Engelstalig

Looks at the way our minds work, and how we make decisions. Why is there more chance we'll believe something if it's in a bold type face? Why are judges more likely to deny parole before lunch? Why do we assume a good-looking person will be more competent? This book enables to you make better decisions at work, at home, and in everything you do.

Justin Sterling is a loner. Formerly Justinian, Lord Sterling, he has lived for centuries in, but not of, our world, serving an ancient entity known only as the Dragon. Justin's reward is immortality, but to keep it he must keep killing. He has grown to hate his interminable life, soaked in blood, almost as much as he fears the hideous death that will be his if he refuses to do the Dragon's bidding.

Sandra McCormick is also a loner. A dedicated Chicago cop, fleeing a twisted past as a victim of abuse, McCormick devotes her scant free time to studying the martial arts--and occasionally cruising the grunge and punk nightclubs for anonymous one-night stands.

These two loners are about to meet.

Lieutenant McCormick has been assigned a high-profile case. Two men are dead. One a lawyer, one a cop. Both murdered in a mysterious and particularly gruesome manner--their still-beating hearts literally torn from their chests.

It was Justin who killed the cop, after another disciple bungled the lawyer's death. Now Justin must eliminate the second cop assigned to the case. It little matters that she's a woman. He has done the Dragon's bidding for so long that the slaughter has become routine.

But there is something different about this assignment--for both the cop and the disciple. It is a difference they both reject, and then embrace more and more passionately as the closing circle of Destiny draws them together.

For these two dedicated killers, these two confirmed loners, each assigned to stalk the other . . . are falling in love.

And love is the one vice the Dragon does not allow.

When a young bird's mother dies, its father tells it that Mummy is living in the sun now, where it is warm and Mummy can fly freely.

The Bridges of Constantine is a poignant fresco of Algeria over the last 50 years, a searing love story and a hymn to a lost city. Khaled, a former revolutionary in the Algerian war of liberation has been in self-exile in Paris for two decades, disgusted by the corruption that now riddles the country he once fought for. He has become a celebrated painter, and at the opening of one of his exhibitions, Hayat, the daughter of his old revolutionary commander, unexpectedly reenters Khaled's life. Hayat had been just a child when he last saw her, but she has now become a seductive young novelist.

Khaled is consumed with passion for her, and she comes to embody the homeland and the city he still grieves for – the city he paints over and over again in his canvases. Through Hayat, his past is breathed back into life and he at last begins to confront his feelings about Algeria. But for Hayat, as elusive as she is tender, the question of what one should yearn for is not so simple, and the choices she makes will have devastating consequences for them both.

The first novel in an award-winning, bestselling trilogy that spans Algeria's tumultuous recent history, The Bridges of Constantine is a lyrical and heartrending love story about loss and remembrance, exile and belonging.

This exciting day-by-day account of Steinbeck's trip to the Gulf of California with biologist Ed Ricketts, drawn from the longer Sea of Cortez, is a wonderful combination of science, philosophy, and high-spirited adventure.

Combining authoritative scholarship, narrative verve and colour illustrations, this overview of the life and significance of one of history's most influential figures highlights Jesus' relationship with the Judaism of his time, the role of women in his life, and the political issues surrounding his trial.

"The story chronicles Triton's growth and experiences through an examination of the various relationships formed while living on Salgado's compound. He learns to love; he develops the skills required to become a professional chef; he becomes a young man. In addition to the personal conflicts, this is a novel of political intrigue; the Marxist revolution and ensuing class conflict serve to disrupt the bucolic lives led by the protagonists. The final separation between Salgado and Triton represents a growth and a loss for both."--Amazon

Life can be baffling and chaotic, and sometimes it's hard to make sense of it all. The answer, explains groundbreaking thinker Steven Levitt, lies in economics. Not ordinary economics, but freakonomics. It is at the heart of everything we see and do and the subjects that bedevil us daily: from parenting to crime, sport to politics, health to education, fear to traffic jams. In Freakonomics Levitt turns conventional economics on its head, stripping away the jargon and calculations of the 'experts' to explore the riddles of everyday life and examine topics such as: how chips are more likely to kill you than a terrorist attack; why sportsmen cheat and how fraud can be spotted; why violent crime can be linked not to gun laws, policing or poverty, but to abortion; and why a road is more efficient when everyone travels at 20mph. Ultimately, he shows us that economics is all about how people get what they want, and what makes them do it. -- Publisher description.

An epic adventure: from the Vikings to the Enlightenment, from barbaric outpost to global hub, this book tells the dazzling history of northern Europe's transformation by sea.

'Pye writes like a dream. Magnificent' Jerry Brotton, author of A History of the World in Twelve Maps
______________

This is a story of saints and spies, of anglers and pirates, traders and marauders - and of how their wild and daring journeys across the North Sea built the world we know.

When the Roman Empire retreated, northern Europe was a barbarian outpost at the very edge of everything. A thousand years later, it was the heart of global empires and the home of science, art, enlightenment and money. We owe this transformation to the tides and storms of the North Sea.

Boats carried food and raw materials, but also new ideas and information. The seafarers raided, ruined and killed, but they also settled and coupled. With them they brought new tastes and technologies - books, science, clothes, paintings and machines. Drawing on an astonishing breadth of learning and packed with human stories and revelations, this is the epic drama of how we came to be who we are.
______________

'A closely-researched and fascinating characterisation of the richness of life and the underestimated interconnections of the peoples all around the medieval and early modern North Sea' Chris Wickham, author of The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000

'Elegant writing and extraordinary scholarship . . . Miraculous' Hugh Aldersey-Williams, author of Periodic Tales and Anatomies

'Bristling, wide-ranged and big-themed . . . at its most meaningful, history involves a good deal of art and storytelling. Pye's book is full of both' Russell Shorto, New York Times

'For anyone, like this reviewer, who is tired of medieval history as a chronicle of kings and kingdoms, knights and ladies, monks and heretics, The Edge of the World provides a welcome respite' Prof Patrick J Geary, Wall Street Journal

KING Yes. I shall release you - SAKUNTALA When? KING When? When, like a bee, I kiss the bud of your unbruised lip And flood my thirsting mouth with nectar. Kalidasa's play about the love of King Dusyanta and Sakuntala, a hermitage girl, their separation by a curse, and eventual reunion, is the supreme work of Sanskrit drama by its greatest poet and playwright (c.4th century CE). Overwhelmingly erotic in tone, in peformance The Recognition of Sakuntala aimed to produce an experience of aesthetic rapture in the audience, akin to certain types of mystical experience. The pioneering English translation of Sakuntala in 1789 caused a sensation among European composers and writers (including Goethe), and it continues to be performed around the world. This vibrant new verse translation includes the famous version of the story from the Mahabharata, a poetic and dramatic text in its own right and a likely source for Kalidasa. The introduction discusses the play in the aesthetic and cultural context of ancient India. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

A haunting and affecting meditation on love from the Nobel-prize winning author of Beloved.

May, Christine, Heed, Junior, Vida - even L - all are women obsessed with Bill Cosey. He shapes their yearnings for a father, husband, lover, guardian, and friend. This audacious vision from a master storyteller on the nature of love - its appetite, its sublime possession, and its consuming dread - is rich in characters and dramatic events, and in its profound sensitivity to just how alive the past can be. Sensual, elegiac and unforgettable, Love ultimately comes full circle to that indelible, overwhelming first love that marks us forever.

Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction

'Love is her best work...a slender but mesmerising tale' Evening Standard

How do doctors piece together obscure medical clues to make a diagnosis? What happens when the decisions are a matter of life and death? In these twenty-six gripping tales culled from his three decades in medicine, the eminent neurologist Harold Klawans, "the shrewdest medical super-sleuth writing today" (The (London) Sunday Times), reaches to the heart of modern medicine. Here the author of the highly acclaimed Toscanini's Fumble and Newton's Madness recounts how as a terrified resident he once confused the smell of his own nervous sweat with the odor of the patient - which turns out to be the essential clue in the diagnosis. We meet the "Lone Ranger" who becomes a mummy after he's given an experimental drug for schizophrenia; the vice president of a bank who believes that snake venom will cure his Lou Gehrig's disease; a man whose eyes, even while driving, suddenly, spontaneously, close; and an eminent neurologist from Vienna whom Klawans exposes as having been a member of the SS. One of the most chilling stories chronicles the drama of a patient whose family chooses to keep him confined to his wheelchair and refuses him treatment to satisfy their own need for control. Bizarre, disturbing, moving - and always fascinating - these tales show how fine the line is between life and death. Klawans poses such controversial questions as: When is someone considered dead? Should doctors fight to extend a life that cannot be saved? When is prolonging life just prolonging the final agony? We witness how in a race to perform the first heart transplant in Chicago, doctors are ready to pull out the heart of a man thought to be dead but who is only unconscious. We see a desperate father who holdsnurses at gunpoint while he disconnects the life support system for his comatose child. Throughout, Klawans defends the patient's right to decide when, where, and how to die, with the help of help or his physician. Guided by this superb storyteller and gifted and compassionate doctor, we explore the edges of life and death and come closer to the mystery of what it means to be a human being.