Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - Harry Potter, Book 2

The great epic of Western literature, translated by the acclaimed classicist Robert FaglesA Penguin Classic   Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, presents us with Homer's best-loved and most accessible poem in a stunning modern-verse translation. "Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the...

Lecture 1 sets the stage for our reading of the Iliad by providing an introduction to the plan of the course and summarizing the mythological background assumed by both the Iliad and the Odyssey (also available as a course taught by Dr. Vandiver). Lecture 2 addresses the question of the 400- to 500-year gap between the events described in the Iliad (and, subsequently, the Odyssey) and the time when they were first written down. It describes the Iliad's relationship to traditional...

From  best-selling historian H. W. Brands, a sweeping chronicle of how a few  wealthy businessmen reshaped America from a land of small farmers and  small businessmen into an industrial giant. The  three decades after the Civil War saw a wholesale shift in American  life, and the cause was capitalism. Driven by J. P. Morgan, Andrew  Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and oth­ers like them, armies of men and  women were harnessed to a new vision of massive industry. A society  rooted in the soil...

A New York Times bestseller! “Beautifully crafted and fun to read.” —Louis Galambos, The Wall Street Journal “Nasaw’s research is extraordinary.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Make no mistake: David Nasaw has produced the most thorough, accurate and authoritative biography of Carnegie to date.” —Salon.com The definitive account of the life of Andrew Carnegie  Celebrated historian David Nasaw, whom The New York Times Book Review has called "a meticulous researcher and a cool analyst," brings...

The  definitive and “utterly absorbing” biography of America’s first news  media baron based on newly released private and business documents (Vanity Fair). In The Chief,  David Nasaw presents an intimate portrait of William Randolph Hearst,  famously characterized in the classic film Citizen Kane, and whose  influence was nearly as great as many world leaders. A brilliant  business strategist, Hearst controlled the largest publishing empire in  the United States, including twenty-eight...

This new edition of How to Raise Your Own Salary is filled with foolproof  techniques for acquiring the knowledge and skills for increasing your  share of life’s riches. The detailed dialog between Andrew Carnegie and  Napoleon Hill will mesmerize you with its message. Simultaneously, this  classic work will stimulate your subconscious mind to put into immediate  operation your desire for individual achievement. This book will teach  you how to: -Win riches, power, and prestige. -Discover how...

The story of Agrippina,  at the center of imperial power for three generations, is the story of  the Julio-Claudia dynasty - and of Rome itself, at its bloody,  extravagant, chaotic, ruthless, and political zenith. In  her own time, she was recognized as a woman of unparalleled power.  Beautiful and intelligent, she was portrayed as alternately a ruthless  murderer and helpless victim, the most loving mother and the most  powerful woman of the Roman empire, using sex, motherhood,...

A New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller From New York Times bestselling  author Cal Newport comes a bold vision for liberating workers from the  tyranny of the inbox--and unleashing a new era of productivity. Modern  knowledge workers communicate constantly. Their days are defined by a  relentless barrage of incoming messages and back-and-forth digital  conversations--a state of constant, anxious chatter in which nobody can  disconnect, and so nobody has the cognitive bandwidth...

Cal  Newport's clearly-written manifesto flies in the face of conventional  wisdom by suggesting that it should be a person's talent and skill - and  not necessarily their passion - that determines their career path. Newport,  who graduated from Dartmouth College (Phi Beta Kappa) and earned a PhD.  from MIT, contends that trying to find what drives us, instead of  focusing on areas in which we naturally excel, is ultimately harmful and  frustrating to job seekers. The title is a direct...

One  of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly  rare. If you master this skill, you'll achieve extraordinary results. Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively  demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master  complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep  work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true  fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a...

A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today bestseller "Newport  is making a bid to be the Marie Kondo of technology: someone with an  actual plan for helping you realize the digital pursuits that do, and  don't, bring value to your life."--Ezra Klein, Vox Minimalism is  the art of knowing how much is just enough. Digital minimalism applies  this idea to our personal technology. It's the key to living a focused  life in an increasingly noisy world. In this...

The  brilliance of the Renaissance laid the foundation of the modern world.  Textbooks tell us that it came about as a result of a rediscovery of the  ideas and ideals of classical Greece and Rome. But now bestselling  historian Gavin Menzies makes the startling argument that in the year  1434, China - then the world's most technologically advanced  civilization - provided the spark that set the European Renaissance  ablaze. From that date onward, Europeans embraced Chinese ideas,...

In Vietnam,  Christopher Goscha tells the full history of Vietnam, from antiquity to  the present day. Generations of emperors, rebels, priests, and  colonizers left complicated legacies in this remarkable country. Periods  of Chinese, French, and Japanese rule reshaped and modernized Vietnam,  but so too did the colonial enterprises of the Vietnamese themselves as  they extended their influence southward from the Red River Delta. Over  the centuries, numerous kingdoms, dynasties, and states...

A  dazzling account of the men (and occasional woman) who led the world’s  empires, a book that probes the essence of leadership and power through  the centuries and around the world. From the rise of  Sargon of Akkad, who in the third millennium BCE ruled what is now Iraq  and Syria, to the collapse of the great European empires in the  twentieth century, the empire has been the dominant form of power in  history. Dominic Lieven’s expansive book explores strengths and failings  of the human...

In the classic tradition of Sun Tzu's The Art of War,  here for the first time in English is the timeless wisdom of China's  greatest emperor, Tang Taizong (AD 598-649), which will show anyone who  leads or manages how to achieve unparalleled results and an enduring  legacy. Tang Taizong was arguably the greatest  emperor in Chinese history. In Asia many historians rank him with such  rulers as Augustus, Genghis Khan, and Napoleon. When he founded the Tang  dynasty, Taizong was only 28 years...

On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set  sail from China to "proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to  collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas." When the fleet  returned home in October 1423, the emperor had fallen, leaving China in  political and economic chaos. The great ships were left to rot at their  moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost in the  long, self-imposed isolation that followed was the knowledge that  Chinese...

A portrait of one of the ancient world’s first political celebrities, who veered from failure to success and back again “This colorful biography of Demetrius . . . explores his rich inner  life and reveals an ancient world of violence and intrigue.”—New York Times Book Review The life of Demetrius (337–283 BCE) serves as a through-line to the  forty years following the death of Alexander the Great (323–282 BCE), a  time of unparalleled turbulence and instability in the ancient world....

In his signature larger-than-life style, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Total Recall is a revealing self-portrait of his illustrious, controversial, and truly unique life. The greatest immigrant success story of our time. His story is unique, and uniquely entertaining, and he tells it brilliantly in these pages. He was born in a year of famine, in a small Austrian town, the son of  an austere police chief. He dreamed of moving to America to become a  bodybuilding champion and a movie star. ...

Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 (Part 2)

 Pulitzer Prize-finalist Stephen Kotkin has written the definitive biography of Joseph Stalin, from collectivization and the Great Terror to the conflict with Hitler's Germany that is the signal event of modern world history   In 1929, Joseph Stalin, having already achieved dictatorial power over the vast Soviet Empire, formally ordered the systematic conversion of the world’s largest peasant economy into “socialist modernity,” otherwise known as collectivization, regardless of the...

 [Fixed] The climax and conclusion of one of the best-selling biographies of our time. The New Yorker declared the first volume of Ian Kershaw's two-volume masterpiece "as  close to definitive as anything we are likely to see," and that promise  is fulfilled in this stunning second volume. As Nemesis opens, Adolf Hitler has achieved absolute power within Germany and  triumphed in his first challenge to the European powers. Idolized by  large segments of the population and firmly supported by...

About  national and international power in the "modern" or Post Renaissance  period. Explains how the various powers have risen and fallen over the 5  centuries since the formation of the "new monarchies" in W. Europe.

Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail - Ray Dalio

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Edith Grossman's definitive English translation of the Spanish masterpiece, in an expanded P.S. edition Widely regarded as one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the adventures of the self-created knight-errant Don Quixote  of La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel  through sixteenth-century Spain. You haven't experienced Don Quixote in English...