Books about Imperfect from Amazon.com

Gently dismantling the myth of medical infallibility, Dr. Atul Gawande's Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science is essential reading for anyone involved in medicine--on either end of the stethoscope Medical professionals make mistakes, learn on the job, and improvise much of their technique and self-confidence. Gawande's tales are humane and passionate reminders that doctors are people, too. His prose is thoughtful and deeply engaging, shifting from sometimes painful stories of suffering patients (including his own child) to intriguing suggestions for improving medicine with the same care he expresses in the surgical theater. Some of his ideas will make health care providers nervous or even angry, but his disarming style, confessional tone, and thoughtful arguments should win over most readers. Complications is a book with heart and an excellent bedside manner, celebrating rather than berating doctors for being merely human. --Rob Lightner.
Price: $3.42 [Notify me when price goes down.]

While most of us have moments of loving freely and openly, it is often hard to sustain this where it matters most—in our intimate relationships. Why, if love is so great and powerful, are human relationships so challenging and difficult? If love is the source of happiness and joy, why is it so hard to open to it fully and let it govern our lives? In this book, John Welwood addresses these questions and shows us how to overcome the most fundamental obstacle that keeps us from experiencing love's full flowering in our lives. Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships begins by showing how all our relational problems arise out of a universal, core wounding around love that affects not only our personal relationships but the quality of life in our world as a whole. This wounding shows up as a pervasive mood of unlove—a deep sense that we are not intrinsically lovable just as we are. And this shuts down our capacity to trust, so that even though we may hunger for love, we have difficulty opening to it and letting it circulate freely through us. This book takes the reader on a powerful journey of healing and transformation that involves learning to embrace our humanness and appreciate the imperfections of our relationships as trail-markers along the path to great love. It sets forth a process for releasing deep-seated grievances we hold against others for not loving us better and against ourselves for not being better loved. And it shows how our longing to be loved can magnetize the great love that will free us from looking to others to find ourselves. Written with penetrating realism and a fresh, lyrical style that honors the subtlety and richness of our relationship to love itself, this revolutionary book offers profound and practical guidance for healing our lives as well as our embattled world.

A workshop based on this book is also available in audio. For more information, click here. .
Price: $6.96 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Sandy Kinsolving's once-glittering life hangs by a threat; his future depends on his wife's inheritance and whether or not she's about to throw him out on his ear. What he wouldn't give for a solution to his money and marriage problems.

If this were an Alfred Hitchcock movie, the solution would be obvious. Enter a stranger with wife problems of his own, who offers a violent -- and mutually advantageous -- proposal.

Them in the time it takes to whisper a word, Kinsolving's normal life ends. What radiates like a mirage before him is wealth, security, and freedom. But lurking in the shadows are a brutal murder he cannot prevent, and a madman who stalks his every waking moment..
Price: $3.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Praise for The Imperfect Board Member

"Finally! A book about boards that isn't boring!"
--Patrick Lencioni, author, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

"Everyone wins with good governance--countries, corporations, and community groups. In a compelling style like no one before him, Jim Brown helps leaders understand the keys for boardroom excellence. The Imperfect Board Member ought to be required reading for people on every type of board. The great thing is that it won't need to be required--it's such a fun book, every leader will want to read it."
--Jim Balsillie, chairman and co-CEO, Research in Motion; chair, Centre for International Governance Innovation

"I know no board members, myself included, who won't learn valuable lessons from Jim Brown's book The Imperfect Board Member. Don't miss it!"
--Ken Blanchard, coauthor, The One-Minute Manager and The Secret

"Thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley, boards have become active. The Imperfect Board Member clarifies sharply the lines of what boards need to do and what management needs to do. The time has come for the two groups to work together and yet keep independent."
--Ram Charan, coauthor, Execution, and author, Boards That Deliver

"The Imperfect Board Member by Jim Brown is a highly perceptive, eminently readable, engagingly human book on how boards and directors can improve their performance. In a breezy conversational style that uses dialogue invitingly and often, the author explores with sensitivity and a light touch not only the standard ingredients but also the more subtle nuances of excellence in both corporate and not-for-profit governance."
--William A. Dimma, author, Tougher Boards for Tougher Times; chairman, Home Capital Group Inc..
Price: $12.20 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Now I find myself in late August, with the nights cool and the crickets thick in the fields. Already the first blighted leaves glow scarlet on the red maples. It’s a season of fullness and sweet longings made sweeter now by the fact that I can’t be sure I’ll see this time of the year again....
— from Learning to Fall

Philip Simmons was just thirty-five years old in 1993 when he learned that he had ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, and was told he had less than five years to live. As a young husband and father, and at the start of a promising literary career, he suddenly had to learn the art of dying. Nine years later, he has succeeded, against the odds, in learning the art of living.

Now, in this surprisingly joyous and spirit-renewing book, he chronicles his search for peace and his deepening relationship with the mystery of everyday life.

Set amid the rugged New Hampshire mountains he once climbed, and filled with the bustle of family life against the quiet progression of illness, Learning to Fall illuminates the journey we all must take — “the work of learning to live richly in the face of loss.”

From our first faltering steps, Simmons says, we may fall into disappointment or grief, fall into or out of love, fall from youth or health. And though we have little choice as to the timing or means of our descent, we may, as he affirms, “fall with grace, to grace.”

With humor, hard-earned wisdom and a keen eye for life’s lessons — whether drawn from great poetry or visits to the town dump — Simmons shares his discovery that even at times of great sorrow we may find profound freedom. And by sharing the wonder of his daily life, he offers us the gift of connecting more deeply and joyously with our own.


From the Hardcover edition..
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Angela is a good bet for making partner at her firm next year. Indeed, she is well on her way to conquering the world when she finds it abruptly turned upside down: she learns that she is unexpectedly expecting . . . a baby. With zero exposure to children and absolutely no idea how to raise an infant, Angela tackles the demands of motherhood while desperately trying to hang on to her first baby, the one which she has nurtured so well for so many years - her career. Along the way she loses touch with her husband and unwittingly acquires an unwelcome but tempting admirer, further complicating an already thorny mess. And just when things reach what seems to be an unbearable boiling point, Angela discovers the ultimate betrayal . . . How will she ever recover? Told candidly in an engaging voice, Frozen Pancakes and Fake Lashes captures the tale of Everywoman's struggle to balance the overwhelming demands of marriage, career and new baby, and chronicles Her quest to regain Her pre-baby mojo..
Price: $17.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Alex Palini believes that his one chance at love has already come and gone after the unexpected death of his life partner three years earlier At the age of thirty-five, he is dating twenty-two-year-old Stephen Clark—known secretly to Alex and his friends as Disposable Boy—just to hear someone breathe next to him at night. After all, his chance at happiness is gone … isn’t it?

When Alex meets his new neighbor Rick Monette, he realizes how easy it would be to fall in love again—until Rick reveals a secret that makes Alex’s heart more vulnerable and forces him to face the possibility of grieving again.

Through Rick’s companionship and the support of Alex’s friends, Alex is about to discover if a second chance can really lead to a happy ending.

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Price: $8.72 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In this book 60 talented women take on the creative challenge of scrapbooking the realities of motherhood, the hard work of relationships, the inevitability of aging and other real-life situations that have made them grow as people and artists. Inside you'll find:

* Layouts that exemplify the whole range of life experience, from loss and illness to births and triumphs.
* "The Story Behind the Layout" where the artists share what compelled her to create the layout.
* Page after page of inspiration and encouragement for capturing the "imperfect" slices of our everyday lives..
Price: $2.11 [Notify me when price goes down.]