In this fascinating book, Ray Jackendoff emphasizes the grammatical commonalities across languages, both spoken and signed, and discusses the implications for our understanding of language acquisition and loss.

    Its effects are devastating, contributing to relational problems, work ethic issues, and emotional struggles.It comes down to this: People are not getting to where they want to go, because they don’t know how to do life the Hard Way. Their entitlement keeps them from tackling challenges and finding success.This audiobook provides principles and tools for change. It teaches people the skills of learning to tackle and resolve matters that are difficult, rather than avoiding them, giving up too quickly, or hoping someone else will do it for them. The habits gleaned from this audiobook will lead to success in the listener's relationships, finances, self-care, and work. When the listener faces what must be faced, he stands to meet his goals and resolve his struggles better and faster. In that sense, this audiobook brings a great deal of hope and positivity to a tough arena of life.The Hard Way is simple: it is facing any challenge required to accomplish what matters most. Anything worth doing will have a cost of being hard to do. But when we learn how to do the right things, and push through the pain that comes, we stand a much better chance of success.Sometimes trials are put upon us, such as a troubled marriage, a failing business, or an illness. At other times they are opportunities where we need to take a risk, such as starting a part-time business, or simply being vulnerable with someone. At still other times they are problems that must be faced, such as a troubled teen, a conversation we have been avoiding, or a team at work that needs to be restructured. Whatever the context, the Hard Way is the first and best way to approach a good outcome.

    

    Provocative and eye-opening, Why Our Decisions Don’t Matter is one of three slim selections of philosophical texts and excerpts—along with Why We Need Love and Why We Fight—introduced and contextualized by acclaimed author Simon Van Booy (Love Begins in Winter, The Secret Lives of People in Love).

    With passion and wit, Mary Oliver skillfully imparts expertise from her long, celebrated career as a disguised poet. She walks readers through exactly how a poem is built, from meter and rhyme, to form and diction, to sound and sense, drawing on poems by Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and others. This handbook is an invaluable glimpse into Oliver’s prolific mind??—??a must-have for all poetry-lovers.

    And while art criticism is ubiquitous in newspapers, magazines, and exhibition brochures, it is also virtually absent from academic writing. How is it that even as criticism drifts away from academia, it becomes more academic? How is it that sifting through a countless array of colorful periodicals and catalogs makes criticism seem to slip even further from our grasp? In this pamphlet, James Elkins surveys the last fifty years of art criticism, proposing some interesting explanations for these startling changes."In What Happened to Art Criticism?, art historian James Elkins sounds the alarm about the perilous state of that craft, which he believes is 'In worldwide crisis . . . dissolving into the background clutter of ephemeral cultural criticism' even as more and more people are doing it. 'It's dying, but it's everywhere . . . massively produced, and massively ignored.' Those who pay attention to other sorts of criticism may recognize the problems Elkins describes: 'Local judgments are preferred to wider ones, and recently judgments themselves have even come to seem inappropriate. In their place critics proffer informal opinions or transitory thoughts, and they shy from strong commitments.' What he'd like to see more of: ambitious judgment, reflection about judgment itself, and 'criticism important enough to count as history, and vice versa.' Amen to that."—Jennifer Howard, Washington Post Book World

    Have you ever stopped to think about what it is that will make your life worth living? Is it the large amount of money that you have in the bank? The prestigious education that you have? The family and friends that surround you? Or your spiritual belief that there is someone greater than you in the world? Most people will spend their entire lifetimes trying to figure it out, but only a few will have the privilege of really understanding and experiencing themselves what it means to live a fulfilled life. Over the past years, we’ve seen many life philosophies take center stage, all claiming to hold to secret to happiness and fulfillment. While all of them may have very convincing premises, only one truly stands out. Ikigai, or the Japanese concept of finding your purpose, is the key to living a meaningful life. If there’s one people group who have mastered the art of living - and living well, it’s definitely the Okinawans of Japan. Famous for being the world’s longest-living people, they attribute their joy and contentment to finding their ikigai. It’s the reason why they live longer, happier, and better lives than the rest of us. So how does knowing your ikigai change your life? And what should you do to help you uncover your ikigai? Well, you’ll discover all that and more after you’ve listened to this audiobook. This audiobook is packed with helpful insights that will change not just the way you think, but also the way you live. You’ll learn how to slow down and let go of the things that stop you from finding your ultimate purpose. This audiobook will also give you the blueprint to living the life that you always wanted so you won’t have to feel your life is meaningless ever again. I hope that through this audiobook, you will see joy, meaning, and purpose in every single day of your life.©2018 Zen Mastery (P)2018 Zen Mastery

    Roy Peter Clark, author of Writing Tools, aims to put the glamour back in grammar with this fun, engaging alternative to stuffy instructionals. In this practical guide, readers will learn everything from the different parts of speech to why effective writers prefer concrete nouns and active verbs. The Glamour of Grammar gives readers all the tools they need to"live inside the language" -- to take advantage of grammar to perfect their use of English, to instill meaning, and to charm through their writing. With this indispensable book, readers will come to see just how glamorous grammar can be.

    Western psychotherapy aims largely to help us eliminate neurotic traits formed in childhood and adapt to society. In contrast, the Sufi goal is ultimately spiritual: Yes, we need to transform our negativity and be effective in the world; but beyond that, we need to reach a state of harmony with the Divine. Full of stories, poetry, meditations, journaling exercises, and colorful everyday examples, this book will open the heart, nourish the self, and quicken the soul.

    Here are 10 inspiring and usefulperspectives, all in one place.This collection of HBR articles will help you:- Make bold decisions that challenge the status quo- Support your decisions with diverse data- Avoid choices that justify past bad decisions- Evaluate risks and benefits with equal rigor- Check for faulty cause-and-effect reasoning- Test your decisions with experiments- Foster and address constructive criticism- Defeat indecisiveness with clear accountability- Root out unconscious prejudices

    The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years - from ‘The Remains of the Day' to ‘White Teeth'. A team of contemporary fiction scholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to provide a thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question.

    Recent work holds the potential for, among other things, reducing the use of psychopharmacological drugs that have unpredictable side effects; substituting one sense (touch) for another (sight); and direct repair of brain and other neurological damage. Restak also demonstrates how the brain is modified the old-fashioned way, such as by practicing a skill. The negative aspects of recent work are invoked in more polemical than scientific prose, such as the specter of social control through "medicalization" of everything, and how the overstimulation of our brains by modern society is giving us all ADD. Hackles will rise the farthest over the author's proclamation that it is proven that TV violence affects our brains in ways that lead to violent behavior without even mentioning the word "censorship." A compact if sometimes oversimplified introduction to its subject, Restak's latest is best when it stays close to the data. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Scientific AmericanPity the poor neurologists of yesteryear, saddled as they were with their conviction that our brains are hardwired after childhood. Then celebrate today’s scientists, who are exploiting brain-imaging technologies to show that our brains are capable of profound and permanent alterations throughout our lives. Neurologist Richard Restak does just that in The New Brain: How the Modern Age Is Rewiring Your Mind, even as he argues that we are being negatively altered by the sound-bite, techno environment in which we live. Technology such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, Restak begins, can now demonstrate that as a musician practices for many hours, certain neural pathways are strengthened. He then moves to a profound implication, namely that all kinds of technological stimuli are forging brain circuits that may hurt us instead of helping us. For instance, he cites correlations between positron emission tomography scans of violent people and normal experimental subjects who are simply thinking about fighting, then asserts that repeated viewing of violence on television and in video games can set up brain circuits that make us more likely to initiate realworld fisticuffs. Unfortunately, such brain imaging may leave more questions than answers. As Restak himself points out, the technology does not provide "neurological explanations," just "important correlations." Yet he is whipped up enough to diagnose all of modern society with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, the probable result of brain changes we are initiating in our media-saturated world. He reminds us of the antidote, though: we are still in control of what we allow ourselves to see and hear. In the end, Restak fails to create a sense that scientists have revealed a new way of understanding the brain. And the images that inspire speculation in the book still await research that may finally reveal the mechanisms of such phenomena as memory and aggression.--Now Available in Paperback!The era of the New Brain is upon us! Already our brains are working differently than they did just one hundred years ago. Drugs are already available that work in the brain to prevent us from feeling drowsy, depressed, anxious, or fearful, or that enhance concentration and memory. Dramatic treatments to repair damage in the brain are becoming common. In The New Brain, neurologist, neuropsychiatrist, and bestselling author Dr. Richard Restak tells how technology and biology are converging to influence the evolution of the human brain. Dr. Restak describes the dramatic advances that now are possible, as well as the potential for misuse and abuse, examining such questions as: Is Attention Deficit Disorder a "normal" response to the modern world's demand that we attend to several things at once? What happens in our brains when images replace language as the primary means of communication? How does exposure to violent imagery affect our brains? Are we all capable of training our brains to perform at a superior level?

    For the student and the professional.

     Beginning with ALONE and closing with WORK, each chapter is a meditation on meaning and context, an invitation to shift and broaden our perspectives on the inevitable vicissitudes of life: pain and joy, honesty and anger, confession and vulnerability, the experience of feeling besieged and the desire to run away from it all. Through this lens, procrastination may be a necessary ripening; hiding an act of freedom; and shyness the appropriate confusion and helplessness that accompanies the first stage of revelation. CONSOLATIONS invites readers into a poetic and thoughtful consideration of words whose meaning and interpretation influence the paths we choose and the way we traverse them throughout our lives.

    By tracing our various definitions of the self throughout history, Cushman reveals that psychotherapy is very much a product of a particular time and place—and that it has been fundamentally complicit in creating many of the ills it seeks to assuage.