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The Second Mountain by David Brooks
Brief Summary
In The Second Mountain, David Brooks explores the four commitments that define a life of meaning and purpose: to a spouse and family, to a vocation, to a philosophy or faith, and to a community. Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. In The Second Mountain, Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation, how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our commitments into one overriding purpose.
In short, this book is meant to help us all lead more meaningful lives. But it’s also a provocative social commentary. We live in a society, Brooks argues, that celebrates freedom, that tells us to be true to ourselves, at the expense of surrendering to a cause, rooting ourselves in a neighborhood, binding ourselves to others by social solidarity and love. We have taken individualism to the extreme—and in the process we have torn the social fabric in a thousand different ways. The path to repair is through making deeper commitments. In The Second Mountain, Brooks shows what can happen when we put commitment-making at the center of our lives.
ISBN:9780812993264
Author:David Brooks
From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gen...
Brief Summary
From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation.
The revolutionary word-of-mouth phenomenon, available for the first time as a trade book
Twenty-one years ago, at a friend’s request, a Massachusetts professor sketched out a blueprint for nonviolent resistance to repressive regimes. It would go on to be translated, photocopied, and handed from one activist to another, traveling from country to country across the globe: from Iran to Venezuela—where both countries consider Gene Sharp to be an enemy of the state—to Serbia; Afghanistan; Vietnam; the former Soviet Union; China; Nepal; and, more recently and notably, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and Syria, where it has served as a guiding light of the Arab Spring.
This short, pithy, inspiring, and extraordinarily clear guide to overthrowing a dictatorship by nonviolent means lists 198 specific methods to consider, depending on the circumstances: sit-ins, popular nonobedience, selective strikes, withdrawal of bank deposits, revenue refusal, walkouts, silence, and hunger strikes.
From Dictatorship to Democracy is the remarkable work that has made the little-known Sharp into the world’s most effective and sought-after analyst of resistance to authoritarian regimes.
ISBN:9781595588500
Author:Gene Sharp
Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty
When you think like a monk, you’ll understand:
How to overcome negativity
How to stop overthinking
Why comparison kills love
How to use your fear
Why you can’t find happiness by looking for it
How to learn from everyone you meet
Why you are not your thoughts
How to find your purpose
Why kindness is crucial to success
Shetty grew up in a family where you could become one of three things—a doctor, a lawyer, or a failure. His family was convinced he had chosen option three: instead of attending his college graduation ceremony, he headed to India to become a monk, to meditate every day for four to eight hours, and devote his life to helping others. After three years, one of his teachers told him that he would have more impact on the world if he left the monk’s path to share his experience and wisdom with others. Heavily in debt, and with no recognizable skills on his resume?, he moved back home in north London with his parents.
Shetty reconnected with old school friends—many working for some of the world’s largest corporations—who were experiencing tremendous stress, pressure, and unhappiness, and they invited Shetty to coach them on well-being, purpose, and mindfulness. Since then, Shetty has become one of the world’s most popular influencers. In 2017, he was named in the Forbes magazine 30-under-30 for being a game-changer in the world of media.
In 2018, he had the #1 video on Facebook with over 360 million views. His social media following totals over 38 million, he has produced over 400 viral videos which have amassed more than 8 billion views, and his podcast, On Purpose, is consistently ranked the world’s #1 Health and Wellness podcast.
In this inspiring, empowering book, Shetty draws on his time as a monk to show us how we can clear the roadblocks to our potential and power. Combining ancient wisdom and his own rich experiences in the ashram, Think Like a Monk reveals how to overcome negative thoughts and habits, and access the calm and purpose that lie within all of us. He transforms abstract lessons into advice and exercises we can all apply to reduce stress, improve relationships, and give the gifts we find in ourselves to the world. Shetty proves that everyone can—and should—think like a monk.
Lenin A Biography by Robert Service
Brief Summary
Lenin is a colossal figure whose influence on twentieth-century history cannot be underestimated. Robert Service has written a calmly authoritative biography on this seemingly unknowable figure.
Making use of recently opened archives, he has been able to piece together the private as well as the public life, giving the first complete picture of Lenin. This biography simultaneously provides an account of one of the greatest turning points in modern history.
Through the prism of Lenin's career, Service examines events such as the October Revolution and the ideas of Marxism-Leninism, the one-party state, economic modernization, dictatorship, and the politics of inter-war Europe. In discovering the origins of the USSR, he casts light on the nature of the state and society which Lenin left behind and which have not entirely disappeared after the collapse of the Soviet regime in 1991.
ISBN:9780330518383
Author:Robert Service
Trotsky A Biography by Robert Service
Brief Summary
Robert Service completes his masterful trilogy on the founding figures of the Soviet Union in an eagerly anticipated, authoritative biography of Leon Trotsky.
Trotsky is perhaps the most intriguing and, given his prominence, the most understudied of the Soviet revolutionaries. Using new archival sources including family letters, party and military correspondence, confidential speeches, and medical records, Service offers new insights into Trotsky.
He discusses Trotsky’s fractious relations with the leaders he was trying to bring into a unified party before 1914; his attempt to disguise his political closeness to Stalin; and his role in the early 1920s as the progenitor of political and cultural Stalinism. Trotsky evinced a surprisingly glacial and schematic approach to making revolution.
Service recounts Trotsky’s role in the botched German revolution of 1923; his willingness to subject Europe to a Red Army invasion in the 1920s; and his assumption that peasants could easily be pushed onto collective farms. Service also sheds light on Trotsky’s character and personality: his difficulties with his Jewish background, the development of his oratorical skills and his preference for writing over politicking, his inept handling of political factions and coldness toward associates, and his aversion to assuming personal power.
Although Trotsky’s followers clung to the stubborn view of him as a pure revolutionary and a powerful intellect unjustly hounded into exile by Stalin, the reality is very different. This illuminating portrait of the man and his legacy sets the record straight.
ISBN:9780674062252
Author:Robert Service
How to Design Your Career Game Plan b...
Brief Summary
How to Design Your Career Game Plan; A Guide to Help You Unlock Your Inner Strengths and Optimise Your Opportunities.
Would you participate in a game where players just moved around the field haphazardly without a game plan and whose coach does not leverage the different players' strengths?
Sadly, many people go through their personal and professional lives without a GAME PLAN. When changes such as restructuring at work, relocation, or other transition needs arise, they find themselves at a loss, not knowing how to deal with the dilemma. One of the most effective ways to build resilience in our professional lives is by equipping ourselves to be versatile so that we can grow and so that we can manage career transitions succssfuly.
How to Design Your Career GAME PLAN is a practical guide that takes you through a process of self-discovery and equips you to design a plan to find and engage in work that aligns with your life's mission, values, and core strengths. This book will help you explore a comprehensive approach to examining who you are and consider how to make the best of your life. In the book, you will find various pointers to unlocking some of the situations that block your progress.
How to Design Your Career Game Plan inspires the reader to embrace the practice of reflection, self-examination, and the value of playing to their GAME no matter where they are on their career journey.
"
Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
With the opening line of Silver Sparrow, "My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist," author Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man's deception, a family's complicity, and two teenage girls caught in the middle.
Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon's two families—the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode when secrets are revealed and illusions shattered. As Jones explores the backstories of her rich yet flawed characters ”the father, the two mothers, the grandmother, and the uncle ”she also reveals the joy, as well as the destruction, they brought to one another's lives.
At the heart of it all are the two lives at stake, and like the best writers ”think Toni Morrison with The Bluest Eye”Jones portrays the fragility of these young girls with raw authenticity as they seek love, demand attention, and try to imagine themselves as women, just not as their mothers.
One Day I Will Write About This Place...
Binyavanga Wainaina tumbled through his middle-class Kenyan childhood out of kilter with the world around him.This world came to him as a chaos of loud and colourful sounds: the hair dryers at his mother's beauty parlour, black mamba bicycle bells, mechanics in Nairobi, the music of Michael Jackson - all punctuated by the infectious laughter of his brother and sister. He could fall in with their patterns, but it would take him a while to carve out his own.
In this vivid and compelling debut, Wainaina takes us through his school days, his failed attempt to study in South Africa, a moving family reunion in Uganda, and his travels around Kenya.
The landscape in front of him always claims his main attention, but he also evokes the shifting political scene that unsettles his views on family, tribe, and nationhood. Throughout, reading is his refuge and his solace. And when, in 2002, a writing prize comes through, the door is opened for him to pursue the career that perhaps had been beckoning all along. Resolutely avoiding stereotype and cliche, Wainaina paints every scene in One Day I Will Write About This Place with a highly distinctive and hugely memorable brush.
The River and the Source by Margaret ...
In 1995, this novel won both the Jomo Kenyatta Literature Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize Best First Book in the Africa Region. Now reprinted, it remains in great demand.
An epic story spanning cultures, it tells the lives of three generations of women.
It traces the story of Akoko in her rich traditional Luo setting, through to the children who live and die in the 20th century.
The Road to Character by David Brooks
With the wisdom, humor, curiosity, and sharp insights that have brought millions of readers to his New York Times column and his previous bestsellers, David Brooks has consistently illuminated our daily lives in surprising and original ways. In The Social Animal, he explored the neuroscience of human connection and how we can flourish together. Now, in The Road to Character, he focuses on the deeper values that should inform our lives.
Responding to what he calls the culture of the Big Me, which emphasizes external success, Brooks challenges us, and himself, to rebalance the scales between our "résumé virtues”—achieving wealth, fame, and status—and our "eulogy virtues,” those that exist at the core of our being: kindness, bravery, honesty, or faithfulness, focusing on what kind of relationships we have formed.
Looking to some of the world’s greatest thinkers and inspiring leaders, Brooks explores how, through internal struggle and a sense of their own limitations, they have built a strong inner character. Labor activist Frances Perkins understood the need to suppress parts of herself so that she could be an instrument in a larger cause. Dwight Eisenhower organized his life not around impulsive self-expression but considered self-restraint. Dorothy Day, a devout Catholic convert and champion of the poor, learned as a young woman the vocabulary of simplicity and surrender. Civil rights pioneers A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin learned reticence and the logic of self-discipline, the need to distrust oneself even while waging a noble crusade.
Blending psychology, politics, spirituality, and confessional, The Road to Character provides an opportunity for us to rethink our priorities, and strive to build rich inner lives marked by humility and moral depth.
"Joy,” David Brooks writes, "is a byproduct experienced by people who are aiming for something else. But it comes.”
Swahili Phrasebook and Dictionary by ...
Brief Summary
Lonely Planet's Swahili Phrasebook Dictionary is your passport to the most relevant Swahili phrases and vocabulary for all your travel needs. Learn that the word for stranger in Swahili is also the same word for guest, make the most of your wildlife safari with our special sustainable travel section, while learning the names of some of the animals you're likely to see -all with your trusted travel companion. With language tools in your back pocket, you can truly get to the heart of wherever you go, so begin your journey now!
Get More From Your Trip with Easy-to-Find Phrases for Every Travel Situation!
Feel at ease with essential tips on culture, manners, idioms and multiple meanings
Order with confidence, explain food allergies, and try new foods with the menu decoder
Save time and hassles with vital phrases at your fingertips
Never get stuck for words with the 3500-word two-way, quick-reference dictionary
Be prepared for both common and emergency travel situations with practical phrases and terminology
Meet friends with conversation starter phrases
Get your message across with easy-to-use pronunciation guides
Inside Lonely Planet's Swahili Phrase(more...)
Lonely Planet's Swahili Phrasebook Dictionary is your handy passport to culturally enriching travels with the most relevant and useful Swahili phrases and vocabulary for all your travel needs. With language tools in your back pocket, you can truly get to the heart of wherever you go, so begin your journey now!
ISBN:9781743211960
Author:Lonely Planet
Developing the Leader Within You 2.0 ...
In the Developing the Leader Within You Workbook, John Maxwell examines the differences between leadership styles, outlines specific ways each reader can apply principles for inspiring, motivating, and influencing others. These principles can be used in any organization to foster integrity and self-discipline and bring a positive change.
Developing the Leader Within You Workbook also allows readers to discover how to be effective in the highest calling of leadership by understanding the five characteristics that set "leader managers" apart from "run-of-the-mill managers."
In this companion to the bestseller, John Maxwell shows readers how to develop the vision, value, influence, and motivation required of successful leaders.
Amplified Outreach Bible
Brief Summary
Amplified Outreach Bible: Capture the Full Meaning Behind the Original Greek and Hebrew.
Capture the full meaning behind the original Greek and Hebrew. The Amplified Bible uses a unique system of punctuation, italics, references, and synonyms to unlock subtle shades of meaning as found in the original languages. For this kind of in-depth study, no working knowledge of Greek or Hebrew is required—just a desire to know more about what God says in his Word.
This updated Amplified Bible includes more amplification in the Old Testament and refined amplification in the New Testament. Additionally, the Bible text has been improved to read smoothly with or without amplifications, so that the text may be read either way. It’s the same feel and style of study material that you love, now with even clearer wording for deeper understanding.
Features:
Complete Amplified Bible text and footnotes
Compact, portable size
Durable, flexible softcover binding
Alphabetical listing of the books of the Bible
Inexpensive edition for personal/ministry use
Double-column format
7-point type size
ISBN:9780310447009
Author:Zondervan
Peaceful Parent Happy Kids by Laura M...
Brief Summary
Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting.
A groundbreaking guide to raising responsible, capable, happy kids.
Based on the latest research on brain development and extensive clinical experience with parents, Dr. Laura Markham’s approach is as simple as it is effective. Her message: Fostering emotional connection with your child creates real and lasting change. When you have that vital connection, you don’t need to threaten, nag, plead, bribe—or even punish.
This remarkable guide will help parents better understand their own emotions—and get them in check—so they can parent with healthy limits, empathy, and clear communication to raise a self-disciplined child. Step-by-step examples give solutions and kid-tested phrasing for parents of toddlers right through the elementary years.
If you’re tired of power struggles, tantrums, and searching for the right "consequence,” look no further. You’re about to discover the practical tools you need to transform your parenting in a positive, proven way.
ISBN:9780399160288
Author:Laura Markham
Inventing Ourselves by Sarah Jayne Bl...
Brief Summary
A tour through the groundbreaking science behind the enigmatic, but crucial, brain developments of adolescence and how those translate into teenage behavior
The brain creates every feeling, emotion, and desire we experience, and stores every one of our memories. And yet, until very recently, scientists believed our brains were fully developed from childhood on. Now, thanks to imaging technology that enables us to look inside the living human brain at all ages, we know that this isn't so.
Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, one of the world's leading researchers into adolescent neurology, explains precisely what is going on in the complex and fascinating brains of teenagers -- namely that the brain goes on developing and changing right through adolescence--with profound implications for the adults these young people will become.
Drawing from cutting-edge research, including her own, Blakemore shows:
How an adolescent brain differs from those of children and adults
Why problem-free kids can turn into challenging teens
What drives the excessive risk-taking and all-consuming relationships common among teenagers
And why many mental illnesses -- depression, addiction, schizophrenia -- present during these formative years
Blakemore's discoveries have transformed our understanding of the teenage mind, with consequences for law, education policy and practice, and, most of all, parents.
"
The Greats on Leadership by Jocelyn D...
Brief Summary
The Greats on Leadership: Classic Wisdom for Modern Managers.
Jocelyn Davis takes you on an in-depth tour of the best leadership ideas of the past 25 centuries, featuring classic authors from Plato to Winston Churchill, Shakespeare to Jane Austen, C.G. Jung to Peter Drucker, and many more. In a style both thought provoking and entertaining, she shows how -history's great writers have always been, and still are, the real leadership gurus.
Davis spells out the behaviors that distinguish true leaders from misleaders and covers 20 specific leadership topics, including:
Leadership Traps (Shakespeare)
Change (Machiavelli)
Power (Sophocles)
Dilemmas (Madison, Hamilton)
Communication (Lincoln, Pericles)
Personality Types (Jung)
Motivation (Frankl)
Judgment (Maupassant, Melville, Austen, Shaw)
Character (Churchill, Plutarch, Shelley, Joyce)
Each chapter begins with a synopsis of a great work by the author and then draws out the key leadership insights, weaving them together with business examples, the best contemporary research, and tools to help put it all into practice. In the last two chapters Davis presents a new way to think about leadership levels, framing them in terms of the impact you have rather than the title on your business card.
Whether you're a recent graduate or MBA searching for something more inspiring than the standard textbook, a new manager looking for something deeper than the typical how-to book, or an experienced executive seeking ideas to lift you to the next level, this remarkably readable and practical guide will set you on the road to becoming a great leader.
ISBN:9781857886399
Author:Jocelyn Davis
The Net and the Butterfly by Judah Po...
Brief Summary
The Net and the Butterfly: The Art and Practice of Breakthrough Thinking.
In The Charisma Myth, Olivia Fox Cabane offered a groundbreaking approach to becoming more charismatic. Now she teams up with Judah Pollack to reveal how anyone can train their brain to have more eureka insights.
The creative mode in your brain is like a butterfly. It's beautiful and erratic, hard to catch and highly valued as a result. If you want to capture it, you need a net. Enter the executive mode, the task-oriented network in your brain that help you tie your shoes, run a meeting, or pitch a client. To succeed, you need both modes to work together--your inner butterfly to be active and free, but your inner net to be ready to spring at the right time and create that "aha!" moment. But is there any way to trigger these insights, beyond dumb luck?
Thanks to recent neuroscience discoveries, we can now explain these breakthrough moments--and also induce them through a series of specific practices. It turns out there's a hidden pattern to all these seemingly random breakthrough ideas. From Achimedes' iconic moment in the bathtub to designer Adam Cheyer's idea for Siri, accidental breakthroughs throughout history share a common origin story. In this book, you will learn to master the skills that will transform your brain into a consistent generator of insights.
Drawing on their extensive coaching and training practice with top Silicon Valley firms, Cabane and Pollack provide a step-by-step process for accessing the part of the brain that produces breakthroughs and systematically removing internal blocks. Their tactics range from simple to zany, such as:
Imagine an alternate universe where gravity doesn't exist, and the social and legal rules that govern it.
Map Disney's Pocahontas story onto James Cameron's Avatar.
Rid yourself of imposter syndrome through mental exercises.
Literally change your perspective by climbing a tree.
Stimulate your butterfly mode by watching a foreign film without subtitles.
By trying the exercises in this book, readers will emerge with a powerful new capacity for breakthrough thinking.
ISBN:9781591847199
Author:Judah Pollack and Olivia Fox Cabane
The Way of Wisdom by Timothy Keller
Brief Summary
The Way of Wisdom: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Book of Proverbs.
New York pastor Timothy Keller is known for his ability to connect a deep understanding of the Bible with contemporary thought and the practical issues we all face.
In this devotional - consisting of all-new material - Keller offers inspiration for every day of the year, based on the book of Proverbs. Working through the entire book, Keller brings this ancient wisdom to life and shows how to apply it to the realities of our daily lives. Just as My Rock; My Refuge taught readers how to pray, so this inspiring new devotional teaches us how to live lives that are rooted in wisdom.
ISBN:9781473647558
Author:Timothy Keller
Maasai A Novel of Love War and Witchc...
Brief Summary
This novel is based on true events of the 19th century, a period of widespread warfare between pastoralist groups fighting for grazing lands and cattle.
The fiercest of these groups were the Laikipiak Maasai who dominated Kenya's Great Rift Valley until their defeat in the 1870s.
The novel focuses on two lovers, Maron and Endelepin and their son Kitoip, as they endure the tribulations of warfare, smallpox, slave traders and the coming of European colonialism"--
ISBN:9781569026816
Author:Elliot M Fratkin