When one examines the vast amount of material which has been amassed as the result of many prisoners' observations and experiences, three phases of the inmate's mental reactions to camp life become apparent: the period following his admission;

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis

Jul 4th, 2016 14m 3s

IT WAS HORRIBLY unfair: a public resource—all the fish in the Icelandic sea—was simply turned over to a handful of lucky Icelanders. Overnight, Iceland had its first billionaires, and they were all fishermen. But as social policy it was ingenio

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

Jun 28th, 2016 18m 3s

THIS BOOK ATTEMPTS TO PROVIDE A SHORT HISTORY OF everybody for the last 13,000 years. The question motivating the book is: Why did history unfold differently on different continents? In case this question immediately makes you shudder at the th

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

Jun 27th, 2016 13m 11s

Perhaps one reason for the great appeal of the group-selection theory is that it is thoroughly in tune with the moral and political ideals that most of us share. We may frequently behave selfishly as individuals, but in our more idealistic mome

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Jun 24th, 2016 13m 8s

The evidence is persuasive: activities that impose high demands on System 2 require self-control, and the exertion of self-control is depleting and unpleasant. Unlike cognitive load, ego depletion is at least in part a loss of motivation. After

Quiet by Susan Cain

Jun 23rd, 2016 13m 37s

So what do introverted leaders do differently from—and sometimes better than—extroverts? One answer comes from the work of Wharton management professor Adam Grant, who has spent considerable time consulting with Fortune 500 executives and milit

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Jun 22nd, 2016 18m 12s

The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea, and the idea is very simple. It is that the best way to understand the emergence of fashion trends, the ebb and flow of crime waves, or, for that matter, the transformation of unknown books into be

Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck

Jun 15th, 2016 16m 30s

In long-range planning for a trip, I think there is a private conviction that it won’t happen. As the day approached, my warm bed and comfortable house grew increasingly desirable and my dear wife incalculably precious. To give these up for thr

Future Shock by Alvin Toffler

Jun 15th, 2016 16m 58s

Painting with the broadest of brush strokes, biologist Julian Huxley informs us that "The tempo of human evolution during recorded history is at least 100,000 times as rapid as that of pre-human evolution." Inventions or improvements of a magni

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (an audiobook excerpt)

Jun 13th, 2016 12m 35s

Our present ideas about the motion of bodies date back to Galileo and Newton. Before them people believed Aristotle, who said that the natural state of a body was to be at rest and that it moved only if driven by a force or impulse. It followed

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan (an audiobook excerpt)

Jun 13th, 2016 16m 13s

The first thing to understand about nutritionism is that it is not the same thing as nutrition. As the “-ism” suggests, it is not a scientific subject but an ideology. Ideologies are ways of organizing large swaths of life and experience under

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene (the complete list)

Jun 9th, 2016 22m 38s

Law 1: Never Outshine the Master Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity. M

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Jun 8th, 2016 13m 38s

We tend to think of cancer as a modern illness because its metaphors are so modern. It is a disease of overproduction, of fulminant growth, growth unstoppable, growth tipped into the abyss of no control. Modern biology encourages us to imagine

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (an audiobook excerpt)

Jun 5th, 2016 17m 22s

THERE WAS ONCE a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, whit

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

Jun 1st, 2016 11m 24s

Write in a way that draws the reader's attention to the sense and substance of the writing, rather than to the mood and temper of the author. If the writing is solid and good, the mood and temper of the writer will eventually be revealed and no

Religion for Atheists by Alain de Botton (free audiobook excerpt)

Jun 1st, 2016 14m 47s

...Images of tranquillity and security haunt it: a particular job, social conquest or material acquisition always seems to hold out the promise of an end to craving. In reality, however, each worry will soon enough be replaced by another, and o

Antifragile by Nassim Taleb (an audiobook excerpt)

May 27th, 2016 12m 12s

Passage 1: Let us call Mithridatization the result of an exposure to a small dose of a substance that, over time, makes one immune to additional, larger quantities of it. Passage 2: Lenin in Zurich. I was recently in a cafe-turned-expensive-res

The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle (an audiobook excerpt)

May 26th, 2016 15m 29s

Passage 1: Brazil's Secret Weapon. Like many sports fans around the world, soccer coach Simon Clifford was fascinated by the supernatural skills of Brazilian soccer players... Passage 2: So began Ericsson's thirty year odyssey through the kingd

Focus by Daniel Goleman (free audiobook excerpt)

May 25th, 2016 18m 8s

Passage 1: Has attention shrunk? There's a swing band from Shanghai playing lounge music in a crowded Swiss convention hall with hundreds of people milling about... Passage 2: Restoring attention. On vacation at a tropical resort with his famil

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race by Jared Diamond

May 23rd, 2016 18m 7s

To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught us that our earth isn't the center of the universe but merely one of billions of heavenly bodies. From biology we learned that we weren't specially created by God but e

Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching or the Book of Tao) by Lao Tzu, translated by Jonathan Star

May 23rd, 2016 5m 32s

Verse 2 of the Book of Tao, translated by Jonathan Star: Everyone recognizes beauty only because of ugliness Everyone recognizes virtue only because of sin Life and death are born together Difficult and easy Long and short High and low – all th

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (an audiobook excerpt)

May 23rd, 2016 16m 58s

Passage 1: Armed with information, experts can exert a gigantic, if unspoken, leverage: fear. Fear that your children will find you dead on the bathroom floor of a heart attack if you do not have angioplasty surgery. Fear that a cheap casket wi

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (an audiobook excerpt)

May 19th, 2016 16m 29s

The Birth of the Passion Hypothesis. It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when our society began emphasizing the importance of following your passion, but a good approximation is the 1970 publication of What Color Is Your Parachute? The