Genius Health

Can creativity be learned? Can you teach someone improvisation? Or is it an innate gift for “creative people?” In this one-of-a-kind book, renowned drummer and teacher, JP Bouvet, takes you on a tour through psychology, educational theory, and, of course, specific approaches to learning the drums, to reveal how improvisation is much easier to learn than most people think. You’ll learn how to leverage the natural tendencies of your mind to systematically learn what most drummers think can’t be learned… effortless improvisational freedom.

At a time when we are all confronted by not one, but many crossroads in our modern lives - identity, technology, trust, politics, and a global pandemic - celebrated mythologist and wilderness guide Martin Shaw delivers Smoke Hole: three metaphors to help us understand our world, one that is assailed by the seductive promises of social media and shadowed by a health crisis that has brought loneliness and isolation to an all-time high.

Lawyers. Accountants. Software Engineers. That what Mom and Dad encouraged us to become. They were wrong. Gone is the age of "left-brain" dominance. The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: designers, inventors, teachers, storytellers - creative and emphatic "right-brain" thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn't.

We live in a society where kids and parents are obsessed with early achievement, from getting perfect scores on SATs to getting into Ivy League colleges to landing an amazing job at Google or Facebook - or even better, creating a start-up with the potential to be the next Google or Facebook or Uber. We see software coders becoming millionaires or billionaires before age 30 and feel we are failing if we are not one of them.

Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to pondering and researching the mindset of the Jewish intellectuals, writers, scientists, and thinkers who turned the tides of history and shaped the world today as we know it. In Genius & Anxiety, Lebrecht begins with the Communist Manifesto in 1847 and ends in 1947, when Israel was founded. This robust, magnificent volume, beautifully designed, is an urgent and necessary celebration of Jewish genius and contribution.

Finish What You Start is a unique deep dive into the psychology and science of accomplishment, productivity, and getting things done. It takes a thorough look at why we are sometimes stuck and gives detailed, step-by-step solutions you can start using today. Every phase of finishing and following through is covered, and even productivity pros will be able to learn something new. Above all else, this is a guide to better understanding your brain and instincts for optimal results.

You are smarter than you think. In fact, your subconscious holds the same mental powers as some of the greatest minds in history. Mind development pioneer Dr. Win Wenger noticed a clear pattern. He found that geniuses are little more than ordinary people who have stumbled upon some knack or technique for widening their channels of attention. New research suggests that the superior achievements of famous thinkers may have been more the result of mental conditioning than genetic superiority. Now, with The Einstein Factor, you can learn to condition your mind in the same way.

Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives celebrates the benefits that messiness has in our lives: why it’s important, why we resist it, and why we should embrace it instead. Using research from neuroscience, psychology, social science, as well as captivating examples of real people doing extraordinary things, Tim Harford explains that the human qualities we value – creativity, responsiveness, resilience – are integral to the disorder, confusion, and disarray that produce them.

How can we create and market creative works that achieve longevity? Holiday explores this mystery by drawing on his extensive experience working with businesses and creators such as Google, American Apparel, and the author John Grisham as well as his interviews with the minds behind some of the greatest perennial sellers of our time.

In his international bestseller, The Happiness Advantage, Harvard-trained researcher Shawn Achor described why happiness is the precursor to greater success. Before Happiness is about what comes before both. Because before we can be happy or successful, we need to first develop the ability to see that positive change is possible. Only once we learn to see the world through a more positive lens can we summon all our motivation, emotion, and intelligence to achieve our personal and professional goals.

Have you ever wondered how off-key you are while singing in the shower? Or if your Bob Dylan albums really sound better on vinyl? Or why certain songs make you cry? Now, scientist and musician John Powell invites you on an entertaining journey through the world of music. Discover what distinguishes music from plain old noise, how scales help you memorize songs, what the humble recorder teaches you about timbre (assuming your suffering listeners don’t break it first), and more.

In this science fiction thriller, brothers are pitted against each other as a pandemic threatens to destabilize world governments by exerting a subtle mind control over survivors. Neil Johns has just started his dream job as a code breaker for the NSA when his brother Paul, a mycologist, goes missing on a trip to collect samples in the Amazon jungle. Paul returns with a gap in his memory and a fungal infection that almost kills him. But once he recuperates, he has enhanced communication, memory, and pattern recognition.

Literature is a technology like any other. And the writers we revere - from Homer, Shakespeare, Austen, and others - each made a unique technical breakthrough that can be viewed as both a narrative and neuroscientific advancement. Literature’s great invention was to address problems we could not solve: not how to start a fire or build a boat, but how to live and love; how to maintain courage in the face of death; how to account for the fact that we exist at all.

The Perfect Story will help you take your stories and make them perfect. Learn how to take any story and make it perfect--from storytelling expert Karen Eber, whose TED Talk on the subject has nearly two million views.

In Me, Myself, and Us, Brian Little, Ph.D., one of the psychologists who helped re-shape the field, provides the first in-depth exploration of the new personality science and its provocative findings for general readers. The audiobook explores questions that are rooted in the origins of human consciousness but are as commonplace as yesterday's breakfast conversation. Are our first impressions of other people's personalities usually fallacious?

We have been spoon-fed the notion that creativity is the province of genius - of those favored, brilliant few whose moments of insight arrive in unpredictable flashes of divine inspiration. And if we are not geniuses, we might as well pack it in and give up. Either we have that gift, or we don’t. But Allen Gannett shows that simply isn’t true. Recent research has shown that there is a predictable science behind achieving commercial success in any creative endeavor, from writing a popular novel to starting up a successful company to creating an effective marketing campaign.

From the former director of GCHQ, learn the methodology used by the British intelligence agencies to reach judgements, establish the right level of confidence and act decisively. Intelligence officers discern the truth. They gather information - often contradictory or incomplete - and, with it, they build the most accurate possible image of the world. With the stakes at their absolute highest, they must then decide what to do.

Former Secret Service agents turned private investigators Sean King and Michelle Maxwell have seen their lives splinter around them. Michelle lies unconscious in a hospital bed after a night of suicidal violence. And Sean is forced to take on a thankless investigation into the murder of a scientist just inside the CIA's razor-wire fence near Williamsburg, Virginia. But they will need to team up again to stop a conspiracy of traitors operating in the shadow of the White House itself.

What if you could exploit the plasticity of personality to change yourself in specific ways? Would you choose to become less neurotic? More self-disciplined? Less shy? Until now, we’ve been told that we’re stuck with the personality we were born with: The introvert will never break out of their shell, the narcissist will be forever trapped gazing into the mirror.

Every Friday the 13th, sixth grade genius and inventor extraordinaire Nate Bannister does three not-so-smart things to keep life interesting. This time he taught a caterpillar math, mailed a love letter, and supersized his cat, Proton, before turning him invisible. As Nate and his new (well, only) friend, Delphine, race to stop Proton from crushing everyone and everything in town, they come face-to-face with Sir Jakob Maculte (the 27th lord of Mayberry Castle and leader of the nefarious Red Death Tea Society).