The discipline of behavioral economics was established forty years ago by Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in a series of startlingly innovative works. The exceptional friendship between Kahneman and Tversky, one of the greatest scientific collaborations ever, enhanced evidence-based medicine, ushered in a new era of government regulation, and enabled a large portion of Michael Lewis’s own work. Lewis demonstrates how their Nobel Prize-winning theory of the mind changed our sense of reality in The Undoing Project.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Man is a deterministic device thrown into a probabilistic universe. In this match, surprises are expected.”
“When you are a pessimist and the bad thing happens, you live it twice, Amos”
“He suggested a new definition of the nerd: a person who knows his own mind well enough to mistrust it.”
“When they made decisions, people did not seek to maximize utility. They sought to minimize regret.”
“The way the creative process works is that you first say something, and later, sometimes years later, you understand what you said.”
James B. Stewart’s book, “DisneyWar,” is an exposé of Michael Eisner’s 20 years as chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company. The dramatic inside tale of Disney Chairman and CEO Michael Eisner’s fall from grace and the controversies that nearly tore the most well-known entertainment business in America apart.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“You don’t do something because it’s a sure thing. You don’t do something for the bank. That’s the one that flops. That’s a riskier proposition than doing something completely original. It’s risky to be safe.”
Generations of readers have been intrigued by Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s memoir because of its tales of life in Nazi death camps and its teachings for spiritual survival. Frankl contends that while we cannot avoid suffering, we can choose how to deal with it, interpret information in it, and push forward with fresh purpose. He bases this claim on his own experience as well as the accounts of his patients. His logotherapy idea is based on the conviction that the quest for meaning rather than pleasure is what drives people most. One of the most well-known novels in America is Man’s Search for Meaning, which continues to motivate us all to discover meaning in life itself.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”
“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”
“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”
Steven Callahan’s gripping account of maritime survival was on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 36 weeks prior to The Perfect Storm and In the Heart of the Sea. Adrift is an undisputed seafaring classic, a gripping first-person account by the lone guy known to have sustained more than a month alone at sea, trying to fight for his life in an inflatable dinghy after his small sloop overturned only six days out. In some ways, Adrift served as the model for the new wave of adventure books. Any adventure library must have Adrift.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“To my mind, voyaging through wildernesses, be they full of woods or waves, is essential to the growth and maturity of the human spirit. It is in the wilderness that you really learn who you are.”
“This life is full of trials and tribulations, so you have to capture humor whenever and wherever you can find it.”
“Avoiding risk is not much of a goal…whether you crawl into a hole or walk a high wire, nobody gets out of here alive. We cannot grow without challenge.”
“My plight has given me a strange kind of wealth, the most important kind. I value each moment that is not spent in pain, desperation, hunger, thirst, or loneliness.”
“German tourists cover the beaches and buy anything with a For Sale sign.”
Henrietta Lacks was her name, but scientists refer to her as HeLa. Her cells were stolen without her permission, and despite the fact that she was a poor tobacco farmer in the South who toiled the same land as her enslaved ancestors, they became one of the most crucial medical instruments. They were the first “immortal” human cells created in culture, and even though she has been deceased for more than 60 years, they are still functioning. HeLa cells would weigh more than 50 million metric tons—the equivalent of one hundred Empire State Buildings—if they were all piled up together and placed on a scale.
HeLa cells were essential for creating the polio vaccine, helped scientists learn more about cancer, viruses, and the consequences of the atom bomb, and aided with significant developments like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping. They have also been purchased and sold in the billions. However, Henrietta Lacks, who is interred in an unmarked grave, is still essentially unknown.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Like the Bible said,’ Gary whispered, ‘man brought nothing into this world and he’ll carry nothing out. Sometimes we care about stuff too much. We worry when there’s nothing to worry about.”
“She’s the most important person in the world and her family living in poverty. If our mother is so important to science, why can’t we get health insurance?”
“But I tell you one thing, I don’t want to be immortal if it mean living forever, cause then everybody else just die and get old in front of you while you stay the same, and that’s just sad.”
“When he asked if she was okay, her eyes welled with tears and she said, “Like I’m always telling my brothers, if you gonna go into history, you can’t do it with a hate attitude. You got to remember, times was different.”
“I keep with me all I know about you deep in my soul, because I am part of you, and you are me.”
There has never been a business like Netflix before. It has sparked nothing less than a revolution in the entertainment sector, bringing in billions of dollars annually and grabbing the interest of hundreds of millions of people across more than 190 nations. Netflix, which began as an online DVD rental service in 1998, had to repeatedly reinvent itself in order to achieve these impressive heights. Without the paradoxical and radical management ideas that cofounder Reed Hastings set from the early beginning, this type of extraordinary flexibility would not have been feasible.
Hastings disregarded the conventional wisdom that other businesses adhere to and defied convention to create a culture that was centered on freedom and responsibility. As a result, Netflix has been able to make adjustments and drive innovation as the necessities of its members and the wider world have changed at the same time.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“it made our workforce smarter. When you give low-level employees access to information that is generally reserved for high-level executives, they get more done on their own. They work faster without stopping to ask for information and approval. They make better decisions without needing input from the top.”
“The Fearless Organization, she explains that if you want to encourage innovation, you should develop an environment where people feel safe to dream, speak up, and take risks. The safer the atmosphere, the more innovation you will have.”
“HIGH PERFORMANCE + SELFLESS CANDOR = EXTREMELY HIGH PERFORMANCE”
“If you give employees more freedom instead of developing processes to prevent them from exercising their own judgment, they will make better decisions and it’s easier to hold them accountable.”
“In a fast and innovative company, ownership of critical, big-ticket decisions should be dispersed across the workforce at all different levels, not allocated according to hierarchical status.”
Adolf Hitler attacked Holland and Belgium on Winston Churchill’s first day in office as prime minister. There were only two weeks left until the Dunkirk evacuation, and Poland and Czechoslovakia had already succumbed. Hitler would conduct a furious bombing campaign for the following 12 months, killing 45,000 Britons. Churchill had to keep his nation together and persuade FDR that Britain was a good ally who was prepared to fight to the bitter end.
It’s a tale of political bluffing, but it’s also a close-knit household drama, played out against the backdrops of Churchill’s wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage went when the moon was full and the bombing threat was at its height, and of course, 10 Downing Street in London. With the aid of diaries, original archival documents, and previously classified intelligence reports—some of which have only recently been made public—Larson offers a fresh perspective on London’s darkest year through the daily life of Churchill and his family, including his wife Clementine; their youngest daughter Mary, who resents her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son Randolph and his lovely, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“It is slothful not to compress your thoughts,” he said.”
“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
“Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.”
“As long as there was tea, there was England.”
“It would be foolish to disguise the gravity of the hour,” he said. “It would be still more foolish to lose heart and courage.”
A groundbreaking biography of Alexander Hamilton—a Founding Father who energized, inspired, scandalized, and molded the young country—is offered by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow. Ron Chernow presents the captivating tale of a man who defied all obstacles to create, inspire, and scandalize fledgling America in the first comprehensive biography of Alexander Hamilton in decades. Alexander Hamilton is “a powerful full-length portrayal, in my view the finest ever produced, of the most intelligent, charismatic and deadly creator of them all,” according to historian Joseph Ellis. Few people in American history have sparked as much controversy or been misconstrued so egregiously as Alexander Hamilton.
The biography by Ron Chernow gives Hamilton his due and corrects the record, skillfully demonstrating that Hamilton’s numerous sacrifices to support ideas that were frequently hotly contested during his time led to the political and economic greatness of today’s America. The biography by Chernow tells the tale of America’s founding as seen through Hamilton, who serves as its key figure. Alexander Hamilton will remind readers of the goal of our institutions and our history as Americans at a time when it is crucial to reflect on our origins.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Those who stand for nothing fall for everything.”
“Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have lies in this; when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort that I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.”
“Give all the power to the many, they will oppress the few. Give all the power to the few, they will oppress the many.”
“The constitution shall never be construed…to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”
“A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous.”
Although there were other books written about Watergate, only All the President’s Men provided readers with the complete narrative, with all the drama, complexity, and exclusive reporting. And even now, thirty years later, if you only read one book about Watergate, make it that one. Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, senior writers for Fortune, are the new Woodward and Bernstein since Enron is currently the largest corporate story of our time.
Surprisingly, Enron was seen as the perfect example of a New Economy business just two years ago due to its rapidly rising profits and stock price. But it was prior to McLean’s story, which was published in Fortune and posed the seemingly harmless question, “How exactly does Enron make money?” The house of cards that was Enron started to fall apart after that. In order to provide a definitive book about the Enron crisis and the fascinating characters behind it, McLean and Elkind have now conducted a much deeper investigation.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Never, ever do the easy wrong instead of the harder right.”
“He once gave a speech advising anyone who wanted to complete a power project to “get all the lawyers in one room, then shoot ’em—in the mouth, because it’s impossible to miss.”
“Securitizations exploded, with everything from lotto winnings to proceeds from tobacco lawsuits being turned into securities that could be sold to the investing public.”
“I don’t like shorts promoting their position.”
“unmistakable message to boardrooms across the country: You can’t lie to shareholders. You can’t put yourself in front of your employees’ interests. No matter how rich and powerful you are, you have to play by the rules.”
Ernest Shackleton, a polar explorer, boarded the Endurance in August 1914 but soon found himself trapped on an ice island. With this, Shackleton and his crew of 27 men started their fabled odyssey. They undertook a very impossible trek through 850 miles of the worst waves in the South Atlantic to the closest outpost of humanity when their ship was ultimately destroyed between two ice floes.
In Endurance, the indisputable account of Ernest Shackleton’s disastrous expedition, Alfred Lansing masterfully describes the terrifying and miraculous journey that established modern heroism.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“No matter what the odds, a man does not pin his last hope for survival on something and then expect that it will fail.”
“We had seen God in His splendors, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.”
“In some ways they had come to know themselves better. In this lonely world of ice and emptiness, they had achieved at least a limited kind of contentment. They had been tested and found not wanting.”
“For scientific leadership give me Scott; for swift and efficient travel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.”
“I long for some rest, free from thought.”
New York Times bestseller number one. The never-before-told true account of African-American female mathematicians who worked for NASA and were essential to the country’s space program is set against the backdrop of the civil rights struggle. Before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, a team of experts labored as “Human Computers,” planning the flight paths that would make it possible for these momentous accomplishments. A group of intelligent, brilliant African-American women was among them. These “colored computers,” who were separated from their white counterparts, utilized pencil and paper to create the equations that would send men and rockets into space. ‘Hidden Figures’ interweaves a rich history of mankind’s greatest adventure with the intimate stories of five brave women whose work forever changed the world, moving from World War II through NASA’s golden age, trying to touch on the civil rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War, and the women’s rights movement.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Women, on the other hand, had to wield their intellects like a scythe, hacking away against the stubborn underbrush of low expectations.”
“Their dark skin, their gender, their economic status–none of those were acceptable excuses for not giving the fullest rein to their imaginations and ambitions.”
“I changed what I could, and what I couldn’t, I endured.”
“Sometimes, she knew, the most important battles for dignity, pride, and progress were fought with the simplest of actions.”
“There was virtually no aspect of twentieth-century defense technology that had not been touched by the hands and minds of female mathematicians.”
An Army Air Forces bomber disappeared after colliding with the Pacific Ocean on a May afternoon in 1943, leaving behind only a scattering of debris and a slick of blood, oil, and gasoline. Then a face appeared on the water’s surface. It was the struggle of a teenage lieutenant who was the bombardier of the aircraft and was pushing himself onto a life raft. In this manner, one of the most remarkable odysseys of the Second World War got underway.
Louis Zamperini was the name of the lieutenant. He had been a crafty and irredeemable criminal in his youth, breaking into homes, fighting, and running away from home to travel on trains. He discovered a great gift for running as a teenager and used it to channel his defiance, which got him to the Berlin Olympics and within striking distance of the four-minute mile. However, when war broke out, the athlete had changed into an airman and set off on a quest that resulted in his fated flight, a small raft, and a drift into the void.
Thousands of kilometers of the open sea, leaping sharks, a sinking raft, dehydration and malnutrition, enemy aircraft, and an even larger challenge lay ahead of Zamperini. When Zamperini was pushed to his physical and mental limitations, he would respond to adversity with inventiveness, agony with humor, optimism, and resolve, and brutality with revolt. The brittle wire of his resolve would hold his fate, success or tragedy, in suspense.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Without dignity, identity is erased.”
“A lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain. Louie thought: Let go.”
“People had long conversations with him, only to realize later that he hadn’t spoken.”
“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen.”
“I just thought I was empty and now I’m being filled…and I just wanted to keep being filled.”
The captivating, frank, and lyrical narrative of a renowned author’s quest for worldly pleasure, commitment to religion, and what she truly desired in life. Elizabeth Gilbert experienced an early-onset midlife crisis about the time she turned 30. She had a spouse, a home, and a fulfilling career—everything an educated, aspirational American woman was meant to want. But instead of experiencing joy and contentment, she was overcome by fear, grief, and perplexity. She experienced a divorce, a crippling depression, another failed relationship, and the destruction of all she had ever imagined herself to be.
Gilbert made a drastic decision in order to move past all of this. She got rid of her possessions, left her work, and started an unaccompanied year-long journey around the globe in order to allow herself the space and time to discover who she truly was and what she truly desired. The captivating history of that year is presented in Eat, Pray, Love. Her goal was to travel to three locations where she could investigate a single feature of her personality against the backdrop of a society that has historically excelled at that particular aspect of personality study. She learned the art of joy in Rome, where she also picked up Italian and put on the happiest 23 pounds of her life.
With the assistance of a local guru and a surprisingly knowledgeable cowboy from Texas, she set off on a four-month spiritual journey to India to learn the art of devotion. She learned the technique of striking a balance between earthly pleasures and heavenly transcendence in Bali. She adopted an ancient medicine man as her teacher and experienced the best kind of love: an unanticipated one.
A powerfully written and heartfelt tale of self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love explores what might happen when you take ownership of your own happiness and stop attempting to live up to social norms. Those who have become aware of the relentless need for change will undoubtedly be moved by it.
Author Jon Krakauer portrays the events in Into the Wild out of chronological order, making it difficult for the reader to determine when certain things occurred. This timeline reorders the book’s events according to their chronological order of occurrence rather than how they appear in Into the Wild for the benefit of clarity.
A young man from a wealthy family made a trip to Alaska in April 1992 and ventured out on his own into the wild north of Mount McKinley. Christopher Johnson McCandless was his full name. He had burned all the money in his wallet, donated his whole savings of $25,000 to charity, sold his car and most of his belongings, and created a new life for himself.
A group of moose hunters discovered his decomposing body four months later. The moving tale of Into the Wild is how McCandless came to pass away. Immediately after receiving his college diploma in 1991, McCandless set off on a vision quest like those undertaken by his heroes Jack London and John Muir, wandering through the West and Southwest.
He left his car, removed its license plates, and torched all of his money in the Mojave Desert. Alexander Supertramp would be his new moniker, and he would be able to revel in the unadulterated joys that nature offered without being constrained by money or possessions. McCandless simply threw the maps away because he wanted a blank place on the map. He disappeared into the wild, leaving his helpless parents and sister behind.
In contrast to other military branches, the Marine Corps in Vietnam mandated that combat pilots spend time performing forward air control duty with the infantry on the front lines. It was a brutal and horrifying lesson in the harsh reality of jungle warfare for Sam Brantley. The battle had always seemed far away as it passed by woods and rice farms at great altitudes. Now when the war was in his face during the Tet Offensive in the summer, what he saw and did turn his perspective forever.
This endearing classic, which was initially released in 1970, compiles 20 years of letters between Helene Hanff, a freelance writer who resides in New York City, and a used book trader in London. Even though they have never met and are geographically and culturally apart, they have developed a warm, heartfelt bond through the years that is built on their shared love of books. These letters’ piercing depictions of their relationship will capture your heart and refuse to let go.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I do love secondhand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest. The day Hazlitt came he opened to “I hate to read new books,” and I hollered “Comrade!” to whoever owned it before me.”
“I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone long gone has called my attention to.”
“If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me. I owe it so much.”
“Why is it that people who wouldn’t dream of stealing anything else think it’s perfectly all right to steal books?”
“It looks too new and pristine ever to have been read by anyone else, but it has been: it keeps falling open at the most delightful places as the ghost of its former owner points me to things I’ve never read before.”
The trek to the stunning Tibetan plateau of Dolpo in the high Himalayas is described in this travelogue. A 250-mile journey to Dolpo was performed by Matthiessen in 1973 as part of an investigation into the wild blue sheep. It was a strenuous, occasionally risky physical endeavor that involved exhaustion, blisters, blizzards, protracted discussions with sherpas, and shivering cold. But it was also a “tour of the emotions” because Matthiessen was looking for comfort among the majestic mountains’ aloofness. He was also hoping to catch a glimpse of a snow leopard, an animal that is so uncommonly seen that it is practically mythological.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“And only the enlightened can recall their former lives; for the rest of us, the memories of past existences are but glints of light, twinges of longing, passing shadows, disturbingly familiar, that are gone before they can be grasped, like the passage of that silver bird on Dhaulagiri.”
“We have outsmarted ourselves, like greedy monkeys, and now we are full of dread.”
“Figures dark beneath their loads pass down the far bank of the river, rendered immortal by the streak of sunset upon their shoulders”
“The sun is roaring, it fills to bursting each crystal of snow. I flush with feeling, moved beyond my comprehension, and once again, the warm tears freeze upon my face. These rocks and mountains, all this matter, the snow itself, the air- the earth is ringing. All is moving, full of power, full of light.”
“And as the wary dogs skirt past, we nod, grimace, and resume our paths to separate destinies and graves.”
A remarkable true story from one of the most inspirational lawyers of our time on the power of mercy to transform us and a call to halt mass incarceration in America. Young attorney Bryan Stevenson established the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit law firm in Montgomery, Alabama, with the mission of representing the underprivileged, the imprisoned, and the wrongfully convicted.
In Just Mercy, the history of EJI is told, from the early years with a small staff dealing with the highest death sentences and execution rates in the country, through a successful campaign to end the cruel practice of sending children to die in prison, to revolutionary projects intended to confront Americans with our history of racial injustice. Walter McMillian, a young Black man who was given a death sentence for the murder of a teenage white woman that he didn’t commit, was one of EJI’s initial clients. The case serves as an example of how capital punishment in America is a straight offshoot of lynching, a system that rewards the guilty and wealthy over the innocent and impoverished.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
“Proximity has taught me some basic and humbling truths, including this vital lesson: Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. My work with the poor and the incarcerated has persuaded me that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice. Finally, I’ve come to believe that the true measure of our commitment to justice, the character of our society, our commitment to the rule of law, fairness, and equality cannot be measured by how we treat the rich, the powerful, the privileged, and the respected among us. The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
“There is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can’t otherwise see; you hear things you can’t otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
“We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, or a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn ourselves as much as we victimize others. The closer we get to mass incarceration and extreme levels of punishment, the more I believe it’s necessary to recognize that we all need mercy, we all need justice, and-perhaps-we all need some measure of unmerited grace.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
“The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving. It’s when mercy is least expected that it’s most potent—strong enough to break the cycle of victimization and victimhood, retribution, and suffering. It has the power to heal the psychic harm and injuries that lead to aggression and violence, abuse of power, mass incarceration.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption