Showing titles in Professionals & Academics

For fifteen years, Joanna Sokol filled private notebooks with her confusion, humor, and anger about the strange world of American street medicine. As her career progressed, she found herself taking notes on scraps of paper, backs of gloves, and margins of EKG printouts. She read about the history that brought ambulances into their current role as the caretakers of society’s forgotten, and spoke to her colleagues about their own experiences and perspectives. Those reflections are collected here, in a series of raw, powerful essays about the state of American medicine.

Il premio Nobel è uno dei più prestigiosi riconoscimenti culturali che possa essere tributato a una persona. Ma è ben lungi dall’essere un vaccino contro le cantonate... fisici, chimici, medici e letterati, tutti premi Nobel, ne sono stati vittime. Il libro racconta in modo brillante e divertente le bizzarre teorie e i clamorosi errori di alcuni premi Nobel. Questo significa che il prestigioso premio svedese è una cosa poco seria? No! Dimostra soltanto che il principio di autorità nella scienza non ha alcun valore: più che l’ipse dixit, contano i fatti!

Vividly written, The Infidel and the Professor is a compelling account of a great friendship of two towering Enlightenment thinkers that had great consequences for modern thought. David Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime, he was attacked as "the Great Infidel" for his skeptical religious views and deemed unfit to teach the young. In contrast, Adam Smith was a revered professor of moral philosophy and is now often hailed as the founding father of capitalism.

Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.

Power is changing. Private corner offices and management by decree are out, as is unquestioned trust in the government and media. These former pillars of traditional power have been replaced by networks of informed citizens who collectively wield more power over their personal lives, employers, and worlds than ever before. So how do you navigate this new landscape and come out on top? Adam Grant, Wharton organizational psychologist, went to the World Economic Forum in Davos, the epicenter of power, and sat down with thought leaders from around the world, to find out.

On a cold and cozy December night in 2018, Jim Kaveney thinks he is dying. He is a husband, a father, a business owner, an athlete, and innovator. He is also an Afib patient facing massive cardiac trauma. In this breakout memoir, Jim Kaveney recounts his dance with death and the events of his life leading up to this fateful, health-defining moment and the shifts in business perspective and priorities that followed.

O lugar da Paola Carosella sempre foi a cozinha – até que a fama, a pressão do julgamento constante e a polarização política no país que ela escolheu para viver tiraram até isso dela. Na tentativa de achar um caminho de volta, a renomada chef de cozinha e apresentadora achou as respostas que ela procurava nos livros de uma ensaísta norte-americana: M.F.K. Fisher.

Saint Francis of Assisi is one of the most influential men in the whole of human history. This acclaimed biography of Saint Francis examines the life of a pure artist, a man "whose whole life was a poem". Here is the Saint Francis who prayed and danced with pagan abandon, who talked to animals, and who invented the crèche. Yet Francis also acknowledged the mystic responsibility to communicate his divine experience.

A small number of people, motivated by an insatiable greed for power and wealth, and backed by a pinstripe army of enablers, have driven the world to the brink of destruction. Patrick Alley, co-founder of Global Witness and the author of Very Bad People, introduces us to some of the world's worst warlords, grifters and kleptocrats who can be found everywhere from presidential palaces to the board rooms of some of the world's best known companies. Pitted against them, the book also follows the people unravelling the deals, tracking the money and going undercover at great risk.

Bob Lazar was a brilliant young physicist that found himself employed at a top-secret facility in the middle of the desert outside Las Vegas. Under the watchful eye of the government elite, he is tasked with understanding an exotic propulsion system being used by an advanced aerospace vehicle he is told came from outer space. The stressful work and long, odd hours start to wear on Bob and he becomes concerned for his safety. He tells his wife and a couple close friends about what he's doing in the desert, and his employers find out and are furious.

If you struggle with a highly sensitive personality, this memoir and collection of stories will help you heal and flourish. Benita A. Esposito is a licensed professional counselor and best-selling author with four decades of professional experience. Even smart high-achievers have themes on their hero’s journey to the authentic self, and these were hers. What unconsciously drew her to an emotionally distant relationship or an emotionally abusive relationship? Why did she feel so hurt when others judged her? Why was she so tired? What compelled her toward self actualization?

In this intimate memoir, renowned developer of Somatic Experiencing, Peter A. Levine—the man who changed the way psychologists, doctors, and healers understand and treat the wounds of trauma and abuse—shares his personal journey to heal his own severe childhood trauma and offers profound insights into the evolution of his innovative healing method.

Thinking in Numbers is the book that Daniel Tammet, best-selling author and mathematical savant, was born to write. In Tammet's world, numbers are beautiful and mathematics illuminates our lives and minds. Using anecdotes, everyday examples, and ruminations on history, literature, and more, Tammet allows us to share his unique insights and delight in the way numbers, fractions, and equations underpin all our lives.

Some $65 billion evaporated during Bernie Madoff’s epic confidence game. Two people were driven to suicide in the wake of the Ponzi Scheme’s exposure. Others went to prison. But there has never been a satisfying accounting for how Bernie got away with so much, for so long. Until now. Shocking, infuriating, riveting (and at times absurdly funny), Madoff shows us how Bernie ensnared thousands of investors. As Behar’s dogged reporting over the last fifteen years makes clear, however, there aren’t many innocents left standing by the end of this tale.

On the Road Less Traveled is the inspirational story of Edmund A. Hajim, an American financier and philanthropist who rises from dire childhood circumstances to achieve professional success and personal fulfillment. At age three, Hajim is kidnapped by his father, driven from St. Louis to Los Angeles, and told that his mother is dead. His father soon abandons him in order to seek employment - mostly in vain - leaving his son behind in a string of foster homes and orphanages.

In kindergarten, James Rhee received a toy red helicopter in gratitude for a simple act of generosity—sharing his lunch. Decades later, the lesson from that small gift led him to develop a human-centered framework for business and personal achievement that helped him overcome seemingly insurmountable hurdles and find unprecedented success.

Since the days of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, no industry has made a greater global impact than Silicon Valley. And few individuals have done more to shape Silicon Valley than billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel. From the technologies we use every day to the delicate power balance between Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Washington, Thiel has been a behind-the-scenes operator influencing countless aspects of contemporary life. But despite his power and the ubiquity of his projects, no public figure is quite so mysterious.

Bestselling novelist Gay Courter recounts her experiences as a Guardian ad Litem, a volunteer court-appointed special advocate (CASA) for children involved in the legal system due to abuse, neglect, or abandonment. Her story is both heartbreaking and heartwarming, and is an inspiration for anyone who has ever looked up from a newspaper and wondered, "What can I do to help?"

David Starr Jordan was a taxonomist, a man possessed with bringing order to the natural world. In time, he would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. When his specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, many might have given up, given in to despair. But Jordan? He surveyed the wreckage at his feet, found the first fish that he recognized, and confidently began to rebuild his collection. And this time, he introduced one clever innovation.

In Cow Hug Therapy, Ellie Laks recounts the extraordinary journey that started with her first teacher, Buddha—not the religious figure, but a rescued miniature Hereford cow. One evening Buddha wrapped her neck around an exhausted and upset Ellie and transferred a singular form of healing and comfort with an incredible impact. Understanding that this was something to be shared with others, Ellie developed Cow Hug Therapy, a groundbreaking approach to emotional healing that has proved effective for trauma, illness, disabilities, addiction, grief, and stress.