July 4, 2008

Professional & Technical Best Sellers

  1. Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time
    The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban's backyard

    Anyone who despairs of the individual's power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan's treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build them a school. Over the next decade he built fifty-five schools—especially for girls—that offer a balanced education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth. As it chronicles Mortenson's quest, which has brought him into conflict with both enraged Islamists and uncomprehending Americans, Three Cups of Tea combines adventure with a celebration of the humanitarian spirit.

  2. You Can Heal Your Life (Gift Edition)
    This gift edition is a beautiful book complete with four-color illustrations throughout. "An excellent book for restructuring one's life and finding self- esteem and self-love."
  3. StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup's Now, Discover Your Strengths
    DO YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO DO WHAT YOU DO BEST EVERY DAY?

    Chances are, you don't. All too often, our natural talents go untapped. From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to fixing our shortcomings than to developing our strengths.

    To help people uncover their talents, Gallup introduced the first version of its online assessment, StrengthsFinder, in the 2001 management book Now, Discover Your Strengths. The book spent more than five years on the bestseller lists and ignited a global conversation, while StrengthsFinder helped millions to discover their top five talents.

    In its latest national bestseller, StrengthsFinder 2.0, Gallup unveils the new and improved version of its popular assessment, language of 34 themes, and much more (see below for details). While you can read this book in one sitting, you'll use it as a reference for decades.

    Loaded with hundreds of strategies for applying your strengths, this new book and accompanying website will change the way you look at yourself -- and the world around you -- forever.

    AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY IN THE NEW & UPGRADED EDITION OF STRENGTHSFINDER 2.0
    (using the unique access code included with each book)

    * A new and upgraded edition of the StrengthsFinder assessment

    * A personalized Strengths Discovery and Action-Planning Guide for applying your strengths in the next week, month, and year

    * A more customized version of your top five theme report

    * 50 Ideas for Action (10 strategies for building on each of your top five themes)

    * The more user-friendly StrengthsFinder 2.0 companion website, with a strengths community area, library of downloadable discussion guides and activities, a strengths screensaver, and a program for creating display cards of your top five themes

  4. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't by Jim Collins
    Explores the way good organizations can be turned into ones that produce great, sustained results. To find the keys to greatness a 21 person research team read and coded 6000 articles, created 348 MB of computer data etc. in a 5yr proj
  5. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
    A national bestseller that has changed the way readers view the ecology of eating, this revolutionary book by award winner Michael Pollan asks the seemingly simple question: What should we have for dinner? Tracing from source to table each of the food chains that sustain us— whether industrial or organic, alternative or processed—he develops a portrait of the American way of eating. The result is a sweeping, surprising exploration of the hungers that have shaped our evolution, and of the profound implications our food choices have for the health of our species and the future of our planet.
  6. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Fifth Edition by American Psychological Association
    ...a new and improved style manual for writers and students in psychology and other behavioral and social sciences... gives writers easy-to-use guidelines on how to prepare manuscripts according to APA style.
  7. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

    • Why do our headaches persist after taking a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a 50-cent aspirin?

    • Why does recalling the Ten Commandments reduce our tendency to lie, even when we couldn't possibly be caught?

    • Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup?

    • Why do we go back for second helpings at the unlimited buffet, even when our stomachs are already full?

    • And how did we ever start spending $4.15 on a cup of coffee when, just a few years ago, we used to pay less than a dollar?

    When it comes to making decisions in our lives, we think we're in control. We think we're making smart, rational choices. But are we?

    In a series of illuminating, often surprising experiments, MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. Blending everyday experience with groundbreaking research, Ariely explains how expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities.

    Not only do we make astonishingly simple mistakes every day, but we make the same types of mistakes, Ariely discovers. We consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. We fail to understand the profound effects of our emotions on what we want, and we overvalue what we already own. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They're systematic and predictable—making us predictably irrational.

    From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, Ariely explains how to break through these systematic patterns of thought to make better decisions. Predictably Irrational will change the way we interact with the world—one small decision at a time.

  8. The Official Guide for GMAT Review, 11th Edition
  9. The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
    Amazon Guest Review: Stephen Hawking
    Published in 1988, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time became perhaps one of the unlikeliest bestsellers in history: a not-so-dumbed-down exploration of physics and the universe that occupied the London Sunday Times bestseller list for 237 weeks. Later successes include 1995’s A Briefer History of Time, The Universe in a Nutshell, and God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs that Changed History. Stephen Hawking is Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.

    In The Drunkard’s Walk Leonard Mlodinow provides readers with a wonderfully readable guide to how the mathematical laws of randomness affect our lives. With insight he shows how the hallmarks of chance are apparent in the course of events all around us. The understanding of randomness has brought about profound changes in the way we view our surroundings, and our universe. I am pleased that Leonard has skillfully explained this important branch of mathematics. --Stephen Hawking

  10. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
    This celebrated New York Times bestsellernow poised to reach an even wider audience in paperbackis a book that is changing the way North Americans think about selling products and disseminating ideas. Gladwells new afterword to this edition describes how readers can constructively apply the tipping point principle in their own lives and work. Widely hailed as an important work that offers not only a road map to business success but also a profoundly encouraging approach to solving social problems.