The guru to the gurus at last shares his knowledge with the rest of us. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman's seminal studies in behavioral psychology, behavioral economics, and happiness studies have influenced numerous other authors, including Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman at last offers his own, first book for the general public. It is a lucid and enlightening summary of his life's work. It will change the way you think about thinking. Two systems drive the way we think and make choices, Kahneman explains....

We live in a world that’s obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distance we ourselves can travel. We underestimate the range of skills that we can learn and how good we can become. We can all improve at improving. And when opportunity doesn’t knock, there are ways to build a door.

What did your boss mean in that email? Is your mechanic stretching the truth? Whether you’re engaged in a casual conversation or a high-stakes negotiation, it’s critical to understand the subtext of a situation. But with so much interaction happening on screens—via email, texts, or video chat—we are losing the ability to interpret expressions and cues. Furthermore, since many are now savvy about the meaning of body language, it’s become even harder to discern someone’s true thoughts or intentions.

In The WEIRDest People in the World, Joseph Henrich draws on cutting-edge research in anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explore these questions and more. He illuminates the origins and evolution of family structures, marriage, and religion, and the profound impact these cultural transformations had on human psychology. Mapping these shifts through ancient history and late antiquity, Henrich reveals that the most fundamental institutions of kinship and marriage changed dramatically under pressure from the Roman Catholic Church.

We taught people that anxiety is dangerous and damaging, and that the solution to its pain is to eradicate it like we do any disease—prevent it, avoid it, and stamp it out at all costs. Yet cutting-edge therapies, hundreds of self-help books, and a panoply of medications have failed to keep debilitating anxiety at bay. A third of us will struggle with anxiety disorders in our lifetime and rates in children and adults continue to skyrocket.

Jamie Fiore Higgins became one of the few women at the highest ranks of Goldman Sachs. Spurred on by the obligation she felt to her working-class immigrant family, she rose through the ranks and saw it all: out-of-control, lavish parties flowing with never-ending drinks; affairs flouted in the office; rampant drug use; and most pervasively, a discriminatory culture that seemed designed to hold back the few women and people of color employed at the company.

From the celebrated neurobiologist and primatologist, a landmark, genre-defining examination of human behavior, both good and bad, and an answer to the question: Why do we do the things we do? Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: He starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.

Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there's another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn. In our daily lives, too many of us favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. We listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard. We see disagreement as a threat to our egos, rather than an opportunity to learn.

How does the brain—a three-pound wrinkly mass—give rise to intelligence and conscious experience? Was Freud right that we are all plagued by forbidden sexual desires? What is the function of emotions such as disgust, gratitude, and shame? Renowned psychologist Paul Bloom answers these questions and many more in Psych, his riveting new book about the science of the mind.

Everybody has regrets, Daniel H. Pink explains in The Power of Regret. They’re a universal and healthy part of being human. And understanding how regret works can help us make smarter decisions, perform better at work and school, and bring greater meaning to our lives.

Robert Greene is a master guide for millions of listeners, distilling ancient wisdom and philosophy into essential texts for seekers of power, understanding, and mastery. Now he turns to the most important subject of all - understanding people's drives and motivations, even when they are unconscious of them themselves. Whether at work, in relationships, or in shaping the world around you, The Laws of Human Nature offers brilliant tactics for success, self-improvement, and self-defense.

In Both/And Thinking, Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis help listeners cope with multiple, knotted tensions at the same time. Drawing from more than twenty years of pioneering research, they provide tools and lessons for transforming these tensions into opportunities for innovation and personal growth.

When it comes to what we believe, humans see what they want to see. In other words, we have what Julia Galef calls a "soldier" mindset. From tribalism and wishful thinking, to rationalizing in our personal lives and everything in between, we are driven to defend the ideas we most want to believe - and shoot down those we don't.

Paranoid about the “ums” and “uhs” that pepper your presentations? Concerned that people notice your vocal fry? Bewildered by “hella” or the meteoric rise of “so”? In Like, Literally, Dude, linguist Valerie Fridland shows how we can re-imagine these forms as exciting new linguistic frontiers rather than our culture’s impending demise. With delightful irreverence and expertise, Fridland weaves together history, psychology, science, and anecdotes to explain why we speak the way we do today, and how that impacts what our kids may be saying tomorrow.

What made a prominent conspiracy-theorist YouTuber finally see that 9/11 was not a hoax? How do voter opinions shift from neutral to resolute? Can widespread social change only take place when a generation dies out? From one of our greatest thinkers on reasoning, HOW MINDS CHANGE is a book about the science, and the experience, of transformation.

You are a mind reader, born with an extraordinary ability to understand what others think, feel, believe, want, and know. It's a sixth sense you use every day, in every personal and professional relationship you have. At its best, this ability allows you to achieve the most important goal in almost any life: connecting, deeply and intimately and honestly, to other human beings. At its worst, it is a source of misunderstanding and unnecessary conflict, leading to damaged relationships and broken dreams. How good are you at knowing the minds of others?

Many scientific and philosophical ideas are so powerful that they can be applied to our lives at home, work, and school to help us think smarter and more effectively about our behavior and the world around us. Surprisingly, many of these ideas remain unknown to most of us. In Mindware, the world-renowned psychologist Richard Nisbett presents these ideas in clear and accessible detail, offering a tool kit for better thinking and wiser decisions.

In his groundbreaking book Predictably Irrational, social scientist Dan Ariely revealed the multiple biases that lead us into making unwise decisions. Now, in The Upside of Irrationality, he exposes the surprising negative and positive effects irrationality can have on our lives. Focusing on our behaviors at work and in relationships, he offers new insights and eye-opening truths about what really motivates us on the job.

You Are Now Less Dumb is grounded in the idea that we all believe ourselves to be objective observers of reality - except we’re not. But that's okay, because our delusions keep us sane. Expanding on this premise, McRaney provides eye-opening analyses of 15 more ways we fool ourselves every day. This smart and highly entertaining audiobook will be wowing listeners for years to come.

For more than three decades, Dr. John Bargh has been responsible for the revolutionary research into the unconscious mind, research that informed best sellers like Blink and Thinking Fast and Slow. Now, in what Dr. John Gottman said "will be the most important and exciting book in psychology that has been written in the past 20 years", Dr. Bargh takes us on an entertaining and enlightening tour of the forces that affect everyday behavior while transforming our understanding of ourselves in profound ways.

A Harvard Business School student pays over $200 for a $20 bill. Washington, D.C., commuters ignore a free subway concert by a violin prodigy. A veteran airline pilot attempts to take off without control-tower clearance and collides with another plane on the runway. Why do we do the wildly irrational things we sometimes do?

We all want to experience pleasure and avoid pain. But there are really two kinds of pleasure and pain that motivate everything we do. If you are promotion-focused, you want to advance and avoid missed opportunities. If you are prevention-focused, you want to minimize losses and keep things working. And as Tory Higgins has found in his groundbreaking research, if you understand how people focus, you have the power to motivate yourself and everyone around you.

I know my own mind. I am able to assess others in a fair and accurate way. These self-perceptions are challenged by leading psychologists Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald as they explore the hidden biases we all carry from a lifetime of exposure to cultural attitudes about age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexuality, disability status, and nationality. Blindspot is the authors’ metaphor for the portion of the mind that houses hidden biases.

If we could turn back the clock psychologically, could we also turn it back physically? For more than 30 years, award-winning social psychologist Ellen Langer has studied this provocative question, and now has a conclusive answer: opening our minds to what's possible, instead of clinging to accepted notions about what's not, can lead to better health at any age.

In this witty and perceptive debut, a former editor at Psychology Today shows us how magical thinking makes life worth living. Psychologists have documented a litany of cognitive biases and explained their positive functions. Now, Matthew Hutson shows us that even the most hardcore skeptic indulges in magical thinking all the time - and it's crucial to our survival. Drawing on evolution, cognitive science, and neuroscience, Hutson shows us that magical thinking has been so useful to us that it's hardwired into our brains.

Humor, like pornography, is famously difficult to define. We know it when we see it, but is there a way to figure out what we really find funnyand why? In this fascinating investigation into the science of humor and laughter, cognitive neuroscientist Scott Weems uncovers what’s happening in our heads when we giggle, guffaw, or double over with laughter. While we typically think of humor in terms of jokes or comic timing, in Ha! Weems proposes a provocative new model.

"Correlation does not imply causation". This mantra has been invoked by scientists for decades and has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. But today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, sparked by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and placed causality - the study of cause and effect - on a firm scientific basis.

Between what can be learned from evolutionary psychology and cognitive science a picture emerges. In Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life, social psychologist Douglas Kenrick fuses these two fields to create a coherent story of human nature. In his analysis, many ingrained, apparently irrational behaviors—one-night stands, prejudice, conspicuous consumption, even art and religious devotion—are quite explicable and (when desired) avoidable.

In The Upside of Your Dark Side, two pioneering researchers in the field of psychology show that while mindfulness, kindness, and positivity can take us far, they cannot take us all the way. Sometimes, they can even hold us back. Emotions like anger, anxiety, or doubt might be uncomfortable, but it turns out that they are also incredibly useful.

The Plateau Effect is a powerful law of nature that affects everyone. Learn to identify plateaus and break through any stagnancy in your life - from diet and exercise, to work, to relationships. The Plateau Effect shows how athletes, scientists, therapists, companies, and musicians around the world are learning to break through their plateau - to turn off the forces that cause people to “get used to” things - and turn on human potential and happiness in ways that seemed impossible.

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.

Tradition says there are three ways to grow a company's revenue: fire up the sales team with empty promises, cut costs and downsize, or cook the books. But what if there's a better way, a way that nine amazingly profitable and well-run companies are already embracing.

In The Social Organism, Luckett and Casey offer a revolutionary theory: social networks - to an astonishing degree - mimic the rules and functions of biological life. In sharing and replicating packets of information known as memes, the world's social media users are facilitating an evolutionary process just like the transfer of genetic information in living things. Memes are the basic building blocks of our culture, our social DNA. To master social media - and to make online content that impacts the world - you must start with the Social Organism.

In a world with intense external pressures, where we often take on many different roles, it can be quite a challenge not to lose sight of who we are. We all reach a point where we wonder, “But what do I really want?” This book helps you answer that question. So that you can always stay true to yourself and live your life the way you want instead of the life that others expect of you. The more we are true to ourselves, the happier we are. And the happier we are, the more we can contribute to the happiness of those around us. Who are you?

When Mike Lewis was 24 and working in a prestigious corporate job, he eagerly wanted to leave and pursue his dream of becoming a professional squash player. But he had questions: When is the right time to move from work that is comfortable to a career you have only dared to dream of? How have other people made such a jump? What did they feel when making that jump - and afterward?

Napoleon Hill’s The Language of Thought is your guide to understanding, generating, and directing more powerful thoughts so that you can live and work with more intention, joy, and success. The single most powerful tool available to human beings is not money, physical strength, influence, or a network; it is the mind. Our thoughts determine our outcomes in life, as well as our ability to enjoy the journey. In order to harness our thoughts to create material success, we do not require any personal advantage such as wealth, connections, or education.

This is not a typical investment book. It is an experiential guide on cultivating the mindset and behavior necessary to weather inherently uncertain and unpredictable markets. It doesn’t just tell you how to invest but how to think better about investing. Referencing studies on psychology, decision making, and investment behavior, Jennings provides a no-nonsense analysis of the financial markets and a road map to navigating its inevitable twists and turns.

Why does Oklahoma have that panhandle? Did someone make a mistake?

We are so familiar with the map of the United States that our state borders seem as much a part of nature as mountains and rivers. Even the oddities—the entire state of Maryland(!)—have become so engrained that our map might as well be a giant jigsaw puzzle designed by Divine Providence. But that's where the real mystery begins.

Stupidity is all around us, from the coworker who won't stop hitting "reply all" to the former high-school classmate posting conspiracy theories on Facebook. But in order to vanquish it, we must first understand it. In The Psychology of Stupidity, some of the world's leading psychologists and thinkers - including a Nobel Prize winner and best-selling authors - will show you: why smart people sometimes believe in utter nonsense; how our lazy brains cause us to make the wrong decisions; why trying to debate fools is a trap; and more!

Ancient, time-tested wisdom: Okinawa, Japan, is a tiny, tiny island south of the Japanese mainland where people live their life's purpose every day. How is it possible for so many to live each day in such meaningful ways? The Okinawan concept of Ikigai. Magical reality come to life: David Michiels stuttered severely well into his adulthood. In clinical terms, his stutter was difficult to treat. But David started to work in a liquor store. Before long, his focus turned to one specific section of the sales floor: the scotch section.

This is a book that is geared toward helping you become a person of value. Success is not merely pursued, it is attracted. This book covers a range of topics, from setting goals to psychology. The book also includes topics such as faith, mentality, and spirituality. This book is the only book of its kind that covers a wide array of chapters, but are all aligned to help you to ensure that your stock keeps rising!