Essential philosophy: everything you need to understand the world's greatest thinkers

By Mannion, James

Publishing Date: 2006

Classification: 100

Call Number: 100 MAN

Everything You Need to Understand the World's Greatest Thinkers.

Master of the mysteries: new revelations on the life of Manly Palmer Hall

By Sahagun, Louis

Publishing Date: [2016]

Classification: 100

Call Number: 130.92 SAH

"In 1919, a Canadian teenager with a sixth grade education arrived by train to the wilds of Los Angeles. Within a decade he had transformed himself into a world-renowned occult scholar. His name was Manly Palmer Hall, author of the landmark publication The Secret Teachings of All Ages, regarded as the best introduction to Western esoteric ideas, and the founder of the Philosophical Research Society, which houses one of the biggest occult libraries in the United States. Hall became the twentieth century's most prolific writer and speaker on ancient philosophies, mysticism, and magic, and a confidante of celebrities and politicians. In 1990, he died--some say he was killed--in what remains an open-ended Hollywood murder mystery."--cover.

Dopamine nation: finding balance in the age of indulgence

By Lembke, Anna

Publishing Date: [2021]

Classification: 100

Call Number: 152.42 LEM

"Resettling Your Brain in the Age of Cheap Pleasures"--

NEW RELEASE

Supercommunicators: how to unlock the secret language of connection

By Duhigg, Charles

Publishing Date: [2024]

Classification: 100

Call Number: 153.6 DUH

"We all know people who seem capable of connecting with almost anyone. They are the ones we turn to for advice, the ones who ask deep questions but also seem to hear what we are trying to say. What do they know about conversation that makes them so special? And what can they tell us about how communication really works? Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg argues, understand--some by intuition, some by hard-won experience--that there is a science to how human beings connect through words. They understand that whenever we speak, we're actually participating in one of three distinct conversations: What is this really about? How do we feel? And who are we? They know the importance of recognizing--and then matching--each kind of conversation, and how to hear the complex emotions, subtle negotiations and hidden beliefs that color and inform everything we say. Our pasts, our values, our affiliations, our identities shape every discussion we have, from who will pick up the kids to how we want to be treated at work"--

Stolen focus: why you can't pay attention--and how to think deeply again

By Hari, Johann

Publishing Date: [2022]

Classification: 100

Call Number: 153.733 HAR

Our ability to pay attention is collapsing. Here, the author offers an examination of why this is happening - and how to get our attention back. Like so many of us, the author was finding it much harder to focus than he used to. He found that a life of constantly switching from device to device, from tab to tab, is diminishing and depressing. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions - even abandoning his phone for three months - but in the long-term, nothing seemed to work. So he went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention and to study their scientific findings - and he learned that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong. In the U.S., teenagers now focus on a task for only sixty-five seconds on average, and office workers manage only three minutes. We think this inability to focus is a personal flaw, an individual failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces, and the science shows that these forces have been ramping up for decades, leaving us uniquely vulnerable - particularly when social media arrived - to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit. These forces have been so successful that our collapse in attention is behind many of the wider problems society faces. In this book, the author embarks on a thrilling journey, taking readers from veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD, to Silicon Valley dissidents who exposed social media companies' furtive attempts to hack our focus; from a favela in Rio where everyone lost their attention in a particularly catastrophic way, to an office in New Zealand that discovered a remarkable technique to restore their workers' attention. In this urgent, deeply researched book, the author shows readers that if we understand the twelve true causes of this crisis - from the collapse of sustained reading to the disruption of boredom to rising pollution - we, as individuals and as a society, can finally begin to solve it by staging an "attention rebellion." Finally, we have a way to get our focus back. --

The motivation manifesto: 9 declarations to claim your personal power

By Burchard, Brendon

Publishing Date: [2014]

Classification: 100

Call Number: 153.8 BUR

""The Motivation Manifesto is a poetic and powerful call to reclaim our lives and find our own personal freedom. It's a triumphant work that transcends the title, lifting the reader from mere motivation into a soaringly purposeful and meaningful life. I love this book."--Paulo Coelho The Motivation Manifesto is a pulsing, articulate, ferocious call to claim our personal power. World-renowned high performance trainer Brendon Burchard reveals that the main motive of humankind is the pursuit of greater Personal Freedom. We desire the grand liberties of choice--time freedom, emotional freedom, social freedom, financial freedom, spiritual freedom. Only two enemies stand in our way: an external enemy, defined as the social oppression of who we are by the mediocre masses, and an internal enemy, a sort of self-oppression caused by our own doubt and fear. The march to Personal Freedom, Burchard argues, can be won only by declaring our intent and independence, stepping into our personal power, and battling through self-doubt and the distractions of the day until full victory is won. Recalling the revolutionist voices of the past that chose freedom over tyranny, Burchard--at times poetic yet always fierce--motivates us to free ourselves from fear and take back our lives once and for all"--

Build the life you want: the art and science of getting happier

By Brooks, Arthur C.

Publishing Date: [2023]

Classification: 100

Call Number: 158 BRO

"Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey combine their decades of experience studying happiness from every angle to show readers how to improve their lives right now, instead of waiting for the outside world to change. They offer a research-based work plan that shows the reader how to manage their emotions so they no longer control their outlook and behavior; turn life's inevitable difficulties and challenges into opportunities for growth; strengthen their family ties by managing expectations and building trust; create and preserve deep and lasting friendships at any age; develop an approach to work that fits their life and brings satisfaction; and find inner peace with a spiritual practice" --

The 7 habits of highly effective people: powerful lessons in personal change

By Covey, Stephen R.

Publishing Date: 2020

Classification: 100

Call Number: 158 COV

One of the most inspiring and impactful books ever written, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has captivated readers for nearly three decades. It has transformed the lives of presidents and CEOs, educators and parents--millions of people of all ages and occupations. Now, this 30th anniversary edition of the timeless classic commemorates the wisdom of the 7 habits with modern additions from Sean Covey. The 7 habits have become famous and are integrated into everyday thinking by millions and millions of people. Why? Because they work! With Sean Covey's added takeaways on how the habits can be used in our modern age, the wisdom of the 7 habits will be refreshed for a new generation of leaders.

The laws of human nature

By Greene, Robert

Publishing Date: [2018]

Classification: 100

Call Number: 158 GRE

Robert Greene's bestselling 48 Laws of Power (1988) distilled ancient wisdom and philosophy into essential texts for seekers of power, understanding, and mastery. Now he turns to understanding people's drives and motivations, even when they are unconscious of them themselves. We are social animals. Our very lives depend on our relationships with people. Knowing why people do what they do is the most important tool we can possess. Drawing from the ideas and examples of Pericles, Queen Elizabeth I, Martin Luther King Jr, and many others, Greene teaches us how to detach ourselves from our own emotions and master self-control, how to develop the empathy that leads to insight, how to look behind people's masks, and how to resist conformity to develop your singular sense of purpose.

Be useful: seven tools for life

By Schwarzenegger, Arnold

Publishing Date: 2023

Classification: 100

Call Number: 158.1 SCH

"The seven rules to follow to realize your true purpose in life-distilled by Arnold Schwarzenegger from his own journey of ceaseless reinvention and extraordinary achievement, and available for absolutely anyone. The world's greatest bodybuilder. The world's highest paid movie star. The leader of the world's sixth largest economy. That these are the same person sounds like the setup to a joke. But this is no joke. This is Arnold Schwarzenegger. And this did not happen by accident. Arnold's stratospheric success happened as part of a process. As the result of clear vision, big thinking, hard work, direct communication, resilient problem-solving, open-minded curiosity, and a commitment to giving back. All of it guided by the one lesson Arnold's father hammered into him above all: be useful. As Arnold conquered every realm he entered, he kept his father's adage close to his heart. Written with his uniquely earnest, blunt, powerful voice, Be Useful takes readers on an inspirational tour through Arnold's toolkit for a meaningful life. Arnold shows us how to put those tools to work, in service of whatever fulfilling future we can dream up for ourselves. He brings his insights to vivid life with compelling personal stories, life-changing successes and life-threatening failures alike-some of them famous, some told here for the first time ever. Too many of us struggle to disconnect from our self-pity and connect to our purpose. At an early age, Arnold forged the mental tools to build the ladder out of the poverty and narrow-mindedness of his rural Austrian hometown, tools he used to add rung after rung from there. Now he has shared that wisdom with all of us. As he puts it, no one is going to come rescue you-you only have yourself. The good news, it turns out, is that you are all you need"--

Consolations: the solace, nourishment and underlying meaning of everyday words

By Whyte, David

Publishing Date: 2015

Classification: 100

Call Number: 158.1 WHY

With the imagery of a poet and the reflection of a philosopher, David Whyte turns his attention to 52 ordinary words, each its own particular doorway into the underlying currents of human life. Beginning with Alone and closing with Work, each chapter is a meditation on meaning and context, an invitation to shift and broaden our perspectives on the inevitable vicissitudes of life: pain and joy, honesty and anger, confession and vulnerability, the experience of feeling besieged and the desire to run away from it all. Through this lens, procrastination may be a necessary ripening; hiding an act of freedom; and shyness the appropriate confusion and helplessness that accompanies the first stage of revelation. Consolations invites readers into a poetic and thoughtful consideration of words whose meaning and interpretation influence the paths we choose and the way we traverse them throughout our lives.

How we believe: the search for God in an age of science

By Shermer, Michael

Publishing Date: [2000]

Classification: 200

Call Number: 215 SHE

"Recent polls report that 96% of Americans believe in God. Why is this? Why, despite the rise of science, technology, and secular education, are people turning to religion in greater numbers than ever before? Why do people believe in God at all?" "These provocative questions lie at the heart of How We Believe, an illuminating new study of God, faith, and religion by best-selling author Michael Shermer. Offering fresh and often startling insights into age-old questions, Shermer's new book explores how and why humans put their faith in a higher power, even in the face of scientific skepticism. With characteristic logic and intellectual intensity, Book jacket."--Jacket.

The three pillars of Zen: teaching, practice, and enlightenment

Publishing Date: 1980

Classification: 200

Call Number: 294.3927

The Westerner is introduced to the basic teaching, practices, and religious character of Zen - (Baker & Taylor)

The original Kama Sutra, completely illustrated: Ananga-ranga, perfumed garden

By Vatsyayana

Publishing Date: 2002

Classification: 200

Call Number: 294.5446 VAT

"Arguably the most famous work on sex ever written, this classic erotic text is considered to be the definitive work on love and all aspects of sex in Sanskrit literature. The Vatsyayana Kama Sutra is translated for you in its original form presented complete with exotic illustrations."--Amazon.

Gender queer: a memoir

By Kobabe, Maia

Publishing Date: 2020

Classification: 300

Call Number: 306.7608 KOB

"In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia's intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity--what it means and how to think about it--for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere"--Publisher's description.

NEW RELEASE

Finish what we started: the MAGA movement's ground war to end democracy

By Arnsdorf, Isaac

Publishing Date: 2024

Classification: 300

Call Number: 320.5209 ARN

"The immersive, captivating untold story of the mass radicalization of the Republican Party in the aftermath of January 6, 2021, entrenching the political power of a radical right-wing movement dedicated to dismantling democracy itself. Inspired by Donald Trump's election lies, a growing movement of grassroots activists mobilized around the country to pick up where the insurrection left off, laying the groundwork to succeed next time where Trump had failed to keep himself in power. But their own success in taking over and purging the Republican Party became their undoing as it drove away moderates and supplied the Democrats with a winning message in the 2022 midterms. Still, the MAGA Republicans proved uninterested in learning from that defeat, only becoming more extreme, divisive, and dead set on returning Trump to power. Washington Post national political reporter Isaac Arnsdorf has spent years at the forefront of reporting on this growing movement. Drawing on extensive, exclusive on-the-ground reporting around the country, and deepened by historical context, Arnsdorf has produced the defining journalistic account of the origins, evolution and future of the MAGA movement. Combining critical and rigorous reporting with the intimacy and complexity of a novel, this book is unlike any other in the decade since Donald Trump convulsed and transformed American politics. Finish What We Started tells the story of the ordinary Americans driving this change, who they are and where they came from, what motivates them, and what their movement means for the survival of American democracy"--Dust jacket flap.

The official German report: the world wide Nazi movement ; Nazi penetration, 1924-1942

By Rogge, O. John

Publishing Date: 2023

Classification: 300

Call Number: 320.533 ROG

"This book presents the shocking findings from O. John Rogge's stunning investigation into the Nazi infiltration of the United States Congress. Rogge lays out in painstaking detail how the Nazis used American taxpayer dollars to pump German propaganda across the country, in the hopes of keeping America out of World War II. Rogge documents the rampant anti-Semitism on stark display in the years leading up to WWII and lays out detailed evidence that members of Congress were in fact enemies of the people. This book presents the material in O. John Rogge's report of September 1946 to the Department of Justice, supplemented by items from the published volumes of a joint publication of our Department of State, the British Foreign Office, and the French government, Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918-1945, Series C (1933-1937), and Series D (1937-1945)."

NEW RELEASE

White rural rage: the threat to American democracy

By Schaller, Thomas F.

Publishing Date: [2024]

Classification: 300

Call Number: 320.973 SCH

"White rural voters hold the greatest electoral sway of any demographic group in the United States, yet rural communities suffer from poor healthcare access, failing infrastructure, and severe manufacturing and farming job losses. Rural voters believe that our nation has betrayed them, and to some degree they're right. In White Rural Rage, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman explore why rural Whites have failed to reap the benefits from their outsize political power and why, as a result, they are the most likely group to abandon democratic norms and traditions. Their rage -- stoked daily by Republican politicians and the conservative media -- now poses an existential threat to the United States. Schaller and Waldman show how vulnerable U.S. democracy has become to rural Whites, who, despite legitimate grievances, are also increasingly inclined to hold racist and xenophobic beliefs, to believe in conspiracy theories, to accept violence as a legitimate course of political action, and to exhibit antidemocratic tendencies. Rural White Americans' attitude might best be described as "I love my country, but not our country," Schaller and Waldman argue. This phenomenon is the patriotic paradox of rural America: The citizens who are most likely to show off their patriotism are also the least likely to defend core American principles. And by encouraging rural Whites' anger rather than addressing the hard problems they face, conservative politicians and talking heads create a feedback loop of resentments that are undermining American democracy. Schaller and Waldman provocatively critique both the structures that permit rural Whites' disproportionate influence over American governance and the prospects for creating a pluralist, inclusive democracy that delivers policy solutions that benefit rural communities. They conclude with a political reimagining that offers a better future for both rural people and the rest of America." --

Strongmen: Mussolini to the present

By Ben-Ghiat, Ruth

Publishing Date: 2021

Classification: 300

Call Number: 321.9092 BEN

Ruth Ben-Ghiat lays bare the blueprint leaders from Mussolini to Trump have followed over the past 100 years, and empowers us to recognize, resist, and prevent their disastrous rule in the future. Authoritarian rulers promise law and order, then legitimize lawbreaking by financial, sexual, and other predators. They use masculinity as a symbol of strength and a political weapon, and they use propaganda, corruption, and violence to stay in power. Vladimir Putin and Mobutu Sese Seko's kleptocracies, Augusto Pinochet's torture sites, Benito Mussolini and Muammar Gaddafi's systems of sexual exploitation, and the relentless barrage of misinformation utilized by the former Trump administration: all show how authoritarian rule, far from ensuring stability, is marked by destructive chaos. Ben-Ghiat makes vividly clear that only by seeing the strongman for what he is - and by valuing one another as he is unable to do - can we stop him, now and in the future.

The bill of obligations: the ten habits of good citizens

By Haass, Richard

Publishing Date: 2023

Classification: 300

Call Number: 323.6 HAA

"A bold guide to how we must re-envision citizenship if American democracy is to survive. The United States faces dangerous threats from Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, terrorists, climate change, and future pandemics, but the greatest peril to the country comes not from abroad but from within, from none other than ourselves. The question facing us is whether we are prepared to do what is necessary to save our democracy. The Bill of Obligations is a bold call for change. In these pages, New York Times bestselling author Richard Haass argues that the very idea of citizenship must be revised and expanded if American democracy is to endure. The Bill of Rights is at the center of our Constitution, yet our most intractable conflicts often emerge from contrasting views as to what our rights ought to be. As former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out, "Many of our cases, the most difficult cases, are not about right versus wrong. They are about right versus right." Rights alone, however, do not provide a strong enough foundation for a democracy to succeed in the twenty-first century. But there is a cure: to place obligations on the same footing with rights. The ten obligations that Haass introduces here are essential for healing our divisions and safeguarding the future of our country. These obligations re-envision what it means to be an American citizen. They are not a burden, but rather commitments that we make to fellow citizens and to the government to uphold our democracy and fight back against the growing apathy, anger, selfishness, and division that threaten us all. Through an expert blend of civics, history, and political analysis, this book illuminates how Americans can rediscover and recover the attitudes and behaviors that have contributed so much to this country's success over the centuries. As Richard Haass argues, "We get the government and the country we deserve. Getting the one we need, however, is up to us." The Bill of Obligations gives citizens across the political spectrum a plan of action to achieve it"--