2013.2.12 NEW ARRIVALS

The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?

[Paperback]

AUTHOR : Jared Diamond

PUBLISHER : Viking Adult

Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things.

While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterday - in evolutionary time - when everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions.

Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds [Paperback]

AUTHOR : Ping Fu

PUBLISHER : Portfolio

Ping Fu knows what it’s like to be a child soldier, a factory worker, and a political prisoner. To be deported with barely enough money for a plane ticket to a bewildering new land.

To start all over, without family or friends, as a maid, waitress, and student.

She also knows what it’s like to be a pioneering software programmer, an innovator, a CEO, and Inc. magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year.

She has truly led a life in two worlds, and both are explored in this book.

Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers [Hardcover]

AUTHOR : Anne Lamott

PUBLISHER : Riverhead Hardcover

New York Times-best-selling author Anne Lamott writes about three simple prayers essential to coming through the hardships of daily life.

In her new book, Lamott has reduced what she knows about prayer to these simple fundamentals.

It is these three prayers - asking for assistance from a higher power, appreciating what we have that is good, and feeling awe at the world around us - that Lamott believes can help get you through the day.

In the book, Lamott recounts how she came to these insights, explains what they mean to her and how they have helped her get by.

The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?

[Hardcover]

AUTHOR : Seth Godin

PUBLISHER : Portfolio Hardcover

The lesson from the Icarus

story: Play it safe. Listen to the experts. It was the perfect propaganda for the industrial economy.

But we tend to forget that Icarus was also warned not to fly too low. Flying too low is even more dangerous, because it feels deceptively safe.

In this book, Seth Godin challenges readers to find the courage to discover the right height for themselves.