Showing results by narrator "Michael Butler Murray" in All Categories

Most of us are aware of the hive mind—the power of bees as an amazing collective. But do we know how uniquely intelligent bees are as individuals? In The Mind of a Bee, Lars Chittka draws from decades of research, including his own pioneering work, to argue that bees have remarkable cognitive abilities. He shows that they are profoundly smart, have distinct personalities, can recognize flowers and human faces, exhibit basic emotions, count, use simple tools, solve problems, and learn by observing others. They may even possess consciousness.

In The Science of Dream Teams, Mike Zani details a data-driven approach to talent optimization that makes hiring, motivating, and managing people more efficient and effective than ever. It employs sophisticated assessments, tools, and software that enable leaders to: measure the traits and characteristics that predict success in a role or fit on a team; build finely tuned project teams and well-balanced leadership teams; and more.

Patrick A. Peters ("Pap") and his twin brother Prescott U. Peters ("Pup") are lawyers with a distinctive eye for opportunity. Pap convinces Pup, who is a good lawyer despite having gone to Yale Law School, that they should leave their respective big-firm practices in New York City to start up a hopefully lucrative practice as plaintiffs' class action lawyers. The brothers meet a variety of clients, judges, and lawyers as they embark on a resourceful and unique approach to lawyer-client relationships, all inspired by actual court cases.

Essential for armchair umpires and scorekeepers, this guide challenges aficionados on every significant part of the Official Baseball Rules. Few sports lovers are as obsessed with rules and statistics as baseball fans. In So You Think You Know Baseball?, lifelong baseball enthusiast Peter E. Meltzer catalogues every noteworthy baseball rule from the Major League rulebook and illustrates its application with actual plays, from the historical to the contemporary. You can listen to the book from start to finish or consult it while watching a game to understand the mechanics of a play or how it should be scored.

When it was finally released, Heaven's Gate failed so completely with reviewers and at the box office that it put legendary studio United Artists out of business and marked the end of Hollywood's auteur era. Or so the conventional wisdom goes. Charles Elton delves deeply into the making and aftermath of the movie and presents a surprisingly different view to that of Steven Bach, one of the executives responsible for Heaven's Gate, who wrote a scathing book about the film and solidified the widely held view that Cimino wounded the movie industry beyond repair.

What is great leadership? What separates the merely competent leaders from those rare individuals who leave a lasting impression on everyone around them? As one of the world's most in-demand CEO coaches and top leadership gurus, John Mattone has worked with some of our brightest business minds - Apple's Steve Jobs, Pepsi's Roger Enrico, and Nielsen's Armando Uriegas - and he's identified the key qualities that, together, make up the mindset of great leadership.

Most start-up origin stories are very different from the famous "unicorns" that have achieved valuations of greater than one billion dollars, from Facebook to Google to Uber. In The Unicorn's Shadow Ethan Mollick takes us to the forefront of an empirical revolution in entrepreneurship.

From the award-winning author of Bring It On Home: Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin, and Beyond and Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd comes this deeply researched alphabetical biography of Queen and each of its dynamic members. Addressing the phenomenal success of the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, acclaimed music journalist Mark Blake builds on the legend of Queen and their enduring audience appeal.

Danny Keegan wants his fifth grade class to be different and, well, exciting. But when he meets four new kids who give new meaning to the term “weird” he realizes he’s in for more excitement than he bargained for!

In a conversational Q&A format, a leading dog expert answers the most commonly asked questions about how dogs think and act. Do dogs dream? Can they recognize themselves in the mirror or understand what they’re seeing on television? Are they more intelligent than cats? People have a great curiosity - and many misunderstandings - about how dogs think, act, and perceive the world. They also wonder about the social and emotional lives of dogs. Stanley Coren brings decades of scientific research on dogs to bear in his unprecedented foray into the inner lives of our canine companions, dispelling many common myths in the process.

Incorporating his own thoughts along with those of noted academics, philosophers, and theologians, Loftus is able to properly define "miracle" and then show why there's no reason to believe such a thing even exists.

Misunderstanding Financial Crises offers a back-to-basics overview of financial crises and shows that they are not rare, idiosyncratic events caused by a perfect storm of unconnected factors. Instead, Gorton shows how financial crises are, indeed, inherent to our financial system.

There has never been a show business book quite like The Show Won't Go On, the first comprehensive study of a bizarre phenomenon: performers who died onstage. From the comedy magician who dropped dead on live television to the amateur thespian who expired during a play called The Art of Murder, the book is a celebration of lives both famous and obscure, as well as a dramatic and accurate recounting of events leading to the moments they died "doing what they loved."

Theirs is a fight to right the wrongs inflicted on them by "the white settlers." They know they are too small to take on the entire country, but they don't need to. Over a few tension-filled days as the battles rages over abundant energy resources, the frantic prime minister can only watch as the insurrection paralyzes the country. But when energy-dependent Americans discover the southward flow of Canadian hydroelectricity, oil, and natural gas is halted, they do not remain passive.

In the early 17th century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a novel. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from studying too many novels of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures. That story, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history.

A pioneering exploration of four cities where East meets West and past becomes future: St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai. Every month, five million people move from the past to the future. Pouring into developing-world “instant cities” like Dubai and Shenzhen, these urban newcomers confront a modern world cobbled together from fragments of a West they have never seen. Do these fantastical boomtowns, where blueprints spring to life overnight on virgin land, represent the dawning of a brave new world? Or is their vaunted newness a mirage?

Steeped in tradition based on more than a quarter century of research and practice, A Book of Pagan Prayer teaches us to pray in the ways of our ancestors for very modern times and concerns. A unique collection of nearly 500 prayers written to fulfill the needs of contemporary pagans from a variety of traditions, A Book of Pagan Prayer is a book to turn to again and again.

The question is no longer if electric vehicles will happen, or even when they'll happen, but how. Veteran automotive reporter Mike Colias takes you inside the transformation in this thoroughly reported profile of the hard pivot in the car business, a $2 trillion industry undergoing the biggest change in its 120-year history—a change that is already sending ripples across the entire global economy.

American democracy has become coin operated. Special interest groups increasingly control every level of government. The necessity of raising huge sums of campaign cash has completely changed the character of politics and policymaking, determining what elected representatives stand for and how they spend their time.

This book seeks to provide a guided examination of what unites and divides the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic communities. With over 25 years of experience teaching in the subject area, Dr. Fritz Wenisch begins to unravel this complex and often contentious topic by first discussing the legal injunctions applying to religious studies courses at secular U.S. universities. He investigates the type of monotheism each religion shares before providing an in-depth overview of each religion, one by one.