Beyond the Grave revised edition: The Right Way and the Wrong Way of Leaving Money To Your Children (and Others)


Gerald M. Condon - 1995
    This expert, one-of-a-kind handbook shows you how to:Ensure that your inheritance instructions will he carried out -- the way you want them to beProtect your child's inheritance from creditors, ex-spouses, addictions, tax troubles, mismanagement, squandering, and other risks of lossPrevent family conflict that can arise when parents die and children divide the "family money"Leave more money to your children and grandchildren, and less to the IRS -- and understand the hidden cost of a "death tax" repeal

The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace


M. Scott Peck - 1987
    It should ultimately serve to lower or remove the walls of misunderstanding which unduly separate us human beings, one from another...' Although we have developed the technology to make communication more efficent and to bring people closer together, we have failed to use it to build a true global community. Dr M. Scott Peck believes that if we are to prevent civilization destroying itself, we must urgently rebuild on all levels, local, national and international and that is the first step to spiritual survival. In this radical and challenging book, he describes how the communities work, how group action can be developed on the principles of tolerance and love, and how we can start to transform world society into a true community.

60 Ways to Lower Your Blood Sugar


Dennis Pollock - 2013
    Many today are well on their way to becoming a sad statistic in the war on obesity, high blood sugar, and the related diseases—including diabetes—that can result from a diet that’s seriously out of whack. In his previous bestselling book, Overcoming Runaway Blood Sugar, Dennis Pollock shared his personal experience with this deadly epidemic—including his success at lowering his runaway blood sugar to acceptable levels. Now Dennis offers readers the next step in the battle: 60 practical ways to manage their blood sugar without resorting to a bland unsatisfying diet of turnips and tuna fish. In this step by step, change by change plan, readers will learn how to: reduce their intake of carbs, exercise more effectively, and shed excess weight. A must-have book for readers serious about regaining their health while also lowering their weight and increasing their energy.

The Trolley Problem, or Would You Throw the Fat Guy Off the Bridge?: A Philosophical Conundrum


Thomas Cathcart - 2013
    Up ahead are five workers; on a spur to the right stands a lone individual. You, a bystander, happen to be standing next to a switch that could divert the trolley, which would save the five, but sacrifice the one—do you pull it? Or say you’re watching from an overpass. The only way to save the workers is to drop a heavy object in the trolley’s path. And you’re standing next to a really fat man….This ethical conundrum—based on British philosopher Philippa Foot’s 1967 thought experiment—has inspired decades of lively argument around the world. Now Thomas Cathcart, coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar, brings his sharp intelligence, quirky humor, and gift for popularizing serious ideas to “the trolley problem.” Framing the issue as a possible crime that is to be tried in the Court of Public Opinion, Cathcart explores philosophy and ethics, intuition and logic. Along the way he makes connections to the Utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, Kant’s limits of reason, St. Thomas Aquinas’s fascinating Principle of Double Effect, and more.Read with an open mind, this provocative book will challenge your deepest held notions of right and wrong. Would you divert the trolley? Kill one to save five? Would you throw the fat man off the bridge?

Gandhi's Life in His Own Words


Mahatma Gandhi - 1983
    And if every page of these chapters does not proclaim to the reader that the only means for the realization of Truth is ahimsa, I shall deem all my labour in writing these chapters to have been in vain. And, even though my efforts in this behalf may prove fruitless, let the readers know that the vehicle, not the great principle, is at fault.- M. K. Gandhi

I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling With Villains (Real and Imagined)


Chuck Klosterman - 2013
    As a child, he rooted for conventionally good characters like wide-eyed Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. But as Klosterman aged, his alliances shifted—first to Han Solo and then to Darth Vader. Vader was a hero who consciously embraced evil; Vader wanted to be bad. But what, exactly, was that supposed to mean? When we classify someone as a bad person, what are we really saying (and why are we so obsessed with saying it)? In I Wear the Black Hat, Klosterman questions the very nature of how modern people understand the culture of villainy. What was so Machiavellian about Machiavelli? Why don’t we see Batman the same way we see Bernhard Goetz? Who’s more worthy of our vitriol—Bill Clinton or Don Henley? What was O.J. Simpson’s second-worst decision? And why is Klosterman still obsessed with some kid he knew for one week in 1985?Masterfully blending cultural analysis with self-interrogation and limitless imagination, I Wear the Black Hat delivers perceptive observations on the complexity of the anti-hero (seemingly the only kind of hero America still creates). I Wear the Black Hat is the rare example of serious criticism that’s instantly accessible and really, really funny. Klosterman is the only writer doing whatever it is he’s doing.

Irrationality


Stuart Sutherland - 1992
    In this iconoclastic book Stuart Sutherland analyses causes of irrationality and examines why we are irrational, the different kinds of irrationality, the damage it does us and the possible cures.

Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan


Lisa Katayama - 2008
    . . different. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Tokyo-born journalist Lisa Katayama's collection of urawaza (a Japanese word for secret lifestyle tricks and techniques). Want to turbocharge your sled? Spray the bottom with nonstick cooking spray. Can't find someone to water your plants while you're away? Place the plant on a water-soaked diaper, so it slowly absorbs water over time. The subject of popular TV shows and numerous books in Japan, these unusually clever solutions to everyday problems have never before been published in Englishuntil now! Urawaza collects more than 100 once-secret tricks, offering step-by-step directionsand explanations in an eye-catching package as unconventional as its contents.

The Present Age


Søren Kierkegaard - 1846
    In it, we find the heart of Kierkagaard. It is not innocuous, not genteel, not comfortable. He does not invite the reader to relax and have a little laugh with him at the expense of other people or at his own foibles. Kierkegaard deliberately challenges the reader's whole existence. Nor does he merely challenge our existence; he also questions some ideas that had become well entrenched in his time and that are even more characteristic of the present age. Kierkegaard insists, for example, that Christianity was from the start essentially authoritarian --not just that the Catholic Church was, or that Calvin was, or Luther, or, regrettably, most of the Christian churches, but that Christ was-- and is. Indeed, though Kierkegaard was, and wished to be, an individual, and even said that on his tombstone he would like no other epitaph than 'That Individual, ' his protest against his age was centered in his lament over the loss of authority." --Walter Kaufman, in the Introduction

Fluency Made Easy


Ikenna D. Obi
    Learn how to reach fluency in your goal language fast, fun and easily.

The Nonviolence Handbook: A Guide for Practical Action


Michael N. Nagler - 2014
    In this short and powerful book, renowned peace activist Michael Nagler challenges this assertion, demonstrating that nonviolence succeeds through aggressively strategic and sustained action. It demands greater courage and discipline than violence.Distilling the core theories of nonviolence and drawing deeply from the lives of leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., this action-oriented handbook offers both guidance for nonviolent resistance and advice for building constructive movements capable of restructuring the very bedrock of society. Nagler also includes stories of successful nonviolent resistance that have been ignored by the mass media. The book features a list of resources that offer pathways to immediate action and engagement with the peace movement worldwide.

Humanist Manifestos I and II


Paul Kurtz - 1973
    Signed by Andrei Sakharov, B.F. Skinner, Corliss Lamont, Betty Friedan, Sir Julian Huxley, Sidney Hook, Jacques Monod, Gunnar Myrdal, and 275 other distinguished leaders of thought and action, it has been hailed as a classic.

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon


Daniel C. Dennett - 2006
    It is an integral part of their marriage, child rearing, and community. In this daring new book, distinguished philosopher Daniel C. Dennett takes a hard look at this phenomenon and asks why. Where does our devotion to God come from and what purpose does it serve? Is religion a blind evolutionary compulsion or a rational choice? In "Breaking the Spell," Dennett argues that the time has come to shed the light of science on the fundamental questions of faith. In a spirited narrative that ranges widely through history, philosophy, and psychology, Dennett explores how organized religion evolved from folk beliefs and why it is such a potent force today. Deftly and lucidly, he contends that the "belief in belief" has fogged any attempt to rationally consider the existence of God and the relationship between divinity and human need."Breaking the Spell" is not an antireligious screed but rather an eyeopening exploration of the role that belief plays in our lives, our interactions, and our country. With the gulf between rationalists and adherents of "intelligent design" widening daily, Dennett has written a timely and provocative book that will be read and passionately debated by believers and nonbelievers alike.

The Little Book of Lykke: The Danish Search for the World's Happiest People


Meik Wiking - 2017
    Not only do they have equal parental leave for men and women, free higher education and trains that run on time, but they burn more candles per household than anywhere else.So nobody knows more about happiness - what the Danes call lykke - than Meik Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen and author of the bestselling sensation The Little Book of Hygge . But he believes that, whilst we can certainly learn a lot from the Danes about finding fulfilment, the keys to happiness are actually buried all around the globe.In this captivating book, he takes us on a treasure hunt to unlock the doors to inner fulfilment. From how we spend our precious time, to how we relate to our neighbours and cook dinner, he gathers evidence, stories and tips from the very happiest corners of the planet. This is the ultimate guide to how we can all find a little more lykke in our lives.Meik Wiking is the CEO of The Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen and is one of the world's leading experts in happiness. Committed to understanding happiness, subjective well-being and quality of life, Meik works with countries across the world to discover and explore global trends of life satisfaction. Only someone absolutely dedicated to happiness sits in coffee shops across the world counting peoples' smiles!His first book, The Little Book of Hygge, became an international bestseller and will soon be published in 31 countries.

Revolution


Russell Brand - 2014
    Our governments are corrupt and the opposing parties pointlessly similar. Our culture is filled with vacuity and pap, and we are told there’s nothing we can do: “It’s just the way things are.”   In this book, Russell Brand hilariously lacerates the straw men and paper tigers of our conformist times and presents, with the help of experts as diverse as Thomas Piketty and George Orwell, a vision for a fairer, sexier society that’s fun and inclusive.   You have been lied to, told there’s no alternative, no choice, and that you don’t deserve any better. Brand destroys this illusory facade as amusingly and deftly as he annihilates Morning Joe anchors, Fox News fascists, and BBC stalwarts.   This book makes revolution not only possible but inevitable and fun.