Books for a Better Life Awards 2011
Random Quotes from Some of the Winners:

Marc Wallack, winner in wellness category for Back to Life After a Heart Crisis:
"I read Lance Armstrong's book, It's Not About the Bike, and his recovery from testicular cancer, and the fact that he had to get back on the bike. That was the end game for me. The end game for me was to run a marathon. It helped define me just as surgery helped define me, and I knew if I couldn't run another marathon, I wasn't going to be me again.

"And so, the last chapter of two of my book really does outline how I reached the finished line, with a lot of help, yes. On the other hand, this book points the way for others to be able to recover from, not only open heart surgery, but also cancer, etc., etc., just like Lance Armstrong. I'm honored, I'm humbled..."

Daphne Rose Kingma, winner of the spiritual category for The Ten Things to Do When Life Falls Apart:
"...All of us are sometimes in invisible anguish and it has been therefore my privilege to find the words to say, to remind us, that in the darkest hours, it's really only our compassion, and our self-compassion, and that energy of love, which is the divine glue that cements us to one another and to our deepest selves, that would bring us peace..."

Gail Caldwell, winner in the relationships category for Let's Take the Long Way Home:
"...I wanted to capture the memory of our friendship, as well as what I went through when I lost her. One of the things I've learned, since the book's publication, is how essential friends are in people's lives. They can be our soulmates, the caretakers, the keepers of the narrative flame. I know that friendship must be particularly resonant for people who are suffering from M.S. or who are working hard in the field to end and treat it. We all need each other. Caroline would be so proud of this award and I would like to accept it in her honor."

Mary Catherine Bateson, winner of the psychology category for Composing a Further Life:
"...I wrote Composing a Life twenty years ago when women were re-thinking their lives and getting rid of stereotypes they had internalized of what they should want and how they should live. I realized about a decade ago, as I was getting older myself, that I had internalized a set of stereotypes abaout the shape of lives, about when choices closed down, when options are over, when we get old.

"Thirty years were added to the average life expectancy at birth in the developed world, in the last century. That is a change in the whole status of our species. It's up to us now to enter that new life period as pioneers to discover it as a time of fulfillment and creativity. A time for taking responsibility and caring for the future. A time for being aware of the needs of the whole planet.

"So I spent a wonderful five years talking to pioneers, finding their ways into that new stage of life that is going to make all of us – oh it's going cost money! – but it's going to make us all much richer in important ways. Thank you."
[Note: It was Mary Catherine Bateson's book, Composing a Life, that inspired Scott Manning to create the Books for a Better Life Awards 15 years ago.]