Top list: Nonfiction

The New York Times bestseller from business journalist Christopher Leonard infiltrates one of America’s most mysterious institutions—the Federal Reserve—to show how its policies spearheaded by Chairman Jerome Powell over the past ten years have accelerated income inequality and put our country’s economic stability at risk.

If you asked most people what forces led to today’s unprecedented income inequality and financial crashes, no one would say the Federal Reserve. For most of its history, the Fed has enjoyed the fawning adoration of the press. When the economy grew, it was credited to the Fed. When the economy imploded in 2008, the Fed got credit for rescuing us.

But here, for the first time, is the inside story of how the Fed has reshaped the American economy for the worse. It all started on November 3, 2010, when the Fed began a radical intervention called quantitative easing. In just a few short years, the Fed more than quadrupled the money supply with one goal: to encourage banks and other investors to extend more risky debt. Leaders at the Fed knew that they were undertaking a bold experiment that would produce few real jobs, with long-term risks that were hard to measure. But the Fed proceeded anyway…and then found itself trapped. Once it printed all that money, there was no way to withdraw it from circulation. The Fed tried several times, only to see the market start to crash, at which point the Fed turned the money spigot back on. That’s what it did when COVID hit, printing 300 years’ worth of money in a few short months.

Which brings us to now: Ten years on, the gap between the rich and poor has grown dramatically, inflation is raging, and the stock market is driven by boom, busts, and bailouts. Middle-class Americans seem stuck in a stage of permanent stagnation, with wage gains wiped out by high prices even as they remain buried under credit card debt, car loan debt, and student debt. Meanwhile, the “too big to fail” banks remain bigger and more powerful than ever while the richest Americans enjoy the gains of a hyper-charged financial system.

The Lords of Easy Money “skillfully” (The Wall Street Journal) tells the “fascinating” (The New York Times) tale of how quantitative easing is imperiling the American economy through the story of the one man who tried to warn us. This is the first inside story of how we really got here—and why our economy rests on such unstable ground.

This candid memoir of music, fame, endurance, “true triumphs, and challenges” (Matt Pinfield, DJ and TV host) from Deryck Whibley, lead singer of Sum 41, follows his rise from a punk kid to an international star.

From his earliest days growing up in Canada, Deryck Whibley loved music and couldn’t wait to achieve something bigger and better than the humble path that lay before him. Whibley was raised by a single mom and their small family constantly moved, so he was used to being the new kid, starting fights (or finishing them), and connecting with people who shared his sensibility for chaotic fun and loud music. Sum 41 was born of a group of friends who loved to jam, shared a DIY ethos, and were determined to be rock stars one day.

Walking Disaster is Whibley’s story, but it is also the untold story of Sum 41. It “barrels in like a tornado of extreme highs and lows” (Los Angeles Times) as Whibley takes you backstage, into the recording booth, and through the formation and rise of the band whose story is inextricably woven with his own.

With his insightful, earnest, and genuine voice, Whibley gets real about fame, fortune, and the music industry. Detailing everything from winning at the MTV Video Music Awards and being nominated for a Grammy to revisiting his high-profile relationships and friendships, contending with invasive paparazzi, and suffering from health issues that brought him to the brink, Whibley offers an insightful and unforgettable memoir.

This is a riveting and disturbing account of the medical atrocities performed in China during WWII.

New York Times bestselling author Natalie Haynes returns to the world of ancient Greek myth in this scintillating follow-up to Pandora’s Jar.

Few writers today have reshaped our view of the ancient Greek myths more than revered bestselling author Natalie Haynes. Divine Might is a female-centered look at Olympus and the Furies, focusing on the goddesses whose prowess, passions, jealousies, and desires rival those of their male kin, including:

Athene, who sprang fully formed from her father’s brow (giving Zeus a killer headache in the process), the goddess of war and provider of wise counsel. Aphrodite, born of the foam (and sperm released from a Titan’s castrated testicles), the most beautiful of all the Olympian goddesses, the epitome of love who dispenses desire and inspires longing—yet harbors a fearsome vengeful side, doling out brutal punishments to those who displease her. Hera, Zeus’s long-suffering wife, whose jealousy born of his repeated dalliances with mortals, nymphs, and other goddesses, leads her to wreak elaborate and often painful revenge on those she believes have wronged her. (Well, wouldn’t you?) Demeter, goddess of the harvest and mother of Persephone; Artemis, the hunter and goddess of wild spaces; the Muses, the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory; and Hestia, goddess of domesticity and sacrificial fire. Infused with Haynes’s engaging charm and irrepressible wit, Divine Might is a refreshing take on the legends and stories we thought we knew.

In this inspiring, heartfelt account, Lawrence Anthony, conservationist and coauthor of The Elephant Whisperer, traces his efforts to save the endangered northern white rhino.

“Smart, insightful, and warm. Dr. Julie is both the expert and wise friend we all need.” –Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and co-host of the ""Dear Therapists"" podcast?

Drawing on years of experience as a clinical psychologist, online sensation Dr Julie Smith provides the skills you need to navigate common life challenges and take charge of your emotional and mental health in her debut book.

Filled with secrets from a therapist's toolkit, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before teaches you how to fortify and maintain your mental health, even in the most trying of times. Dr Julie Smith’s expert advice and powerful coping techniques will help you stay resilient, whether you want to manage anxiety, deal with criticism, cope with depression, build self-confidence, find motivation, or learn to forgive yourself. Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before tackles everyday issues and offers practical solutions in bite-sized, easy-to-digest entries which make it easy to quickly find specific information and guidance.

Your mental well-being is just as important as your physical well-being. Packed with proven strategies, Dr. Julie’s empathetic guide offers a deeper understanding of how your mind works and gives you the insights and help you need to nurture your mental health every day. Wise and practical, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before might just change your life.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

David Wragg's Operation Sea Lion examines how realistic the German threat of invasion was for Britain in the summer of 1940.

A Confession, or My Confession, is a short work on the subject of melancholia, philosophy and religion by the acclaimed Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. It was written in 1879 to 1880, when Tolstoy was in his early fifties.

The book is a brief autobiographical story of the author's struggle with a mid-life existential crisis. It describes his search for the answer to the ultimate philosophical question: "If God does not exist, since death is inevitable, what is the meaning of life?." Without the answer to this, for him, life had become "impossible".

The story begins with the Eastern fable of the dragon in the well. A man is chased by a beast into a well, at the bottom of which is a dragon. The man clings to a branch that is being gnawed on by two mice (one black, one white, representing night and day and the relentless march of time). The man is able to lick two drops of honey (representing Tolstoy's love of his family and his writing), but because death is inevitable, he no longer finds the honey sweet.

Tolstoy goes on to describe four possible attitudes towards this dilemma. The first is ignorance. If one is oblivious to the fact that death is approaching, life becomes bearable. The problem with this for him personally is that he is not ignorant. Having become conscious of the reality of death, there is no going back.

In a romantic and suspenseful collection of the New York Times bestselling trilogy, love's unbreakable bonds are put to the test. When her boyfriend, Tristan, died, Ivy thought she'd lost everything, even her faith in angels. But now she's discovered that he's her gaurdian angel - his presence is so strong that she can feel the touch of his hand, the beat of his heart. Ivy needs Tristan now more than ever because he knows she's in terrible danger. Only Ivy's guardian angel can save her now that his killer is after her. But if Tristan rescues Ivy, his mission on earth will be finished, and he must leave her behind forever. Will saving Ivy mean losing her just when he's finally reached her again?

Achieve work-life balance by conquering procrastination and get your most important work done, now with new chapters on technology and maintaining focus

The fully revised and expanded edition of the global bestseller with over 3 million copies sold world-wide

The saying goes: if the first thing you do each morning is eat a live frog, then you're done with the toughest thing for the day. Eating that frog means tackling your most challenging task-and it's also the one that can have the greatest positive impact on your life.

Productivity and time management coach Brian Tracy shows you how to organize each day so you can zero in on these critical tasks and accomplish them efficiently and effectively.

The 3 essentials of successful time management are decision, discipline, and determination, and Tracy shows you how to dial in these skills using 21 principles and techniques like:

- Single handle every task

- Upgrade your key skills

- Identify your key constraints

- Put the pressure on yourself

- Slice and dice the task

This life-changing manual will ensure that you get more of your important tasks done today.

In this thought-provoking book, Richard Sennett explores the work of craftsmen past and present, identifies deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values, and challenges received ideas about what constitutes good work in today's world.

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner offer the long-awaited paperback edition of Freakonomics, the runaway bestseller, including six Freakonomics columns from the New York Times Magazine and a Q & A with the authors.

Unlock the more straightforward side of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone with this concise and insightful summary and analysis!

This engaging summary presents an analysis of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling, the first book in the bestselling series. In the novel, we are introduced to the Boy Who Lived and the wizarding world, which is inhabited by a range of colourful characters and fantastical creatures. In Harry’s first year at Hogwarts School at Witchcraft and Wizardry, he begins his magical education, shines on the Quidditch field and overcomes a series of sinister obstacles to find the mysterious Philosopher’s Stone. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is the first novel in J.K. Rowling’s bestselling seven-book series, which has inspired films, video games, board games and even a theme park. Rowling is now a household name around the world, and her other books include The Casual Vacancy (2012) and The Cuckoo’s Calling (2013), which was published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

Find out everything you need to know about Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in a fraction of the time!

This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you:

•A complete plot summary

•Character studies

•Key themes and symbols

•Questions for further reflection

Why choose BrightSummaries.com?

Available in print and digital format, our publications are designed to accompany you on your reading journey. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time.

See the very best of literature in a whole new light with BrightSummaries.com!

The Iodine Crisis explains how we became so deficient, then shows the time-tested solution to reversing many conditions. Lynne Farrow reveals how she and thousands of other patient-activists changed their lives by researching and using iodine.

An Avid Reader Press book. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.

In 1975, Ray Dalio founded an investment firm, Bridgewater Associates, out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York City. Forty years later, Bridgewater has made more money for its clients than any other hedge fund in history and grown into the fifth most important private company in the United States, according to Fortune magazine. Dalio himself has been named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Along the way, Dalio discovered a set of unique principles that have led to Bridgewater’s exceptionally effective culture, which he describes as “an idea meritocracy that strives to achieve meaningful work and meaningful relationships through radical transparency.” It is these principles, and not anything special about Dalio—who grew up an ordinary kid in a middle-class Long Island neighborhood—that he believes are the reason behind his success.

In Principles, Dalio shares what he’s learned over the course of his remarkable career. He argues that life, management, economics, and investing can all be systemized into rules and understood like machines. The book’s hundreds of practical lessons, which are built around his cornerstones of “radical truth” and “radical transparency,” include Dalio laying out the most effective ways for individuals and organizations to make decisions, approach challenges, and build strong teams. He also describes the innovative tools the firm uses to bring an idea meritocracy to life, such as creating “baseball cards” for all employees that distill their strengths and weaknesses, and employing computerized decision-making systems to make believability-weighted decisions. While the book brims with novel ideas for organizations and institutions, Principles also offers a clear, straightforward approach to decision-making that Dalio believes anyone can apply, no matter what they’re seeking to achieve.

Here, from a man who has been called both “the Steve Jobs of investing” and “the philosopher king of the financial universe” (CIO magazine), is a rare opportunity to gain proven advice unlike anything you’ll find in the conventional business press.

Even bad code can function. But if code isn't clean, it can bring a development organization to its knees. Every year, countless hours and significant resources are lost because of poorly written code. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Noted software expert Robert C. Martin presents a revolutionary paradigm with Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship. Martin has teamed up with his colleagues from Object Mentor to distill their best agile practice of cleaning code "on the fly" into a book that will instill within you the values of a software craftsman and make you a better programmer-but only if you work at it.

Clean Code is divided into three parts.

- The first 13 chapters, fully contained in the audio, describes the principles, patterns, and practices of writing clean code.

- The second part, chapters 14 to 16, consists of several case studies of increasing complexity and is included in a pdf that comes with your purchase. Each case study is an exercise in cleaning up code-of transforming a code base that has some problems into one that is sound and efficient. You'll be reading code-lots of code. And you will be challenged to think about what's right about that code, and what's wrong with it.

- The third part, chapter 17, is provided both in the audio and the pdf. It is the payoff: a single chapter containing a list of heuristics and "smells" gathered while creating the case studies. The result is a knowledge base that describes the way we think when we write, read, and clean code.

Listeners will come away from Clean Code understanding:

- How to tell the difference between good and bad code

- How to write good code and how to transform bad code into good code

- How to create good names, good functions, good objects, and good classes

- How to format code for maximum readability

- How to implement complete error handling without obscuring code logic

- How to unit test and practice test-driven development

This book is a must for any developer, software engineer, project manager, team lead, or systems analyst with an interest in producing better code.

Summary, Analysis, and Review of Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air PLEASE NOTE: This is a key takeaways and analysis of the book and NOT the original book. Start Publishing Notes' Summary, Analysis, and Review of Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air includes a summary of the book, review, analysis & key takeaways, and a detailed About the Author section. PREVIEW: Dr. Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air is an autobiographical account of his experience with Stage IV lung cancer. Part memoir, part guidebook, and part philosophical investigation, it is the story of his life, his work, and the difficult-but ultimately rewarding-process of coming to terms with his own death. The tragic ironies of Kalanithi's situation-a non-smoker with lung cancer, a young man with an aggressive terminal illness, a talented surgeon who fell ill before he could realize his potential, a new father whose daughter will never know him-could not pull at readers' heartstrings more if it had been engineered in a lab.

Winner of the Audible Best of the Year Award for Celebrity Memoirs

Including the never-before-heard tape recordings of Lisa Marie Presley, this audiobook is movingly read by her daughter, Riley Keough, and multi award-winning actress Julia Roberts.

Born to an American myth and raised in the wilds of Graceland, Lisa Marie Presley tells her whole story for the first time in this raw, riveting, one-of-a-kind memoir faithfully completed by her daughter, Riley Keough.

In 2022, Lisa Marie Presley asked her daughter to help finally finish her long-conceived memoir.

A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words; never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and grieved.

Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, lay in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story: about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland; about the unconditional love she felt from her father, Elvis; about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran towards his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble. About her singular, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, and about being married to Michael Jackson, and what they had in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About ever-present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world.

To make her mother known.

This extraordinary book is composed of both Lisa Marie’s and Riley’s voices, a mother and daughter communicating across the chasm of life and death as they try to heal each other. Profoundly moving and deeply revealing, From Here to the Great Unknown is a book like no other – the last words of the only child of a true legend.

Winner of the Audible Best of the Year Award in Australia for Celebrity Memoirs, w/b 02/12/24.

William Bynum follows the march of science through the centuries, in a lively work that will delight readers of all ages.

The Other End of the Leash shares a revolutionary, new perspective on our relationship with dogs, focusing on our behavior in comparison with that of dogs. An applied animal behaviorist and dog trainer with more than twenty years experience, Dr. Patricia McConnell looks at humans as just another interesting species, and muses about why we behave the way we do around our dogs, how dogs might interpret our behavior, and how to interact with our dogs in ways that bring out the best in our four-legged friends.

After all, although humans and dogs share a remarkable relationship that is unique in the animal world, we are still two entirely different species, each shaped by our individual evolutionary heritage. Quite simply, humans are primates and dogs are canids (like wolves, coyotes, and foxes). Since we each speak a different native tongue, a lot gets lost in the translation.

The Other End of the Leash demonstrates how even the slightest changes in your voice and the way you stand can help your dog understand what you want. Once you start to think about your own behavior from the perspective of your dog, you’ll understand why much of what appears to be doggy-disobedience is simply a case of miscommunication. Inside you will learn

• How to use your voice so that your dog is more likely to do what you ask.

• Why “getting dominance” over your dog is a bad idea.

• Why “rough and tumble primate play” can lead to trouble–and how to play with your dog in ways that are fun and keep him out of trouble.

• How dogs and humans share personality types–and why most dogs want to live with benevolent leaders rather than “alphawannabees!”

In her own insightful, compelling style, Patricia McConnell combines wonderful true stories about people and dogs with a new, accessible scientific perspective on how they should behave around each other. This is a book that strives to help you make the most of life with your dog, and to prevent problems that might arise in that most rewarding of relationships.