Transform and enhance your working relationships through mindful co-working. Are you making the most of your co-working relationships? Most of us work with others and spend as much time with colleagues as we do with our families - so it's important our working relationships run smoothly. By helping workers become more attuned to their colleagues, mindful co-working removes the pressure and stress of competition from working relationships to make them both more enjoyable and more effective. Author Clark Baim shares the secrets he has learned with co-workers and co-trainers during more than 2,000 training workshops. He also includes practical exercises and useful tools to help you perfect the art, whatever field you work in. This indispensable guide to co-working is required reading for anyone who wants to work confidently with colleagues - and enjoy it!

The New York Times bestselling Freakonomics changed the way we see the world, exposing the hidden side of just about everything. Then came SuperFreakonomics, a documentary film, an award-winning podcast, and more.

Now, with Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have written their most revolutionary book yet. With their trademark blend of captivating storytelling and unconventional analysis, they take us inside their thought process and teach us all to think a bit more productively, more creatively, more rationally—to think, that is, like a Freak.

Levitt and Dubner offer a blueprint for an entirely new way to solve problems, whether your interest lies in minor lifehacks or major global reforms. As always, no topic is off-limits. They range from business to philanthropy to sports to politics, all with the goal of retraining your brain. Along the way, you’ll learn the secrets of a Japanese hot-dog-eating champion, the reason an Australian doctor swallowed a batch of dangerous bacteria, and why Nigerian e-mail scammers make a point of saying they’re from Nigeria.

Some of the steps toward thinking like a Freak:

First, put away your moral compass—because it’s hard to see a problem clearly if you’ve already decided what to do about it. Learn to say “I don’t know”—for until you can admit what you don’t yet know, it’s virtually impossible to learn what you need to. Think like a child—because you’ll come up with better ideas and ask better questions. Take a master class in incentives—because for better or worse, incentives rule our world. Learn to persuade people who don’t want to be persuaded—because being right is rarely enough to carry the day. Learn to appreciate the upside of quitting—because you can’t solve tomorrow’s problem if you aren’t willing to abandon today’s dud.

Levitt and Dubner plainly see the world like no one else. Now you can too. Never before have such iconoclastic thinkers been so revealing—and so much fun to read.

A one-stop resource of practical exercises for professionals to use in direct work with offenders aged 16+. Changing Offending Behaviour is a guide to the essentials of rehabilitation theory which also equips the reader with ready-to-use photocopiable exercises and activities to help put the theory into practice in rehabilitation work with adult offenders. Drawing on a range of evidence-based methodologies, theories and treatment approaches, including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Attachment Theory, Relationally-based Therapies, Social Learning Theory, Motivational Interviewing and the Cycle of Change, this resource provides exercises to increase self-understanding, examine patterns of behaviour, and build empathy and other crucial skills. All the exercises are culturally aware and designed for maximum flexibility to meet different needs and learning styles. Covering must-know theory and packed with practical exercises that work, this is an indispensable resource for probation workers and related professionals.

Best-selling and top practitioner and student work for people who run therapy groups of all kinds, explaining how drama can be used with offenders and similar target groups who find it easier to express themselves in this way - In use across the UK by therapists and groupwork specialists. First-rate reviews. Geese Theatre UK is an associate group of of Geese Theater USA where the method was originally developed by John Bergman. The Geese Theatre Handbook explains the thinking behind the company's approach to applied drama with offenders and people at risk of offending, including young people. Contains 100+ exercises with explanations, instructions and suggestions Helps practitioners develop their own style and approach Materials can be readily adapted to other settings including conflict resolution, restorative justice and interpersonal skills training A Key Resource for Offending behaviour groupworkers Probation officers Youth workers Youth offending teams Prison officers Social workers Criminologists Community workers Forensic psychologists Psychotherapists Mental health professionals Community theatre workers and actors Drama teachers Drama-in-education and theatre-in-education practitioners Drama therapists and other creative arts therapists Adventure therapists Group and individual therapists and counsellors Psychodramatists Sociodramatists Professional team builders Team supervisors Family therapists Staff training and development officers Conflict resolution workers Special needs workers and teachers ...and people training or studying in these and related fields. Reviews 'A generous book [which] provides a treasure chest of games and exercise for any group setting . . . a wealth of food for thought . . . for trainers of all kinds . . . an invaluable addition to the Waterside list': Criminal Justice Matters 'An invaluable resource': Prison Service News 'Fascinating . . . Excellent . . . If you're involved with offenders or other risk groups, buy it': The Magistrate 'An absolute treasure trove for people who work with groups - in mental health, schools, training, social work - wherever': Mental Health Today

The book that started the Quiet Revolution

At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society. 

In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts—from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves.

Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content

Working with Sex Offenders is a unique book which brings together leading practitioners in the field to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date distillation of relevant guidance to assist anyone who works with sex offenders.

The authors examine topics including assessment, treatment, supervision and safeguarding. Skills and strategies for successful engagement with offenders are a key focus of the book, as well as improving understanding of underpinning factors associated with offending and desistance.

This volume, which is derived from well-received presentations hosted by the UK’s National Organisation for the Treatment of Abusers (NOTA) over a number of years, also offers a detailed examination of individual, organisational and societal roles in relation to identifying and preventing sexual abuse in our communities.

Using case examples throughout, Working with Sex Offenders will be essential reading for all professionals involved in the management and treatment of sex offenders.

Look out for Daniel Pink’s new book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

#1 New York Times Business Bestseller
#1 Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller
#1 Washington Post bestseller

From the bestselling author of Drive and A Whole New Mind comes a surprising--and surprisingly useful--new book that explores the power of selling in our lives.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, one in nine Americans works in sales. Every day more than fifteen million people earn their keep by persuading someone else to make a purchase.

But dig deeper and a startling truth emerges:

Yes, one in nine Americans works in sales. But so do the other eight.

Whether we’re employees pitching colleagues on a new idea, entrepreneurs enticing funders to invest, or parents and teachers cajoling children to study, we spend our days trying to move others. Like it or not, we’re all in sales now.

To Sell Is Human offers a fresh look at the art and science of selling. As he did in Drive and A Whole New Mind, Daniel H. Pink draws on a rich trove of social science for his counterintuitive insights. He reveals the new ABCs of moving others (it's no longer "Always Be Closing"), explains why extraverts don't make the best salespeople, and shows how giving people an "off-ramp" for their actions can matter more than actually changing their minds.

Along the way, Pink describes the six successors to the elevator pitch, the three rules for understanding another's perspective, the five frames that can make your message clearer and more persuasive, and much more. The result is a perceptive and practical book--one that will change how you see the world and transform what you do at work, at school, and at home.

Look out for Daniel Pink’s new book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic "right-brain" thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn't.

Drawing on research from around the world, Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others) outlines the six fundamentally human abilities that are absolute essentials for professional success and personal fulfillment--and reveals how to master them. A Whole New Mind takes readers to a daring new place, and a provocative and necessary new way of thinking about a future that's already here.

THE BESTSELLING CLASSIC ON CONCEPT OF 'FLOW' – THE KEY TO UNLOCKING MEANING, CREATIVITY, AND TRUE HAPPINESS

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's famous investigations of "optimal experience" have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. In this new edition of his groundbreaking classic work, Csikszentmihalyi ("the leading researcher into ‘flow states’" —Newsweek) demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience teaches how, by ordering the information that enters our consciousness, we can discover true happiness and greatly improve the quality of our lives.

"Explores a happy state of mind called flow, the feeling of complete engagement in a creative or playful activity." —Time

Why are some people able to make positive change while others remain the same? 

In his international bestseller, The Happiness Advantage, Harvard trained researcher Shawn Achor described why happiness is the precursor to greater success. This book is about what comes before both. Because before we can be happy or successful, we need to first develop the ability to see that positive change is possible. Only once we learn to see the world through a more positive lens can we summon all our motivation, emotion, and intelligence to achieve our personal and professional goals.

In Before Happiness, Achor reveals five actionable, proven strategies for changing our lens to positive:
 
- The Most Valuable Reality: See a broader range of ideas and solutions by changing the details on which your brain chooses to focus 
- Success Mapping: Set goals oriented around the things in life that matter to you most, whether career advancement or family or making a difference in the world
- The X-spot: Use success accelerants to propel you more quickly towards those goals, whether finishing a marathon, reaching a sales target, learning a language, or losing 10 pounds
- Noise-Canceling: Boost the signal pointing you to opportunities and possibilities that others miss
- Positive Inception: Transfer these skills to your team, your employees, and everyone around you 
 
By mastering these strategies, you’ll create an renewable source of positivity, motivation, and engagement that will allow you to reach your fullest potential in everything you do.

A revised edition of the classic bestselling how to draw book. A life-changing book, this fully revised and updated edition of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is destined to inspire generations of readers and artists to come.

Translated into more than seventeen languages, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is the world's most widely used instructional drawing book. Whether you are drawing as a professional artist, as an artist in training, or as a hobby, this book will give you greater confidence in your ability and deepen your artistic perception, as well as foster a new appreciation of the world around you. This revised/updated fourth edition includes:

• a new introduction;
• crucial updates based on recent research on the brain's plasticity and the enormous value of learning new skills/ utilizing the right hemisphere of the brain;
• new focus on how the ability to draw on the strengths of the right hemisphere can serve as an antidote to the increasing left-brain emphasis in American life-the worship of all that is linear, analytic, digital, etc.;
• an informative section that addresses recent research linking early childhood "scribbling" to later language development and the importance of parental encouragement of this activity;
• and new reproductions of master drawings throughout

In his decades as a psychotherapist and creativity coach, Eric Maisel has found a common thread behind what often gets labeled “writer’s block,” “procrastination,” or “stage fright.” It’s the particular anxiety that, paradoxically, keeps creators from doing, completing, or sharing the work they are driven toward. This “creative anxiety” can take the form of avoiding the work, declaring it not good enough, or failing to market it — and it can cripple creators for decades, even lifetimes. But Maisel has learned what sets successful creators apart. He shares these strategies here, including artist-specific stress management; how to work despite bruised egos, day jobs, and other inevitable frustrations; and what not to do to deal with anxiety. Implementing these 24 lessons replaces the pain of not creating with the profound rewards of free artistic self-expression.

Ever been to so many meetings that you couldn't get your work done? Ever fallen asleep during a bulletpoint presentation? Ever watched the news and ended up knowing less? Welcome to the land of Blah Blah Blah.

The Problem: We talk so much that we don't think very well. Powerful as words are, we fool ourselves when we think our words alone can detect, describe, and defuse the multifaceted problems of today. They can't-and that's bad, because words have become our default thinking tool.

The Solution: This book offers a way out of blah-blah-blah. It's called "Vivid Thinking."

In Dan Roam's first acclaimed book, The Back of the Napkin, he taught readers how to solve problems and sell ideas by drawing simple pictures. Now he proves that Vivid Thinking is even more powerful. This technique combines our verbal and visual minds so that we can think and learn more quickly, teach and inspire our colleagues, and enjoy and share ideas in a whole new way.

The Destination: No more blah-blah-blah. Through Vivid Thinking, we can make the most complicated subjects suddenly crystal clear. Whether trying to understand a Harvard Business School class, or what went down in the Conan versus Leno battle for late-night TV, or what Einstein thought about relativity, Vivid Thinking provides a way to clarify anything.

Through dozens of guided examples, Roam proves that anyone can apply this systematic approach, from leftbrain types who hate to draw to right-brainers who hate to write. This isn't just a book about improving communications, presentations, and ideation; it's about removing the blah-blah- blah from your life for good.

"Extraordinary, wise, and hopeful... nearly poetic meditations."—Boston Globe What if imagination and art are not, as many of us might think, the frosting on life but the fountainhead of human experience? What if our logic and science derive from art forms, rather than the other way around? In this trenchant volume, Rollo May helps all of us find those creative impulses that, once liberated, offer new possibilities for achievement. A renowned therapist and inspiring guide, Dr. May draws on his experience to show how we can break out of old patterns in our lives. His insightful book offers us a way through our fears into a fully realized self.

 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: by Oliver Sacks | Key Takeaways, Analysis & Review

 

Preview:

In this 30th anniversary edition of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks, M.D. brings together more than two dozen narratives of patients with many different neurological impairments. The narratives illuminate medical details of the diseases while illustrating how those diseases play out in a patient’s thoughts and actions, bringing a more human aspect to the ailments.

These neurological impairments take on many forms. Losses can be highly disruptive to a patient’s life, such as Jimmie G.’s severe memory loss. However, many patients find ways to adapt to their ailments and recoup those losses in other ways, such as Mr. P., a music teacher who lost his ability to distinguish faces and objects, even mistaking his wife for his hat, who learned to sing to himself to keep from becoming disoriented. And MacGregor, who installed a level on his glasses to enable him to stand upright to correct a persistent lean…

 

PLEASE NOTE: This is key takeaways and analysis of the book and NOT the original book.  

 

Inside this Instaread of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat:Overview of the bookImportant PeopleKey TakeawaysAnalysis of Key Takeaways

A powerful and inspiring examination of the connection between the potential for great talent and conditions commonly thought to be “disabilities,” revealing how the source of our struggles can be the origin of our greatest strengths.

In The Power of Different, psychiatrist and bestselling author Gail Saltz examines the latest scientific discoveries, profiles famous geniuses who have been diagnosed with all manner of brain “problems”—including learning disabilities, ADD, anxiety, Depression, Bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and Autism—and tells the stories of lay individuals to demonstrate how specific deficits in certain areas of the brain are directly associated with the potential for great talent. Saltz shows how the very conditions that cause people to experience difficulty at school, in social situations, at home, or at work, are inextricably bound to creative, disciplinary, artistic, empathetic, and cognitive abilities.

In this pioneering work, readers will find engaging scientific research and stories from historical geniuses and everyday individuals who have not only made the most of their conditions, but who have flourished because of them. They are leaning into their brain differences to:

*Identify areas of interest and expertise
*Develop work arounds
*Create the environments that best foster their talents
*Forge rewarding interpersonal relationships

Enlightening and inspiring, The Power of Different proves that the unique wiring of every brain can be a source of strength and productivity, and contributes to the richness of our world.

In the past few decades, personality psychology has made considerable progress in raising new questions about human nature—and providing some provocative answers. New scientific research has transformed old ideas about personality based on the theories of Freud, Jung, and the humanistic psychologies of the nineteen sixties, which gave rise to the simplistic categorizations of the Meyer-Briggs Inventory and the 'enneagream'. But the general public still knows little about the new science and what it reveals about who we are.

In this book, Brian Little, one of the psychologists who helped re-shape the field, provides the first in-depth exploration of the new personality science and its provocative findings for general readers. The book explores questions that are rooted in the origins of human consciousness but are as commonplace as yesterday's breakfast conversation. Are our first impressions of other people's personalities usually fallacious? Are creative individuals essentially maladjusted? Are our personality traits, as William James put it “set like plaster” by the age of thirty? Is a belief that we are in control of our lives an unmitigated good? Do our singular personalities comprise one unified self or a confederacy of selves, and if the latter, which of our mini-me-s do we offer up in marriage or mergers? Are some individuals genetically hard-wired for happiness? Which is the more viable path toward human flourishing, the pursuit of happiness or the happiness of pursuit?

Little provides a resource for answering such questions, and a framework through which readers can explore the personal implications of the new science of personality. Questionnaires and interactive assessments throughout the book facilitate self-exploration, and clarify some of the stranger aspects of our own conduct and that of others. Brian Little helps us see ourselves, and other selves, as somewhat less perplexing and definitely more intriguing.

This is not a self-help book, but students at Harvard who took the lecture course on which it is based claim that it changed their lives.

This myth-busting book shows how "forgotten" middle children can-and do-rule the world.

In this counterintuitive book, psychologist Catherine Salmon and journalist Katrin Schumann combine science, history, and real-life stories to reveal for the first time that our perception of middle children is dead wrong.

Using unpublished and little-known research from evolutionary psychology, sociology, and communications, The Secret Power of Middle Children illustrates how adaptive strategies middleborns develop during childhood translate into stronger friendships, lasting marriages, successful careers, and effective parenting.

Over seventy million adult Americans are middle children, and forty percent of young American families have middle children. With constructive advice on how to maximize the benefits and avoid the pitfalls of being a middle child, Salmon and Schumann help middle children at any age (and their parents) use birth order as a strategy for success.

Discover the ten things highly creative people do differently. 

Is it possible to make sense of something as elusive as creativity? Based on psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman’s groundbreaking research and Carolyn Gregoire’s popular article in the Huffington Post, Wired to Create offers a glimpse inside the “messy minds” of highly creative people. Revealing the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology, along with engaging examples of artists and innovators throughout history, the book shines a light on the practices and habits of mind that promote creative thinking. Kaufman and Gregoire untangle a series of paradoxes— like mindfulness and daydreaming, seriousness and play, openness and sensitivity, and solitude and collaboration – to show that it is by embracing our own contradictions that we are able to tap into our deepest creativity. Each chapter explores one of the ten attributes and habits of highly creative people:

Imaginative Play * Passion * Daydreaming * Solitude * Intuition * Openness to Experience * Mindfulness * Sensitivity * Turning Adversity into Advantage * Thinking Differently

With insights from the work and lives of Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Marcel Proust, David Foster Wallace, Thomas Edison, Josephine Baker, John Lennon, Michael Jackson, musician Thom Yorke, chess champion Josh Waitzkin, video-game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, and many other creative luminaries, Wired to Create helps us better understand creativity – and shows us how to enrich this essential aspect of our lives. 


From the Hardcover edition.

Everyone wants to be more creative. Being creative makes life more fun and interesting. But many believe the common misconception that creativity is something you are born with and others can only envy. In 'Change Your Mind', Rod Judkins reveals that 'creative' people are no more creative than the rest of us. Rather, their gift is that they believe they are creative. 'Change Your Mind' will unlock the creative genius you always knew you were.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Reviving Ophelia, Another Country, and The Shelter of Each Other comes an inspirational book that shows how words can change the world.

Words are the most powerful tools at our disposal. With them, writers have saved lives and taken them, brought justice and confounded it, started wars and ended them. Writers can change the way we think and transform our definitions of right and wrong.

Writing to Change the World is a beautiful paean to the transformative power of words. Encapsulating Mary Pipher's years as a writer and therapist, it features rousing commentary, personal anecdotes, memorable quotations, and stories of writers who have helped reshape society. It is a book that will shake up readers' beliefs, expand their minds, and possibly even inspire them to make their own mark on the world.

 Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert | Key Takeaways, Analysis & Review

 

Preview:

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert is a book of motivational passages, anecdotes, and quotes meant to inspire readers to embrace creativity in whatever form is most natural for them.  By exploring creativity through real life experiences and words of encouragement, readers learn to face what holds them back from embracing inspiration and activating their creative nature, also known as finding Big Magic…

 

PLEASE NOTE: This is key takeaways and analysis of the book and NOT the original book. 

 

Inside this Instaread of Big Magic:Overview of the bookImportant PeopleKey TakeawaysAnalysis of Key Takeaways

 

As a technology pioneer at MIT and as the leader of three successful start-ups, Kevin Ashton experienced firsthand the all-consuming challenge of creating something new. Now, in a tour-de-force narrative twenty years in the making, Ashton leads us on a journey through humanity’s greatest creations to uncover the surprising truth behind who creates and how they do it. From the crystallographer’s laboratory where the secrets of DNA were first revealed by a long forgotten woman, to the electromagnetic chamber where the stealth bomber was born on a twenty-five-cent bet, to the Ohio bicycle shop where the Wright brothers set out to “fly a horse,” Ashton showcases the seemingly unremarkable individuals, gradual steps, multiple failures, and countless ordinary and usually uncredited acts that lead to our most astounding breakthroughs.

Creators, he shows, apply in particular ways the everyday, ordinary thinking of which we are all capable, taking thousands of small steps and working in an endless loop of problem and solution. He examines why innovators meet resistance and how they overcome it, why most organizations stifle creative people, and how the most creative organizations work. Drawing on examples from art, science, business, and invention, from Mozart to the Muppets, Archimedes to Apple, Kandinsky to a can of Coke, How to Fly a Horse is a passionate and immensely rewarding exploration of how “new” comes to be.

No matter what your passion is—business, technology, science, or plumbing—this practical guide will enable you to unleash your innate creative skills based on your unique personality type and succeed in everything you do.

Whether you can admit it to yourself or not, you are creative.

In today’s complex world, creativity is the key to finding and living your passion. Whatever that passion is—cooking, technology, writing, or even plumbing—Creative You reveals your own personal style of creativity to help you build an environment of innovation at work and home.

Discover your creative personality type with a simple quiz and detailed descriptions of the sixteen person­ality types. Plus, tools and techniques show you how to apply creativity to your everyday life. Drop excuses like I’m too old to start being creative and creativity is only for artists. Confidently use creativity to live your passion by using your natural style. Whether you are starting from scratch or enhancing an already developed skill, discover the creative you that you’ve been searching for.

The present is a contest between the bright and dark sides of discovery. To avoid being torn apart by its stresses, we need to recognize the fact—and gain courage and wisdom from the past. Age of Discovery shows how.

Now is the best moment in history to be alive, but we have never felt more anxious or divided. Human health, aggregate wealth and education are flourishing. Scientific discovery is racing forward. But the same global flows of trade, capital, people and ideas that make gains possible for some people deliver big losses to others—and make us all more vulnerable to one another.

Business and science are working giant revolutions upon our societies, but our politics and institutions evolve at a much slower pace. That’s why, in a moment when everyone ought to be celebrating giant global gains, many of us are righteously angry at being left out and stressed about where we’re headed.

To make sense of present shocks, we need to step back and recognize: we’ve been here before. The first Renaissance, the time of Columbus, Copernicus, Gutenberg and others, likewise redrew all maps of the world, democratized communication and sparked a flourishing of creative achievement. But their world also grappled with the same dark side of rapid change: social division, political extremism, insecurity, pandemics and other unintended consequences of discovery.

Now is the second Renaissance. We can still flourish—if we learn from the first.

Radical in its implications, this original and important work may change forever the views we hold about the nature of learning. In The Power of Mindful Learning, Ellen Langer uses her innovative theory of mindulness, introduced in her influential earlier book, to dramatically enhance the way we learn. In business, sports, laboratories, or at home, our learning is hobbled by certain antiquated and pervasive misconceptions. In this pithy, liberating, and delightful book she gives us a fresh, new view of learning in the broadest sense. Such familiar notions as delayed gratification, ”the basics”, or even ”right answers”, are all incapacitating myths which Langer explodes one by one. She replaces them with her concept of mindful or conditional learning which she demonstrates, with fascinating examples from her research, to be extraordinarily effective. Mindful learning takes place with an awareness of context and of the ever-changing nature of information. Learning without this awareness, as Langer shows convincingly, has severely limited uses and often sets on up for failure.With stunning applications to skills as diverse as paying attention, CPR, investment analysis, psychotherapy, or playing a musical instrument, The Power of Mindful Learning is for all who are curious and intellectually adventurous.

“This is a book about magic, about the Beatles, about the chemistry between people, about neuroscience, and about the buddy system; it examines love and hate, harmony and dissonance, and everything in between. The result is wise, funny, surprising, and completely engrossing.” — Susan Orlean
 
Lennon and McCartney, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Pierre and Marie Curie. Throughout history, partners have buoyed each other to better work — though often one member is little known to the general public. (See Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, or Vincent and Theo van Gogh.) In Powers of Two, Joshua Wolf Shenk draws on neuroscience, social psychology, and cultural history to present the social foundations of creativity, with the pair as its primary embodiment. Revealing the six essential stages through which creative intimacy unfolds, Shenk shows how pairs begin to talk, think, and even look like each other; how the most successful ones thrive on conflict; and why some cease to work together while others carry on. At once intuitive and deeply surprising, Powers of Two will reshape the way you view individuals, relationships, and society itself.
 
“Sterling . . . a rare glimpse into the private realms of duos . . . Shenk is a natural storyteller.” — Sarah Lewis, New York Times
 
“In this surprising, compelling, deeply felt book, Joshua Wolf Shenk banishes the idea of solitary genius by demonstrating that our richest art and science come from collaboration: we need one another not only for love, but also for thinking and imagining and growing and being.” — Andrew Solomon

Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY) will be remembered for its crucial influence on youth culture throughout the 1980s, popularizing tattooing, body piercing, "acid house" raves, and other ahead-of-the-curve cultic flirtations and investigations. Its leader was Genesis P-Orridge, co-founder of Psychick TV and Throbbing Gristle, the band that created the industrial music genre.

The limited signed cloth edition of Thee Psychick Bible quickly sold out, creating demand for any edition of this 544-page book, which will be available in a handsome smyth-sewn paperback edition with flaps and ribbon. According to author Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, "this is the most profound new manual on practical magick, taking it from its Crowleyan empowerment of the Individual to a next level of realization to evolve our species."

Who we most deeply are is mirrored in our artistic work. Our need for mirroring simultaneously attracts us to and repels us from our creative callings and relationships. It is one of life's great dilemmas.

Artist's block and lover's block flow from the same pool. Often, we fear deeply the very thing needed to create original art, to experience intimate relationships and to live authentic lives: we are frightened by the impulse to be fully revealed to ourselves, and to others, as this most often entails exposing the unacceptable shadowy aspects of our humanity and risking rejection.

Mirrors in all their manifold guises permit us to safely see and experience ourselves in reflection and become better acquainted with the rejected, ostracized aspects of our personalities. Creative work is one of the few places where we can truly express and witness lost aspects of our authentic selves.

Within us a treasure beckons. This is what we spend our lives pursuing. What slows and distracts us is not the object we long for, but where we search. To find this precious gem, we must eventually return to our own creative spirits.

Why isn’t everyone creative? Why doesn’t education foster more ingenuity? Why is expertise often the enemy of innovation? Bestselling creativity expert Michael Michalko shows that in every ?eld of endeavor — from business and science to government, the arts, and even day-to-day life — natural creativity is limited by the prejudices of logic and the structures of accepted categories and concepts. Through step-by-step exercises, illustrated strategies, and inspiring real-world examples, he shows readers how to liberate their thinking and literally expand their imaginations by learning to synthesize dissimilar subjects, think paradoxically, and enlist the help of the subconscious mind. He also reveals the attitudes and approaches that diverse geniuses share — and anyone can emulate. Fascinating and fun, Michalko’s strategies facilitate the kind of lightbulb-moment thinking that changes lives — for the better.

Summary, Analysis & Review of Susan Cain’s Quiet by Eureka

Preview:

Quiet by Susan Cain illustrates the latest research findings about the opposing characteristics of introverts and extroverts.

 

This companion to Quiet includes:Overview of the bookImportant PeopleKey TakeawaysAnalysis of Key Takeawaysand much more!

 

From the New York Times bestselling author of How We Got To Now and Farsighted

The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery--these are all great ideas. But where do they come from? What kind of environment breeds them? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How do we generate the breakthrough technologies that push forward our lives, our society, our culture? Steven Johnson's answers are revelatory as he identifies the seven key patterns behind genuine innovation, and traces them across time and disciplines. From Darwin and Freud to the halls of Google and Apple, Johnson investigates the innovation hubs throughout modern time and pulls out the approaches and commonalities that seem to appear at moments of originality.

If you found out for certain there is a Heaven and a Hell, how would you change your life? If you had to name the one thing that most frightens you about growing old, what would it be? If you could have only one part of your body massaged every day, what part would you choose? If you could have any view in the world visible from your bed, what would it be? If you could suddenly find out that one work of fiction was actually true, what book would you select? If you could name the sexiest words anyone could say to you, what would they be? If you could put anyone you know on Prozac, who would you choose? If you could be the house cat or lap dog of any person on earth, whose would you choose to be?

If...(Questions for the Game of Life) was a bestselling sensation with readers around the world. If 2 is a collection of 500 completely new and tantalizing, provocative questions that really make you think. It's an excellent source for party games, office water-cooler conversation, family dinners, and nights out at the local tavern. Crack open the secret dreams, the hidden desires, and the real personalities of your friends, your family, your lovers--and even yourself--with If 2...


From the Hardcover edition.

Between the physical world of vibration, as measured by apparatus, and the world of consciously heard music there is a third area of investigation. Our auditory apparatus and/or mind separates different instruments and tones, hears some vibrations but not others, adds tones to fill out the sound spectrum, etc. This middle ground is the province of the psychology of music, a subject about which even many physical scientists know little.
This introduction, by the developer of the Seashore test of musical ability, is a thorough survey of this field, the standard book for psychologists specializing in the area, for the school, and for interested musicologists. It opens with the musical mind and with a series of chapters on music as a medium: vibrato, pitch, loudness, duration, timbre, tone, consonance, volume, and rhythm, dealing with each from the special point of view of the role of psychology. It then moves to such factors as learning, imagining, and thinking in music; the nature of musical feeling; the relative sound patterns of specific instruments and the human voice; measures of musical talent; inheritance of musical ability; primitive music; the development of musical skills; and musical aesthetics.
This wealth of material is supplemented with dozens of oscillograms and other sound-pattern charts recorded from actual play and singing by Jeritza, Caruso, Paderewski, Szigeti, Rethberg, Menuhin, Martinelli, and other artists. An appendix cites two attitudes toward the evaluation of musical talent and over 200 bibliographic references.

This boxed set on Brain Training will give tips and incite on how the brain works and how to improve the power of your memory and increase your attention span.

The classic study of the creative process from the bestselling author of Flow

Creativity is about capturing those moments that make life worth living. Legendary psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (“The leading researcher into ‘flow states.’”  — Newsweek) reveals what leads to these moments—be it the excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab—so that this knowledge can be used to enrich people's lives. Drawing on nearly one hundred interviews with exceptional people, from biologists and physicists, to politicians and business leaders, to poets and artists, as well as his thirty years of research on the subject, Csikszentmihalyi uses his famous flow theory to explore the creative process. He discusses such ideas as why creative individuals are often seen as selfish and arrogant, and why the "tortured genius" is largely a myth. Most important, he explains why creativity needs to be cultivated and is necessary for the future of our country, if not the world.

The last book of essays by Church of Satan founder LaVey.

Milner’s great study, first published in 1950, discusses the nature of creativity and those forces which prevent its expression. In focusing on her own beginner’s efforts to draw and paint, she analyses not the mysterious and elusive ability of the genius but – as the title suggests – the all too common and distressing situation of ‘not being able’ to create.

With a new introduction by Janet Sayers, this edition of On Not Being Able to Paint brings the text to the present generation of readers in the fields of psychoanalysis, education and all those, specialist and general audiences alike, with an interest or involvement in the creative process and those impulses impeding it in many fields.

Riting Myth, Mythic Writing: Plotting Your Personal Story is a both a theoretical as well as interactive book on the nature of personal myth. Its intention is to offer participants who wish to explore further the terms and structure of their personal myth over 80 writing meditations that are spread throughout 9 chapters in order to guide the readers-writers on a pilgrimage into the deepest layers of their personal myth.

An added feature of the book are writing meditation responses from participants who have been part of the author's writing retreats in both the United States and Europe. Their power and authenticity attests to the strong desire and need of each of us to explore what myth guides us, what terms it does so within and what one can learn to become more conscious of those deep forces in the psyche that seek expression in all we do and are.

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

The perfect gift for Graduation! Rosamund Stone Zander's new book, Pathways to Possibility, is now available from Viking.

Presenting twelve breakthrough practices for bringing creativity into all human endeavors, The Art of Possibility is the dynamic product of an extraordinary partnership. The Art of Possibility combines Benjamin Zander's experience as conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and his talent as a teacher and communicator with psychotherapist Rosamund Stone Zander's genius for designing innovative paradigms for personal and professional fulfillment. The authors' harmoniously interwoven perspectives provide a deep sense of the powerful role that the notion of possibility can play in every aspect of life. Through uplifting stories, parables, and personal anecdotes, the Zanders invite us to become passionate communicators, leaders, and performers whose lives radiate possibility into the world.

 “Of all the writers I know, I have learned the most about how to be a productive creative person from Mark. His tips are always realistic, accessible, and sticky. It’s not just talk, this is productivity advice that will change your life.”

Jocelyn K. Glei, author and Founding Editor, 99U

We are living in an age of unprecedented creative stimulation—via the internet, social media, all-pervasive technology, and an “always on” working culture.

Which means we are living in an age of unprecedented distraction from focused creative work—from all the same sources.

First, computers and the internet transformed the work we did at our desks. Then along came smartphones to transform our social lives and make our work mobile.

Now we have our work, our network, our media, and our social media with us wherever we go. Augmented Reality (AR) is layering more and more virtual elements over the physical world we inhabit, and Virtual Reality (VR) promises us escape to unlimited virtual worlds.

The pace of change is exciting, overwhelming, and unstoppable.

And creators are increasingly discovering a downside to the brave new world:

* countless distractions and interruptions

* endless email

* pressure to keep up

* anxiety about falling behind

* difficulty concentrating

* aches and pains from too much time at the keyboard

Dig a little deeper, and the biggest concern for many creatives is a nagging sense that their most important work is being left undone.

If you’re excited by the opportunities of the creative age, but worried about the effect of all those interruptions and digital distractions on your creative work, Productivity for Creative People has been written for you.

For the past twenty years creative coach Mark McGuinness has helped hundreds of creatives like you to overcome these challenges.

A poet and creative entrepreneur, he is the author of Motivation for Creative People and Resilience: Facing Down Rejection and Criticism on the Road to Success. He is also a co-author of the bestselling books from 99U, Manage Your Day-to-Day and Maximize Your Potential.

Mark’s latest book, Productivity for Creative People, is a collection of insights, tips, and techniques to help you carve out time for your most important work – while managing your other commitments. All the solutions he shares have been tested with real people in real situations.

You will learn:

* How getting organized can make you more creative

* Why multitasking doesn’t work

* How to tell if you’re really overloaded – and what to do about it

* The importance of panicking early

* How doing nothing can make you more productive

* The crucial difference between incubation and procrastination

* How to carve out time for your most important creative work

* Why boredom is necessary for creativity

* What to do about all that email

* How to nap like a fighter pilot

* A simple technique to reduce smartphone addiction

Productivity for Creative People is the perfect guide to creating extraordinary work without (necessarily) disappearing to a cabin in the woods, or even giving up your smartphone.

“Many creative people are busier than ever, but rarely get around to the work that truly matters. Mark McGuinness offers solid and practical advice for busy creative people who want to make their mark on the world.”

Todd Henry, author of The Accidental Creative

“Authors now have amazing online tools to reach readers all over the world, but those same tools can distract us from the focused creativity that we love and that we need to write better books. In Productivity for Creative People, Mark McGuinness outlines a way of working that will help you sort out what’s really important and achieve your creative goals, while still managing your daily tasks. Recommended for any author who is feeling overwhelmed.”

Joanna Penn, bestselling author and award-winning entrepreneur. TheCreativePenn.com

Practical self-help for artists who want to free their creativity. Art from Intuition offers artists everywhere a unique system for freeing their own creative intuition, the sixth sense that directs an artist’s drive and work. By letting go of the self-criticism, doubt, and insecurity that discourage artmaking, artists will be able to soar to new heights of creativity. More than 60 practical exercises take the reader from the most basic intuitive art to more sophisticated techniques. Each exercise, supported by step-by-step instructions, is accessible to artists at every level, and the exercises can be done in any order. After each chapter, readers are encouraged to follow up by evaluating their drawings or paintings to see how they reflect their own personal goals. Works of art by students and contemporary artists exemplify how exciting and how productive a freer, more intuitive approach to making art can be.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

“A gem of enlightenment. . . . One rejoices in Bronowski’s dedication to the identity of acts of creativity and of imagination, whether in Blake or Yeats or Einstein or Heisenberg.”—Kirkus Reviews
“According to Bronowski, our account of the world is dictated by our biology: how we perceive, imagine, symbolize, etc. He proposes to explain how we receive and translate our experience of the world so that we achieve knowledge. He examines the mechanisms of our perception; the origin and nature of natural language; formal systems and scientific discourse; and how science, as a systematic attempt to establish closed systems one after another, progresses by exploring its own errors and new but unforeseen connections. . . . A delightful look at the inquiring mind.”—Library Journal
“Eminently enjoyable to read, with a good story or ‘bon mot’ on every page.”—Nature
“A well-written and brilliantly presented defense of the scientific enterprise which could be especially valuable to scientists and to teachers of science at all levels.”—AAAS Science Books & Films
Contents
1. The Mind as an Instrument for Understanding
2. The Evolution and Power of Symbolic Language
3. Knowledge as Algorithm and as Metaphor
4. The Laws of Nature and the Nature of Laws
5. Error, Progress, and the Concept of Time
6. Law and Individual Responsibility

What is creativity, and where does it come from? Creativity and Development explores the fascinating connections and tensions between creativity research and developmental psychology, two fields that have largely progressed independently of each other-until now. In this book, scholars influential in both fields explore the emergence of new ideas, and the development of the people and situations that bring them to fruition. The uniquely collaborative nature of Oxford's Counterpoints series allows them to engage in a dialogue, addressing the key issues and potential benefits of exploring the connections between creativity and development. Creativity and Development is based on the observation that both creativity and development are processes that occur in complex systems, in which later stages or changes emerge from the prior state of the system. In the 1970s and 1980s, creativity researchers shifted their focus from personality traits to cognitive and social processes, and the co-authors of this volume are some of the most influential figures in this shift. The central focus on system processes results in three related volume themes: how the outcomes of creativity and development emerge from dynamical processes, the interrelation between individual processes and social processes, and the role of mediating artifacts and domains in developmental and creative processes. The chapters touch on a wide range of important topics, with the authors drawing on their decades of research into creativity and development. Readers will learn about the creativity of children's play, the creative aspects of children's thinking, the creative processes of scientists, the role of education and teaching in creative development, and the role of multiple intelligences in both creativity and development. The final chapter is an important dialogue between the authors, who engage in a roundtable discussion and explore key questions facing contemporary researchers, such as: Does society suppress children's creativity? Are creativity and development specific to an intelligence or a domain? What role do social and cultural contexts play in creativity and development? Creativity and Development presents a powerful argument that both creativity scholars and developmental psychologists will benefit by becoming more familiar with each other's work.

Naomi Lowinsky has given us a remarkable, fearless, and full autobiography. Speaking in poetic, psychologically sensitive, scholarly dialogues with her shape-shifting muse, she has created a new form . . . This is a beautiful book to treasure and spread among worthy friends. —Sylvia Perera, Author of 'Descent to the Goddess' and 'Celtic Queen Maeve and Addiction.’ 

Naomi Ruth Lowinsky offers us a superbly detailed investigation of the powerful, mythic forces of the world as they are revealed to the active creative self. Don't miss this enlightening and fascinating book. —David St. John, Author of 'Study for the World's Body: New and Selected Poems' and 'Prism.’ 

Naomi's poetry and prose is infused with the suffering and joys of humans everywhere. Insightful and deeply moving, she brings us the food and water of life. —Joan Chodorow, Author of 'Dance Therapy and Depth Psychology', editor of 'C.G. Jung on Active Imagination.’ 

A passionate love letter to those who yearn to be heard. A must read for every woman who longs to write poetry. —Maureen Murdock, Author of The Heroine's Journey and Unreliable Truth: On Memoir and Memory. 

Naomi Ruth Lowinsky reinterprets mythic and historical reality in provocative versions of the stories of Eurydice, Helen, Ruth, Naomi, and Sappho. The voice of The Sister from Below argues, cajoles, prods, explains, and yes, loves her human counterpart, and becomes the inspiration for Lowinsky's stunning poetry in this highly original book. —Betty de Shong Meador, Author of Inanna, Lady of Largest Heart and Princess, Priestess, Poet.

Who is She, this Sister from Below? She's certainly not about the ordinary business of life: work, shopping, making dinner. She speaks from other realms. If you'll allow, She'll whisper in your ear, lead your thoughts astray, fill you with strange yearnings, get you hot and bothered, send you off on some wild goose chase of a daydream, eat up hours of your time. She's a siren, a seductress, a shapeshifter . . . Why listen to such a troublemaker? Because She is essential to the creative process: She holds the keys to the doors of our imaginations and deeper life the evolution of Soul.

The Sister emerges out of reverie, dream, a fleeting memory, a difficult emotion--she is the moment of inspiration--the muse. Naomi Ruth Lowinsky writes of nine manifestations in which the muse visits her, stirring up creative ferment, filling her with ghosts, mysteries, erotic teachings, the old religion--bringing forth her voice as a poet. Among these forms of the muse are the "Sister from Below," the inner poet who has spoken for the soul since language began. The muse also appears as the ghost of a grandmother Naomi never met, who died in the Shoah--a grandmother with 'unfinished business.' She visits in the form of Old Mother India, whose culture Naomi visited as a young woman. She cracks open her Western mind, flooding her with many gods and goddesses. She appears as Sappho, the great lyric poet of the ancient world, who engages her in a lovely midlife fantasy. She comes as "Die ur Naomi," an old woman from the biblical story for which Naomi was named, who insists on telling Her version of the Book of Ruth. And in the end, surprisingly, the muse appears in the form of a man, a long dead poet whom Naomi loved in her youth.

The Sister from Below is a personal story, yet universal, of giving up a creative calling because of life's obligations, and being called back to it in later life. This Fisher King Press publication describes the intricate patterns of a rich inner life; it is a traveler's memoir, with outer journeys to Italy, India and a Neolithic cave in Bulgaria, and inward journeys to biblical Canaan and Sappho's Greece; it is filled with mythic experience, a poet's story told. The Sister conveys the lived experience of the creative life, a life in which active imagination--the Jungian technique of engaging with inner figures--is an essential practice.

The Sister speaks to all those who want to cultivate an unlived promise, those on a spiritual path, those who are filled with the urgency of poems that have to be written, paintings that must be painted, journeys that yearn to be taken...

The revolutionary book that showed how mindfulness can be applied to every aspect of our lives
The highly innovative findings of social psychologist Dr. Ellen J. Langer and her team of researchers at Harvard introduced a unique concept of mindfulness, adapted to contemporary life in the West. Langer's theory has been applied to a wide number of fields, including health, business, aging, social justice, and learning. There is now a new psychological assessment based on her work (called the Langer Mindfulness Scale). In her introduction to this 25th anniversary edition, Dr. Langer (now known as "the Mother of Mindfulness") outlines some of these exciting applications and suggests those still to come.

An illuminating look at the surprising upside of ambiguity—and how, properly harnessed, it can inspire learning, creativity, even empathy
 
Life today feels more overwhelming and chaotic than ever. Whether it’s a confounding work problem or a faltering relationship or an unclear medical diagnosis, we face constant uncertainty. And we’re continually bombarded with information, much of it contradictory.
 
Managing ambiguity—in our jobs, our relationships, and daily lives—is quickly becoming an essential skill. Yet most of us don’t know where to begin.
 
As Jamie Holmes shows in Nonsense, being confused is unpleasant, so we tend to shutter our minds as we grasp for meaning and stability, especially in stressful circumstances. We’re hard-wired to resolve contradictions quickly and extinguish anomalies. This can be useful, of course. When a tiger is chasing you, you can’t be indecisive. But as Nonsense reveals, our need for closure has its own dangers. It makes us stick to our first answer, which is not always the best, and it makes us search for meaning in the wrong places. When we latch onto fast and easy truths, we lose a vital opportunity to learn something new, solve a hard problem, or see the world from another perspective.
 
In other words, confusion—that uncomfortable mental place—has a hidden upside. We just need to know how to use it. This lively and original book points the way.

Over the last few years, new insights from social psychology and cognitive science have deepened our understanding of the role of ambiguity in our lives and Holmes brings this research together for the first time, showing how we can use uncertainty to our advantage. Filled with illuminating stories—from spy games and doomsday cults to Absolut Vodka’s ad campaign and the creation of Mad Libs—Nonsense promises to transform the way we conduct business, educate our children, and make decisions.
 
In an increasingly unpredictable, complex world, it turns out that what matters most isn’t IQ, willpower, or confidence in what we know. It’s how we deal with what we don’t understand.


From the Hardcover edition.

What makes a musical note different from any other sound? How can you tell if you have perfect pitch? Why do 10 violins sound only twice as loud as one? Do your Bob Dylan albums sound better on CD or vinyl? John Powell, a scientist and musician, answers these questions and many more in HOW MUSIC WORKS, an intriguing and original guide to acoustics. In a clear, accessible, and engaging voice, Powell fascinates the reader with his delightful descriptions of the science and psychology lurking beneath the surface of music. With lively discussions of the secrets behind harmony, timbre, keys, chords, loudness, musical composition, and more, HOW MUSIC WORKS will be treasured by music lovers everywhere.

Child prodigies. Gifted and Talented Programs. Perfect 2400s on the SAT. Sometimes it feels like the world is conspiring to make the rest of us feel inadequate. Those children tapped as possessing special abilities will go on to achieve great things, while the rest of us have little chance of realizing our dreams. Right?

In Ungifted, cognitive psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman—who was relegated to special education as a child—sets out to show that the way we interpret traditional metrics of intelligence is misguided. Kaufman explores the latest research in genetics and neuroscience, as well as evolutionary, developmental, social, positive, and cognitive psychology, to challenge the conventional wisdom about the childhood predictors of adult success. He reveals that there are many paths to greatness, and argues for a more holistic approach to achievement that takes into account each young person's personal goals, individual psychology, and developmental trajectory. In so doing, he increases our appreciation for the intelligence and diverse strengths of prodigies, savants, and late bloomers, as well as those with dyslexia, autism, schizophrenia, and ADHD.

Combining original research, anecdotes, and a singular compassion, Ungifted proves that anyone—even those without readily observable gifts at any single moment in time—can become great.

The late Anton Szandor LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, may be the most notoriously familiar for his Satanic Bible, but The Satanic Witch best reflects the discoveries Anton made in his younger days working the carny shows and Mitt Camps. This is undiluted Gypsy lore regarding the forbidden knowledge of seduction and manipulation.

The Satanic Witch is not designed for Barbie Dolls, but women cunning and crafty enough to employ the workable formulas within, which instantly surpass the entire catalogue of self-help tomes and New Age idiocies.

The Introduction — Peggy Nadramia, High Priestess of the Church of Satan, tells us how this book changed her life.

The Afterword — Blanche Barton, Anton LaVey’s biographer, Chairmistress of the Council of Nine, and mother of Satan Xerxes Carnacki LaVey, Anton’s third child, informs us how The Satanic Witch came to pass and influence the behavior of so many women.

Eric Maisel’s prolific, multifaceted career is a testament to his profound understanding of what it takes to live out one’s creative ambitions. A therapist who is also a bestselling author, coach (and coach trainer), columnist for Professional Artist magazine, and featured blogger for Psychology Today and the Huffington Post, Maisel is an expert on all that blocks the creative. In Making Your Creative Mark, Maisel distills his decades of coaching, teaching, listening, and creating into nine keys, including Passion, Confidence, Empathy, Stress, and Relationship. Each key’s lesson helps creators implement real solutions to their individual challenges. Whether they are writers, painters, actors, composers, or craftspeople, readers will learn to “unlock” what has kept them from beginning, continuing, completing — and succeeding.

Insights—like Darwin's understanding of the way evolution actually works, and Watson and Crick's breakthrough discoveries about the structure of DNA—can change the world. We also need insights into the everyday things that frustrate and confuse us so that we can more effectively solve problems and get things done. Yet we know very little about when, why, or how insights are formed—or what blocks them. In Seeing What Others Don't, renowned cognitive psychologist Gary Klein unravels the mystery.

Klein is a keen observer of people in their natural settings—scientists, businesspeople, firefighters, police officers, soldiers, family members, friends, himself—and uses a marvelous variety of stories to illuminate his research into what insights are and how they happen. What, for example, enabled Harry Markopolos to put the finger on Bernie Madoff? How did Dr. Michael Gottlieb make the connections between different patients that allowed him to publish the first announcement of the AIDS epidemic? What did Admiral Yamamoto see (and what did the Americans miss) in a 1940 British attack on the Italian fleet that enabled him to develop the strategy of attack at Pearl Harbor? How did a “smokejumper” see that setting another fire would save his life, while those who ignored his insight perished? How did Martin Chalfie come up with a million-dollar idea (and a Nobel Prize) for a natural flashlight that enabled researchers to look inside living organisms to watch biological processes in action?

Klein also dissects impediments to insight, such as when organizations claim to value employee creativity and to encourage breakthroughs but in reality block disruptive ideas and prioritize avoidance of mistakes. Or when information technology systems are “dumb by design” and block potential discoveries.

Both scientifically sophisticated and fun to read, Seeing What Others Don't shows that insight is not just a “eureka!” moment but a whole new way of understanding.

Read Stuart Brown's posts on the Penguin Blog.

From a leading expert, a groundbreaking book on the science of play, and its essential role in fueling our happiness and intelligence throughout our lives

We've all seen the happiness on the face of a child while playing in the school yard. Or the blissful abandon of a golden retriever racing across a lawn. This is the joy of play. By definition, play is purposeless, all-consuming, and fun. But as Dr. Stuart Brown illustrates, play is anything but trivial. It is a biological drive as integral to our health as sleep or nutrition. We are designed by nature to flourish through play.

Dr. Brown has spent his career studying animal behavior and conducting more than six-thousand "play histories" of humans from all walks of life-from serial murderers to Nobel Prize winners. Backed by the latest research, Play (20,000 copies in print) explains why play is essential to our social skills, adaptability, intelligence, creativity, ability to problem solve and more. Particularly in tough times, we need to play more than ever, as it's the very means by which we prepare for the unexpected, search out new solutions, and remain optimistic. A fascinating blend of cutting-edge neuroscience, biology, psychology, social science, and inspiring human stories of the transformative power of play, this book proves why play just might be the most important work we can ever do.

Do games hold the secret to better productivity? 

If you’ve ever found yourself engrossed in Angry Birds, Call of Duty, or a plain old crossword puzzle when you should have been doing something more productive, you know how easily games hold our attention. Hardcore gamers have spent the equivalent of 5.93 million years playing World of Warcraft while the world collectively devotes about 5 million hours per day to Angry Birds. A colossal waste of time? Perhaps. But what if we could tap into all the energy, engagement, and brainpower that people are already expending and use it for more creative and valuable pursuits?

Harnessing the power of games sounds like a New-Age fantasy, or at least a fad that’s only for hip start-ups run by millennials in Silicon Valley. But according to Adam L. Penenberg, the use of smart game design in the workplace and beyond is taking hold in every sector of the economy, and the companies that apply it are witnessing unprecedented results. “Gamification” isn’t just for consumers

chasing reward points anymore. It’s transforming, well, just about everything.

Penenberg explores how, by understanding the way successful games are designed, we can apply them to become more efficient, come up with new ideas, and achieve even the most daunting goals. He shows how game mechanics are being applied to make employees happier and more motivated, improve worker safety, create better products, and improve customer service.

For example, Microsoft has transformed an essential but mind-numbing task—debugging software—into a game by having employees compete and collaborate to find more glitches in less time. Meanwhile, Local Motors, an independent automaker based in Arizona, crowdsources designs from car enthusiasts all over the world by having them compete for money and recognition within the community. As a result, the company was able to bring a cutting-edge vehicle to market in less time and at far less cost than the Big Three automakers.

These are just two examples of companies that have tapped the characteristics that make games so addictive and satisfying. Penenberg also takes us inside organizations that have introduced play at work to train surgeons, aid in physical therapy, translate the Internet, solve vexing scientific riddles, and digitize books from the nineteenth century. Drawing on the latest brain science as well as his firsthand reporting from these cutting-edge companies, Penenberg offers a powerful solution for businesses and organizations of all stripes and sizes.

This chronicle of the two months in 1888 when Paul Gauguin shared a house in France with Vincent Van Gogh describes not only how these two hallowed artists painted and exchanged ideas, but also the texture of their everyday lives. Includes 60 B&W reproductions of the artists' paintings and drawings from the period.

WHY IS IT THAT SOME OF THE GREATEST WORKS OF LITERATURE HAVE BEEN PRODUCED BY WRITERS IN THE GRIP OF ALCOHOLISM, AN ADDICTION THAT COST THEM PERSONAL HAPPINESS AND CAUSED HARM TO THOSE WHO LOVED THEM?

In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six extraordinary men: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver.

All six of these writers were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast. Often, they did their drinking together: Hemingway and Fitzgerald ricocheting through the cafés of Paris in the 1920s; Carver and Cheever speeding to the liquor store in Iowa in the icy winter of 1973.

Olivia Laing grew up in an alcoholic family herself. One spring, wanting to make sense of this ferocious, entangling disease, she took a journey across America that plunged her into the heart of these overlapping lives. As she travels from Cheever's New York to Williams's New Orleans, and from Hemingway's Key West to Carver's Port Angeles, she pieces together a topographical map of alcoholism, from the horrors of addiction to the miraculous possibilities of recovery.

Beautiful, captivating, and original, The Trip to Echo Spring strips away the myth of the alcoholic writer to reveal the terrible price creativity can exert.

How do creative people think? Do great works of the imagination originate in words or in images? Is there a rational explanation for the sudden appearance of geniuses like Mozart or Einstein? Such questions have fascinated people for centuries; only in recent years, however, has cognitive psychology been able to provide some clues to the mysterious process of creativity. In this revised edition of Notebooks of the Mind, Vera John-Steiner combines imaginative insight with scientific precision to produce a startling account of the human mind working at its highest potential. To approach her subject John-Steiner goes directly to the source, assembling the thoughts of "experienced thinkers"--artists, philosophers, writers, and scientists able to reflect on their own imaginative patterns. More than fifty interviews (with figures ranging from Jessica Mitford to Aaron Copland), along with excerpts from the diaries, letters, and autobiographies of such gifted giants as Leo Tolstoy, Marie Curie, and Diego Rivera, among others, provide illuminating insights into creative activity. We read, for example, of Darwin's preoccupation with the image of nature as a branched tree while working on his concept of evolution. Mozart testifies to the vital influence on his mature art of the wondrous "bag of memories" he retained from childhood. Anais Nin describes her sense of words as oppressive, explaining how imagistic free association freed her as a writer. Adding these personal accounts to laboratory studies of thought process, John-Steiner takes a refreshingly holistic approach to the question of creativity. What emerges is an intriguing demonstration of how specific sociocultural circumstances interact with certain personality traits to encourage the creative mind. Among the topics examined here are the importance of childhood mentor figures; the lengthy apprenticeship of the talented person; and the development of self- expression through highly individualistic languages, whether in images, movement or inner speech. Now, with a new introduction, this award-winning book provides an uniquely broad-based study of the origins, development and fruits of human inspiration.

For many of us, feelings of deficiency are right around the corner. It doesn’t take much--just hearing of someone else’s accomplishments, being criticized, getting into an argument, making a mistake at work--to make us feel that we are not okay. Beginning to understand how our lives have become ensnared in this trance of unworthiness is our first step toward reconnecting with who we really are and what it means to live fully.
--from Radical Acceptance

Radical Acceptance

“Believing that something is wrong with us is a deep and tenacious suffering,” says Tara Brach at the start of this illuminating book. This suffering emerges in crippling self-judgments and conflicts in our relationships, in addictions and perfectionism, in loneliness and overwork--all the forces that keep our lives constricted and unfulfilled. Radical Acceptance offers a path to freedom, including the day-to-day practical guidance developed over Dr. Brach’s twenty years of work with therapy clients and Buddhist students.

Writing with great warmth and clarity, Tara Brach brings her teachings alive through personal stories and case histories, fresh interpretations of Buddhist tales, and guided meditations. Step by step, she leads us to trust our innate goodness, showing how we can develop the balance of clear-sightedness and compassion that is the essence of Radical Acceptance. Radical Acceptance does not mean self-indulgence or passivity. Instead it empowers genuine change: healing fear and shame and helping to build loving, authentic relationships. When we stop being at war with ourselves, we are free to live fully every precious moment of our lives.


From the Hardcover edition.

Author Michael Gelb ignited the current fascination with all things Da Vinci with his runaway bestseller, How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day. Just as that book showed readers how to use the seven Da Vincian principles to develop their creative potential, his new book, Da Vinci Decoded, will help you use the same principles to cultivate your spiritual potential.

Wonder. Appreciation. Awareness. Wholeness…In the Western world of the fifteenth century, these personal qualities were all boldly embodied in one extraordinary man. From art to botany, anatomy to mechanics, Da Vinci was a profoundly original thinker fully in tune with the world of man and nature, and with the divine spirit that bridges the two. In this bold new guide to awakening the soul, Michael Gelb draws on Leonardo’s writings, inventions, and works of art to show how you, too, can practice the seven essential principles by which Leonardo lived and worked:
Filled with practical exercises that will help you put each of the seven principles into use, a series of reflective questions designed for self-assessment, and inspirational sayings drawn from the world’s great wisdom traditions, Da Vinci Decoded offers a wide range of tools to use in your spiritual quest. Now you can let Leonardo and this book be your personal guides to creating your own personal spiritual renaissance today.


From the Hardcover edition.