Audiobooks Books - Page 3

The Post-American World

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Subjects -> History -> World -> General AAS
Subjects -> History -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 157 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A Prophetic Assessment of America's Changing Place in an Increasingly Global Age

For Fareed Zakaria, the great story of our times is not the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else -- the growth of countries such as China, India, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Kenya, and many, many more. This economic growth is generating a new global landscape where power is shifting and wealth and innovation are bubbling up in unexpected places. It's also producing political confidence and national pride. As these trends continue, the push of globalization will increasingly be joined by the pull of nationalism -- a tension that is likely to define the next decades.

With his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination, Zakaria draws on lessons from the two great power shifts of the past five hundred years -- the rise of the Western world and the rise of the United States -- to tell us what we can expect from the third shift, the "rise of the rest." Washington must begin a serious transformation of global strategy and seek to share power, create coalitions, build legitimacy, and define the global agenda. None of this will be easy for the greatest power the world has ever known -- the only power that for so long has really mattered. But all that is changing now. The future we face is the post-American world.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Stephen R. Covey

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Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Motivational

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 813 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

An Exceptional Book 5 out of 5 stars.
29 of 29 people found this review helpful.

In browsing my book shelf I came upon and then found myself rereading this incredibly simple yet profound book. The principles and ideas Stephen writes about are truly ways to discover how to live your life as the person you want to be. I especially found the section where Stephen writes about how powerful unexamined attitudes and perceptions influence how I react toward situations and others. Once I started looking at my predetermined thoughts...those same situations became less mundane and irritating. My experiences became more authentic, meaningful and enjoyable instantaneously. Stephen writes of this as a "paradigm shift", where our attitudes and behaviors, left unexamined, shape how we feel and act in our life in mechanical patterns.

Two authors that have also inspired and ignited my passion for living a magnificent life are Ariel & Shya Kane. The Kanes works: "Being Here: Modern Day Tales of Enlightenment", "Working on Yourself Doesn't Work: The 3 Simple Ideas That Will Instantaneously Transform Your Life", "How to Create a Magical Relationship" and their internet radio show "Being Here" on Voiceamerica.com are all indispensable sources I turn to in supporting my well-being in all areas of my life. I highly recommend the Kanes and Stephen Covey classic, timeless book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People."

Editorial Review:

THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE is recognised as one of the most influential audio-books ever recorded. In this seminal work, Stephen R. Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centred approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, honesty and human dignity - principles that give us the security to adapt to change, and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates. The 7 Habits have become so famous because they work. From Habit 1: Be Proactive and Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind, millions of people have worked their way through the 7 and found in them a key to transforming their lives. Translated into thirty-four languages THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE has been the key to the success of legions of business leaders and individuals the world over.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Michael Pollan

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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Diets & Weight Loss -> Diets -> Weight Loss

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 197 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good but not worth it if you have Omnivore's Dilema 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Let me say that on its own this is a very good book. Pollan does a great job of talking about how much of the "science" behind the nutrition claims of journalists and doctors is basically bunk and often may do more harm than good. He then goes onto explain what parts of the Western Diet (processed foods, industrial foods, corn syrup, hydrogenated corn) may be causing so many of the Chronic diseases) and some basic rules to live by for eating food.
That said, there is not much in this book that I did not already learn from Omnivore's Dilemma. The book read more like another chapter to Omnivore's dilemma than a stand alone book. So hence the three stars since I think its just okay if you have read Omnivore's, however if you haven't i would say this is more like 4.5 stars

The Truth to Health Is In Real Food: This should be required reading in ALL schools 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

"Most of what we're consuming today is not food, and how we're consuming it--in the car, in front of the TV, and increasing alone--is not really eating."

It is the American paradox that the more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become. Pollan explains why this has happened and what we can do about it. Understanding the context of health is vital to understanding how to achieve it in our current circumstances.

Editorial Review:

What to eat, what not to eat, and how to think about health: a manifesto for our times.

The Limits of Power (American Empire Project)

Andrew Bacevich, Eric Conger

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 131 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Limits of Power identifies a profound triple crisis facing America: the economy, in remarkable disarray, can no longer be fixed by relying on expansion abroad; the government, transformed by an imperial presidency, is a democracy in form only; U.S. involvement in endless wars, driven by a deep infatuation with military power, has been a catastrophe for the body politic. These pressing problems threaten all of us, Republicans and Democrats. If the nation is to solve its predicament, it will need the revival of a distinctly American approach: the neglected tradition of realism.

Andrew J. Bacevich, uniquely respected across the political spectrum, offers a historical perspective on the illusions that have governed American policy since 1945. The realism he proposes includes respect for power and its limits; sensitivity to unintended consequences; aversion to claims of exceptionalism; skepticism of easy solutions, especially those involving force; and a conviction that the books will have to balance. Only a return to such principles, Bacevich argues, can provide common ground for fixing America’s urgent problems before the damage becomes irreparable.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Naomi Klein

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Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Popular Economics -> Policy & Current Events

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 325 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In her ground-breaking reporting Naomi Klein introduced the term “disaster capitalism.” Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S. occupation, Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic “shock treatment”, losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers.
 
The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman’s free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement’s peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia and Iraq.
At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. Klein argues that by capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.

The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

Thomas L. Friedman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1174 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

It Is Your Responsibility as a Human Being to Read this Book and Make a Difference in The World 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Thomas Friedman brilliantly shows how the forces of globalization have connected the world in ways never possible before. The walls, ceilings, and even floors that once separated people, societies, and countries have been flattened out. Now, a single individual has more power than any other time in history.

We must make use of all these new possibilities to succeed in a world that is more competitive and more challenging than ever before.

You have to establish a competitive advantage that differentiates you from the rest of this world. If you don't, you can't survive.

This next 50 years are the most crucial time in the history of our time. We have the opportunity to end poverty, diseases, wars, ignorance, greed, and hunger.

If we don't succeed in creating a NEW world where people live in harmony with nature and with each other, we don't have a chance as a species.

It is your responsibility as a human being to be accountable for yourself and your world.

Editorial Review:

When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, what will they say was the most crucial development in the first few years of the twenty-first century? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world’s two biggest nations? And with this “flattening” of the globe, has the world gotten too small and too fast for human beings and their political systems to adjust in a stable manner?

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

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Subjects -> Law -> Procedures & Litigation -> Courts
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Total reviews: 167 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin takes you into the chambers of the most important—and secret—legal body in our country, the Supreme Court, and reveals the complex dynamic among the nine people who decide the law of the land.

Just in time for the 2008 presidential election—where the future of the Court will be at stake—Toobin reveals an institution at a moment of transition, when decades of conservative disgust with the Court have finally produced a conservative majority, with major changes in store on such issues as abortion, civil rights, presidential power, and church-state relations.

Based on exclusive interviews with justices themselves, The Nine tells the story of the Court through personalities—from Anthony Kennedy's overwhelming sense of self-importance to Clarence Thomas's well-tended grievances against his critics to David Souter's odd nineteenth-century lifestyle. There is also, for the first time, the full behind-the-scenes story of Bush v. Gore—and Sandra Day O'Connor's fateful breach with George W. Bush, the president she helped place in office.

The Nine is the book bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin was born to write. A CNN senior legal analyst and New Yorker staff writer, no one is more superbly qualified to profile the nine justices.

Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

H.W. Brands

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Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Presidents & Heads of State

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A sweeping, magisterial biography of the man generally considered the greatest president of the twentieth century, admired by Democrats and Republicans alike. Traitor to His Class sheds new light on FDR's formative years, his remarkable willingness to champion the concerns of the poor and disenfranchised, his combination of political genius, firm leadership, and matchless diplomacy in saving democracy in America during the Great Depression and the American cause of freedom in World War II.

Drawing on archival materials, public speeches, personal correspondence, and accounts by family and close associates, acclaimed bestselling historian and biographer H. W. Brands offers a compelling and intimate portrait of Roosevelt’s life and career.

Brands explores the powerful influence of FDR’s dominating mother and the often tense and always unusual partnership between FDR and his wife, Eleanor, and her indispensable contributions to his presidency. Most of all, the book traces in breathtaking detail FDR’s revolutionary efforts with his New Deal legislation to transform the American political economy in order to save it, his forceful—and cagey—leadership before and during World War II, and his lasting legacy in creating the foundations of the postwar international order.

Traitor to His Class brilliantly captures the qualities that have made FDR a beloved figure to millions of Americans.

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

Oliver Sacks

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Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> Theory, Composition & Performance -> Appreciation
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Subjects -> Entertainment -> Music -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 90 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat.  But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does—humans are a musical species.

Oliver Sacks’s compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own brains, and of the human experience. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people—from a man who is struck by lightning and suddenly inspired to become a pianist at the age of forty-two, to an entire group of children with Williams syndrome, who are hypermusical from birth; from people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans, to a man whose memory spans only seven seconds—for everything but music.

Our exquisite sensitivity to music can sometimes go wrong: Sacks explores how catchy tunes can subject us to hours of mental replay, and how a surprising number of people acquire nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and day. Yet far more frequently, music goes right: Sacks describes how music can animate people with Parkinson’s disease who cannot otherwise move, give words to stroke patients who cannot otherwise speak, and calm and organize people whose memories are ravaged by Alzheimer’s or amnesia.

Music is irresistible, haunting, and unforgettable, and in Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks tells us why.

Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

Jonah Goldberg

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 357 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Shallow 1 out of 5 stars.
7 of 17 people found this review helpful.

Assuming all political positions must be plotted along a horizontal left-right x axis hurts the argument of this book. Rather, consider a four-sided model composed of x and y axes, where the familiar left/liberal and right/conservative positions are flanked on the north and south by libertarian/individualist and authoritarian/collectivist positions.

We can then account for the fact that both left and right can be guilty of so-called 'fascist' authoritarian/collectivist thinking in their ranks. We usually call it "totalitarian" when it occurs on the left, and "fascist" when it occurs on the right, for good reasons. Fascism was philosophically rooted in vitalism, rule by the physically better or stronger, where totalitarianism was supposed to be rule by the smarter or 'more rational'. So the right/fascist and left/totalitarian labels apply well to the distinctly different-flavored versions of collectivism on each side. Mr. Goldberg's argument then comes off as a pointless exercise in playground name-changing.

Mr. Goldberg seems to be saying nothing more than 'I know you are, but what am I?' in response to frustration at being called 'fascist'. How does it contribute to public discourse in any substantive way to make a whole book around renaming the totalitarian tendencies amongst real leftists 'fascism' instead of the perfectly intelligible and useful 'totalitarian'?

Editorial Review:

In this angry, funny, smart, contentious book, Jonah Goldberg offers a startling new perspective on the theories and practices that define fascist politics.