One of the finer single volume biographies of Washington, Thayer makes ample use of Washington’s letters and writings yielding a rich portrait of the man behind the legend.
Why can’t our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens? In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding.
His starting point is moral intuition-the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right. He blends his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain, and he explains why conservatives can navigate that map more skillfully than can liberals. He then examines the origins of morality, overturning the view that evolution made us fundamentally selfish creatures. But rather than arguing that we are innately altruistic, he makes a more subtle claim-that we are fundamentally groupish. It is our groupishness, he explains, that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations. In a stunning final chapter on ideology and civility, Haidt shows what each side is right about, and why we need the insights of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation.
In this New York Times bestseller, updated for 2016, an award-winning journalist uses ten maps of crucial regions to explain the geo-political strategies of the world powers fans of geography, history, and politics (and maps) will be enthralled†(Fort Worth Star-Telegram).
Maps have a mysterious hold over us. Whether ancient, crumbling parchments or generated by Google, maps tell us things we want to know, not only about our current location or where we are going but about the world in general. And yet, when it comes to geo-politics, much of what we are told is generated by analysts and other experts who have neglected to refer to a map of the place in question.
All leaders of nations are constrained by geography. In one of the best books about geopolitics†(The Evening Standard), now updated to include 2016 geopolitical developments, journalist Tim Marshall examines Russia, China, the US, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Japan, Korea, and Greenland and the Arctic—their weather, seas, mountains, rivers, deserts, and borders—to provide a context often missing from our political reportage: how the physical characteristics of these countries affect their strengths and vulnerabilities and the decisions made by their leaders.
Offering a fresh way of looking at maps†(The New York Times Book Review), Marshall explains the complex geo-political strategies that shape the globe. Why is Putin so obsessed with Crimea? Why was the US destined to become a global superpower? Why does China’s power base continue to expand? Why is Tibet destined to lose its autonomy? Why will Europe never be united? The answers are geographical. In an ever more complex, chaotic, and interlinked world, Prisoners of Geography is a concise and useful primer on geopolitics†(Newsweek) and a critical guide to one of the major determining factors in world affairs.
Navigate Viking history, culture, and literature with world-renowed medievalist Christopher R. Fee, Ph.D., named by the Princeton Review as one of America’s best professors.
Frequently depicted as “Scandinavian scavengers,” warlike pirates, raiders, and invaders, the Vikings have lately surfaced from the depths of history to become pop culture’s most adored ruffians. For Prof. Fee, this recent craze for all-things Viking is a mixed blessing. The spike in popular fascination often occasions a need to separate the wheat from the chaff: fact from fiction, history from myth, literature from legend.
This 24-lecture audio series rights the ship by offering you a scholarly and comprehensive overview of Viking history, geography, literature, religion, and culture. Prof. Fee leads this series with canny and personable teaching.
As you meet the great Viking adventurers, you’ll explore pivotal events such as the raid on the monastery at Lindisfarne in 739 and the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066, as well as lesser-known curiosities: the etymology of the term “Viking,” the story of the Vikings known as Varangians who guarded the Byzantine Emperor, and the origins of the state that we now know as Russia.
From runic inscriptions to heroic sagas, pagan belief to Danelaw, you’ll ponder the Vikings’ lasting significance as you immerse yourself in the seen and unseen record of their fascinating civilization.
This course is part of the Learn25 collection.
This is the novel that ensured Fyodor Dostoevsky’s place as a giant of Russian literature. First published in 1866, this legendary work continues to enthrall readers around the world and earn Dostoevsky legions of fans with every printing. Timeless, and breathtaking in scope, Crime and Punishment-the story of a young Russian intellectual’s decision to murder a cruel pawnbroker and his subsequent intellectual and spiritual crisis-is one of the most famous novels in all of literature. This absorbing book attacks the overly logical nihilistic ideals of reason and science and proves that only through love, self-denial and suffering comes salvation. George Guidall’s fluent interpretation of the Russian names enhances this deep, multi-leveled text, and liberates Dostoevsky’s eternal prose with dimensions of color and feeling lost to the printed page alone.
Orison Swett Marden was well-known at the turn of the 20th century for his inspirational and spiritual books of self-help. This one deals with the importance of a man developing his own will-power. Swett Marden here offers advice on how to achieve success and how to overcome disappointments through self-belief, persistence and determination, all within a spiritual and moral framework. (Summary by Ruth Golding)
The world-renowned bestseller for women addicted to unhealthy relationships—updated and with a new introduction
If your relationships are unhappy, unfulfilling, even ego destroying… If your yearning for love is frustrated by a partner who is more interested in work, substances, or other women than in you… If being in love means being in pain…then this book was written for you.
Women Who Love Too Much distills Robin Norwood’s entire career as a therapist specializing in the treatment of co-alcoholism and relationship addiction. Through their own words and stories, women who love too much reveal the roots of their attraction to difficult, troubled, distant men, and Norwood offers them—and you—a way out of the pain using a ten-point guide to recovery, happiness, and fulfillment. First published in 1985 and translated into dozens of languages, Women Who Love Too Much has changed the lives of millions of women around the world. Let it change yours too.
What if charisma could be taught?
For the first time, science and technology have taken charisma apart, figured it out and turned it into an applied science: In controlled laboratory experiments, researchers could raise or lower people’s level of charisma as if they were turning a dial.
What you’ll find here is practical magic: unique knowledge, drawn from a variety of sciences, revealing what charisma really is and how it works. You’ll get both the insights and the techniques you need to apply this knowledge. The world will become your lab, and every person you meet, a chance to experiment.
The Charisma Myth is a mix of fun stories, sound science, and practical tools. Cabane takes a hard scientific approach to a heretofore mystical topic, covering what charisma actually is, how it is learned, what its side effects are, and how to handle them.
According to researchers, the vast majority—a whopping 75-98 percent—of the illnesses that plague us today are a direct result of our thought life. What we think about truly affects us both physically and emotionally. In fact, fear alone triggers more than 1,400 known physical and chemical responses in our bodies, activating more than thirty different hormones! Today our culture is undergoing an epidemic of toxic thoughts that, left unchecked, create ideal conditions for illnesses.
Supported by current scientific and medical research, Dr. Caroline Leaf gives readers a prescription for better health and wholeness through correct thinking patterns, declaring that we are not victims of our biology. She shares with readers the “switch” in our brains that enables us to live happier, healthier, more enjoyable lives where we achieve our goals, maintain our weight, and even become more intelligent. She shows us how to choose life, get our minds under control, and reap the benefits of a detoxed thought life.