Social Memory

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Have You Eaten Grandma? written and read by Gyles Brandreth. It can be much harder than it seems; commas, colons, semicolons and even apostrophes can drive us all mad at times, but it riles no one more than the longest-serving resident of Countdown's Dictionary Corner, grammar guru Gyles Brandreth. In this brilliantly funny tirade and guide, Gyles anatomises the linguistic horrors of our times, tells us where we've been going wrong (and why) and shows us how, in future, we can get it right every time.

If you've ever wanted to improve your ability to memorize names and faces by as much as 100%, 200%, even 300% (or more) … using simple memory techniques that you can learn in 15-20 minutes (or less), then this may be the most important book you will ever read.

When Tobias Richard Vandevelde wakes up in a hospital with no memory of the night before, his horrified mother tells him that he was found unconscious.... At Featherdale Wildlife Park. In a dingo pen. He assumes that his two best friends are somehow responsible, until the mysterious Reuben turns up, claiming that Toby has a rare and dangerous condition. Next thing he knows, Toby finds himself involved with a strange bunch of sickly insomniacs who seem convinced that he needs their help.

Meredith Maran lived a daughter's nightmare: she accused her father of sexual abuse, then realized, nearly too late, that he was innocent. During the 1980s and 1990s, tens of thousands of Americans became convinced that they had repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse, and then, decades later, recovered those memories in therapy. Journalist, mother, and daughter Meredith Maran was one of them.

In a trio of popular gender rituals—sorority rush, beauty pageants, and the Confederate Pageant of the Natchez (Mississippi) Pilgrimage—young white southern women have readily ditched contemporary modes of dress and comportment for performances of purity, gentility, and deference. Clearly, the ability to "do" white southern womanhood, convincingly and on cue, has remained a valued performance. Based on ethnographic research and taped interviews, Southern Beauty goes behind the scenes of the three rituals to explore the motivations and rewards associated with participation.

The Key to Study Skills is a guide for simple strategies to double your reading, memory, and focus. Produced by the creators of the number-one best-selling course "Become a SuperLearner" and a book with the same name, it includes everything you need to read 1000 words per minute and retain almost everything. This speed would let you read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in just 77 minutes. The Bible would still take 13 hours....

Leah Carroll's mother, a gifted amateur photographer, was murdered by two drug dealers with Mafia connections when Leah was four years old. Her father, a charming alcoholic who hurtled between depression and mania, was dead by the time she was 18. Why did her mother have to die? Why did the man who killed her receive such a light sentence? What darkness did Leah inherit from her parents? Leah was left to put together her own future, and now in her memoir she explores the mystery of her parents' lives through interviews and police records.

In Thoughts That Hold Immigrants Back in America, Dr. Tursun Alkam draws from his personal journey and decades of research to illuminate the mental roadblocks that prevent immigrants from reaching their full potential. Whether it’s the fear of failure, perfectionism, language barriers, or cultural identity conflicts, this transformative guide helps you recognize and overcome the thoughts that limit growth, integration, and success.

Lethal Leadership is a collection of three books which will help you improve your leadership skills so you can better interact with people and create significant changes in your external environment. The world needs more leaders, and this collection will help you tackle the subject of persuasion and power from multiple angles. This bundle includes The Modern-Day Polymath, The Art and Science of Storytelling, and Street Smarts. The field of leadership is constantly changing; the upcoming leader should be dynamic and capable of adapting to the environment.

Brain science and cognitive psychology is one of the most versatile psychological specialty areas today - and one of the most in demand. So whether it be for study and research purposes or for self development, this is the perfect book for you!

For most of us, fond memories of the Christmas season are inseparable from television's holiday presentations. The world loves everything from iconic cartoons like How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Charlie Brown Christmas to the groundbreaking Julia sitcom segment, "I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas," Christmas in Rockefeller Center, and the 1992 television-remake of Christmas in Connecticut directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Christmas TV Memories: Nostalgic Holiday Favorites of the Small Screen embraces it all, offering a tinsel-decked traipse down memory lane.

Fights over history are at the heart of most important constitutional disputes in America. The Supreme Court's current embrace of originalism is only the most recent example of how lawyers and judges try to use history to establish authority for their positions. Jack M. Balkin argues that fights over constitutional interpretation are often fights over collective memory. Balkin shows how lawyers and judges channel history through standard forms of legal argument that shape how they use history and even what they see in history.

Have you ever wanted to truly know what goes on inside the head of Sherlock Holmes? Have you wanted to be able to read people and their expressions like books? Have you ever wanted to read a room and all the tells and clues that it provides? Then this is the book for you.

Eager to retell the narrative of her own family and her coming-of-age, Patti Davis casts aside misperceptions that defined her in the past. Far from being the enfant terrible, Dear Mom and Dad reveals young Patti as a sensitive child, who was not able to be the public person her family demanded. Davis casts an empathetic yet honest eye on her parents—on her father, the eternal lifeguard, who saved seventy-seven people, yet failed to create a coherent AIDS policy, and her mother, who never escaped her own tortured youth.

On March 11, 2003, in Brownsville, Texas - one of America's poorest cities - John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho murdered their three young children. The apartment building in which the brutal crimes took place was already run down, and in their aftermath a consensus developed in the community that it should be destroyed. It was a place, neighbors felt, that was plagued by spiritual cancer.

This essential guide for immigrants explores what it truly takes to succeed in America. Drawing on real-life stories, practical advice, and the author's personal experiences, What Successful Immigrants Do in America offers actionable strategies for thriving in a new culture while staying true to your roots.

In this thoroughly updated third edition of Marcia Tate’s bestseller, you’ll learn about twenty definitive brain-compatible techniques to maximize retention and minimize forgetting in learners of all ages. Tate’s techniques are drawn from the latest neuroscientific research and learning style theory and are described step-by-step for immediate application in your classroom.

Amelia and her friends are taking part in a competition to visit Pumpkin Paradise Park - the most bloodcurding theme park ever! All they have to do is sell as many cookies as possible. But the creatures of Nocturnia have begun to act stranger than usual...no one can seem to remember anything - including their own names or even Amelia's big birthnight party! Where have everyone's memories gone? And how can Amelia save them when they have all forgotten who she is?

More people know who Khloe Kardashian is than who Rene Descartes was. Most can't find Delaware on a map, correctly spell the word occurrence, or name the largest ocean on the planet. But how important is it to fill our heads with facts? A few keystrokes can summon almost any information in seconds. Why should we bother learning facts at all? Best-selling author William Poundstone confronts that timely question in Head in the Cloud.

Philosophy, Socrates declared, is the art of dying. This book underscores that it is also the art of learning to live and share the earth with those who have come before us. Burial, with its surrounding rituals, is the most ancient documented cultural-symbolic practice: all humans have developed techniques of caring for and communicating with the dead.