Academic Life

Consider a world without weather prediction. How would we know when to evacuate communities ahead of fires or floods, or figure out what to wear tomorrow? Until 40 years ago, we couldn’t forecast weather conditions beyond ten days. Renowned climate scientist Dr. Jagadish Shukla is largely to thank for modern weather forecasting. Born in rural India with no electricity, plumbing, or formal schools, he attended classes that were held in a cow shed. Shukla grew up amid turmoil: overwhelming monsoons, devastating droughts, and unpredictable crop yields.

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".

In the Black traces B. Denham Jolly's personal and professional struggle for a place in a country where Black Canadians have faced systematic discrimination. He arrived from Jamaica to attend university in the mid-1950s and worked as a high school teacher before going into the nursing and retirement-home business. Though he was ultimately successful in his business ventures, Jolly faced both overt and covert discrimination, which led him into social activism.

A visionary carpenter shares meditations on work, creativity, and design, revealing powerful lessons on building a meaningful life through his experience constructing some of New York’s most iconic spaces.

Laurie Zaleski never aspired to run an animal rescue; that was her mother Annie’s dream. But from girlhood, Laurie was determined to make the dream come true. Thirty years later as a successful businesswoman, she did it, buying a 15-acre farm deep in the Pinelands of South Jersey. She was planning to relocate Annie and her caravan of ragtag rescues - horses and goats, dogs and cats, chickens and pigs - when Annie died, just two weeks before moving day. In her heartbreak, Laurie resolved to make her mother’s dream her own.

Many of us know little about Archimedes other than his "Eureka" exclamation upon discovering that he could immerse an object in a full tub of water and measure the spillage to determine the object's weight. That seemingly simple observation not only proved to King Hieron II of Syracuse that a certain amount of silver had been used in what was supposed to be his solid-gold crown, it established the key principles of buoyancy that govern the flotation of hot-air balloons, ships, and denizens of the sea.

What part of memory is reliable fact, what part creative embellishment? Which favorite presuppositions are unfounded, which statistically biased? By conjoining two opposing mind-sets - the suspension of disbelief required in storytelling and the skepticism inherent in the scientific method - best-selling mathematician John Allen Paulos has created an unusual hybrid, a composite of personal memories and mathematical approaches to reevaluating them.

A hopeful look at coping with the ravages of serious chronic illness by an accomplished journalist, a contributing columnist for the New York Times, and former senior producer of the CBS Evening News.

Are you ready to unlock your full academic and career potential? Life Skills for Success - Book 4: Academic & Career Success is your guide to mastering the skills needed for academic achievement and professional growth. This comprehensive resource helps students and young professionals develop practical strategies for excelling in school, building effective study habits, and achieving long-term career success.

Dr. Helen Morrison has profiled more than 80 serial killers around the world. What she has learned about them will shatter every assumption you've ever had about the most notorious killers known to man.

In 1942, a team at the University of Chicago achieved what no one had before: a nuclear chain reaction. At the forefront of this breakthrough stood Enrico Fermi. Straddling the ages of classical physics and quantum mechanics, equally at ease with theory and experiment, Fermi truly was the last man who knew everything - at least about physics. But he was also a complex figure who was a part of both the Italian Fascist Party and the Manhattan Project, and a less-than-ideal father and husband who nevertheless remained one of history's greatest mentors.

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.

Aristotle Onassis was a born orator, and Jackie Kennedy would sit and listen to him spin off tales and stories - often racy - by the hour. A speaker of seven languages, he could keep a dinner party of some of the world's most sophisticated conversationalists spellbound. Even Jackie couldn't help but drop her reserve and laugh with him. America's First Lady simply never knew anyone quite as free or exotic as Aristotle Onassis, a paradoxical blend of raconteur and ruffian.

In Taking the Stand, Dershowitz describes his evolution as a lawyer—from a C-minus student in Yeshiva High School to the youngest full professor in the history of Harvard Law School. In his #1 New York Times bestselling book Chutzpah, Alan described his Jewish life.

When you are told that you have leukemia, your world stops. Your brain can't function. You are asked to make decisions about treatment almost immediately, when you are not in your right mind. And yet you pull yourself together and start asking questions. Beside you is your doctor, whose job it is to solve the awful puzzle of bone marrow gone wrong. The two of you are in it together. In When Blood Breaks Down, Mikkael Sekeres, a leading cancer specialist, takes listeners on the journey that patient and doctor travel together.

How Can I Help? portrays a week in the life of Dr. David Goldbloom as he treats patients, communicates with families, and trains staff at CAMH, the largest psychiatric facility in Canada. This highly listenable and touching behind-the-scenes account of his daily encounters with a wide range of psychiatric concerns - from his own patients and their families to Emergency Department arrivals - puts a human face on an often misunderstood area of medical expertise.

Almost six million Americans—about one in every ten people over the age of sixty-five—have Alzheimer’s disease or related dementias, and this number is projected to more than double by 2050. What is it like to live with and amid this increasingly prevalent condition—an affliction that some fear more than death? In My Father’s Brain, the distinguished physician and author Sandeep Jauhar sets his father’s descent into Alzheimer’s alongside his own journey toward understanding this disease and how it might best be coped with, if not cured.

Author of The Kennedys at War and The Lion’s Pride, Edward J. Renehan, Jr. presents a fascinating biography of one of the most hated and most admired American entrepreneurs of all time. Here, he sheds light on Wall Street magnate Jay Gould and his frequently overshadowed creativity. Gould was the quintessential robber baron and the original modern businessman whose financial examples persist even today.

J. P. Morgan is more than just the name on one of the largest banks in America. He was a man who altered the course of American finance and the chief financier for the strategic interests of the titans of the day, such as Carnegie and Rockefeller. He also financed new and ingenious technologies developed by Thomas Edison and was a visionary who saw the potential in Nikola Tesla. Hear all about him and find areas that you may have in common with this towering titan.

From early childhood, Dr. Hannah Mumby has loved wildlife, especially elephants. Her first wild elephant sighting at 24 changed the course of her life. Since then, she has devoted herself to studying these incredible animals and educating humanity about them. Hannah's field work has taken her around the world, where she has studied many elephant groups, including both orphaned elephants and the solitary elephant males. These remarkable animals have so much to teach us, Mumby argues, and Elephants takes listeners into their world as never before.