Slightly Out Of Focus


Book Description

In 1942, a dashing young man who liked nothing so much as a heated game of poker, a good bottle of scotch, and the company of a pretty girl hopped a merchant ship to England. He was Robert Capa, the brilliant and daring photojournalist, and Collier’s magazine had put him on assignment to photograph the war raging in Europe. In these pages, Capa recounts his terrifying journey through the darkest battles of World War II and shares his memories of the men and women of the Allied forces who befriended, amused, and captivated him along the way. His photographs are masterpieces — John G. Morris, Magnum Photos’ first executive editor, called Capa “the century’s greatest battlefield photographer” — and his writing is by turns riotously funny and deeply moving. From Sicily to London, Normandy to Algiers, Capa experienced some of the most trying conditions imaginable, yet his compassion and wit shine on every page of this book. Charming and profound, Slightly Out of Focus is a marvelous memoir told in words and pictures by an extraordinary man.—Print Ed.




Focusing


Book Description

The classic guide to a powerful technique that can increase your mindfulness and lead to personal transformation Based on groundbreaking research conducted at the University of Chicago, the focusing technique has gained widespread popularity and scholarly acclaim. It consists of six easy-to-master steps that identify and change the way thoughts and emotions are held within the body. Focusing can be done virtually anywhere, at any time, and an entire “session” can take no longer than ten minutes, but its effects can be felt immediately–in the relief of bodily tension and psychological stress, as well as in dramatic shifts in understanding and insight. In this highly accessible guide, Dr. Eugene Gendlin, the award-winning psychologist who developed the focusing technique, explains the basic principles behind focusing and offers simple step-by-step instructions on how to utilize this powerful tool for tapping into greater self-awareness and inner wisdom. As you learn to develop your natural ability to “focus,” you’ll find yourself more in sync with both mind and body, filled with greater self-assurance, and better equipped to make the positive changes necessary to improve and enhance every aspect of your life.




Fewer, Better Things


Book Description

From the former director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, a timely and passionate case for the role of the well-designed object in the digital age. Curator and scholar Glenn Adamson opens Fewer, Better Things by contrasting his beloved childhood teddy bear to the smartphones and digital tablets children have today. He laments that many children and adults are losing touch with the material objects that have nurtured human development for thousands of years. The objects are still here, but we seem to care less and know less about them. In his presentations to groups, he often asks an audience member what he or she knows about the chair the person is sitting in. Few people know much more than whether it's made of wood, plastic, or metal. If we know little about how things are made, it's hard to remain connected to the world around us. Fewer, Better Things explores the history of craft in its many forms, explaining how raw materials, tools, design, and technique come together to produce beauty and utility in handmade or manufactured items. Whether describing the implements used in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, the use of woodworking tools, or the use of new fabrication technologies, Adamson writes expertly and lovingly about the aesthetics of objects, and the care and attention that goes into producing them. Reading this wise and elegant book is a truly transformative experience.




Deep Work


Book Description

AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF 2O16 PICK IN BUSINESS & LEADERSHIP WALL STREET JOURNAL BUSINESS BESTSELLER A BUSINESS BOOK OF THE WEEK AT 800-CEO-READ Master one of our economy’s most rare skills and achieve groundbreaking results with this “exciting” book (Daniel H. Pink) from an “exceptional” author (New York Times Book Review). Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep Work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way. In Deep Work, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill. 1. Work Deeply 2. Embrace Boredom 3. Quit Social Media 4. Drain the Shallows A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. Deep Work is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.




Stolen Focus


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Our ability to pay attention is collapsing. From the author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections comes a groundbreaking examination of why this is happening—and how to get our attention back. “The book the world needs in order to win the war on distraction.”—Adam Grant, author of Think Again “Read this book to save your mind.”—Susan Cain, author of Quiet WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Post, Mashable, Mindful In the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions—even abandoning his phone for three months—but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention—and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong. We think our inability to focus is a personal failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces that have left us uniquely vulnerable to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit. Hari found that there are twelve deep causes of this crisis, from the decline of mind-wandering to rising pollution, all of which have robbed some of our attention. In Stolen Focus, he introduces readers to Silicon Valley dissidents who learned to hack human attention, and veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD. He explores a favela in Rio de Janeiro where everyone lost their attention in a particularly surreal way, and an office in New Zealand that discovered a remarkable technique to restore workers’ productivity. Crucially, Hari learned how we can reclaim our focus—as individuals, and as a society—if we are determined to fight for it. Stolen Focus will transform the debate about attention and finally show us how to get it back.




Get Slightly Famous


Book Description

I build levers to move objects that appear to be immovable.Alexei Drovosek represents the next evolution of human: no heart, immunity to cancer, and the uncanny ability to survive in conditions that would kill normal men. As an orphan growing up in post-Soviet Russia, Alexei was taken in by the state and trained as its most vicious and effective killer. But eventually the Russian Federal Security Service's best-trained assassin did the most dangerous thing of all: he turned on his handlers, went rogue, and disappeared.In the bleak, high-tech near future, Alexei has resurfaced in a secret compound on the outskirts of Los Angeles, a city where autonomous-drive vehicles race along the highways and independent city-states operate with materialistic impunity. In the center of it all is the soaring headquarters of Pearl Knight Industries, an international mega-corporation that keeps war machines and cultural capitalism running in every country and on every continent on the planet. As a principal proponent of the 31st Amendment to the United States constitution, which legalized the transfer of suffrage from citizens to corporations, Pearl Knight has power that is truly above the law.Alexei lives a clandestine existence where his closest companions are his personal AI, Emma, and a group of orphans he has spent years amassing and training. But Alexei isn't fostering these children as a favor to the state; he's raising them with the hope that they will destroy it. As he moves each child into play in the world's highest-stakes game of chess that spans decades and continents, Alexei fights to destroy the plutocratic control of those in power and restore what matters to him most: democracy and freedom.




The Sense of an Ending


Book Description

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.




The Sweetness of Water (Oprah's Book Club)


Book Description

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER / AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK ONE OF PRESIDENT OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021 Winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Longlisted for the 2022 Carnegie Medal for Excellence Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize In the spirit of The Known World and The Underground Railroad, "a miraculous debut" (Washington Post)​ and "a towering achievement of imagination" (CBS This Morning)about the unlikely bond between two freedmen who are brothers and the Georgia farmer whose alliance will alter their lives, and his, forever--from "a storyteller with bountiful insight and assurance" (Kirkus) A Best Book of the Year: Oprah Daily, NPR, Washington Post, Time, Boston Globe, Smithsonian, Chicago Public Library, BookBrowse, and the Oregonian A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A July Indie Next Pick In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry--freed by the Emancipation Proclamation--seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys. Parallel to their story runs a forbidden romance between two Confederate soldiers. The young men, recently returned from the war to the town of Old Ox, hold their trysts in the woods. But when their secret is discovered, the resulting chaos, including a murder, unleashes convulsive repercussions on the entire community. In the aftermath of so much turmoil, it is Isabelle who emerges as an unlikely leader, proffering a healing vision for the land and for the newly free citizens of Old Ox. With candor and sympathy, debut novelist Nathan Harris creates an unforgettable cast of characters, depicting Georgia in the violent crucible of Reconstruction. Equal parts beauty and terror, as gripping as it is moving, The Sweetness of Water is an epic whose grandeur locates humanity and love amid the most harrowing circumstances.




Now, Discover Your Strengths


Book Description

The 20th anniversary edition of Now, Discover Your Strengths comes with an access code to the Clifton StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment. This updated assessment includes reports and resources that go far beyond the standardized reports of the older assessment by providing you with personalized insight statements unique to your specific combination of strengths. The original publication of Now, Discover Your Strengths in 2001 launched a worldwide strengths revolution. To date, more than 20 million people have discovered their strengths, and tens of thousands more are discovering theirs every week. Gallup Press has published numerous strengths-based books, and Gallup Strengths Center has become a worldwide destination for strengths-based development. Since the book's release, Gallup has continued to dedicate countless hours to developing our strengths science, the brainchild of the late Dr. Donald O. Clifton, who was named Father of Strengths-Based Psychology by the American Psychological Association. Part of that investment resulted in Clifton StrengthsFinder 2.0 -- a refined upgrade of the original assessment for discovering your strengths. To ensure that you have the best possible experience in discovering and developing your strengths, we have made Clifton StrengthsFinder 2.0 available to those who purchase the 20th anniversary edition of Now, Discover Your Strengths. The updated assessment includes new reports and resources, including the Strengths Insight and Action-Planning Guide. This guide goes far beyond the standardized reports of the older assessment by providing you with personalized insight statements unique to your specific combination of strengths. These highly customized Strengths Insights are an in-depth analysis of your top five strengths. They describe who you are in astonishing detail and provide you with a comprehensive understanding of yourself, your strengths and what makes you stand out. These updated resources, in combination with the 20th anniversary edition of Now, Discover Your Strengths, give you the best opportunity to soar with your strengths -- at work and in your life.




Slightly Invisible


Book Description

When Charlie insists that his little sister, Lola, leave him and his friend Marv alone to play, she agrees but soon she and her invisible friend, Soren Lorensen, must come to the boys' rescue.