Sapiens became a #1 international bestseller and a New York Times bestseller for simple reasons… Unlike other macroscopic reviews of human history, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind combines the best research into history with recent discoveries in biology and archaeology and complementary disciplines of science. It provides a unique point of view on how we got to where we are today – and what that means for us as a species. Dr. Yuval Noah Harari traces the development of consciousness, above all else. 100,000 years ago Homo Sapiens were an insignificant animal – but today we dominate the planet. At some point, the evolution of thinking superseded biological evolution. Much of our 'success' hinges on the importance of the myths and legends – the fictions of our imagination that have played such a vital role in the development of culture, ideology, religion, economics, science – instead of our pure biological traits. Reading our summary is the perfect way to cover the full material and grasp the essential insights of Dr. Harari’s research in a fraction of the time. If you find Dr. Harari’s concepts enticing, we highly advise you to buy the full book! Why read ExecutiveGROWTH Summaries: The best-quality summaries on Amazon, guaranteed. Team of professional native-English writers and editors (a huge issue on Amazon; check the reviews of ANY other summary book company to see for yourself). Engaged CEO and a responsive team committed to your personal growth and making your reading experience superb. Bonus Power Insights gives you the main takeaways to keep top-of-mind. Bonus Guided Challenge to immediately implement the book’s knowledge to your daily life. We craft our summaries for busy high-achievers who still have the insatiable appetite to keep learning and growing. Our summaries provide the fastest way to increase perspective and productivity, guaranteed. We only curate summaries whose original books we absolutely love and are convinced have the highest potential for personal growth. Our team has singled out the key concepts and trimmed out all the rest, allowing you to digest the author's core message in a fraction of the time. It's easy to read the entire summary in a little over one hour without needing highly developed speed-reading superpowers! DISCLAIMER: We are convinced that our professional summaries will introduce more readers to the full book who otherwise would have turned a blind eye by the sheer commitment. Our intention is sincere in that readers could use this summary as an introduction or a companion to the original book, not as a substitute.

    In The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century, as well as successor The New England Mind: From Colony to Province, Perry Miller asserts a single intellectual history for America that could be traced to the Puritan belief system.

    It is not a political, still less a personal, biography of the queen; instead it reappraises her role in government and in the nation, and explores the ways in which she exercised her power. Adept at avoiding the pitfalls of sentiment and anachronism alike, Christopher Haigh examines Elizabeth in terms of her power rather than her policies, exploring her relations with the statesmen of her time and with the key institutions of 16th century political life: the Church, the nobility, the Privy CounciL the Royal Court, Parliament, military and naval commanders, and the people of England.

    Joel Mokyr shows that we cannot understand the Industrial Revolution without recognizing the importance of the intellectual sea changes of Britain’s Age of Enlightenment. In a vigorous discussion, Mokyr goes beyond the standard explanations that credit  geographical factors, the role of markets, politics, and society to show that the beginnings of modern economic growth in Britain depended a great deal on what key players knew and believed, and how those beliefs affected their economic behavior. He argues that Britain led the rest of Europe into the Industrial Revolution because it was there that the optimal intersection of ideas, culture, institutions, and technology existed to make rapid economic growth achievable. His wide-ranging evidence covers sectors of the British economy often neglected, such as the service industries.

    Naturalist. Warrior. President. There are so many sides to Theodore Roosevelt that it is easy to overlook one of his most enduring contributions to American public life: the use of fame to fuel his political career.In this concisely written, enlightening book, presidential historian Lewis L. Gould goes beyond the bully pulpit stereotypes to reveal how Roosevelt used his celebrity to change American politics. Based on research gleaned from the personal papers of Roosevelt and his contemporaries, TheodoreRoosevelt recaptures its subject's bold activism and irrepressible, larger-than-life personality. Beginning with his privileged childhood in New York City, the narrative traces his election to the New York Assembly, where he quickly rose through the ranks of the Republican Party. It is here that hefirst applied his shrewd ability to keep himself in the spotlight--a skill that served him well as commander of a volunteer regiment (dubbed Roosevelt's Rough Riders) in the Spanish-American War. Gould shows how Roosevelt rode a wave of popular acclaim at the war's end, assuming the governorshipof New York and serving as president from 1901 to 1909. While covering his major accomplishments as chief executive, including his successes as a trust-buster, labor mediator, and conservationist, Gould explains how fame both sustained and limited Roosevelt when he ran for president in 1912 andopposed Woodrow Wilson's policies during World War I.Theodore Roosevelt delivers the most insightful look yet at a pioneer of political theater--a man whose vigorous idealism as a champion of democracy serves as a counterpoint to the cynicism of today's political landscape. The book will coincide with the 100th anniversary of Roosevelt's third partyrun for the Progressive or Bull Moose Party.

    In his acclaimed book―based on his legendary Harvard course―Sandel offers a rare education in thinking through the complicated issues and controversies we face in public life today. It has emerged as a most lucid and engaging guide for those who yearn for a more robust and thoughtful public discourse. "In terms we can all understand," wrote Jonathan Rauch in The New York Times, Justice "confronts us with the concepts that lurk . . . beneath our conflicts."Affirmative action, same-sex marriage, physician-assisted suicide, abortion, national service, the moral limits of markets―Sandel relates the big questions of political philosophy to the most vexing issues of the day, and shows how a surer grasp of philosophy can help us make sense of politics, morality, and our own convictions as well.Justice is lively, thought-provoking, and wise―an essential new addition to the small shelf of books that speak convincingly to the hard questions of our civic life.

    In 1985 Hans von Ohain, the scientist who pioneered Nazi Germany's efforts to build a jet plane, posed the question: 'Would World War II have occured if the Luftwaffe knew it faced operational British jets instead of Spitfires?' He immediately answered, 'I, for one, think not.'Frank Whittle, working-class outsider and self-taught enthusiast, had worked out the blueprint of a completely new type of engine in 1929, only for his ideas to be blocked by bureaucratic opposition until the outbreak of war in 1939. The importance of his work was recognized too late by the government for his revolutionary engine to play a major part in World War II. After the war Whittle's dream of civilian jet-powered aircraft became a reality and Britain enjoyed a golden age of 1950's jet-powered flight.Drawing on Whittle's extensive private papers, Campbell-Smith tells the story of a stoic and overlooked British hero, a tantalizing tale of 'what might have been'.

    

    Levin now delivers the book that characterizes both his devotion to his more than 5 million listeners and his love of our country and the legacy of our Founding Fathers: Liberty and Tyranny is Mark R. Levin's clarion call to conservative America, a new manifesto for the conservative movement for the 21st century.In the face of the modern liberal assault on Constitution-based values, an attack that has steadily snowballed since President Roosevelt's New Deal of the 1930s and resulted in a federal government that is a massive, unaccountable conglomerate, the time for re-enforcing the intellectual and practical case for conservatism is now. Conservative beliefs in individual freedoms do in the end stand for liberty for all Americans, while liberal dictates lead to the breakdown of civilized society -- in short, tyranny. Looking back to look to the future, Levin writes "conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principles are our founding principles." And in a series of powerful essays, Levin lays out how conservatives can counter the liberal corrosion that has filtered into every timely issue affecting our daily lives, from the economy to health care, global warming, immigration, and more -- and illustrates how change, as seen through the conservative lens, is always prudent, and always an enhancement to individual freedom.As provocative, well-reasoned, robust, and informed as his on-air commentary, Levin's narrative will galvanize readers to begin a new era in conservative thinking and action. Liberty and Tyranny provides a philosophical, historical, and practical framework for revitalizing the conservative vision and ensuring the preservation of American society.

    The economy shrank, bank lending froze, hundreds of thousands lost their jobs, living standards are still falling and Britons will be paying higher taxes for decades to pay the clean-up bill. How on earth had a small Scottish bank grown so quickly to become a global financial giant that could do such immense damage when it collapsed?At the centre of the story was Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive known as "Fred the Shred" who terrorised some of his staff and beguiled others. Not a banker by training, he nonetheless was given control of RBS and set about trying to make it one of the biggest brands in the world. It was said confidently that computerisation and new banking products had made the world safer. Only they hadn't...Based on more than 80 interviews and with access to diaries and papers kept by those at the heart of the meltdown, this is the definitive account of the RBS disaster, a disaster which still casts such a shadow over our economy. In Making It Happen, senior executives, board members, Treasury insiders and regulators reveal how the bank's mania for expansion led it to take enormous risks its leaders didn't understand.From the birth of the Royal Bank in 18th century Scotland, to the manic expansion under Fred Goodwin in the middle of a mad boom and culminating in the epoch-defining collapse, Making It Happen is the full, extraordinary story.

    Ever a game little guinea pig, Kingwell put himself on Prozac and St. John's wort. He hired himself out as an expert to "help" marketers suss out material sources of happiness for the 18 to 29 cohort. He notices little things such as the fact that Pepperidge Farm has added smiley faces to their Goldfish crackers. (And for what? The fish are happy that you are happy when you eat them?) He ranges widely, writing about Roman Stoic Epictetus, Nick Hornby, The Honeymooners, Freud, Sir Thomas More, PMS, Plato, and much more. Kingwell, a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto, exceeds at making the personal philosophical--a skill that has earned him mild derision from academic contemporaries, but that lay readers will appreciate. His writing is clear, engaging, and thought-provoking, and, like fellow pop philosopher Alain de Botton (How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Consolations of Philosophy), Kingwell doffs his mortarboard at Montaigne, surely the most loose-limbed and least po-faced of philosophers--human, confused, and curious--who seems to be enjoying something of a revival. Your happiness does not depend on reading this book. But it's nice to know that for those of us who abjure books with titles like Become Happy in Eight Minutes, there are wry, funny, smart, and even uplifting reads such as In Pursuit of Happiness. --J.R.

    Incessant budget crises plus a government paralyzed by partisan gridlock have led to demands for reform, even a constitutional convention. But what, exactly, is wrong and how can we fix it? In California Crackup, Joe Mathews and Mark Paul provide clear and informed answers. Their fast-paced and often humorous narrative deftly exposes the constitutional origins of our current political and economic problems and furnishes a uniquely California fix: innovative solutions that allow Californians to debate their choices, settle on the best ones, hold elected officials accountable for results, and choose anew if something doesn’t work.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    One - now the minority - functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other - the majority - is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority - which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected - presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society. In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture - attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies - to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.

    But libertarianism is more than the philosophy of individual freedom and unfettered markets that Republicans have embraced. Indeed, as Jason Brennan points out, libertarianism is a quite different--and far richer--system of thought than most of us suspect.In this timely new entry in Oxford's acclaimed series What Everyone Needs to Know(R), Brennan offers a nuanced portrait of libertarianism, proceeding through a series of questions to illuminate the essential elements of libertarianism and the problems the philosophy addresses, including such topics as the Value of Liberty, Human Nature and Ethics, Economic Liberty, Civil Rights, Social Justice and the Poor, Government and Democracy, and Contemporary Politics. Brennan asks the most fundamental and challenging questions: What do Libertarians think liberty is? Do libertarians think everyone should be selfish? Are libertarians just out to protect the interests of big business? What do libertarians think we should do about racial injustice? What would libertarians do about pollution? Are Tea Party activists true libertarians? As he sheds light on libertarian beliefs, Brennan overturns numerous misconceptions. Libertarianism is not about simple-minded paranoia about government, he writes. Rather, it celebrates the ideal of peaceful cooperation among free and equal people. Libertarians believe that the rich always capture political power; they want to minimize the power available to them in order to protect the weak. Brennan argues that libertarians are, in fact, animated by benevolence and a deep concern for the poor.Clear, concise, and incisively written, this volume explains a vitally important philosophy in American history--and a potent force in contemporary politics.What Everyone Needs to Know(R) is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.