New World Wit

The end of the Cold War was the greatest shock to international affairs since World War II. In that perilous moment, Saddam Hussein chose to invade Kuwait, China cracked down on its own pro-democracy protesters, and regimes throughout Eastern Europe teetered between democratic change and new authoritarians. Not since FDR in 1945 had a US president faced such opportunities and challenges. As the presidential historian Jeffrey Engel reveals in this hard-to-pause history, behind closed doors, George H. W. Bush rose to the occasion brilliantly.

In the 1860s, Napoleon III, intent on curbing the rise of American imperialism, persuaded a young Austrian archduke and a Belgian princess to leave Europe and become the emperor and empress of Mexico. They and their entourage arrived in a Mexico ruled by terror, where revolutionary fervor was barely suppressed by French troops. When the United States, now clear of its own Civil War, aided the rebels in pushing back Maximilian’s imperial soldiers, the French army withdrew, abandoning the young couple. The regime fell apart.

Lucid Dreaming - conscious awareness during the dream state - is an exhilarating experience. Because the world you are experiencing is one of your own creation, you can do the impossible and consciously influence the outcome of your dreams.

Born in West Africa in the early 1950s, Somé was kidnapped at age four by a French Jesuit missionary to be trained as a priest, for the next 15 years enduring the harsh regimen of a seminary where his native language and tribal traditions were systematically suppressed. At age 20 he escaped, but when he returned to his Dugara people in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) they rejected him as an outsider. To reconnect with his native culture, Somé underwent a month-long initiation into shamanism.

The precursor to The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, this book explores the full meaning of "wealth consciousness" with clear and simple wisdom. According to author Deepak Chopra, "Affluence includes money but is not just money.

Gloriously rich and utterly delightful, Miss Peregrine’s Museum of Wonders is an indispensable guide to the peculiar world, perfect for longtime fans and new listeners alike. Covering everything from how to blend in with suspicious normals to the most popular time loops to visit as a temporal tourist, this essential volume is ideal for anyone curious about the world of Miss Peregrine: its strange history, curious practices, fascinating places, most famous (and infamous) names, and much more.

WWII forever changed what it means to go to war. After putting down this book, you'll understand exactly why.

Over the few short decades that followed Christopher Columbus' first landing in the Caribbean in 1492, Spain conquered the two most powerful civilizations of the Americas: the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru. Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, and the other explorers and soldiers who took part in these expeditions dedicated their lives to seeking political and religious glory, helping to build an empire unlike any the world had ever seen. But centuries later, these conquistadors have become the stuff of nightmares.

Today, companies cannot afford to have their employees disengaged and hating or at least not loving their jobs. Traditional management is broken. We need a new, twenty-first-century approach to management that will galvanize the minds and hearts of people giving so much of their lives to organizations. In The No-Limits Enterprise: Organizational Self-Management in the New World of Work, Doug Kirkpatrick examines how companies can begin the journey toward becoming a twenty-first-century enterprise with limitless power for growth.

Megan Crewe has received both critical accolades and popular acclaim for her young adult novels. The Way We Fall launches a new series featuring 16-year-old Kaelyn, whose island community is quarantined after the outbreak of a deadly virus. Before long, people begin to turn against each other as they fight for dwindling supplies. Remarkably, in the midst of this chaos, Kaelyn discovers both an unlikely ally and a surprising love interest. And with prospects for survival growing dimmer with each passing moment, she will need all the help she can get.

The Republic poses questions that endure: What is justice? What form of community fosters the best possible life for human beings? What is the nature and destiny of the soul? What form of education provides the best leaders for a good republic? What are the various forms of poetry and the other arts, and which ones should be fostered and which ones should be discouraged? How does knowing differ from believing?

In a small town in the north of Australia, a mysterious cloud heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors. A crazed visionary looks to donkeys to solve the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife, seeking solace from his madness, follows the dance of butterflies and scours the internet to find out how her Aboriginal/Chinese family could be repatriated to China. One of their sons, named Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide.

"This book is in part a detective story. After 9/11 I knew, if I needed further reinforcement, that we are living in a new world - the world of a global capitalist economy that is vastly more flexible, resilient, open, self-correcting, and fast-changing than it was even a quarter century earlier. It's a world that presents us with enormous new possibilities but also enormous new challenges. The Age of Turbulence is my attempt to understand the nature of this new world." (Alan Greenspan)

Ten years after an attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, cries of "Benghazi!" still echo across America. But instead of a landmark event to be taken seriously, it has become a punchline, an empty word, or a code for controversy and political theatre. In this thrilling retelling, Ethan Chorin reveals Benghazi as a watershed moment in American history, one that helped create the world America lives in today: polarized, fearful, and dangerously unstable.

What accounts for the rise of the state, the creation of the first global system, and the dominance of the West? The conventional answer asserts that superior technology, tactics, and institutions forged by Darwinian military competition gave Europeans a decisive advantage in war from 1500 onward. Empires of the Weak argues that Europeans had no general military superiority in the early modern era. Sharman shows instead that European expansion is better explained by deference to strong Asian and African polities, disease in the Americas, and maritime supremacy earned by default.

In a time of social and ecological crisis, what can we as individuals do to make the world a better place? This inspirational and thought-provoking book serves as an empowering antidote to the cynicism, frustration, paralysis, and overwhelm so many of us are feeling, replacing it with a grounding reminder of what’s true: we are all connected, and our small, personal choices bear unsuspected transformational power.

For 400 years - from the first Spanish assaults against the Arawak people of Hispaniola in the 1490s to the US Army's massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in the 1890s - the indigenous inhabitants of North and South America endured an unending firestorm of violence. During that time the native population of the Western Hemisphere declined by as many as 100 million people.

Therapy, you say? Sign up Marly, the angry ex-Unseelie-fae-queen. Or how about Sasha, the bitter exiled-Unseelie-fae-king? And definitely Ruby, the mortal bartender who lost her heart when she found her memories of March, the unicorn shifter she loved. A good therapist would say learn to live with the consequences of choices, but Ruby isn't ready to accept that a choice she didn't even know she made landed March as the prisoner of the Seelie fae court. And Marly and Sasha have some feelings about reclaiming the throne of the Unseelie court.

The journey of Erik the Viking is almost done but the Norns have not yet finished spinning and their webs threaten to engulf Erik, his family and his growing clan. He may be getting old, but Erik is still a force to be reckoned with and when others falter, the last Viking in the New World is there to steer the clan to safety. This is the last audiobook in the saga that has been the story of Erik the Navigator.

The Changed Life was originally intended to be given as a spoken address by the renowned 19-century Scottish evangelist Henry Drummond.