by Rupe | Mar 5, 2010 | Not So Recent Reads
Title: The Talent Code: Unlocking the Secret of Skill in Sports, Art, Music, Math, and Just About Anything by Daniel Coyle
Publisher’s Summary
A New York Times best-selling author explores cutting-edge brain science to learn where talent comes from, how it grows, and how we can make ourselves smarter.
How does a penniless Russian tennis club with one indoor court create more top 20 women players than the entire United States? How did a small town in rural Italy produce the dozens of painters and sculptors who ignited the Italian Renaissance? Why are so many great soccer players from Brazil?
Where does talent come from, and how does it grow?
New research has revealed that myelin, once considered an inert form of insulation for brain cells, may be the holy grail of acquiring skill. Journalist Daniel Coyle spent years investigating talent hotbeds, interviewing world-class practitioners (top soccer players, violinists, fighter, pilots, artists, and bank robbers) and neuroscientists. In clear, accessible language, he presents a solid strategy for skill acquisition – in athletics, fine arts, languages, science or math – that can be successfully applied through a person’s entire lifespan.
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by Rupe | Mar 5, 2010 | Not So Recent Reads
Title: The Top 10 Distinctions Between Millionaires and the Middle Class by Keith Cameron Smith 3
Publisher’s Summary
If you’re ready to take the journey to wealth and personal fulfillment, here’s your ticket. In this life-changing audiobook, entrepreneur and inspirational speaker Keith Cameron Smith tells you how to think like a millionaire and reap the benefits of a millionaire mindset. The key to moving beyond the middle class and up the economic ladder is mastering 10 vital principles, including:
Millionaires think long-term. The middle class thinks short-term. Create a clear vision of the life you desire, and focus on it.
Millionaires talk about ideas. The middle class talks about things and other people. Ask some positive “what if” questions every day, and bounce ideas off successful people who will be honest with you.
Millionaires work for profits. The middle class works for wages. Take calculated risks and learn to take advantage of good opportunities.
We all want to improve our financial position. In this inspirational and practical guide filled with savvy and sensible advice, Smith upgrades you from coach to first class. If you follow these principles, you can transform your life, and realize your dreams.
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by Rupe | Mar 5, 2010 | Not So Recent Reads
Title: Poor People by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Publisher’s Summary
As both a masterpiece of Russian populist writing and a parody of the entire genre, Poor People is an early example of Dostoevsky’s genius.
Written as a series of letters, Poor People tells the tragic tale of a petty clerk and his impossible love for a young girl. Longing to help her and her family, he sells everything he can, but his kindness leads him only into more desperate poverty, and ultimately into debauchery. As a typical “man of the underground”, he serves as the embodiment of the belief that happiness can only be achieved with riches.
This work is remarkable for its vivid characterizations, especially of Dievushkin, the clerk, solely by means of his letters to the young girl and her answers to him.
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by Rupe | Mar 5, 2010 | Not So Recent Reads
Title: Animal Farm by George Orwell
Publisher’s Summary
George Orwell’s classic satire of the Russian Revolution is an intimate part of our contemporary culture, quoted so often that we tend to forget who wrote the original words. It is an account of the bold struggle that transforms Mr. Jones’ Manor Farm into Animal Farm, a wholly democratic society built on the credo that All Animals Are Created Equal. Out of their cleverness, the pigs Napoleon, Squealer, and Snowball emerge as leaders of the new community in a subtle evolution that bears an insidious familiarity. The climax is the brutal betrayal of the faithful horse Boxer, when totalitarian rule is re-established with the bloodstained postscript to the founding slogan: But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others.
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by Rupe | Mar 5, 2010 | Not So Recent Reads
Title: World War One: A Short History by Norman Stone
Publisher’s Summary
In 1914, a new kind of war came about, bringing with it a new kind of world. World War One began on horseback, with generals employing bayonet charges to gain ground, and ended with attacks resembling the Nazi blitzkriegs. The scale of devastation was unlike anything the world had seen before: 14 million combatants died, a further 20 million were wounded, and four empires were destroyed. Even the victors’ empires were fatally damaged.
An overwhelming disaster from which the world is still recovering, World War One can seem baffling in its complexity. But now Norman Stone, one of world’s greatest military historians, has composed a dazzlingly lucid and succinct history of the conflict. Stone has distilled a lifetime of teaching, arguing, and thinking into this brisk and opinionated account of the fundamental tragedy of the 20th century.
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by Rupe | Mar 5, 2010 | Not So Recent Reads
Title: Sample Capitalism: A Very Short Introduction by James Fulcher
Publisher’s Summary
Capitalism deals with the issues that have preoccupied thinkers from Marx and Weber through to Cuddens and Soros. It examines not only issues of great contemporary importance, such as modern globalization and ecological crises, but also looks at examples from the ancient world.
Explaining the origins of capitalism, this Introduction raises the issue of whether capitalism indeed originated in Europe. Next it examines a distinctive stage in the development of capitalism that began in the 1980s in order to understand where we are now and the various stages that have evolved since. Fulcher goes on to explore whether capital has escaped the nation-state by going global (while emphasizing that globalizing processes are not new and questioning whether capitalism is global in character.)
The book discusses the crisis tendencies of capitalism, such as the Southeast Asian banking crisis, the collapse of the Russian economy, and the 1997-98 global financial crisis, and asks whether capitalism is doomed. In the end, the author ruminates on a possible alternative to capitalism, discussing socialism, communal and cooperative experiments, and the alternatives proposed by environmentalists.
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