Best friends by Sharon J. Wohlmuth & Carol Saline.

Relatives are the family we are born with, but friends are the family we choose. Friendship brings extraordinary comfort and joy to our lives--and best friends go a step further. They are there not only to celebrate our happiness, but to cushion our pain. What is it that inspires everyday friends to forge a lasting connection and become best friends?
Sharon J. Wohlmuth and Carol Saline, the bestselling authors of Sisters and Mothers and Daughters, capture the essence of the ties that bind these "chosen families" together. In this beautiful collection of essays and photographs, Saline and Wohlmuth survey friends from a broad range of American life.

As the voices and perspectives of these men and women mingle, echo and occasionally differ with one another, we discover how friends meet, how they sometimes fight, how they reconcile, and what keeps them close. Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Bacon, Angela Bassett, Naomi Judd, Larry King, Patti LaBelle, Andrea Mitchell, Morrie Schwartz, Kerri Strug, and Gay Talese share their relationships with people who would love them even if they weren't famous. Many lesser-known but equally inspiring friendships are included as well: three gorgeous sisters who share everything from their apartment to their careers as classical chamber musicians, an affluent novelist whose best friend is a nun living under a vow of poverty, two Holocaust survivors who built their friendship in the Nazi death camps and rekindled it when they accidentally met on a street in Boston, and five octogenarians who grew up as best buddies and have never lost their intimate attachment.

Best Friends illustrates more than just the good fortune of the people in its pages; it reveals the power, dignity and variety of the precious bonds we develop and maintain throughout our lives.