Raise calmer, happier, healthier children with these fun, hands-on nature activities for parents and kids to enjoy together.

Gold Winner, Nonfiction Authors Association Book Awards

Are your kids stressed? Are they feeling a bit down? Do your children—and you—need a break from screens? Nature can help. What we all suspected intuitively for generations, science has now confirmed: spending time connecting to nature is a safe, effective tool to help improve our health and happiness.

In Finding Ecohappiness, author Sandi Schwartz guides families in building regular habits of experiencing nature to reduce stress and boost mood. She explores key positive psychology tools from a nature-loving perspective. You will learn simple, practical tips for incorporating these tools—awe and gratitude, mindfulness, creative arts, outdoor play and adventure, volunteering, food, and animals—into your daily routine to help your children thrive and live a happy, balanced life.

Finding Ecohappiness will introduce you to all kinds of engaging nature activities you can do with your kids, from hiking and bike rides to visiting nature centers and science museums to volunteering outdoors to embarking on ecotourism adventures. In addition, you will discover unique nature relaxation activities like cow cuddling, animal yoga, forest bathing, float therapy, and earthing. Nature isn’t just for kids, either—doing these activities with your children will tremendously improve your own well-being, too.

A must-read for all families, Finding Ecohappiness will help you protect your children from feeling stressed and overwhelmed; manage your children’s current issues regarding stress, anxiety, and mood; and improve family togetherness.

A sweeping, interwoven story of how America fell in love with the Occult

Here’s to My Sweet Satan is the first book to fully document the Occult craze of the 1960s and 1970s as a single pop culture phenomenon that continues to influence nearly every aspect of culture today. A masterful cultural history, Here’s to My Sweet Satan tells how the Occult conquered the American imagination, weaving together topics as diverse as the birth of heavy metal, 1970s horror films, the New Age movement, Count Chocula cereal, the serial killer Son of Sam, and more. Cultural critic George Case explores how the Occult craze permanently changed American society, creating the cultural framework for the political power of the religious right, false accusations of Satanic child abuse, and today’s widespread rejection of science and rationality.

An insightful blend of pop culture and social history, Here’s to My Sweet Satan lucidly explains how the most technological society on earth became enthralled by the supernatural.

Learn to Build Furniture the Japanese Way

Japanese Furniture Projects in Solid Wood teaches the reader five solid-wood projects for the home, developed and first published in Japan. Translated from the original Japanese, the projects are the work of Mitsuo Fujimoto, a custom furnituremaker located in Akiruno City, Tokyo.

These projects include two stools, a table, an audio rack, and a cabinet. The author covers basic equipment, basic milling, and construction. The projects incorporate a mix of Western power tools and Japanese hand tools. The designs are not complicated but require some woodworking skills. The projects look simple but are very satisfying to make because they do involve a certain amount of hand tool use, which will sharpen the beginning woodworker’s skills.

Over 800 step-by-step photographs guide the reader through the completion of each project. Key Points in each project are called out in the photographs and captions to alert the reader to various procedures. The designs are quite straightforward but they offer the woodworker a chance to explore various processes that will expand their understanding of the craft of furniture building. For example, the book teaches the reader about the construction of octagonal legs, angled leg attachments, angled mortise and tenon joints, biscuit joinery, and pattern routing.

New and improved! A skill-building introduction that helps beginning woodturners master basic woodturning techniques on their own.

Written by a professional woodturning instructor with over two decade’s teaching experience, A Lesson Plan for Woodturning, 2nd edition, is a systematic, skill-building introduction that helps beginning woodturners master basic woodworking techniques on their own.

The new and updated 2nd edition provides a complete, self-directed course in woodturning safety, tools, and techniques that will help any beginning woodturner learn the basics on his or her own time. Using methods proven in the classroom, A Lesson Plan for Woodturning provides the equivalent of three semester-length classes in one book.

Designed to give readers a thorough grounding in every essential woodturning technique, this book is systematically organized to teach basic skills that are building blocks for mastering more complex tasks. Each lesson features projects designed to develop the specific skill discussed. The structure, order, and specific exercises are based on classroom-tested experience in teaching woodturning to both adult and younger students and are well-tested in the classroom.

New to the second edition are fresh woodturning projects (including one on pen turning), additional instructional lessons on best practices for beginning turners, and special advice for woodturning teachers who are looking to instruct woodturning beginners.

Each project is thoroughly documented with step-by-step instructions, illustrations, and photographs, showing the specific tasks, positions, and cutting motions needed to successfully complete the project. The projects are simple, direct, and focused on skill development. Readers can easily develop their own similar projects following the same general steps.