epub | 27.38 KB | English | Isbn:9780142003343 | Author: Steven Pinker | Year: 2003
Description:
A brilliant inquiry into the origins of human nature from the author of Rationality, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now.
"Sweeping, erudite, sharply argued, and fun to read..also highly persuasive." -Time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Updated with a new afterword
One of the world's leading experts on language and the mind explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits-a doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century-denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts. Injecting calm and rationality into debates that are notorious for ax-grinding and mud-slinging, Pinker shows the importance of an honest acknowledgment of human nature based on science and common sense.
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epub | 19.88 KB | English | Isbn:9780670025855 | Author: Steven Pinker | Year: 2014
Description:
"Charming and erudite," from the author of Rationality and Enlightenment Now, "The wit and insight and clarity he brings . . . is what makes this book such a gem." -Time.com
Why is so much writing so bad, and how can we make it better? Is the English language being corrupted by texting and social media? Do the kids today even care about good writing-and why should we care? From the author of The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now.
In this entertaining and eminently practical book, the cognitive scientist, dictionary consultant, and New York Times-bestselling author Steven Pinker rethinks the usage guide for the twenty-first century. Using examples of great and gruesome modern prose while avoiding the scolding tone and Spartan tastes of the classic manuals, he shows how the art of writing can be a form of pleasurable mastery and a fascinating intellectual topic in its own right. The Sense of Style is for writers of all kinds, and for readers who are interested in letters and literature and are curious about the ways in which the sciences of mind can illuminate how language works at its best.
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epub | 13.88 KB | English | Isbn:9780374129187 | Author: Steven Quartz | Year: 2015
Description:
A bold argument that our "quest for cool" shapes modern culture and the global economy
Like it or not, we live in an age of conspicuous consumption. In a world of brand names, many of us judge ourselves and others by the products we own. Teenagers broadcast their brand allegiances over social media. Tourists flock to Rodeo Drive to have their pictures taken in front of luxury stores. Soccer moms switch from minivans to SUVs to hybrids, while hip beer connoisseurs flaunt their knack for distinguishing a K?lsch from a pilsner. How did this pervasive desire for "cool" emerge, and why is it so powerful today that it is a prime driver of the global economy?
In Cool, the neuroscientist and philosopher Steven Quartz and the political scientist Anette Asp bring together the latest findings in brain science, economics, and evolutionary biology to form a provocative theory of consumerism, revealing how the brain's "social calculator" and an instinct to rebel are the crucial missing links in understanding the motivations behind our spending habits. Applying their theory to everything from grocery shopping to the near-religious devotion of Harley-Davidson fans, Quartz and Asp explore how the brain's ancient decision-making machinery guides consumer choice. Using these revolutionary insights, they show how we use products to advertise ourselves to others in an often unconscious pursuit of social esteem. Surprising at every turn, Cool will change the way you think about money, status, desire, and choice.
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QuickRead presents a summary of "Do the Work" by Steven Pressfield:
Overcome Resistance and Get Out of Your Own Way.
Do you find yourself unable to finish a project? Perhaps your dream is to write a book, start a new business, or begin a new philanthropic endeavor. As you begin your new project, fear begins to seep in and you begin to self-sabotage. You prastinate and begin to engage in self-doubt, these demons prohibit you from achieving your goals and pursuing your dreams. Unfortunately, many of us find ourselves in this position quite often. But where does this inner resistance come from and why is it consistently stopping us from accomplishing more? Throughout Do the Work, Steven Pressfield aims to teach you everything you need to know to identify these causes of resistance and how to stop it from taking over. You'll learn the various techniques you need to overcome the resistance, get back to work and finally turn your dreams into a reality. As you read, you'll learn how arrogance and ignorance are your allies, you'll discover how to slay a dragon, and finally, you'll understand why failure leads to success.
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epub | 25.85 KB | English | | Author: Steven Sloman | Year: 2017
Description:
"The Knowledge Illusion is filled with insights on how we should deal with our individual ignorance and collective wisdom." -Steven Pinker
We all think we know more than we actually do.
Humans have built hugely complex societies and technologies, but most of us don't even know how a pen or a toilet works. How have we achieved so much despite understanding so little? Cognitive scientists Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach argue that we survive and thrive despite our mental shortcomings because we live in a rich community of knowledge. The key to our intelligence lies in the people and things around us. We're constantly drawing on information and expertise stored outside our heads: in our bodies, our environment, our possessions, and the community with which we interact-and usually we don't even realize we're doing it.
The human mind is both brilliant and pathetic. We have mastered fire, created dematic institutions, stood on the moon, and sequenced our genome. And yet each of us is error prone, sometimes irrational, and often ignorant. The fundamentally communal nature of intelligence and knowledge explains why we often assume we know more than we really do, why political opinions and false beliefs are so hard to change, and why individual-oriented approaches to education and management frequently fail. But our collaborative minds also enable us to do amazing things. The Knowledge Illusion contends that true genius can be found in the ways we create intelligence using the community around us.
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epub | 16.16 KB | English | Isbn:9780062427137 | Author: Dr. Steven R. Gundry, MD | Year: 2017
Description:
From renowned cardiac surgeon Steven R. Gundry, MD, the New York Times bestselling The Plant Paradox is a revolutionary look at the hidden compounds in "healthy" foods like fruit, vegetables, and whole grains that are causing us to gain weight and develop chronic disease.
Most of us have heard of gluten-a protein found in wheat that causes widespread inflammation in the body. Americans spend billions of dollars on gluten-free diets in an effort to protect their health. But what if we've been missing the root of the problem? In The Plant Paradox, renowned cardiologist Dr. Steven Gundry reveals that gluten is just one variety of a common, and highly toxic, plant-based protein called lectin. Lectins are found not only in grains like wheat but also in the "gluten-free" foods most of us commonly regard as healthy, including many fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, and conventional dairy products. These proteins, which are found in the seeds, grains, skins, rinds, and leaves of plants, are designed by nature to protect them from predators (including humans). Once ingested, they incite a kind of chemical warfare in our bodies, causing inflammatory reactions that can lead to weight gain and serious health conditions.
At his waitlist-only clinics in California, Dr. Gundry has successfully treated tens of thousands of patients suffering from autoimmune disorders, diabetes, leaky gut syndrome, heart disease, and neurodegenerative diseases with a protocol that detoxes the cells, repairs the gut, and nourishes the body. Now, in The Plant Paradox, he shares this clinically proven program with readers around the world.
The simple (and daunting) fact is, lectins are everywhere. Thankfully, Dr. Gundry offers simple hacks we easily can employ to avoid them, including:[*]Peel your veggies. Most of the lectins are contained in the skin and seeds of plants; simply peeling and de-seeding vegetables (like tomatoes and peppers) reduces their lectin content.[*]Shop for fruit in season. Fruit contain fewer lectins when ripe, so eating apples, berries, and other lectin-containing fruits at the peak of ripeness helps minimize your lectin consumption.[*]Swap your brown rice for white. Whole grains and seeds with hard outer coatings are designed by nature to cause digestive distress-and are full of lectins.
With a full list of lectin-containing foods and simple substitutes for each, a step-by-step detox and eating plan, and delicious lectin-free recipes, The Plant Paradox illuminates the hidden dangers lurking in your salad bowl-and shows you how to eat whole foods in a whole new way.
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epub | 18.61 KB | English | Isbn:9781607464334 | Author: Steven Pressfield | Year: 2010
Description:
Think of The War of Art as tough love... for yourself.
Since 2002, The War of Art has inspired people around the world to defeat "Resistance"; to recognize and knock down dream-blocking barriers and to silence the naysayers within us.
Resistance kicks everyone's butt, and the desire to defeat it is equally as universal. The War of Art identifies the enemy that every one of us must face, outlines a battle plan to conquer this internal foe, then pinpoints just how to achieve the greatest success.
Though it was written for writers, it has been embraced by business entrepreneurs, actors, dancers, painters, photographers, filmmakers, military service members and thousands of others around the world.
"As I closed The War of Art, I felt a surge of positive calm. I now know I can win this war. And if I can win, so can you." - From the foreword by Robert McKee, screenwriting guru
"[The War of Art] aims to help readers channel creative energy, unlock potential and overcome the fears that stop us from reaching our fullest potential. With courage, following the right formula and working hard, the book proposes that passion can be turned into purpose." - Ellen Degeneres book pick
"Resistance is the voice in the back of our head telling us to back off, be careful, go slow, compromise. . . . [Steve Pressfield is] the godfather of the resistance, the five-star general in the war against fear." - Seth Godin
"A vital gem . . . a kick in the ass." - Esquire
"I've never read a self help book that wasn't fatuous, obvious and unhelpful. Until The War of Art. It's amazingly cogent and smart on the psychology of creation. If I ever teach a writing course this would be one of the first books I'd assign, along with the letters of Flannery O'Connor." - Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City and Brightness Falls
"Yes, The War of Art is hell. But Steven Pressfield is our Clausewitz who shows how you too can battle against The Four Horsemen of The Apologetic: sloth, inertia, rationalization and prastination. Shakespeare, Rembrandt and Beethoven all are proof of what you can do with talent and General Pressfield." - Frank Deford, author and NPR commentator
"A marvelous help for anybody who has ever encountered the resistance of a blank page, an empty canvas or an unyielding musical scale." - Stan Berenstain, co-creator of The Berenstain Bears
Steven Pressfield is an historian, screenwriter, and the author of the historical novels Gates of Fire, Tides of War, Virtues of War, The Afghan Campaign, Killing Rommel, The Legend of Bagger Vance (made into the movie starring Matt Damon and Will Smith) and The War of Art.
His books are included in the curriculum at West Point and the Naval Academy, and are on the Commandant's Reading List for the Marine Corps.
His writing also appears on his blog - [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] - which features his weekly "Writing Wednesdays" column, and the series "The Creative Process" and "Agora."
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A New York Times Bestseller
"A rich portrait of the urban poor, drawn not from statistics but from vivid tales of their lives and his, and how they intertwined." -The Economist
"A sensitive, sympathetic, unpatronizing portrayal of lives that are ususally ignored or lumped into ill-defined stereotype." -Finanical Times
Foreword by Stephen J. Dubner, coauthor of Freakonomics
When first-year graduate student Sudhir Venkatesh walked into an abandoned building in one of Chicago's most notorious housing projects, he hoped to find a few people willing to take a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty-and impress his professors with his boldness. He never imagined that as a result of this assignment he would befriend a gang leader named JT and spend the better part of a decade embedded inside the projects under JT's protection. From a privileged position of unprecedented access, Venkatesh observed JT and the rest of his gang as they operated their crack-selling business, made peace with their neighbors, evaded the law, and rose up or fell within the ranks of the gang's complex hierarchical structure. Examining the morally ambiguous, highly intricate, and often corrupt struggle to survive in an urban war zone, Gang Leader for a Day also tells the story of the complicated friendship that develops between Venkatesh and JT-two young and ambitious men a universe apart.
Sudhir Venkatesh's latest book Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York's Underground Economy-a memoir of sociological investigation revealing the true face of America's most diverse city-is also published by Penguin Press.
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epub | 18.29 KB | English | | Author: Stuart Diamond | Year: 2010
Description:
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Learn the negotiation model used by Google to train employees worldwide, U.S. Special Ops to promote stability globally ("this stuff saves lives"), and families to forge better relationships.
A 20% discount on an item already on sale. A four-year-old willingly brushes his/her teeth and goes to bed. A vacationing couple gets on a flight that has left the gate. $5 million more for a small business; a billion dollars at a big one.
Based on thirty years of research among forty thousand people in sixty countries, Wharton Business School Professor and Pulitzer Prize winner Stuart Diamond shows in this unique and revolutionary book how emotional intelligence, perceptions, cultural diversity and collaboration produce four times as much value as old-school, conflictive, power, leverage and logic.
As negotiations underlie every human encounter, this immediately-usable advice works in virtually any situation: kids, jobs, travel, shopping, business, politics, relationships, cultures, partners, competitors.
The tools are invisible until you first see them. Then they're always there to solve your problems and meet your goals.
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epub | 22.13 KB | English | Isbn:9781780660257 | Author: Stuart Sutherland | Year: 2013
Description:
New, 21st anniversary edition, with a new foreword by Ben Goldacre, author of Bad Science and Bad Pharma, and an afterword by James Ball, covering developments in our understanding of irrationality over the last two decades.
Why do doctors, army generals, high-ranking government officials and other people in positions of power make bad decisions that cause harm to others? Why do prizes serve no useful function? Why are punishments so ineffective? Why is interviewing such an unsatisfactory method of selection?
Irrationality is a challenging and thought-provoking book that draws on statistical concepts, probability theory and a mass of intriguing research to expose the failings of human reasoning, judgement and intuition. The author explores the inconsistencies of human behaviour, and discovers why even the experts find it so hard to make rational and unbiased decisions.
Written with clarity and occasional flashes of wry humour, this classic volume is just as relevant today as when it was first written twenty-one years ago.
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