Perhaps you thought of grocery stores or something sexy like internet retailing, but chances are you didn’t think of banking. Yet, most likely you interact with a bank every time you’re paid and when you pay your bills. Banks facilitate the flow of money through the economy and even if you don’t interact with a bank daily, the businesses you deal with on a daily basis do. For all the interaction people have with banks, few understand how they work or why they work. Even fewer understand why they should consider including bank stocks in their investment portfolio. There are a lot of misconceptions about banks, including understanding what they are and what they do. For many people the word “bank” evokes images of receiving a toaster upon opening an account, or thoughts of security related to the storing of precious items in a safety deposit box. Others might go further and tap their inner Michael Moore and talk about how banks are greedy and evil. It’s our belief that banks aren’t just places to store idle savings (on which you receive virtually nothing in interest) or to cash checks, but that they should be an integral part of an investor’s portfolio. The goal of this book is to provide you with a foundation and framework with which you can both begin to understand banks, but also learn the basic tools used to analyze banks as investments.

    Drawing on a wide range of  great writers, from Philip Roth to Antonin Scalia to Jane Austen, How to Write a Sentence is much more than a writing manual—it is a spirited love letter to the written word, and a key to understanding how great writing works.

    Using a wealth of examples, from ancient myths and folk tales via the plays and novels of great literature to the popular movies and TV soap operas of today, it shows that there are seven archetypal themes which recur throughout every kind of storytelling. But this is only the prelude to an investigation into how and why we are 'programmed' to imagine stories in these ways, and how they relate to the inmost patterns of human psychology. Drawing on a vast array of examples, from Proust to detective stories, from the Marquis de Sade to E.T., Christopher Booker then leads us through the extraordinary changes in the nature of storytelling over the past 200 years, and why so many stories have 'lost the plot' by losing touch with their underlying archetypal purpose. Booker analyses why evolution has given us the need to tell stories and illustrates how storytelling has provided a uniquely revealing mirror to mankind's psychological development over the past 5000 years.This seminal book opens up in an entirely new way our understanding of the real purpose storytelling plays in our lives, and will be a talking point for years to come.

    In this provocative new book, headline-making psychologist and social commentator Dr. Jean Twenge explores why the young people she calls "Generation Me" -- those born in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s -- are tolerant, confident, open-minded, and ambitious but also cynical, depressed, lonely, and anxious.Herself a member of Generation Me, Dr. Twenge uses findings from the largest intergenerational research study ever conducted -- with data from 1.3 million respondents spanning six decades -- to reveal how profoundly different today's young adults are. Here are the often shocking truths about this generation, including dramatic differences in sexual behavior, as well as controversial predictions about what the future holds for them and society as a whole. Her often humorous, eyebrow-raising stories about real people vividly bring to life the hopes and dreams, disappointments and challenges of Generation Me.GenMe has created a profound shift in the American character, changing what it means to be an individual in today's society. The collision of this generation's entitled self-focus and today's competitive marketplace will create one of the most daunting challenges of the new century. Engaging, controversial, prescriptive, funny, "Generation Me" will give Boomers new insight into their offspring, and help those in their teens, 20s, and 30s finally make sense of themselves and their goals and find their road to happiness.

    A new approach to the nation's most common learning disorder identifies six types of Attention Deficit Disorder and provides guidelines for choosing the proper treatment regimen.

    It makes us question ourselves and our decisions, causes us to worry about the future, and fills our days with dread and emotional turbulence. Based in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), this book is designed to help you break the cycle of worry.Worry convinces us there's danger, and then tricks us into getting into fight, flight, or freeze mode—even when there is no danger. The techniques in this book, rather than encouraging you to avoid or try to resist anxiety, shows you how to see the trick that underlies your anxious thoughts, and how avoidance can backfire and make anxiety worse.If you’re ready to start observing your anxious feelings with distance and clarity—rather than getting tricked once again—this book will show you how.

    Sharon Moalem turns our current understanding of illness on its head and challenges us to fundamentally change the way we think about our bodies, our health, and our relationship to just about every other living thing on earth, from plants and animals to insects and bacteria.Through a fresh and engaging examination of our evolutionary history, Dr. Moalem reveals how many of the conditions that are diseases today actually gave our ancestors a leg up in the survival sweepstakes. When the option is a long life with a disease or a short one without it, evolution opts for disease almost every time.Everything from the climate our ancestors lived in to the crops they planted and ate to their beverage of choice can be seen in our genetic inheritance. But Survival of the Sickest doesn't stop there. It goes on to demonstrate just how little modern medicine really understands about human health, and offers a new way of thinking that can help all of us live longer, healthier lives..

    Athens had entered upon her brief and magnificent flowering of genius which so molded the world of mind and of spirit that our mind and spirit today are different... What was then produced of art and of thought has never been surpasses and very rarely equalled, and the stamp of it is upon all the art and all the thought of the Western world."A perennial favorite in many different editions, Edith Hamilton's best-selling The Greek Way captures the spirit and achievements of Greece in the fifth century B.C. A retired headmistress when she began her writing career in the 1930s, Hamilton immediately demonstrated a remarkable ability to bring the world of ancient Greece to life, introducing that world to the twentieth century. The New York Times called The Greek Way a "book of both cultural and critical importance."

    Join our characters as they visit outer space, watch the Earth go through its earliest stages, and gaze in wonder at the earliest forms of life. Young readers will gain a basic understanding of evolution, and perhaps more importantly, what we can learn from it: to be kind to one another, as we are all related in the same family tree.

    Chances are you’ve also read Jane Eyre; if you were an exceptionally moody teenager, you might have even read Wuthering Heights. English majors might add George Eliot or Virginia Woolf to this list…but then the trail ends. Were there truly so few women writing anything of note during late 18th and 19th century Britain?In Not Just Jane, Shelley DeWees weaves history, biography, and critical analysis into a rip-roaring narrative of the nation’s fabulous, yet mostly forgotten, female literary heritage. As the country, and women’s roles within it, evolved, so did the publishing industry, driving legions of ladies to pick up their pens and hit the parchment. Focusing on the creative contributions and personal stories of seven astonishing women, among them pioneers of detective fiction and the modern fantasy novel, DeWees assembles a riveting, intimate, and ruthlessly unromanticized portrait of female life—and the literary landscape—during this era. In doing so, she comes closer to understanding how a society could forget so many of these women, who all enjoyed success, critical acclaim, and a fair amount of notoriety during their time, and realizes why, now more than ever, it’s vital that we remember.Rediscover Charlotte Turner Smith, Helen Maria Williams, Mary Robinson, Catherine Crowe, Sara Coleridge, Dinah Mulock Craik, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon.

    Admired for its lengthy pedigree—a line of poets extending back to a time before recorded history—and a ubiquitous presence in virtually all cultures, poetry is also revered for its great beauty and the powerful emotions it evokes. But the form has also instilled trepidation in its many admirers mainly because of a lack of familiarity and knowledge. Poetry demands more from readers—intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually—than other literary forms. Most of us started out loving poetry because it filled our beloved children's books from Dr. Seuss to Robert Louis Stevenson. Eventually, our reading shifted to prose and later when we encountered poetry again, we had no recent experience to make it feel familiar. But reading poetry doesn’t need to be so overwhelming. In an entertaining and engaging voice, Thomas C. Foster shows readers how to overcome their fear of poetry and learn to enjoy it once more.From classic poets such as Shakespeare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Edna St. Vincent Millay to later poets such as E.E. Cummings, Billy Collins, and Seamus Heaney, How to Read Poetry Like a Professor examines a wide array of poems and teaches readers:How to read a poem to understand its primary meaning.The different technical elements of poetry such as meter, diction, rhyme, line structures, length, order, regularity, and how to learn to see these elements as allies rather than adversaries.How to listen for a poem’s secondary meaning by paying attention to the echoes that the language of poetry summons up.How to hear the music in poems—and the poetry in songs!With How to Read Poetry Like a Professor, readers can rediscover poetry and reap its many rewards.

    It contains advice on time management, goal setting and how to get the best grades with the least effort. Advice that transfers just as well for professionals and the self employed to get ahead of the competition.----------HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR MEMORY: FREE EXCERPT BELOW----------Reviews from other eBook websites:"Effortless reading, and I now feel much more confident studying for tests. This was exactly what I've been looking for."-Graham Panci"Thank you for showing me how I can use my mind much more effectively. It all makes sense now that I've read it here. Eye opening!"-Clay Winters"Brilliantly simple, I've heard of some of these things before, but never had it explained so completely and so clearly. Many thanks John."-Julie YotoFREE EXCERPT:Mnemonic Tip 2- Convert Digits into WordsRemembering phrases is easier than remembering a series of digits. Similarly whole words are easier to remember than just single letters. So try to convert single digits and letters into words and then out them into memorable sentences.The reason these are more memorable than digits or letters alone is that there is no meaning, no reference point to a single number or a letter, and so they don’t make much of an impression on our minds. Actors can remember whole scripts, some then remember these for the rest of their lives. They can do this because the words, the phrases, have such a clear meaning to them; they are characters and stories. If they tried to remember the same amount of information in the form of just numbers or letters they would have no chance.This is an important aspect to all of these mnemonic devices, moving information of little meaning, to something of greater meaning.For example we can turn the digits 0 1 8 2 4 into the phrase “Only One Crate of beer tonight for me”. Here I have converted the numbers into words in the following way:Only= 0 or ZeroOne= 1Crate=8 (here I am using only a phonetically similar word, but still this is more than enough to make it memorable and link us back to the number 8.)Tonight= TwoFor= FourThis was quite straight forward for just five digits. But for longer series of digits, such as a whole phone number, the same process applies. Take your time to practice this on your own phone number now, or maybe create a random series of digits, and then code it into a sentence. It will seem difficult at first, but with a small amount of practice you can quickly become adept at this method.The exact same process can be applied to letters. Perhaps the letters H P become the words “Harry Potter”. And so, if you wanted to remember the code 01824HP you could encode it into the phrase:‘“Only one crate of beer tonight for me” said Harry Potter.’Read it a few times aloud to yourself then turn into an image in your mind, visualize it clearly; picture Harry Potter sat drinking beer at a bar, then saying this as he burps loudly. Creating a visual image will cause the phrase to route more deeply into your mind as you are creating a clear memory, and building a still deeper and stronger collection of new pathways in your mind.I promise you this image and phrase will be easier to remember than the 5 digits and 2 letters would by themselves.

    Jonathan Culler, an extremely lucid commentator and much admired in the field of literary theory, offers discerning insights into such theories as the nature of language and meaning, and whether literature is a form of self-expression or a method of appeal to an audience. Concise yet thorough, Literary Theory also outlines the ideas behind a number of different schools: deconstruction, semiotics, postcolonial theory, and structuralism, among others. From topics such as literature and social identity to poetry, poetics, and rhetoric, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction is a welcome guide for anyone interested in the importance of literature and the debates surrounding it.About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

    From stars, planets and galaxies, to black holes, the Big Bang and life in space, this title has been making it easy for beginners to quickly grasp the basic concepts of astronomy for over 25 years. Updated with the latest discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics, this newest edition of Dinah Moche's classic guide now includes many Web site addresses for spectacular images and news. And like all previous editions, it is packed with valuable tables, charts, star and moon maps and features simple activities that reinforce readers' grasp of basic concepts at their own pace, as well as objectives, reviews, and self-tests to monitor their progress. Dinah L. Moche, PhD (Rye, NY), is an award-winning author, educator, and lecturer. Her books have sold over nine million copies in seven languages.

    While not every story is concerned with the hard science behind space travel and other futuristic ventures, fiction can give listeners an amazing insight into what people could be capable of and what people dream of doing.In the 10 lectures of The Science of Sci-Fi: From Warp Speed to Interstellar Travel, Professor Erin Macdonald interweaves real science and the achievements of the imagination to reveal the truth that underlies favorite stories and sheds light on what the future may hold. From faster-than-light travel to journeys through time itself, science fiction makes humanity seem limitless. So, what scientific boundaries are people pushing against while seeking to fly among the stars?Listening Length: 3 hours and 59 minutes