Bitter Is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass, Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office


Jen Lancaster - 2006
    It's a modern Greek tragedy, as defined by Roger Dunkle in The Classical Origins of Western Culture: a story in which "the central character, called a tragic protagonist or hero, suffers some serious misfortune which is not accidental and therefore meaningless, but is significant in that the misfortune is logically connected."In other words? The bitch had it coming.

Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want


Michael Hyatt - 2016
    What we do with it is our choice. Are we drifting through it as spectators, reacting to our circumstances when necessary and wondering just how we got to this point anyway? Or are we directing it, maximizing the joy and potential of every day, living with a purpose or mission in mind?Too many of us are doing the former--and our lives are slipping away one day at a time. But what if we treated life like the gift that it is? What if we lived each day as though it were part of a bigger picture, a plan? That's what New York Times bestselling author Michael Hyatt and executive coach Daniel Harkavy show us how to do: to design a life with the end in mind, determining in advance the outcomes we desire and path to get there. In this step-by-step guide, they share proven principles that help readers create a simple but effective life plan so that they can get from where they are now to where they really want to be--in every area of life.

The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World


Melinda French Gates - 2019
    Her goal, as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift a society up, invest in women.In this candid and inspiring book, Gates traces her awakening to the link between women's empowerment and the health of societies. She shows some of the tremendous opportunities that exist right now to “turbo-charge" change. And she provides simple and effective ways each one of us can make a difference.Convinced that all women should be free to decide whether and when to have children, Gates took her first step onto the global stage to make a stand for family planning. That step launched her into further efforts: to ensure women everywhere have access to every kind of job; to encourage men around the globe to share equally in the burdens of household work; to advocate for paid family leave for everyone; to eliminate gender bias in all its forms.Throughout, Gates introduces us to her heroes in the movement towards equality, offers startling data, shares moving conversations she's had with women from all over the world—and shows how we can all get involved.A personal statement of passionate conviction, this book tells of Gates' journey from a partner working behind the scenes to one of the world's foremost advocates for women, driven by the belief that no one should be excluded, all lives have equal value, and gender equity is the lever that lifts everything.

Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny


Suze Orman - 2005
    With her signature mix of insight, compassion, and soul-deep recognition, she equips women with the financial knowledge and emotional awareness to overcome the blocks that have kept them from making more out of the money they make. At the center of the book is The Save Yourself Plan--a streamlined, five-month program that delivers genuine long-term financial security. But what's at stake is far bigger than money itself: It's about every woman's sense of who she is and what she deserves, and why it all begins with the decision to save yourself. Join the Movement to Save Yourself with this Unprecedented Offer to Readers of Women & Money: Suze Orman believes that having an account of your own is the cornerstone of long-term financial security, and so she has begun a national movement called Save Yourself to turn this wish--that every woman have an account in her own name--into a reality. She is joined in this crusade by the financial brokerage firm TD Ameritrade, which has come up with an extraordinary offer for readers of WOMEN & MONEY. Follow Suze's Save Yourself Plan and open an account in your name with TD Ameritrade. Commit to an automatic deposit of at least $50 per month for twelve consecutive months, and TD Ameritrade will provide the incentive in the form of a $100 deposit into your account in the thirteenth month. In other words, you save $600 or more over the course of a year, and TD Ameritrade will reward that effort with a $100 bonus. Learn more inside the book or at www.saveyourself.com.Offer valid for one new TD AMERITRADE account (non-retirement) opened between 2/27/07 and 3/31/08, and funded by 12 monthly consecutive automatic electronic deposits of $50 or more. First $50 must be deposited within 30 days of opening account. To be eligible, you must be a U.S. resident aged 18 or older. See www.saveyourself.com for obligations and limitations and to accept this offer. This is not an offer or solicitation in any jurisdiction where TD AMERITRADE is not authorized to do business. Random House, Inc., does not endorse, is not associated with, and has no responsibility for the TD AMERITRADE offer. TD AMERITRADE, Random House, Inc., and Suze Orman are separate and not affiliated, and each of them is not responsible for the services and information provided by the other(s). TD AMERITRADE, Inc., member NASD/SIPC.

The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands


Laura Schlessinger - 2003
    Laura urgently reminds women that to take proper care of their husbands is to ensure themselves the happiness and satisfaction they yearn for in marriage.Women want to be in love, get married, and live happily ever after. Yet disrespect for men and disregard for the value, feelings, and needs of husbands has fast become the standard for male-female relations in America. Those two attitudes clash in unfortunate ways to create struggle and strife in what could be a beautiful relationship.Countless women call Dr. Laura, unhappy in their marriages and seemingly at a loss to understand the incredible power they have over their men to create the kind of home life they yearn for. Now, in The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, Dr. Laura shows you—with real-life examples and real-life solutions—how to wield that power to attain all the sexual pleasure, intimacy, love, joy, and peace you want in your life.Dr. Laura's simple principles have changed the lives of millions. Now they can change yours.

The Zookeeper's Wife


Diane Ackerman - 2007
    With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen "guests" hid inside the Zabinskis' villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts. Jan, active in the Polish resistance, kept ammunition buried in the elephant enclosure and stashed explosives in the animal hospital. Meanwhile, Antonina kept her unusual household afloat, caring for both its human and its animal inhabitants—otters, a badger, hyena pups, lynxes.With her exuberant prose and exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Diane Ackerman engages us viscerally in the lives of the zoo animals, their keepers, and their hidden visitors. She shows us how Antonina refused to give in to the penetrating fear of discovery, keeping alive an atmosphere of play and innocence even as Europe crumbled around her.

Mary: Mrs. A. Lincoln


Janis Cooke Newman - 2006
    The first president’s wife to be called First Lady, she was a political strategist, a supporter of emancipation, and a mother who survived the loss of three children and the assassination of her beloved husband. Yet she also ran her family into debt, held seances in the White House, and was committed to an insane asylum. In Janis Cooke Newman’s debut novel, Mary Todd Lincoln shares the story of her life in her own words. Writing from Bellevue Place asylum, she takes readers from her tempestuous childhood in a slaveholding Southern family through the years after her husband’s death. A dramatic tale filled with passion and depression, poverty and ridicule, infidelity and redemption, Mary allows us entry into the inner, intimate world of this brave and fascinating woman.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI


David Grann - 2017
    After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.Then, one by one, they began to be killed off. One Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, watched as her family was murdered. Her older sister was shot. Her mother was then slowly poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances.In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes such as Al Spencer, “the Phantom Terror,” roamed – virtually anyone who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll surpassed more than twenty-four Osage, the newly created F.B.I. took up the case, in what became one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations. But the bureau was then notoriously corrupt and initially bungled the case. Eventually the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the bureau. They infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest modern techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history.A true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history.

Ramonst


A.F. Knott - 2016
    Within a balance of terror and innocence, he bears silent witness to ghosts of the dead and the cruelties of a teenage killer while local justice plays out in a community carved from legacies of coal mining and religion.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity


Katherine Boo - 2012
    Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees "a fortune beyond counting" in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter - Annawadi's "most-everything girl" - will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call "the full enjoy." But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi. With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century's hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget.

Choose Yourself: Be Happy, Make Millions, Live the Dream


James Altucher - 2013
    Markets have crashed. Jobs have disappeared. Industries have been disrupted and are being remade before our eyes. Everything we aspired to for “security,” everything we thought was “safe,” no longer is: College. Employment. Retirement. Government. It’s all crumbling down. In every part of society, the middlemen are being pushed out of the picture. No longer is someone coming to hire you, to invest in your company, to sign you, to pick you. It’s on you to make the most important decision in your life: Choose Yourself.New tools and economic forces have emerged to make it possible for individuals to create art, make millions of dollars and change the world without “help.” More and more opportunities are rising out of the ashes of the broken system to generate real inward success (personal happiness and health) and outward success (fulfilling work and wealth).This book will teach you to do just that. With dozens of case studies, interviews and examples–including the author, investor and entrepreneur James Altucher’s own heartbreaking and inspiring story–Choose Yourself illuminates your personal path to building a bright, new world out of the wreckage of the old.

The Art of Non-Conformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World


Chris Guillebeau - 2010
    You'll discover how to live on your own terms by exploring creative self-employment, radical goal-setting, contrarian travel, and embracing life as a constant adventure.Inspired and guided by Chris's own story and those of others who have pursued unconventional lives, you can devise your own plan for world domination-and make the world a better place at the same time.

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones


James Clear - 2018
    James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights.Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field.Learn how to:*  make time for new habits (even when life gets crazy);*  overcome a lack of motivation and willpower;*  design your environment to make success easier;*  get back on track when you fall off course;...and much more.Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits--whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.

The Magic of Thinking Big


David J. Schwartz - 1959
    Dr. Schwartz presents a carefully designed program for getting the most out of your job, your marriage and family life, and your community. He proves that you don't need to be an intellectual or have innate talent to attain great success and satisfaction, but you do need to learn and understand the habit of thinking and behaving in ways that will get you there.

Mourning Grey: Part One: The Guardians Of The Temple Saga


Marie Montine - 2021
    When she sees visions of an ancient temple that defy the story told in the play, she is confronted with choices:. she either has to pick her destiny or her heart...as she is falling for the one whom she is enemies with.A vampire only known as Audray finds her new life as Lharkin's follower troubling; she must help the Empian find a way to convince Cassandra to join them before the human realizes who she really is. When Audray seeks comfort in the arms of the Queen's son, she struggles with the inevitable: that she must eventually tell him what she is.Mourning Grey is the beginning of a saga that explores the lives living under the Guardians of Light and Dark, and that some things exist in the grey, such as love.