English Culture

Anna Hibiscus lives in Africa. Amazing Africa. Anna Hibiscus has never been away from her home in Africa, surrounded by her parents and baby brothers, as well as all of her aunts and uncles and cousins. But now she is going to Canada to visit her grandmother for Christmas. She has never met Granny Canada and she can't wait to see snow! Canada is very cold and it takes Anna a little while to get used to wearing lots of clothes and eating different types of food. She also has to get used to Granny's dog, Qimmac.

A sociologist and former fashion model takes listeners inside the elite global party circuit of "models and bottles" to reveal how beautiful young women are used to boost the status of men.

The Ape That Understood the Universe is the story of the strangest animal in the world: the human animal. It opens with a question: How would an alien scientist view our species? What would it make of our sex differences, our sexual behavior, our child-rearing patterns, our moral codes, our religions, our languages, and science? The book tackles these issues by drawing on ideas from two major schools of thought: evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory.

From actor Cary Elwes, who played the iconic role of Westley in The Princess Bride, comes a first-person account and behind-the-scenes look at the making of the cult classic film filled with never-before-told stories, exclusive photographs, and interviews with costars Robin Wright, Wallace Shawn, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, and Mandy Patinkin, as well as author and screenwriter William Goldman, producer Norman Lear, and director Rob Reiner.

The Mindful Parent brings together Dr. Peterson's village interviews, observations, research, and over 35 years of work as a psychologist to teach modern parents how to raise healthier, more well-balanced, and kinder children. It includes creative ideas from parents who are currently adopting these practices and balancing other aspects of their personal, career, and financial responsibilities to assure their children get the support they need to thrive.

Self-made billionaire Sam Zell consistently sees what others don't. From finding a market for overpriced Playboy magazines among his junior high classmates, to buying real estate on the cheap after a market crash, to investing in often unglamorous industries with long-term value, Zell acts boldly on supply and demand trends to grab the first-mover advantage. And he can find opportunity virtually anywhere - from an arcane piece of legislation to a desert meeting in Abu Dhabi.

Anna Hibiscus lives in Africa. Amazing Africa. She lives with her whole family in a wonderful house. There is always somebody to laugh or play with. She loves to splash in the sea with her cousins and have parties with her aunties. But more than anything else in the world, Anna Hibiscus would love to see snow.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is neither a hand-wringing narrative of danger and decline nor a digital fairy tale. Rather, it offers a deeply reasoned and evocative examination of the contests over the next chapter of capitalism that will decide the meaning of information civilization in the 21st century. The stark issue at hand is whether we will be the masters of information and machines or its slaves.

As machines become capable of doing most of the work people have performed for centuries, we are headed for a massive social reorganization. In The Five Forces That Change Everything, Steve Hoffman, venture capitalist and CEO of Founders Space, takes you on a journey to see what the most brilliant minds of our age are dreaming up.

The last time New Orleans attorney Jean-Luc Valmont saw Maribel Cordoba, a Spanish nobleman's daughter, she was an 11-year-old orphan perched in the riggings of his privateering vessel proving herself as the best lookout on his crew. Until the day his infamy caught up with them all, and innocent lives were lost. Unsure why he survived, but vowing to make something of the chance he was given, Jean-Luc has buried his past life so deep that no living person will ever find it - until a very much alive and very grown-up Maribel Cordoba arrives on his doorstep.

Emily Ratajkowski is an acclaimed model and actress, an engaged political progressive, a formidable entrepreneur, a global social media phenomenon, and now, a writer. Rocketing to world fame at age 21, Ratajkowski sparked both praise and furor with the provocative display of her body as an unapologetic statement of feminist empowerment. The subsequent evolution in her thinking about our culture’s commodification of women is the subject of this book.

Our brains do their best to help us out, but every so often they can be real assholes - having meltdowns, getting addicted to things, or shutting down completely at the worst possible moments. Your brain knows it's not good to do these things, but it can't help it sometimes - especially if it's obsessing about trauma it can't overcome. That's where this life-changing book comes in. With humor, patience, science, and lots of good-ole swearing, Dr. Faith explains what's going on in your skull, and talks you through the process of retraining your brain to respond appropriately....

How can biblical authority be a reality for those shaped by the modern world? This work treats the First World as a mission field, offering a unique perspective on the relationship between the gospel and current society by presenting an outsider's view of contemporary Western culture.

Throughout history, people have experimented, invented, and created new ways of doing things. Kid Innovators tells the stories of a diverse group of brilliant thinkers in fields like technology, education, business, science, art, and entertainment, reminding us that every innovator started out as a kid. Florence Nightingale rescued baby mice, Alan Turing was a daydreamer with terrible handwriting, and Alvin Ailey felt like a failure at sports.

From the Yangtze to the Yellow River, China is traversed by great waterways, which have defined its politics and ways of life for centuries. Water has been so integral to China's culture, economy, and growth and development that it provides a window on the whole sweep of Chinese history. In The Water Kingdom, renowned writer Philip Ball opens that window to offer an epic and powerful new way of thinking about Chinese civilization. Water, Ball shows, is a key that unlocks much of Chinese culture.

Industry expert Alex Aniel spent two years interviewing key former members of Capcom staff, allowing him to tell the inside story of how Resident Evil was envisioned as early as the late 1980s, how its unexpected and unprecedented success saved the company from financial trouble, how the series struggled at the turn of the century, and, eventually, how a new generation of creators was born after the release of Resident Evil 4.

In For the Culture, Marcus Collins argues that true cultural engagement is the most powerful vehicle for influencing behavior. If you want to get people to move, you must first understand the underlying cultural forces that make them tick. Collins uses stories from his own work as an award-winning marketer—from spearheading digital strategy for Beyoncé, to working on Apple and Nike collaborations, to the successful launch of the Brooklyn Nets NBA team—to break down the ways in which culture influences behavior and how listeners can do the same

Throughout history, technological change — whether it takes the form of agricultural improvements in the Middle Ages, the Industrial Revolution, or today’s artificial intelligence — has been viewed as a main driver of prosperity, working in the public interest. The reality, though, is that technology is shaped by what powerful people want and believe, generating riches, social respect, cultural prominence, and further political voice for those already powerful. For most of the rest of us, there is the illusion of progress.

Most people are fearful of change because they don't have any control over how or when it happens to them. Since change happens either to the individual or by the individual, Dr. Spencer Johnson uses a simple story to show that when it comes to living in a changing world, what matters most is your attitude. Exploring a simple way to take the fear and anxiety out of managing the future, Who Moved My Cheese? can help you discover how to anticipate, acknowledge, and accept change in order to have a positive impact on your job, your relationships, and every aspect of your life.

Our age is obsessed by the idea of conspiracy. We see it everywhere---from Pearl Harbor to 9/11, from the assassination of Kennedy to the death of Diana. In this age of terrorism we live in, the role of conspiracy is a serious one---one that can fuel radical or fringe elements to violence. For award-winning journalist David Aaronovitch, there came a time when he started to see a pattern among these inflammatory theories.