Articles in Not So Recent Reads
How to make people like you in 4 seconds

Speaker and author Nicholas Boothman offers tips for making a solid first impression — before it’s too late.
Within seconds of meeting you, people are already making judgments about your personality. Are you hireable? Or dateable? …
Title: Scarcity
Title: Scarcity
Summary:
In the blockbuster tradition of Freakonomics, a Harvard economist and a Princeton psychology professor team up to offer a surprising and empowering new way to look at everyday life, presenting a paradigm-challenging examination of how scarcity …
Title: 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism

Title: 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism
Summary:
Thing 1: There is no such thing as the free market.
Thing 4: The washing machine has changed the world more than the Internet.
Thing 5: Assume the worst about people, and …
Title: How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free – Retirement Wisdom That You Won't Get from Your Financial Advisor

Title:Â How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free – Retirement Wisdom That You Won’t Get from Your Financial Advisor by Ernie J. Zelinski
Summary:
How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free offers inspirational advice on how to enjoy life …
Title: One Second After

Title: One Second After by William R. Forstchen
Summary:
In a small North Carolina town, one man struggles to save his family after America loses a war that will send it back to the Dark Ages.
Already cited on the …
Title: The Second World War – Milestones to Disaster

Title: The Second World War – Milestones to Disaster by Winton Churchhill
Summary:
Churchill’s history of the Second World War is, and will remain, the definitive work. Lucid, dramatic, remarkable for its breadth and sweep and for …
Title: The Evolution of God

Title: The Evolution of God by Robert Wright
Summary:
In this sweeping narrative, which takes us from the Stone Age to the Information Age, Robert Wright unveils an astonishing discovery: there is a hidden pattern that the …
Title: Stiff

Title:Â Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
Summary:
An oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem.
For two thousand years, cadavers (some willingly, some unwittingly) have been involved in …
Title: The Year of Magical Thinking

Title: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Summary
“Life changes fast….You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” These were among the first words Joan Didion wrote in January 2004. Her …
Title: Steve Jobs

Title:Â Steve Jobs by Walter IsaacsonÂ
Summary
Based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a …
Title: Light in August

Title: Light in August by William Faulkner
Summary
Light in August is an exploration of racial conflict in the society of the Southern United States. Originally Faulkner planned to call the novel Dark House, which also became the working …
Title: Amazing Grace

Title: Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery by Eric Metaxas
Publisher’s Summary
Amazing Grace tells the story of the remarkable life of the British abolitionist William Wilberforce (1759-1833). This accessible biography chronicles …
Title: Uncle Tom's Cabin

Title: Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Publisher’s Summary
Published in 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought the abolitionists’ message to the public conscience – no woman before or since has so moved America to take action …
Title: On Writing – Stephen King

Title: On Writing by Stephen King
Publisher’s Summary:
“If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.” Here is Stephen King’s master class on his craft.
On Writing begins with …
Title: Go the Fu–k to Sleep

Title: Go the Fu–k to Sleep by Adam Manbach (Narrated by Samuel Jackson)
Publisher’s Summary:
Academy Award nominee Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) rocks this mock bedtime story, capturing a hilarious range of emotions as the voice of a …
Title: Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, an impoverished ex-student in St. Petersburg who formulates and executes a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money. Raskolnikov argues that with the pawnbroker’s money he …
Title: The Memoir Project

Title: The Memoir Project: A Throughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing and Life by Marion Roach Smith
Publisher’s Summary:
Whether or not one has lived an exceptional or dramatic life, we inherently understand that writing memoir—whether it’s a …
Title: SuperFreakanomics

Title: SuperFreakanomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
Publisher Summary:
Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling more than four million copies in 35 …
Title: The Assaut on Reason

Title: The Assault on Reason by Al Gore
Publisher’s Summary:
Here is a visionary analysis of how the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism, and blind faith have combined with the degradation of the public sphere to create …
TItle – Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

Title – Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
Publisher’s Summary:
Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over 15 years – a chaotic period that saw the death of …
Title: Oceans Apart

Title: Oceans Apart by Karen Kingsbury
Publisher’s Summary
Airline Captain Connor Evans has nearly forgotten that stormy weekend in Hawaii nearly ten years ago when he broke the greatest promise of all. Now Connor has the perfect …
Title: Rebel Buddha

Title: Rebel Buddha – On the Road to Freeddom by  Dzogchen Ponlop
Publisher’s Summary
There’s a rebel within you. It’s the part of you that already knows how to break free of fear and unhappiness. This …
Title: Sex at Dawn

Title: Sex at Dawn – The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jetha
Publisher’s Summary:
Since Darwin’s day, we’ve been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. Mainstream science – as well …
Why We Get Fat: And what we can do about it

Title: Why we get Fat and What we can do about it by Gary Taubes
Publisher’s Summary:
An eye-opening, myth-shattering examination of what makes us fat, from acclaimed science writer Gary Taubes.
In his New York Times best …
The Hidden Reality

Title:  The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene
Publisher’s Summary
There was a time when “universe†meant all there is. Everything. Yet, in recent years discoveries in physics and …
Title: Autobiography of Mark Twain

Title: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1: The Complete and Authoritative Edition by Mark Twain
Publisher’s Summary
“I’ve struck it!†Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. “And I will give it away – to you. …
Title: The Fire Next Time

Title: The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Publisher’s Summary
At once a powerful evocation of his early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice to both the individual and the …
Title: Jesus, Interrupted

Title: Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible by Bart D. Ehrman
Publisher’s Summary
Picking up where Bible expert Bart Ehrman’s New York Times best seller, Misquoting Jesus, left off, Jesus, Interrupted addresses the larger …
Title: Decision Point by George W. Bush

Title: Decision Point by George W. Bush
Publisher’s Summary
President George W. Bush narrates and describes the critical decisions of his presidency and personal life. Decision Points is the extraordinary memoir of America’s 43rd president. Shattering the …
Title: Stein on Writing

Title: Stein on Writing: A Master Editor Shares His Craft, Techniques, and Strategies by Sol Stein
Publisher’s Summary
Stein on Writing provides immediately useful advice for writers of fiction and nonfiction, whether newcomers or accomplished professionals. As …