The Nation's Favourite


Simon Garfield - 1999
    Matthew Bannister said he was going to reinvent the station, the most popular in Europe. But things didn't go exactly to plan. The station lost millions of listeners. Its most famous DJs left, and their replacements proved to be disasters. Radio 1's commercial rivals regarded the internal turmoil with glee. For a while a saviour arrived, in the shape of Chris Evans. But his behaviour caused further upheavals, and his eventual departure provoked another mass desertion by listeners. What was to be done? In the middle of this crisis, Radio 1 bravely (or foolishly) allowed the writer Simon Garfield to observe its workings from the inside. For a year he was allowed unprecedented access to management meetings and to DJs in their studios, to research briefings and playlist conferences. Everyone interviewed spoke in passionate detail about their struggle to make their station credible and successful once more. The result is a gripping and often hilarious portrait a much loved national institution as it battles back from the brink of calamity.

A Grief Observed


C.S. Lewis - 1961
    S. Lewis's wife, the American-born poet Joy Davidman. In her introduction to this new edition, Madeleine L'Engle writes: "I am grateful to Lewis for having the courage to yell, to doubt, to kick at God in angry violence. This is a part of a healthy grief which is not often encouraged. It is helpful indeed that C. S. Lewis, who has been such a successful apologist for Christianity, should have the courage to admit doubt about what he has so superbly proclaimed. It gives us permission to admit our own doubts, our own angers and anguishes, and to know that they are part of the soul's growth."Written in longhand in notebooks that Lewis found in his home, A Grief Observed probes the "mad midnight moments" of Lewis's mourning and loss, moments in which he questioned what he had previously believed about life and death, marriage, and even God. Indecision and self-pity assailed Lewis. "We are under the harrow and can't escape," he writes. "I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get. The old life, the jokes, the drinks, the arguments, the lovemaking, the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace." Writing A Grief Observed as "a defense against total collapse, a safety valve," he came to recognize that "bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love."Lewis writes his statement of faith with precision, humor, and grace. Yet neither is Lewis reluctant to confess his continuing doubts and his awareness of his own human frailty. This is precisely the quality which suggests that A Grief Observed may become "among the great devotional books of our age."

Awakening Kundalini: The Path to Radical Freedom


Lawrence Edwards - 2012
    With its ability to connect us to the energy of creation and elevate us to a higher state of consciousness, Kundalini awakening is crucial to the deepening of our spiritual evolution. But the deep spiritual unfolding that Kundalini offers can also be confusing and difficult to grasp—so how can we approach this universal power with preparation and wisdom?An Essential Guide for Navigating the Kundalini ExperienceIn Awakening Kundalini, Dr. Lawrence Edwards, who has devoted his life to understanding and teaching about Kundalini, presents an essential guide to harnessing this boundless energy. In six in-depth sessions, he offers a comprehensive exploration from the physical, psychological, and spiritual perspectives, with insights and practices for recognizing what Kundalini is, how it manifests, and when your body and mind are ready to initiate an awakening of consciousness. "You are born with Kundalini," says Dr. Edwards. "You just need the right conditions to unfold it." Through seven hours of teachings, learn how to open to the freedom of awakening while avoiding the pitfalls, misunderstandings, and projections that are so often a part of the spiritual journey."Kundalini reveals the divine nature of the entire universe and every being within it-and shows us our true capacity for limitless compassion, connection, and love," Dr. Edwards teaches. Join him to discover how to tap into this profoundly transformative force, and through Awakening Kundalini, realize your ability to live "radically free."HighlightsThe soul's yearning for transcendence and freedom• The three upayas (means) that support Kundalini ascent• Cultivating "witness consciousness"—the ability to watch without judgment whatever arises and dissolves in our lives• Using the vibrational power of mantra to unfold Kundalini energy• The importance of discernment and healthy boundaries when it comes to spiritual practice• The unlimited ways in which shaktipat, the descent of grace, can reveal our true nature• The body's chakra system and its role in Kundalini awakening• Our shadow sides, and how Kundalini can illuminate the darkness that hides our talents and lures our ego-mind• Telling the difference between sat (what is true) and asat (what is not true)

Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know


Alexandra Horowitz - 2009
    The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human.Temple Grandin meets Stephen Pinker in this engaging and informative look at what goes on inside the minds of dogs—from a cognitive scientist with a background at The New Yorker.With more than 52 million pet dogs in America today, it’s clear we are a nation of unabashed dog-lovers. Yet the relationship between dogs and humans remains a fascinating mystery, as no one really knows what goes on in the canine mind. Now, in Inside of a Dog, Alexandra Horowitz fuses her perspectives as both scientist and dog-owner to deliver a fresh look at the world of dogs—as seen from the animal’s point of view. Inspired by her years of living with her own dog, Pumpernickel, who was a constant source of delight and mystery, Horowitz’s mind became filled with questions and ideas. In crisp, clear prose, she draws on her research in the field of dog cognition to give readers a sense of a dog’s perceptual and cognitive abilities—and paints a picture of what the canine experience is like. Horowitz’s own scientific journey, and the insights she uncovered, allowed her to understand her dog better and appreciate her more.Containing up-to-the minute research and providing many moments of dog-behavior recognition, this lively and absorbing book helps dog owners to see their best friend’s behavior in a different, and revealing light, allowing them to understand their pets and enjoy their company even more.

Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality


Max Tegmark - 2012
    Our Big Bang, our distant future, parallel worlds, the sub-atomic and intergalactic - none of them are what they seem. But there is a way to understand this immense strangeness - mathematics. Seeking an answer to the fundamental puzzle of why our universe seems so mathematical, Tegmark proposes a radical idea: that our physical world not only is described by mathematics, but that it is mathematics. This may offer answers to our deepest questions: How large is reality? What is everything made of? Why is our universe the way it is?Table of ContentsPreface 1 What Is Reality? Not What It Seems • What’s the Ultimate Question? • The Journey Begins Part One: Zooming Out 2 Our Place in Space Cosmic Questions • How Big Is Space? • The Size of Earth • Distance to the Moon • Distance to the Sun and the Planets • Distance to the Stars • Distance to the Galaxies • What Is Space? 3 Our Place in TimeWhere Did Our Solar System Come From? • Where Did theGalaxies Come From? • Where Did the Mysterious MicrowavesCome From? • Where Did the Atoms Come From? 4 Our Universe by NumbersWanted: Precision Cosmology • Precision Microwave-Background Fluctuations • Precision Galaxy Clustering • The Ultimate Map of Our Universe • Where Did Our Big Bang Come From? 5 Our Cosmic Origins What’s Wrong with Our Big Bang? • How Inflation Works • The Gift That Keeps on Giving • Eternal Inflation 6 Welcome to the Multiverse The Level I Multiverse • The Level II Multiverse • Multiverse Halftime Roundup Part Two: Zooming In 7 Cosmic Legos Atomic Legos • Nuclear Legos • Particle-Physics Legos • Mathematical Legos • Photon Legos • Above the Law? • Quanta and Rainbows • Making Waves • Quantum Weirdness • The Collapse of Consensus • The Weirdness Can’t Be Confined • Quantum Confusion 8 The Level III Multiverse The Level III Multiverse • The Illusion of Randomness • Quantum Censorship • The Joys of Getting Scooped • Why Your Brain Isn’t a Quantum Computer • Subject, Object and Environment • Quantum Suicide • Quantum Immortality? • Multiverses Unified • Shifting Views: Many Worlds or Many Words? Part Three: Stepping Back 9 Internal Reality, External Reality and Consensus Reality External Reality and Internal Reality • The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth • Consensus Reality • Physics: Linking External to Consensus Reality 10 Physical Reality and Mathematical Reality Math, Math Everywhere! • The Mathematical Universe Hypothesis • What Is a Mathematical Structure? 11 Is Time an Illusion? How Can Physical Reality Be Mathematical? • What Are You? • Where Are You? (And What Do You Perceive?) • When Are You? 12 The Level IV Multiverse Why I Believe in the Level IV Multiverse • Exploring the Level IV Multiverse: What’s Out There? • Implications of the Level IV Multiverse • Are We Living in a Simulation? • Relation Between the MUH, the Level IV Multiverse and Other Hypotheses •Testing the Level IV Multiverse 13 Life, Our Universe and Everything How Big Is Our Physical Reality? • The Future of Physics • The Future of Our Universe—How Will It End? • The Future of Life •The Future of You—Are You Insignificant? Acknowledgments Suggestions for Further Reading Index

How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life


Dalai Lama XIV - 2002
    According to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the ability to find true fulfillment lies within each of us. In this very special book, the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet, Nobel Prize winner, and bestselling author helps readers embark upon the path to enlightenment with a stunning illumination of the timeless wisdom and an easy-access reference for daily practice. Divided into a series of distinct steps that will lead spiritual seekers toward enlightenment, How to Practice is a constant companion in the quest to practice morality, meditation, and wisdom. This accessible book will guide you toward opening your heart, refraining from doing harm, and maintiaining mentaltranquility as the Dalai Lama shows you how to overcome everyday obstacles, from feelings of anger and mistrust to jealousy, insecurity, and counterproductive thinking. Imbued with His Holiness' vivacious spirit and sense of playfulness, How to Practice offers sage and practical insight into the human psyche and into the deepest aspirations that bind us all together.

Life's Golden Ticket


Brendon Burchard - 2007
    Brendon Burchard tells the story of a man who is so trapped in the prison of his past that he cannot see the possibilities, the choices, and the gifts before him. To soothe his fiancée Mary, clinging to life in a hospital bed, the man takes the envelope she offers and heads to an old, abandoned amusement park that she begs him to visit.To his surprise, when he steps through the rusted entrance gates, the park magically comes to life. Guided by the wise groundskeeper Henry, the man will encounter park employees, answer difficult questions, overcome obstacles, listen to lessons from those wiser than he, and take a hard look at himself.At the end of his journey, the man opens Mary’s mysterious envelope. Inside is a golden ticket—the final phase in turning his tragic life’s story of loss and regret into a triumphant tale of love and redemption.

Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists


Kay Larson - 2012
    Many writers have grappled with Cage’s music—which used notes chosen by chance, randomly tuned radios, and even silence—trying to understand what his music means rather than where it came from. An unprecedented and revelatory book, Where the Heart Beats reveals what actually empowered Cage to compose his incredible music, and how he inspired the tremendous artistic transformations of mid-century America.Where the Heart Beats is the first biography of John Cage to address the phenomenal importance of Zen Buddhism to the composer’s life, and to the artistic avant-garde of the 1950s and 60s. Zen’s power of transforming Cage’s troubled mind, by showing him his own enlightened nature—which is also the nature of all living things—liberated Cage from an acute personal crisis that threatened his life, his music, and his relationship with his life-partner, Merce Cunningham. Caught in a society that rejected his music, his politics, and his sexual orientation, Cage was transformed by Zen from an overlooked and somewhat marginal musician into the absolute epicenter of the avant garde.Using Cage’s life as a starting point, Where the Heart Beats looks beyond to the individuals he influenced and the art he inspired. His circle included Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Merce Cunningham, Yoko Ono, Jasper Johns, Morton Feldman, and Leo Castelli, who all went on to revolutionize their respective disciplines. As Cage’s story progresses, as his students’ trajectories unfurl, Where the Heart Beats shows the blossoming of Zen in the very heart of American culture. Both an innovative biography and a ground-breaking cultural history of the American Century, Where the Heart Beats is the work of acclaimed art critic Kay Larson. Following her time at New York Magazine and The Village Voice, Larson practiced Zen at a Buddhist monastery in upstate New York. Larson’s deep knowledge of Zen Buddhism, her long familiarity with New York’s art world, and her exhaustive original research all make Where the Heart Beats the definitive story about one of America’s most enduringly important artists.

New Brunswick, New Jersey, Goodbye: Bands, Dirty Basements, and the Search for Self


Ronen Kauffman - 2007
    More than just an engaging personal account, it's a story about personal growth, coming of age, and the real power of punk and hardcore. Gain an insider's look at a truly influential underground movement.

A Book of Secrets: Finding Solace in a Stubborn World


Derren Brown - 2021
    By sharing his own moments of anger, frustration, loneliness and loss, Derren reveals how it's possible to find consolation and compassion in our most challenging times.A Book of Secrets is a profound and practical guide to finding value in sadness and strength from what life throws at us - it is from the difficulty of life that we find meaning and grow.

Figuring


Maria Popova - 2019
     Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists--mostly women, mostly queer--whose public contribution has risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience, and appreciate the universe. Among them are the astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science; the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who did the same in art; the journalist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, who sparked the feminist movement; and the poet Emily Dickinson.Emanating from these lives are larger questions about the measure of a good life and what it means to leave a lasting mark of betterment on an imperfect world: Are achievement and acclaim enough for happiness? Is genius? Is love? Weaving through the narrative is a set of peripheral figures--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman--and a tapestry of themes spanning music, feminism, the history of science, the rise and decline of religion, and how the intersection of astronomy, poetry, and Transcendentalist philosophy fomented the environmental movement.

Quantum Revelation: A Radical Synthesis of Science and Spirituality


Paul Levy - 2018
    In their discovery of the quantum realm, the physics community stumbled upon a genuine multifaceted revelation which can be likened to a profound spiritual treasure - a heretofore undreamed of creative power - hidden within our own mind. Quantum physics unequivocally points out that the study of the universe and the study of consciousness are inseparably linked, which is to say that ultimate progress in the one will be impossible without progress in the other. Einstein declared that what it reveals is so immensely important that "it should be everyone's concern." Yet few of us in the general public truly understand how the game-changing discoveries of the past century not only relate to our day-to-day lives, but also give us insights into the nature of reality and our place within it.Written for readers with no physics background, Paul Levy's latest book, The Quantum Revelation: A Radical Synthesis of Science and Spirituality is for those who have heard that quantum physics is a fascinating subject but don't quite understand how or why. Levy contemplates the deeper philosophical underpinnings of quantum physics, exploring the fundamental questions it provokes: What does it mean that quantum theory has discovered that there is no such thing as "objective reality?" How are we participating - via our consciousness - in creating our experience of a reality that quantum theory itself describes as "dreamlike?" What are the implications for us in our day-to-day lives that - as quantum theory reveals - what we call reality is more like a dream than we had previously imagined?The Quantum Revelation is unique in how it synthesizes science and spirituality so as to reveal and explore the dreamlike nature of reality. It is a book not just for people interested in quantum theory, but for anyone who is interested in waking up and dreaming lucidly, be it in our night dreams or our waking life.

Bronze Age Mindset


Bronze Age Pervert - 2018
    The contents are pure dynamite. He explains that you live in ant farm. That you are observed by the lords of lies, ritually probed. Ancient man had something you have lost: confidence in his instincts and strength, knowledge in his blood. BAP shows how the Bronze Age mindset can set you free from this Iron Prison and help you embark on the path of power. He talks about life, biology, hormones. He gives many examples from history, both ancient and modern. He shows the secrets of the detrimental robots, how they hide and fabricate. He helps you escape gynocracy and ascend to fresh mountain air. The pricing, he insisted on against all advice. It refers to the lucky 969 Movement of Burma, led by the noble monk Wirathu. Praise be to the Pervert. Praise be to his teaching of peace. Be careful.

Gift from the Sea


Anne Morrow Lindbergh - 1955
    Drawing inspiration from the shells on the shore, Lindbergh’s musings on the shape of a woman’s life bring new understanding to both men and women at any stage of life. A mother of five, an acclaimed writer and a pioneering aviator, Lindbergh casts an unsentimental eye on the trappings of modernity that threaten to overwhelm us: the time-saving gadgets that complicate rather than simplify, the multiple commitments that take us from our families. And by recording her thoughts during a brief escape from everyday demands, she helps readers find a space for contemplation and creativity within their own lives.With great wisdom and insight Lindbergh describes the shifting shapes of relationships and marriage, presenting a vision of life as it is lived in an enduring and evolving partnership. A groundbreaking, best-selling work when it was originally published in 1955, Gift from the Sea continues to be discovered by new generations of readers. With a new introduction by Lindbergh’s daughter Reeve, this fiftieth-anniversary edition will give those who are revisiting the book and those who are coming upon it for the first time fresh insight into the life of this remarkable woman.The sea and the beach are elements that have been woven throughout Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s life. She spent her childhood summers with her family on a Maine island. After her marriage to Charles Lindbergh in 1929, she accompanied him on his survey flights around the North Atlantic to launch the first transoceanic airlines. The Lindberghs eventually established a permanent home on the Connecticut coast, where they lived quietly, wrote books and raised their family.After the children left home for lives of their own, the Lindberghs traveled extensively to Africa and the Pacific for environmental research.

This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women


Jay Allison - 2006
    Each piece compels readers to rethink not only how they have arrived at their own personal beliefs but also the extent to which they share them with others. Featuring a well-known list of contributors--including Isabel Allende, Colin Powell, Gloria Steinem, William F. Buckley Jr., Penn Jillette, Bill Gates, and John Updike--the collection also contains essays by a Brooklyn lawyer; a part-time hospital clerk from Rehoboth, Massachusetts; a woman who sells Yellow Pages advertising in Fort Worth, Texas; and a man who serves on the state of Rhode Island's parole board. The result is a stirring and provocative trip inside the minds and hearts of a diverse group of people whose beliefs--and the incredibly varied ways in which they choose to express them--reveal the American spirit at its best.