July 2018 list by Donalee Jacobs
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Barons of the Sea: And Their Race to Build the World’s Fastest Clipper Ship
by Steven Ujifusa
In the grand tradition of David McCullough and Ron Chernow, the sweeping story of the nineteenth-century American dynasties who battled for dominance of the tea and opium trades. Barons of the Sea tells the story of a handful of cutthroat competitors who raced to build the fastest, finest, most profitable clipper ships to carry their precious cargo to American shores. They were visionary, eccentric shipbuilders, debonair captains, and socially-ambitious merchants with names like Forbes and Delano—men whose business interests took them from the cloistered confines of China's expatriate communities to the sin city decadence of Gold Rush-era San Francisco, and from the teeming hubbub of East Boston's shipyards and to the lavish sitting rooms of New York's Hudson Valley estates.
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Blood & Ivy: The 1849 Murder That Scandalized Harvard
by Paul Collins
On November 23, 1849, in the heart of Boston, one of the city's richest men vanished. Dr. George Parkman, a Brahmin who owned much of Boston's West End, was last seen that afternoon visiting his alma mater, Harvard Medical School. Police scoured city tenements and the harbor-some leads put Parkman at sea or in Manhattan-but a Harvard janitor held a much darker suspicion: that their ruthless benefactor had never even left the Medical School building. His shocking discovery engulfed America in one of its most infamous trials, The Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. John White Webster, Harvard's professor of chemistry. A baffling case of red herrings, grave robbing, and dismemberment, it became a landmark in the use of medical forensics.
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Boundaries for Your Soul: How to Turn Your Overwhelming Thoughts and Feelings into Your Greatest Allies
by Ph.d. Cook, Alison
Do you ever struggle to calm your competing, internal "enemies"? Boundaries for Your Soul provides a Spirit-based plan for creating remarkable serenity within by helping you recognize that these often-overwhelming emotions are not your enemies; rather, they are helpers who have gone well beyond their roles, robbing you of deep-down joy and genuine connection with others. By compassionately guiding them to their proper functions, however, you can make them your greatest encouragers and allies.
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The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking
by Mikael Krogerus
Most of us face the same questions every day: What do I want? How can I get it? How can I live more happily and work more efficiently? Whether you're a chronic second-guesser or just eager for new ways to look at your world, Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschâppeler will teach you how to improve your understanding of the dilemmas you face and how to make better decisions every day. Taught in MBA courses and elsewhere, The Decision Book contains classics like the Swiss Cheese Model for reviewing mistakes and the Personal Performance Model for testing whether or not to switch jobs. This revised edition includes a model for identifying cognitive biases and the expectation model to help you choose a life partner.
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Goodbye, Sweet Girl: A Story of Domestic Violence and Survival
by Kelly Sundberg
Kelly Sundberg's husband, Caleb, was a funny, warm, supportive man and a wonderful father to their little boy Reed. He was also vengeful and violent. But Sundberg did not know that when she fell in love, and for years told herself he would get better. He didn't. In her remarkable book, she offers an intimate record of the joys and terrors that accompanied her long, difficult awakening, and presents a haunting, heartbreaking glimpse into why women remain too long in dangerous relationships. To understand herself and her violent marriage, Sundberg looks to her childhood in Salmon, a small, isolated mountain community known as the most redneck town in Idaho. Like her marriage, Salmon is a place of deep contradictions, where Mormon ranchers and hippie back-to-landers live side-by-side; a place that takes pride in its individualism and rugged self-sufficiency, yet is beholden to church and communal standards at all costs.
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Healing PCOS
by Amy Medling
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, or PCOS, is one of the most common hormonal disorders, and the most common cause of female infertility, affecting roughly five million American women. Because its symptoms are so varied-including stubborn weight gain, acne, mood swings, abnormal hair loss or growth, and irregular menstrual cycles-PCOS is often misdiagnosed and treated with "Band-Aid" pharmaceuticals with uncomfortable side effects that only mask the root causes. In Healing PCOS, certified health coach and founder of PCOS Diva, Amy Medling guides listeners step-by-step through her transformative 21-day plan to successfully treat their PCOS. Grounded in the latest medical research and filled with the knowledge Amy has acquired living with PCOS herself and helping tens of thousands of women take charge of their fertility, health, and happiness.
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Indianapolis
by Lynn Vincent
Just after midnight on July 30, 1945, days after delivering the components of the atomic bomb from California to the Pacific Islands, the USS Indianapolis was sailing in the Philippine Sea when she was struck by two Japanese torpedoes. The ship sank within minutes. Some 300 men went down with the ship. Nearly 900 made it into the water alive. For the next five nights and four days, the men battled injuries, sharks, dehydration, insanity, and eventually each other. Only 316 survived. For the better part of a century, the story of USS Indianapolis has been understood as a sinking tale. The reality, however, is far more complicated—and compelling. Now, for the first time, thanks to a decade of original research and interviews with 107 survivors and eyewitnesses, Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic tell the complete story of the ship, her crew, and their final mission to save one of their own.
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Outside the Jukebox: How I Turned My Vintage Music Obsession into My Dream Gig
by Scott Bradlee
With student loan debt piling up and no lucrative gigs around the corner, musician Scott Bradlee found himself struggling to choose between paying the rent or avoiding defaulting on his loans. It was in these desperate circumstances that he began experimenting, applying his passion for jazz, ragtime, and doo wop styles to contemporary hits by singers like Macklemore and Miley Cyrus, resulting in Postmodern Jukebox, the rotating supergroup devoted to period covers of pop songs. Today, the success he has had is astonishing, with Postmodern Jukebox collecting upwards of three million subscribers on YouTube, selling out major venues around the world, and developing previously unknown talent into superstars. Bradlee takes readers through the false starts, absurd failures, and unexpected breakthroughs of his journey from a lost musician to a musical kingmaker headlining Radio City Music Hall, presenting all the entrepreneurial insights he learned along the way..
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Parents Rising: 8 Strategies for Raising Kids Who Love God, Respect Authority, and Value What's Right
by Arlene Pellicane
How to raise godly children in a godless world. Do you feel like you're fighting a losing battle? Against the culture, against the busyness, sometimes even against your spouse and kids Often it seems like everything is against you as a parent, and your everyday life can feel far from joy-filled. But it doesn't need to be that way. Parents Rising will show you eight cultural trends that parents are up against today and what you can do to claim victory. This book is about growth not guilt. It's not a pep talk, or a "try harder" speech. This is real help for real problems that every parent faces. It's a way to focus your efforts so that they'll be more effective and you'll be less exhausted.
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The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin's Spies Are Winning Control of America and Dismantling the West
by Malcolm Nance
Retired Intelligence officer and New York Times bestselling author of The Plot to Hack America, Malcolm Nance offers a provocative analysis of the Russian Federation's master plan. Revelatory, insightful, and at times shocking, The Plot to Destroy Democracy reveals how Russia's recent hackings in the United States and Europe and its increasingly belligerent rhetoric fit into its master plan to unseat democracies around the world.
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Predictive Marketing: Easy Ways Every Marketer Can Use Customer Analytics and Big Data
by Omer Artun
The marketing paradigm is changing, and this book provides a blueprint for navigating the transition from creative- to data-driven marketing, from one-size-fits-all to one-on-one, and from marketing campaigns to real-time customer experiences. You'll learn how to use machine-learning technologies to improve customer acquisition and customer growth, and how to identify and re-engage at-risk or lapsed customers by implementing an easy, automated approach to predictive analytics. Much more than just theory and testament to the power of personalized marketing, this book focuses on action, helping you understand and actually begin using this revolutionary approach to the customer experience.
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The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela
by Nelson Mandela
An unforgettable portrait of one of the most inspiring historical figures of the twentieth century, published on the centenary of his birth. Arrested in 1962 as South Africa's apartheid regime intensified its brutal campaign against political opponents, forty-four-year-old lawyer and African National Congress activist Nelson Mandela had no idea that he would spend the next twenty-seven years in jail. During his 10,052 days of incarceration, Mandela wrote hundreds of letters to unyielding prison authorities, fellow activists, government officials, and most memorably to his courageous wife, Winnie, and his five children. Now, 255 of these letters, a majority of which were previously unseen, provide the most intimate portrait of Mandela since Long Walk to Freedom.
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The Promise of the Grand Canyon
by John F. Ross
A timely new account of the first complete exploration of the Grand Canyon and Powell's subsequent career as a pioneer of sustainable development in the West. When John Wesley Powell became the first person to navigate the entire Colorado River, through the Grand Canyon, he completed what Lewis and Clark had begun nearly 70 years earlier—the final exploration of continental America. John Ross recreates Powell's expedition in all its glory and terror, but it was his second career as a scientist, bureaucrat, and land-management pioneer that started a national conversation about stewardship of the new land when most everyone else still looked upon it as simply an inexhaustibly exploitable resource. Powell didn't have all the answers, but was first to ask the right questions.
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The Rise of Rome: From the Iron Age to the Punic Wars
by Kathryn Lomas
By the third century BC, the once-modest settlement of Rome had conquered most of Italy and was poised to build an empire throughout the Mediterranean basin. What transformed a humble city into the preeminent power of the region? In The Rise of Rome, historian and archaeologist Kathryn Lomas reconstructs the diplomatic ploys, political stratagems, and cultural exchanges whereby Rome established itself as a dominant player in a region already brimming with competitors. The Latin world, she argues, was not so much subjugated by Rome as unified by it.
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The Shipwreck Hunter
by David L. Mearns
This gripping memoir by the world's foremost marine geologist is an enthralling blend of maritime history, popular science, and Clive Cussler-style adventure. David L. Mearns has discovered some of the world's most fascinating and elusive shipwrecks. From the mighty battleship HMS Hood, sunk in a pyrrhic duel with the Bismarck, to solving the mystery of HMAS Sydney, to the crumbling wooden skeletons of Vasco da Gama's sixteenth century fleet, Mearns has searched for and found dozens of sunken vessels in every ocean of the world. The Shipwreck Hunter chronicles his most intriguing finds. It describes the extraordinary techniques used, the detailed research and mid-ocean stamina and courage required to find a wreck thousands of feet beneath the sea, as well as the moving human stories that lie behind each of these oceanic tragedies.
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Spying on Whales
by Nicholas Pyenson
Nick Pyenson's research gives us the answers to some of our biggest questions about whales. He takes us deep inside the Smithsonian's unparalleled fossil collections, to frigid Antarctic waters, and to the arid desert in Chile, where scientists race against time to document the largest fossil whale site ever found. Full of rich storytelling and scientific discovery, Spying on Whales spans the ancient past to an uncertain future-all to better understand the most enigmatic creatures on Earth.
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Tell Me What You Want
by Justin J. Lehmiller
A leading expert on human sexuality and author of the blog Sex and Psychology offers an unprecedented look at sexual fantasy based on the most comprehensive, scientific survey ever undertaken. It helps listeners better understand their own sexual desires and how to attain them within their relationships, but also to appreciate why the desires of their partners may be so incredibly different.
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A Tiger Among Us: A Story of Valor in Vietnam's a Shau Valley
by Bennie G. Adkins
For four days in early March 1966, then-sergeant Bennie Adkins and sixteen other Green Berets held their undermanned and unfortified position at Camp A Shau, a small training and reconnaissance camp located right next to the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail, North Vietnam's major supply route. Surrounded 10-to-1, the Green Berets endured constant mortar and rifle fire, treasonous allies, and a violent jungle rain storm. But there was one among them who battled ferociously, like a tiger, and, when they finally evacuated, carried the wounded to safety. Forty-eight years later, Bennie Adkins's valor was recognized when he received this nation's highest military award.A Tiger among Us tells the story of how this small group of warriors out-fought and out-maneuvered their enemies, how a remarkable number of them lived to tell about it, and how that tiger became their savior.
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The Weather Detective
by Peter Wohlleben
In this first-ever English translation of The Weather Detective, Peter Wohlleben uses his long experience and deep love of nature to help decipher the weather and our local environments in a completely new and compelling way. Analyzing the explanations for everyday questions and mysteries surrounding weather and natural phenomena, he delves into a new and intriguing world of scientific investigation. At what temperature do bees stay home? Why do southerly winds in winter often bring storms? How can birdsong or flower scents help you tell the time? Full of the very latest discoveries, combined with ancient now-forgotten lore, The Weather Detective helps you read nature's secret signs and discover a rich new layer of meaning in the world around you.
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