Get our latest book recommendations, author news, and competitions right to your inbox.
Published by Prometheus
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Table of Contents
About The Book
When we are in painfully difficult or confusing life situations, especially amidst ever-uncertain times, our minds grapple for structure: a funeral ceremony definitively lays the dead to rest; the exaggerated choreography of a surgical room confirms its sterility; and a daily schedule gives prisoners a sense of normalcy. These practices, these rituals, give us peace. Though it might seem contradictory, ordered rituals actually bring us freedom, creativity, and mental well-being. Rituals aren’t a thing of history or belonging to elaborate ceremonies, and they aren’t even confined to the most painful or confusing of times. Rituals can be at a family dinner table or in a morning bathroom routine. In Everyday Rituals, Pearl Katz shows us just how transformative rituals are, no matter what kind.
Unlike other titles on the subject in the self-help genre or in anthropological reportage, Katz applies her years of fieldwork and psychiatric study to tangible, everyday American life. She writes a thoroughly persuasive argument, using poignant case studies, to truly inspire readers. Specific hormones flow and brain paths open when artists follow their creative regimen, and mental health increases in patients under hospital directive; in contrast, young people suffer stress in unbounded undergraduate hookup culture. And after the coronavirus ripped many rituals from American life, the ill effects of a life without routine burn bright. It’s in the ordinary that Katz discovers unlimited potential: mundane routine actually sparks incredible imagination. With scientific evidence, case studies, personal narrative, and guiding wisdom, Katz enlightens us as to how and why we can feel true freedom.
Unlike other titles on the subject in the self-help genre or in anthropological reportage, Katz applies her years of fieldwork and psychiatric study to tangible, everyday American life. She writes a thoroughly persuasive argument, using poignant case studies, to truly inspire readers. Specific hormones flow and brain paths open when artists follow their creative regimen, and mental health increases in patients under hospital directive; in contrast, young people suffer stress in unbounded undergraduate hookup culture. And after the coronavirus ripped many rituals from American life, the ill effects of a life without routine burn bright. It’s in the ordinary that Katz discovers unlimited potential: mundane routine actually sparks incredible imagination. With scientific evidence, case studies, personal narrative, and guiding wisdom, Katz enlightens us as to how and why we can feel true freedom.
Product Details
- Publisher: Prometheus (August 6, 2024)
- Length: 288 pages
- ISBN13: 9781633889552
Raves and Reviews
We rebel against customs and rituals, but Katz shows their liberating power, the freedom to create within the structures of the old. A fascinating story, well told, with memorable examples and astonishing surprises, from sex to science.
– John Mather, Astrophysicist, Nobel Prize laureate (Physics) 2006
Every seminarian of every tradition should read this extremely insightful book.
– Rabbi Robert Goldstein, D.Min., Rabbi Emeritus, Amherst, MA
Dr. Pearl Katz eloquently presents a compelling argument that rituals can transform everyday ordinary life to inspire imagination, creativity, innovation and change.
Her vivid descriptions of family routines, medical encounters, and death and dying illustrate how rituals enhance freedom of the mind.
Her interviews with young people about their sex lives and everyday family life during Covid reveal how the absence of rituals can restrict people’s freedom.
Dr. Katz's superb ability to observe and analyze gives new insights about the role of rituals in our lives.
– Boris Draznin, M.D., Ph.D., The Celeste and Jack Grynberg Professor of Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Katz’s compelling book argues that rituals don't constrain us but free our minds to wander and create. Whether it's bedtime routines or 16,000 identical Starbucks, home births or the surgical suite, Drill Sergeant training or a raucous Irish wake, the emptiness of hookups or lonely death in the pandemic, she shows us in dazzling observations and interviews that rituals are as vital to modern life as to any traditional culture, and that we’d be far more trapped without them.
– Melvin Konner, M.D., Ph.D., Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor, Department of Anthropology, Program in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology, Emory University
Filled with examples of how the structuring of life via rituals and habits frees the mind and spirit, paradoxically crafting freedom and creativity out of constraint, Everyday Rituals rediscovers Confucian and Taoist wisdom. It is going out toward others via organized social relations that creates the authentic self, not the American pop wisdom that we find the self within. This is the real lesson of life!
– Arthur Kleinman, M.D., Ph.D., Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology, Professor of Medical Anthropology in Global Health and Social Medicine, Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Resources and Downloads
High Resolution Images
-
Book Cover Image (jpg): Everyday Rituals
eBook 9781633889552
