Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness(Audiobook)
Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we all are susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself.
The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars
Weaving natural history, memoir, and the stories of maverick scientists, daring adventurers, and stargazing dreamers, this epic work takes us from Antarctica to outer space to tell the tale of how the study of meteorites became a scientific passion. A famed polar explorer who risked personal ruin-and the lives of his crew-in a quest for massive iron meteorites hidden in an Arctic wasteland.
Uncle Oscar was one of a kind. His dusty antiques shop, the Green Vase -- nestled in San Francisco's historic Jackson Square neighborhood -- was like his own personal museum to the Gold Rush era. Needless to say, I was shocked when he was found dead in his shop, and even more surprised to discover he'd left the venerable establishment to me!
As a general rule we do not want much encouragement to talk about ourselves; yet this little book is the result of a friendly suggestion, and even of a little friendly pressure. A Personal Record is an autobiographical work (or "fragment of biography") by Joseph Conrad, published in 1912. It has also been published under the titles A Personal Record: Some Reminiscences and Some Reminiscences. Notoriously unreliable and digressive in structure, it is nonetheless the principal contemporary source for information about the author's life. It tells about his schooling in Russian Poland, his sailing in Marseille, the influence of his Uncle Tadeusz, and the writing of Almayer's Folly.
The Chocolate Cake Sutra: Ingredients for a Sweet Life
Because everyone yearns for a recipe for a fruitful life, many may gravitate to this friendly, accessible "cookbook." A Buddhist priest and confessed chocolate cake devotee, Larkin (Stumbling Toward Enlightenment) started Still Point Zen center in inner city Detroit. In the best Zen tradition, she recounts many personal anecdotes that find their flavor percolating in that everyday existence. These stories rise to make vivid points in focused, economical chapters.
