The ​Upside of Irrationality The ​Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

Susan Weinschenk - 100 ​Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People
We ​design to elicit responses from people. We want them to buy something, read more, or take action of some kind. Designing without understanding what makes people act the way they do is like exploring a new city without a map: results will be haphazard, confusing, and inefficient. This book combines real science and research with practical examples to deliver a guide every designer needs. With it you’ll be able to design more intuitive and engaging work for print, websites, applications, and products that matches the way people think, work, and play. Learn to increase the effectiveness, conversion rates, and usability of your own design projects by finding the answers to questions such as: What grabs and holds attention on a page or screen? What makes memories stick? What is more important, peripheral or central vision? How can you predict the types of errors that people will make? What is the limit to someone’s social circle? How do you motivate people to continue on to (the next step? What line length for text is best? Are some fonts better than others? These are just a few of the questions that the book answers in its deep-dive exploration of what makes people tick.

Peter Warr - Guy Clapperton - The ​Joy of Work?
Are ​you happy at work? Or do you just grin and bear it? We spend an average of 25% of our lives at work, so it's important to make the best of it. The Joy of Work? looks at happiness and unhappiness from a fresh perspective. It draws on up-to-date research from around the world to present the causes and consequences of low job satisfaction and gives helpful suggestions and strategies for how to get more enjoyment from work. The book includes many interesting case studies about individual work situations, and features simple self-completion questionnaires and procedures to help increase your happiness. Practical suggestions cover how to improve a job without moving out of it, advice about changing jobs, as well as how to alter typical styles of thinking which affect your attitudes. This book is unique. The subject is of major significance to virtually all adults - people in jobs and those who are hoping to get one. It is particularly distinctive in combining two areas that are usually looked at separately - self-help approaches to making yourself happy and issues within organizations that affect well-being. The Joy of Work? has been written in a relaxed and readable style by an exceptional blend of authors: a highly-acclaimed professor of psychology and a widely published business journalist. Bringing together research from business and psychology - including positive psychology -- this practical book will make a big difference to your happiness at work -- and therefore to your whole life.

Alexander R. Luria - Jerome Bruner - Jerome S. Bruner - The ​Mind of a Mnemonist
"The ​Mind of a Mnemonist is a rare phenomenon - a scientific study that transcends its data and, in the manner of the best fictional literature, fashions a portrait of an unforgettable human being.

Laurence Gonzales - Deep ​Survival
In ​Deep Survival, Laurence Gonzalez combines hard science and powerful storytelling to illustrate the mysteries of survival, whether in the wilderness or in meeting any of life's great challenges. This gripping narrative, the first book to describe the art and science of survival, will change the way you see the world. Everyone has a mountain to climb. Everyone has a wilderness inside.

Naoki Higashida - The ​Reason I Jump
A ​story never before told and a memoir to help change our understanding of the world around us, 13-year-old Naoki Higashida's astonishing, empathetic book takes us into the mind of a boy with severe autism. With an introduction by David Mitchell, author of the global phenomenon, Cloud Atlas, and translated by his wife, KA Yoshida. Naoki Higashida was only a middle-schooler when he began to write The Reason I Jump. Autistic and with very low verbal fluency, Naoki used an alphabet grid to painstakingly spell out his answers to the questions he imagines others most often wonder about him: why do you talk so loud? Is it true you hate being touched? Would you like to be normal? The result is an inspiring, attitude-transforming book that will be embraced by anyone interested in understanding their fellow human beings, and by parents, caregivers, teachers, and friends of autistic children. Naoki examines issues as diverse and complex as self-harm, perceptions of time and beauty, and the challenges of communication, and in doing so, discredits the popular belief that autistic people are anti-social loners who lack empathy. This book is mesmerizing proof that inside an autistic body is a mind as subtle, curious, and caring as anyone else's.

Roy F. Baumeister - John Tierney - Willpower
One ​of the world's most esteemed and influential psychologists, Roy F. Baumeister, teams with New York Times science writer John Tierney to reveal the secrets of self-control and how to master it. In Willpower, the pioneering researcher Roy F. Baumeister collaborates with renowned New York Times science writer John Tierney to revolutionize our understanding of the most coveted human virtue: self-control. In what became one of the most cited papers in social science literature, Baumeister discovered that willpower actually operates like a muscle: it can be strengthened with practice and fatigued by overuse. Willpower is fueled by glucose, and it can be bolstered simply by replenishing the brain's store of fuel. That's why eating and sleeping- and especially failing to do either of those-have such dramatic effects on self-control (and why dieters have such a hard time resisting temptation). Baumeister's latest research shows that we typically spend four hours every day resisting temptation. No wonder people around the world rank a lack of self-control as their biggest weakness. Willpower looks to the lives of entrepreneurs, parents, entertainers, and artists-including David Blaine, Eric Clapton, and others-who have flourished by improving their self-control. The lessons from their stories and psychologists' experiments can help anyone. You learn not only how to build willpower but also how to conserve it for crucial moments by setting the right goals and using the best new techniques for monitoring your progress. Once you master these techniques and establish the right habits, willpower gets easier: you'll need less conscious mental energy to avoid temptation. That's neither magic nor empty self-help sloganeering, but rather a solid path to a better life. Combining the best of modern social science with practical wisdom, Baumeister and Tierney here share the definitive compendium of modern lessons in willpower. As our society has moved away from the virtues of thrift and self-denial, it often feels helpless because we face more temptations than ever. But we also have more knowledge and better tools for taking control of our lives. However we define happiness-a close- knit family, a satisfying career, financial security-we won't reach it without mastering self-control.

Joseph Zinker - Creative ​Process in Gestalt Therapy
This ​is a deeply compassionate book which explores the relationship between therapist and patient and explains the roots, aims and methods of Gestalt therapy. The author, Joseph Zinker, who is not only an active practitioner but also a painter, sculptor and poet, argues that therapy need not be an affair governed by fixed rules and principles but can be a creative process in which both the patient and the therapist invent and improvise on strategies to change the patient's behavior. Creative process in Gestalt therapy encourages all of us to cast off our rigid personalities and try to realize our full potential as human beings.

Andrew Solomon - Far ​from the Tree
From ​the National Book Award–winning author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression comes a monumental new work, a decade in the writing, about family. In Far from the Tree, Andrew Solomon tells the stories of parents who not only learn to deal with their exceptional children but also find profound meaning in doing so. Solomon’s startling proposition is that diversity is what unites us all. He writes about families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, multiple severe disabilities, with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, who are transgender. While each of these characteristics is potentially isolating, the experience of difference within families is universal, as are the triumphs of love Solomon documents in every chapter. All parenting turns on a crucial question: to what extent parents should accept their children for who they are, and to what extent they should help them become their best selves. Drawing on forty thousand pages of interview transcripts with more than three hundred families, Solomon mines the eloquence of ordinary people facing extreme challenges. Whether considering prenatal screening for genetic disorders, cochlear implants for the deaf, or gender reassignment surgery for transgender people, Solomon narrates a universal struggle toward compassion. Many families grow closer through caring for a challenging child; most discover supportive communities of others similarly affected; some are inspired to become advocates and activists, celebrating the very conditions they once feared. Woven into their courageous and affirming stories is Solomon’s journey to accepting his own identity, which culminated in his midlife decision, influenced by this research, to become a parent. Elegantly reported by a spectacularly original thinker, Far from the Tree explores themes of generosity, acceptance, and tolerance—all rooted in the insight that love can transcend every prejudice. This crucial and revelatory book expands our definition of what it is to be human.

Cacilda Jethá - Christopher Ryan - Sex ​at Dawn
Since ​Darwin's day, we've been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. Mainstream science--as well as religious and cultural institutions--has maintained that men and women evolved in families in which a man's possessions and protection were exchanged for a woman's fertility and fidelity. But this narrative is collapsing. Fewer and fewer couples are getting married, and divorce rates keep climbing as adultery and flagging libido drag down even seemingly solid marriages. How can reality be reconciled with the accepted narrative? It can't be, according to renegade thinkers Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. While debunking almost everything we "know" about sex, they offer a bold alternative explanation in this provocative and brilliant book. Ryan and Jethá's central contention is that human beings evolved in egalitarian groups that shared food, child care, and, often, sexual partners. Weaving together convergent, frequently overlooked evidence from anthropology, archaeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality, the authors show how far from human nature monogamy really is. Human beings everywhere and in every era have confronted the same familiar, intimate situations in surprisingly different ways. The authors expose the ancient roots of human sexuality while pointing toward a more optimistic future illuminated by our innate capacities for love, cooperation, and generosity. With intelligence, humor, and wonder, Ryan and Jethá show how our promiscuous past haunts our struggles over monogamy, sexual orientation, and family dynamics. They explore why long-term fidelity can be so difficult for so many; why sexual passion tends to fade even as love deepens; why many middle-aged men risk everything for transient affairs with younger women; why homosexuality persists in the face of standard evolutionary logic; and what the human body reveals about the prehistoric origins of modern sexuality. In the tradition of the best historical and scientific writing, Sex at Dawn unapologetically upends unwarranted assumptions and unfounded conclusions while offering a revolutionary understanding of why we live and love as we do.

Rachel Reiland - Get ​Me Out of Here
Borderline ​Personality Disorder. "What the hell was that?" raged Rachel Reiland when she read the diagnosis written in her medical chart. As the 29-year old accountant, wife, and mother of young children would soon discover, it was the diagnosis that finally explained her explosive anger, manipulative behaviors, and self-destructive episodes- including bouts of anorexia, substance abuse, and sexual promiscuity. With astonishing honesty, Reiland's memoir reveals what mental illness feels like and looks like from the inside, and how healing from such a devastating disease is possible through intensive therapy and the support of loved ones.

Robin Skynner - John Cleese - Families ​and How to Survive Them
Written ​in an unconventional dialogue form, this book explores the inner workings of the modern family, and the interactions between couples and their children.

Seth Farber - The ​Spiritual Gift of Madness
A ​bold call for the “insane” to reclaim their rightful role as prophets of spiritual and cultural transformation • Explains how many of those diagnosed as schizophrenic, bipolar, and other forms of “madness” are not ill but experiencing a spiritual awakening • Explores the rise of Mad Pride and the mental patients’ liberation movement • Reveals how those seen as “mad” must embrace their spiritual gifts to help the coming global spiritual transition Many of the great prophets of the past experienced madness--a breakdown followed by a breakthrough, spiritual death followed by rebirth. With the advent of modern psychiatry, the budding prophets of today are captured and transformed into chronic mental patients before they can flower into the visionaries and mystics they were intended to become. As we approach the tipping point between extinction and global spiritual awakening, there is a deep need for these prophets to embrace their spiritual gifts. To make this happen, we must learn to respect the sanctity of madness. We need to cultivate Mad Pride. Exploring the rise of Mad Pride and the mental patients’ liberation movement as well as building upon psychiatrist R. D. Laing’s revolutionary theories, Seth Farber, Ph.D., explains that diagnosing people as mad has more to do with social control than therapy. Many of those labeled as schizophrenic, bipolar, and other kinds of “mad” are not ill but simply experiencing different forms of spiritual awakening: they are seeing and feeling what is wrong with society and what needs to be done to change it. Farber shares his interviews with former schizophrenics who now lead successful and inspiring lives. He shows that it is impossible for society to change as long as the mad are suppressed because they are our catalysts of social change. By reclaiming their rightful role as prophets of spiritual and cultural revitalization, the mad--by seeding new visions for our future--can help humanity overcome the spiritual crisis that endangers our survival and lead us to a higher and long-awaited stage of spiritual development.

Kingsley L. Dennis - The ​Struggle for Your Mind
A ​revolutionary call to overthrow society’s mental controls and expand consciousness for the greater good of humanity • Explores the tactics used to control consciousness, such as misinformation, debt systems, fear conditioning, and the distraction of entertainment and technology • Reveals the emerging mechanisms for neurogenetic evolution within our brains that will enable us to throw off the shackles of mental control • Explains how to break through the barriers inhibiting conscious evolution and restore our connection with Nature and the Divine Within society there exists a silent war. The battlefield is our everyday lives: our education, our work, our leisure, our emotional and spiritual well-being, and our thinking and perceptions. Our very sense of “reality” is deliberately engineered to work against conscious evolution and preserve social norms. In short, we are all part of a war of consciousness. And the opportunity is at hand for us to win. Assessing the ways modern societies limit consciousness and keep humanity obedient and distracted from their inner lives, Kingsley Dennis presents an eye-opening investigation of the way our minds have been programmed to preserve incumbent power structures and their rules. He exposes the tactics employed for thousands of years by the elite to control our minds, including misinformation and propaganda, debt systems, consumerism, religious doctrine, scientific authority, economic “uncertainties,” fear of terrorist attacks and armageddon, distraction through entertainment and technology, as well as the false belief that we are separate from Nature and the Divine. Despite these obstacles, humanity is awakening to culture’s imposed limits on perception through an accelerating rise in collective empathy and awareness. Exploring the biology of consciousness, Dennis reveals the emerging mechanisms for neurogenetic evolution within the brains of gifted individuals, psychics, and visionaries and the coming increases in solar and magnetic energies that will activate them within all of us. Explaining how we can free up mental and emotional energy to break through the barriers inhibiting conscious evolution, he shows that by taking back our minds and changing the way we think, we can restore our connection with Nature and the Divine and lead humanity into a new age of harmony and awareness.

Julie Morgenstern - SHED ​Your Stuff, Change Your Life - A Four-Step Guide to Getting Unstuck
Organizing ​works when you know where you’re going but don’t know how to get there. But sometimes organizing isn’t enough. When you’re eager to make a change in your life, but you’re unsure of your new destination, you need to SHED. But it’s not just about throwing things away! The SHED process is more about what comes before and after you heave the clutter, so that changes you make really stick in the long term.

Malcolm Gladwell - David ​and Goliath
Three ​thousand years ago on a battlefield in ancient Palestine, a shepherd boy felled a mighty warrior with nothing more than a stone and a sling, and ever since then the names of David and Goliath have stood for battles between underdogs and giants. David's victory was improbable and miraculous. He shouldn't have won. Or should he have? In David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell challenges how we think about obstacles and disadvantages, offering a new interpretation of what it means to be discriminated against, or cope with a disability, or lose a parent, or attend a mediocre school, or suffer from any number of other apparent setbacks. Gladwell begins with the real story of what happened between the giant and the shepherd boy those many years ago. From there, David and Goliath examines Northern Ireland's Troubles, the minds of cancer researchers and civil rights leaders, murder and the high costs of revenge, and the dynamics of successful and unsuccessful classrooms---all to demonstrate how much of what is beautiful and important in the world arises from what looks like suffering and adversity. In the tradition of Gladwell's previous bestsellers---The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers and What the Dog Saw---David and Goliath draws upon history, psychology, and powerful storytelling to reshape the way we think of the world around us.

Gerald O'Mahony - Finding ​the Still Point
Writing ​from his own past experience of severe mood swings, the author provides a means to understand and govern the movements of moods and feelings so as to find the “still” point, the place of perfect balance. “Finding the Still Point” writes Gerald O’Mahony, “aims to help the reader modify or alter behaviour patterns… It underpins common sense with the basic belief that we are God’s children, and therefore not rubbish; we are God’s children, and therefore not God.”

Dan Ariely - The ​(Honest) Truth About Dishonesty
The ​New York Times bestselling author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality returns with thought-provoking work to challenge our preconceptions about dishonesty and urge us to take an honest look at ourselves. Does the chance of getting caught affect how likely we are to cheat? How do companies pave the way for dishonesty? Does collaboration make us more honest or less so? Does religion improve our honesty? Most of us think of ourselves as honest, but, in fact, we all cheat. From Washington to Wall Street, the classroom to the workplace, unethical behavior is everywhere. None of us is immune, whether it's the white lie to head off trouble or padding our expense reports. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, award-winning, bestselling author Dan Ariely turns his unique insight and innovative research to the question of dishonesty. Generally, we assume that cheating, like most other decisions, is based on a rational cost-benefit analysis. But Ariely argues, and then demonstrates, that it's actually the irrational forces that we don't take into account that often determine whether we behave ethically or not. For every Enron or political bribe, there are countless puffed résumÉs, hidden commissions, and knockoff purses. In The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty, Ariely shows why some things are easier to lie about; how getting caught matters less than we think; and how business practices pave the way for unethical behavior, both intentionally and unintentionally. Ariely explores how unethical behavior works in the personal, professional, and political worlds, and how it affects all of us, even as we think of ourselves as having high moral standards. But all is not lost. Ariely also identifies what keeps us honest, pointing the way for achieving higher ethics in our everyday lives. With compelling personal and academic findings, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty will change the way we see ourselves, our actions, and others.

Dave Pelzer - A ​Child Called "It"
This ​book chronicles the unforgettable account of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games--games that left him nearly dead. He had to learn how to play his mother's games in order to survive because she no longer considered him a son, but a slave; and no longer a boy, but an "it." Dave's bed was an old army cot in the basement, and his clothes were torn and raunchy. When his mother allowed him the luxury of food, it was nothing more than spoiled scraps that even the dogs refused to eat. The outside world knew nothing of his living nightmare. He had nothing or no one to turn to, but his dreams kept him alive--dreams of someone taking care of him, loving him and calling him their son.

Rudy Simone - Aspergirls
Girls ​with Asperger's Syndrome are less frequently diagnosed than boys, and even once symptoms have been recognised, help is often not readily available. The image of coping well presented by AS females of any age can often mask difficulties, deficits, challenges, and loneliness. This is a must-have handbook written by an Aspergirl for Aspergirls, young and old. Rudy Simone guides you through every aspect of both personal and professional life, from early recollections of blame, guilt, and savant skills, to friendships, romance and marriage. Employment, career, rituals and routines are also covered, along with depression, meltdowns and being misunderstood. Including the reflections of over thirty-five women diagnosed as on the spectrum, as well as some partners and parents, Rudy identifies recurring struggles and areas where Aspergirls need validation, information and advice. As they recount their stories, anecdotes, and wisdom, she highlights how differences between males and females on the spectrum are mostly a matter of perception, rejecting negative views of Aspergirls and empowering them to lead happy and fulfilled lives. This book will be essential reading for females of any age diagnosed with AS, and those who think they might be on the spectrum. It will also be of interest to partners and loved ones of Aspergirls, and anybody interested either professionally or academically in Asperger's Syndrome.

Charles Mackay - Extraordinary ​Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
This ​classic catalogue of some of the more outré enthusiasms - speculative, social, religious and just plain daft - serves as a salutary reminder that the follies of mankind are not unique to the modern world. Whenever struck by campaigns, fads, cults and fashions, the reader may take some comfort that Charles Mackay can demonstrate historical parallels for almost every neurosis of our times. The South Sea Bubble, Witch Mania, Alchemy, the Crusades, Fortune-telling, Haunted Houses, and even ‘Tulipomania’ are only some of the subjects covered in this book, which is given a contemporary perspective through Professor Norman Stone's lively new Introduction.