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Jim Collins Answers the Social Sector with a Monograph to Accompany Good to Great. 30-50% of those who bought Good to Great work in the Social Sector.

• This monograph is a response to questions raised by readers in the social sector. It is not a new book.
• Jim Collins wants to avoid any confusion about the monograph being a book by limiting its distribution to online retailers.
• Based on interviews and workshops with over 100 social sector leaders.
• The difference between successful organizations is not between the business and the social sector, the difference is between good organizations and great ones..
  Price: $6.53 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Every biology student knows Ernst Haeckel as the originator of the "Biogenetic Law": ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny Haeckel was a passionate student of the evolutionary shaping of biological forms, and Art Forms in Nature captures both his artistic sensibility and the scientific rigor he applied to all his studies. First published in 1904, Art Forms in Nature is a glorification of function and form, a demonstration of organic symmetry that has nothing--and everything--to do with nature as it actually exists. Each plate exhibits organisms carefully arranged and exquisitely detailed, "a symbiosis between decorative sketches and descriptive observations of nature," as Olaf Breidbach states in his fascinating introductory text. The radiolarians, medusae, rotifers, bryozoans, and even frogs and turtles lovingly recreated here are gorgeous and self-explanatory, rendered in delicate, filigreed lines, and colored gently with muted green, delicate pink, and sepia. Art students will appreciate the designs found in nature--scientists will love the evolutionary statement of form inherent in the beauty. --Therese Littleton.
Price: $16.49 [Notify me when price goes down.]

From Dave Eggers: For this year's edition of The Best American Nonrequired Reading, we wanted to expand the scope of the book to include shorter pieces, and fragments of stories, and transcripts, screenplays, television scripts -- lots of things that we hadn't included before. Our publisher readily agreed, and so you'll see that this year's edition is far more eclectic in form than previous editions. Along the way to making the book, we also came across a variety of things that didn't fit neatly anywhere, but which we felt should be included, so we conceived the front section, which is a loose Best American roundup of notable words and sentences from 2005. It is, like this book in general, obviously and completely incomplete, but might be interesting nevertheless..
Price: $0.11 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Tim Cahill writes in his introduction to The Best American Travel Writing 2006, "'Story' is the essence of the travel essay. Stories are the way we organize the chaos in our lives, orchestrate voluminous factual material, and -- if we are very good -- shed some light on the human condition." Here are twenty-six pieces that showcase the best travel writing from 2005, filled with "keen observations that transform ordinary journeys into extraordinary ones" (Library Journal).

Mark Jenkins journeys into a forgotten valley in Afghanistan, Kevin Fedarko takes a wild ride through the rapids of the Grand Canyon, and Christopher Solomon reports on the newest fad to hit South Korea: downhill skiing. For David Sedaris, a seemingly routine domestic flight is cause for a witty rumination on modern airline travel. Alain de Botton describes the discreet charms of Zurich, and Ian Frazier recalls leaving the small Midwestern town he called home. Michael Paterniti gives a touching portrait of the world's tallest man -- eight and a half feet and growing, while P.J. O'Rourke visits an airplane manufacturer to see firsthand how the French make the world's biggest passenger plane. George Saunders is dazzled by a trip to the "Vegas of the Middle East," Rolf Potts takes on tantric yoga for dilettantes, and Sean Flynn documents a seedier side of travel -- the newest hotspot in the international sex trade.

Culled from a wide variety of publications, these stories, as Cahill writes, all "touched me in one way or another, changed an attitude, made me laugh aloud, or provided fuel for my dreams. I wish the reader similar joys.".
Price: $0.07 [Notify me when price goes down.]

An essential American dream—equal access to higher education—was becoming a reality with the GI Bill and civil rights movements after World War II. But this vital American promise has been broken. Christopher Newfield argues that the financial and political crises of public universities are not the result of economic downturns or of ultimately valuable restructuring, but of a conservative campaign to end public education’s democratizing influence on American society. Unmaking the Public University is the story of how conservatives have maligned and restructured public universities, deceiving the public to serve their own ends. It is a deep and revealing analysis that is long overdue.

Newfield carefully describes how this campaign operated, using extensive research into public university archives. He launches the story with the expansive vision of an equitable and creative America that emerged from the post-war boom in college access, and traces the gradual emergence of the anti-egalitarian “corporate university,” practices that ranged from racial policies to research budgeting. Newfield shows that the culture wars have actually been an economic war that a conservative coalition in business, government, and academia have waged on that economically necessary but often independent group, the college-educated middle class. Newfield’s research exposes the crucial fact that the culture wars have functioned as a kind of neutron bomb, one that pulverizes the social and culture claims of college grads while leaving their technical expertise untouched. Unmaking the Public University incisively sets the record straight, describing a forty-year economic war waged on the college-educated public, and awakening us to a vision of social development shared by scientists and humanists alike.

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Price: $23.96 [Notify me when price goes down.]

&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LP style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"&&RAs founder, editor, and publisher of the intellectual forum www.edge.org, John Brockman is well-positioned to initiate and cultivate an ongoing dialogue with today's leading cutting-edge thinkers. The website is a virtual salon for every type of intellectual and scientific pursuit, from evolutionary biology and quantum physics, to crowd psychology and miniaturized computing. Through this vibrant and varied online community, Brockman has shifted sharply away from the stereotype of the introverted, out-of-touch scientist and introduced the reality of a fully aware and involved scientific society.&&L/P&&R&&LP style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"&&R&&LI&&RScience at the Edge&&L/I&&R reflects this brave new world, and Brockman has assembled some of the today's most revolutionary scholars from all scientific disciplines to discuss their unique contributions to the development of modern thought. Far from being a catalog of the marginal disputes of a quarrelsome scientific class, this is a thrilling and intellectually stimulating discussion that serves as an introduction to some of the best minds of the 21st century. This revised and updated version features additional conversations, as well as a new introduction written especially for this edition.&&L/P&&R&&LP style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 0.5in"&&R &&L/P&&R&&LP style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"&&RThe book contains Brockman's discussions, many with bestselling authors, on the following topics:&&L/P&&R

• Population theory, with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jared Diamond
• Human nature, with Steven Pinker, author of &&LI&&RThe Stuff Of Thought&&L/I&&R
• Technology and the human mind, with Ray Kurzweil, author of the controversial book &&LI&&RThe Age of Spiritual Machines&&L/I&&R
• Ways for humans to make themselves more intelligent, with Marvin Minsky, author of &&LI&&RThe Emotion Machine&&L/I&&R
• Evolution of mankind's violence, with Richard Wrangham, co-author of &&LI&&RDemonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence&&L/I&&R
• Possibilities of robot life, with Rodney Brooks, author of &&LI&&RFlesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us&&L/I&&R
• Cognitive science and brain development, with Marc Hauser, author of &&LI&&RThe Evolution of Communication&&L/I&&R
• String theory and dimensions of space, with Lisa Randall, Harvard physics professor

&&LP style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in"&&RA selection of the Scientific American Book Club.&&L/P&&R&&L/DIV&&R&&L/DIV&&R&&L/DIV&&R&&L/DIV&&R.
Price: $11.23 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph was originally published in 1972, one year after the artist's death, in conjunction with a retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art. Edited and designed by Arbus's daughter, Doon, and her friend and colleague, painter Marvin Israel, the monograph contains eighty of her most masterful photos. The images in this newly published edition, marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the collection's original publication, were printed from new three-hundred-line-screen duotone film, allowing for startlingly clear reproduction. The impact of the collection is heightened by the introduction, which contains excerpts of audio tapes in which Arbus discusses her experiences as a photographer and her feelings about the often bizarre nature of her subjects. Diane Arbus's work has indelibly impacted modern visual sensibilities, evidenced by the intensely personal moments captured in this powerful group of photographs..
Price: $25.02 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Orhan Pamuk’s first book since winning the Nobel Prize, Other Colors is a dazzling collection of essays on his life, his city, his work, and the example of other writers

Over the last three decades, Pamuk has written, in addition to his seven novels, scores of pieces—personal, critical, and meditative—the finest of which he has brilliantly woven together here. He opens a window on his private life, from his boyhood dislike of school to his daughter’s precocious melancholy, from his successful struggle to quit smoking to his anxiety at the prospect of testifying against some clumsy muggers who fell upon him during a visit to New York City. From ordinary obligations such as applying for a passport or sharing a holiday meal with relatives, he takes extraordinary flights of imagination; in extreme moments, such as the terrifying days following a cataclysmic earthquake in Istanbul, he lays bare our most basic hopes and fears. Again and again Pamuk declares his faith in fiction, engaging the work of such predecessors as Laurence Sterne and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, sharing fragments from his notebooks, and commenting on his own novels. He contemplates his mysterious compulsion to sit alone at a desk and dream, always returning to the rich deliverance that is reading and writing.

By turns witty, moving, playful, and provocative, Other Colors glows with the energy of a master at work and gives us the world through his eyes, assigning every radiant theme and shifting mood its precise shade in the spectrum of significance.

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Price: $13.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

David Berg knows how to win cases. And he knows how to tell a story. In The Trial Lawyer: What It Takes To Win Berg puts both skills to dazzling use in an engaging and instructive guide to winning at trial. Berg covers the key elements of a trial - persuasion, discovery, jury studies, voir dire, opening arguments, cross examinations, preparing and presenting witnesses and closing arguments - but he also shares his thoughts on what it takes to win - whether winning means a decisive verdict or an extraordinary settlement..
Price: $47.25 [Notify me when price goes down.]