The Zen Commandments: Ten Suggestions for a Life of Inner Freedom


Dean Sluyter - 2001
    Do the right thing, of course-- but better yet, find your inner light and doing the right thing becomes as natural as breathing. THE ZEN COMMANDMENTS offers ten powerful nudges toward that light.Drawing on sources from Zen stories and the Bible to jazz and rock 'n' roll, from American movies to Tibetan meditative techniques, Dean Sluyter steers clear of dogma and emphasizes what works-- a sort of spiritual street smarts. He shows that the state of boundless freedom and happiness isn't something distant or exotic, but is right here, while you're stuck in traffic or taking out the trash. And revisiting the Ten Commandments, he shows how on a deeper level they offer some surprising enlightenment wisdom of their own.“The book is extremely well written and joyously entertaining.”—Publishers Weekly “With sparkling clarity and wit, Sluyter's ten suggestions lay out the practical essentials of the path. My suggestion is: listen to this guy.”—Lama Surya Das, author of Awakening the Buddha Within “Dean Sluyter clearly presents simple but profound ways to live one's life consciously and skillfully. He teaches that the source of universal truth not only rests in the heart of every one of us, but is the essence of what ultimately brings us true happiness and freedom. This is a wonderful book with rich wisdom and deep insight.”—Rabbi David Cooper, author of God Is a Verb “No matter what your religion (or lack of it), this book shows how to live the kind of life people ache for. It turns out to be pretty simple.”—Jane Cavolina, co-author of Growing Up Catholic

Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious


Timothy D. Wilson - 2002
    But is introspection the best path to self-knowledge? What are we trying to discover, anyway? In an eye-opening tour of the unconscious, as contemporary psychological science has redefined it, Timothy D. Wilson introduces us to a hidden mental world of judgments, feelings, and motives that introspection may never show us.This is not your psychoanalyst's unconscious. The adaptive unconscious that empirical psychology has revealed, and that Wilson describes, is much more than a repository of primitive drives and conflict-ridden memories. It is a set of pervasive, sophisticated mental processes that size up our worlds, set goals, and initiate action, all while we are consciously thinking about something else.If we don't know ourselves--our potentials, feelings, or motives--it is most often, Wilson tells us, because we have developed a plausible story about ourselves that is out of touch with our adaptive unconscious. Citing evidence that too much introspection can actually do damage, Wilson makes the case for better ways of discovering our unconscious selves. If you want to know who you are or what you feel or what you're like, Wilson advises, pay attention to what you actually do and what other people think about you. Showing us an unconscious more powerful than Freud's, and even more pervasive in our daily life, Strangers to Ourselves marks a revolution in how we know ourselves.

Geography: Ideas in Profile


Danny Dorling - 2016
    Channelling our twin urges to explore and understand, geographers uncover the hidden connections of human existence, from infant mortality in inner cities to the decision-makers who fly overhead in executive jets, from natural disasters to over-use of fossil fuels.In this incisive introduction to the subject, Danny Dorling and Carl Lee reveal geography as a science which tackles all of the biggest issues that face us today, from globalisation to equality, from sustainability to population growth, from climate change to changing technology - and the complex interactions between them all.Illustrated by a series of award-winning maps created by Benjamin D. Hennig, this is a book for anyone who wants to know more about why our world is the way it is today, and where it might be heading next.

Language in Thought and Action


S.I. Hayakawa - 1939
    Senator S. I. Hayakawa discusses the role of language in human life, the many functions of language, and how language—sometimes without our knowing—shapes our thinking in this engaging and highly respected book. Provocative and erudite, it examines the relationship between language and racial and religious prejudice; the nature and dangers of advertising from a linguistic point of view; and, in an additional chapter called “The Empty Eye,” the content, form, and hidden message of television, from situation comedies to news coverage to political advertising.

The Art of Hunting Humans: A radical and confronting explanation of the human mind


Sidney Mazzi - 2019
    With straightforward language, weird metaphors and practical examples, it enables readers to understand human behaviour and evaluate their lives from an outsider’s perspective.Designed to challenge rather than comfort, The Art of Hunting Humans sets itself apart from anything else written in its field. The result is a sceptical, radical explanation of the mind that provides extraordinary insights into the inner worlds of human beings.Learn more: wannabewise dot comBOOK BLURB:The age-old art of human hunting is one you must orchestrate with care. In The Art of Hunting Humans, you’ll learn essential facts about Earth’s smartest primate and discover mistakes that are common among hunters while in pursuit of their prey. Whether you are an experienced hunter or a novice, this guide is essential reading. In it, you’ll learn the major steps for a hunt — from correct observation and selection of your prey to choosing the tastiest bait. It will reveal how to leverage humans’ self-ignorance and strange behaviours and expose flaws of which they are oblivious. At the end of the book, you will have the opportunity to meet the SUPERIORS — creatures like no other. You’d better be ready!Even if you’re a seasoned hunter, The Art of Hunting Humans provides extraordinary insights into human behaviour as well as tips that will blow your mind.Almost everything in this book is a trap. Enjoy!

Heart: An American Medical Odyssey


Dick Cheney - 2013
    Jonathan Reiner, share the story of Cheney’s thirty-five-year battle with heart disease—providing insight into the incredible medical breakthroughs that have changed cardiac care over the last four decades. For as long as he has served at the highest levels of business and government, Vice President Dick Cheney has also been one of the world’s most prominent heart patients. Now, for the first time ever, Cheney, together with his longtime cardiologist, Jonathan Reiner, MD, shares the very personal story of his courageous thirty-five-year battle with heart disease, from his first heart attack in 1978 to the heart transplant he received in 2012.In 1978, when Cheney suffered his first heart attack, he received essentially the same treatment President Eisenhower had had in 1955. Since then, cardiac medicine has been revolutionized, and Cheney has benefitted from nearly every medical breakthrough. At each juncture, when Cheney faced a new health challenge, the technology was one step ahead of his disease. Cheney’s story is in many ways the story of the evolution of modern cardiac care.Heart is the riveting, singular memoir of both doctor and patient. Like no US politician has before him, Cheney opens up about his health struggles, sharing harrowing, never-before-told stories about the challenges he faced during a perilous time in our nation’s history. Dr. Reiner provides his perspective on Cheney’s case and also gives readers a fascinating glimpse into his own education as a doctor and the history of our understanding of the human heart. He masterfully chronicles the important discoveries, radical innovations, and cutting-edge science that have changed the face of medicine and saved countless lives.Powerfully braiding science with story and the personal with the political, Heart is a sweeping, inspiring, and ultimately optimistic book that will give hope to the millions of Americans affected by heart disease.

Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work


Paul Babiak - 2006
    Now, Dr. Paul Babiak and Dr. Robert D. Hare return with a revised and updated edition of their essential guide.All of us at some point have—or will—come into contact with psychopathic individuals. The danger they present may not be readily apparent because of their ability to charm, deceive, and manipulate. Although not necessarily criminal, their self-serving nature frequently is destructive to the organizations that employ them. So how can we protect ourselves and our organizations in a business climate that offers the perfect conditions for psychopaths to thrive?In Snakes in Suits, Hare, an expert on the scientific study of psychopathy, and Babiak, an industrial and organizational psychologist and a leading authority on the corporate psychopath, examine the role of psychopaths in modern corporations and provide the tools employers can use to avoid and deal with them. Together, they have developed the B-Scan 360, a research tool designed specifically for business professionals.Dr. Babiak and Dr. Hare reveal the secret lives of psychopaths, explain the ways in which they manipulate and deceive, and help you to see through their games. The rapid pace of today’s corporate environment provides the perfect breeding ground for these "snakes in suits" and this newly revised and updated classic gives you the insight, information, and power to protect yourself and your company before it’s too late.

Decoding Love: Why It Takes Twelve Frogs to Find a Prince, and Other Revelations from the Science of Attraction


Andrew S. Trees - 2009
     Relationships should be so simple. You meet someone. You fall in love. If all goes well, that person falls in love with you. You live happily every after. As Andrew Trees reveals in "Decoding Love," this ?romantic storyline? has shaped our thinking about relationships for centuries. But the fairy tale is deeply flawed. Researchers today are making shocking discoveries about how and why we choose the people we love. Drawing from the latest studies in economics, brain science, game theory, evolutionary psychology, and other fields, "Decoding Love" takes on a topic we all think we understand?how we fall in love?and illustrates that most of our assumptions are wrong. Along the way, Andrew Trees offers surprising new insights into the nature of attraction and desire as well as an intimate look at the strange intersection of romance and the modern world of dating. Throughout, "Decoding Love" reveals the frequently bizarre scientific findings about human attraction from the powerful influence of smell to a mathematical theory that one must date twelve people before happening upon Mr. or Ms. Right. Everything from a genetic marker for infidelity to the way the pill can sway a woman's choice of her partner is explored in this astonishing and thoroughly amusing account of what goes into determining why one person falls in love with another. Page-turning, thought-provoking, and sparkling with wit, "Decoding Love" is an uncommon look at that most common of human pursuits: falling in love.

The End of History and the Last Man


Francis Fukuyama - 1992
    Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.

Lectures of Col. Robert Green Ingersoll


Robert G. Ingersoll - 1942
    Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

The Human Race to the Future: What Could Happen - and What to Do [2014 edition]


Daniel Berleant - 2013
    get this book now!*** Do you wonder about the future... what things will be like some day, how long it might take, and what we can do about it? Substantive yet imaginative, readable, occasionally humorous, and science oriented, this book proposes possible future scenarios spanning from the current century to nearly eternity. Most chapters offer a concluding section with recommendations and often, agree or disagree, the author's occasionally inimitable opinions. Some of the recommended actions can be done by individuals, others by nations or other groups, and still others by the entire world. Over 300 references. Discover "What it Means That an Hour’s Work Yields a Week’s Food" (chapter 1). Foresee the "Teeming Cities of Mars" (chap. 21). Learn why it’s "Keyboards Yesterday, Mind Reading Tomorrow" (chap. 3). Have you ever wondered — "Will Artificial Intelligence Threaten Civilization?" (See chap. 12.) Find out what happens "When Genomes Get Cheap" (chap. 6). Prepare for an "Asteroid Apocalypse" (chap. 25). Explore why you would benefit from "Wiki-Wiki-Wikipedia" (chap. 4). How we will "Live Anywhere, Work Anywhere Else" (chap. 2). Realize how the future "Tastes Like the Singularity" (chap. 15). Get smarter with "Smart Pills’n Such" (chap. 5). Experience a "Soylent Spring" (chap. 9). Understand nukes better by "Deconstructing Nonproliferation" (chap. 13). Get ready for a "Space Empire" (chap. 14). What is "Sic Transit Humanitas: The Transcent of Man" (chap. 26)? There’s global warming, and there’s "Warm, Poison Planet" (chap. 17). But let’s not forget about "Big Ice" (chap. 22). Things may really grow on trees with "New Plant Paradigms" (chap. 24). We all have "Questions" (chap. 31). And much more! This book is aimed at the reader who is interested in the future, and intrigued by science and technology.

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande - A 20-minute Summary: Medicine and What Matters in the End


Instaread Summaries - 2014
    Being Mortal by Atul Gawande - A 20-minute Summary Inside this Instaread Summary: • Overview of the entire book• Introduction to the important people in the book• Summary and analysis of all the chapters in the book• Key Takeaways of the book• A Reader's Perspective Preview of this summary: Chapter 1 Gawande grew up in Ohio. His parents were immigrants from India and both were doctors. His grandparents stayed in India, and there were few older people in his neighborhood, so he had little experience with aging or death until he met his wife’s grandmother, Alice Hobson. Hobson was seventy-seven and living on her own in Virginia. She was a spirited widow who fixed her own plumbing and volunteered with Meals On Wheels. However, Hobson was losing strength and height steadily each year as her arthritis worsened.Gawande’s father enthusiastically adopted the customs of his new country, but he could not understand the way in which seniors were treated in the US. In India, the elderly were treated with great respect and lived out their lives with family.In the United States, Sitaram Gawande, Gawande’s grandfather, likely would have been sent to a nursing home like most of the elderly who cannot handle the basics of daily living by themselves. However, in India, Sitaram Gawande was able to live in his own home and manage his own affairs, with family constantly around him. He died at the age of one hundred and ten when he fell off a bus during a business trip.Until recently, most elderly people stayed with their families. Even as the nuclear family unit became predominant, replacing the multi-generational family unit, people cared for their elderly relatives. Families were large and one child, usually a daughter, would not marry in order to take care of the parents.This has changed in much of the world, where elderly people end up struggling to live alone, like Hobson, rather than living with dignity amid family, like Sitaram Gawande.One cause of this change can be found in the nature of knowledge. When few people lived to be very old, elders were honored. Their store of knowledge was greatly useful. People often portrayed themselves as older to command respect. Modern society’s emphasis on youth is a complete reversal of this attitude. Technological advances are perceived as the territory of the young, and everyone wants to be younger. High-tech job opportunities are all over the world, and young people do not hesitate to leave their parents behind to pursue them.In developed countries, parents embrace the concept of a retirement filled with leisure activities. Parents are happy to begin living for themselves once children are grown. However, this system only works for young, healthy retirees, but not for those who cannot continue to be independent. Hobson, for example, was falling frequently and suffering memory lapses. Her doctor did tests and wrote prescriptions, but did not know what to do about her deteriorating condition. Neither did her family… About the Author With Instaread Summaries, you can get the summary of a book in 30 minutes or less. We read every chapter, summarize and analyze it for your convenience.

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010


Charles Murray - 2012
    In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way of driving home the fact that the trends he describes do not break along lines of race or ethnicity. Drawing on five decades of statistics and research, Coming Apart demonstrates that a new upper class and a new lower class have diverged so far in core behaviors and values that they barely recognize their underlying American kinship—divergence that has nothing to do with income inequality and that has grown during good economic times and bad. The top and bottom of white America increasingly live in different cultures, Murray argues, with the powerful upper class living in enclaves surrounded by their own kind, ignorant about life in mainstream America, and the lower class suffering from erosions of family and community life that strike at the heart of the pursuit of happiness. That divergence puts the success of the American project at risk. The evidence in Coming Apart is about white America. Its message is about all of America.

New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future


James Bridle - 2018
    Underlying this trend is a single idea: the belief that our existence is understandable through computation, and more data is enough to help us build a better world.   In actual fact, we are lost in a sea of information, increasingly divided by fundamentalism, simplistic narratives, conspiracy theories, and post-factual politics. Meanwhile, those in power use our lack of understanding to further their own interests. Despite the accessibility of information, we’re living in a new Dark Age.   From rogue financial systems to shopping algorithms, from artificial intelligence to state secrecy, we no longer understand how our world is governed or presented to us. The media is filled with unverifiable speculation, much of it generated by anonymous software, while companies dominate their employees through surveillance and the threat of automation.   In his brilliant new work, leading artist and writer James Bridle excavates the limits of technology and how it aids our understanding of the world. Surveying the history of art, technology, and information systems, he explores the dark clouds that gather over our dreams of the digital sublime.

The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity


Douglas Murray - 2019
    He reveals the astonishing new culture wars playing out in our workplaces, universities, schools and homes in the names of social justice, identity politics and intersectionality.We are living through a postmodern era in which the grand narratives of religion and political ideology have collapsed. In their place have emerged a crusading desire to right perceived wrongs and a weaponization of identity, both accelerated by the new forms of social and news media. Narrow sets of interests now dominate the agenda as society becomes more and more tribal--and, as Murray shows, the casualties are mounting.