The alarm sounds. Your feet hit the floor and carry you into another day. But what does that day hold for you? Will you be punching your card at work, catching up on TV at home, and crashing into bed before you rinse and repeat the next day? Or will you dare to dig deep and discover the incredible potential lying dormant within us all? In Wide Awake, renowned speaker and church visionary Erwin Raphael McManus challenges us to put an end to all the sleepwalking and settling, for each of us was created by God for a reason. He has called you to live as Jesus did—a heroic life, void of monotony, teeming with danger, adventure, and the unknown. Living wide awake is about realizing that the world desperately needs you to live up to your potential. There is a future that needs to be created, and it is waiting for us all to wake up and get out of bed. The alarm has sounded, and it is time to shake off the slumber. It’s time to live, to create, to imagine, to dream . . . Wide Awake.

Interviews on Enlightenment compiled by Quidam Green Meyers. In this revealing text, Meyers speaks to some of the Wests top spiritual teachers and writers on the topic of Contemporary Awakening. Wide Awake reveals that there is no set path for enlightenment, yet we are all capable of achieving it. Some of the contributors stress that we already are enlightened, but have not yet become aware of it. Those interviewed include Matthew Fox, Alan Cohen, Rev. Michael Beckwith, Catherine Ingram, Lama Surya Das, Saniel Bonder, Isaac Shapiro, Arjuna Nick Ardagh, Satyam, Nadeen, Dasarath, Neelam, Akash, Wayne Liquorman, Howard Raphael Cushner and Antonio Duncan.

Many of today's teenagers are tired of the pressure to compete and consume-and are looking for a different way to live their lives. This book offers an alternative: the 2,500-year old practice of Buddhism. Written in a style that will have immediate appeal to young "seekers" and those wanting to understand the ancient teachings, this book addresses such relevant topics as peer pressure, emotional difficulties, stress, fostering peace, and even protecting the environment. For everyone looking for self-help, self-esteem, and self-awareness, this book offers advice on: •Discovering truth in a world of hype •Finding peace amid the ups and downs of life •Accepting ourselves •Working with difficult emotions •How to meditate •Dealing with temptations and making the right decisions about sex and drugs •Advice on volunteering, working for peace, and protecting the environment

For anyone who has wondered about the experience of objects that make up their everyday lives—Wide Awake is passing them the mic. Wide Awake is a collection of interviews with the inanimate objects that make up our everyday. The objects belong to Madison, a 20-something girl who is living on her own, in a relationship, and battling mental illness for the first time. The story unfolds through Madison’s journal entries, and through the perspectives of the objects of her life.

“Excellent."--Wall Street Journal A propulsive account of our history's most surprising, most consequential political club: the Wide Awake anti-slavery youth movement that marched America from the 1860 election to civil war. At the start of the 1860 presidential campaign, a handful of fired-up young Northerners appeared as bodyguards to defend anti-slavery stump speakers from frequent attacks. The group called themselves the Wide Awakes. Soon, hundreds of thousands of young White and Black men, and a number of women, were organizing boisterous, uniformed, torch-bearing brigades of their own. These Wide Awakes--mostly working-class Americans in their twenties--became one of the largest, most spectacular, and most influential political movements in our history. To some, it demonstrated the power of a rising majority to push back against slavery. To others, it looked like a paramilitary force training to invade the South. Within a year, the nation would be at war with itself, and many on both sides would point to the Wide Awakes as the mechanism that got them there. In this gripping narrative, Smithsonian historian Jon Grinspan examines how exactly our nation crossed the threshold from a political campaign into a war. Perfect for readers of Lincoln on the Verge and TheField of Blood, Wide Awake bears witness to the power of protest, the fight for majority rule, and the defense of free speech. At its core, Wide Awake illuminates a question American democracy keeps posing, about the precarious relationship between violent speech and violent actions.