Throughout history, people have picked up their pens and wielded their words–transforming their lives, their communities, and beyond. Now it’s your turn!
MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD:
Rebels, Reformers, and Revolutionaries Who Changed the World Through Writing
by Rochelle Melander, illustrated by Melina Ontiveros
Beaming Books, July 2021
Throughout history, people have picked up their pens and wielded their words–transforming their lives, their communities, and beyond. Now it’s your turn! Representing a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences, MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD connects over forty inspiring biographies with life-changing writing activities and tips, showing readers just how much their own words can make a difference. Readers will explore nature with Rachel Carson, experience the beginning of the Reformation with Martin Luther, champion women’s rights with Sojourner Truth, and many more. These richly illustrated stories of inspiring speechmakers, scientists, explorers, authors, poets, activists, and even other kids and young adults will engage and encourage young people to pay attention to their world, to honor their own ideas and dreams, and to embrace the transformative power of words to bring good to the world.
Rochelle Melander is a speaker, a professional certified coach, and the founder of Dream Keepers, a writing workshop that encourages young people to write about their lives and dreams for the future. Rochelle wrote her first book at seven and has published 11 books for adults. MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD is her debut book for children. She lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Melina Ontiveros is a Mexican artist and illustrator. A proud self-taught artist, she enjoys experimenting with color and textures.
Many of us will remember the late Lou Reed as an iconic rock musician and lead singer of the Velvet Underground, but few of us are aware of Lou’s other great passion, the one that he carried up to his final days and moments of his life: the martial art of Tai Chi. During the last decades of his life, Reed studied directly under Master Ren Guang-Yi, a champion of Chen Tai Chi. He was so influenced by his practice that he released an album in 2008 that he wrote specifically to be listened to while training Tai Chi, entitled Hudson River Wind Meditations. Now, mindfulness meets martial arts in this beautifully designed book edited by his wife, acclaimed artist Laurie Anderson. Through both prose and photography, it offers us a glimpse into Reed’s physical, mental, and spiritual journey. Drawn from exclusive interviews and conversations with his fellow students, teachers, and friends including Julian Schnabel, Iggy Pop, Darren Aronofsky, and Lou’s celebrated teacher Master Ren Guangyi, this truly unique book is a gift for rock and roll fans and seekers of wisdom, insight and inspiration alike. 
In its earliest days, WeWork promised the impossible: to make the American work place cool. Adam Neumann, an immigrant determined to make his fortune in the United States, landed on the idea of repurposing surplus New York office space for the burgeoning freelance class. Over the course of ten years, WeWork attracted billions of dollars from some of the most sought-after investors in the world, while spending it to build a global real estate empire that he insisted was much more than that: an organization that aspired to nothing less than « elevating the world’s consciousness. » Moving between New York real estate, Silicon Valley venture capital, and the very specific force field of spirituality and ambition erected by Adam Neumann himself, Billion Dollar Loser lays bare the internal drama inside WeWork. Based on more than two hundred interviews, this book chronicles the breakneck speed at which WeWork’s CEO built and grew his company along with Neumann’s relationship to a world of investors, including Masayoshi Son of Softbank, who fueled its chaotic expansion into everything from apartment buildings to elementary schools. Culminating in a day-by-day account of the five weeks leading up to WeWork’s botched IPO and Neumann’s dramatic ouster, Wiedeman exposes the story of the company’s desperate attempt to secure the funding it needed in the final moments of a decade defined by excess. Billion Dollar Loser is the first book to indelibly capture the highly leveraged, all-blue-sky world of American business in President Trump’s first term, and also offers a sober reckoning with its fallout as a new era begins.
Actors Romy Schneider and Alain Delon were the dream couple of the 1960s. They fell in love when they first met in Paris in 1958 on the set of the Arthur Schnitzler adaptation Christine, and their extraordinary roller-coaster affair would last five years. Four years later, they are reunited in front of the camera, playing lovers in the cult film The Swimming Pool, and thus begins a friendship that would last until Romy Schneider’s untimely and tragic death in 1982. When she died, it was Alain Delon who took care of everything. She was the love of his life: « Our love didn’t end. It changed. » To tell their story, the author and biographer Thilo Wydra has conducted countless in-depth interviews with Romy Schneider and Alain Delon’s friends and colleagues in France and Germany, among them Jane Birkin, Senta Berger, Mario Adorf, Jean-Claude Carrière, Michael Verhoeven, Volker Schlöndorff, and many others – and in their personal recollections the German-French lovers come alive once again.