Academic English

She was a successful ad sales rep in Manhattan. He was a homeless 11-year-old panhandler on the street. He asked for spare change; she kept walking. But then something stopped her in her tracks, and she went back. And she continued to go back, again and again. They met up nearly every week for years and built an unexpected, life-changing friendship that has today spanned almost three decades.

Bacon. McDonalds. Cinnabon. Hot Pockets. Kale. Stand-up comedian and author Jim Gaffigan has made his career rhapsodizing over the most treasured dishes of the American diet (“choking on bacon is like getting murdered by your lover”) and decrying the worst offenders (“kale is the early morning of foods”).

Archetypal wild man Edward Abbey and proper, dedicated Wallace Stegner left their footprints all over the western landscape. Now, the award-winning nature writer David Gessner follows the ghosts of these two remarkable writer-environmentalists - from Stegner's birthplace in Saskatchewan to the site of Abbey's pilgrimages to Arches - braiding their stories and asking how they speak to the lives of all those who care about the West. What is the future of a region beset by droughts and fires, by fracking and drilling?

Almost 10 years ago, Bloomberg journalist Brad Stone captured the rise of Amazon in his best seller The Everything Store. Since then, Amazon has expanded exponentially, inventing novel products like Alexa and disrupting countless industries, while its workforce has quintupled in size and its valuation has soared to nearly two trillion dollars.

No Stone Unturned recreates the genesis of NecroSearch International: a small ,eclectic group of scientists and law enforcement personal, active and retired, who volunteer their services to help locate the clandestine graves of murder victims and recover the remains and evidence to assist with the apprehension and conviction of the killers.

When we meet Carrie Sun, she can’t shake the feeling that she’s wasting her life. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Carrie excelled in school, graduated early from MIT, and climbed the corporate ladder, all in pursuit of the American dream. But at twenty-nine, she’s left her analyst job, dropped out of an MBA program, and is trapped in an unhappy engagement. So when she gets the rare opportunity to work at one of the most prestigious hedge funds in the world, she knows she can’t say no. Fourteen interviews later, she’s in.

In this powerful, wide-ranging, and emotional story about the limits of medical knowledge, Abel discovers why she wasn't diagnosed with celiac as a child. She considers how environmental fears and Internet anecdotes lead people to avoid gluten. And she grapples with the question that confronts us all: how to live calmly, even joyfully, in the face of uncertainty.

As long as I can keep my supernatural origins hidden, my life is simple. It's just my best friend and me against the world, eating dried ramen and peas, watching reality TV, and laying low in the city that never sleeps. That is until Draven, a dangerously attractive hunter, tracks me down and kidnaps me. He's with the Obsidian Order, and he gives me a choice: join their ranks or die. All I have to do is pass a series of deadly trials at their Academy, competing against a bunch of supernaturals who want me dead. Sounds easy, right?

There's a Customer Born Every Minute reveals the lost wisdom of famous entrepreneur and showman, P. T. Barnum. Barnum was much more than a showman; he was a dedicated businessman and entrepreneur with a razor-sharp mind. In this delightful and absorbing new edition, Joe Vitale reveals the secrets of Barnum's success and shares the 10 key business practices that Barnum developed and lived by.

"I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla," writes Robert Sapolsky in this witty and riveting chronicle of a scientist's coming-of-age in remote Africa. An exhilarating account of Sapolsky's twenty-one-year study of a troop of rambunctious baboons in Kenya, A Primate's Memoir interweaves serious scientific observations with wry commentary about the challenges and pleasures of living in the wilds of the Serengeti-for man and beast alike.

As the biggest criminal trial since the Boston Strangler draws nearer, the public’s fascination with the life and crimes of mob boss Whitey Bulger continues to heat up. Many stories have been told about the murders Whitey and Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi committed, and the tacit permission they received from the FBI.

The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson's exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world's top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power.

Sometimes in medicine the only way to know what is truly going on in a patient is to operate, to look inside with one's own eyes. This audio is exploratory surgery on medicine itself, laying bare a science not in its idealized form, but as it actually is - complicated, perplexing, and profoundly human. Atul Gawande offers an unflinching view from the scalpel's edge, where science is ambiguous, information is limited, the stakes are high. In dramatic and revealing stories of patients and doctors, he explores how deadly mistakes occur and why good surgeons go bad.

Reggie Fils-Aimé, retired President and Chief Operating Officer of Nintendo of America Inc., shares leadership lessons and inspiring stories from his unlikely rise to the top. Learn from Reggie how to leverage disruptive thinking to pinpoint the life choices that will make you truly happy, conquer negative perceptions from those who underestimate or outright dismiss you, and master the grit, perseverance, and resilience it takes to dominate in the business world and to reach your professional dreams.

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship—and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Kevin Hazzard felt that something was missing from his life - his days were too safe, too routine. A failed salesman turned local reporter, he wanted to test himself, see how he might respond to pressure and danger. He signed up for emergency medical training and became, at age 26, a newly minted EMT running calls in the worst sections of Atlanta. His life entered a different realm - one of blood, violence, and amazing grace.

As a teen, Daymond John immersed himself in the burgeoning rap scene and quickly started to recognize that the people in the hip-hop community were being ignored and even looked down upon by major players in the fashion industry. Frustrated with this disconnect and passionate about the hip-hop community and culture, John and three of his best childhood friends started the iconic fashion label FUBU (For Us By Us) in John’s mother’s home in Queens.

Who is Bernie Madoff, and how did he pull off the biggest Ponzi scheme in history? These questions have fascinated people ever since the news broke about the respected New York financier who swindled his friends, relatives, and other investors out of $65 billion. Many have speculated about what must have happened, but no reporter has been able to get the full story - until now. Diana B. Henriques of the New York Times has written the definitive book on the man and his scheme.

Once Donald Trump’s fiercest surrogate, closest confidant, and staunchest defender, Michael Cohen knows where the skeletons are buried. This is the most devastating business and political horror story of the century. As Trump’s lawyer and “fixer”, Cohen not only witnessed firsthand but was also an active participant in the inner workings of Trump’s business empire, political campaign, and presidential administration.

Aristotle wrote on everything from the shape of seashells to sterility, from speculations on the nature of the soul to meteorology, poetry, art, and even the interpretation of dreams. Apart from mathematics, he transformed every field of knowledge that he touched. Above all, Aristotle is credited with the founding of logic. When he first divided human knowledge into separate categories, he enabled our understanding of the world to develop in a systematic fashion.