Nonfiction Jewels
Discover Nonfiction Jewels: a curated collection of transformative true stories and ideas, featuring My Stroke of Insight, Blink, and The Art of Happiness—perfect for curious minds.
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My Stroke of Insight
by Jill Bolte Taylor
A brain scientist discusses suffering a stroke at the age of thirty-seven, describing her discovery of differences in the left and right side of the brain and the steps she took over a period of eight years to recover her health.
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Fortune's Formula
by William Poundstone
In 1961, MIT mathematics professor Ed Thorp made a small Vegas fortune by "counting cards"; his 1962 bestseller, "Beat the Dealer," made the phrase a household word. With Claude Shannon, the father of information theory, Thorp next conquered the roulette tables. In this prosaic but fascinating cultural history, the author tells not only what they did but how they did it.
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How Doctors Think
by Jerome E. Groopman
A physician discusses the thought patterns and actions that lead to misdiagnosis on the part of healthcare providers, and suggests methods that patients can use to help doctors assess conditions more accurately.
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The Art of Happiness
by Dalai Lama XIV Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho
Drawing on more that 2,500 years of Buddhist tradition and teaching, the spiritual leader demonstrates how to confront the negative emotions, stresses, and obstacles of everyday life in order to find the source of inner peace.
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The Fifties
by David Halberstam
The Fifties is a sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural history of the ten years that Halberstam regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon, but also of Harley Earl, who put fins on cars; Dick and Mac McDonald and Ray Kroc, who mass-produced the American hamburger; Kemmons Wilson, who placed his Holiday Inns along the nation's roadsides; U-2 pilot Gary Francis Powers; Grace Metalious, who wrote Peyton Place; and "Goody" Pincus, who led the team that invented the Pill. A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
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The Great Mortality
by John Kelly
La moria grandissima began its terrible journey across the European and Asian continents in 1347, leaving unimaginable devastation in its wake. Five years later, twenty-five million people were dead, felled by the scourge that would come to be called the Black Death. The Great Mortality is the extraordinary epic account of the worst natural disaster in European history -- a drama of courage, cowardice, misery, madness, and sacrifice that brilliantly illuminates humankind's darkest days when an old world ended and a new world was born.
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Warped Passages
by Lisa Randall
The universe has many secrets. It may hide additional dimensions of space other than the familier three we recognize. There might even be another universe adjacent to ours, invisible and unattainable . . . for now. Warped Passages is a brilliantly readable and altogether exhilarating journey that tracks the arc of discovery from early twentieth-century physics to the razor's edge of modern scientific theory. One of the world's leading theoretical physicists, Lisa Randall provides astonishing scientific possibilities that, until recently, were restricted to the realm of science fiction. Unraveling the twisted threads of the most current debates on relativity, quantum mechanics, and gravity, she explores some of the most fundamental questions posed by Nature—taking us into the warped, hidden dimensions underpinning the universe we live in, demystifying the science of the myriad worlds that may exist just beyond our own.