Tom B. Is Recommending:

How biology, psychology, and history shape us as individuals

We are doomed to repeat history if we fail to learn from it, but how are we affected by the forces that are invisible to us? In The Invisible History of the Human Race Christine Kenneally draws on cutting-edge research to reveal how both historical artifacts and DNA tell us where we come from and where we may be going. 

 

While some books explore our genetic inheritance and popular television shows celebrate ancestry, this is the first book to explore how everything from DNA to emotions to names and the stories that form our lives are all part of our human legacy. Kenneally shows how trust is inherited in Africa, silence is passed down in Tasmania, and how the history of nations is written in our DNA. From fateful, ancient encounters to modern mass migrations and medical diagnoses, Kenneally explains how the forces that shaped the history of the world ultimately shape each human who inhabits it.

The Invisible History of the Human Race is a deeply researched, carefully crafted and provocative perspective on how our stories, psychology, and genetics affect our past and our future.

 

 

 

"If people aren't calling you crazy, you aren't thinking big enough."
These days taking chances isn’t just for college dropouts in hoodies. Whether you work at a Fortune 500 company, a nonprofit, or a mom-and-pop, everybody needs to think and act like an entrepreneur. We all need to be nimble, adaptive, daring—and maybe even a little crazy—or risk being left behind.

But how do you take smart risks without risking it all? That’s Linda Rottenberg’s expertise. As the cofounder and CEO of Endeavor, the world’s leading organization dedicated to supporting fast-growing entrepreneurs, she’s spent the last two decades helping innovators think bold and execute smart.

Now Rottenberg draws on her unrivaled experience to show you the proven techniques to achieve your dreams: from overcoming fear to facing down critics, from stalking supporters to exploiting chaos. Crazy Is a Compliment combines inspiring stories, original research, and practical advice to create a road map for getting started and going bigger.

Rottenberg brings to life iconic entrepreneurs like Walt Disney and Estée Lauder and reveals how companies like MTV, GE, and Burberry found their best successes by breaking the corporate mold and embracing the entrepreneur mind-set. She also introduces us to some of the one thousand entrepreneurs she’s advised, like Leila Velez, who started a hair-care company in her kitchen sink in Rio that now earns $80 million a year. As Linda writes:

"Every day I meet people with a dream. Maybe you’re serving coffee and fantasizing about launching a microbrewery; maybe you’ve skipped college and yearn to start your own design firm; maybe you’re sitting in your cubicle and brainstorming a new idea that can improve your company.

You have a dream, but you don’t know how to turn your dream into reality. Or you’ve already launched your dream but you’re unsure how to take it to the next level. This book can show you the way."

 

 

When you stand in front of a work of art in a museum or exhibition, the first two questions you normally ask yourself are 1) Do I like it? and 2) Who's it by? When you stand in front of a work of art in an auction room or dealer's gallery, you ask these two questions followed by others: How much is it worth? How much will it be worth in five or ten years' time? And what will people think of me if they see it hanging on my wall?
 

Breakfast at Sotheby's is an alphabetical guide to how people reach answers to such questions, and how in the process art is given a financial value. Based on Philip Hook's thirty-five years' experience of the art market, Breakfast at Sotheby's explores the artist and his hinterland (including definitions for -isms, middle-brow artists, Gericault, and suicides), subject and style (from abstract art and banality through surrealism and war), "wall-power," provenance, and market weather.

Comic, revealing, piquant, splendid, and occasionally absurd, Breakfast at Sotheby's is a book of pleasure and intelligent observation, as engaged with art as it is with the world that surrounds it.  

 

 

The best selling book in the history of modern Vietnam, Ticket to Childhood has been nothing short of a sensation in its home country: it has sold over 350,000 copies and has gone through thirty-five printings. This, the novel's first appearance outside Vietnam, marks the arrival, in English, of a hugely appealing and engaging author. 

 

The story of a man looking back on his life, Ticket to Childhood captures the texture of childhood in all of its richness. As we learn of the small miracles and tragedies that made up the narrator's life--the misadventures and the misdeeds--we meet his long-lost friends, none of whom can forget how rich their lives once were. And even if Nguyen Nhat Anh can't take us back to our own childhoods, he captures those innocent times with a great deftness.
 

A fable that will charm adults and move children, Ticket to Childhood is sure to capture the hearts of American readers.

A brilliant study of Aristotle as biologist

The philosophical classics of Aristotle loom large over the history of Western thought, but the subject he most loved was biology. He wrote vast volumes about animals. He described them, classified them, told us where and how they live and how they develop in the womb or in the egg. He founded a science. It can even be said
that he founded science itself.

In The Lagoon, acclaimed biologist Armand Marie Leroi recovers Aristotle’s science. He revisits Aristotle’s writings and the places where he worked. He goes to the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos to see the creatures that Aristotle saw, where he saw them. He explores Aristotle’s observations,
his deep ideas, his inspired guesses—and the things he got wildly wrong. He shows how Aristotle’s science is deeply intertwined with his philosophical system and reveals that he was not only the first biologist, but also one of the greatest.

The Lagoon is both a travelogue and a study of the origins of science. And it shows how a philosopher who lived almost two millennia ago still has so much to teach us today.

In The Upside of Your Dark Side, two pioneering researchers in the field of psychology show that while mindfulness, kindness, and positivity can take us far, they cannot take us all the way. Sometimes, they can even hold us back. Emotions such as anger, anxiety, guilt, and sadness might feel uncomfortable, but it turns out that they are also incredibly useful. For instance: • Anger fuels creativity • Guilt sparks improvement • Self-doubt enhances performance.

In the same vein, we can become wiser and more effective when we harness the darker parts of our personality in certain situations. For instance: • Selfishness increases courage • Mindlessness leads to better decisions. The key lies in what the authors call “emotional, social, and mental agility,” the ability to access our full range of emotions and behavior—not just the “good” ones—in order to respond most effectively to whatever situation we might encounter.

Drawing on years of scientific research and a wide array of real-life examples including sports, the military, parenting, education, romance, business, and more, The Upside of Your Dark Side is a refreshing reality check that shows us how we can truly maximize our potential. With an appreciation of our entire psychological toolkit, we become whole—which allows us to climb the highest peaks and handle the deepest valleys.