Excerpt - Choices and Illusions by Eldon Taylor

We Can Win at Everything

This excerpt is from CHOICES AND
ILLUSIONS by Eldon Taylor

Change is perhaps the most sought-after goal in life. If we but had more money, more education, and less compulsion, could lose weight or stop smoking, be more popular and have more friends, and so forth, life would be perfect. Change is also perhaps the most frightening experience we can undertake. Change means giving up something, some belief, some habit, some pattern, some something. Change from the inside out can also mean great risk.  

Genuine change often means letting go of acquaintances who hold different beliefs—like our bad-luck fortune-cookie carriers. It isn’t so much that we let go of them as they abandon us, for we no longer provide a sanctuary safe for “cookie” sharing. There are also plenty of naysayers. Like the smart chickens in the chicken house, they will tell you all this is nonsense. Some may even attack you with such words as hoax and fraud. Like most attacks, they are designed to produce feeling of insecurity, doubt, even stupidity. One book out there suggests that self-help efforts generally rob people of their money and their esteem. The book is entitled Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless, by Steve Selerno. I heard him tell of a sales event he attended with salesmen all from the same company. He criticized the motivational speaker on the grounds that in the beginning of the presentation the speaker told everyone in the audience that each could be the number one salesperson in the coming year. Such was a logical absurdity, he asserted, for how could they all be number one in the same company? Stop and think about it for a minute. Do you really think either the salespeople or the motivator took this statement to mean anything other than each of the salespeople in the room had the ability to be number one? I don’t. Indeed, I have been guilty of far worse, at least on the surface, by stating that we can win at everything! 

Now you might say, “How is it possible to win at everything?” The answer is simple, but it is also involved in the definitions attached to winning and losing. Let me get this point straight, right from the beginning. We only lose when we let ourselves down! We can only win, in the real sense of winning, when we do our very best! Our very best requires commitment, courage, dedication, singleness of purpose or focus, and more. These attributes are fundamentally known as character.  

A friend of mine, Coach Phil Porter, says, “The basis of winning is character.” Phil is an ninth dan black belt in martial arts, a retired Air Force major, and the coach of many Olympic players. He adds, “Character is simply a combination of all the virtues which have been the basis of American life.”  

Character is a hallmark of great champions. Character is developed. Character requires an earnest effort to be, to live, to think, and to act according to a code of conduct that dictates honesty and integrity in all things. No higher act of honesty exists than that which is necessary in order to stand back and say, “I know I did my very best!” Self-honesty can be one of the most difficult characteristics, and yet the most rewarding, a person can ever develop. The words of Pythagoras ring as true today as ever: “Above all else, know thyself!” 

Words and truisms can be interesting. When I was very young, the words “all men are created equal” disturbed me. What on earth did this really mean? It was obvious to any child that all men were not indeed created equal. Adults who truly wished to settle my concern over this foolish matter gave me many answers. Their typical answer went something like “in the eyes of God, all men are equal.” 

Although this answer did provide some comfort, it nevertheless failed to register at every level of my being as “true.” Then one day the answer was put to me another way. It went something like this: Imagine a rocket scientist who after much work launches an interstellar voyager. Imagine the pride he feels in the accomplishment. Now imagine a so-called menial laborer. On his hands and knees for endless hours, he scrubs and polishes a floor. He has worked so hard and with so much pride that he has scrubbed his knuckles raw. Now he stands back and beholds his labors. The floor absolutely glistens—every square inch of it. It never looked this good even when it was new. Now, I was further instructed, which man senses the most pride, the rocket scientist or the floor scrubber? 

Even at a young age, I recognized that questions such as this one were obvious. If both men did their absolute very best and knew it, put their whole heart, mind, and soul into their work, their pride of accomplishment would be equal. To the degree that they compromised their very best, to that precise degree their sense of accomplishment would be diminished.  

Eldon Taylor 

Eldon Taylor has made a lifelong study of the human mind and has earned doctoral degrees in psychology and metaphysics. He is president of Progressive Awareness Research, an organization dedicated to researching techniques for accessing the immense powers of the mind. For more than 20 years, he has approached personal empowerment from the cornerstone perspective of forgiveness, gratitude, service and respect for all life. 

To contact Eldon in response to the story, you can reach him via his website: www.innertalk.com. To get a copy of his new book Choices and Illusions, go to: 

http://www.amazon.com/Choices-Illusions-How-Where-Want/dp/1401918530/ 

On My Radar:

Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City, Was Extorted Out of Millions by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Informants in FBI History
by Michael D. Blutrich
BenBella Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City, Was Extorted out of Millions by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in FBI History is the fascinating account of a man in the Witness Protection Program, his experiences as a gay man operating a successful New York City gentleman’s club before becoming an unlikely FBI informant, and how it all went wrong.

In his own self-deprecating voice, Blutrich tells all: From recording armed gangsters in the act of committing felonies and repeatedly evading discovery through amazing stealth to enduring a psychotic break from the imposed pressures and losing everything in the name of earning redemption.

On My Radar:

The Fix: How Bankers Lied, Cheated and Colluded to Rig the World's Most Important Number
by Liam Vaughan and Gavin Finch 
John Wiley & Sons
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In the midst of the financial crisis, Tom Hayes and his network of traders and brokers from Wall Street's leading firms set to work engineering the biggest financial conspiracy ever seen. As the rest of the world burned, they came together on secret chat rooms and late night phone calls to hatch an audacious plan to rig Libor, the 'world's most important number' and the basis for $350 trillion of securities from mortgages to loans to derivatives. Without the persistence of a rag-tag team of investigators from the U.S., they would have got away with it....

The Fix by award-winning Bloomberg journalists Liam Vaughan and Gavin Finch, is the inside story of the Libor scandal, told through the journey of the man at the centre of it: a young, scruffy, socially awkward misfit from England whose genius for math and obsessive personality made him a trading phenomenon, but ultimately paved the way for his own downfall.

Based on hundreds of interviews, and unprecedented access to the traders and brokers involved, and the investigators who caught up with them, The Fix provides a rare look into the dark heart of global finance at the start of the 21st Century.

In My TBR Stack:

Three Days in January: Dwight Eisenhower's Final Mission
by Bret Baier with Catherine Whitney
William Morrow
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

January 1961: President Eisenhower has three days to secure the nation's future before his young successor, John F. Kennedy, takes power — a final mission by the legendary leader who planned D-Day and guided America through the darkening Cold War

Bret Baier, the Chief Political Anchor for Fox News Channel and the Anchor and Executive Editor of Special Report with Bret Baier, illuminates the extraordinary yet underappreciated presidency of Dwight Eisenhower by taking readers into Ike's last days in power. Baier masterfully casts the period between Eisenhower's now-prophetic farewell address on the evening of January 17, 1961, and Kennedy's inauguration on the afternoon of January 20 as the closing act of one of modern America's greatest leaders — during which Eisenhower urgently sought to prepare both the country and the next president for the challenges ahead.

Those three days in January 1961, Baier shows, were the culmination of a lifetime of service that took Ike from rural Kansas to West Point, to the battlefields of World War II, and finally to the Oval Office. When he left the White House, Dwight Eisenhower had done more than perhaps any other modern American to set the nation, in his words, "on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment."

On January 17, Eisenhower spoke to the nation in one of the most remarkable farewell speeches in U.S. history. Ike looked to the future, warning Americans against the dangers of elevating partisanship above national interest, excessive government budgets (particularly deficit spending), the expansion of the military-industrial complex, and the creeping political power of special interests. Seeking to ready a new generation for power, Eisenhower intensely advised the forty-three-year-old Kennedy before the inauguration.

Baier also reveals how Eisenhower's two terms changed America forever for the better — perhaps even saved the world from destruction — and demonstrates how today Ike offers us the model of principled leadership that polls say is so missing in politics. The Supreme Commander of Allied Forces during World War II, Eisenhower only reluctantly stepped into politics. As president, Ike successfully guided the country out of a dangerous war in Korea, peacefully through the apocalyptic threat of nuclear war with the Soviets, and into one of the greatest economic booms in world history.

Five decades later, Baier's Three Days in January forever makes clear that Eisenhower, an often forgotten giant of U.S. history, still offers vital lessons for our own time and stands as a lasting example of political leadership at its most effective and honorable.

On My Radar:

Superhubs: How the Financial Elite and Their Networks Rule our World
by Sandra Navidi
Nicholas Brealey Publishing
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

SuperHubs is a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the global financial system and the powerful personal networks through which it is run, at the centre of which sit the Elites - the SuperHubs.

Combining an insider's knowledge with principles of network science, Sandra Navidi offers a startling new perspective on how the financial system really operates.

SuperHubs reveals what happens at the exclusive, invitation-only platforms - The World Economic Forum in Davos, the meetings of the International Monetary Fund, think-tank gatherings, power lunches, charity events, and private parties. This is the most vivid portrait to date of the global elite: the bank CEOs, fund managers, billionaire financiers and politicians who, through their interlocking relationships and collective influence are transforming the future of our financial system and, for better or worse, shaping our world.

On My Radar:

Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation
by Alan Burdick
Simon and Schuster
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

“Time” is the most commonly used noun in the English language; it’s always on our minds and it advances through every living moment. But what is time, exactly? Do children experience it the same way adults do? Why does it seem to slow down when we’re bored and speed by as we get older? How and why does time fly?

In this witty and meditative exploration, award-winning author and New Yorker staff writer Alan Burdick takes readers on a personal quest to understand how time gets in us and why we perceive it the way we do. In the company of scientists, he visits the most accurate clock in the world (which exists only on paper); discovers that “now” actually happened a split-second ago; finds a twenty-fifth hour in the day; lives in the Arctic to lose all sense of time; and, for one fleeting moment in a neuroscientist’s lab, even makes time go backward. Why Time Flies is an instant classic, a vivid and intimate examination of the clocks that tick inside us all.

On My Radar:

Stripped: More Stories from Exotic Dancers
(Completely Revised and Updated Edition)
by Bernadette Barton
NYU Press
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

What kind of woman dances naked for money? Bernadette Barton takes us inside countless strip bars and clubs, from upscale to back road as well as those that specialize in lap dancing, table dancing, topless only, and peep shows, to reveal the startling lives of exotic dancers.

Originally published in 2006, the product of years of first-hand research in strip clubs around the country, Stripped is a classic portrait of what it’s like for those who choose to strip as a profession. Barton explores why women begin stripping, the initial excitement and financial rewards of the work, the dangers of the life—namely, drugs and prostitution—and, inevitably, the difficulties in staying in the business over time, especially for their relationships, sexuality and self-esteem. 

In this completely revised and updated edition, Barton returns to the strip clubs she originally studied to observe the major changes in the industry that have occurred over the last decade. She examines how “raunch culture” affects exotic dancers’ treatment by their clientele, who are now accustomed to seeing nudity and sexualized performance in accessible, R and X -rated media from a variety of outlets, particularly the Internet. Barton explores how new media has  transformed exotic dancing, allowing dancers to build an online brand, but also introducing  possibilities for customers to take unauthorized nude photos and videos of the entertainers.. And finally, Barton speaks to new dancers as well as dancers she interviewed in the previous edition, examining how the toll of stripping still impacts the lives of exotic dancers in a changing industry. Incorporating new scholarship, new observations, and increased awareness of emerging media technology, Barton brings a fresh and important perspective on the challenges that women face working in the still-thriving world of exotic dancing. 

Guest Post:

BookSpin is pleased to host a guest post by author Wendy Crisp Lestina for her book:

A Bit of Earth
by Wendy Crisp Lestina
Lychgate Press


My first books were published by Putnam (now, Penguin Random House). The initial title sold for a big advance. The book, 100 Things I’m Not Going To Do Now That I’m Over 50, earned out that advance and quite a bit more. Putnam was happy, so they published two more titles by me, neither of which earned out. The red ink on the balance sheet made me a personae non gratae, or, as I prefer, a person au gratin. I’m not an unsuccessful author. I’m someone who’s smothered in cheese.

My new book, A Bit of Earth, was published by Lychgate Press, an indie in Corvallis, Oregon. There was no advance and, unnervingly, no contract.

“What if, say, someone were to buy foreign rights?” I asked cautiously.

“I’d send you the money,” the publisher said.

“All the money?”

“If you wish. I’d like to keep some for myself.”

That sounded good: doing business with an independent press as a human-scale experience. And, I liked that the publisher’s name is also Wendy.

A Bit of Earth is a memoir. The only task more difficult than writing a memoir is talking about it. Yes, it’s all about me, and now I’m going to talk about me writing all about me.

For women—I’m generalizing—the exercise is counterintuitive. We’re trained, nurtured, coaxed—choose your verb—to be focused on others. When I was in elementary school, the biggest negative character flaw a girl could have was to be conceited. Over the years, that concept became selfish; then, self-absorbed. (Now, the trait is narcissism, and it’s not merely abhorrent, it’s internationally life-threatening.)

I began to write the memoir and quickly became uncomfortable. Who cares what happened to you?

I flushed out those furies and a new, tougher, crew showed up. Are you going to tell the truth? Really? Ha, ha, ha. You won’t be able to live in this town again.

I live four miles outside of the town of 1,500 people where I was born. I left Ferndale when I went to college, and I didn’t return for 34 years. By that time, I was almost 50 and I thought—incorrectly, as it turned out—that I’d made all my mistakes off-stage. As I wrote in the preface to A Bit of Earth, “I was confident I understood life, and I was ready to share my unique wisdom. I wrote three books saying as much. They were very short books.”

I kept writing and rewriting, and as I wrote, a certainty crept in. I began to realize that although the stories are about my reactions to my experiences, A Bit of Earth is not about me.

It is about our very human search for joy, and the remarkable, mysterious hope that keeps us believing, like the child on Christmas morning in the old joke. We rip through a box of manure, shouting with excitement, “I know there’s a pony in here somewhere!”

And there is.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Book Description A Bit of Earth, published by Lychgate Press, an independent press in Corvallis, Oregon, is a memoir that begins in 1980 with the theft from a car parked on the streets of New York City of my father’s Silver Star medal, which was awarded to him for his heroism during World War II—heroism that resulted in his death. The book ends, 22 chapters later, with its unlikely recovery, 34 years later, in 2014. The story in-between, life stories that begin before I was born and take place in various settings (farms in northern California and tiny towns on the Minnesota prairie; Los Angeles and New York) is a kaleidoscope of stories about a life—mine—influenced by a dead father’s spiritual admonition to "life a big life, as big as you can make it, big enough for both of us.” A Bit of Earth is both a personal story, filled with details of people and places and things that are unique to my experience, and a story about everyone whose childhood and adult life began in the atomic age and wove through a world in which long-standing rules were subject to revision or dissolution. Everyone seeks ways to survive, cope and—occasionally—master this challenge by finding a home, something to hang on to, a piece of earth. My way is humor. This is, mostly, a funny book. - - - - - - - - - - - BookSpin would like to thank Sage's Blog Tours for inviting us to participate in the promotion of this book. Sage's twitter is here.

On My Radar:

Delusions of Grammar: The Worst of the Worst
by Sharon Eliza Nichols
St. Martins Griffin
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

MORE missspellings! MORE badder grammar! MORE than 350 photos of laugh-out-loud funny signs from the creator of the smash-hit books (and Facebook groups) I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar and More Badder Grammar here together for the first time in one awesome bind-up.

Sharon Eliza Nichols pleases, thrills, horrifies, and amuses her audience with an all-new assortment of the most ungrammatical, outrageous, and ridiculous mistakes ever put into print. Featuring actual photos of actual signs in actual locations, these billboard blunders are sure to delight grammar groupies, punctuation sticklers, and pretty much anyone who can read.

On My Radar:

Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus
by Matt Taibbi
Illustrated by Victor Juhasz
Spiegel and Grau
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Dispatches from the 2016 election that provide an eerily prescient take on our democracy’s uncertain future, by the country’s most perceptive and fearless political journalist.

The 2016 presidential contest as told by Matt Taibbi, from its tragicomic beginnings to its apocalyptic conclusion, is in fact the story of Western civilization’s very own train wreck. Years before the clown car of candidates was fully loaded, Taibbi grasped the essential themes of the story: the power of spectacle over substance, or even truth; the absence of a shared reality; the nihilistic rebellion of the white working class; the death of the political establishment; and the emergence of a new, explicit form of white nationalism that would destroy what was left of the Kingian dream of a successful pluralistic society.

Taibbi captures, with dead-on, real-time analysis, the failures of the right and the left, from the thwarted Bernie Sanders insurgency to the flawed and aimless Hillary Clinton campaign; the rise of the “dangerously bright” alt-right with its wall-loving identity politics and its rapturous view of the “Racial Holy War” to come; and the giant fail of a flailing, reactive political media that fed a ravenous news cycle not with reporting on political ideology, but with undigested propaganda served straight from the campaign bubble. At the center of it all stands Donald J. Trump, leading a historic revolt against his own party, “bloviating and farting his way” through the campaign, “saying outrageous things, acting like Hitler one minute and Andrew Dice Clay the next.” For Taibbi, the stunning rise of Trump marks the apotheosis of the new postfactual movement.

Taibbi frames the reporting with original essays that explore the seismic shift in how we perceive our national institutions, the democratic process, and the future of the country. Insane Clown President is not just a postmortem on the collapse and failure of American democracy. It offers the riveting, surreal, unique, and essential experience of seeing the future in hindsight.

Fiction Focus:

Night of Fire: A Novel
by Colin Thubron
Harper Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Award-winning, bestselling novelist and travel writer Colin Thubron returns to fiction with his first novel in more than a decade, a searing, poetic masterwork of memory.

A house is burning, threatening the existence of its six tenants—including a failed priest; a naturalist; a neurosurgeon; an invalid dreaming of his anxious boyhood; and their landlord, whose relationship to the tenants is both intimate and shadowy. At times, he shares their preoccupations and memories. He will also share their fate.

In Night of Fire, the passions and obsessions in a dying house loom and shift, from those of the hallucinating drug addict in the basement to the landlord training his rooftop telescope on the night skies. As the novel progresses, the tenants’ diverse stories take us through an African refugee camp, Greek Orthodox monasteries, and the cremation grounds of India. Haunting the edges of their lives are memories. Will these remembrances be consumed forever by the flames? Or can they survive in some form?

Night of Fire is Colin Thubron’s fictive masterpiece: a novel of exquisite beauty, philosophical depth, and lingering mystery that is a brilliant meditation on life itself.

In My TBR Stack:

Life Word: Discover Your One Word to Leave a Legacy
by Jon Gordon, Dan Britton, Jimmy Page
Wiley Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In One Word that will Change your Life authors Jon Gordon, Dan Britton, and Jimmy Page helped readers discover their yearly word to live with more intention, focus and purpose. Now with Life Word they help readers discover a word that will significantly impact their life and legacy.

Life Word reveals a simple, powerful tool to help you identify the word that will inspire you to live your best life while leaving your greatest legacy.  In the process you’ll discover your why which will help show you the way to live with a renewed sense of power, purpose and passion.  

The authors walk you step-by-step through the process of discovering your Life Word and share an action plan with the most successful ways to live and share it. If you’re ready to live with more clarity, confidence and courage and leave a lasting legacy, let’s get started!

In My TBR Stack:

Furious George: My Forty Years Surviving NBA Divas, Clueless GMs, and Poor Shot Selection
by George Karl with Curt Sampson
Harper Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

The most outspoken and combative coach in NBA history—and one of the most successful, amassing more than 1,175 victories, the sixth best winning record ever—reflects on his life, his career, and his battles on and off the basketball court in this no-holds-barred memoir

A man of deep passion and intensity, George Karl earned his bad boy reputation while playing at the University of North Carolina, a rap that continued through the five years he spent with the San Antonio Spurs—and long after he stopped playing.

Karl’s beery nights, fistfights, and barking followed him into a thirty-five-year coaching career. In a game defined by big stakes and bigger egos, rabid fans and an unforgiving media, Karl was hired and fired a dozen times. After leading a team beset by injuries and with no superstar to its best season of all time—an achievement that earned Karl the title NBA Coach of the Year—he was dumped by the Denver Nuggets in 2013. Less than a year and a half later, Karl was at the helm of the Sacramento Kings, snarling and bellowing on the sidelines before being cut loose in May 2016.

Intense, obstinate, and loud, Karl has never backed down from a confrontation, whether with management, officials, or star players, as NBA legends from Allan Iverson to Gary Payton to Carmelo Anthony to Demarcus Cousins can attest. Telling his story, Karl holds nothing back as he speaks out about the game that has defined his life, including the greed, selfishness, and ass-covering he believes are characteristic of the modern NBA player, and the rampant corruption that leads all the way to the office of the NBA commissioner, David Stern. Karl also reveals how he’s learned to deal with the personalities, the pressure, and the setbacks with a resilience he acquired from his three bouts with cancer.

Raw, hard-hitting, and brutally honest, Furious George is as thrilling, unpredictable, and entertaining as the game that has defined Karl’s life.

On My Radar:

The Hollywood MBA: A Crash Course in Management from a Life in the Film Business
by Tom Reilly
St. Martin's Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

What would you do if alligators were loose in your office? Or if your place of business changed 80 times during a four month period? What if two of your key employees were infant twins? Or you were asked to manage 130 people who were hired yesterday?

Tom Reilly has faced these obstacles and thousands more in his three-decade career managing major motion pictures. He’s led more than 100,000 employees and been responsible for overseeing over two billion dollars in pro-rated production budgets and learned that successful management isn’t about what you want; the question is, what do you NEED?

Often filming at live locations, Reilly was forced to adopt a unique set of strategies to accommodate for extreme workplace conditions and the challenge of leading and managing big budget projects, a revolving-door workforce of technicians, and actors such as Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, Tom Hanks, Charlize Theron, Sean Connery, and Harrison Ford.

In The Hollywood MBA, Reilly explores the ten key strategies he utilized to manage big crews, big budgets, and big personalities on major motion pictures, and shows us how these strategies can be leveraged in any business for success.

With an eye for making small adjustments to management strategy that produce big results, Reilly utilizes the narrative backdrop of the film set as an extreme case study in modern management identifying proven, easy-to-implement, and often counter intuitive practices that will increase engagement, team cohesion, efficiency, creativity, quality, and the bottom line in any industry.

On My Radar:

Always Happy Hour: Stories
by Mary Miller

A Liveright Book
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Combining hard-edged prose and savage Southern charm, Mary Miller showcases biting contemporary talent at its best. Fast on the heels of her "terrific" (New York Times Book Review) debut novel, The Last Days of California, she now reaches new heights with this collection of shockingly relatable, ill-fated love stories.

Acerbic and ruefully funny, Always Happy Hour weaves tales of young women—deeply flawed and intensely real—who struggle to get out of their own way. They love to drink and have sex; they make bad decisions with men who either love them too much or too little; and they haunt a Southern terrain of gas stations, public pools, and dive bars. Though each character shoulders the weight of her own baggage—whether it’s a string of horrible exes, a boyfriend with an annoying child, or an inability to be genuinely happy for a best friend—they are united in their unrelenting suspicion that they deserve better.

These women seek understanding in the most unlikely places: a dilapidated foster home where love is a liability in "Big Bad Love," a trailer park littered with a string of bad decisions in "Uphill," and the unfamiliar corners of a dream home purchased with the winnings of a bitter divorce settlement in "Charts." Taking a microscope to delicate patterns of love and intimacy, Miller evokes the reticent love among the misunderstood, the gritty comfort in bad habits that can’t be broken, and the beat-by-beat minutiae of fated relationships.

Like an evening of drinking, Always Happy Hour is a comforting burn, warm and intoxicating in its brutal honesty. In an unforgettable style that distinguishes her within her generation, Miller once again captures womanhood in "a raw…and heartbreaking way" (Los Angeles Review of Books) and solidifies her essential role in American fiction.

"I adore Mary Miller's stories and you will too. Read this book and then read her others. Like, now." —Tom Franklin, author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

On My Radar:

United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good
by Cory Booker
Ballantine Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

A passionate new voice in American politics, United States Senator Cory Booker makes the case that the virtues of empathy, responsibility, and action must guide our nation toward a brighter future.
 
Raised in northern New Jersey, Cory Booker went to Stanford University on a football scholarship, accepted a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, then studied at Yale Law School. Graduating from Yale, his options were limitless.
 
He chose public service.
 
He chose to move to a rough neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey, where he worked as a tenants’ rights lawyer before winning a seat on the City Council. In 2006, he was elected mayor, and for more than seven years he was the public face of an American city that had gone decades with too little positive national attention and investment. In 2013, Booker became the first African American elected to represent New Jersey in the U.S. Senate.
 
In United, Cory Booker draws on personal experience to issue a stirring call to reorient our nation and our politics around the principles of compassion and solidarity. He speaks of rising above despair to engage with hope, pursuing our shared mission, and embracing our common destiny.
 
Here is his account of his own political education, the moments—some entertaining, some heartbreaking, all of them enlightening—that have shaped his civic vision. Here are the lessons Booker learned from the remarkable people who inspired him to serve, men and women whose example fueled his desire to create opportunities for others. Here also are his observations on the issues he cares about most deeply, from race and crime and the crisis of mass incarceration to economic and environmental justice.
 
“Hope is the active conviction that despair will never have the last word,” Booker writes in this galvanizing book. In a world where we too easily lose touch with our neighbors, he argues, we must remember that we all rise or fall together—and that we must move beyond mere tolerance for one another toward a deeper connection: love.

On My Radar:

How to Be Bored (The School of Life)
by Eva Hoffman
Picador Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Lethargic inactivity can be debilitating and depressing, but in the modern world the pendulum has swung far in the other direction. We live in a hyperactive, over-stimulated age. Uninterrupted activity can seem exciting, but it can also leave us emotionally disorientated and mentally depleted. How can we recover a sense of balance and a richness in our lives?

In How to Be Bored, Eva Hoffman argues for the need to cultivate curiosity and self-knowledge and to relish moments of unplugged idleness and non-virtual contact with others. Drawing on psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and a wide range of literature, she emphasizes the need to understand our own preferences and purposes and to replenish our inner resources. This book aims to make readers more vigorously engaged in their lives and to restore a sense of depth and meaning to their experiences.

Click here for a link to an excerpt from How to Be Bored