal the nature of the mind and to liberate us from painful thoughts, using her revolutionary system of self-inquiry called “The Work.” Byron Katie doesn’t merely describe the awakened mind; she empowers us to see it and feel it in action. At once startlingly fresh and powerfully enlightening, A Mind at Home with Itself offers us a transformative new perspective on life and death. In the midst of a normal American life, Byron Katie became increasingly depressed and over a ten-year period sank further into despair and suicidal thoughts. Then one morning in 1986 she woke up in a state of absolute joy, filled with the realization of how her own suffering had ended. The freedom of that realization has never left her. Its direct result, The Work, has helped millions of people all over the world to question their stressful thoughts and set themselves free from suffering.

A headlong adrenaline-rush of a new novel from one of our most beloved and original writers: Slade House, which has its origins in Mitchell''s famously Twitter-released short story last year, is his most entertaining and accessible novel yet. A cycle of linked ghost stories perfect for any dark and stormy night. An ordinary road in a town like yours: bus routes and red-brick houses. A dank narrow alley, easy to miss, even when you''re looking for it. A small black metal door set into the wall: no handle, no keyhole, but at your touch it opens onto a sunlit garden, sloping up to a house that doesn''t quite make sense... Go through, and the door closes discreetly behind you. In David Mitchell''s exhilarating new novel, five "guests" separated by nine years enter Slade House for a brief visit--only to vanish without trace from the outside world. Who draws them to the heart of Slade House, and why is the house missing from maps? Beginning in 1979 and ending in 2015, these five interlacing narratives will enchant Mitchell''s readers, old and new, with a signature blend of mystery, realism and the supernatural.

The Bone Clocks follows the twists and turns of Holly''s life from a scarred adolescence in Gravesend to old age on Ireland''s Atlantic coast as Europe''s oil supply dries up - a life not so far out of the ordinary, yet punctuated by flashes of precognition, visits from people who emerge from thin air and brief lapses in the laws of reality. For Holly Sykes - daughter, sister, mother, guardian - is also an unwitting player in a murderous feud played out in the shadows and margins of our world, and may prove to be its decisive weapon.

The Second Edition of A History of the Later Roman Empire features extensive revisions and updates to the highly-acclaimed, sweeping historical survey of the Roman Empire from the accession of Diocletian in AD 284 to the death of Heraclius in 641. Features a revised narrative of the political history that shaped the late Roman Empire Includes extensive changes to the chapters on regional history, especially those relating to Asia Minor and Egypt Offers a renewed evaluation of the decline of the empire in the later sixth and seventh centuries Places a larger emphasis on the military deficiencies, collapse of state finances, and role of bubonic plague throughout the Europe in Rome’s decline Includes systematic updates to the bibliography

Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory provides a masterful overview of the central issue concerning psychoanalysts today: finding a way to deal in theoretical terms with the importance of the patient''s relationships with other people. Just as disturbed and distorted relationships lie at the core of the patient''s distress, so too does the relation between analyst and patient play a key role in the analytic process. All psychoanalytic theories recognize the clinical centrality of “object relations,” but much else about the concept is in dispute. In their ground-breaking exercise in comparative psychoanalysis, the authors offer a new way to understand the dramatic and confusing proliferation of approaches to object relations. The result is major clarification of the history of psychoanalysis and a reliable guide to the fundamental issues that unite and divide the field. Greenberg and Mitchell, both psychoanalysts in private practice in New York, locate much of the variation in the concept of object relations between two deeply divergent models of psychoanalysis: Freud''s model, in which relations with others are determined by the individual''s need to satisfy primary instinctual drives, and an alternative model, in which relationships are taken as primary. The authors then diagnose the history of disagreement about object relations as a product of competition between these disparate paradigms. Within this framework, Sullivan''s interpersonal psychiatry and the British tradition of object relations theory, led by Klein, Fairbairn, Winnicott, and Guntrip, are shown to be united by their rejection of significant aspects of Freud''s drive theory. In contrast, the American ego psychology of Hartmann, Jacobson, and Kernberg appears as an effort to enlarge the classical drive theory to accommodate information derived from the study of object relations. Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory offers a conceptual map of the most difficult terrain in psychoanalysis and a history of its most complex disputes. In exploring the counterpoint between different psychoanalytic schools and traditions, it provides a synthetic perspective that is a major contribution to the advance of psychoanalytic thought.

The book reveals how disparate people connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.

All richly illustrated with lustrous line drawings throughout, they are here for young readers to rediscover: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Abu Keer and Abu Seer, and Aladdin and the Magic Lamp in its original setting of China. These stories will bring you to a whole new world; one where clever wit will save the day, thieves give chase with swords and spears, kings can kill with a glance, honesty is rewarded with a vast, unheard-of treasure.

"Pasazer statku, z utesknieniem wygladajacy konca podrozy przez Pacyfik w 1850 roku; wydziedziczony kompozytor, usilujacy oszustwem zarobic na chleb w Belgii lat miedzywojennych; dziennikarka-idealistka w Kalifornii rzadzonej przez gubernatora Reagana; wydawca ksiazek, uciekajacy przed gangsterami, ktorym jest winien pieniadze; genetycznie modyfikowana uslugujaca z restauracji, w oczekiwaniu na wykonanie wyroku smierci; i Zachariasz, chlopak z wysp Pacyfiku, ktory przyglada sie, jak dogasa swiatlo nauki i cywilizacji - narratorzy Atlasu Chmur slysza nawzajem swoje echa poprzez meandry dziejow, co odmienia ich los zarowno w blahym, jak i w donioslym wymiarze."--Cover.

From Stephen Mitchell comes an anthology of poetry chosen from the world''s great religious and literary traditions--the perfect companion to Mitchel''s bestselling translation of Tao Te Ching • The Upanishads • The Book of Psalms • Lao-tzu • The Bhagavad Gita • Chuang-tzu • The Odes of Solomon • Seng-ts''an • Han-shan • Li Po • Tu Fu • Layman P''ang • Kukai • Tung-shan • Symeon the New Theologian • Izumi Shikibu • Su Tung-p''o • Hildegard of Bingen • Francis of Assisi • Wu-men • Dõgen • Rumi • Mechthild of Magdeburg • Dante • Kabir Mirabai • William Shakespeare • George Herbert • Bunan • Gensei • Angelus Silesius • Thomas Traherne • Basho • William Blake • Ryõkan • Issa • Ghalib • Bibi Hayati • Wait Whitman • Emily Dickinson • Gerard Manley Hopkins • Uvavnuk • Anonymous Navaho • W. B. Yeats • Antonio Machado • Rainer Maria Rilke • Wallace Stevens • D.H. Lawrence • Robinson Jeffers

This is the essential pregnancy guide for dads-to-be and comes complete with must-have man-centric checklists so you won''t forget anything. From the joys of conception, the pain of labour and the exhilaration of birth, this easy-to-read book will empower you with authentic, reassuring, realistic, bloke-authoritative advice so you can be the most supportive and useful partner ever for your pregnant other half. This is more than what to expect, it is what to do...for blokes. Congratulations and enjoy the ride.

The Bhagavad Gita, or ''Song of the Spirit'', is the best known book of India''s national epic The Mahabharata. Based on a dialogue between Bhagavan Krishna and Prince Arjuna on the eve of a great battle, it is held to be the essence of Hindu spirituality, sacred literature and yoga, as well as exploring the great universal themes of courage, honour, death, love, virtue and fulfilment. Of interest to the large number of contemporary spiritual seekers - of any faith and none - who want to read the world''s most important sacred texts, and to learn from their wisdom. Also useful for scholars of Vedic literature and students.

THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER David Mitchell''s novels have captivated critics and readers alike, as his Man Booker shortlistings and Richard & Judy Book of the Year award attest. Now he has written a masterpiece. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the kind of book that comes along once in a decade - enthralling in its storytelling, imagination and scope. Set at a turning point in history on a tiny island attached to mainland Japan, David Mitchell''s tale of power, passion and integrity transports us to a world that is at once exotic and familiar: an extraordinary place and an era when news from abroad took months to arrive, yet when people behaved as they always do - loving, lusting and yearning, cheating, fighting and killing. Bringing to vivid life a tectonic shift between East and West, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is dramatic, funny, heartbreaking, enlightening and thought-provoking. Reading it is an unforgettable experience.

Dispatched to the influential Japanese port of Dejima in 1799, ambitious clerk Jacob de Zoet resolves to earn enough money to deserve his wealthy fiancée, an effort that is challenged by his relationship with the midwife daughter of a samurai.

A revised edition of the first book of poems by Stephen Mitchell, the renowned translator of Rilke''s poetry, The Book of Job, and the Tao Te Ching. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Let the heavens and the earth rejoice: A new adaptation of the psalms from the author of The Gospel According to Jesus. When the ancient rabbis named the anthology that we know as the Book of Psalms, they called it sefer tehillim—the Book of Praises. That is the dominant theme of the greatest of the Psalms: a rapturous praise, a deep, exuberant gratitude for being here. In this volume, leading biblical scholar and award-winning translator Stephen Mitchell translates fifty of the most powerful and popular bible psalms—to create poems that recreate the music of the original Hebrew verse.

There are more psychoanalytic theories today than anyone knows what to do with, and the heterogeneity and complexity of the entire body of psychoanalytic though have become staggering. In Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis, Stephen A. Mitchell weaves strands from the principal relational-model traditions (interpersonal psychoanalysis, British school object-relations theories, self psychology, and existential psychoanalysis) into a comprehensive approach to many of the knottiest problems and controversies in theoretical and clinical psychoanalysis. Mitchell’s earlier book, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory, co-authored with Jay Greenberg, set the stage for this current integration by providing a broad comparative analysis of important thinking on the nature of human relationships. In that classic study Greenberg and Mitchell distinguished between two basic paradigms: the drive model, in which relations with others are generated and shaped by the need for drive gratifications, and various relational models, in which relations themselves are taken as primary and irreducible. In Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis, Mitchell argues that the drive model has since outlived its usefulness. The relational model, on the other hand, has been developed piecemeal by different authors who rarely acknowledge and explore the commonality of their assumptions or the rich complementarity of their perspectives. In this bold effort at integrative theorizing, Mitchell draws together major lines of relational-model traditions into a unified framework for psychoanalytic thought, more economical than the anachronistic drive model and more inclusive than any of the singular relational approaches to the core significance of sexuality, the impact of early experience, the relation of the past to the present, the interpenetration of illusion and actuality, the centrality of the will, the repetition of painful experience, the nature of analytic situation, and the process of analytic change. As such, his book will be required reading for psychoanalytic scholars, practitioners, candidates in psychoanalysis, and students in the field.

Following the phenomenal success of his own version of the Tao Te Ching, a renowned scholar and translator delivers a 21st-century form of ancient wisdom into the modern world.

Stephen Mitchell is widely known for his ability to make ancient masterpieces thrillingly new, to step in where many have tried before and create versions that are definitive for our time. His celebrated version of the Tao Te Ching is the most popular edition in print, and his translations of Jesus, Rilke, Genesis, and Job have won the hearts of readers and critics alike. Stephen Mitchell now brings to the Bhagavad Gita his gift for breathing new life into sacred texts. The Bhagavad Gita is universally acknowledged as one of the world''s literary and spiritual masterpieces. It is the core text of the Hindu tradition and has been treasured by American writers from Emerson and Thoreau to T. S. Eliot, who called it the greatest philosophical poem after the Divine Comedy. There have been more than two hundred English translations of the Gita, including many competent literal versions, but not one of them is a superlative literary text in its own right. Now all that has changed. Stephen Mitchell''s Bhagavad Gita sings with the clarity, the vigor, and the intensity of the original Sanskrit. It will, as William Arrowsmith said of Mitchell''s translation of The Sonnets to Orpheus, "instantly make every other rendering obsolete."

In her first two books, Byron Katie showed how suffering can be ended by questioning the stressful thoughts that create it, through a process of self-inquiry she calls The Work. Now, in A Thousand Names for Joy, she encourages us to discover the freedom that lives on the other side of inquiry.Stephen Mitchell—the renowned translator of the Tao Te Ching—selected provocative excerpts from that ancient text as a stimulus for Katie to talk about the most essential issues that face us all: life and death, good and evil, love, work, and fulfillment. The result is a book that allows the timeless insights of the Tao Te Ching to resonate anew for us today, while offering a vivid and illuminating glimpse into the life of someone who for twenty years—ever since she “woke up to reality” one morning in 1986—has been living what Lao-tzu wrote more than 2,500 years ago.Katie’s profound, lighthearted wisdom is not theoretical; it is absolutely authentic. That is what makes this book so compelling. It’s a portrait of a woman who is imperturbably joyous, whether she is dancing with her infant granddaughter or finds that her house has been emptied out by burglars, whether she stands before a man about to kill her or embarks on the adventure of walking to the kitchen, whether she learns that she is going blind, flunks a “How Good a Lover Are You?” test, or is diagnosed with cancer. With her stories of total ease in all circumstances, Katie does more than describe the awakened mind; she lets you see it, feel it, in action. And she shows you how that mind is yours as well.

Publisher Description

Presents an account of the life of Jesus, using what the author considers to be the most authentic sources.