Common Ground: Exclusive Edition

Our modern diet, high in low-quality carbohydrates, is damaging our bodies - producing a constant overload of sugar in our bloodstream that clogs up our arteries and piles hidden fat into our internal organs. The result has been a doubling in the number of type 2 diabetics,as well as a surge in those with a potentially hazardous condition - prediabetes. It is now known that even moderately elevated blood sugar levels can trigger heart disease, stroke, dementia, and cancer.

In his audiobook, A Higher Loyalty, former FBI director James Comey shares his never-before-told experiences from some of the highest stakes situations of his career in the past two decades of American government, exploring what good, ethical leadership looks like and how it drives sound decisions. His journey provides an unprecedented entry into the corridors of powe, and a remarkable lesson in what makes an effective leader.

Brain imaging research demonstrates that memory loss actually starts in the brain decades before you have any symptoms. Learn the actions you can take to help not just prevent memory loss later in life...but to begin restoring the memory you may have already lost. Expert physician Dr. Amen reveals how a multipronged strategy - including dietary changes, physical and mental exercises, and spiritual practices - can improve your brain health, enhance your memory, and reduce the likelihood that you'll develop Alzheimer's and other memory loss-related conditions.

We now live in a learning economy, says Brad Staats, and while learning has always been important, the returns on lifetime learning are greater than ever. Our primary focus must be on our ability to learn. We must strive to develop new skills to create more value - or be left behind. In Never Stop Learning, Staats outlines the framework that will help you become more effective as a lifelong learner.

The Free-Time Formula provides a real-world framework for more effective time management that helps you prioritize, focus, clarify, and go. You'll begin with a time audit to assess your current stress, strategies, and output. From there, you'll work step-by-step toward a new daily routine that will help you become the focused, efficient achiever you've been trying to be for so long.

While building the Virgin Group over 40 years, Richard Branson has never shied away from seemingly outlandish challenges that others (including his own colleagues on several occasions) considered sheer lunacy. He has taken on giants like British Airways and won, and monsters like Coca-Cola and lost. Now Branson gives an inside look at his strikingly different swashbuckling style of leadership.

Every Day Is Extra is Kerry’s passionate, insightful, sometimes funny, always moving account of his life. Kerry tells wonderful stories about colleagues Ted Kennedy and John McCain, as well as President Obama and other major figures. He writes movingly of recovering his faith while in the Senate, and deplores the hyper-partisanship that has infected Washington. Few books convey as convincingly as this one the life of public service like that which John Kerry has lived for 50 years.

Back in 2005, the first edition of Why Gender Matters broke ground in illuminating the differences between boys and girls—how they perceive the world differently, how they learn differently, how they process emotions and take risks differently. Dr. Sax argued that in failing to recognize these hardwired differences between boys and girls, we ended up reinforcing damaging stereotypes, medicalizing misbehavior, and failing to help kids to reach their full potential.

In 2008, Howard Schultz, the president and chairman of Starbucks, made the unprecedented decision to return as CEO, eight years after he stepped down from daily oversight of the company to become chairman. Concerned that Starbucks had lost its way, Schultz was determined to help it return to its core values and restore not only its financial health, but also its soul.

For all the love and attention we give dogs, much of what they do remains mysterious. Just think about different behaviors you see at a dog park. We have a good understanding of what it means when dogs wag their tails, but what about when they sniff and roll on a stinky spot? What goes on in dogs' heads and hearts-and how much can we know and understand? Canine Confidential has the answers. Written by Marc Bekoff, it not only brilliantly opens up the world of dog behavior, but also helps us understand how we can make our dogs' lives the best they can possibly be.

In business and in life, you must be smart to get ahead. As things shift and change quickly, you need to tap in to your brain - learn how to think smartly - in order to make sure that you maximize your opportunities. In Get Smart!, internationally acclaimed business guru, speaker, author, and productivity expert Brian Tracy has laid the groundwork on how to easily reconfigure your negative thinking patterns and habits and reprogram your brain to achieve its maximum potential.

Like heart disease, says psychotherapist Richard O'Connor, depression is fueled by complex and interrelated factors: genetic, biochemical, environmental. In this refreshingly sensible book, O'Connor focuses on an additional factor often overlooked: our own habits.

It's not you; it's your schedule. Does it sound like magic? It's not. We've all heard of circadian rhythms - those biological processes that give us jet lag and make us night owls or early birds. But few of us know just how profoundly these diurnal patterns affect our overall health. Bad habits - like skipping meals, squeezing in workouts, working late into the night and then trying to catch up on sleep during the weekend - disrupt our natural cycles. A growing body of research on chronobiology reveals just how sensitive the human body is to these rhythms all the way down to the genetic level.

Like thousands of Aboriginal children in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere in the colonized world, Xatsu'll chief Bev Sellars spent part of her childhood as a student in a church-run residential school. These institutions endeavored to "civilize" Native children through Christian teachings; forced separation from family, language, and culture; and strict discipline. In this frank and poignant memoir of her years at St. Joseph's Mission, Sellars breaks her silence about the residential school's lasting effects on her and her family and eloquently articulates her own path to healing.

In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites listeners into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her - from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work to her time spent at the world's most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it - in her own words and on her own terms.