Called "the sleeper hit of the publishing season" by The Boston Globe, Shop Class as Soulcraft became an instant best seller, attracting fans with its radical (and timely) reappraisal of the merits of skilled manual labor. On both economic and psychological grounds, author Matthew B. Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning everyone into a "knowledge worker," based on a misguided separation of thinking from doing.

Once we were drivers, the open road alive with autonomy, adventure, danger, trust, and speed. Today we are as likely to be in the back seat of an Uber as behind the wheel ourselves. Tech giants are hurling us toward a shiny, happy "self-driving" future, selling utopia but equally keen to advertise to a captive audience strapped into another expensive device. Are we destined, then, to become passengers, not drivers? Why We Drive reveals that much more may be at stake than we might think.

When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist.

In Feminism Against Progress, Mary Harrington argues that the industrial-era faith in progress is turning against all but a tiny elite of women. Women's liberation was less the result of human moral progress than an effect of the material consequences of the Industrial Revolution.

Today, even as so many of us spend hours in front of screens and in the virtual world, there is a growing movement that recognizes the power in the personal, the imperfect, the handmade. Eric Gorges, a metal shaper, taps into that hunger to get back to what's "real" through visits with the fellow artisans he has profiled for his popular public television program. In this book, he tells their stories and shares the collective wisdom of calligraphers, potters, stone carvers, glassblowers, engravers, wood workers, and more while celebrating the culture they've created.

John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction focuses on mechanisms of traditional education which cripple imagination, discourage critical thinking, and create a false view of learning as a byproduct of rote-memorization drills. Gatto's earlier book, Dumbing Us Down, introduced the now-famous expression of the title into the common vernacular. Weapons of Mass Instruction adds another chilling metaphor to the brief against conventional schooling.

The Bolsheviks promised that they were building a new society, a workers’ paradise that would change the nature of mankind itself. What they ended up constructing was the largest prison the world had ever seen: a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that spanned half the globe.

We are living through the most prosperous age in all of human history, yet we are listless, divided, and miserable. Wealth and comfort are unparalleled, but our political landscape is unmoored, and rates of suicide, lone­liness, and chronic illness continue to skyrocket. How do we explain the gap between these truths? And how should we respond? For evolutionary biologists Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein, the cause of our troubles is clear: The accelerat­ing rate of change in the modern world has outstripped the capacity of our brains and bodies to adapt.

In this timely and powerful book, Jerry Muller uncovers the damage our obsession with metrics is causing and shows how we can begin to fix the problem. Filled with examples from education, medicine, business and finance, government, the police and military, and philanthropy and foreign aid, this brief and accessible book explains why the seemingly irresistible pressure to quantify performance distorts and distracts, whether by encouraging "gaming the stats" or "teaching to the test"....

From the creator of the wildly popular blog Wait but Why, a fun and fascinating deep dive into what the hell is going on in our strange, unprecedented modern times.

The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.

A sparklingly strange odyssey through the kaleidoscope of America's new spirituality: the cults, practices, high priests, and prophets of our supposedly post-religion age.

In a series of illuminating, often surprising experiments, MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Blending everyday experience with groundbreaking research, Ariely explains how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities.

Yuval Noah Harari's 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a probing and visionary investigation into today's most urgent issues as we move into the uncharted territory of the future. As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic of war, and the world feels more polarized than ever, Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive.

In his landmark best seller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant, in the blink of an eye, that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept?

Once we were drivers, the open road alive with autonomy, adventure, danger, trust, and speed. Today we are as likely to be in the back seat of an Uber as behind the wheel ourselves. Tech giants are hurling us toward a shiny, happy "self-driving" future, selling utopia but equally keen to advertise to a captive audience strapped into another expensive device. Are we destined, then, to become passengers, not drivers? Why We Drive reveals that much more may be at stake than we might think.

Called "the sleeper hit of the publishing season" by The Boston Globe, Shop Class as Soulcraft became an instant best seller, attracting fans with its radical (and timely) reappraisal of the merits of skilled manual labor. On both economic and psychological grounds, author Matthew B. Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning everyone into a "knowledge worker," based on a misguided separation of thinking from doing.

The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking presents practical, lively, and inspiring ways for you to become more successful through better thinking. The idea is simple: You can learn how to think far better by adopting specific strategies. Brilliant people aren't a special breed--they just use their minds differently.

Get smart about men and relationships with the help of this straightforward guide. Learn how to read that vitally important first date, how to tell the good guys from the bad, how to handle a breakup and after, and the 11 commandments for a smart woman.

Think of a time when you were worried about something, but then you suddenly realized how insignificant it was. Isn’t it amazing how much lighter you felt? The key is to focus only on the here and now. By doing so, you free yourself from unnecessary anxiety, and your mind will be at peace.

In How Come That Idiot's Rich and I'm Not? best-selling author Robert Shemin reveals for the first time the inner-circle secrets of the mega-wealthy. Have you ever wondered why some people attract wealth while others stay financially trapped and in debt? The key is wealth-friendly, upside-down thinking. Stick with all the old moneymaking rules and stay broke. Break them and get rich. This is the audiobook that shows you how.

This motivational audiobook is a wonderful collection of short and inspirational stories and facts that have the power to evoke the leader within oneself. Be it a student or a manager, this audiobook is for everyone and for all ages.

Part instruction manual, part someone else's diary, My Morning Routine features interviews with 64 of today's most successful people - including three-time Olympic gold medalist Rebecca Soni, Twitter cofounder Biz Stone, and General Stanley McChrystal - and offers advice on creating a routine of your own. Some routines are all about early morning exercise and spartan living; others are more leisurely and self-indulgent. What they have in common is they don't feel like a chore. Once you land on the right routine, you'll look forward to waking up.

There is no cure for the human condition: life is hard. But Kieran Setiya believes philosophy can help. He offers us a map for navigating rough terrain, from personal trauma to the injustice and absurdity of the world.

This clever and pithy audiobook challenges introverts to take ownership of their personalities...with quiet strength. Sophia Dembling asserts that the introvert’s lifestyle is not "wrong" or lacking, as society or extroverts would have us believe. Through a combination of personal insights and psychology, The Introvert’s Way helps and encourages introverts to embrace their nature, to respect traits they may have been ashamed of and reframe them as assets.

Things My Son Needs to Know About the World collects the personal dispatches from the front lines of one of the most daunting experiences any man can experience: fatherhood. As he conveys his profound awe at experiencing all the “firsts” that fill him with wonder and catch him completely unprepared, Fredrik Backman doesn’t shy away from revealing his own false steps and fatherly flaws, tackling issues both great and small, from masculinity and midlife crises to practical jokes and poop.

Covid-19 has changed our habits whether we like to admit it or not. We've become more distracted than ever, which is impacting every aspect of our lives. In this updated and expanded version of The Road to Better Habits, you’ll learn how to transform your habits in a simple way. Ultimately, where you are in your life is a result of your habits. The American historian and philosopher, Will Durant, said it best: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Marianne decided to finally find out if her elusive "perfect existence" - the one without debt, anxiety, or hangover Netflix marathons, the one where she healthily bounced around town and met the cashmere-sweater-wearing man of her dreams - really did lie in the pages of our best-known and acclaimed self-help books. She vowed to test a book a month for one year, following its advice to the letter, taking what she hoped would be the surest path to a flawless new her. But as the months passed, Marianne’s reality was turned upside down.

Based upon his weekly Harvard Business Review column (one of the most popular columns on HBR.com, receiving hundreds of thousands of unique page views a month), 18 Minutes clearly shows how busy people can cut through all the daily clutter and distractions and find a way to focus on those key items that are truly the top priorities in our lives.

Awaken your passion, and tap in to your inner greatness as you remove the metaphorical clutter from your life with Simple Thinking. You'll learn how to expand your mind and understand your true potential through the power of thinking simply while stripping back the jargon and digging to the core of any obstacle in your way.