Books That Deserve To Be Read
There are more than half a million books published each year in the US alone. Not all of them make the best seller lists. We are on a quest to find the books that deserve to be in the best seller list.
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
With two appearances on CBS This Morning and Fresh Air’s most popular interview of 2017, Matthew Walker has made abundantly clear that sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life. Until very recently, science had no answer to the question of why we sleep, or what good it served, or why we suffer such devastating health consequences when it is absent. Compared to the other basic drives in life—eating, drinking, and reproducing—the purpose of sleep remains more elusive.
Within the brain, sleep enriches a diversity of functions, including our ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions. It recalibrates our emotions, restocks our immune system, fine-tunes our metabolism, and regulates our appetite. Dreaming creates a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge, inspiring creativity.
In this “compelling and utterly convincing” (The Sunday Times) book, preeminent neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker provides a revolutionary exploration of sleep, examining how it affects every aspect of our physical and mental well-being. Charting the most cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and marshalling his decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood and energy levels, regulate hormones, prevent cancer, Alzheimer’s and diabetes, slow the effects of aging, and increase longevity. He also provides actionable steps towards getting a better night’s sleep every night.
Clear-eyed, fascinating, and accessible, Why We Sleep is a crucial and illuminating book. Written with the precision of Atul Gawande, Andrew Solomon, and Sherwin Nuland, it is “recommended for night-table reading in the most pragmatic sense” (The New York Times Book Review).
The Stranger in the Lifeboat
Adrift in a raft after a deadly ship explosion, ten people struggle for survival at sea. Three days pass. Short on water, food and hope, they spot a man floating in the waves. They pull him in.
“Thank the Lord we found you,” a passenger says.
“I am the Lord,” the man whispers.
So begins Mitch Albom’s most beguiling and inspiring novel yet.
Albom has written of heaven in the celebrated number one bestsellers The Five People You Meet in Heaven and The First Phone Call from Heaven. Now, for the first time in his fiction, he ponders what we would do if, after crying out for divine help, God actually appeared before us? What might the Lord look, sound and act like?
In The Stranger in the Lifeboat, Albom keeps us guessing until the end: Is this strange and quiet man really who he claims to be? What actually happened to cause the explosion? Are the survivors already in heaven, or are they in hell?
The story is narrated by Benji, one of the passengers, who recounts the events in a notebook that is later discovered—a year later—when the empty life raft washes up on the island of Montserrat.
It falls to the island’s chief inspector, Jarty LeFleur, a man battling his own demons, to solve the mystery of what really happened.
A fast-paced, compelling novel that makes you ponder your deepest beliefs, The Stranger in the Lifeboat suggests that answers to our prayers may be found where we least expect them.
It Starts with Us: A Novel
Before It Ends with Us, it started with Atlas. Colleen Hoover tells fan favorite Atlas’s side of the story and shares what comes next in this long-anticipated sequel to the “glorious and touching” (USA TODAY)
The Human Sales Factor: The H2H Equation for Connecting, Persuading, and Closing the Deal
There’s a science to getting others to buy from you—a secret only the best salespeople, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders in the world know: selling, at its core, isn’t really about moving a product or service. It’s about moving people.
Having spent nearly three decades meticulously examining the skillsets required for connecting with others—through the training and coaching of thousands of sales leaders and their teams for some of the biggest brands in the world—bestselling author Lance Tyson has mastered the powers of persuasion and influence, while decoding the intricacies of why people buy from others.
Whether you’re a seasoned professional or an entrepreneur trying to pitch the next great idea—or maybe you just want to get better at getting what you want—The Human Sales Factor: The H2H Equation for Connecting, Persuading, and Closing the Deal is for you. This book is a peek under the hood of Lance’s proven, predictable, scalable process. It’s designed for sales leaders and their teams, yet is still approachable and applicable for the person who just wants to open doors and increase the chances of getting anything they want or need.
Connecting and persuading are no longer soft skills. They are fundamental skills that can help you attract investors, sell products, build brands, inspire teams, and trigger movements.
Despite all the processes, lingo, methodologies, and corporate rhetoric, sales—no matter the industry—has never truly been B2B or B2C. It always has and always will be done H2H—that is, Human 2 Human.
A Brighter TOMORROW
A Brighter TOMORROW is a beautiful coffee table book that contains heartfelt poetry and original artwork inspired by the pandemic. This unique book offers the reader comfort and hope for the future.
Dead Against Her
Sheriff Bree Taggert’s downfall is part of a killer’s cunning design in #1
Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Melinda Leigh’s
novel of murder, lies, and revenge.Called to an isolated farm to check on
an elderly widow, Sheriff Bree Taggert finds a brutal double homicide. One
of the victims is Eugene Oscar, the bitter and corrupt former deputy she
recently forced out of the department.Working with criminal investigator
Matt Flynn, Bree discovers that she isn’t the only one who had a troubling
history with Eugene. But someone doesn’t want Bree digging up the past. She
becomes the target of a stranger’s sick and devious campaign calculated to
destroy her reputation, career, family, and new relationship with Matt. To
make matters worse, she’s the prime suspect in Eugene’s murder.When her
chief deputy goes missing while investigating the case, Bree refuses to
back down. She won’t let him become the next victim. His life and her
future depend on finding a killer nursing a vengeful rage. Read more
Bad Actors
In London’s MI5 headquarters a scandal is brewing that could disgrace the entire intelligence community. The Downing Street superforecaster—a specialist who advises the Prime Minister’s office on how policy is likely to be received by the electorate—has disappeared without a trace. Claude Whelan, who was once head of MI5, has been tasked with tracking her down.
But the trail leads him straight back to Regent’s Park itself, with First Desk Diana Taverner as chief suspect. Has Taverner overplayed her hand at last? Meanwhile, her Russian counterpart, Moscow intelligence’s First Desk, has cheekily showed up in London and shaken off his escort. Are the two unfortunate events connected?
Over at Slough House, where Jackson Lamb presides over some of MI5’s most embittered demoted agents, the slow horses are doing what they do best, and adding a little bit of chaos to an already unstable situation . . .
There are bad actors everywhere, and they usually get their comeuppance before the credits roll. But politics is a dirty business, and in a world where lying, cheating and backstabbing are the norm, sometimes the good guys can find themselves outgunned.1
The Dark Flood: A Benny Griessel Novel
From internationally acclaimed crime writer Deon Meyer, a new thriller
featuring superstar detectives Benny Griessel and Vaughn Cupido in the wake
of their impulsive pursuit of state corruption that has left their
reputations hanging in the balanceHaving jeopardized their careers in an
unauthorized investigation that threatened to reveal the corruption in
South Africa’s halls of power, Benny Griessel and Vaughn Cupido have been
demoted from the elite Hawks police unit. While waiting to be transferred
from Cape Town to seemingly mundane duty in Stellenbosch, Griessel receives
a disturbing, anonymous letter: “I can only trust you and Captain Cupido.
There is an adder in our bosom. Be careful of phone calls.” Assigned to
investigate the disappearance of Callie de Bruin, a young university
student and brilliant computer programmer, they hit dead ends until the
trail, including the death of a fellow officer, leads to a series of gun
heists and the alarming absence of certain weapons from the police
registry, the ramifications of which could be devastating.As Griessel and
Cupido intensify their search for de Bruin, real estate agent Sandra
Steenberg confronts her own crisis: state corruption has caused the real
estate market to crash, exacerbating the dire financial straits facing her
family. When billionaire Jasper Boonstra contacts her to represent a major
property he wants to sell, she pushes aside her concerns about his
notorious reputation as playboy and swindler. And then Boonstra himself
disappears, and Griessel is forced to juggle between Boonstra’s bitter
wife, protective lawyer, and Steenberg, the last person to see him
alive.With propulsive and intricate plotting, sharp prose, and an ending
that takes one’s breath away just when the dust seems to have settled, The
Dark Flood spotlights the state capture and corruption that has overtaken
the country, lending political weight to a powerful story. Read more
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this
New York Times bestseller is “an extraordinary achievement” (The New
Yorker)—a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its
first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic
battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a
radical new understanding of its essence.Physician, researcher, and
award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a
cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a
biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent
chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more
than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human
ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism,
and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks,
victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers,
training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just
three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war
against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the
protagonist. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies
provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is
an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to
demystify cancer. Read more
The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization
2019 was the last great year for the world economy.For generations,
everything has been getting faster, better, and cheaper. Finally, we
reached the point that almost anything you could ever want could be sent to
your home within days – even hours – of when you decided you wanted
it.America made that happen, but now America has lost interest in keeping
it going.Globe-spanning supply chains are only possible with the protection
of the U.S. Navy. The American dollar underpins internationalized
energy and financial markets. Complex, innovative industries were created
to satisfy American consumers. American security policy forced warring
nations to lay down their arms. Billions of people have been fed and
educated as the American-led trade system spread across the globe.All of
this was artificial. All this was temporary. All this is ending.In The End
of the World is Just the Beginning, author and geopolitical strategist
Peter Zeihan maps out the next world: a world where countries or regions
will have no choice but to make their own goods, grow their own food,
secure their own energy, fight their own battles, and do it all with
populations that are both shrinking and aging.The list of countries that
make it all work is smaller than you think. Which means everything about
our interconnected world – from how we manufacture products, to how we grow
food, to how we keep the lights on, to how we shuttle stuff about, to how
we pay for it all – is about to change.In customary Zeihan fashion, rather
than yelling fire in the geoeconomic theatre, he narrates the accumulation
of matchsticks, gasoline, and dynamite in the hands of the oblivious
audience, suggesting we might want to call the fire department.A world
ending. A world beginning. Zeihan brings readers along for an illuminating
(and a bit terrifying) ride packed with foresight, wit, and his
trademark irreverence. Read more
How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them
“No single book is as relevant to the present moment.”—Claudia Rankine,
author of Citizen“One of the defining books of the decade.”—Elizabeth
Hinton, author of From the War on Poverty to the War on CrimeNEW YORK TIMES
BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • With a new preface • Fascist politics are
running rampant in America today—and spreading around the world. A Yale
philosopher identifies the ten pillars of fascist politics, and charts
their horrifying rise and deep history. As the child of refugees of World
War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason
Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be
vulnerable to fascism: Nations don’t have to be fascist to suffer from
fascist politics. In fact, fascism’s roots have been present in the United
States for more than a century. Alarmed by the pervasive rise of fascist
tactics both at home and around the globe, Stanley focuses here on the
structures that unite them, laying out and analyzing the ten pillars of
fascist politics—the language and beliefs that separate people into an “us”
and a “them.” He knits together reflections on history, philosophy,
sociology, and critical race theory with stories from contemporary Hungary,
Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations. He
makes clear the immense danger of underestimating the cumulative power of
these tactics, which include exploiting a mythic version of a nation’s
past; propaganda that twists the language of democratic ideals against
themselves; anti-intellectualism directed against universities and experts;
law and order politics predicated on the assumption that members of
minority groups are criminals; and fierce attacks on labor groups and
welfare. These mechanisms all build on one another, creating and
reinforcing divisions and shaping a society vulnerable to the appeals of
authoritarian leadership. By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as
prevalent today as ever, Stanley reveals that the stuff of politics—charged
by rhetoric and myth—can quickly become policy and reality. Only by
recognizing fascists politics, he argues, may we resist its most harmful
effects and return to democratic ideals.“With unsettling insight and
disturbing clarity, How Fascism Works is an essential guidebook to our
current national dilemma of democracy vs. authoritarianism.”—William Jelani
Cobb, author of The Substance of Hope Read more
The Creative Act: A Way of Being
The #1 New York Times bestseller.From the legendary music producer, a
master at helping people connect with the wellsprings of their creativity,
comes a beautifully crafted book many years in the making that offers that
same deep wisdom to all of us.”A gorgeous and inspiring work of art on
creation, creativity, the work of the artist. It will gladden the hearts of
writers and artists everywhere, and get them working again with a new sense
of meaning and direction. A stunning accomplishment.” —Anne Lamott“I set
out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead,
it revealed itself to be a book on how to be.” —Rick RubinMany famed music
producers are known for a particular sound that has its day. Rick Rubin is
known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different
genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they
really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their
self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence
from which the surprising becomes inevitable. Over the years, as he has
thought deeply about where creativity comes from and where it doesn’t, he
has learned that being an artist isn’t about your specific output, it’s
about your relationship to the world. Creativity has a place in everyone’s
life, and everyone can make that place larger. In fact, there are few more
important responsibilities.The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous
course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all
can follow. It distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime’s work into a
luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments—and
lifetimes—of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of
us. Read more
When Breath Becomes Air
Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.
What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.
Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.
Foundation
THE EPIC SAGA THAT INSPIRED THE APPLE TV+ SERIES FOUNDATION, NOW STREAMING • Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future—to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save humankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire—both scientists and scholars—and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.
The Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov are among the most influential in the history of science fiction, celebrated for their unique blend of breathtaking action, daring ideas, and extensive worldbuilding. In Foundation, Asimov has written a timely and timeless novel of the best—and worst—that lies in humanity, and the power of even a few courageous souls to shine a light in a universe of darkness.
Daughter of the Morning Star: A Longmire Mystery
When Lolo Long’s niece Jaya begins receiving death threats, Tribal Police Chief Long calls on Absaroka County Sheriff Walt Longmire along with Henry Standing Bear as lethal backup. Jaya “Longshot” Long is the phenom of the Lame Deer Lady Stars High School basketball team and is following in the steps of her older sister, who disappeared a year previously, a victim of the scourge of missing Native Woman in Indian Country. Lolo hopes that having Longmire involved might draw some public attention to the girl’s plight, but with this maneuver she also inadvertently places the good sheriff in a one-on-one with the deadliest adversary he has ever faced in both this world and the next.
The Lincoln Highway: A Novel
In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York.
Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles’s third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.
No Cure for Being Human: (And Other Truths I Need to Hear)
It’s hard to give up on the feeling that the life you really want is just out of reach. A beach body by summer. A trip to Disneyland around the corner. A promotion on the horizon. Everyone wants to believe that they are headed toward good, better, best. But what happens when the life you hoped for is put on hold indefinitely?
Kate Bowler believed that life was a series of unlimited choices, until she discovered, at age 35, that her body was wracked with cancer. In No Cure for Being Human, she searches for a way forward as she mines the wisdom (and absurdity) of today’s “best life now” advice industry, which insists on exhausting positivity and on trying to convince us that we can out-eat, out-learn, and out-perform our humanness. We are, she finds, as fragile as the day we were born.
With dry wit and unflinching honesty, Kate Bowler grapples with her diagnosis, her ambition, and her faith as she tries to come to terms with her limitations in a culture that says anything is possible. She finds that we need one another if we’re going to tell the truth: Life is beautiful and terrible, full of hope and despair and everything in between—and there’s no cure for being human.
Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave
Almost every religion, spiritual practice, philosophy and person grapples with fear. The most repeated phrase in the Bible is “Be not afraid.” The ancient Greeks spoke of phobos, panic and terror. It is natural to feel fear, the Stoics believed, but it cannot rule you. Courage, then, is the ability to rise above fear, to do what’s right, to do what’s needed, to do what is true. And so it rests at the heart of the works of Marcus Aurelius, Aristotle, and CS Lewis, alongside temperance, justice, and wisdom.
In Courage Is Calling , Ryan Holiday breaks down the elements of fear, an expression of cowardice, the elements of courage, an expression of bravery, and lastly, the elements of heroism, an expression of valor. Through engaging stories about historic and contemporary leaders, including Charles De Gaulle, Florence Nightingale, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Holiday shows you how to conquer fear and practice courage in your daily life.
You’ll also delve deep into the moral dilemmas and courageous acts of lesser-known, but equally as important, figures from ancient and modern history, such as Helvidius Priscus, a Roman Senator who stood his ground against emperor Vespasian, even in the face of death; Frank Serpico, a former New York City Police Department Detective who exposed police corruption; and Frederick Douglass and a slave named Nelly, whose fierce resistance against her captors inspired his own crusade to end slavery.
In a world in which fear runs rampant—when pe
Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography
When Anthony Bourdain died in June 2018, fans around the globe came together to celebrate the life of an inimitable man who had dedicated his life to traveling nearly everywhere (and eating nearly everything), shedding light on the lives and stories of others. His impact was outsized and his legacy has only grown since his death.
Now, for the first time, we have been granted a look into Bourdain’s life through the stories and recollections of his closest friends and colleagues. Laurie Woolever, Bourdain’s longtime assistant and confidante, interviewed nearly a hundred of the people who shared Tony’s orbit—from members of his kitchen crews to his writing, publishing, and television partners, to his daughter and his closest friends—in order to piece together a remarkably full, vivid, and nuanced vision of Tony’s life and work.
From his childhood and teenage days, to his early years in New York, through the genesis of his game-changing memoir Kitchen Confidential to his emergence as a writing and television personality, and in the words of friends and colleagues including Eric Ripert, José Andrés, Nigella Lawson, and W. Kamau Bell, as well as family members including his brother and his late mother, we see the many sides of Tony—his motivations, his ambivalence, his vulnerability, his blind spots, and his brilliance.
Unparalleled in scope and deeply intimate in its execution, with a treasure trove of photos from Tony’s life, Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography is a t
A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries
If it’s navel-gazing you’re after, you’ve come to the wrong place; ditto treacly self-examination. Rather, his observations turn outward: a fight between two men on a bus, a fight between two men on the street, pedestrians being whacked over the head or gathering to watch as a man considers leaping to his death. There’s a dirty joke shared at a book signing, then a dirtier one told at a dinner party – lots of jokes here. Plenty of laughs.
These diaries remind you that you once really hated George W. Bush, and that not too long ago, Donald Trump was just a harmless laughingstock, at least on French TV. Time marches on, and Sedaris, at his desk or on planes, in hotel dining rooms and odd Japanese inns, records it. The entries here reflect an ever-changing background – new administrations, new restrictions on speech and conduct. What you can say at the start of the book, you can’t by the end. At its best, A Carnival of Snackery is a sort of sampler: the bitter and the sweet. Some entries are just what you wanted. Others you might want to spit discreetly into a napkin.
The Love Hypothesis
As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn’t believe in lasting romantic relationships–but her best friend does, and that’s what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees.
That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor–and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford’s reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive’s career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding…six-pack abs.
Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.
Little Blue Truck’s Halloween
Celebrate Halloween with the #1 New York Times best-selling Little Blue Truck and friends.
Beep! Beep! It’s Halloween! Little Blue Truck is picking up his animal friends for a costume party. Lift the flaps in this large, sturdy board book to find out who’s dressed up in each costume! Will Blue wear a costume too?