Academic English

Nine million Americans are touched by aneurysms during their lifetimes. This is one story of love. Brainstorm is the candid and powerful memoir of the author's harrowing experience of an aneurysm and his road to recovery. It is a journey of love and devotion and a clash of medical beliefs and countercultures.

A remarkable audio edition of C.S. Lewis' beloved classic—the only existing recording of Lewis reading his own work. C.S. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and bestselling author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great...

In this astounding account, Wall Street's notorious bad boy - and original million-dollar-a-month stock chopper - leads us through a drama worthy of The Sopranos, from his early rise to power to the FBI raid on his estate to the endless indictments at his arrest, to his deal with a bloodthirsty prosecutor to rat on his oldest friends and colleagues - while they were doing the same.

The life story of Gary Gygax, godfather of all fantasy adventure games, has been told only in bits and pieces. Michael Witwer has crafted a dynamic, dramatized biography of Gygax from his childhood in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, to his untimely death in 2008. Gygax’s magnum opus, Dungeons & Dragons, would explode in popularity throughout the 1970s and ’80s and irreversibly alter the world of gaming. Gygax’s involvement in the industry lasted long after his dramatic and involuntary departure, and his footprint can be seen in the role-playing genre he is largely responsible for creating.

How could a 66-year-old grandmother, who gave her life to helping people with their health, become the subject of a malicious smear campaign which resulted in her being classified as a serious threat to public health in Australia? This book exposes the hypocrisy of the organization Friends of Science in Medicine who act as 'friends of science', but are in reality pharmaceutical apologists and the 'Enemies of Truth in Medical Science'. Barbara became collateral damage in the war on any dissent from mainstream medical dogma.

In Seed to Dust, Marc Hamer paints a beautiful portrait of the garden that “belongs to everyone.” He describes a year in his life as a country gardener, with each chapter named for the month he’s in. As he works, he muses on the unusual folklores of his beloved plants. He observes the creatures who scurry and hide from his blade or rake. And he reflects on his own life: living homeless as a young man, his loving relationship with his wife and children, and - now - feeling the effects of old age on body and mind.

Patagonia, named by Fortune in 2007 as the coolest company on the planet, has earned a reputation as much for its ground-breaking environmental and social practices as for the quality of its clothes. In this exceptionally frank account, Chouinard and Stanley recount how the company and its culture gained the confidence, by step and misstep, to make its work progressively more responsible, and to ultimately share its discoveries with companies as large as Wal-Mart or as small as the corner bakery.

The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the 20th century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, MD, who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman's documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius.

On her 120-acre homestead high in the Colorado Rockies, beloved writer Pam Houston learns what it means to care for a piece of land and the creatures on it. Elk calves and bluebirds mark the changing seasons, winter temperatures drop to 35 below, and lightning sparks a 110,000-acre wildfire, threatening her century-old barn and all its inhabitants. Through her travels from the Gulf of Mexico to Alaska, she explores what ties her to the Earth, the ranch most of all.

In 1986, more people watched “The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vault” than the Superbowl. More people watched the two-hour live event than David Frost’s interview with Richard Nixon. Both events were high-wire, high-reward, high-disaster broadcasts. Geraldo Rivera had been fired from ABC after fifteen years and the live broadcast from Chicago of Al Capone’s vault was to be his comeback. On April 21, 1986, at nine fifteen Eastern, Geraldo gave the signal at the midpoint of the show to blow open the subterranean vault with dynamite and reveal to the world the great secrets of Al Capone...

Discover what Jesus meant when he said, "Follow me." And what happens when you do. Only Jesus—from John MacArthur, author of the classic bestseller The Gospel According to Jesus —examines the gospel as Christ himself proclaimed it. And each chapter is now updated with extensive scriptural...

A perfect blend of medical drama and spiritual insight, Gray Matter is a fascinating account of Dr. David Levy's decision to begin asking his patients if he could pray for them before surgery. Some are thrilled. Some are skeptical. Some are hostile, and some are quite literally transformed by the request.

A rags-to-$9-billion-riches story. A crash course in Burger King history and fast food in America, The Burger King is McLamore's candid and conversational memoir. Written before his death in 1996, he talks of his life, the birth of the Whopper, and the rise of Burger King. McLamore's account of Burger King offers an instructive and inspiring tale to young entrepreneurs. Here's a story of entrepreneurship development from one of the top entrepreneurs of fast food chains.

For listeners touched by Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air and anyone with a life-threatening illness seeking healing of body, mind, and spirit, a fellow patient shares her journey of choosing to have the best day of her life by working as though she will live and living every moment as though she might die. Waking to the stunning realization she had cancer, Jocelyn Rasmussen’s first thought was that she needed a miracle. Her second thought was that she didn’t want to die with any unspent love or grace inside her.

In Europe, Bourne's investigation into the Black Legion turns into one of the deadliest and most tangled operations of his double life-the pursuit of the leader of a terrorist group with roots in the darkest days of World War II--all while an assassin as brilliant and damaged as himself is...

Few scientists have enthralled more people than Richard P. Feynman, the Nobel Prize winner and best-selling author of Six Easy Pieces and Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Beloved for his engaging character and zest for life, he is an American icon. In this selection of letters, Feynman's towering genius and singular personality shine like dazzling stars.

Stoicism may be an ancient philosophy, but it is one that has even more relevance to our daily lives now that we are in the modern world. With Stoicism, we learn that we can control some things, such as our emotions and our reactions, and this can help to lead us to happiness. In this complete guidebook, we are going to take you from the very basics of using Stoicism in your daily life, to complete mastery. We will show you how this ancient philosophy is going to work to make you feel happier and more virtuous.

The Believer is the weird and chilling true story of Dr. John Mack. This eminent Harvard psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer risked his career to investigate the phenomenon of human encounters with aliens and to give credibility to the stupefying tales shared by people who were utterly convinced they had happened.

Have you ever wondered what it's like to save a life? In his book Life Changing Paramedic Stories, Dion talks about 12 life-changing experiences while working as a Canadian paramedic.

In the most rigorous articulation of his philosophical system to date, Slavoj Žižek provides nothing short of a new definition of dialectical materialism. In forging this new materialism, Žižek critiques and challenges not only the work of Alain Badiou, Robert Brandom, Joan Copjec, Quentin Meillassoux, and Julia Kristeva (to name but a few), but everything from popular science and quantum mechanics to sexual difference and analytic philosophy.