My life was altered forever when my family moved from California to Suffolk, England. I attended an English school and was exposed to English literature, music, and history. I visited Poet’s Corner in Winchester Cathedral in London, Shakespeare’s home and grave in Stratford-Upon-Avon, and numerous English villages and gardens. Through these experiences, I fell in love with words and rhythm and how they can be used to tell stories. In college, I took a trip across Europe that further transformed my life as I encountered the art and history of Italy and France and the fascinating tableau of cultures across the continent, a trip that further expanded my appreciation of art, architecture, and creativity.
This story has remained one of my most favorite of all time.
While teaching English at a community college, I assigned this book to my students. Its tale, about a young Andalusian, Santiago, who leaves home to seek his destiny, changed my students’ lives and mine.
Together, we grew to appreciate that the best teacher is personal experience. We identified how travel teaches lessons, such as using caution judiciously and the necessity to work hard to achieve goals.
We also discussed how travel provides opportunities to develop skills like learning new languages and raises awareness about other people’s customs and perspectives.
A global phenomenon, The Alchemist has been read and loved by over 62 million readers, topping bestseller lists in 74 countries worldwide. Now this magical fable is beautifully repackaged in an edition that lovers of Paulo Coelho will want to treasure forever.
Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. This is such a book - a beautiful parable about learning to listen to your heart, read the omens strewn along life's path and, above all, follow your dreams.
Santiago, a young shepherd living in the hills of Andalucia, feels that…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
As an acupuncturist and die-hard romantic, I did a deep dive into Taoist teachings when the love of my life passed away suddenly. I was looking for comfort, for answers, for reassurance that such intense chemistry can somehow transcend death. What happened is a long-buried desire to be an author started spinning my grief into Atlantis Writhing, a romantasy I hoped would uplift others enduring a dark night of the soul.
I made the mistake of reading Wuthering Heights right after I finished my favorite romance of all time (Jane Eyre).
I suppose I’d hoped the Brontë sisters, as siblings, would somehow create similar main characters with intense chemistry. But Charlotte’s love story was built on mutual respect and affection; Emily, on the other hand, created the selfish and shameless saga of Heathcliff and Catherine.
Honestly? I had to read a few chapters before I could even begin to appreciate the raw intensity of a connection matched only by the novel’s stormy and violent landscape. Yet I don’t believe there’s ever been a romance novel with more compelling chemistry.
Wuthering Heights is indeed a beautifully – if brutally – written tale about twin flames, and how that type of obsessive craving is a thirst that can never be quenched.
One of the great novels of the nineteenth century, Emily Bronte's haunting tale of passion and greed remains unsurpassed in its depiction of destructive love. Her tragically short life is brilliantly imagined in the major new movie, Emily, starring Emma Mackey in the title role.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition of Wuthering Heights features an afterword by David Pinching.
One wild, snowy night on the Yorkshire moors, a gentleman asks…
As I’ve grown older I’ve become more and more interested in the spiritual aspect of life, believing that we are primarily a soul with a body rather than the other way round. I fell into teaching but have always found more fulfilment in extramural activities like learning about complementary therapies, former lives, and ancient spiritual practices, like dream therapy. I've never been sure which genre my novels fit into, just that they all have elements of romance, mystery, misdeeds, and good deeds, with the purpose of touching the reader’s soul. I believe words can be spells and inspired writing can cast magic.
My grandparents were Irish, which explains why Celtic mythology speaks to me. I hadn’t heard of Dream Angus (aka Aengus) until I read this book, by which time it was too late to quiz my ancestors on this impish Eros, golden-haired bearer of dreams. It was said that sometimes he kissed lovers and, when they parted, the kisses turned into songbirds who followed them home, serenading them with love songs. The author intersperses his telling of the legend with contemporary stories set in Scotland where one of the characters is especially influenced by an aspect of Dream Angus’s personality, sometimes good, sometimes quite the opposite. Angus lives on in a lullaby recorded, among others, by Barbara Dickson. It’s both haunting and sweet, just as love can be.
Dream Angus comes to you at night and bestows dreams. Just the sight of him may be enough to make you lose your heart, for he is also the god of love, youth and beauty.
In this mesmerising retelling of the Celtic myth, Alexander McCall Smith unites dream and reality, leaving us to wonder: what is life but the pursuit of dreams?
The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way. Authors in the series include Karen Armstrong, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, David Grossman, Natsuo…
Mia Lark is running out of options. There is only one way to change the score: the fantasy planet Revivium.
Armed with the powerful magic in the helm and the friendly AI, Hex that goes with it, Mia throws caution out the window. It’s time to find the main guildhall…
As I’ve grown older I’ve become more and more interested in the spiritual aspect of life, believing that we are primarily a soul with a body rather than the other way round. I fell into teaching but have always found more fulfilment in extramural activities like learning about complementary therapies, former lives, and ancient spiritual practices, like dream therapy. I've never been sure which genre my novels fit into, just that they all have elements of romance, mystery, misdeeds, and good deeds, with the purpose of touching the reader’s soul. I believe words can be spells and inspired writing can cast magic.
To some, lucid dreaming (realising you’re in a dream while still dreaming), might come naturally. But if it hasn’t, and you’re willing to spend three weeks practising the techniques, the benefits are well worth it. These include: learning to banish nightmares; developing one’s powers of choice and control; healing and restoring aspects of one’s personality that are limiting personal growth. I used to keep a dream journal, mainly to check whether any dream had been predictive, but lucid dreaming is a completely different ball game, aimed at transforming one’s everyday life. As a writer, I am particularly interested in the benefit of boosting creativity. This is a book for really serious dreamers.
How to Catch A Dream is the ultimate toolkit to become a lucid dreamer to create a happier and more fulfilling waking life.
'Theresa Cheung shows us that the way forward is to understand that consciousness/spiritual awareness is the fundamental ground of all experience.' DEEPAK CHOPRA
Dream expert Theresa Cheung gives you everything you need to dream bigger and better in just three weeks.
Week One: Dream Seeker Everybody dreams, but not everybody remembers them. Not only will week one help you to recall your dreams, it will also help boost your creativity and encourage healthier sleep hygiene…
I have enjoyed mathematics and writing since I’ve been a kid, not only enjoying doing research in mathematics but assisting others to appreciate and enjoy mathematics. Along the way, I’ve gained an interest in the history of mathematics and the mathematicians who created mathematics. Perhaps most important, my primary goal has been to show others how enjoyable mathematics can be. Mathematics has given me the marvelous opportunity to meet and work with other mathematicians who have a similar passion for mathematics.
Have you ever been to a mathematics lecture where the speaker wore a tuxedo and baffled the audience with his mystifying knowledge of numbers? Well, I have and the speaker was Arthur Benjamin, who combined mathematics and magic. He even displayed this knowledge with Stephen Colbert on his earlier show The Colbert Report. It is our good fortune that he describes much of this mathematical wizardry in this fascinating book.
A New York Times Bestseller Arthur Benjamin . . . joyfully shows you how to make nature's numbers dance." ,Bill Nye The Magic of Math is the math book you wish you had in school. Using a delightful assortment of examples,from ice-cream scoops and poker hands to measuring mountains and making magic squares,this book revels in key mathematical fields including arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and calculus, plus Fibonacci numbers, infinity, and, of course, mathematical magic tricks. Known throughout the world as the mathemagician," Arthur Benjamin mixes mathematics and magic to make the subject fun, attractive, and easy to understand for math…
As a kid I read every popular math book I could lay my hands on. When I became a mathematician I wanted to do more than teaching and research. I wanted to tell everyone what a wonderful and vital subject math is. I started writing popular math books, and soon was up to my neck in radio, TV, news media, magazines... For 12 years I wrote the mathematical Recreations Column for Scientific American. I was only the second mathematician in 170 years to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, on TV with a live tiger. The University changed my job description: half research, half ‘outreach’. I had my dream job.
Mathematicians are constantly baffled by the public’s lack of awareness, not just of what mathematics does, but what it is. Today’s technological society functions only because of a vast range of mathematical concepts, techniques, and discoveries, which go far beyond elementary arithmetic and algebra. This was one of the first books to tackle these misunderstandings head on. It does so by examining not just the math and what it’s used for, but the social structures, the ‘conditions of civilization’ that have brought us to this curious state: utterly dependent on math, almost universally unaware that we are.
"A passionate plea against the use of formal mathematical reasoning as a method for solving mankind's problems. . . . An antidote to the Cartesian view that mathematical and scientific knowledge will suffice to solve the central problems of human existence." — The New York Times "These cogitations can and should be read by every literate person." — Science Books and Films "A warning against being seduced or intimidated by mathematics into accepting bad science, bad policies, and bad personal decisions." — Philadelphia Inquirer Rationalist philosopher and mathematician René Descartes visualized a world unified by mathematics, in which all intellectual…
Winner of the 2024 New Mexico - Arizona Book Award.
In this deeply researched novel of America's most celebrated outlaw, Mark Warren sheds light on the human side of Billy the Kid and reveals the intimate stories of the lesser-known players in his legendary life of crime. Warren's fictional composer…
I have taught undergraduate and PhD students physics and biophysics for 36 years, and I never get tired of it. I always look for hot new topics and everyday things that we all see but rarely notice as interesting. I also look for “how could anything like that possibly happen at all?”-type questions and the eureka moment when some idea from physics or math pries off the lid, making a seemingly insoluble problem easy. Finally, I look for the skills and frameworks that will open the most doors to students in their future work.
Steve Strogatz is our generation’s poet laureate of math. I could not put this book down because, although I use math daily, I was amazed at how Strogatz connects everything to everyday experience. Just one example: Hardly anyone gets told about “group theory” in high school because it’s “too advanced”—but here we find it beautifully illustrated with the problem of flipping your mattress twice a year.
This book will help you have your own ideas by opening your eyes to a world of things that just make better sense through the lens of careful analysis, the interplay of the visual and the symbolic, and (just enough) abstraction.
Award-winning Steven Strogatz, one of the foremost popularisers of maths, has written a witty and fascinating account of maths' most compelling ideas and how, so often, they are an integral part of everyday life.
Maths is everywhere, often where we don't even realise. Award-winning professor Steven Strogatz acts as our guide as he takes us on a tour of numbers that - unbeknownst to the unitiated - connect pop culture, literature, art, philosophy, current affairs, business and even every day life. In The Joy of X, Strogatz explains the great ideas of maths - from negative numbers to calculus, fat…
I've been teaching math and physics for more than 20 years as a private tutor. During this time, I experimented with different ways to explain concepts to make them easy to understand. I'm a big fan of using concept maps to show the connections between concepts and teaching topics in an integrated manner, including prerequisites and applications. While researching the material for my book, I read dozens of linear algebra textbooks and watched hundreds of videos, looking for the best ways to explain complicated concepts intuitively. I've tried to distill the essential ideas of linear algebra in my book and prepared this list to highlight the books I learned from.
In my opinion, Prof. Axler's book is the best way to learn the formal proofs of linear algebra theorems.
My undergraduate studies were in engineering, so I never learned the proofs. This is why I chose this book to solidify my understanding of the material; it didn't disappoint! Already, in the first few chapters, I learned new things about concepts that I thought I understood.
The book contains numerous exercises which were essential for the learning process. I went through the exercises with a group of friends, which helped me stay motivated. It wasn't easy, but all the time I invested in the proofs was rewarded by a solid understanding of the material.
I highly recommend this book as a second book on linear algebra.
This best-selling textbook for a second course in linear algebra is aimed at undergrad math majors and graduate students. The novel approach taken here banishes determinants to the end of the book. The text focuses on the central goal of linear algebra: understanding the structure of linear operators on finite-dimensional vector spaces. The author has taken unusual care to motivate concepts and to simplify proofs. A variety of interesting exercises in each chapter helps students understand and manipulate the objects of linear algebra.
The third edition contains major improvements and revisions throughout the book. More than 300 new exercises have…
If you want to know what conducting an orchestra is like, you ask a conductor. If you want to know what being a mathematician is like, you ask a mathematician. I have been studying, researching, and teaching mathematics (mainly at Cambridge but also in France and elsewhere) for a lifetime and loved (almost) every moment of it. In the words of Constance Reid, `Mathematicians are people who devote their lives to what seems to me a wonderful kind of play.'
This book is out of print, but I include it in the hope that some public-spirited publisher may be persuaded to reissue this large-format picture book. It was the first book on mathematics that I read at about the age of ten and it contained precisely what I needed to show me that this was a subject with a history and a use. (Nor am I the only mathematician to have this experience.)
As an adult, I found the same author’s Mathematics for the Million a bit crass and utilitarian but I pardon him everything for a wonderful first experience.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been…
Ramon Ramirez’s Dog is a collection of essays written over the years about the adventures and misadventures, mostly outside but occasionally inside the diplomatic career of a U.S. ambassador. Common threads weaving the stories together are a desire for a life well-lived, balancing career with family and friends, keeping physically…
I'm a British writer, (though I now live and work in California) and a Stanford professor who is passionate about helping everyone know they have endless potential and that math is a subject of creativity, connections, and beautiful ideas. I spend time battling against math elitism, systemic racism, and the other barriers that have stopped women and people of color from going forward in STEM. I am the cofounder of youcubed, a site that inspires millions of educators and their students, with creative mathematics and mindset messages. I've also made a math app, designed to help students feel good about struggling, called Struggly.com. I love to write books that help people develop their mathematical superpowers!
This is a beautiful book filled with glossy color photos, that would be a lovely gift for any girl or woman interested in mathematics, or really, any human.
Inside the book are the “rebel women” who have specialized in mathematics (and yes it seems you still need to be a rebel to succeed in this male-dominated field). I learned so much about the mathematics the women studied and created, as well as the ways they battled for recognition to be able to contribute to mathematics.
The book is filled with powerful and creative mathematics produced by inspirational women.
From rocket scientists to code breakers, discover the incredibly inspiring stories of more than 30 women who fought through the obstacles, shattered the stereotypes, and embraced their STEM passions.
Prepare to be inspired. With more than 200 photos and original interviews with several of the amazing women covered, Power in Numbers: The Rebel Women of Mathematics is a full-color volume that takes aim at the forgotten influence of women on the development of mathematics over the last two millennia.
Each biography reveals the amazing life of a different female mathematician, from her childhood and early influences, to the obstacles she…