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Orphan X
Brief summary
"Do you need my help?" It was always the first question he asked. They called him when they had nowhere else to turn.
Raised and trained as part of a top secret programme he was sent to the worst places in the world to do the things his government denied any knowledge of.
Then he broke with the programme and disappeared. But now someone's on his tail. Someone who knows he was once known simply as Orphan X.
ISBN:9781405928892
Author:Gregg Hurwitz
Getting (More of) What You Want: How ...
Getting (More of) What You Want: How the Secrets of Economics and Psychology Can Help You Negotiate Anything, in Business and in Life.
Almost every interaction involves negotiation, yet we often miss the cues that would allow us to make the most of these exchanges.
In Getting (More of) What You Want, Margaret Neale and Thomas Lys draw on the latest advances in psychology and economics to provide new strategies for anyone shopping for a car, lobbying for a raise, or simply haggling over who takes out the trash.
Getting (More of) What You Want shows how inexperienced negotiators regularly leave significant value on the table—and reveals how you can claim it.
The Spy Who Loved Castro
Brief summary
How I was recruited by the CIA to kill Fidel Castro
Few can say they’ve seen some of the most significant moments of the twentieth century unravel before their eyes. Marita Lorenz is one of them.
Born in Germany at the outbreak of WWII, Marita was incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp as a child. In 1959, she travelled to Cuba where she met and fell in love with Fidel Castro. Yet upon fleeing to America, she was recruited by the CIA to assassinate the Fidel. Torn by love and loyalty, she failed to slip him the lethal pills.
Her life would take many more twists and turns ? including having a child with ex-dictator of Venezuela, Marcos Pérez Jiménez; testifying about the John F Kennedy assassination; and becoming a party girl for the New York Mafia, as well as a police informant.
Caught up in Cold War intrigue, espionage and conspiracy ? this is Marita’s incredible true story of a young girl, turned spy.
ISBN:9781785034534
Author:Marita Lorenz
Gut Reactions
Brief summary
Gut Reactions: How Healthy Insides Can Improve Your Weight, Mood and Well-Being
From your weight, to how you age, to allergies and diseases - your gut controls it all.
In Gut Reactions, leading scientists Justin and Erica Sonnenberg explain how we've neglected this vital organ for far too long. As well as the consequences you might expect - a dramatic rise in food intolerances and inflammatory bowel diseases - are a whole host of other concerns, such as an increase in cancer, asthma, autism and diabetes.
We now have only 1,200 species of microbes living in our gut. We used to have many more. Why are these species becoming extinct? And how do we prevent it?
With recipes and meal plans, as well as guidance on alternatives to antibiotics and lifestyle choices, Gut Reactions will help you to interpret, understand and incorporate these new radical findings into your diet and lifestyle and will help you on your journey to a healthier gut.
ISBN:9780552171168
Author:Justin Sonnenburg & Erica Sonnenburg
Alter Egos
Brief summary
Alter Egos: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Twilight Struggle over American Power
The deeply reported story of two supremely ambitious figures, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton—archrivals who became partners for a time, trailblazers who share a common sense of their historic destiny but hold very different beliefs about how to project American power
In Alter Egos, veteran New York Times White House correspondent Mark Landler takes us inside the fraught and fascinating relationship between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton—a relationship that has framed the nation’s great debates over war and peace for the past eight years.
In the annals of American statecraft, theirs was a most unlikely alliance. Clinton, daughter of an anticommunist father, was raised in the Republican suburbs of Chicago in the aftermath of World War II, nourishing an unshakable belief in the United States as a force for good in distant lands.
Obama, an itinerant child of the 1970s, was raised by a single mother in Indonesia and Hawaii, suspended between worlds and a witness to the less savory side of Uncle Sam’s influence abroad.
Clinton and Obama would later come to embody competing visions of America’s role in the world: his, restrained, inward-looking, painfully aware of limits; hers, hard-edged, pragmatic, unabashedly old-fashioned.
Spanning the arc of Obama’s two terms, Alter Egos goes beyond the speeches and press conferences to the Oval Office huddles and South Lawn strolls, where Obama and Clinton pressed their views.
It follows their evolution from bitter rivals to wary partners, and then to something resembling rivals again, as Clinton defined herself anew and distanced herself from her old boss. In the process, it counters the narrative that, during her years as secretary of state, there was no daylight between them, that the wounds of the 2008 campaign had been entirely healed.
The president and his chief diplomat parted company over some of the biggest issues of the day: how quickly to wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; whether to arm the rebels in Syria; how to respond to the upheaval in Egypt; and whether to trust the Russians.
In Landler’s gripping account, we venture inside the Situation Room during the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, watch Obama and Clinton work in tandem to salvage a conference on climate change in Copenhagen, and uncover the secret history of their nuclear diplomacy with Iran—a story with a host of fresh disclosures.
With the grand sweep of history and the pointillist detail of an account based on insider access—the book draws on exclusive interviews with more than one hundred senior administration officials, foreign diplomats, and friends of Obama and Clinton—Mark Landler offers the definitive account of a complex, profoundly important relationship.
As Barack Obama prepares to relinquish the presidency, and Hillary Clinton makes perhaps her last bid for it, how both regard American power is a central question of our time.
ISBN:9780812998856
Author:Mark Landler
The Happiness of Pursuit
Brief summary
A remarkable book that will both guide and inspire, The Happiness of Pursuit reveals how anyone can bring meaning into their life by undertaking a quest.
When he set out to visit all of the planet’s countries by age thirty-five, compulsive goal seeker Chris Guillebeau never imagined that his journey’s biggest revelation would be how many people like himself exist--each pursuing a challenging quest.
And, interestingly, these quests aren’t just travel-oriented. On the contrary, they’re as diverse as humanity itself. Some involve exploration; others the pursuit of athletic or artistic excellence; still others a battle against injustice or poverty or threats to the environment.
Everywhere that Chris visited he found ordinary people working toward extraordinary goals, making daily down payments on their dream.
The more Chris spoke with these strivers--including a suburban mom pursuing a wildly ambitious culinary project, a DJ producing the world’s largest symphony, a young widower completing the tasks his wife would never accomplish, a teenager crossing an entire ocean alone, and scores of others writing themselves into the record books--the more he began to appreciate the direct link between questing and long-term happiness--how going after something in a methodical way enriches our lives.
He was compelled to complete a comprehensive study of the phenomenon and extract the best advice. In The Happiness of Pursuit he draws on interviews with hundreds of questers, revealing their secret motivations, their selection criteria, the role played by friends and family, their tricks for solving logistics, and the importance of documentation.
Equally fascinating is Chris’ examination of questing’s other side, including questers’ acute awareness of mortality, their struggle against monotony, and their wistful feelings once a quest has succeeded.
What happens after the summit is climbed, the painting hung, the endurance record broken, the "at risk” community saved?
A book that challenges each of us to take control--to make our lives be about something while at the same time remaining clear-eyed about the commitment--The Happiness of Pursuit will inspire readers of every age and aspiration. It’s a playbook for making your life count.
ISBN:9780385348867
Author:Chris Guillebeau
The Industries of the Future
Brief summary
Leading innovation expert Alec Ross explains what’s next for the world: the advances and stumbling blocks that will emerge in the next ten years, and how we can navigate them.
While Alec Ross was working as Senior Advisor for Innovation to the Secretary of State, he traveled to forty-one countries, exploring the latest advances coming out of every continent. From startup hubs in Kenya to R&D labs in South Korea, Ross has seen what the future holds.
In The Industries of the Future, Ross shows us what changes are coming in the next ten years, highlighting the best opportunities for progress and explaining why countries thrive or sputter.
He examines the specific fields that will most shape our economic future, including robotics, cybersecurity, the commercialization of genomics, the next step for big data, and the coming impact of digital technology on money and markets.
In each of these realms, Ross addresses the toughest questions: How will we adapt to the changing nature of work? Is the prospect of cyberwar sparking the next arms race? How can the world’s rising nations hope to match Silicon Valley in creating their own innovation hotspots? And what can today’s parents do to prepare their children for tomorrow?
Ross blends storytelling and economic analysis to give a vivid and informed perspective on how sweeping global trends are affecting the ways we live. Incorporating the insights of leaders ranging from tech moguls to defense experts, The Industries of the Future takes the intimidating, complex topics that many of us know to be important and boils them down into clear, plainspoken language.
This is an essential book for understanding how the world works—now and tomorrow—and a must-read for businesspeople in every sector, from every country.
ISBN:9781476753652
Author:Alec J. Ross
Taming the Infinite
Brief Summary
Taming the Infinite: The Story of Mathematics from the First Numbers to Chaos Theory
From ancient Babylon to the last great unsolved problems, an acclaimed mathematician and popular science writer brings us his witty, engaging, and definitive history of mathematics
In his famous straightforward style, Ian Stewart explains each major development—from the first number systems to chaos theory—and considers how each affected society and changed everyday life forever.
Maintaining a personal touch, he introduces all of the outstanding mathematicians of history, from the key Babylonians, Greeks, and Egyptians, via Newton and Descartes, to Fermat, Babbage, and Godel, and demystifies math's key concepts without recourse to complicated formulae.
Written to provide a captivating historic narrative for the non-mathematician, this book is packed with fascinating nuggets and quirky asides, and contains plenty of illustrations and diagrams to illuminate and aid understanding of a subject many dread, but which has made the world what it is today.
ISBN:9781847247681
Author:Ian Stewart
W is for Wasted
Brief Summary
Two dead men changed the course of my life that fall. One of them I knew and the other I’d never laid eyes on until I saw him in the morgue.
The first was a local PI of suspect reputation. He’d been gunned down near the beach at Santa Teresa. It looked like a robbery gone bad. The other was on the beach six weeks later. He’d been sleeping rough. Probably homeless.
No identification. A slip of paper with Millhone’s name and number was in his pants pocket. The coroner asked her to come to the morgue to see if she could ID him.
Two seemingly unrelated deaths, one a murder, the other apparently of natural causes.
But as Kinsey digs deeper into the mystery of the John Doe, some very strange linkages begin to emerge. And before long at least one aspect is solved as Kinsey literally finds the key to his identity. "And just like that,” she says, "the lid to Pandora’s box flew open. It would take me another day before I understood how many imps had been freed, but for the moment, I was inordinately pleased with myself.”
In this multilayered tale, the surfaces seem clear, but the underpinnings are full of betrayals, misunderstandings, and outright murderous fraud. And Kinsey, through no fault of her own, is thoroughly compromised.
W is for . . . wanderer . . . worthless . . . wronged . . .
W is for wasted.
ISBN:9780399158988
Author:Sue Grafton
Her Own Rules by Barbara Taylor Bradford
Brief summary
One of the world's most beloved and successful novelists, the incomparable Barbara Taylor Bradford has the golden touch—creating powerful stories of love and deception, crisis and triumph, that resonate with real emotion . . . and remarkable characters that live in the heart and memory for months after the final page has been turned.
Now two of her strongest New York Times bestselling masterworks have been combined in one volume—to be savored anew or for the very first time by fans young and old.
Successful businesswoman Meredith Stratton has always played by Her Own Rules and won. But when she's struck by a mysterious illness, she fears the roots of her ailment are buried somewhere in her forgotten past.
And, with the help of a caring psychiatrist, she must uncover them—while peeling back the layers of her most carefully designed creation: herself.
Who would want to kill Sebastian Locke, charismatic millionaire and universally admired philanthropist? Journalist Vivienne Trent is determined to find out, following a twisted trail of secrets to the startling truth about the death—and the life—of her enigmatic ex-husband, a man who was easy to love but . . . Dangerous to Know
"
ISBN:9780061284861
Author:Barbara Taylor Bradford
Forty Acres by Wayne Alexander
Brief summary
What if overcoming the legacy of American slavery meant bringing back that very institution? A young black attorney is thrown headlong into controversial issues of race and power in this page-turning and provocative new novel.
Martin Grey, a smart, talented black lawyer working out of a storefront in Queens, becomes friendly with a group of some of the most powerful, wealthy, and esteemed black men in America. He’s dazzled by what they’ve accomplished, and they seem to think he has the potential to be as successful as they are.
They invite him for a weekend away from it all—no wives, no cell phones, no talk of business. But far from home and cut off from everyone he loves, he discovers a disturbing secret that challenges some of his deepest convictions…
Martin finds out that his glittering new friends are part of a secret society dedicated to the preservation of the institution of slavery—but this time around, the black men are called "Master.” Joining them seems to guarantee a future without limits; rebuking them almost certainly guarantees his death. Trapped inside a picture-perfect, make-believe world that is home to a frightening reality, Martin must find a way out that will allow him to stay alive without becoming the very thing he hates.
A novel of rage and compassion, good and evil, trust and betrayal, Forty Acres is the thought-provoking story of one man’s desperate attempt to escape the clutches of a terrifying new moral order.
ISBN:9781476730530
Author:Dwayne Alexander Smith
Dead Letter Drop
Brief summary
Featuring a special introduction by Peter James, Dead Letter Drop is Peter James' first ever novel, originally published in 1981.
Max Flynn, undercover agent, has the unenviable job of spying on his own side. When to kill, who to kill, whether to kill are all questions which have to be answered at great speed if he wants to stay alive.
But why does an innocuous airline ticket No. 14B matter so much? Who has gone to the trouble of committing suicide? And could Flynn's beautiful companion be a spy? The hazy, murky world of counter espionage leaves no room for errors of judgement and Flynn knows he's finished if he makes one false move.
ISBN:9781447255956
Author:Peter James
Billion-Dollar Lessons
Brief summary
Billion-Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years
Welcome to Business Failure 101
In the 1960s, IBM CEO Tom Watson called an executive into his office after his venture lost $10 million. Watson asked the man if he knew why he’d been called in. The man said he assumed he was being fired. Watson told him, "Fired? Hell, I spent $10 million educating you. I just want to be sure you learned the right lessons.”
In Billion-Dollar Lessons, Paul Carroll and Chunka Mui draw on research into more than 750 business failures to reveal the misguided tactics that mire companies again and again. There are thousands of books about successful companies but virtually none about the lessons to be learned from those that crash and burn.
Lesson One: The Cold Hard Facts
Between 1981 and 2006, 423 major publicly held U.S. companies with combined assets totaling $1.5 trillion filed for bankruptcy. Hundreds more took huge write-offs, discontinued major operations, or were acquired under duress. Again and again, companies follow the same wrong-headed strategies that brought down businesses in the past. The sub-prime mortgage crisis that cost companies tens of billions of dollars in 2007 and 2008 echoes the ill-conceived strategies that pushed Green Tree Financial and Conseco into bankruptcy years earlier. Tom Watson’s executive’s $10 million lesson seems cheap by comparison.
Lesson Two: Failure Patterns
Carroll and Mui found that the number one cause of failure was misguided strategy—not sloppy execution, poor leadership, or bad luck. These strategic errors fall into seven categories, including:
* Pursuing nonexistent synergies: Quaker Oats’ purchase of Snapple was supposed to capitalize on distribution synergies but instead led to a $1.7 billion write-off.
* Moving into an "adjacent” market that isn’t really adjacent: Avon decided its "culture of caring” qualified it to operate retirement homes. Subsequent write-offs totaled $545 million.
* Buying more problems than efficiencies through misguided consolidation: Despite pioneering the discount department store years before Sam Walton came along, Ames Department Stores flubbed consolidation efforts, landing in bankruptcy twice before eventually liquidating.
Lesson Three: Avoid Making the Same Mistakes
But there’s light at the end of the tunnel: Billion-Dollar Lessons provides proven methods that managers, boards, and even investors can adopt to avoid making the same mistakes. While there’s no way to guarantee success, this book draws on vivid, off-the-beaten-track examples to help you avoid failure by showing you how to thoroughly assess potentially disastrous strategies before they bring your company down.
Required Reading
Think of Billion-Dollar Lessons as the flip side of Good to Great, but just as eye- opening and essential as that business classic. There’s enormous value in learning from companies that lost millions (if not billions) in pursuit of strategies that led to spectacular flameouts. Everyone makes mistakes, but why make the same mistakes over and over?
ISBN:9781591842194
Author: Paul B. Carroll & Chunka Mui
The Outsiders
According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs. A soc (short for "social") has money, can get away with just about anything, and has an attitude longer than a limousine.
A greaser, on the other hand, always lives on the outside and needs to watch his back. Ponyboy is a greaser, and he's always been proud of it, even willing to rumble against a gang of socs for the sake of his fellow greasers--until one terrible night when his friend Johnny kills a soc.
The murder gets under Ponyboy's skin, causing his bifurcated world to crumble and teaching him that pain feels the same whether a soc or a greaser.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:S.E. Hinton
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kings...
The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959.
They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil.
What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.
Half Wild
"You will have a powerful Gift, but it’s how you use it that will show you to be good or bad."
In a modern-day England where two warring factions of witches live amongst humans, seventeen-year-old Nathan is an abomination, the illegitimate son of the world's most powerful and violent witch.
Nathan is hunted from all sides: nowhere is safe and no one can be trusted. Now, Nathan has come into his own unique magical Gift, and he's on the run--but the Hunters are close behind, and they will stop at nothing until they have captured Nathan and destroyed his father.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Sally Green
Giant Steps
WHAT GOOD IS INSPIRATION IF IT'S NOT BACKeD UP BY ACTION?
Based on the finest tools, techniques, principles, and strategies offered in Awaken the Giant Within, bestselling author and peak performance consultant Anthony Robins offers daily inspiration and small actions -- exercises -- that will compel you to take giant steps forward in the quality of your life.
From the simple power of decision-making to the more specific tools that can redefine the quality of your relationships, finances, health, and emotions, Robbins shows you how to get maximum results with minimum investment of time.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Anthony Robbins
Unlimited Power by Anthony Robbins
Brief Summary
It's not about power over other people. It's about power over yourself!
Yes, you can do, have, achieve, and create anything you want out of life. Anthony Robbins has proved it. Robbins, the undisputed master of the magic of mind power shows you in this audio program how to harness yours.
He demonstrates -- passionately and eloquently -- that whatever you think will be, that your state of mind determines what you can and can't do, and that all successful results can be modeled and duplicated. His enthusiasm is contagious as he shows you how to:
- Reprogram your mind in minutes to eliminate fears and phobias
- Fuel your body with spectacular health and energy
- Dramatically improve your interpersonal relationships
- Become a persuasive communicator and create instant rapport with anyone you meet
- Use the success of others to remodel yourself
- Discover the five keys to wealth and happiness
- Master the ultimate success formula
- Robbins calls Unlimited Power the new science of personal achievement. You'll call it the best thing that ever happened to you.
Autobiography of Martin Luther King J
Brief Summary
Compiled from his own words, this history-making autobiography IS Martin Luther King:
The mild-mannered, inquisitive child and student who rebelled against segregation; the dedicated young minister who constantly questioned the depths of his faith and the limits of his wisdom; the loving husband and father who sought to balance his family's needs with those of a growing nationwide movement;
And the reflective, world-famous leader who was fired by a vision of equality for people everywhere. Relevant and insightful,
This Autobiography offers King's seldom discussed views on some of the world's greatest and most controversial figures including John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Mahatma Gandhi and Richard Nixon.
This book brings to life a remarkable man whose thoughts and actions speak to our most burning contemporary issues and still inspire our desires, hopes and dreams.
"
ISBN:2147483647
Author:Martin Luther, Jr. King
Pure, White and Deadly
Sugar. It's killing us.
Why do we eat so much of it?
What are its hidden dangers?
In 1972, when British scientist John Yudkin first proved that sugar was bad for our health, he was ignored by the majority of the medical profession and rubbished by the food industry.
We should have heeded his warning. Today, 1 in 4 adults in the UK are overweight. There is an epidemic of obese six month olds around the globe. Sugar consumption has tripled since World War II.
Using everyday language and a range of scientific evidence, Professor Yudkin explores the ins and out of sugar, from the different types - is brown sugar really better than white? - to how it is hidden inside our everyday foods, and how it is damaging our health.
Brought up-to-date by childhood obesity expert Dr Robert Lustig M.D., his classic exposé on the hidden dangers of sugar is essential reading for anyone interested in their health, the health of their children and the health of modern society.
ISBN:2147483647
Author:John Yudkin