The Best Audiobooks: Excerpts from Great Nonfictio

When one examines the vast amount of material which has been amassed as the result of many prisoners' observations and experiences, three phases of the inmate's mental reactions to camp life become apparent: the period following his admission; the period when he is well entrenched in camp routine; and the period following his release and liberation. Today's book is Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. Frankl is the father of logotherapy and a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Click here to buy the Kindle ebook on Amazon. Click here to buy the audiobook on Audible. Click here to start a free 30-day Audible trial (which includes two free audiobooks). **the above are affiliate links where I earn a commission. thanks for your support of the podcast and future episodes!** Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we publish free audiobook excerpts from bestselling books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each episode is to teach you something you didn't know, or to tell a story, and give you an accurate feel for that particular audiobook. Currently, audiobook samples are not easy to find, nor curated or helpful. And because Audible membership is expensive and purchasing individual audiobooks even more so, I decided to create this podcast. It's a hobby, a passion project of sorts :) Featured authors include Malcolm Gladwell, Ernest Hemingway, Jared Diamond, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace and many more. There will be at least two new books every week. Visit TheBookPod.com to see my curated Amazon store featuring every audiobook on this podcast. You can preview and buy the audiobooks there. Finally, if you like the podcast, please leave a review and help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson

IT WAS HORRIBLY unfair: a public resource—all the fish in the Icelandic sea—was simply turned over to a handful of lucky Icelanders. Overnight, Iceland had its first billionaires, and they were all fishermen. But as social policy it was ingenious: in a single stroke the fish became a source of real, sustainable wealth rather than shaky sustenance. Fewer people were spending less effort catching more or less precisely the right number of fish to maximize the long-term value of Iceland’s fishing grounds. The new wealth transformed Iceland—and turned it from the backwater it had been for 1,100 years to the place that spawned Björk. If Iceland has become famous for its musicians it’s because Icelanders now have time to play music, and much else. Iceland’s youth are paid to study abroad, for instance, and encouraged to cultivate themselves in all sorts of interesting ways. Since its fishing policy transformed Iceland, the place has become, in effect, a machine for turning cod into PhDs. Today's book is Boomerang by Michael Lewis. Lewis is the bestselling author of many popular nonfiction books including The Big Short, Liar's Poker, The New New Thing, and The Blind Side. Click here to buy the Kindle ebook on Amazon. Click here to buy the audiobook on Audible. Click here to start a free 30-day Audible trial (which includes two free audiobooks). **the above are affiliate links where I earn a commission. thanks for your support of the podcast and future episodes!** Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we publish free audiobook excerpts from bestselling books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each episode is to teach you something you didn't know, or to tell a story, and give you an accurate feel for that particular audiobook. Currently, audiobook samples are not easy to find, nor curated or helpful. And because Audible membership is expensive and purchasing individual audiobooks even more so, I decided to create this podcast. It's a hobby, a passion project of sorts :) Featured authors include Malcolm Gladwell, Ernest Hemingway, Jared Diamond, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace and many more. There will be at least two new books every week. Visit TheBookPod.com to see my curated Amazon store featuring every audiobook on this podcast. You can preview and buy the audiobooks there. Finally, if you like the podcast, please leave a review and help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson

THIS BOOK ATTEMPTS TO PROVIDE A SHORT HISTORY OF everybody for the last 13,000 years. The question motivating the book is: Why did history unfold differently on different continents? In case this question immediately makes you shudder at the thought that you are about to read a racist treatise, you aren’t: as you will see, the answers to the question don’t involve human racial differences at all. The book’s emphasis is on the search for ultimate explanations, and on pushing back the chain of historical causation as far as possible. Most books that set out to recount world history concentrate on histories of literate Eurasian and North African societies. Today's book is Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond. Diamond is the author of Collapse, The Third Chimpanzee, and many more. Click here to buy the Kindle ebook on Amazon. Click here to buy the audiobook on Audible. Click here to start a free 30-day Audible trial (which includes two free audiobooks). **the above are affiliate links where I earn a commission. thanks for your support of the podcast and future episodes!** Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we publish free audiobook excerpts from bestselling books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each episode is to teach you something you didn't know, or to tell a story, and give you an accurate feel for that particular audiobook. Currently, audiobook samples are not easy to find, nor curated or helpful. And because Audible membership is expensive and purchasing individual audiobooks even more so, I decided to create this podcast. It's a hobby, a passion project of sorts :) Featured authors include Malcolm Gladwell, Ernest Hemingway, Jared Diamond, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace and many more. There will be at least two new books every week. Visit TheBookPod.com to see my curated Amazon store featuring every audiobook on this podcast. You can preview and buy the audiobooks there. Finally, if you like the podcast, please leave a review and help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Perhaps one reason for the great appeal of the group-selection theory is that it is thoroughly in tune with the moral and political ideals that most of us share. We may frequently behave selfishly as individuals, but in our more idealistic moments we honour and admire those who put the welfare of others first. We get a bit muddled over how widely we want to interpret the word 'others', though. Often altruism within a group goes with selfishness between groups. This is a basis of trade unionism. At another level the nation is a major beneficiary of our altruistic self-sacrifice, and young men are expected to die as individuals for the greater glory of their country as a whole. Moreover, they are encouraged to kill other individuals about whom nothing is known except that they belong to a different nation. Today's book is The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. It is perhaps the seminal book at the intersection of popular science and natural evolution. Did you know that Dawkins later wished he had named the book The Immortal Gene? Click here to buy the Kindle ebook on Amazon. Click here to buy the audiobook on Audible. Click here to start a free 30-day Audible trial (which includes two free audiobooks). **the above are affiliate links where I earn a commission. thanks for your support of the podcast and future episodes!** Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we publish free audiobook excerpts from bestselling books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each episode is to teach you something you didn't know, or to tell a story, and give you an accurate feel for that particular audiobook. Currently, audiobook samples are not easy to find, nor curated or helpful. And because Audible membership is expensive and purchasing individual audiobooks even more so, I decided to create this podcast. It's a hobby, a passion project of sorts :) Featured authors include Malcolm Gladwell, Ernest Hemingway, Jared Diamond, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace and many more. There will be at least two new books every week. Visit TheBookPod.com to see my curated Amazon store featuring every audiobook on this podcast. You can preview and buy the audiobooks there. Finally, if you like the podcast, please leave a review and help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The evidence is persuasive: activities that impose high demands on System 2 require self-control, and the exertion of self-control is depleting and unpleasant. Unlike cognitive load, ego depletion is at least in part a loss of motivation. After exerting self-control in one task, you do not feel like making an effort in another, although you could do it if you really had to. In several experiments, people were able to resist the effects of ego depletion when given a strong incentive to do so. In contrast, increasing effort is not an option when you must keep six digits in short-term memory while performing a task. Ego depletion is not the same mental state as cognitive busyness. Today's book is Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman is the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics winner for his work in decision making and social psychology. Click here to buy the Kindle ebook on Amazon. Click here to buy the audiobook on Audible. Click here to start a free 30-day Audible trial (which includes two free audiobooks). **the above are affiliate links where I earn a commission. thanks for your support of the podcast and future episodes!** Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we publish free audiobook excerpts from bestselling books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each episode is to teach you something you didn't know, or to tell a story, and give you an accurate feel for that particular audiobook. Currently, audiobook samples are not easy to find, nor curated or helpful. And because Audible membership is expensive and purchasing individual audiobooks even more so, I decided to create this podcast. It's a hobby, a passion project of sorts :) Featured authors include Malcolm Gladwell, Ernest Hemingway, Jared Diamond, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace and many more. There will be at least two new books every week. Here's a curated Amazon store including every audiobook featured on this podcast. You can preview and buy the audiobooks there. Finally, if you like the podcast, please leave a review and help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson

So what do introverted leaders do differently from—and sometimes better than—extroverts? One answer comes from the work of Wharton management professor Adam Grant, who has spent considerable time consulting with Fortune 500 executives and military leaders—from Google to the U.S. Army and Navy. When we first spoke, Grant was teaching at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, where he’d become convinced that the existing research, which showed a correlation between extroversion and leadership, didn’t tell the whole story. Today's book is Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. Susan is a self-professed introvert and the bestselling author of Quiet and Quiet Power. Click here to buy the Kindle ebook on Amazon. Click here to buy the audiobook on Audible. Click here to start a free 30-day Audible trial (which includes two free audiobooks). **the above are affiliate links where I earn a commission. thanks for your support of the podcast and future episodes!** Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we publish free audiobook excerpts from bestselling books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each episode is to teach you something you didn't know, or to tell a story, and give you an accurate feel for that particular audiobook. Currently, audiobook samples are not easy to find, nor curated or helpful. And because Audible membership is expensive and purchasing individual audiobooks even more so, I decided to create this podcast. It's a hobby, a passion project of sorts :) Featured authors include Malcolm Gladwell, Ernest Hemingway, Jared Diamond, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace and many more. There will be at least two new books every week. For more podcast episodes and info, visit kevinhabits.com If you'd like to support this podcast, shop at Amazon using the above links or help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea, and the idea is very simple. It is that the best way to understand the emergence of fashion trends, the ebb and flow of crime waves, or, for that matter, the transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth, or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do... Today's book is The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell is a writer for The New Yorker and the bestselling author of Outliers, Blink, and David And Goliath. Click here to buy the Kindle ebook on Amazon. Click here to buy the audiobook on Audible. Click here to start a free 30-day Audible trial (which includes two free audiobooks). **the above are affiliate links where I earn a commission. thanks for your support of the podcast and future episodes!** Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we publish free audiobook excerpts from bestselling books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each episode is to teach you something you didn't know, or to tell a story, and give you an accurate feel for that particular audiobook. Currently, audiobook samples are not easy to find, nor curated or helpful. And because Audible membership is expensive and purchasing individual audiobooks even more so, I decided to create this podcast. It's a hobby, a passion project of sorts :) Featured authors include Malcolm Gladwell, Ernest Hemingway, Jared Diamond, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace and many more. There will be at least two new books every week. Here's a curated Amazon store including every audiobook featured on this podcast. You can preview and buy the audiobooks there. Finally, if you like the podcast, please leave a review and help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson

In long-range planning for a trip, I think there is a private conviction that it won’t happen. As the day approached, my warm bed and comfortable house grew increasingly desirable and my dear wife incalculably precious. To give these up for three months for the terrors of the uncomfortable and unknown seemed crazy. I didn’t want to go. Something had to happen to forbid my going, but it didn’t. I could get sick, of course, but that was one of my main but secret reasons for going at all. During the previous winter I had become rather seriously ill with one of those carefully named difficulties which are the whispers of approaching age. When I came out of it I received the usual lecture about slowing up, losing weight, limiting the cholesterol intake. It happens to many men, and I think doctors have memorized the litany. It had happened to so many of my friends. The lecture ends, “Slow down. You’re not as young as you once were.” And I had seen so many begin to pack their lives in cotton wool, smother their impulses, hood their passions, and gradually retire from their manhood into a kind of spiritual and physical semi-invalidism. In this they are encouraged by wives and relatives, and it’s such a sweet trap. Today's featured book is Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck. It's a travelogue of Steinbeck's roadtrip across America. Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962 for writing, among others, East of Eden, The Winter of our Discontent, The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and many more. To buy the Kindle ebook: http://amzn.to/1ZQIITh To buy the Audible audiobook: http://amzn.to/1Yr3M3U For a free 30-day Audible trial: http://amzn.to/1q9rIw7 Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we publish free audiobook excerpts from bestselling books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each episode is to teach you something you didn't know, or to tell a story, and give you an accurate feel for that particular audiobook. Because Audible is so expensive, and audio samples are not easy to find, nor curated or edited, we decided to launch this podcast. Featured authors include Malcolm Gladwell, Ernest Hemingway, Jared Diamond, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace and many more. There will be at least one or two new books every week! Here's a curated Amazon store including every audiobook featured on this podcast. You can preview and buy the audiobooks there. Finally, if you like the podcast, please leave a review and help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our present ideas about the motion of bodies date back to Galileo and Newton. Before them people believed Aristotle, who said that the natural state of a body was to be at rest and that it moved only if driven by a force or impulse. It followed that a heavy body should fall faster than a light one, because it would have a greater pull toward the earth. The Aristotelian tradition also held that one could work out all the laws that govern the universe by pure thought: it was not necessary to check by observation. So no one until Galileo bothered to see whether bodies of different weight did in fact fall at different speeds. It is said that Galileo demonstrated that Aristotle’s belief was false by dropping weights from the leaning tower of Pisa... Today's featured book is A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes by Stephen Hawking, a #1 NYT Bestselling Book and a perennial science classic. Hawking is the author of The Theory of Everything, The Universe in a Nutshell, and many others. This is the book for anyone interested in physics, astronomy, and the study of our universe. To buy the Kindle ebook: http://amzn.to/1UvW3MH To buy the Audible audiobook: http://amzn.to/1UeybzF For a free 30-day Audible trial: http://amzn.to/1q9rIw7 Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we publish free audiobook excerpts from bestselling books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each episode is to teach you something you didn't know, or to tell a story, and give you an accurate feel for that particular audiobook. Because Audible is so expensive, and audio samples are not easy to find, nor curated or edited, we decided to launch this podcast. Featured authors include Malcolm Gladwell, Ernest Hemingway, Jared Diamond, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace and many more. There will be at least one or two new books every week! Here's a curated Amazon store including every audiobook featured on this podcast. You can preview and buy the audiobooks there. Finally, if you like the podcast, please leave a review and help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The first thing to understand about nutritionism is that it is not the same thing as nutrition. As the “-ism” suggests, it is not a scientific subject but an ideology. Ideologies are ways of organizing large swaths of life and experience under a set of shared but unexamined assumptions. This quality makes an ideology particularly hard to see, at least while it’s still exerting its hold on your culture. A reigning ideology is a little like the weather—all pervasive and so virtually impossible to escape. Still, we can try. In the case of nutritionism, the widely shared but unexamined assumption is that the key to understanding food is indeed the nutrient. Put another way: Foods are essentially the sum of their nutrient parts. From this basic premise flow several others. Today's featured book is In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan, the author of the bestselling The Omnivore's Dilemma, Cooked, Food Rules, and many others. It's a thoughtful and thorough look at the modern food industry - dominated by the ideology of nutritionism - why it's bad for us, and how we got there. To buy the Kindle ebook: http://amzn.to/28xNdIh To buy the Audible audiobook: http://amzn.to/1ZLCX9q For a free 30-day Audible trial: http://amzn.to/1q9rIw7 Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we publish free audiobook excerpts from bestselling books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each episode is to teach you something you didn't know, or to tell a story, and give you an accurate feel for that particular audiobook. Because Audible is so expensive, and audio samples are not easy to find, nor curated or edited, we decided to launch this podcast. Featured authors include Malcolm Gladwell, Ernest Hemingway, Jared Diamond, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace and many more. There will be at least one or two new books every week! Here's a curated Amazon store including every audiobook featured on this podcast. You can preview and buy the audiobooks there. Finally, if you like the podcast, please leave a review and help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Law 1: Never Outshine the Master Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power... Today's featured book is The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene, the author of Mastery and The Art of Seduction. It's a wonderful, interdisciplinary look at the lessons and insights that enabled leaders throughout history to acquire power and keep it. To buy the Kindle ebook: http://amzn.to/1YgzK31 To buy the Audible audiobook: http://amzn.to/1ZBOmIQ For a free 30-day Audible trial: http://amzn.to/1q9rIw7 Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we publish free audiobook excerpts from bestselling books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each episode is to teach you something you didn't know, or to tell a story, and give you an accurate feel for that particular audiobook. Because Audible is so expensive, and audio samples are not easy to find, nor curated or edited, we decided to launch this podcast. Featured authors include Malcolm Gladwell, Ernest Hemingway, Jared Diamond, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace and many more. There will be at least one or two new books every week! Here's a curated Amazon store including every audiobook featured on this podcast. You can preview and buy the audiobooks there. Finally, if you like the podcast, please leave a review and help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson

We tend to think of cancer as a modern illness because its metaphors are so modern. It is a disease of overproduction, of fulminant growth, growth unstoppable, growth tipped into the abyss of no control. Modern biology encourages us to imagine the cell as a molecular machine. Cancer is that machine unable to quench its initial demand... Today's featured book is The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee. It's a Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece that tells the story of cancer - as a disease, a social phenomenon, and a metaphor. From the author of The Gene: An Intimate History. To buy the Kindle ebook: http://amzn.to/1TZ0UM6 To buy the Audible audiobook: http://amzn.to/24A83SF For a free 30-day Audible trial: http://amzn.to/1q9rIw7 Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we publish free audiobook excerpts from bestselling books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each episode is to teach you something you didn't know, or to tell a story, and give you an accurate feel for that particular audiobook. Because Audible is so expensive, and audio samples are not easy to find, nor curated or edited, we decided to launch this podcast. Featured authors include Malcolm Gladwell, Ernest Hemingway, Jared Diamond, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace and many more. There will be at least one or two new books every week! Here's a curated Amazon store including every audiobook featured on this podcast. You can preview and buy the audiobooks there. Finally, if you like the podcast, please leave a review and help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson

THERE WAS ONCE a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the fall mornings. Along the roads, laurel, viburnum and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler’s eye through much of the year. Today's featured book is Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Published in 1962, the book played an important role in growing public awareness of pollution and environmental conservation. It won the National Book Award for nonfiction and was among Discover Magazine's 25 greatest science books of all-time. To buy the Kindle ebook: http://amzn.to/1O9vBfa To buy the Audible audiobook: http://amzn.to/25HJrx2 For a free 30-day Audible trial: http://amzn.to/1q9rIw7 Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we publish free audiobook excerpts from bestselling books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each episode is to teach you something you didn't know, or to tell a story, and give you an accurate feel for that particular audiobook. Because Audible is so expensive, and audio samples are not easy to find, nor curated or edited, we decided to launch this podcast. Featured authors include Malcolm Gladwell, Ernest Hemingway, Jared Diamond, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace and many more. There will be at least one or two new books every week! Here's a curated Amazon store including every audiobook featured on this podcast. You can preview and buy the audiobooks there. Finally, if you like the podcast, please leave a review and help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson

...Images of tranquillity and security haunt it: a particular job, social conquest or material acquisition always seems to hold out the promise of an end to craving. In reality, however, each worry will soon enough be replaced by another, and one desire by the next, generating a relentless cycle of what Buddhists call ‘grasping’, or up?d?na in Sanskrit... Today's featured book is Religion for Atheists: A non-believer's guide to the uses of religion by Alain de Botton, the author of How Proust Can Change Your Life and The Course of Love. de Botton is one of my favorite public thinkers and he writes movingly and powerfully about how anyone - including atheists - can learn from organized religion to improve their lives. To buy the Kindle ebook: http://amzn.to/24jbGMy To buy the Audible audiobook: http://amzn.to/1O5Xvsr For a free 30-day Audible trial: http://amzn.to/1q9rIw7 Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we publish free audiobook excerpts from bestselling books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each episode is to teach you something you didn't know, or to tell a story, and give you an accurate feel for that particular audiobook. Because Audible is so expensive, and audio samples are not easy to find, nor curated or edited, we decided to launch this podcast. Featured authors include Malcolm Gladwell, Ernest Hemingway, Jared Diamond, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace and many more. There will be at least one or two new books every week! Here's a curated Amazon store including every audiobook featured on this podcast. You can preview and buy the audiobooks there. Finally, if you like the podcast, please leave a review and help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Write in a way that draws the reader's attention to the sense and substance of the writing, rather than to the mood and temper of the author. If the writing is solid and good, the mood and temper of the writer will eventually be revealed and not at the expense of the work. Therefore, the first piece of advice is this: to achieve style, begin by affecting none — that is, place yourself in the background. A careful and honest writer does not need to worry about style. As you become proficient in the use of language, your style will emerge, because you yourself will emerge, and when this happens you will find it increasingly easy to break through the barriers that separate you from other minds, other hearts — which is, of course, the purpose of writing, as well as its principal reward. Fortunately, the act of composition, or creation, disciplines the mind; writing is one way to go about thinking, and the practice and habit of writing not only drain the mind but supply it, too... Today's featured book is The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. This is the book affectionately known as the "Strunk and White". It's THE classic, timeless style manual for writers of American English. Whatever you're writing about - whether a poem or a news article, a blog post or a novel, this book can help you improve your writing style and skill. Please note: this is Part 1 of a two-parter. Part 2 will be published at a later date. To buy the Kindle ebook: http://amzn.to/1O5Zj4M To buy the Audible audiobook: http://amzn.to/283NvX7 For a free 30-day Audible trial: http://amzn.to/1q9rIw7 Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we publish free audiobook excerpts from bestselling books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each episode is to teach you something you didn't know, or to tell a story, and give you an accurate feel for that particular audiobook. Because Audible is so expensive, and audio samples are not easy to find, nor curated or edited, we decided to launch this podcast. Featured authors include Malcolm Gladwell, Ernest Hemingway, Jared Diamond, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace and many more. There will be at least one or two new books every week! Here's a curated Amazon store including every audiobook featured on this podcast. You can preview and buy the audiobooks there. Finally, if you like the podcast, please leave a review and help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Passage 1: Let us call Mithridatization the result of an exposure to a small dose of a substance that, over time, makes one immune to additional, larger quantities of it. Passage 2: Lenin in Zurich. I was recently in a cafe-turned-expensive-restaurant in Zurich poring over the overpriced menu... Passage 3: Corporate Teleology. When I was in business school I rarely attended lectures in something called strategic planning... Today's featured book is Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness. It's a powerful and controversial book about the importance of chaos and stress and disorder and how we can maximize our lives and societies to benefit from disorder. To buy the Kindle ebook: http://amzn.to/1NSHwOr To buy the Audible audiobook: http://amzn.to/1qPGS9d For a free 30-day Audible trial: http://amzn.to/1q9rIw7 Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we publish free audiobook excerpts from bestselling books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each episode is to teach you something you didn't know, or to tell a story, and give you an accurate feel for that particular audiobook. Because Audible is so expensive, and audio samples are not easy to find, nor curated or edited, we decided to launch this podcast. Featured authors include Malcolm Gladwell, Ernest Hemingway, Jared Diamond, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace and many more. There will be at least one or two new books every week! Here's a curated Amazon store including every audiobook featured on this podcast. You can preview and buy the audiobooks there. Finally, if you like the podcast, please leave a review and help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Passage 1: Brazil's Secret Weapon. Like many sports fans around the world, soccer coach Simon Clifford was fascinated by the supernatural skills of Brazilian soccer players... Passage 2: So began Ericsson's thirty year odyssey through the kingdom of talent. Ericsson explored all dimensions of skilled performance, studying nurses, gymnasts, violinists and dart players... Passage 3: A Tiny Powerful Idea. In 1997, Gary McPherson set out to investigate a mystery that has puzzled parents and music teachers since time immemorial: why certain children progress quickly at music lessons, and others don't...  Today's featured book is The Talent Code: Unlocking the Secret of Skill in Sports, Art, Music, Math, and Just About Anything by Daniel Coyle, the author of Hardball and Waking Samuel. The Talent Code is a wonderful book about how world-class performers get there. From Brazilian soccer to Meadowmount musicians, it's a global tour of talent hotbeds and a detailed dive into the techniques, habits, and secrets of how to become great at what you do. Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we read free audio excerpts from my favorite books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each reading is to give you a feel for the writer's style and substance, and for you to learn / experience something in the process. Because Audible is so expensive, and audiobook samples are not easy to find (nor curated or edited), I decided to launch this podcast. To buy the Kindle ebook: http://amzn.to/20HJpP1 To buy the Audible audiobook: http://amzn.to/1WnxmrD For a free 30-day Audible trial: http://amzn.to/1q9rIw7 (the above are affiliate links. thanks for your support :) Here's a curated Amazon store including every audiobook featured on this podcast. You can preview and buy the audiobooks there. Finally, if you like the podcast, please leave a review and help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Passage 1: Has attention shrunk? There's a swing band from Shanghai playing lounge music in a crowded Swiss convention hall with hundreds of people milling about... Passage 2: Restoring attention. On vacation at a tropical resort with his family, magazine editor William Falk bemoans, he found himself sitting staring at his work while his daughter waited for him to go to the beach... Passage 3: The Illusion of Understanding. Here was the dilemma and opportunity for a major national retailer. Its magazine buyers were reporting that close to 65% of all magazines printed in the United States were never sold... Today's featured book is Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence by Daniel Goleman, a great book about the importance of focus and concentration in a world where attention (focus) is at a premium.It's a book full of science, stories, and insights on how you can perform better in your daily life. Goleman is the author of the bestseller Emotional Intelligence, as well as Social Intelligence and The Meditative Mind. Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we read free audio excerpts from my favorite books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each reading is to give you a feel for the writer's style and substance, and for you to learn / experience something in the process. Because Audible is so expensive, and audiobook samples are not easy to find (nor curated or edited), I decided to launch this podcast. Featured authors include Cal Newport, Ernest Hemingway, Jared Diamond, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace and many more. You can buy the Kindle ebook here: http://amzn.to/25i5OWp You can buy the Audible audiobook here: http://amzn.to/1WjTjId For a free 30-day Audible trial: http://amzn.to/1q9rIw7 (the above are affiliate links. thanks for your support :) Here's a curated Amazon store including every audiobook featured on this podcast. You can preview and buy the audiobooks there. Finally, if you like the podcast, please leave a review and help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson

To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught us that our earth isn't the center of the universe but merely one of billions of heavenly bodies. From biology we learned that we weren't specially created by God but evolved along with millions of other species. Now archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence... Today's featured reading is a powerful and provocative essay by Jared Diamond titled The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race. Diamond makes a strong argument for why agriculture wasn't, and isn't, the great innovation we think it to be. He is the author of several of my favorite "big question" books, including Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel which will be featured in future episodes. Here's a link to the original essay, in full: http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html Welcome to The Best Audiobooks, where we read free audio excerpts from my favorite books, both fiction and nonfiction. The goal of each reading is to give you a feel for the writer's style and substance, and for you to learn / experience something in the process. Because Audible is so expensive, and audiobook samples are not easy to find (nor curated or edited), I decided to launch this podcast. Featured authors include Cal Newport, Ernest Hemingway, Jared Diamond, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace and many more. I read the full essay. The total length is 18:06. For a free 30-day Audible trial: http://amzn.to/1q9rIw7 (the above are affiliate links. thanks for your support :) Here's a curated Amazon store including every audiobook featured on this podcast. You can preview and buy the audiobooks there. Finally, if you like the podcast, please leave a review and help me spread the word! I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me - Ralph Waldo Emerson