An evaluation of the sources of illogical decisions explores the reasons why irrational thought often overcomes level-headed practices, offering insight into the structural patterns that cause people to make the same mistakes repeatedly.

Presidential historian Beschloss has brought us a saga about crucial times in America's history when a courageous president dramatically changed the future of the United States. Beschloss brings to life these flawed, complex men--and their wives, families, friends and foes, in an intimate, behind-the-scenes view of presidents coping with the supreme dilemmas of their lives. As he shows, none of these presidents was eager to incur ridicule, vilification...

Burnett and Evans believe that in order to change, people need a process-- a design process-- to help them figure out what they want and how to create it. Rather than dreaming up a lot of fun fantasies that have no relationship to the real world-- or the real you-- they show us how to build a future brick by brick, how to approach our own life design challenges with curiosity and creativity. They give us the tools and show us certain simple "mind-sets,"...

Troubled because her brother has told her that the future of Earth is bleak, a little girl goes to her grandmother who assures her that there are many possible futures and encourages her to use her imagination to explore some of the alternatives.

"Pudding the snail and his friends can't seem to agree on anything. Whatever Jitterbug the chipmunk wants, Geezer the goose does not. Whatever Toast the butterfly wants, Duffles and Nudge the otters are absolutely against. And if somehow Toast and Duffles and Jitterbug and Nudge all agree on something, then Geezer is not having it. So when Toast suggests they need a leader, the friends try to figure out the best way to pick someone to be in charge....

Amy Webb is a noted futurist who combines curiosity, skepticism, colorful storytelling, and deeply reported, real-world analysis in this essential book for understanding the future. The Signals are Talking reveals a systematic way of evaluating new ideas bubbling up on the horizon--distinguishing what is a real trend from the merely trendy. This book helps us hear which signals are talking sense, and which are simply nonsense, so that we might know...

"There is no more universal truth in life than death. No matter who you are, it is certain that one day you will die, but the mechanics and understanding of that experience will differ greatly in today's modern age. Dr. Haider Warraich is a young and brilliant new voice in the conversation about death and dying started by Dr. Sherwin Nuland's classic How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter, and Atul Gawande's recent sensation, Being Mortal:...

Discusses the power of conversation and the conditions--simplicity, personal courage, listening, and diversity--that support it and explains how such conversations can lead to essential social change on both a local and global scale.

Katy Butler was living thousands of miles from her vigorous and self-reliant parents when the call came: a crippling stroke had left her proud seventy-nine-year-old father unable to fasten a belt or complete a sentence. Tragedy at first drew the family closer: her mother devoted herself to caregiving, and Butler joined the twenty-four million Americans helping shepherd parents through their final declines. Then doctors outfitted her father with a...

An ambitious toilet plunger expresses his desire to be a vase.