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Books — Harold Kushner



Conquering Fear

Living Boldly in an Uncertain World

by Harold S. Kushner

From the best-selling author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, an illuminating book about fear—and what we can do to overcome it.

An inescapable component of our lives, fear comes in many guises: fear of unemployment; fear of aging, illness, losing beauty; fear of a terrorist attack or natural disaster. In uncertain times, coping with these fears can be especially challenging, but in this indispensable, hopeful book, Harold S. Kushner teaches us to confront, master, and even embrace fear for a more fulfilling life.

Drawing on the teachings of religious and secular literature and on the true stories of people who have faced their fears, Kushner helps us to see that fear can present us with extraordinary opportunities—to connect with our emotions, rethink our values, and change our lives, and the world, for the better. For those who fear helplessness, he suggests empowerment: through prayer, service, and education. For those who fear for mankind’s future, he insists on hope and pragmatic measures, such as working to protect the environment. For those who fear death, he proposes life—lived boldly and purposefully.

In Conquering Fear, we are again inspired by Harold S. Kushner’s wisdom, at once deeply spiritual and eminently practical.

Knopf (October 6, 2009)

Overcoming Life's Disappointments

by Harold S. Kushner

From Harold S. Kushner, the author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, a book that shows us how to be our best selves even when things don’t turn out as we had hoped—that is, how we can overcome life’s disappointments.

Kushner turns to the experience of Moses to find the requisite lessons of strength and faith. Moses towers over all others in the Old Testament: he is the man on the mountaintop to whom God speaks with unparalleled intimacy, and he leads his people out of bondage. But he is also deeply human, someone whose soaring triumphs are offset by frustration and longing: his people ignore his teachings, he is denied entrance to the Promised Land, his family suffers. But he overcomes.

From the life of Moses, Kushner gleans principles that can help us deal with the problems we encounter. Through the example of Moses’ remarkable resilience, we learn how to weather the disillusionment of dreams unfulfilled, the pain of a lost job or promotion, a child’s failures, divorce or abandonment, and illness. We learn how to meet all disappointments with faith in ourselves and the future, and how to respond to heartbreak with understanding rather than bitterness and despair.

This is a book of spiritual wisdom—as practical as it is inspiring.

The Lord is My Shepherd

Healing Wisdom of the Twenty-Third Psalm

by Harold S. Kushner

So begins the psalm that, for millennia, has been a source of comfort in grief and of courage in fear. Now Harold Kushner discovers what it has to teach us about living our day-to-day lives. Each chapter discusses one line of the psalm in the context of both the time when it was written and the present day, and illuminates the life lessons contained within it. For example, Kushner shows us that the phrase "My cup runneth over" is a declaration of our gratitude for what life has given us and a rejection of the envy we may feel for what others have. And he draws on the ideas and thoughts of various spiritual figures - from G. K. Chesterton to Martin Buber to Paul Tillich - to further expand our understanding of this great psalm and help us benefit from its everyday spiritual wisdom.

Living a Life That Matters

Resolving the Conflict Between Conscience and Success

by Harold S. Kushner

From the celebrated author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, a profound and practical book about doing well by doing good. For decades now, from the pulpit and through his writing, Harold Kushner has been helping people navigate the rough patches of life: loss, guilt, crises of faith. Now, in this compelling new work, he addresses an equally important issue: our craving for significance, the need to know that our lives and our choices mean something.

We sometimes do great things, and sometimes terrible things, to reassure ourselves that we matter to the world. We sometimes confuse fame, power, and wealth with true achievement. But finally we need to think of ourselves as good people, and we are troubled when we compromise our integrity in the pursuit of what we think of as success.

Harold Kushner tells us that the path to a truly successful and significant life is through friendship, through family, and through acts of generosity and self-sacrifice. He describes how, in affecting the life of even one person in a positive way, we make a difference in the world, and prove that we do in fact matter.

Persuasive and sympathetic, anecdotal and commonsensical, Living a Life That Matters inspires and uplifts.

How Good Do We Have to Be

A New Understanding of Guilt and Forgiveness

by Harold S. Kushner

From the author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People comes an inspiring new bestseller that puts human feelings of guilt and inadequacy in perspective - and teaches us how we can learn to accept ourselves and others even when we and they are less than perfect. How Good Do We Have to Be? is for everyone who experiences that sense of guilt and disappointment. Harold Kushner, writing with his customary generosity and wisdom, shows us how human life is too complex for anyone to live it without making mistakes, and why we need not fear the loss of God's love when we are less than perfect. Harold Kushner begins by offering a radically new interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve, which he sees as a tale of Paradise Outgrown rather than Paradise Lost: eating from the Tree of Knowledge was not an act of disobedience, but a brave step forward toward becoming human, complete with the richness of work, sexuality and child-rearing, and a sense of our mortality. Drawing on modern literature, psychology, theology, and his own thirty years of experience as a congregational rabbi, Harold Kushner reveals how acceptance and forgiveness can change our relationships with the most important people in our lives and help us meet the bold and rewarding challenge of being human.