No Ordinary Day


Book Description

Shortlisted for the SYRCA 2013 Diamond Willow Award, selected as an American Library Association 2012 Notable Children's Book, a Booklist Editors' Choice, nominated for the OLA Golden Oak Tree Award, and a finalist for the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Awards: Young Adult/Middle Reader Award, the Governor General's Literary Awards: Children's Text and the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award There's not much that upsets young Valli. Even though her days are spent picking coal and fighting with her cousins, life in the coal town of Jharia, India, is the only life she knows. The only sight that fills her with terror are the monsters who live on the other side of the train tracks -- the lepers. Valli and the other children throw stones at them. No matter how hard her life is, she tells herself, at least she will never be one of them. Then she discovers that she is not living with family after all, that her "aunt" was a stranger who was paid money to take Valli off her own family's hands. She decides to leave Jharia ... and so begins a series of adventures that takes her to Kolkata, the city of the gods. It's not so bad. Valli finds that she really doesn't need much to live. She can "borrow" the things she needs and then pass them on to people who need them more than she does. It helps that though her bare feet become raw wounds as she makes her way around the city, she somehow feels no pain. But when she happens to meet a doctor on the ghats by the river, Valli learns that she has leprosy. Despite being given a chance to receive medical care, she cannot bear the thought that she is one of those monsters she has always feared, and she flees, to an uncertain life on the street. Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.3 Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character's thoughts, words, or actions). CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.3 Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact). CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.6 Explain how an author develops the point of view of the narrator or speaker in a text.




Methods of Desire


Book Description

Since the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, Indonesia has undergone a radical program of administrative decentralization and neoliberal reforms. In Methods of Desire, author Aurora Donzelli explores these changes through an innovative perspective—one that locates the production of neoliberalism in novel patterns of language use and new styles of affect display. Building on almost two decades of fieldwork, Donzelli describes how the growing influence of transnational lending agencies is transforming the ways in which people desire and voice their expectations, intentions, and entitlements within the emergent participatory democracy and restructuring of Indonesia’s political economy. She argues that a largely overlooked aspect of the Era Reformasi concerns the transition from a moral regime centered on the expectation that desires should remain hidden to a new emphasis on the public expression of individuals’ aspirations. The book examines how the large-scale institutional transformations that followed the collapse of the Suharto regime have impacted people’s lives and imaginations in the relatively remote and primarily rural Toraja highlands of Sulawesi. A novel concept of the individual as a bundle of audible and measurable desires has emerged, one that contrasts with the deep-rooted reticence toward the expression of personal preferences. The spreading of foreign discursive genres such as customer satisfaction surveys, training sessions, electoral mission statements, and fundraising auctions, and the diffusion of new textual artifacts such as checklists, flowcharts, and workflow diagrams are producing forms of citizenship, political participation, and moral agency that contrast with the longstanding epistemologies of secrecy typical of local styles of knowledge and power. Donzelli’s long-term ethnographic study examines how these foreign protocols are being received, absorbed, and readapted in a peripheral community of the Indonesian archipelago. Combining a telescopic perspective on our contemporary moment with a microscopic analysis of conversational practices, the author argues that the managerial forms of political rationality and the entrepreneurial morality underwriting neoliberal apparatuses proliferate through the working of small cogs, that is, acts of speech. By examining these concrete communicative exchanges, she sheds light on both the coherence and inconsistency underlying the worldwide diffusion of market logic to all domains of life.




Parting Knowledge


Book Description

There are forms of knowing that seem either to come from a parting or to require one. Paradigmatically in Genesis, Adam parts from God in order to join in knowledge with his partner, the flesh of his flesh, and the result is a bereft but not unpromising knowledge, looking like a labor of love. Saint Augustine famously--some would say infamously--reads the Genesis paradigm of knowing as a story of original sin, where parting is both damnable and disfiguring and reuniting a matter of incomprehensible grace. Roughly half the essays in this collection engage directly with Augustine's theological animus and follow his thinking into self-division, perversity of will, grief, conversion, and the aspiration for transcendence. The remaining ones, more concerned with grace than with sin, bring an animus more distantly Augustinian to the preemption of forgiveness and the persistence of hell, morality and its limits, sexual piety, strange beauty, and a philosophy that takes in confession. The common pull of all the essays is towards the imperfection in self-knowledge--a place of disfigurement perhaps, but also a nod to transformation.




The Botany of Desire


Book Description

“Pollan shines a light on our own nature as well as on our implication in the natural world.” —The New York Times “A wry, informed pastoral.” —The New Yorker The book that helped make Michael Pollan, the New York Times bestselling author of How to Change Your Mind, Cooked and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, one of the most trusted food experts in America Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers’ genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?




No Ordinary Son


Book Description




Brave Thinking


Book Description

BRAVE THINKING is the culmination of more than 40 years of study, and 30 years of teaching this technology of transformation. People struggle with relationships. They struggle with money. They struggle with health. I’ve been coaching first as a minister, then for the last decade as a trainer outside the church world. But teaching, studying, and working in this laboratory called life. I’ve been both a student, and I’ve been a trainer in this laboratory, helping people unlock what it is they would love to have, be, do, give in their life. And helping them understand their capacity to do this. To use brave thinking and tap into the field of infinite possibility, potentiality, and work with a particular dream vision for their lives, so they can begin to see the pattern. Because once you see the pattern of how thoughts become things and how you can take what looks like very little and translate it into something much more – it’s as different as moving from simple addition to squaring in math. When you are working with simple addition, the only way to get to 25 is you must amass 25 ones. When you learn to multiply you find that you only need two 5’s to get to that same result. It takes way less effort and you have way more results. And when you move up the ladder of awareness a little bit further, you see you only need one 5. Brave Thinking will help people recognize that they have everything they need to live a life they love living, and a life that really has meaning and purpose and substance and significance. And I know how to do that. I know how to help them. BRAVE THINKING provides the code to a very different kind of thinking. Either one opens the doors to a potential that is something we are in love with, or something we fear. The purpose of this book is to provide very concrete direct clear simple understandings. Such as the world was flat or other kinds of commonplace thinking and help them recognize how much of that has governed their lives or the lives of people they know. It will show examples of people who dared to think beyond the boundaries of ordinary thinking and who dared to learn a new system of thinking. Rather than being condition based in a way of living life, they began to live a life that is vision-driven. And they came from a vision rather than living from circumstance. Most people think that when the circumstances change, ¡§then I can make a new decision, “then I can have something” “then I can be something,” “then I can do something.” What if it’s just the opposite? When you watch your television, and there are other common examples we’ll use, when you turn on a TV, the picture you are seeing comes from the frequency that your tuner is tuned to. And when you go to a movie theater, the dancing images on the screen are simply reflections of the light passing through the film that’s held before the projector.




The Prosperity Bible


Book Description

In a beautiful, durable volume suited to a lifetime of use, here is the all-in-one "bible" on how to harness the creative powers of your mind to achieve a life of prosperity-packaged in a handsome display box with a ribbon bookmark. The Prosperity Bible is a one-of-a-kind resource that collects the greatest moneymaking secrets of authors from every field-religion, finance, philosophy, and self-help-and makes them available in an attractive, keepsake edition. This is a book to treasure and return to again and again for guidance, ideas, know-how, and inspiration. Here is the only single volume where you can read success advice from Napoleon Hill, P. T. Barnum, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Fillmore, Wallace D. Wattles, Florence Scovel Shinn, and Ernest Holmes-along with a bevy of million-copy-selling writers who have one key element in common: a commitment to understanding and promulgating the laws of winning. These are the beloved teachers and writers who created the idea of a mental formula for success. Their principles, comprehensively collected in nineteen selected writings, have been proved in the experience of millions of men and women who have cherished their works from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Now they are enshrined in this all-in-one treasury-complete in a handsome display box with a ribbon bookmark.




Napoleon Hill Collection


Book Description

Start down your path to prosperity the right way—four essential books on wealth and self-improvement by Napoleon Hill! Napoleon Hill is considered by many to be the first and most important name in self-help and prosperity—now, for the first time, Tarcher/Penguin offers you his most important works in one place! Think and Grow Rich This book has been called the "Granddaddy of All Motivational Literature." It was the first book to boldly ask, "What makes a winner?" The man who asked and listened for the answer, Napoleon Hill, is now counted in the top ranks of the world's winners himself. In the original Think and Grow Rich, published in 1937, Hill draws on the life stories of Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and other millionaires of his generation. In the updated version, Arthur R. Pell, Ph.D., a nationally known author, lecturer, consultant in human resources management, and an expert in applying Hill's thought, interweaves anecdotes of how contemporary millionaires and billionaires—such as Bill Gates, Mary Kay Ash, Dave Thomas, and Sir John Templeton—achieved their wealth. Outmoded or arcane terminology and examples are faithfully refreshed to preclude any stumbling blocks to a new generation of readers. Think Your Way to Wealth Returned to print after many years of unavailability, this book opens the doorway to a treasury of wisdom. Think Your Way to Wealth captures Napoleon Hill's initial encounter with Andrew Carnegie, who revealed the money-attracting strategy that Hill later popularized in his later work. Think Your Way to Wealth is Hill's vivid account of that seminal meeting and captures Carnegie's initial advice, how-to’s, practical steps, and concrete directions. Originally published in 1948, Think Your Way to Wealth has been out of print and unavailable for many years. This new Tarcher Success Classics edition reproduces the complete, original text just as Hill first presented it. The Master Key to Riches The Master-Key to Riches is the blueprint that Napoleon Hill placed in the hands of those who would teach and perfect his success methods. Now revised and updated for the twenty-first century to avoid arcane language or points of reference, this book contains the full range of ideas and exercises that appeared in the original edition. In this volume, Hill covers lessons including: * The Law of Cosmic Habitforce * Andrew Carnegie's "Master Mind" Method * The Magic of Going the "Extra Mile" * The Twelve True Riches of Life The Magic Ladder to Success This book is the volume in which Napoleon Hill first distilled the seventeen factors that make up his "Law of Success" philosophy. These key principles capture the ethics and actions that empower all who harness them to become leaders in the field of their choice. Leaders are not born, Hill argues, they are molded by a remarkably similar, simple, and dynamic set of habits. The Magic Ladder to Success is Napoleon Hill's lost classic—long out of print, this new edition has been revised and updated for the twenty-first century.




Essential Prosperity


Book Description

The ultimate collection of books for life-changing success It’s time to stop living your life on the margins and claim the financial success you deserve. Essential Prosperity is a treasury of wisdom that will empower you to move from a life of want—defined by debt, fear, and missed possibilities—to one of true success. You have the power and potential to create the life of abundance you’ve always imagined and Essential Prosperity will show you how. Essential Prosperity includes fourteen life changing books from the thought leaders and teachers whose work has changed the world, including: - The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason - Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill - Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy - As a Man Thinketh by James Allen - Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles - The Game of Life by Florence Scovel Shinn - The Golden Key by Emmet Fox - The Go-Getter by Peter B. Kyne - How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett - Acres of Diamonds by Russell Conwell - Creative Mind and Success by Ernest Holmes - The Secret of Success by William Walker Atkinson - The Life Power and How to Use It by Elizabeth Towne - Prosperity by Annie Rix Militz These experts speak from every background—from self-help and spirituality to finance and business—each of them sharing the secrets to building life changing wealth and prosperity.




No Ordinary Time


Book Description

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Pulitzer Prize–winning classic about the relationship between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, and how it shaped the nation while steering it through the Great Depression and the outset of World War II. With an extraordinary collection of details, Goodwin masterfully weaves together a striking number of story lines—Eleanor and Franklin’s marriage and remarkable partnership, Eleanor’s life as First Lady, and FDR’s White House and its impact on America as well as on a world at war. Goodwin effectively melds these details and stories into an unforgettable and intimate portrait of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and of the time during which a new, modern America was born.