Knowledge = Power

Robert Cialdini-Instant Influence

Critically acclaimed author John Julius Norwich weaves the turbulent  story of Sicily into a spellbinding narrative that places the island at  the crossroads of world history. “Sicily,” said Goethe, “is  the key to everything.” It is the largest island in the Mediterranean,  the stepping-stone between Europe and Africa, the link between the Latin  West and the Greek East....

This classic  biography is the story of seven men—a naturalist, a writer, a lover, a  hunter, a ranchman, a soldier, and a politician—who merged at age  forty-two to become the youngest President in history. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt begins at the apex of his international prestige. That was on New  Year’s Day, 1907, when TR, who had just won the Nobel Peace Prize, th...

In a sparkling, fast-paced narrative, esteemed historian John Julius  Norwich chronicles the turbulent events of fourteenth- and  fifteenth-century England that inspired Shakespeare's history plays. It  was a time of uncertainty and incessant warfare, a time during which the  crown was constantly contested, alliances were made and broken, and  peasants and townsmen alike a...

Winner of the National Book Award and now considered a classic, The House of Morgan is the most ambitious history ever written about an American banking dynasty. Acclaimed by the Wall Street Journal as "brilliantly researched and written", the book tells the rich,  panoramic story of four generations of Morgans and the powerful,  secretive firms they spawned. It is the definitive account...

"A wonderful, splendid book - a book that should be ready by every  American, student or otherwise, who wants to understand his country,  its true history, and its hope for the future." (Howard Fast) For  much of his life, historian Howard Zinn chronicled American history  from the bottom up, throwing out the official version taught in schools -  with its emphasis on great...

Everyone wants to live a meaningful life. Long before our own day of  self-help books offering twelve-step programs and other guides to attain  happiness, the philosophers of ancient Greece explored the riddle of  what makes a life worth living, producing a wide variety of ideas and  examples to follow. This rich tradition was recast by Diogenes Laertius  into an anthology...

One of The Economist 's Best Books of the Year A  gripping, meticulously researched account of Lenin’s fateful 1917 rail  journey from Zurich to Petrograd, where he ignited the Russian  Revolution and forever changed the world In April 1917, as the  Russian Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication sent shockwaves across war-torn  Europe, the future leader of the Bolshevik revolution...

The Moralia ( Ancient Greek : Ἠθικά Ethika ;  loosely translated as "Morals" or "Matters relating to customs and  mores") is a group of manuscripts dating from the 10th-13th centuries,  traditionally ascribed to the 1st-century Greek scholar Plutarch of Chaeronea . [1] The eclectic collection contains 78 essays and transcribed speeches. They provide insights into Roman and Gree...

“Lives” is a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans by the  ancient Greek historian Plutarch who lived during the first and second  century AD. The work consists of twenty-three paired biographies, one  Greek and one Roman, and four unpaired, which explore the influence of  character on the lives and destinies of important persons of Ancient  Greece and Rome. Ra...

Antifragile  is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s  landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty,  probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t  understand. The other books in the series are  Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Skin in the Game,  and  The Bed of Procrustes . Nassim Nicholas Ta...

Ron Chernow won the National Book Award in 1990 for his first book, The  House of Morgan, and his second book, The Warburgs, won the Eccles Prize  as the Best Business Book of 1993. His biography of John D.  Rockefeller, Sr., Titan, was a national bestseller and a National Book  Critics Circle Award finalist.

New York Times Bestseller: This life story of the quirky  physicist is “a thorough and masterful portrait of one of the great  minds of the century” ( The New York Review of Books ).  Raised  in Depression-era Rockaway Beach, physicist Richard Feynman was  irreverent, eccentric, and childishly enthusiastic—a new kind of  scientist in a field that was in its infancy. H...

Called a great book worthy of a  great man, this definitive biography of the Commander in Chief of the  Pacific Fleet in World War II is considered the best book ever written  about Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. Highly respected by both the civilian  and naval communities, Nimitz was sometimes overshadowed by more  colorful warriors in the Pacific such as MacArthur and Halsey...

A brilliant and concise account of the lives and ideas of the great philosophers, from Plato to Dewey. Few  write for the non-specialist as well as Will Durant, and this book is a  splendid example of his eminently readable scholarship. Durant’s  insight and wit never cease to dazzle; The Story of Philosophy is a key book for anyone who wishes to survey the history and development o...

2015 Audie Award Finalist for Non-Fiction Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the  computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of  the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation  really happens. What were the talents that allowed certain  in...

Julius Caesar wrote his exciting Commentaries during some of the most  grueling campaigns ever undertaken by a Roman army. The Gallic Wars and  The Civil Wars constitute the greatest series of military dispatches  ever written. As literature, they are representative of the finest  expressions of Latin prose in its "golden" age, a benchmark of elegant  style and masculine b...

Wilson is a sophisticated and marvelously humane writer. His vision is a  liberating one, and a reader of this splendid book comes away with a  sense of the kinship that exists among the people, animals, and insects  that share the planet. ( New Yorker 20041219) Compellingly  interesting and enormously important...The most stimulating, the most  provocative, and the most i...

"It's hard to overestimate the impact that Robert Conquest's  extraordinary study had on the West's perceptions of Soviet history.  Using rare Soviet materials, some published during the Khrushchev thaw,  others in self-published samizdat format, the British historian put  together an authoritative chronicle of Stalin's murderous reign. Western  communists and fellow trave...

South: The Story of Shackleton's 1914-1917 Expedition  Kindle Edition by                  Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton

Featuring extensive revisions to  the text as well as a new introduction and epilogue - bringing the book  completely up to date on the tumultuous politics of the previous decade  and the long-term implications of the Soviet collapse - this compact,  original, and engaging book offers the definitive account of one of the  great historical events of the last 50 years. Combi...

How American race law provided a blueprint for Nazi Germany Nazism  triumphed in Germany during the high era of Jim Crow laws in the United  States. Did the American regime of racial oppression in any way inspire  the Nazis? The unsettling answer is yes. In Hitler’s American Model ,  James Whitman presents a detailed investigation of the American impact  on the notorious N...

From the New York Times bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan, named one of the world’s Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine, comes a riveting journey through one of Europe’s frontier  countries—and a potent examination of the forces that will determine  Europe’s fate in the postmodern age. Robert Kaplan first  visited Romania in the 1970s, when he was a young journalist...

Tracing the extraordinary trajectory of Julius Caesar's life, Adrian  Goldsworthy covers not only the great Roman emperor's accomplishments as  charismatic orator, conquering general, and powerful dictator but also  lesser-known chapters. Ultimately, Goldsworthy realizes the full  complexity of Caesar's character and shows why his political and  military leadership continu...

“[ The Rising Sun ] is quite possibly the most readable, yet informative account of the Pacific war.”— Chicago Sun-Times This  Pulitzer Prize–winning history of World War II chronicles the dramatic  rise  and fall of the Japanese empire, from the invasion of Manchuria  and China to the  atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Told from  the Japanese perspective, The...