Anyone who wants to get better at anything should read [Peak]. Rest assured that the book is not mere theory. Ericsson's research focuses on the real world, and he explains in detail, with examples, how all of us can apply the principles of great performance in our work or in any other part of our lives.--Fortune

Anders Ericsson has made a career studying chess champions, violin virtuosos, star athletes, and memory mavens. Peak distills three decades of myth-shattering research into a powerful learning strategy that is fundamentally different from the way people traditionally think about acquiring new abilities. Whether you want to stand out at work, improve your athletic or musical performance, or help your child achieve academic goals, Ericsson's revolutionary methods will show you how to improve at almost any skill that matters to you.

The science of excellence can be divided into two eras: before Ericsson and after Ericsson. His groundbreaking work, captured in this brilliantly useful book, provides us with a blueprint for achieving the most important and life-changing work possible: to become a little bit better each day.--Dan Coyle, author of The Talent Code

Ericsson's research has revolutionized how we think about human achievement. If everyone would take the lessons of this book to heart, it could truly change the world.--Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein

Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. While male pilots were lauded as heroes, the few women who dared to fly were more often ridiculed--until a cadre of women pilots banded together to break through the entrenched prejudice.

Fly Girls weaves together the stories of five remarkable women: Florence Klingensmith, a high school dropout from Fargo, North Dakota; Ruth Elder, an Alabama divorcée; Amelia Earhart, the most famous, but not necessarily the most skilled; Ruth Nichols, who chafed at her blue blood family's expectations; and Louise Thaden, the young mother of two who got her start selling coal in Wichita. Together, they fought for the chance to fly and race airplanes--and in 1936, one of them would triumph, beating the men in the toughest air race of them all.

This fascinating and beautifully illustrated book will make you see the world more clearly than you ever have before. And that clarity will transform how you deal with the challenges and opportunities you face every day. -- Leonard Mlodinow, author of Subliminal and The Drunkard's Walk

How could looking at Monet's water lily paintings help save a company millions? How can noticing people's footwear foil a terrorist attack? How can your choice of adjective win an argument, calm your children, or catch a thief?

In her celebrated seminar, The Art of Perception, art historian Amy Herman has trained experts from many fields to perceive and communicate better. By showing people how to look closely at images, she helps them hone their visual intelligence, a set of skills we all possess but few of us know how to use effectively. She has spent more than a decade teaching doctors to observe patients instead of their charts, helping police officers separate facts from opinions when investigating a crime, and training professionals from the FBI, the State Department, Fortune 500 companies, and the military to recognize the most pertinent and useful information. Her lessons highlight far more than the physical objects you may be missing; they teach you how to recognize the talents, opportunities, and dangers that surround you every day.

Herman offers a compelling case for the life-enhancing value--and central importance--of careful observation . . . Visual Intelligence is a fascinating book and an important one--and it is a great read. --Daniel Weiss, president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

In this fascinating, often surprising book, Alvin Roth guides us through the jungles of modern life, pointing to the many markets that are hidden in plain view all around us. -- Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational and The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty

Most of the study of economics deals with commodity markets, where the price of a good connects sellers and buyers. But what about other kinds of goods, like a spot in the Yale freshman class or a position at Google? If you've ever sought a job or hired someone, applied to college or guided your child into a good kindergarten, asked someone out on a date or been asked out, you've participated in a kind of market. This is the territory of matching markets, where sellers and buyers must choose each other, and price isn't the only factor determining who gets what.

In Who Gets What--and Why, Nobel laureate Alvin E. Roth reveals the matching markets hidden around us and shows us how to recognize a good match and make smarter, more confident decisions.

Mr. Roth's work has been to discover the most efficient and equitable methods of matching, and implement them in the world. He writes with verve and style . . . Who Gets What--and Why is a pleasure to read. -- Wall Street Journal

A book filled with wit, charm, common sense, and uncommon wisdom. -- Paul Milgrom, professor of economics, Stanford University and Stanford Business School

The open-range cattle era lasted barely a quarter century, but it left America irrevocably changed. Cattle Kingdom reveals how the West rose and fell, and how its legacy defines us today. The tale takes us from dust-choked cattle drives to the unlikely splendors of boomtowns like Abilene, Kansas, and Cheyenne, Wyoming. We meet a diverse cast, from cowboy Teddy Blue to failed rancher and future president Teddy Roosevelt. This is a revolutionary new appraisal of the Old West and the America it made.

Knowlton writes well about all the fun stuff: trail drives, rambunctious cow towns, gunfights and range wars . . . [He] enlists all of these tropes in support of an intriguing thesis: that the romance of the Old West arose upon the swelling surface of a giant economic bubble . . . Cattle Kingdom is The Great Plains by way of The Big Short. -- Wall Street Journal

Knowlton deftly balances close-ups and bird's-eye views. We learn countless details . . . More important, we learn why the story played out as it did. -- New York Times Book Review

The best one-volume history of the legendary era of the cowboy and cattle empires in thirty years. -- True West

Brimming, addictive . . . In Everybody Behaves Badly, the party has just begun and the taste of fame is still ripe . . . The Lost Generation [is] restored to reckless youth in living black and white. -- James Wolcott, Vanity Fair

An essential book . . . a page-turner. Blume combines the best aspects of critic, biographer and storyteller . . . and puts the results together with the skill of an accomplished novelist. [This is] a complicated story, told masterfully. -- Minneapolis Star Tribune

Magnificently reported. -- Gay Talese

In the summer of 1925, Ernest Hemingway traveled to Pamplona for the infamous running of the bulls. He then channeled that trip's drunken brawls, sexual rivalry, midnight betrayals, and midday hangovers into a novel that redefined modern literature. Lesley Blume tells the full story behind Hemingway's legendary rise for the first time, revealing how he created his own image as the bull-fighting aficionado, hard-drinking literary genius, and expatriate bon vivant. In all its youth, lust, and rivalry, the Lost Generation is illuminated here as never before.

Engrossing . . . Drawing on journals, letters, and autobiographies of many members of the artistic circles in which Hemingway moved in the early 1920s, Blume shows how ruthlessly Hemingway betrayed his mentors, skewered his friends in his fiction, and sought to advance his career at all costs. -- Boston Globe

Fascinating . . . compulsively readable. -- Houston Chronicle

Fascinating--and full of the kind of factoids you can't wait to share. --Scientific American

Parasites can live only inside another animal and, as Kathleen McAuliffe reveals, these tiny organisms have many evolutionary motives for manipulating the behavior of their hosts. With astonishing precision, parasites can coax rats to approach cats, spiders to transform the patterns of their webs, and fish to draw the attention of birds that then swoop down to feast on them. We humans are hardly immune to their influence. Organisms we pick up from our own pets are strongly suspected of changing our personality traits and contributing to recklessness and impulsivity--even suicide. Germs that cause colds and the flu may alter our behavior even before symptoms become apparent.

Parasites influence our species on the cultural level, too. Drawing on a huge body of research, McAuliffe argues that our dread of contamination is an evolved defense against parasites. The horror and revulsion we are programmed to feel when we come in contact with people who appear diseased or dirty helped pave the way for civilization, but may also be the basis for major divisions in societies that persist to this day. This Is Your Brain on Parasites is both a journey into cutting-edge science and a revelatory examination of what it means to be human.

If you've ever doubted the power of microbes to shape society and offer us a grander view of life, read on and find yourself duly impressed. --Heather Havrilesky, Bookforum

A novel that reads like science fiction but bristles with rich detail about how the next World War could be fought. --Vice

A modern-day successor to tomes such as The Hunt for Red October from the late Tom Clancy. -USA Today

What Will World War III Look Like?

Ghost Fleet is a page-turning imagining of a war set in the not-too-distant future. Navy captains battle through a modern-day Pearl Harbor; fighter pilots duel with stealthy drones; teenage hackers fight in digital playgrounds; Silicon Valley billionaires mobilize for cyber-war; and a serial killer carries out her own vendetta. Ultimately, victory will depend on who can best blend the lessons of the past with the weapons of the future. But what makes the story even more notable is that every trend and technology in book--no matter how sci-fi it may seem--is real.

The debut novel by two leading experts on the cutting edge of national security, Ghost Fleet has drawn praise as a new kind of technothriller while also becoming the new must-read for military leaders around the world.

A wild book, a real page-turner.--The Economist

Ghost Fleet is a thrilling trip through a terrifyingly plausible tomorrow. This is not just an excellent book, but an excellent book by those who know what they are talking about. Prepare to lose some sleep.--D. B. Weiss, writer of HBO's Game of Thrones

It's exciting, but it's terrifying at the same time.--General Robert Neller, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps

Theroux's eye for landscape remains as sharp as ever . . . It's Theroux's remarkable gift for getting strangers to reveal themselves that makes going along for this ride worthwhile. -- New York Times Book Review

Paul Theroux has spent the past fifty years roaming the globe, describing his encounters with remote people and far-flung places in ten best-selling travel books. Now, for the first time, he explores a part of America--the Deep South. Setting out on a winding road trip, Theroux discovers a region of architectural and artistic wonders, incomparable music, mouth-watering cuisine--and also some of the worst schools, medical care, housing, and unemployment rates in the nation.
Yet, no matter where he goes, Theroux meets the unsung heroes of the South, the people who, despite it all, never left, and also those who found their way home and devoted their lives to rebuilding a place they could never live without.

Paul Theroux's latest travel memoir had me at hello . . . Theroux pulls no punches in his quest to understand this overlooked margin of American life. -- Boston Globe

A vivid contemporary portrait of rural life . . . a deeply affecting personal account. -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Compulsively readable. --Los Angeles Times

Post-traumatic stress disorder haunts America today, its reach extending far beyond the armed forces to touch the lives of millions of us. In The Evil Hours, David J. Morris shares stories of people living with PTSD--including himself--and investigates the rich scientific, literary, and cultural history of the condition. The result is a humane, unforgettable book that has been hailed as a literary triumph, and an indispensable account of an illness.

[The Evil Hours] reminded me why I wanted to be a writer in the first place . . . Communicate[s] the reality of PTSD, both to those who live with it and those who never have. --David Brooks, New York Times

Engaging . . . Timely . . . A fascinating and well-researched narrative. --Chicago Tribune

This is the book we've always needed . . . A work that empowers and connects people like never before. Anyone who has been touched by PTSD would benefit greatly from this book. --Foreign Policy

Simply the best book I have ever read about adolescence. . . . With gentle wisdom, Steinberg guides us through truly novel findings on what happens during adolescence and tells us how, as parents and teachers, we should change our ways. -- Martin E. P. Seligman, Ph. D., author of The Optimistic Child

If you need to understand adolescents--whether your own or anyone else's--you must read this book . . . Steinberg explains why most of our presumptions about adolescence are dead wrong and reveals the truth about this exciting and unnerving stage of life. --Jennifer Senior, author of All Joy and No Fun

Over the past few decades, adolescence has lengthened, and this stage of life now lasts longer than ever. Recent research has shown that the adolescent brain is surprisingly malleable, making it a crucial time of life for determining a person's future success and happiness. In Age of Opportunity, the world-renowned expert on adolescence Laurence Steinberg draws on this trove of fresh evidence--including his own groundbreaking research--to explain the teenage brain's capacity for change and to offer new strategies for instilling resilience, self-control, and other beneficial traits. By showing how new discoveries about adolescence must change the way we raise, teach, and treat young people, Steinberg provides a myth-shattering guide for parents, educators, and anyone else who cares about adolescents.

This book belongs on the shelf of every parent, teacher, youth worker, counselor, judge--heck, anyone interested in pre-teens and teenagers.--David Walsh, Ph.D., author of Why Do They Act That Way? A Survival Guide to the Adolescent Brain for You and Your Teen

No doubt Inventology will be marketed to the creative business class, but there's ample interest here even for readers who aren't actively inventing anything.--Boston Globe

A doctor realizes that an innocent-looking tube is killing his patients, then reads a newspaper article that inspires him to create a better version that serves as an early warning system for infections. A father cleans up after his toddler and builds a sippy cup that won't spill. An engineer dreams of a different world and pioneers the cell phone.

By studying breakthroughs like these, we can learn how people imagine their way around impossible problems to discover groundbreaking answers. Pagan Kennedy reports on how enduring methods of invention can be adapted to the twenty-first century, as millions of us deploy tools like crowdfunding, big data, and 3-D printing to address our needs or realize our dreams. Drawing on fresh research and the surprising stories behind many inventions old and new to reveal the steps that most reliably produce discovery, Inventology is a myth-shattering book and a must-read for anyone who is curious about creativity and the mental leaps required to solve our most challenging problems.

'Inventology' may be a real science; researchers are beginning to study it, and teachers are teaching it . . . A delightful account of how inventors do what they do.--Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Offers a new perspective into the process of invention that will inform and illuminate.--Publishers Weekly

[An] adroit exploration. [Gelles] deftly describes what mindfulness is and what it isn't, presents the science behind it, and handily succeeds in convincing readers that the practice is worth exploring. -- Success

Business leaders around the country are discovering that meditation may be the key to fostering a happier, more productive workplace.

Many American companies, including some of our largest -- such as General Mills, Ford, Target, and Google -- have built extensive programs to foster mindful practices among their workers. Mindful Work is the first book to explain how all sorts of businesses and any kind of worker can benefit from meditation, yoga, and other mindful techniques. Mindfulness lowers stress, increases mental focus, and alleviates depression among workers. It has also benefited companies that have adopted it -- from the millions of dollars Aetna has saved in health-care costs to the ways Patagonia has combined leadership in its market with a pervasively mindful outlook. Mindful Work offers an eye-opening tour through this new landscape, and goes beyond other books on the subject by providing evidence for the practical benefits of mindfulness and showing readers how to become more mindful themselves.

Brimming with insights and backed up with solid research, Mindful Work takes us to the front lines of a revolution that is transforming the business world. -- Arianna Huffington

Theroux is at the top of his game with his third collection of essays, a magisterial grouping of intimate remembrances, globe-trotting adventures, and incisive literary critiques.--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Theroux's observations are so keen and writerly skills so sharp that he butter-slices narratives with a razor-thin surgeon's scalpel, masterfully serving up both the world's dark underbelly and its gloriously uplifting sustenance of love, longing and wonder-lust. --Forbes

Paul Theroux's latest collection of essays applies his signature searching curiosity to a life lived as much in reading as on the road. This writerly tour-de-force features a satisfyingly varied selection of topics. Travel essays take us to Ecuador, Zimbabwe, and Hawaii, to name a few. Gems of literary criticism reveal fascinating depth in the work of Henry David Thoreau, Muriel Spark, Joseph Conrad, and Hunter Thompson. And in a series of breathtakingly personal profiles, we take a helicopter ride with Elizabeth Taylor, go diagnosing with Oliver Sacks, eavesdrop on the day-to-day life of a Manhattan dominatrix, and explore New York with Robin Williams.

An extended meditation on the craft of writing binds together this wide-ranging collection, along with Theroux's constant quest for the authentic in a person or in a place.

The stunning metamorphosis of twenty-first-century Hollywood and what lies ahead for the art and commerce of film

Ben Fritz chronicles the dramatic shakeup of America's film industry, bringing equal fluency to both the financial and entertainment aspects of Hollywood. He offers us an unprecedented look deep inside a Hollywood studio to explain why sophisticated movies for adults are an endangered species while franchises and super-heroes have come to dominate the cinematic landscape. And through interviews with dozens of key players at Disney, Marvel, Netflix, Amazon, Imax, and others, he reveals how the movie business is being reinvented.

Despite the destruction of the studios' traditional playbook, Fritz argues that these seismic shifts signal the dawn of a new heyday for film. The Big Picture shows the first glimmers of this new golden age through the eyes of the creative mavericks who are defining what entertainment will look like in the new era.

Superb. -- Publishers Weekly

The first definitive account of the anti-Nazi underground in Germany

A riveting narrative of the organization, conspiracy, and sacrifices made by those who led the resistance against Hitler. Orbach deftly analyzes the mixed motives, moral ambiguities and organizational vulnerability that marked their work, while reminding us forcefully of their essential bravery and rightness. And he challenges us to ask whether we would have summoned the same courage. -- Charles S. Maier, professor of history, Harvard University, and author of Among Empires

In 1933, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. A year later, all political parties but the Nazis had been outlawed, freedom of the press was but a memory, and Hitler's dominance seemed complete. Yet over the next few years, an unlikely cadre of conspirators emerged--schoolteachers, politicians, theologians, even a carpenter--who would try repeatedly to end the Führer's genocidal reign. This dramatic account is history at its most suspenseful, revealing the full story of those noble, ingenious, and doomed efforts.
Orbach's fresh research offers profound new insight into the conspirators' methods, motivations, fears, and hopes. We've had no idea until now how close they came--several times--to succeeding. The Plots Against Hitler fundamentally alters our view of World War II and sheds bright--even redemptive--light on its darkest days.

To those in her Cape Cod town, Mother is an exemplar of piety, frugality, and hard work. To her husband and seven children, she is a selfish, petty tyrant. She excels at playing her offspring against each other. Her favorite, Angela, died in childbirth; only Angela really understands her, she tells the others. The others include the officious lawyer, Fred; the uproarious professor, Floyd; a pair of inseparable sisters whose devotion to Mother has consumed their lives; and JP, the narrator, a successful writer whose work she disparages. As she lives well past the age of one hundred, her brood struggles with and among themselves to shed her viselike hold on them.
Mother Land is a piercing portrait of how a parent's narcissism impacts a family. While the particulars of his tale are unique, Paul Theroux encapsulates with acute clarity and wisdom a circumstance that is familiar to millions of readers.

Paul Theroux ladles a steaming cup of dysfunctional-family chowder in Mother Land. -- Vanity Fair

An engrossing, emotionally tangled and often merciless examination of family and self . . . Mother Land is a bittersweet, brutally frank family saga that offers enough redemption to make the journey worth it. -- Shelf Awareness

A pioneering psychologist reveals how three powerful emotions are the surest path to attaining your goals

Grit, the ability to persevere against all odds, is widely recognized as the key to success. But how can grit be cultivated and sustained? In this myth-shattering book, David DeSteno reveals that the most powerful tools we can draw upon to achieve our toughest goals are not willpower or self-denial, but our prosocial emotions--gratitude, compassion, and pride. In fact, this undervalued toolkit evolved specifically to help us resist immediate temptations in favor of long-term gains. DeSteno breaks down the long-overlooked mechanisms of perseverance built into our brains and shows how we can work with our emotions, instead of denying them, to achieve our goals. And he shows how we can do it with greater ease and deeper satisfaction than we would have thought possible.

Revolutionary. --Chade-Meng Tan, author of Joy on Demand and Search Inside Yourself

Anyone who hopes to live a more meaningful and fulfilling life should read this book.--Peter Salovey, professor of psychology and president, Yale University, and discoverer of emotional intelligence

DeSteno's provocative argument is that the science of success is, in fact, very much the science of social emotions like gratitude and compassion. I, for one, am convinced!--Angela Duckworth, author of Grit

2016 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Finalist

The amazing story of an unbelievable boy . . . The world that opens up to us through his story is both fascinating and slightly terrifying . . . but in a good way. You won't be able to walk away from this tale. -- Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

Imagine if cartoon whiz kid Jimmy Neutron were real and had a brainchild with MacGyver and his adolescence got told as a rollicking bildungsroman about American prodigies and DIY nuclear reactors--well, that's this book. --Jack Hitt, author of Bunch of Amateurs

By the age of nine, Taylor Wilson had mastered the science of rocket propulsion. At eleven, his grandmother's cancer diagnosis inspired him to investigate new ways to produce medical isotopes. And by fourteen, Wilson had built a 500-million-degree reactor and become the youngest person in history to achieve nuclear fusion. How could someone so young achieve so much, and what can Wilson's story teach parents and teachers about how to support high-achieving kids?

In The Boy Who Played with Fusion, science journalist Tom Clynes narrates Taylor's extraordinary journey--from his Arkansas home, to a unique public high school just for academic superstars, to the present, when Wilson is designing devices to prevent terrorists from shipping radioactive material and inspiring a new generation to take on the challenges of science.

Clynes guides us on an engrossing journey to the outer realms of science and parenting. The Boy Who Played with Fusion is a fascinating exploration of 'giftedness' and all its consequences. --Paul Greenberg, author of Four Fish and American Catch

An essential contribution to our understanding of the most important underlying questions about the development of giftedness, talent, creativity, and intelligence. --Psychology Today