The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: A Natural Philosopher’s Quest for Trout and the Meaning of Everything


Marcelo Gleiser - 2016
    Now a world-famous theoretical physicist with hundreds of scientific articles and several books of popular science to his credit, he felt it was time to connect with nature in less theoretical ways. After seeing a fly-fishing class on the Dartmouth College green, he decided to learn to fly-fish, a hobby, he says, that teaches humility. In The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected, Gleiser travels the world to scientific conferences, fishing wherever he goes. At each stop, he ponders how in the myriad ways physics informs the act of fishing; how, in its turn, fishing serves as a lens into nature’s inner workings; and how science engages with questions of meaning and spirituality, inspiring a sense of mystery and awe of the not yet known. Personal and engaging, The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected is a scientist’s tribute to nature, an affirmation of humanity’s deep connection with and debt to Earth, and an exploration of the meaning of existence, from atom to trout to cosmos.

Tim Burton: A Child's Garden of Nightmares


Paul A. Woods - 2002
    Once a lonely teenager who found solace in horror flicks and cheesy Chiller Theater matinees, Burton relentlessly mines this history in his films, imbuing juvenile fantasy with emotional depth. This definitive study of Burton’s career tracks his life and work. Articles and interviews span his years as a malcontent animator at Walt Disney Studios through his creation of the pop-gothic aesthetic that marks all of his work. The book also features commentary by the editor on the origins of Burton’s ideas, a thorough analysis of each of his films, and images from the movies.

How to Be Human: The Manual


Ruby Wax - 2018
    No question, anyone reading this has won the evolutionary Hunger Games by the fact you're on all twos and not some fossil. This should make us all the happiest species alive - most of us aren't, what's gone wrong? We've started treating ourselves more like machines and less like humans. We're so used to upgrading things like our iPhones: as soon as the new one comes out, we don't think twice, we dump it. (Many people I know are now on iWife4 or iHusband8, the motto being, if it's new, it's better.)We can't stop the future from arriving, no matter what drugs we're on. But even if nearly every part of us becomes robotic, we'll still, fingers crossed, have our minds, which, hopefully, we'll be able use for things like compassion, rather than chasing what's 'better', and if we can do that we're on the yellow brick road to happiness.I wrote this book with a little help from a monk, who explains how the mind works, and also gives some mindfulness exercises, and a neuroscientist who explains what makes us 'us' in the brain. We answer every question you've ever had about: evolution, thoughts, emotions, the body, addictions, relationships, kids, the future and compassion. How to be Human is extremely funny, true and the only manual you'll need to help you upgrade your mind as much as you've upgraded your iPhone

I Can't Believe It's Not Better


Monica Heisey - 2015
    Created to help you live your Best Life, this book offers tips on everything from workplace politics to sexting, from how to make your apartment look like you read design blogs to where to cry in public. Important guides like "How To Watch Literally Hours of TV At A Time" will help you sort your life out for good, while thought—provoking personal essays such as "Pizzas I Have Loved" and helpful exercises like "Are You Being Flirted With, A Quiz" provide some gravitas and perspective to help you navigate this modern world. Plus there is a very weird short story about bees.Funny, smart and charming, this book is the perfect accompaniment to your next life crisis, or at least an easy and appropriate gift for the niece you don't know very well but want to impress.Monica Heisey is a writer and comedian from Toronto. She has written for VICE, Playboy, the Guardian, Rookie, Cosmopolitan, The Hairpin, The Toast, Hello Giggles...

The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto


Bernard DeVoto - 1948
    The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author turns his shrewd wit on the spirits and attitudes that cause his stomach to turn and his eyes to roll — warning: this book is not for rum drinkers. DeVoto instructs his readers on how to drink like gentlemen and sheds new light on the simple joys of the cocktail hour. Daniel Handler's introduction to this reprint of the 1950s classic provides a humorous framework for the modern reader.

Crying for Help: The Shocking True Story of a Damaged Girl with a Dark Past


Casey Watson - 2012
    Sophia’s actions are disturbing and provocative and, before long, Casey and her family find themselves in a dark and dangerous situation.Two years ago Sophia’s mother had a terrible accident. Sophia has been in care ever since.Right away, Casey feels something isn’t right. Sophia’s a well-developed girl, who looks more like 18 than 12. She only seems to have eyes and ears for men, and treats all women with contempt and disgust. And she has everyone around her jumping through hoops.Over time, as more details begin to emerge about Sophia’s past, it becomes clear that her behaviour is a front for an early life filled with pain and suffering. But although Casey feels she is gradually breaking through to Sophia and getting her to open up about things she has never spoken about before, her violence is threatening the safety of the whole family, forcing Casey to question whether she can really handle this lost and damaged girl.Both shocking and inspiring, this true story will shed new light on the extreme and sometimes dangerous nature of foster care.

Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails: From the Alamagoozlum Cocktail to the Zombie {80 Rediscovered Recipes and the Stories behind Them}


Ted Haigh - 2004
    This book does not repeat the timeworn cocktails of old. Instead historian, expert, and drink aficionado Dr. Cocktailhas hand-picked a superb collection of 80 drinks rarely made today, and all of them deserve revival. Some are from the nineteenth century, some from the Prohibition era, and some from just after World War II, just as the golden age of the cocktail was waning. All are retrieved from extremely uncommon sources. In fact, some of these drinks were found carefully penned into old cocktail manuals or on scraps of paper and may never have been published. They are true treasures, indeed.Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails pays homage to the great bartenders of the past and the grand beverages they created, the recipes for which were almost lost to history. Fully illustrated, it is filled with golden-age style, narrated with humorous and colorful anecdotes, chock-full of fascinating cocktail history, and brimming with delicious concoctions. If you have half the fun looking at this book and trying these recipes as the author did putting them together, a great party is about to ensue.

Eureka: The Birth of Science


Andrew Gregory - 1997
    Medicine, anatomy, astronomy, mathematics and cosmology were all invented in their world. Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Archimedes and Hippocrates were amongst its stars, master architects all of the modern as well as the ancient.

The Politics Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained


Kate Johnsen - 2013
    From ancient and medieval philosophers such as Confucius and Thomas Aquinas, to revolutionary thought leaders such as Thomas Jefferson and Leon Trotsky, to the voices who have shaped modern politics today -- Mao Zedong, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, and more -- "The Politics Book" clearly and simply explains more than 100 groundbreaking ideas in the history of political thought.With easy-to-follow graphics, succinct quotations, and accessible text, "The Politics Book" is an essential reference for students and anyone wondering how politics works.

HBR's 10 Must Reads on Women and Leadership (with bonus article "Sheryl Sandberg: The HBR Interview") (HBR’s 10 Must Reads)


Harvard Business Review - 2018
    We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you understand where gender equality is today--and how far we still have to go. This book will inspire you to: Better understand the path women must take to leadership Learn the root causes of the barriers that exist for women in the workplace Check your own gender biases and distinguish between confidence and competence in your colleagues Manage a more effective gender-diversity program Recognize the issues women face when speaking up about bias or harassment Help women reenter the workforce after taking time off--and create opportunities for them to reach their ambitions. This collection of articles includes "Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership," by Alice H. Eagly and Linda L. Carli; "Do Women Lack Ambition?" by Anna Fels; "Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers," by Herminia Ibarra, Robin Ely, and Deborah Kolb; "Women and the Vision Thing," by Herminia Ibarra and Otilia Obodaru; "The Power of Talk: Who Gets Heard and Why," by Deborah Tannen; "The Memo Every Woman Keeps in Her Desk," by Kathleen Reardon; "Why Diversity Programs Fail," by Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev; "Now What?" by Joan C. Williams and Suzanne Lebsock; "The Battle for Female Talent in Emerging Markets," by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Ripa Rashid; "Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success," by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce; and "Sheryl Sandberg: The HBR Interview," by Sheryl Sandberg and Adi Ignatius.

Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life


Joshua Fields Millburn - 2011
    It’s also the best thing we’ve ever written about Minimalism and will likely serve as the cornerstone to our work for years to come. It took us a year to write this book—a year of creating the best material possible and finding ways to relate it back to our lives so you would have practical ways to relate the subject matter to your life.Chapter Themes:Do you jump out of bed every morning excited about the day in front of you? Do you live a life defined by deep meaning, endless passion, excellent health, empowering relationships, and constant growth?You can.Ultimately, the eight chapters and ninety-eight sections inside this book are meant to help you take small actions each day that will radically improve your life over a short period of time.This book’s foreword and first chapter go into vast detail on our personal backgrounds, our troubled pasts, our depression, and how we made changes that transformed our lives over two years. These chapters discuss why didn’t feel fulfilled by our careers and why we turned to our society’s idea of a meaningful life: we bought stuff, we spent too much money, and we lived paycheck to paycheck trying to purchase happiness in every trip to the shopping mall or luxurious vacation we could find. Instead of finding our passion, instead of searching for our mission, we pacified ourselves with ephemeral indulgences, inducing a crack-cocaine high that didn’t last far past the checkout line.The subsequent chapters move on the the five dimensions that comprise a meaningful life:1. Health2. Relationships3. Passions4. Growth5. ContributionThese are the things we changed in our lives that had the most impact. These changes resulted in more meaningful lives for the two of us. These five chapters discuss each of these concepts in depth, much more than our website. Throughout these chapters we consider why these areas are the most important dimensions of our lives and how minimalism allowed us to focus on these areas. We give you personal examples of how we changed everything in our lives over two year span. We left our big corporate jobs, changed our diets, started exercising regularly, got healthy, strengthened our core relationships, made great new relationships, started pursuing our passions, contributed to more people than we ever had, and found ways to be happy and content with our lives.The final chapter of this book, "The Confluence of Meaning," binds together the five dimensions and asks the reader important questions about their life. These questions are not rhetorical, they are meant to make you think. The entire book is designed to help you actively engage in each chapter by reading the content more than once, taking notes, highlighting meaningful passages, making lists, and, most importantly, taking action.

Women: Body-Positive Art to Inspire and Empower


Carol Rossetti - 2015
    They congratulate the empowered, comfort the survivors, and present rebuttals to the oppressive comments that rain down upon women from the heights of the patriarchy.” —BustThe message we receive from the world is clear: we’re not good enough. We’re not skinny enough, pretty enough, smart enough. Women is all about accepting ourselves. Carol Rossetti asks us instead to say, “We’re not good enough—we’re even better.”Despite the progress we’ve made as a society, there is still a cruel and subtle gender oppression that exists today—and many don’t realize it’s there. In response, Rossetti decided to draw women to focus on the issues we face. Her illustrations are of women who feel safe expressing themselves by showing the world their fashion, sexuality, relationships, religion, disabilities, and even traumatic experiences.Rossetti’s commanding images belong on billboards and street corners and in schools and offices to remind us that our unique experiences and expressions should make us feel beautiful, intelligent, and proud. We have the power to embrace who we are and can stop trying so hard to please the rest of the world. Carol Rossetti and Women offer us a vision of who we can be.

My Appetite for Destruction: Sex, and Drugs, and Guns N' Roses


Steven Adler - 2010
    Offering a different perspective from the bestselling Slash, Adler chronicles his life with the band, and own intense struggle with addiction, as seen on Dr. Drew’s Celebrity Rehab and Sober House.

I Can Make You Hate


Charlie Brooker - 2012
    In the meantime, if you'd like to read something that alternates between laugh-out-loud-funny and apocalyptically angry, keep holding this book. Steal it if necessary. In his latest collection of rants, raves, hastily spluttered articles and scarcely literate scrawl, Charlie Brooker proves that there is almost nothing in this universe, big or small, that can't reduce a human being to a state of pure blind hatred. It won't help you lose weight, feel smarter, sleep more soundly, or feel happier about yourself. It will provide you with literally hours of distraction and merriment. It can also be used to stun an intruder, if you hit him with it correctly (hint: strike hard, using the spine, on the bridge of the nose). Only a prick wouldn't buy this book. Don't be that prick.

Being John Lennon: A Restless Life


Ray Connolly - 2018
    The John Lennon depicted in these pages is a much more kaleidoscopic figure, sometimes almost a collision of different characters.He was, of course, funny, often very funny. But above everything, he had attitude—his impudent style somehow personifying the aspirations of his generation to question authority. He could, and would, say the unsayable. Though there were more glamorous rock stars in rock history, even within the Beatles, it was John Lennon’s attitude which caught, and then defined, his era in the most memorable way.