Academic Life

In 15 New Testament Words of Life, New Testament expert Nijay Gupta explores the most important words found in the New Testament. He makes their meaning clear so that these words can become—once again—life giving words for modern Christians as they were for early Jesus-followers. For those first readers of the New Testament who chose to follow Jesus, these words were words of life and they can be again for Jesus-followers in the modern world.

What can death teach us about life? Conducting many thousands of post-mortems has given Dr Richard Shepherd the opportunity to examine death at every stage of life. Each autopsy is its own unique investigation, providing evidence of how, through life, the risks to us ebb and flow. From old to young, from murder to misadventure and from illness to accidental death, each body has taught him something: about human development, about mortality, about its owner's life story, about justice and even about himself.

Andrew Carnegie amassed wealth that inspired generations of entrepreneurs and industrialists. Starting with nothing in Scotland, he gradually built so much wealth that those at the top of the current Forbes list would still not be able to match him. This audiobook presents the life of one of the gentlest and kindest men in history and the way he made his money. His fortune was ultimately almost three times more than the richest men on the planet today.

Very few individuals can truthfully say that their work impacts every person on Earth. Forrest Galante is one of them. As a wildlife biologist and conservationist, Galante devotes his life to studying, rediscovering, and protecting our planet’s amazing life-forms. Part memoir, part biological adventure, Still Alive celebrates the beauty and determined resiliency of our world, as well as the brave conservationists fighting to save it.

With compassion and candor, leading neurosurgeon Henry Marsh reveals the fierce joy of operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets, and the moments of black humor that characterize a brain surgeon's life. If you believe that brain surgery is a precise and exquisite craft, practiced by calm and detached surgeons, this gripping, brutally honest account will make you think again.

William Osler was one of the big four founding fathers of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and later became the Regis Professor of Medicine at Oxford. But this acclaimed physician was so much more. This is a remarkable story.

In Jimmy Buffett: A Good Life All the Way, acclaimed music critic Ryan White has crafted the first definitive account of Buffett's rise from singing songs for beer to his emergence as a tropical icon and CEO behind the Margaritaville industrial complex, a vast network of merchandise, chain restaurants, resorts, and lifestyle products all inspired by his sunny but disillusioned hit "Margaritaville".

When Apollo 11 touched down on the Moon’s surface in 1969, the first man on the Moon became a legend. In First Man, author James R. Hansen explores the life of Neil Armstrong. Based on over 50 hours of interviews with the intensely private Armstrong, who also gave Hansen exclusive access to private documents and family sources, this "magnificent panorama of the second half of the American twentieth century" (Publishers Weekly, starred review) is an unparalleled biography of an American icon.

In Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn, leadership coach Katie Anderson and Toyota leader Isao Yoshino bring you a remarkable book about what it means to learn, to lead, and to care. With a career that spanned nearly four decades at Toyota Motor Corporation, Isao Yoshino’s stories help us understand how Toyota intentionally developed the culture of excellence for which it is renowned today, and how one person learned to lead so that he could lead to learn.

Mathematics shapes almost everything we do. But despite its reputation as the study of fundamental truths, the stories we have been told about it are wrong—warped like the sixteenth-century map that enlarged Europe at the expense of Africa, Asia and the Americas. In The Secret Lives of Numbers, renowned math historian Kate Kitagawa and journalist Timothy Revell make the case that the history of math is infinitely deeper, broader, and richer than the narrative we think we know.

This is the memoir of James C. Hormel - a man who grew up feeling different not only because his family owned the Hormel “empire” and lived in a 26 bedroom house in a small Midwest town, but because he was gay at a time when homosexuality was not discussed or accepted. Outwardly he tried to live up to the life his father wanted for him - he was a successful professional, had married a lovely woman, and had children - but as volatile changes in the late 1960s impeded on the American psyche, Hormel realized that he could not hide his true self forever.

The definitive biography of the most important economic statesman of our time, from the best-selling author of The Power Law and More Money Than God. Sebastian Mallaby's magisterial biography of Alan Greenspan, the product of over five years of research based on untrammeled access to his subject and his closest professional and personal intimates, brings into vivid focus the mysterious point where the government and the economy meet. To understand Greenspan's story is to see the economic and political landscape of our time in a whole new light.

In this engaging, witty, and inspirational memoir, Chrishell Stause shares her story of living an unconventional childhood in small-town Kentucky marked by periods of homelessness, family addiction struggles, and dreams of one day being on a daytime soap, all while managing the local Dairy Queen. Through resilience and grit, she overcame obstacles and pushed past every barrier in her path to become one of the most envied luxury realtors in Los Angeles and buzzworthy cast members in reality TV.

A riveting and candid account of a young journalist's awakening to a life of chronic illness, weaving together her personal story with reporting to shed light on how Americans live with long-term diagnoses today.

In Seed to Dust, Marc Hamer paints a beautiful portrait of the garden that “belongs to everyone.” He describes a year in his life as a country gardener, with each chapter named for the month he’s in. As he works, he muses on the unusual folklores of his beloved plants. He observes the creatures who scurry and hide from his blade or rake. And he reflects on his own life: living homeless as a young man, his loving relationship with his wife and children, and - now - feeling the effects of old age on body and mind.

Returning Marx to the Victorian confines of the 19th century, Jonathan Sperber, one of the United States' leading European historians, challenges many of our misconceptions of this political firebrand turned London journalist. In this deeply humanizing portrait, Marx no longer is the Olympian soothsayer, divining the dialectical imperatives of human history, but a scholar-activist whose revolutionary Weltanschauung was closer to Robespierre's than to those of 20th-century Marxists.

The name “Aleister Crowley” instantly conjures visions of diabolic ceremonies and orgiastic indulgences—and while the sardonic Crowley would perhaps be the last to challenge such a view, he was also much more than “the Beast,” as this authoritative biography shows. Perdurabo—entitled after the magical name Crowley chose when inducted into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn—traces Crowley’s remarkable journey from his birth as the only son of a wealthy lay preacher to his death in a boarding house as the world’s foremost authority on magick.

Anthony Bourdain’s death by suicide in June 2018 shocked people around the world. Bourdain seemed to have it all: an irresistible personality, a dream job, a beautiful family, and international fame. The reality, though, was more complicated than it seemed. Bourdain became a celebrity with his bestselling book Kitchen Confidential. He parlayed it into a series of hit television shows, including the Food Channel’s Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and CNN’s Parts Unknown. But his bad boy charisma belied a troubled spirit.

“How do I become more confident?” is the question Lydia Fenet hears almost every time she speaks to women across the country. Navigating a two-decade career at the world’s leading auction house while raising three children, Lydia had her own journey of learning self-assurance. Through stories of overcoming challenges in both her work and personal lives, she demonstrates that confidence isn’t something that only some people are born with; rather, it’s inside every one of us, waiting to be claimed.

There are many ways of telling the story of a life and how we've got to where we are. The questions of why and how we think the way we do continues to preoccupy philosophers. In The Stuff of Life, Timothy Morton chooses the objects that have shaped and punctuated their life to tell the story of who they are and why they might think the way they do. From the looming expanse of Battersea Power Station to a packet of anti-depressants and a cowboy suit, Morton explores why 'stuff' matters and the life of these things have so powerfully impinged upon their own.