Author: tedweinstein

The Supreme Court, once the most respected institution in American government, is now routinely criticized for rendering decisions based on the individual justices’ partisan leanings rather than on a faithful reading of the law. For legal scholar and former Supreme Court clerk Aaron Tang, however, partisanship is not the Court’s root problem. Overconfidence is.
 
Conservative and liberal justices alike have adopted a tone of uncompromising certainty in their ability to solve society’s problems with just the right lawyerly arguments. The result is a Court that lurches stridently from one case to the next, delegitimizing opposing views and undermining public confidence in itself. 
 
To restore the Court’s legitimacy, Tang proposes a different approach in Supreme Hubris: How Overconfidence Is Destroying the Court―and How We Can Fix It, one in which the Court acknowledges the arguments and interests on both sides and rules in the way that will do the least harm possible. Examining a surprising number of popular opinions where the Court has applied this approach—ranging from LGBTQ rights to immigration to juvenile justice—Tang shows how the least harm principle can provide a promising and legally grounded framework for the difficult cases that divide our nation.

Jessica Carew Kraft, an urban wife and mom of two, was firmly rooted in the modern world, complete with a high-powered career in tech and the sneaking suspicion that her lifestyle was preventing her and her family from truly thriving. Determined to find a better way, Jessica quit her job and set out to learn about “rewilding” from people who reject the comforts and convenience of civilization by using ancient tools and skills to survive. Along the way, she learned how to turn sticks into fire, stones into axes, and bones into tools for harvesting wild food―and found an entire community walking the path back from our technology-focused, anxiety-ridden way of life to a simpler, more human experience.

Weaving deep research and reportage with her own personal journey, Jessica tells the remarkable story of the potential benefits rewilding has for us and our planet, and questions what it truly means to be a human in today’s world. Why We Need to Be Wild: One Woman’s Quest for Ancient Human Answers to 21st Century Problems is a thought-provoking, unforgettable narrative that illuminates how we survived in the past, how we live now, and how each of us can choose to thrive in the years ahead. 

At the heart of democracy lies a contradiction that cannot be resolved, one that has affected free societies since their advent. Now media and communications professor Zac Gershberg and journalist Sean Illing illuminate the paradox that freedom of speech and media has always been a necessary condition of democracy while that very freedom is also its greatest threat. The Paradox of Democracy is a thought-provoking history of communications that challenges our most cherished ideas about freedom of speech and democracy.

The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion captures the deep connection between communication and political culture, from the ancient art of rhetoric and the revolutionary role of newspapers to liberal broadcast media and the toxic misinformation of the digital public sphere. With clear-eyed analysis, Gershberg and Illing show that our contemporary debates over media, populism, and cancel culture are not so different from democratic cultural experiences of the past. As we grapple with a fast-changing, hyper-digital world, they prove democracy is always perched precipitously on a razor’s edge

The Pop-Up Pitch: The Two-Hour Creative Sprint to the Most Persuasive Presentation of Your Life is a radical new approach to help you create the perfect presentation, combining three key elements of persuasive storytelling – simple pictures, clear words, and powerful emotions – that together motivate audiences to pay attention, learn something new, and make effective decisions.

The Pop-Up Pitch weaves together the latest insights on visual cognition, behavioral economics, and classic story structures in an easy-to-learn and inspiring storytelling algorithm. In this new era of remote, work and online presenting, it delivers powerful and persuasive outcomes for time-limited professionals dealing with complex ideas, attention-deficit audiences, and the evolving challenges of modern meetings.

Help your relationships and your body with this definitive guide to better sleep for couples—with proven strategies to improve both sleep and relationship health—by a clinical psychologist named as one of the top experts on the science of sleep.

Dr. Wendy Troxel is a clinical psychologist and behavioral sleep specialist whose mission is teaching couples to prioritize sleep and helping them find solutions to maximize the sleep quality for both partners, whether sleeping together or apart. In Sharing the Covers: Every Couple’s Guide to Better Sleep, she shows couples how vital it is to “sleep like your relationship depends on it”—because in many cases, it does. Whether it’s stress, snoring, or insomnia that’s keeping you up, Sharing the Covers will help couples get back to sleep and get back to each other.

Globalization has profoundly shaped the world we live in, yet its rise was neither inevitable nor planned. It is also one of the most contentious issues of our time. While it may have made goods less expensive, it has also sent massive flows of money across borders and shaken the global balance of power. Outside the Box: How Globalization Changed from Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas offers a fresh and lively history of globalization, showing how it has evolved over two centuries in response to changes in demographics, technology, and consumer tastes.

Marc Levinson, the acclaimed author of The Box, tells the story of globalization through the people who eliminated barriers and pursued new ways of doing business. He shows how the nature of globalization changed dramatically in the 1980s with the creation of long-distance value chains. This new type of economic relationship shifted manufacturing to Asia, destroying millions of jobs and devastating industrial centers in North America, Europe, and Japan. Levinson describes how improvements in transportation, communications, and computing made international value chains possible, but how globalization was taken too far because of large government subsidies and the systematic misjudgment of risk by businesses.

In Outside the Box, Levinson explains that globalization is entering a new era in which moving stuff will matter much less than moving services, information, and ideas.

Exercise is health-enhancing and life-extending, yet many of us feel it’s a chore. But, as Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D. reveals, it doesn’t have to be. The bestselling author of The Willpower Instinct introduces a surprising science-based book that doesn’t tell us why we should exercise but instead shows us how to fall in love with movement.

In The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage, she draws on insights from neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, and evolutionary biology, as well as memoirs, ethnographies, and philosophers. She shows how movement is intertwined with some of the most basic human joys, including self-expression, social connection, and mastery–and why it is a powerful antidote to the modern epidemics of depression, anxiety, and loneliness.

McGonigal tells the stories of people who have found fulfillment and belonging through running, walking, dancing, swimming, weightlifting, and more, with examples that span the globe, from Tanzania, where one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes on the planet live, to a dance class at Juilliard for people with Parkinson’s disease, to the streets of London, where volunteers combine fitness and community service, to races in the remote wilderness, where athletes push the limits of what a human can endure. Along the way, McGonigal paints a portrait of human nature that highlights our capacity for hope, cooperation, and self-transcendence.

The result is a revolutionary narrative that goes beyond familiar arguments in favor of exercise, to illustrate why movement is integral to both our happiness and our humanity. Readers will learn what they can do in their own lives and communities to harness the power of movement to create happiness, meaning, and connection.

The death of Steve Jobs left a gaping void at one of the most innovative companies of all time. Jobs wasn’t merely Apple’s iconic founder and CEO; he was the living embodiment of a global megabrand. It was hard to imagine that anyone could fill his shoes–especially not Tim Cook, the intensely private executive who many thought of as Apple’s “operations drone.”

But seven years later, as journalist Leander Kahney reveals in this definitive book, Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level, things at Apple couldn’t be better. Its stock has nearly tripled, making it the world’s first trillion dollar company. Under Cook’s principled leadership, Apple is pushing hard into renewable energy, labor and environmentally-friendly supply chains, user privacy, and highly-recyclable products. From the massive growth of the iPhone to lesser-known victories like the Apple Watch, Cook is leading Apple to a new era of success.

Drawing on unprecedented access with Apple insiders, Kahney tells the inspiring story of how one man attempted to replace someone irreplacable, and–through strong, humane leadership, supply chain savvy, and a commitment to his values–succeeded more than anyone had thought possible.

In his now-classic books Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work!, both New York Times bestsellers, Austin Kleon gave readers the keys to unlock their creativity and become known for it. Now he offers his most inspiring work yet, Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad, offering clear, powerful guidance for how to stay creative, focused, and true to yourself—for life.

Some of Austin’s key advice: The creative life is not a linear journey to a finish line, it’s a loop—so find a daily routine, because today is the only day that matters. Disconnect from the world to connect with yourself—sometimes you just have to switch into airplane mode. Get outdoors and take a walk (as director Ingmar Bergman told his daughter, “The demons hate fresh air”). Pay attention, and especially pay attention to what you pay attention to. Worry less about getting things done, and more about the worth of what you’re doing. Instead of focusing on making your mark, work to leave things better than you found them.

Keep Going offers timeless, practical, and ethical principles for anyone trying to sustain a meaningful and productive life.

Common advice is to find and follow your passion. A life of passion is a good life, or so we are told. But it’s not that simple. Rarely is passion something that you just stumble upon, and the same drive that fuels breakthroughs–whether they’re athletic, scientific, entrepreneurial, or artistic–can be every bit as destructive as it is productive. Yes, passion can be a wonderful gift, but only if you know how to channel it. If you’re not careful, passion can become an awful curse, leading to endless seeking, suffering, and burnout.

Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness, the authors of Peak Performance, once again team up, this time to demystify passion in The Passion Paradox: A Guide to Going All In, Finding Success, and Discovering the Benefits of an Unbalanced Life, showing readers how they can find and cultivate their passion, sustainably harness its power, and avoid its dangers. They show readers how to develop the right kind of passion, the kind that lets you achieve great things without ruining your life. This thought-provoking book combines captivating stories of extraordinarily passionate individuals with the latest science on the biological and psychological factors that give rise to and help sustain one’s passion.

Jez Burrows opened the New Oxford American Dictionary and sat, mystified. Instead of the definition of “study” he was looking for, he found himself drawn to the strangely conspicuous, curiously melodramatic sentence that followed it: “He perched on the edge of the bed, a study in confusion and misery.” It read like a tiny piece of fiction on the lam and hiding out in the dictionary—and it wasn’t alone. Was it possible to reunite these fugitive fictions? To combine and remix example sentences to form new works? With this spark and a handful of stories shared online, Dictionary Stories: Short Fictions and Other Findings was born.

This genre-bending and wildly inventive collection glows with humor, emotion, and intellect. Effortlessly transcending sentence level, Burrows lights between the profound and the absurd, transporting readers into moments, worlds, and experiences of remarkable variety. Featuring original illustrations by the author, Dictionary Stories is a giddy celebration of the beauty and flexibility of language.

In a very real sense we define our lives through our stories. Understand these stories, along with the motivations behind them, and we can positively change how our future unfolds. With this premise, Elle Luna, artist and author of The Crossroads of Should and Must, and psychotherapist Susie Herrick present Your Story Is Your Power.

Beautifully designed and illustrated with Luna’s watercolor artwork throughout, this inspiring and practical hands-on guide shows women how to uncover and understand their own stories in order to live more confident, unapologetic lives. Your Story Is Your Power is a guided introspection, bringing us from the influences that created the way we think and engage with the world into our own personal stories. By using a series of psychologically astute exercises that focus on the reader’s experience of being female, the reader will identify and understand how she is shaped by family, cultural stereotypes, personality type, personal myths, and more. And as in any successful therapy, the heart of this knowledge gained leads to a clearer sense of self and purpose, both in one’s personal life and in the larger community of women.

Balanced with examples and stories of both authors, along with their shared sense of humor and measured outrage, Your Story Is Your Power is a personal, thoughtful, motivating, gorgeous gift to help every woman take control of her future.

A few common principles drive performance, regardless of the field or the task at hand. Whether someone is trying to qualify for the Olympics, break ground in mathematical theory or craft an artistic masterpiece, many of the practices that lead to great success are the same. In Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success, authors Brad Stulberg — a former McKinsey consultant and journalist who covers health and the science of human performance — and Steve Magness — a performance scientist and coach of Olympic athletes — team up to demystify these practices and demonstrate how everyone can achieve their best.

The first book of its kind, Peak Performance combines the inspiring stories of top performers across a range of capabilities – from athletic, to intellectual, to artistic – with the latest scientific insights into the cognitive and neurochemical factors that drive performance in all domains. In doing so, the book uncovers new linkages that hold promise as performance enhancers but have been overlooked in our traditionally-siloed ways of thinking. The result is a life-changing book in which readers will learn how to enhance their performance by a myriad of ways including: optimally alternating between periods of intense work and rest; developing and harnessing the power of a self-transcending purpose; and priming the body and mind for enhanced productivity. If you want to take your game to the next level, whatever “your game” may be, Peak Performance will teach you how.

Of all the world’s great cities, perhaps none is so defined by its Art Deco architecture as New York. Lively and informative, New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham’s Jazz Age Architecture leads readers step-by-step past the monuments of the 1920s and 30s that recast New York as the world’s modern metropolis. Anthony W. Robins, New York’s best-known Art Deco tour guide, includes an introductory essay describing the Art Deco phenomenon, followed by eleven walking tour itineraries in Manhattan, each accompanied by a map designed by legendary New York cartographer John Tauranac and a survey of Deco sites across the four other boroughs. Also included is a photo gallery of sixteen color plates by nationally acclaimed Art Deco photographer Randy Juster. Robins is a historian and writer who specializes in the architecture of New York City. A former division director at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, has led walking tours of New York for thousands of locals and visitors to the city. In New York Art Deco, Robins has distilled thirty years’ worth of experience into a guidebook for all to enjoy at their own pace.

An employee leaves and you post the open position. Resumes trickle in. You interview a few candidates. No one fits the bill. The next thing you know, three months have passed and that desk is still empty… Nothing drives business success like a staff of talented, productive employees. So why accept a hiring process that fails you time and time again? Well, there’s one person who doesn’t: Scott Wintrip. And in High-Velocity Hiring, he provides the tools and systems for creating a hiring process designed for today’s fast-paced, talent-deficient landscape. Using the proven methods Wintrip has applied at some of today’s more forward-thinking companies, you’ll hire top employees faster — and smarter.

High-Velocity Hiring replaces the old, worn-out way of hiring with the simple but revolutionary approach of actively cultivating top talent before positions open. The old way is slow and inefficient. Wintrip’s way is dynamic and proven-effective. You’ll enrich and maintain a flow of high-quality candidates, harness this flow by identifying the most talented people, and channel it into a pool of ready-to-hire prospective employees. More than ever, hiring the best people requires foresight, planning, alertness, and decisive action. With High-Velocity Hiring, you have everything you need to seize the high-ground in the war for talent and maintain it for long-term growth and profitability.

Deep within the American Dream lies the belief that hard work and steady saving will ensure a comfortable retirement and a better life for one’s children. But even for many families who seem to be doing everything right in an era of unprecedented prosperity, this ideal is still out of reach.

In The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty, NYU economist Jonathan Morduch and Center for Financial Services Innovation SVP Rachel Schneider draw on the groundbreaking U.S. Financial Diaries project, which followed the lives of 235 low- and middle-income families as they navigated through a full year. Combining hard facts with in-depth personal stories, The Financial Diaries presents an unparalleled inside look at the economic stresses of today’s families and offers powerful, fresh ideas for solving them.

In 2000, Keith Devlin — Stanford mathematician, author of 30+ popular math books, and NPR’s “Math Guy” — set out to research the life and legacy of the medieval mathematician Leonardo of Pisa, popularly known as Fibonacci, whose book Liber abbaci has quite literally affected the lives of everyone alive today. Although he is most famous for the Fibonacci numbers — which, it so happens, he didn’t invent — Fibonacci’s greatest contribution was as an expositor of mathematical ideas at a level ordinary people could understand. In 1202, Liber abbaci — the “Book of Calculation” — introduced modern arithmetic to the Western world. Yet Fibonacci was long forgotten after his death, and it was not until the 1960s that his true achievements were finally recognized.

Finding Fibonacci: The Quest to Rediscover the Forgotten Mathematical Genius Who Changed the World is Devlin’s compelling firsthand account of his ten-year quest to tell Fibonacci’s story. Devlin, a math expositor himself, kept a diary of the undertaking, which he draws on here to describe the project’s highs and lows, its false starts and disappointments, the tragedies and unexpected turns, some hilarious episodes, and the occasional lucky breaks. You will also meet the unique individuals Devlin encountered along the way, people who, each for their own reasons, became fascinated by Fibonacci, from the Yale professor who traced modern finance back to Fibonacci, to the Italian historian who made the crucial archival discovery that brought together all the threads of Fibonacci’s astonishing story.

Is it possible both to be a conscientious citizen of the world and grow one’s own wealth? Jonathan DeYoe, the author of Mindful Money: Simple Practices for Reaching Your Financial Goals and Increasing Your Happiness Dividend, says yes, and he explains exactly how.

Money drives many of our decisions. We all worry about earning it, spending it, and saving it ― regardless of our income level or spiritual perspective. Yet few of us understand money’s true nature. Jonathan K. DeYoe, a California-based financial adviser with twenty years’ experience as well as a longtime Buddhist, helps you create a unique financial plan that is guided by your deepest beliefs, and shows you how to save, invest, pay off debt, and fund your retirement and dreams by building a lifetime income stream. With a foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winner Alice Walker, Mindful Money does all this while emphasizing that money is a tool you can use to support your lifestyle, reach your goals, and earn the “happiness dividend” everyone deserves.

The decades after World War II were a golden age across much of the world. It was a time of economic miracles, an era when steady jobs were easy to find and families could see their living standards improving year after year. And then, around 1973, the good times vanished. The world economy slumped badly, then settled into the slow, erratic growth that had been the norm before the war. The result was an era of anxiety, uncertainty, and political extremism that we are still grappling with today.

In An Extraordinary Time, acclaimed economic historian Marc Levinson, author of The Box, and The Great A&P, describes how the end of the postwar boom reverberated throughout the global economy, bringing energy shortages, financial crises, soaring unemployment, and a gnawing sense of insecurity. Almost everywhere, the pendulum swung to the right, bringing politicians like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to power. But their promise that deregulation, privatization, lower tax rates, and smaller government would restore economic security and robust growth proved unfounded. Although the guiding hand of the state could no longer deliver the steady economic performance the public had come to expect, free-market policies were equally unable to do so. The golden age would not come back again. A sweeping reappraisal of the last sixty years of world history, An Extraordinary Time forces us to come to terms with how little control we actually have over the economy.

One of the earliest of all Buddhist texts, the Atthakavagga, or “Book of Eights,” is a remarkable document, not only because it comes from the earliest strain of the literature–before the Buddha, as the title suggests, came to be thought of as a “Buddhist”–but also because its approach to awakening is so simple and free of adherence to any kind of ideology. Instead the Atthakavagga points to a direct and simple approach for attaining peace without requiring the adherence to doctrine.

The value of the teachings it contains is not in the profundity of their philosophy or in their authority as scripture; rather, the value is found in the results they bring to those who live by them. Instead of doctrines to be believed, the Book of Eights describes means or practices for realizing peace. Now in The Buddha before Buddhism: Wisdom from the Early Teachings, Noted Buddhist teacher and scholar Gil Fronsdal‘s rigorous translation with commentary reveals the text to be of interest not only to Buddhists, but also to the ever-growing demographic of spiritual-but-not-religious, those who seek a spiritual life outside the structures of religion.

Thousands of years ago, early humans had an innate need to communicate, but no written language. So they found an easy and natural way to share their thoughts and stories: pictures. Today, after so many years when speaking and writing grew dominant, we’re back in another highly visual age. About 90 percent of everything shared online is now visual – selfies, GIFs, smartphone videos, and more. To survive and thrive in this new visual era, it’s important to harness the power of imagery. You don’t need to be Leonardo da Vinci to be an outstanding visual thinker and communicator. The most effective drawings are the simplest, and you can get good at those in three minutes. In this clear, powerful little book, Draw to Win, international bestselling visual thinking guru Dan Roam teaches you how to use seven basic shapes to explain just about anything to just about anyone. Get ready to work smarter, communicate more clearly, and get better at whatever you do, just by picking up a pen.

To survive in today’s gig economy, you have to be a mover, a shaker, a doer, and a maker. The Hustle Economy presents 25 essays from founders, writers, producers, game makers, artists, and creative types from every path who share one common trait — they are all self-made hustlers who have succeeded at turning their creativity into careers. This collection, created by I Love Charts creator and producer Jason Oberholtzer and illustrated by Jessica Hagy, cartoonist and author of Indexed, How to be Interesting and The Art of War Visualized, includes inspiring and insightftul essays from:
– Producer and performer Mike Rugnetta on why “Do what you love” is both the best and worst piece of advice you’ll ever receive.
– Author, television writer, and humorist Emma Koenig on staying focused and productive no matter what life throws at you.
– Web comic Zach Weinersmith on the equation for success and using your creativity to do what the rest of us won’t.
– Trendspotter Jess Kimball Leslie on identifying your skills and turning it into a successful career.
– and many more

“Disruption” is a business buzzword that has gotten out of control. Today everything and everyone seem to be characterized as disruptive. Now in The Disruption Dilemma, leading young economist Joshua Gans cuts through the chatter to focus on the current realities of disruption, decades beyond its first introduction by Clayton Christensen (who in fact blurbed this book). Departing from the conventional wisdom, Gans identifies two kinds of disruption: demand-side, when successful firms focus on their main customers and underestimate market entrants with innovations that target niche demands; and supply-side, when firms focused on developing existing competencies become incapable of developing new ones. Gans describes the full range of actions business leaders can take to deal with each type of disruption, from “self-disrupting” independent internal units to tightly integrated product development. But therein lies the disruption dilemma: A firm cannot practice both independence and integration at once. Gans shows business leaders how to choose the right strategy so their firms can deal with disruption while continuing to innovate.

No aspect of the Buddha’s teaching seems to have been more misunderstood and neglected than Right Concentration, yet it is a part of the Noble Eightfold Path and an integral element of the Buddha’s own path to awakening. Now legendary American Buddhist teacher Leigh Brasington’s Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas offers a practical, accessible and demystifying look at the states of deep concentration – the jhanas – as described in the suttas of the Pali Canon. The book gives pragmatic, achievable instructions for entering these concentration states and provides an expert look at the theory, history and presentation of the jhanas in the Buddha’s original teachings. (Shambhala)

From the New York Times bestselling author of Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work! comes an interactive journal and all-in-one logbook to get your creative juices flowing and keep a record of your ideas and discoveries. The Steal Like an Artist Journal is the next step in your artistic journey. It combines Austin Kleon‘s unique and compelling ideas with the physical quality that makes journals like Moleskines so enormously popular. Page after page of ideas, prompts, quotes, and exercises offer a daily course in creativity. There are lists to fill in, challenges to take, illustrated creative exercises, and much more. The journal even has an elastic band for place-marking and a special pocket in the back — a “swipe file” to store bits and pieces of inspiration. Because if you want to steal like an artist, you need a place to keep your loot. (Workman)

Nearly one-half of Americans admit to losing sleep over stress. And while most of us do everything we can to reduce it, Stanford psychologist and internationally bestselling author of The Willpower Instinct Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., delivers a startling message: Stress isn’t bad. In The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It, McGonigal highlights new research indicating that stress can in fact make us stronger, smarter, and happier — if we learn how to embrace it. This controversial and groundbreaking new book overturns long-held beliefs about stress. It brings together cutting-edge discoveries on the correlation between resilience — the human capacity for stress-related growth — and mind-set, the power of our beliefs to shape our reality. The Upside of Stress is not a guide to getting rid of stress, but a guide to getting better at stress by understanding it, embracing it, and using it. (Avery/Penguin)

Who hasn’t asked the question “How can I find and follow my true calling?” Elle Luna frames this moment as “standing at the crossroads of Should and Must.” “Should” is what we feel we ought to be doing, or what is expected of us. “Must” is the thing we dream of doing, our heart’s desire. And it was her own personal journey that inspired her to write a brief online manifesto that, in a few short months, touched hundreds of thousands of people. Now she expands her ideas into an inspirational, highly visual gift book, The Crossroads of Should and Must: Find and Follow Your Passion. (Workman)

In today’s business world, it takes more than a website to stay competitive. The smartest, most successful companies are using radically new membership models, subscription-based formats, and freemium pricing structures to grow their customer base—and explode their market valuation—in the most disruptive shift in business since the Industrial Revolution. In The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue, expert consultant Robbie Kellman Baxter shows how to turn ordinary customers into members for life. Whether you have a small business with limited resources, an established company using a traditional business model, or a hungry start-up that wants a bigger bang for its buck, this comprehensive guide provides a wealth of membership-building options to suit every need. Readers will discover what works, and what doesn’t, from some of the key players in the new membership economy. It’s not about ownership; it’s about access, options, and freedom. When you join forces with your customers, membership has its rewards—for you, your company, and your continued success. (McGraw-Hill)

It’s the perfect meeting of minds. One, a general whose epigrammatic lessons on strategy offer timeless insight and wisdom. And the other, a visual thinker whose succinct diagrams and charts give readers a fresh way of looking at life’s challenges and opportunities. A Bronze Age/Information Age marriage of Sun Tzu and Jessica Hagy, The Art of War Visualized: The Sun Tzu Classic in Charts and Graphs is an inspired mash-up, a work that completely reenergizes the venerable classic and makes it accessible to a new generation of students, entrepreneurs, business leaders, artists, seekers, and lovers of games and game theory. For The Art of War Visualized, Hagy presents her vision in evocative ink-brush art and bold typography. The result is page after page in which each passage of the complete canonical text is visually interpreted in a singular diagram, chart, or other illustration—making the classic dazzlingly accessible for a new generation of readers. (Workman)

Innovators today are told to run loose and think lean in order to fail fast and succeed sooner. But in a world obsessed with the new, where cool added features often trump actual customer needs, it’s the consumer who suffers. In our quest to be more agile, we end up creating products that underwhelm. Today’s leading companies understand that emotional connection is critical to product development. And they use a clear, repeatable design process that focuses squarely on consumer engagement rather than piling on features for features’ sake. In Well-Designed: How to Use Empathy to Create Products People Love, a refreshingly jargon-free and practical book, product design expert Jon Kolko maps out this process, demonstrating how it will help you and your team conceive and build successful, emotionally resonant products again and again. Whether you’re a designer, a product developer, or a marketer thinking about your company’s next offering, this book will forever change the way you think about—and create—successful products. (Harvard Business Review Press)

When Zen teacher Karen Maezen Miller and her family land in a house with a hundred-year-old Japanese garden, she uses the paradise in her backyard to glean the living wisdom of our natural world. Through her eyes, rocks convey faith, ponds preach stillness, flowers give love, and leaves express the effortless ease of letting go. Paradise in Plain Sight: Lessons from a Zen Garden welcomes readers into the garden for Zen lessons in fearlessness, forgiveness, presence, acceptance, and contentment. Miller gathers inspiration from the ground beneath her feet to remind us that paradise is always here and now. (New World Library)

Jennifer Fulwiler told herself she was happy. Why wouldn’t she be? She made good money as a programmer at a hot tech start-up, had just married a guy with a stack of Ivy League degrees, and lived in a twenty-first-floor condo where she could sip sauvignon blanc while watching the sun set behind the hills of Austin. Raised in a happy, atheist home, Jennifer had the freedom to think for herself and play by her own rules. Yet a creeping darkness followed her all of her life. Finally, one winter night, it drove her to the edge of her balcony, making her ask once and for all why anything mattered. At that moment everything she knew and believed was shattered. Asking the unflinching questions about life and death, good and evil, led Jennifer to Christianity, the religion she had reviled since she was an awkward, sceptical child growing up in the Bible Belt. Mortified by this turn of events, she hid her quest from everyone except her husband, concealing religious books in opaque bags as if they were porn and locking herself in public bathroom stalls to read the Bible. Just when Jennifer had a profound epiphany that gave her the courage to convert, she was diagnosed with a life-threatening medical condition-and the only treatment was directly at odds with the doctrines of her new-found faith. Something Other Than God: How I Passionately Sought Happiness and Accidentally Found It is a poignant, profound and often funny tale of one woman who set out to find the meaning of life and discovered that true happiness sometimes requires losing it all. (Ignatius Press)

For many financial professionals as well as individual investors, behavioral bias is the largest single factor behind poor investment decisions. The same instincts that our brains employ to keep us alive all too often work against us in the world of finance and investments. Investing Psychology: The Effects of Behavioral Finance on Investment Choice and Bias, by noted finance expert Tim Richards, explores several different types of behavioral bias, which pulls back the curtain on any illusions you have about yourself and your investing abilities. This practical investment guide explains that conventional financial wisdom is often nothing more than myth, and provides a detailed roadmap for overcoming behavioral bias. Investing Psychology is a unique book that shows readers how to dig deeper and persistently question everything in the financial world around them, to avoid the incorrect investment decisions that human nature all too often compels us to make. (John Wiley & Sons)

For the vast majority of us, giving a presentation is an extremely difficult and nerve-wracking process, whether we’re in a one-on-one meeting, a conference room with a dozen strangers, or a lecture hall in front of thousands. But according to Dan Roam, the visual communications expert and acclaimed author of The Back of the Napkin, it doesn’t have to be so hard. Dan draws on ideas he’s been honing for more than two decades as an award-winning presenter who has brought his whiteboard everywhere from Fortune 500 companies to tiny start-ups to the White House. In this short but powerful book, Show and Tell: How Everybody Can Make Extraordinary Presentations, Roam introduces a new set of tools for making extraordinary presentations in any setting. (Portfolio/Penguin Random House)

In his New York Times bestseller Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon showed readers how to unlock their creativity by “stealing” from the community of other movers and shakers. Now, in an even more forward-thinking and necessary book, he shows how to take that critical next step on a creative journey—getting known. Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered is about why generosity trumps genius. It’s about getting findable, about using the network instead of wasting time “networking.” It’s not self-promotion, it’s self-discovery—let others into your process, then let them steal from you. Filled with illustrations, quotes, stories, and examples, Show Your Work! offers ten transformative rules for being open, generous, brave, productive. From broader life lessons about work (you can’t find your voice if you don’t use it) to the etiquette of sharing—and the dangers of oversharing—to the practicalities of Internet life (build a good domain name; give credit when credit is due), it’s an inspiring manifesto for succeeding as any kind of artist or entrepreneur in the digital age. (Workman)

The Doodle Revolution: Unlock the Power to Think Differently is a fearless guide to awakening your mind using simple visual language. What do Einstein, Edison, Richard Feynman, Henry Ford, and JFK have in common? Like virtually all heavy-hitting thinkers, they looked beyond just words and numbers to get intellectual and creative insights. They actively applied a deceptively simple tool to think both smarter and faster: the doodle. And so can the rest of us-zero artistic talent required. Visual thinking expert Sunni Brown created The Doodle Revolution as a kick-starter guide for igniting and applying simple visual language to any challenge. The instinctive and universal act of doodling need only be unleashed in order to innovate, solve problems, and elevate cognitive performance instantly. (Portfolio/Penguin Random House)

Jony Ive’s product designs for Apple have not only made it one of the most valuable companies in the world, they’ve overturned entire industries, from music and mobile phones to PCs and tablets. But for someone who has changed the world as much as he has, little is widely known about Apple’s design chief, who shuns the spotlight and lets his work speak for itself. Now in Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products, CultofMac.com editor and New York Times bestselling author of Inside Steve’s Brain Leander Kahney takes a rigorous look at a remarkably creative career and offers a unique perspective on how Ive designs killer products that attract fanatically loyal customers. (Portfolio/Penguin)

Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of JFK remains one of the most horrifying and hotly debated crimes in American history. Just as perplexing is the assassin himself. Oswald’s hazy background and motivations make him an intriguing yet frustratingly enigmatic figure. Because he briefly defected to the Soviet Union, some historians allege he was a Soviet agent. But in what the New York Times Book Review calls a “penetrating study of Oswald’s pivotal sojourn in the Soviet Union,” Peter Savodnik‘s The Interloper: Lee Harvey Oswald Inside the Soviet Union reveals a stranger, more chilling story. Oswald ventured to Russia at the age of 19, after a failed stint in the U.S. Marine Corps and a childhood spent shuffling from address to address with his unstable, needy mother. But Oswald quickly became just as disillusioned with his adopted country as he had been with the United States. After nearly three years, he returned to America feeling utterly defeated and began to look for an outlet for his frustration and rage. Drawing on groundbreaking research, including interviews with Oswald’s friends in Russia and the United States, The Interloper brilliantly evokes the shattered psyche not just of Oswald himself, but also of the era he so tragically defined. (Perseus/Basic Books)

Allan Sherman was the Larry David, the Adam Sandler, the Sacha Baron Cohen of the 1960s. He led Jewish humor and sensibilities out of ethnic enclaves and into the American mainstream with explosively funny parodies of classic songs that won him fans from Harpo Marx to President John F. Kennedy. In the 50th anniversary year of Sherman’s greatest hit, “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh,” journalist Mark Cohen‘s Overweight Sensation: The Life and Comedy of Allan Sherman celebrates Sherman’s legacy as a touchstone of postwar humor and a turning point in Jewish American cultural history. With exclusive access to Allan Sherman’s estate, Cohen has written the first full-length biography of one of America’s greatest comedians, a coarse voice singing off-key about seltzer, the garment industry, and why being a knight wasn’t really so great (aluminum pants), a hugely creative artist who sold three million albums in just twelve months, yet died in obscurity a decade later at the age of forty-nine. (Brandeis)

In The Nature of the Future: Dispatches from the Socialstructed World, Marina Gorbis, head of Silicon Valley’s legendary Institute for the Future, offers a vision of our reinvented world. A thriving new relationship-driven or “socialstructed” economy is emerging in which individuals are harnessing the powers of new technologies to join together and provide an exciting range of array of products and services. These engaged and innovative pioneers are filling gaps and doing the seemingly impossible by reinventing business, education, medicine, banking, government, and even scientific research. Based on extensive research and offering surprising insights, Gorbis takes readers on a tour of the socialstructed future and depicts an exciting vision of tomorrow. (Simon & Schuster)

Climate change. Finite fossil fuels. Fresh water depletion. Rising commodity prices. Ocean acidification. Deforestation. Feeding the world’s billions. We’re beset by an array of natural resource and environmental challenges that pose a tremendous risk to human prosperity, to world peace, and to the planet itself. Yet if we act now, technologist Ramez Naam argues, these problems are addressable. In this remarkable and important book, The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet, he argues that our most valuable resource isn’t oil, water, gold, or land, it’s our continually growing capacity to innovate. He charts a course to supercharge innovation by changing the rules of our economy, which can lead the whole world to greater human safety and well-being. Harvard’s Steven Pinker says “This book contains a plan — probably the only plan — to save the world.” (University Press of New England)

You want to leave a mark, not a blemish. Be a hero, not a spectator. You want to be interesting. (Who doesn’t?) But sometimes it takes a nudge, a wake-up call, an intervention — and a little help. This is where whimsical and insightful cartoonist Jessica Hagy comes in. Based on a blog post that quickly went viral and has now attracted more than 1 million 1.2 million 1.4 million viewers, How to Be Interesting is a uniquely inspirational book that combines fresh and pithy lessons with deceptively simple diagrams and charts. It’s a book about exploring, taking chances, being open, taking ownership and much more. (Workman)

For eons, readers have flocked to the Fake Science website for scientifically flavored information. The research there has been lauded by Mental Floss as “inaccurate and ridiculous in every way,” praised by the Guardian as “brilliantly false,” heralded by io9 as “amazing,” and noted by Google as “a website.” Now readers can finally share the freshest discoveries of the Fake Science lab. Larded with hundreds of footnotes, illustrations, and a small amount of lard (it reduces paper manufacturing costs), Fake Science 101 is a completely new, truth-sterilized textbook. a “Less-Than-Factual Guide to Our Amazing World.” It will help you become the scientist you always dreamed of becoming while you were sleeping through science class. (Adams Media)

Elusive Victories: The American Presidency at War is a superb work of history and political analysis making the surprising argument that American presidents have repeatedly failed at war. Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center professor Andrew Polsky argues that true success in war is defined not by battlefield triumphs but by whether it accomplishes a nation’s political objectives; even in wars we consider victories, including the Civil War and both World Wars, presidents have often failed to achieve their key political goals, especially the kind of peace they sought. Elusive Victories offers a penetrating analysis of the multiple dimensions of wartime presidential leadership and an insightful explanation for why presidents fail. Pulitzer Prize-winning historial James M. McPherson says, “In this provocative and incisive study of six presidents as wartime commanders in chief, Andrew Polsky demonstrates that it is much easier to start a war than to bring it to a successful conclusion.” International relations scholar Andrew J. Bacevich says “Polsky’s cautionary tale is as timely as it is important.” (Oxford University Press)

When asked to talk to students at a community college in upstate New York, designer and author of Newspaper Blackout Austin Kleon sat down and wrote a simple list of 10 things he wished he’d heard when he was in college: Steal like an artist. Don’t wait until you know who you are to start making things. Write the book you want to read. Use your hands. Side projects are important. Do good work and put it where people can see it. Geography is no longer our master. Be nice. Be Boring. Creativity is subtraction. After giving the speech, he posted the text and slides to his blog, and it quickly went viral, with more than 1.5 million 1.8 million 2.0 million page views. Now Kleon has expanded his original manifesto into Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative, including new insights, drawings and exercises which offer a comprehensive guide to being creative and original in art, work and life. (Workman)

Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., is a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University. Her book The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It shatters myths about willpower and reveals life-changing secrets from the new science of self-control. McGonigal takes readers on a fascinating tour of research in psychology, neuroscience, medicine and economics to reveal a compelling new picture of what willpower is, why it matters, and how to develop it: Why willpower is limited and why too much self-control is actually bad for our health; the different types of willpower and how to harness “I will,” “I won’t,” and “I want” power; and how to create environments that boost our willpower. Whether hoping to lose weight, find greater focus, get a handle on stress or make another change in the way we lead our lives, The Willpower Instinct offers new knowledge as well as practical strategies for self-control without suffering. (Avery/Penguin)

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? 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. Acclaimed visual thinking guru Dan Roam offers a way out of blah-blah-blah, which he calls “Vivid Thinking.” His earlier book, The Back of the Napkin, taught readers how to solve problems and sell ideas by drawing simple pictures. Now in Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don’t Work he demonstrates remarkable new tools to combine 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. (Portfolio/Penguin)

Journalist Matthew Shaer takes readers inside the hidden world of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights–a close-knit but divided community. On a cold night in December, the members of a Hasidic anti-crime patrol called the Shomrim are summoned to a yeshiva dormitory in Crown Heights. There to break up a brawl, the Shomrim instead found themselves embroiled in a religious schism that has split the community and turned roommate against roommate, neighbor against neighbor. Among Righteous Men: A Tale of Vigilantes and Vindication in Hasidic Crown Heights offers a peek into the deepest corners of a normally hidden world, in a book filled with car chases, tragic figures, racial strife, and tense courtroom scenes as well as insights into Hasidic life and culture. Sudhir Venkatesh, author of Gang Leader for a Day, says “The book feels novelistic, but it is all too true, and Shaer brings to life the great characters: gangs, lawyers, religious leaders, victims, and perpetrators. All come alive in this wonderful, riveting book.” (John Wiley & Sons)

From modest beginnings as a tea shop in New York, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company became the largest retailer in the world. But its explosive growth made it a mortal threat to hundreds of thousands of mom-and-pop grocery stores. Main Street fought back tooth and nail and eventually the federal government pressed criminal charges against the Great A&P for selling food too cheaply — and won. The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America is Marc Levinson‘s brilliant business history of a stunningly successful company that forever changed how Americans shop and what Americans eat. The “Wall Street Journal” named it one of the Ten Best Nonfiction Books of 2011. (Hill & Wang/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Humanity is on the cusp of an exciting longevity revolution. The first person to live to 150 years has probably already been born. What will your life look like when you live to be over 100? Will you be healthy? Will your marriage need a sunset clause? How long will you have to work? Will you finish one career at 65 only to go back to school to learn a new one? And then, will you be happily working for another sixty years? Maybe you’ll be a parent to a newborn and a grandparent at the same time. Will the world become overpopulated? And how will living longer affect your finances, your family life, and your views on religion and the afterlife? In “Washington Post” bestseller 100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, From Careers and Relationships to Family and Faith, futurist Sonia Arrison takes us on an eye-opening journey to the future at our doorsteps, where science and technology is beginning to radically change life as we know it. She introduces us to the people transforming our lives, the brilliant scientists, genius inventors and billionaires who fund their work, and paints a vivid picture of a future that only recently seemed like science fiction, but now is very real. (Basic Books/Perseus)

In 1202, a 32-year old Italian finished one of the most influential books of all time, which introduced modern arithmetic to Western Europe. Devised in India in the 7th and 8th centuries and brought to North Africa by Muslim traders, the Hindu-Arabic system helped transform the West into the dominant force in science, technology, and commerce, leaving behind Muslim cultures which had long known it but had failed to see its potential. The young Italian, Leonardo of Pisa (better known today as Fibonacci), had learned the Hindu number system when he traveled to North Africa. The book he created was Liber abbaci, the “Book of Calculation,” and its publication led directly to large-scale international commerce and the scientific revolution of the Renaissance. Now in The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci’s Arithmetic Revolution, NPR’s “Math Guy” and one of the great math popularizers of our time, Keith Devlin, recreates the life and enduring legacy of an overlooked genius, and in the process makes clear how central numbers and mathematics are to our daily lives. (Walker & Company/Bloomsbury)

In this short e-book (about 14,000 words), Stanford mathematician and NPR’s “Math Guy” Keith Devlin presents the fascinating similarities between 13th Century mathematician Leonardo of Pisa, more commonly known as Fibonacci, and Steve Jobs, the 20th Century founder of Apple computers. A companion to Devlin’s book The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci’s Arithmetic Revolution, Leonardo & Steve: The Young Genius Who Beat Apple to Market by 800 Years shows the uncanny parallels between Leonardo’s arithmetic revolution that took place in Tuscany centuries ago and the one that began in California’s Silicon Valley in more recent times. It is a story about the personal computing revolution that occurred in the 1980s, but with the novel twist that it was actually history repeating itself.

Climate change is now doing far more harm than marooning polar bears on melting chunks of ice — it is damaging the health of people around the world. Written by Paul Epstein, associate director of Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and Global Environment and award-winning science journalist Dan Ferber, Changing Planet, Changing Health: How the Climate Crisis Threatens Our Health and What We Can Do about It brilliantly connects stories of real people with cutting-edge scientific and medical information, and offers innovative, essential solutions for shaping a healthy global economic order in the twenty-first century. Booklist named it one of the Top Ten Health Books of 2011, and their starred review said “If ever there was a book that ought to be on everybody’s reading bucket list this is it.” Former Vice President Al Gore calls it “a landmark that will raise our consciousness.” Elizabeth Kolbert calls it “an illuminating, important, and deeply sobering book,” and Bill McKibben says “You’ll never find a clearer or smarter explanation of one of the toughest problems the world faces.” (University of California Press)

Kill or Capture is the electrifying true story of the pursuit for the man behind al Qaeda’s suicide bombing campaign in Iraq. It is a true-life thriller that tells the story of senior military interrogator Matthew Alexander‘s adrenaline-filled, “outside the wire” pursuit of a notorious Syrian mass murderer named Zafar — the leader of al Qaeda in northern Iraq — a killer with the blood of thousands of innocents on his hands. In a breathless thirty-day period, Alexander and a small Special Operations task force brave the hazards of the Iraqi insurgency to conduct dangerous kill-or-capture missions and hunt down a murderer. Kill or Capture immerses readers in the dangerous world of battlefield interrogations as the author and his team climb the ladder of al Qaeda leadership in a series of raids, braving roadside bombs, near death by electrocution and circles within circles of lies. (St. Martin’s Press)

Gonzo memoirist Rick Lax (author of Lawyer Boy) was paranoid and terrified of being conned, so he bolts for Las Vegas, deception capital of the world, to learn the game and how to guard against it. There he meets deceivers of all kinds, from back-alley hustlers and poker pros to the biggest headliners on the Strip. During the course of his unconventional education, which includes passing himself off as an octogenarian, being exposed as a card counter, and picking up a hooker (inadvertently, of course), Rick gets closer to becoming a human lie detector… but at what cost? By the end of Fool Me Once: Hustlers, Hookers, Headliners, and How Not to Get Screwed in Vegas, you’ll know why seventh graders make better liars than college students, how to use a handful of rice as a polygraph, and how to bluff a poker pro. Above all, you’ll understand why some things in life are a lot worse than being fooled. Kirkus Reviews says “Plenty of cons and cheap hustles in this lively memoir of time spent on the seamier edge of Casinoland… An entertaining field guide to vice, but also one with a point.” (St. Martin’s Press)

When things don’t go well on a sales call, salespeople usually ask themselves, “Why did I lose that sale?” and then move on. But learning the answer can mean the difference between landing and losing the next sale. Richard Schroder is a recognized thought leader in win/loss analysis and sales training. Now in From a Good Sales Call to a Great Sales Call he teaches how to assess strengths and weaknesses based on information from the most qualified source available: the buyer. Refreshingly direct and right to the point, this system is based on 12 years of research and thousands of sales prospect interviews. This comprehensive, powerful program leads to better sales techniques and increased close rates. In short, it works. (McGraw-Hill)

Books like Predictably Irrational and Nudge have brought behavioral economics into the mainstream. But while we all marvel at how different — and weird — real people behave compared to the “rational actors” of traditional economics, in the end we go back to business as usual. After all, what do a few laboratory experiments have to do with making a buck? As economist Kay-Yut Chen has shown, quite a bit. Chen started behavioral economics research at Hewlett-Packard, founding the first such “moneylab” at any company, let alone one in the Fortune 500. His groundbreaking research into human behavior has led to tangible results for HP. In fact, he has saved the company millions of dollars by showing how changing the right conditions can make people behave very differently. Chen and science writer Marina Krakovsky reveal how to translate the counterintuitive findings of behavioral economics into concrete action steps for businesses of any size. Secrets of the Moneylab: How Behavioral Economics Can Improve Your Business shows how tackling your real-world problems like a scientist can open up entirely new realms of possibility and profit. (Portfolio/Penguin)

One of the most prescient financial analysts of the past decade predicts the next economic iceberg and explains how all of us can steer clear. The Great Recession was just the beginning, says analyst Eric Janszen. If we remain on the current course, an even bigger catastrophe is imminent. Inclined to disbelieve him? He predicted the last two busts well before they happened. Our problems, according to Janszen, are rooted in the flaws of the debt-driven FIRE economy (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate), which dwarfs and is coming close to extinguishing America’s “Productive Economy,” the making and selling of real things. The government’s tried-and-true methods of currency depreciation, tax and interest rate cuts, and fiscal stimulus won’t cut it this time around. The only way out is to change our fundamental approach. With a startling grasp of the complex factors at play, Janszen’s new book The Postcatastrophe Economy: Rebuilding America and Avoiding the Next Bubble cuts through the rhetoric to get at the heart of our recent financial woes. This urgently thought-provoking book shows how political failures have impeded our country’s economic progress and offers solutions for a more sustainable and stable economic future. (Portfolio/Penguin)

A geographer, social scientist, artist, writer and provocateur, Trevor Paglen has been exploring the secret “black world” of the U.S. military and intelligence agencies for almost a decade, publishing, speaking and making astonishing photographs. As an artist, Paglen is interested in the idea of photography as truth-telling, but his pictures often stop short of traditional ideas of documentation. His long-awaited first photographic monograph is Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes. In the series “Limit Telephotography” he employs high-end optical systems to photograph top-secret governmental sites, and in “The Other Night Sky,” he uses the data of amateur satellite watchers to track and photograph classified spacecraft in Earth’s orbit. In other works Paglen transforms documents such as passports, flight data and aliases of CIA operatives into art objects. Rebecca Solnit contributes a searing essay that traces this history of clandestine military activity on the American landscape. Photo-Eye calls it a “fascinating collection” and says “Aperture has published something genuinely important here.” (Aperture)

When most Americans hear the words “roller derby” they think of the kitschy sport once popular on weekend television during the seventies and eighties. Originally an endurance competition where skaters traveled the equivalent of a trip between Los Angeles and New York, derby gradually evolved into a violent contact sport often involving fake fighting. But after nearly dying out in the nineties, derby has been making a comeback. There are now more than 17,000 skaters in more than 400 leagues around the world, with hundreds of thousands of die-hard fans. Written by veteran skaters as both a history and a how-to, Down and Derby: The Insider’s Guide to Roller Derby is a brassy celebration of every aspect of the sport, from its origins in the late 1800s, to the rules of a modern bout, to the science of picking an alias, to the many ways you can get involved off skates. Alex Cohen is a radio host on KPCC in Los Angeles and a frequent contributor to National Public Radio, and Jennifer Barbee writes for Blood and Thunder magazine and is a longtime staffer of the WGA. As “Axles of Evil” and “Kasey Bomber,” they have skated with the L.A. Derby Dolls since 2003. (Soft Skull/Counterpoint)

We’ll let Publishers Weekly tell you about Karen Maezen Miller‘s Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life: “Miller (author of Momma Zen) uses daily household chores — laundry, kitchen, yard — to demonstrate timeless Buddhist principles. The skillful weaving of personal anecdotes, a few Zen terms, and acute insights — sometimes addressing the reader directly — distinguish this book from others in the genre. Miller, a Zen priest and student of the late Maezumi Roshi, argues for the faultless wisdom of following instructions when going about the mundane activities that form the substance of everyday life. Candid about some of the difficulties of her past, Miller stresses the importance of changing perceptions, which can lead to more beneficial outcomes for oneself and others: All practice is the practice of making a turn in a different direction. The book wears its Zen lightly; indeed, Miller skates over the years of study — as well as the decision to become a priest — that undoubtedly ground her current perspectives. By choosing to focus on the conclusions rather than the process of her Zen journey, Miller has tilted her writing more toward self-help/advice than spirituality/religion. This disarming book is full of deft and reassuring observations.” (New World Library)

The world’s best contemporary writers — from Michael Chabon and Claire Messud to Jonathan Lethem and Amy Tan — engage in a wide-ranging, insightful, and oft- surprising roundtable discussion on the art of writing fiction. Drawing back the curtain on the mysterious process of writing novels, The Secret Miracle: The Novelist’s Handbook, from the 826 Valencia writing centers and edited by Daniel Alarcon, brings together the foremost practitioners of the craft to discuss how they write. Paul Auster, Roddy Doyle, Allegra Goodman, Aleksandar Hemon, Mario Vargas Llosa, Susan Minot, Rick Moody, Haruki Murakami, George Pelecanos, Gary Shteyngart, and others take us step by step through the alchemy of writing fiction, answering everything from nuts-and-bolts queries — “Do you outline?” — to perennial questions posed by writers and readers alike: “What makes a character compelling?” From Stephen King’s deadpan distinction between novels and short stories (“Novels are longer and have more s**t in them”) to Colm Toibin’s anti-romanticized take on his characters (“They are just words”), every page contains insights found nowhere else. With honesty, humor, and elegance, The Secret Miracle gives both aspiring writers and lovers of literature a master class in the art of writing. (Henry Holt)

Ancient Wisdom, Modern Kitchen: Recipes from the East for Health, Healing, and Long Life, a winner in the 2010 International Book Awards, reveals how easy it is to tap into the 3,000-year-old secrets of the Eastern healing arts. This entertaining and easy-to-use book provides scores of delicious recipes, anecdotes about various herbs and foods, and all you need to know about acquiring ingredients–even if you don’t know the difference between a lotus seed and the lotus position. Highlighting “superfoods” such as goji berries, as well as more familiar ingredients like ginger, garlic, and mint, it includes an overview of traditional Chinese medicine, herbs and food therapy, details on 100 healthy Asian ingredients, and recipes for a wide range of common health concerns, including fatigue, menopause, high cholesterol, weight control, and diabetes. Publishers Weekly says “the three authors of this well-penned title highlight key concepts of east Asian herbal cooking, and lucidly explain their holistic approach to cooking.” (Da Capo Press/Perseus)

Getting to yes is not the same as getting results. In Beyond Dealmaking: Five Steps to Negotiating Profitable Relationships, international negotiation expert and mediator Melanie Billings-Yun shows that the key to winning unbeatable, long-term results in today’s complex economic landscape is to negotiate solid, long-term relationships. Traditionally, negotiation has been approached as an isolated activity, separate from the business relationship. But those who focus only on getting the deal closed often find their victory doesn’t translate into sustainable profits. Any deal is as fragile as the paper it’s written on. Countless disputes arise and deals easily collapse when the negotiation process leaves one party unhappy, feeling forced into unfair terms, or even disgruntled at a change in circumstances. In five clear steps, Billings-Yun takes the pain and fear out of negotiation with her proven GRASP method. Filled with real-life examples of negotiations that have gone right and wrong, this groundbreaking book shows how fairness, honesty, empathy, flexibility and mutual problem-solving lead to sustainable success. (Jossey-Bass/John Wiley & Sons)

Boys are falling behind in school. The world has become more verbal; boys haven’t. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the biggest culprits are not video games, pop culture, or female-dominated schools biased toward girls. The real problem is that boys have been thrust into a bewildering new school environment that demands high-level reading and writing skills long before they are capable of handling them. The gap between male and female achievement has reached the college level, where only 40 per cent of graduates next year will be male. This doesn’t just mean fewer male doctors and lawyers, it also means fewer men in the careers that previously did not require post-high school degrees but do now. Why Boys Fail: Saving Our Sons from an Educational System That’s Leaving Them Behind examines the roots and repercussions of this problem and spells out the educational, political, social and economic challenges we face as we work to end it. Amidst the alarming proof of failure among boys — around the world — there are also inspiring case studies of schools where something is going right. Each has come up with realistic ways to make sure that every student — male and female — has the tools to succeed in school and later in life. Educators and parents alike will take heart in these promising developments, and heed the book’s call to action. (AMACOM Books)

Visual thinking guru Dan Roam‘s The Back of the Napkin, an international bestseller, taught readers the power of brainstorming and communicating with pictures. It presented a new and exciting way to solve all kinds of problems — from the boardroom to the sales floor to the cubicle jungle — and proved that a simple drawing on a humble napkin can be more powerful than the slickest PowerPoint presentation. The new companion workbook, Unfolding the Napkin: The Hands-On Method for Solving Complex Problems with Simple Pictures, helps readers put Roam’s principles into practice with step-by-step guidelines. It’s filled with detailed case studies, guided do-it-yourself exercises, and plenty of blank space for drawing. Roam structured the book as a complete four-day visual-thinking seminar, taking readers step-by-step from “I can’t draw” to “Here is the picture I drew that I think will save the world.” (Portfolio/Penguin Group)

For the first time, a leading financial adviser has developed a remarkable set of guidelines to give individuals the same kind of objective insight into their personal finances that successful businesses have always had. Your Money Ratios: 8 Simple Tools for Financial Security, by Charles Farrell, helps readers effectively manage debt, invest prudently, and develop a realistic and effective savings plan to ensure both financial success and security. It teaches eight simple ratios to helps simplify many of the complex financial decisions you make each year. Publishers Weekly says “Farrell does a wonderful job of taking the worry and stress out of number anxiety.” (Avery/Penguin)