Human Life

In her old house by the fjord, Signe lies on a bench and sees a vision of herself as she was more than twenty years earlier: standing by the window waiting for her husband Asle, on that terrible late November day when he took his rowboat out onto the water and never returned. Her memories widen out to include their whole life together, and beyond: the bonds of family and the battles with implacable nature stretching back over five generations, to Asle's great-great-grandmother Aliss.

Cities are birthplaces of civilization; centers of culture, trade, and progress; cauldrons of opportunity - and the home of 80 percent of the world's population by 2050. As the 21st century progresses, metropolitan areas will bear the brunt of global megatrends such as climate change, natural resource depletion, population growth, income inequality, mass migrations, and education and health disparities, among many others.

While a college student at The New School, Melissa Febos spent four years working as a dominatrix in a midtown dungeon. In poetic, nuanced prose, she charts in Whip Smart how unchecked risk-taking eventually gave way to a course of self-destruction. But as she recounts crossing over the very boundaries that she set for her own safety, she never plays the victim. In fact, the glory of this memoir is Melissa's ability to illuminate the strange and powerful truths that she learned as she found her way out of a hell of her own making.

One of America's most acclaimed sportswriters, Dan Jenkins has won countless fans with his bawdy sense of humor. Bubba Talks is a series of reflections from the quintessential American redneck - a lover of hot ladies, football, cheeseburgers, and Firebirds.

Meet David Shallcross. Outstanding college athlete back in the day. These days, a highly successful entrepreneur, happily married, loves his kids. Only one problem. He’s a little…shall we say…bored. So he takes a flyer on some high risk investments…except it’s more than a flyer. It’s his entire balance sheet. He pushed all his chips to the middle of the table. And lost every penny. His wife? Furious. And rightly so, because he’s just gambled away his family’s financial security. And how does David feel?

With his big blue eyes and soulful expression, George was the irresistible runt of the litter. But Dave and Christie Nasser's "baby" ended up being almost five feet tall, seven feet long, and 245 pounds. Eager to play, and boisterous to the point of causing chaos, this big Great Dane was scared of water, scared of dogs a fraction of his size, and, most of all, scared of being alone. Giant George is the charming story of how this precocious puppy won Dave and Christie's hearts and along the way became a doggie superstar.

In our age of science and psychology, it's tempting to think of human sexuality in terms of biology and interpersonal relationships. But in The Soul of Sex, Thomas Moore regards sex as an experience of the soul and emphasizes the more human themes of fantasy, desire, meaning, and morality. Moore turns especially to the religious traditions of the world, to rites, stories, and visual imagery that see in sex some of the most profound mysteries of life.

In 1997, Yiannis Kouros ran 188 miles in 24 hours. In 1984, at age 42, Maria Moreira gave birth to her 10th set of twins. In 1973, Terry Tao learned to read when he was two years old. Tao started college at age nine, and at 24 was appointed a full-time professor at UCLA. What does it feel like to be exceptional? And what does it take to get there? Why can some people achieve greatness when others can’t, no matter how hard they try? Just how much potential does our species have? Evolutionary biologist Rowan Hooper has the answers.

The hero's journey - this human life - is a search for the greatest treasure of all: the gifts of your true nature. These gifts are your birthright, but they have been hidden from you, kept from you by the dragon: the ego. These gifts are the wisdom, love, peace, courage, strength, and joy that reside at your core. A Heroic Life shows you how to overcome the ego's false beliefs and face the ego's fears.

The normal human way of doing things is rife with inefficiencies. It means starting a new writing project and blankly staring at your screen, waiting for inspiration to hit you. It means reading books at such a slow pace that you never have time to finish them in your busy schedule. It means having a capricious mind that jumps from one distraction to the next, stifling your ability to learn and retain information. To become superhuman is to achieve superhuman memory, reading, and writing skills.

On May 10, 1998, biologist Craig Venter, director of the Institute for Genomic Research, announced that he was forming a private company that within three years would unravel the complete genetic code of human life, seven years before the projected finish of the U.S. government's Human Genome Project. Venter hoped that by decoding the genome ahead of schedule, he would speed up the pace of biomedical research and save the lives of thousands of people. He also hoped to become very famous and very rich.

We've all asked ourselves the question. It's impossible to look up at the stars and NOT think about it: Are we alone in the universe? Books, movies, and television shows proliferate that attempt to answer this question and explore it. In Out There, Space.com senior writer Dr. Michael Wall treats that question as merely the beginning, touching off a wild ride of exploration into the final frontier. He considers, for instance, the myriad of questions that would arise once we do discover life beyond Earth (an eventuality which, top NASA officials told Wall, is only drawing closer).

Thelma is the busy single mum of 12-year-old Louis. When he is hit by a lorry one morning, their lives are changed for ever. Louis falls into a coma, and if he doesn't regain consciousness in the next four weeks, he may never wake up again. At home in Louis' bedroom, a devastated Thelma finds a list of all the things he wants to accomplish in his life and suddenly sees a way to survive: she will fulfil her son's dreams, in the hope that it will bring him back.

In Born in Africa, Martin Meredith follows the trail of discoveries about human origins made by scientists over the last hundred years, recounting their intense rivalry, personal feuds, and fierce controversies, as well as their feats of skill and endurance. The results have been momentous. Scientists have identified more than 20 species of extinct humans. They have firmly established Africa as the birthplace not only of humankind but also of modern humans.

La historia sigue a Segismundo, un príncipe encarcelado desde su nacimiento por su padre, el rey Basilio, debido a una profecía que predice que Segismundo se convertirá en un tirano. A través de una serie de eventos dramáticos, Calderón de la Barca teje una reflexión filosófica sobre la vida y los sueños, cuestionando la realidad misma.

The purpose of creating this audiobook is to help the listener to understand as much about influencing human behavior as possible. Like most things in life, it is possible for anyone, regardless of background, to learn and put this information into practice and become a truly influential individual. Learning and applying the skills herein will help the listener to win more friends and gain more influence over people even without having a form of authority over them.

All places are not created equal. In this groundbreaking book, Richard Florida shows that where we live is increasingly a crucial factor in our lives, one that fundamentally affects our professional and personal prospects. As well as explaining why place matters now more than ever, Who's Your City? provides indispensable tools to help you choose the right place for you.

Ritual is one of the oldest, and certainly most enigmatic, threads in the history of human culture. It presents a profound paradox: people ascribe the utmost importance to their rituals, but few can explain why they are so important. Apparently pointless ceremonies pervade every documented society, from handshakes to hexes, hazings to parades. Before we ever learned to farm, we were gathering in giant stone temples to perform elaborate rites and ceremonies. Dimitris Xygalatas leads us on an enlightening tour through this shadowy realm of human behavior.

In February of 1973, Nancy Weber put an ad in the Village Voice offering to trade places with another woman, a stranger, for a month. In hopes of better understanding what was fixed and final in each person - and what was invented, and therefore might be reinvented - they would use each other's names, live in each other's homes, love each other's loves, and do each other's work.

Divine Guidance from the Akashic Records: Your Essential Blueprint for Living a Spiritual Life in a Human Body is the perfect book to guide you on how to tend to your body's consciousness, navigate planetary energies, embody peace, re-discover your divine gifts and talents, cultivate and nurture relationships, and shift limiting belief patterns to create what you really want!