Eliot, The Four QuartetsDo babies remember music from the womb? Can classical music increase your child’s IQ? Is music good for productivity? Can it aid recovery from illness and injury? And what is going on in your brain when Ultravox’s ‘Vienna’, Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht or Dizzee Rascal’s ‘Bonkers’ transports you back to teenage years?In a brilliant new work that will delight music lovers of every persuasion, music psychologist Victoria Williamson examines our relationship with music across the whole of a lifetime.Along the way she reveals the amazing ways in which music can physically reshape our brains, explores how ‘smart music listening’ can improve cognitive performance, and considers the perennial puzzle of what causes ‘earworms’.Requiring no specialist musical or scientific knowledge, this upbeat, eye-opening book reveals as never before the extent of the universal language of music that lives deep inside us all.

    As it happens, those of us who concluded “the guy’s just nuts” were right: a fair number of those impossible-to-get-along-with employees actually do have full-fledged personality disorders. In Toxic Coworkers, the authors help us to recognize a variety of common personality traits and disorders, understand how they come about, and learn to develop effective strategies for dealing with them. So the next time the narcissist who runs the front desk is bugging you, or you need to squeeze a favor out of the schizoid who handles inventory, you’ll know exactly what to do.

    It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving over 400 people on the premises. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola Prison in Louisiana, a former plantation named for the country from which most of its enslaved people arrived and which has since become one of the most gruesome maximum-security prisons in the world. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers. In a deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view-whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods—like downtown Manhattan—on which the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women and children has been deeply imprinted. Informed by scholarship and brought alive by the story of people living today, Clint Smith’s debut work of nonfiction is a landmark work of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in understanding our country.

    -John Gray, Ph.D., author of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus There is nothing more empowering than accepting responsibility. Taking responsibility is not about assuming fault; it is about re-taking the helm and control of your journey in life. This book will help you navigate through the difficulties of personality and behavioral change to more emotional peace. -Dr. Laura Schlessinger, author of The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands Nobody is born insecure, angry, bored, or depressed. The fact is, happiness is our natural state and, as psychologist Dr. Joseph J. Luciani explains in this warm, witty, and empowering guide, chronic unhappiness is just a bad habit-a habit that can be broken. It's much easier than you think! Based on Dr. Luciani's twenty-five years of experience helping patients unlearn reflexive, destructive thinking, The Power of Self-Coaching arms you with all the tools you need to free yourself from your mental and emotional traps. As you work through the many self-quizzes, training and coaching exercises, and Power Drills, you'll see yourself anew and feel yourself growing lighter, more spontaneous, and ready to take charge of your life. A proven five-step program for reconnecting with the innate capacity for happiness, The Power of Self-Coaching gives you what you need to: * Identify learned patterns of thought and feelings that are making you unhappy * Use Dr. Luciani's celebrated Self-Talk techniques to develop new, healthy ways of thinking and feeling * Eliminate boredom, hopelessness, chronic fatigue, and emotional numbness from your life * Tap your full creative, intellectual, and emotional potential and live the rich, rewarding life you want and deserve

    Joe Dispenza has created two meditation CDs—featuring different music—to accompany his book You Are the Placebo.     On this longer 56-minutedisc, Dr. Joe walks you through Meditation 1: Changing Two Beliefs and Perceptions. After introducing the open-focus technique, he then moves you into the practice of finding the present moment. When you discover the sweet spot of the present moment and you forget about yourself as the personality you have always been, you have access to other possibilities that already exist in the quantum field. That’s because you are no longer connected to the same body-mind, to the same identification with the environment, and to the same predictable timeline. In the present moment, the familiar past and the future literally no longer exist, and you become pure consciousness—a thought alone. That is the moment that you can change your body, change your environment, and even create a new timeline for your life!

    Race, class, and gender shape our social identities, and thus who we perceive as “like us” or “not like us”. But one overlooked factor can be even more powerful: the way we speak. As the pioneering psychologist Katherine Kinzler reveals in How You Say It, the way we talk is central to our social identity because our speech largely reflects the voices we heard as children. We can change how we speak to some extent, whether by “code-switching” between dialects or learning a new language; over time, your speech even changes to reflect your evolving social identity and aspirations. But for the most part, we are forever marked by our native tongue—and are hardwired to prejudge others by theirs, often with serious consequences. Your accent alone can determine the economic opportunity or discrimination you encounter in life, making speech one of the most urgent social-justice issues of our day. Our linguistic differences present challenges, Kinzler shows, but they also can be a force for good. Humans can benefit from being exposed to multiple languages —a paradox that should inspire us to master this ancient source of tribalism, and rethink the role that speech plays in our society.

    Psychology is the study of the human brain, but it’s so much more than a mere dissection of the gooey gray mass trapped in our skulls; it’s a study of what makes us tick as individuals and as a species.Human Psychology 101: Understanding the Human Mind and What Makes People Tick is meant to show you the facets of a human being and how they work together to make a person tick. It’s not a psychological treatise or a DSM-V. It’s a collection of my own research of psychology and stories from my life and those of my friends and acquaintances that help illustrate the principles I’m going to be telling you about.I will be dividing this book into seven aspects of human psychology: emotions, personality, decision-making, morality, perception, behavior, and relationships.To understand what makes someone tick is to have mastered a sort of psychological sleight of hand, and I hope that this book serves as a useful step on your way to mastery over that brand of magic trick. How human beings think and behave is an unendingly fascinating study, one that reveals how simple and elegant and, on the other hand, complex and mysterious we all are. I hope you are as pumped as I am to think about the inner workings of how people tick.

    From Plato to Christianity, from the Enlightenment to Nietzsche, the Western tradition has been based on arrogant and erroneous beliefs about human beings and their place in the world. Philosophies such as liberalism and Marxism think of humankind as a species whose destiny is to transcend natural limits and conquer the Earth. Even in the present day, despite Darwin's discoveries, nearly all schools of thought take as their starting point the belief that humans are radically different from other animals. John Gray argues that this humanist belief is an illusion. The aim of Straw Dogs is to explore how the world and human life look once humanism has been finally abandoned.Straw Dogs explores philosophical issues such as the nature of the self, free will, morality, progress and the value of truth. Drawing his inspiration from art, poetry, and the frontiers of science as well as philosophy itself, John Gray presents a post-humanist view of the world and of human life. Straw Dogs is an exhilarating, sometimes disturbing book that leads the reader to question their deepest beliefs.

    In 2006 Will Elliott had his first novel the Pilo Family Circus published. It won five literary awards and great acclaim, nationally and internationally. What nobody knew was that the young author of that work of terrifying fantasy had recently recovered from a psychotic episode and been diagnosed as schizophrenic. Strange Places takes us on a journey through psychosis and out the other side, documenting the delusions, the drugs and the insights that recovery brings. A beautifully written memoir of a harrowing - and enlightening - time, from one of Australia's best young writers.

    Johnson describes the feeling of "bleeding out", unable to tell where she stopped and where her partner began. A self-confessed "psycho girlfriend," she was influenced by many emotional factors from her past. She recalls her path through a dysfunctional, destructive relationship, while recounting the experiences that brought her to her breaking point. In recognizing her struggle with borderline personality disorder, Johnson is ultimately able to seek help, embarking on a soul-searching healing process. It's a path that is painful, difficult, and at times heart-wrenching, but ultimately makes her more able to love and coexist in healthy relationships.

    But thrоugh self-discipline, mental tоughnеѕѕ, аnd hаrd wоrk, Goggins trаnѕfоrmеd himself frоm a depressed, overweight уоung man wіth nо future іntо a U.S. Armеd Fоrсеѕ ісоn аnd оnе of the wоrld'ѕ tор endurance athletes. Thе оnlу mаn іn hіѕtоrу tо complete еlіtе trаіnіng аѕ a Nаvу SEAL, Armу Rаngеr, аnd Air Force Tactical Aіr Controller, hе wеnt оn to ѕеt records іn numerous.PLEASE NOTE: This is a summary and analysis of the book and NOT the original book.Our summaries aim to teach you important lessons in a time-efficient and cost-effective manner. They are coherent, concise, and comprehensive, highlighting the main ideas and concepts found in the original books. Unessential information is removed to save the reader hours of reading time. Save time and money while completing your reading list.

    This witty and informative guide demystifies the ancient Enneagram system with cartoons, exercises, and personality tests that reveal our motivations and desires and show how to put that knowledge to use in our everyday lives.The 9 Types of People:The Perfectionist: Motivated by the need to live life the right way, improve oneself and others, and avoid anger.The Helper: Motivated by the need to be loved and appreciated and to express your positive feelings towards others.The Achiever: Motivated by the need to be productive, to achieve success, and to avoid failure.The Romantic: Motivated by the need to understand your feelings and to be understood to search for the meaning of life, and to avoid being ordinary.The Observer: Motivated by the need to know everything and understand the universe, to be self-sufficient and left alone, and to avoid not having the answer or looking foolish.The Questioner: Motivated by the need for security, to feel taken care of, or to confront your fears.The Adventurer: Motivated by the need to be happy and plan fun things, to contribute to the world, and to avoid suffering and pain.The Asserter: Motivated by the need to be self-reliant and strong, to make an impact on the world, and to avoid being weak.The Peacemaker: Motivated by the need to keep the peace, merge with others, and avoid conflict.

    Now, in The New Science of the Human Past, Reich describes just how the human genome provides not only all the information that a fertilized human egg needs to develop but also contains within it the history of our species. He delineates how the Genomic Revolution and ancient DNA are transforming our understanding of our own lineage as modern humans; how genomics deconstructs the idea that there are no biologically meaningful differences among human populations (though without adherence to pernicious racist hierarchies); and how DNA studies reveal the deep history of human inequality--among different populations, between the sexes, and among individuals within a population.

    The book is an analysis of physical suffering and its relation to the numerous vocabularies and cultural forces--literary, political, philosophical, medical, religious--that confront it. Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Kissinger, She weaves these into her discussion with an eloquence, humanity, and insight that recall the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre. Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain enormously difficult to describe in words--confronted with it, Virginia Woolf once noted, "language runs dry"--it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme instances to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry analyzes the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of torture and warfare, and shows how to be fictive. From these actions of "unmaking" Scarry turns finally to the actions of "making"--the examples of artistic and cultural creation that work against pain and the debased uses that are made of it. Challenging and inventive, The Body in Pain is landmark work that promises to spark widespread debate.

    Psychology is the only branch of learning in which I am particularly versed. To the psychologist the religious propensities of man must be at least as interesting as any other of the facts pertaining to his mental constitution. It would seem, therefore, as a psychologist, the natural thing for me would be to invite you to a descriptive survey of those religious propensities." When William James went to the University of Edinburgh in 1901 to deliver a series of lectures on "natural religion," he defined religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine." Considering religion, then, not as it is defined by--or takes place in--the churches, but as it is felt in everyday life, he undertook a project that, upon completion, stands not only as one of the most important texts on psychology ever written, not only as a vitally serious contemplation of spirituality, but for many critics one of the best works of nonfiction written in the 20th century. Reading The Varieties of Religious Experience, it is easy to see why. Applying his analytic clarity to religious accounts from a variety of sources, James elaborates a pluralistic framework in which "the divine can mean no single quality, it must mean a group of qualities, by being champions of which in alternation, different men may all find worthy missions." It's an intellectual call for serious religious tolerance--indeed, respect--the vitality of which has not diminished through the subsequent decades.