The Garamond Agency

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The Wandering Mind

It is easy to imagine that our constant state of distractedness is peculiar to the digital age, but distraction has been a concern in every era—perhaps never more so than for Christian monks living in Ireland, Iran, and the places in between, from 300 to 900 CE. Though they quit the world for lives of seclusion, monks still struggled to concentrate, and they came to perceive distraction as a fundamental problem.

As Jamie Kreiner argues in The Wandering Mind, we are obsessed with distraction today in large part because they were. Exploring the sophisticated techniques they developed in their endless quest to concentrate—from unforgiving sleep regimens to massive meditational construction projects—Kreiner demonstrates that their insights, remarkably, can still be useful to us now.

Blending history and psychology, The Wandering Mind is a witty account of human fallibility that bridges a distant era and our own.

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Harnessing Grief

The inspiring story of a mother who took unimaginable tragedy and used her grief as a force to do good…

When Maria Kefalas’s daughter Calliope was diagnosed with a degenerative, uncurable genetic disease, the last thing Maria expected to discover in herself was a superpower. She and her husband, Pat, were head over heels in love with their youngest daughter, whose spirit, dancing eyes, and appetite for life captured the best of each of them.

When they learned that Cal had MLD (metachromatic leukodystrophy), their world was shattered. But as she spent time listening to and learning from Cal, Maria developed the superpower of grief. It made her a fearless warrior for her daughter. And it gave her voice a bell-like clarity—poignant and funny all at once.

This superpower of grief also revealed a miracle—not the conventional sort that fuels the prayers of friends and strangers but a realization that, in order to save themselves, Maria and Pat would need to find a way to save others. And so, with their two older children, they set out to raise money so that they, in their son PJ’s words, could “find a cure for Cal’s disease.”

They had no way of knowing that a research team in Italy was closing in on an effective gene therapy for MLD. Though the therapy came too late to help Cal, this news would be the start of an unexpected journey that would introduce Maria and her family to world-famous scientists, brilliant doctors, biotech CEOs, a Hall of Fame NFL quarterback, and a wise nun, and it would also involve selling 50 thousand cupcakes. They would travel to the FDA, the NIH, and the halls of Congress in search of a cure that would never save their child. And their lives would become inextricably intertwined with the families of 13 children whose lives would be transformed by the biggest medical breakthrough in a generation.

A memoir about heartbreak that is also about joy, Harnessing Grief is both unsparing and generous. Steeped in love, it is a story about possibility.

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Unworthy Republic

If Americans know anything about the deportation of native people in the 1830s, it is usually the story of the Cherokee Trail of Tears, often recounted in maudlin prose in a narrative that is heartbreaking but ultimately of little broader import. The poetic phrase “Trail of Tears” is so familiar that many people conflate Cherokee forced emigration with deportation more generally, even though Cherokees represented a fraction—about 15,000—of the 80,000 thousand children, women, and men who were shipped west by the Federal government.

In May of 1830, Congress authorized the expulsion of indigenous peoples in the East to territories west of the Mississippi River. Over the next decade, Native Americans saw their homelands and possessions stolen through fraud, intimidation, and murder. Thousands lost their lives. In this powerful, gripping book, award-winning historian Claudio Saunt upends the common view that “Indian Removal” was an inevitable chapter in U.S. expansion across the continent.

Instead, Saunt argues that it was a contested political act—resisted by both indigenous peoples and U.S. citizens – that passed by a razor-thin margin in Congress. In telling the full story of this systematic, state-sponsored theft, he reveals how expulsion became national policy, abetted by Southern power brokers and slave owners and financed by northern Wall Street bankers. Moving beyond the Trail of Tears, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Country is a fast-paced, yet deeply researched, account of unbridled greed, government indifference, and administrative incompetence. The consequences of this vast transfer of land and wealth still resonate today.

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Sin Boldly

Jammed with sage advice, genuine encouragement, and surprising examples of how to write and how not to write, this book gives beginning writers and confident students alike an easy-to-follow roadmap for improving one of the most important skills for success.

En route to Sin Boldly!-induced, A+ paper bliss, readers encounter such topics as: Choosing a Topic and Telling Your Story (“K.I.S.S.-Keep It Simple, Stupid”), Literary Games (featuring “Francobabble for Freshman”), Choosing a Voice (“Dissing the Prof”), Grammatical Horrors (“A does not equal they”), and Common Mistakes (“Hopefully and Other Controversies”).

Cheeky, original, and decidedly practical… perfect for anyone who wants to hone their communication skills—college-bound or in the working world. Fully revised and updated with new examples, quizzes, and tips, Sin Boldly! is not only a comprehensive guide, but also a fantastic, fun read for anyone who wants to write clearly and effectively.

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The Lincoln Miracle

The leadup to the presidential election of 1860 found America bitterly divided, as the dominant Democratic Party broke up over the intense pressure of slavery, and the six-year-old Republican Party sought a leader who could win. The story of the convention to name the Republican Party’s candidate – eight days that led to Abraham Lincoln’s nomination – makes clear that Lincoln’s extraordinary quest to lead the party might have collapsed, with fatal consequences for the United States of America.

The convention was held in Chicago, although Lincoln himself waited for news from Springfield, far from the heavy drinking, humor, jealousy, political animosities, and angling for power that were the stuff of political life of the times. The Lincoln Miracle: Inside the Republican Convention That Changed History plunges the reader right into the convention, to experience the sights, sounds and smells of Chicago in 1860. The tension-filled maneuvering of the political players and the candidates’ managers echo the forces buffeting the nation — particularly over slavery and Lincoln’s vision for ending it. 

With its secretive and sordid horse-trading, the convention allows us to see Lincoln’s strengths as a political strategist. His plan played out perfectly against long odds, thanks to the hard work of friends whose extraordinary loyalty he had the gift of cultivating. The Lincoln Miracle opens a window on the tremendous political forces tearing America apart as it lurched toward the bloody and catastrophic Civil War.

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