Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come? In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical – and sometimes devastating – breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, paleontology and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come? Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power ... and our future.

    In her previous book, The Well-Trained Mind, the author provided a road map of classical education for parents wishing to home-school their children, and that book is now the premier resource for home-schoolers. In this new book, Bauer takes the same elements and techniques and adapts them to the use of adult readers who want both enjoyment and self-improvement from the time they spend reading.The Well-Educated Mind offers brief, entertaining histories of five literary genres—fiction, autobiography, history, drama, and poetry—accompanied by detailed instructions on how to read each type. The annotated lists at the end of each chapter—ranging from Cervantes to A. S. Byatt, Herodotus to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich—preview recommended reading and encourage readers to make vital connections between ancient traditions and contemporary writing.The Well-Educated Mind reassures those readers who worry that they read too slowly or with below-average comprehension. If you can understand a daily newspaper, there's no reason you can't read and enjoy Shakespeare's Sonnets or Jane Eyre. But no one should attempt to read the "Great Books" without a guide and a plan. Susan Wise Bauer will show you how to allocate time to your reading on a regular basis; how to master a difficult argument; how to make personal and literary judgments about what you read; how to appreciate the resonant links among texts within a genre—what does Anna Karenina owe to Madame Bovary?—and also between genres. Followed carefully, the advice in The Well-Educated Mind will restore and expand the pleasure of the written word.

    . . I have wondered sometimes if it would not finally turn out to be a book about Hell." It is 1932 and he has returned to his native Port William to become the town's barber.Orphaned at age ten, Jayber Crow's acquaintance with loneliness and want have made him a patient observer of the human animal, in both its goodness and frailty.He began his search as a "pre-ministerial student" at Pigeonville College. There, freedom met with new burdens and a young man needed more than a mirror to find himself. But the beginning of that finding was a short conversation with "Old Grit," his profound professor of New Testament Greek."You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out--perhaps a little at a time.""And how long is that going to take?""I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps.""That could be a long time.""I will tell you a further mystery," he said. "It may take longer."Wendell Berry's clear-sighted depiction of humanity's gifts--love and loss, joy and despair--is seen though his intimate knowledge of the Port William Membership.

    J.C. Ryle--the last of the great Puritans--tackles each of these subjects with a tenderness and tact which is unsurpassed. If it was difficult to be a young man in the days of the nineteeth century when Ryle first penned Thoughts for Young Men, it is all the more difficult to be a young man in the twenty-first century world of image-overload, radical individualism, and rampant sensuality. Thoughts for Young Men remains to this day the most relevent and helpful book on the subject in print.

    If Mandino's suggested reading structure is followed, it would take about 10 months to read the book.What you are today is not important... for in this  runaway bestseller you will learn how to change your life by applying the secrets you are about to  discover in the ancient scrolls.

    Doesn’t God work in the nighttime as well? In Learning to Walk in the Dark, Taylor asks us to put aside our fears and anxieties and to explore all that God has to teach us “in the dark.” She argues that we need to move away from our “solar spirituality” and ease our way into appreciating “lunar spirituality” (since, like the moon, our experience of the light waxes and wanes). Through darkness we find courage, we understand the world in new ways, and we feel God’s presence around us, guiding us through things seen and unseen. Often, it is while we are in the dark that we grow the most.With her characteristic charm and literary wisdom, Taylor is our guide through a spirituality of the nighttime, teaching us how to find our footing in times of uncertainty and giving us strength and hope to face all of life’s challenging moments.

    He’s not after some superficial outward tinkering, but instead a deep–rooted, life–altering change that takes place on the inside. In an age where pleasing people, puffing up your ego and building your résumé are seen as the methods to ‘make it’, the Apostle Paul calls us to find true rest in blessed self–forgetfulness.In this short and punchy book, best–selling author Timothy Keller, shows that gospel–humility means we can stop connecting every experience, every conversation with ourselves and can thus be free from self–condemnation. A truly gospel–humble person is not a self–hating person or a self–loving person, but a self–forgetful person.This freedom can be yours…

    Back then, most experts believed that differences in how girls and boys behave are mainly due to differences in how they were treated by their parents, teachers, and friends.It's hard to cling to that belief today. An avalanche of research over the past twenty years has shown that sex differences are more significant and profound than anybody guessed. Sex differences are real, biologically programmed, and important to how children are raised, disciplined, and educated. In Why Gender Matters, psychologist and family physician Dr. Leonard Sax leads parents through the mystifying world of gender differences by explaining the biologically different ways in which children think, feel, and act. He addresses a host of issues, including discipline, learning, risk taking, aggression, sex, and drugs, and shows how boys and girls react in predictable ways to different situations. For example, girls are born with more sensitive hearing than boys, and those differences increase as kids grow up. So when a grown man speaks to a girl in what he thinks is a normal voice, she may hear it as yelling. Conversely, boys who appear to be inattentive in class may just be sitting too far away to hear the teacher—especially if the teacher is female. Likewise, negative emotions are seated in an ancient structure of the brain called the amygdala. Girls develop an early connection between this area and the cerebral cortex, enabling them to talk about their feelings. In boys these links develop later. So if you ask a troubled adolescent boy to tell you what his feelings are, he often literally cannot say.Dr. Sax offers fresh approaches to disciplining children, as well as gender-specific ways to help girls and boys avoid drugs and early sexual activity. He wants parents to understand and work with hardwired differences in children, but he also encourages them to push beyond gender-based stereotypes. A leading proponent of single-sex education, Dr. Sax points out specific instances where keeping boys and girls separate in the classroom has yielded striking educational, social, and interpersonal benefits. Despite the view of many educators and experts on child-rearing that sex differences should be ignored or overcome, parents and teachers would do better to recognize, understand, and make use of the biological differences that make a girl a girl, and a boy a boy.

    . . all year long.Does your home sometimes feel like just a place to eat, sleep, and change clothes on the way to the next activity? Do you long for "home" to mean more than a place where you stash your stuff? Wouldn't you love it to become a haven of warmth, rest, and joy . . . the one place where you and your family can't wait to be?There is good news waiting for you in the pages of The Lifegiving Home. Every day of your family's life can be as special and important to you as it already is to God. In this unique book designed to help your family enjoy and celebrate every month of the year together, you'll discover the secrets of a life-giving home from a mother who created one and her daughter who was raised in it: popular authors Sally and Sarah Clarkson. Together they offer a rich treasure of wise advice, spiritual principles, and practical suggestions. You'll embark on a new path to creating special memories for your children; establishing home-building and God-centered traditions; and cultivating an environment in which your family will flourish. (Don't miss the companion piece, The Lifegiving Home Experience.)

    Lysa demonstrates the incredible power of two words--yes and no--and the way that these simple, daily decisions can shape the story of our lives.  Lysa has learned firsthand that there's a big difference between saying yes to everyone and saying yes to God. Drawing from applicable scriptures and her own personal experiences, Lysa teaches us that if we know and believe that God has a plan for each of us, we'll live it out--serving as living proof of His never-ending grace and kindness.Throughout The Best Yes, Lysa will give you the practical tools you need to:Stop people-pleasing by embracing a biblical understanding of loveEscape the guilt of disappointing others by learning the secret of the small noOvercome the agony of hard choices by grounding your decisions in wisdomGrow closer to God as you sharpen your own discernmentLearn to be intentional with your time, your choices, and yourselfIncorporate the Best Yes as a filter for your daily decision makingIf we take time to slow down and rise above the rush of the world's endless demands, we can rest assured that God's wisdom will help us make decisions that will still be good tomorrow. No matter what season of life you find yourself in, you deserve the chance to make decisions that bring out the best you.

    Teenage girls are taking courses of testosterone and disfiguring their bodies. Parents are undermined; experts are over-relied upon; dissenters in science and medicine are intimidated; free speech truckles under renewed attack; socialized medicine bears hidden consequences; and an intersectional era has arisen in which the desire to escape a dominant identity encourages individuals to take cover in victim groups. Every person who has ever had a skeptical thought about the sudden rush toward a non-binary future but been afraid to express it—this book is for you.

    Whether it’s writing the next great American novel, starting a business, or joining a band, Rob Bell wants to help us make those dreams become reality. Our path is ours and ours alone to pursue, he reminds us, and in doing so, we derive great joy because we are living our passions.How to Be Here lays out concrete steps we can use to define and follow our dreams, interweaving engaging stories, lessons from biblical figures, insights gleaned from Rob’s personal experience, and practical advice. Rob gives you the support and insight you need to silence your critics, move from idea to action, take the first step, find joy in the work, persevere through hard times, and surrender to the outcome.Like Stephen Pressfield’s classic The War of Art, How to Be Here will inspire readers to seek the lives they were created to lead.

    A clinical psychologist and Jewish educator use the Torah and other Jewish texts to offer psychological and practical insights into parenting and sharing practical advice on how to develop realistic expectations for each child, teach respect for adults, deal with frustration, enhance independence, and more.

    K. Chesterton, the "Prince of Paradox," is at his witty best in this collection of twenty essays and articles from the turn of the twentieth century. Focusing on "heretics" — those who pride themselves on their superiority to Christian views — Chesterton appraises prominent figures who fall into that category from the literary and art worlds. Luminaries such as Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and James McNeill Whistler come under the author's scrutiny, where they meet with equal measures of his characteristic wisdom and good humor.In addition to incisive assessments of well-known individuals ("Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Making the World Small" and "Mr. H. G. Wells and the Giants"), these essays contain observations on the wider world. "On Sandals and Simplicity," "Science and the Savages," "On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family," "On Smart Novelists and the Smart Set," and "Slum Novelists and the Slums" reflect the main themes of Chesterton's life's work. Heretics roused the ire of some critics for censuring contemporary philosophies without providing alternatives; the author responded a few years later with a companion volume, Orthodoxy. Sardonic, jolly, and generous, both books are vintage Chesterton.He is criticizing those who hold incomplete and inadequate views about "life, the universe, and everything." He is, in short, criticizing all that host of non-Christian views of reality, as he demonstrated in his follow-up book Orthodoxy. The book is both an easy read and a difficult read. But he manages to demonstrate, among other things, that our new 21st century heresies are really not new because he himself deals with most of them.

    The school developed a personalized learning plan for every student. They engaged the students by engaging them in interdisciplinary, real-world projects, rather than passively learning and memorizing in a classroom environment. They created mentorship groups, where students would talk through their goals and help each other solve problems, as well as meet one on one with their mentor, weekly. By internalizing a sense of purpose, self-direction, self-sufficiency, collaboration, students learn the cognitive and life skills needed to navigate the next phases of their lives. Virtually 100% of Summit's original 400 students went on to attend four year colleges. In the years that followed, Summit opened 10 more charter schools in California and Washington, to similar success, and national recognition.Today, Tavenner, and Summit Public Schools, are partnering with 400 public schools, across 40 states, and over 3500 teachers and 80,000 students, to bring the Summit Learning Program and teaching practices to school systems everywhere. With generous support from Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg's nonprofit organization, which calls Summit "the future of education," and over one hundred million dollars in contributions from the Gates Foundation, Summit is revolutionizing how our children are educated.