Symptoms of decline are all around us today, it seems: slowing growth, crushing debts, aging populations, anti-social behaviour. But what exactly is amiss with Western civilization? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues, is that our institutions - the intricate frameworks within which a society can flourish or fail - are degenerating. Representative government, the free market, the rule of law and civil society: these were once the four pillars of West European and North American societies. It was these institutions, rather than any geographical or climatic advantages, that set the West on the path to global dominance after around 1500. In our time, however, these institutions have deteriorated in disturbing ways. Our democracies have broken the contract between the generations by heaping IOUs on our children and grandchildren. Our markets are increasingly distorted by over-complex regulations that are in fact the disease of which they purport to be the cure. The rule of law has metamorphosed into the rule of lawyers. And civil society has degenerated into uncivil society, where we lazily expect all our problems to be solved by the state.The Great Degeneration is a powerful - and in places polemical - indictment of an era of negligence and complacency. While the Arab world struggles to adopt democracy, and while China struggles to move from economic liberalization to the rule of law, Europeans and Americans alike are frittering away the institutional inheritance of centuries. To arrest the degeneration of the West's once dominant civilization, Ferguson warns, will take heroic leadership and radical reform. This book is based on Niall Ferguson's 2012 BBC Reith Lectures, which were broadcast under the title 'The Rule of Law and Its Enemies'.

    Action items include:• Figuring out your core values• Increasing your testosterone• Creating a budget• Improve your posture• Conquer a Fear• Take a Woman on Date• Learn a Manual Skill• And much more!Take action today to become a better man with the Art of Manliness!

    Conn Iggulden's Wars of the Roses Ebook Bundle contain the following:TrinityStormbirdBloodlineRavenspur

    - The Witches- George's Marvelous Medicine- The Twits- Esio Trot- Matilda- The BFG

    Yet, each moment of joy is only that: momentary, showing up the rest of our lives to be unsatisfying, somehow lacking and incomplete. On the other hand, Vedanta, the body of knowledge found at the end of the Veda, asserts with breathtaking boldness that one's true nature is completeness and limitlessness. Vedanta also promises that moksa, liberation from all forms of limitations that seem to bind a human being, is possible here and now. In this lucid, lively introduction to Vedanta, Swami Dayananda shows how man's constant struggle to overcome these limitations through the ceaseless pursuit of security and pleasure are predestined to failure for the simple reason that they are misdirected: they stem from a failure in understanding the real nature of the fundamental problem itself. All effort howsoever great or unremitting being limited, the result of such effort is also bound to be equally limited, inadequate. The road to freedom from limitation, then, can scarcely lie that way. Indeed, asserts Vedanta, it is only to be found in the correct knowledge of one's true nature as absolute. This vital first step, a clear understanding of man's fundamental problem of ignorance and error about his real nature. Is what this book is all about.

    Why then just five years later, is she at odds with her father and sister-in-law and accepting a job in a second hand clothes shop?

    This increasingly ubiquitous, immensely powerful technology often leads us to assume that as the number of people online grows, it inevitably leads to a smaller, more cosmopolitan world. We’ll understand more, we think. We’ll know more. We’ll engage more and share more with people from other cultures. In reality, it is easier to ship bottles of water from Fiji to Atlanta than it is to get news from Tokyo to New York.In Rewire, media scholar and activist Ethan Zuckerman explains why the technological ability to communicate with someone does not inevitably lead to increased human connection. At the most basic level, our human tendency to “flock together” means that most of our interactions, online or off, are with a small set of people with whom we have much in common. In examining this fundamental tendency, Zuckerman draws on his own work as well as the latest research in psychology and sociology to consider technology’s role in disconnecting ourselves from the rest of the world.For those who seek a wider picture—a picture now critical for survival in an age of global economic crises and pandemics—Zuckerman highlights the challenges, and the headway already made, in truly connecting people across cultures. From voracious xenophiles eager to explore other countries to bridge figures who are able to connect one culture to another, people are at the center of his vision for a true kind of cosmopolitanism. And it is people who will shape a new approach to existing technologies, and perhaps invent some new ones, that embrace translation, cross-cultural inspiration, and the search for new, serendipitous experiences.Rich with Zuckerman’s personal experience and wisdom, Rewire offers a map of the social, technical, and policy innovations needed to more tightly connect the world.

    Rediscover the immortal story of Lemuel Gulliver and his fantastic voyage. Join him on his journey to the land of the six-inch-high Lilliputians...and into the royal court of the sixty-foot-tall Brobdingnagians. Ascend with him to the flying island of Laputa, whose inhabitants are endowed with uncommon intelligence, but no common sense at all. And follow him into the world of the Houyhnhnms, a race of civilized horses -- lords and masters of the brutish human Yahoos. The tale of a lifetime, "Gulliver's Travels" is filled with action, romance, danger, satirical wit, timeless wisdom, and the high drama only a classic of this caliber can convey. Set sail!

    In his Introduction John Gray describes these essays as applications of Mill's doctrine of the Art of Life, as set out in A System of Logic. Using the resources of recent scholarship, he shows Mill's work to be far richer and subtler than traditional interpretations allow.

    What are the ten principles of concentration of wealth and power at work in America today? They're simple enough: reduce democracy, shape ideology, redesign the economy, shift the burden onto the poor and middle classes, attack the solidarity of the people, let special interests run the regulators, engineer election results, use fear and the power of the state to keep the rabble in line, manufacture consent, marginalize the population. In Requiem for the American Dream, Chomsky devotes a chapter to each of these ten principles, and adds readings from some of the core texts that have influenced his thinking to bolster his argument.To create Requiem for the American Dream, Chomsky and his editors, the filmmakers Peter Hutchison, Kelly Nyks, and Jared P. Scott, spent countless hours together over the course of five years, from 2011 to 2016. After the release of the film version, Chomsky and the editors returned to the many hours of tape and transcript and created a document that included three times as much text as was used in the film. The book that has resulted is nonetheless arguably the most succinct and tightly woven of Chomsky's long career, a beautiful vessel--including old-fashioned ligatures in the typeface--in which to carry Chomsky's bold and uncompromising vision, his perspective on the economic reality and its impact on our political and moral well-being as a nation."During the Great Depression, which I'm old enough to remember, it was bad–much worse subjectively than today. But there was a sense that we'll get out of this somehow, an expectation that things were going to get better . . ." —from Requiem for the American Dream

    How should we gain mastery over the enemies lurking within our own mind, so that we can enjoy a peaceful and prosperous life? This book published by Advaita Ashrama, a branch of Ramakrishna Math, gives practical guidelines to make life more meaningful — both on the individual and the collective level — by managing it in the right way, and thus achieve success and fulfillment.

    Become entranced with the basic struggle of good vs. evil as you travel to a galaxy far, far away.

    In this introductory book on BaZi or Four Pillars of Destiny, Joey Yap ventures deep into the essence of Personality Analysis to foster a more accurate and informed understanding, beyond the conventional Chinese Astrology reading. What You`ll Learn: - Plot your personal BaZi (Destiny Code) Chart - Understand your character and personality model - Determine your favourable or unfavourable career options - Analyse your Wealth potential and capacity of your life - Maximise your opportunities in life - Discover and utilise your hidden talents - Improve personal and family relationships - Optimise your performance

    Exposing the true status of the world's dwindling energy supplies, Jeremy Leggett reveals the scale of the disaster looming over our planet, and the action each and every one of us must take - right now - to stand a chance of averting it.

    A. Pierce, author of Spirituality at Work The concluding prayer of the Mass is a command: Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. We are charged to go forth and quite literally transform our families, our communities, and our world through the redeeming sacrifice of Christ as celebrated in the Mass. Fr. Dominic Grassi and Joe Paprocki use this challenge as the starting point for their inspiring and illuminating look at the central act of Catholic worship. They ask, What would our faith look like if we truly understood the gift of the Eucharist?Living the Mass will stir a new passion for and a greater understanding of this sacred two-thousand-year-old celebration offered freely to all who come, to all who believe.  Also available in Spanish! Vivir la misa