Started in 1984, TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to spreading new ideas, usually in the form of short speeches covering many topics in more than 100 languages. Join the spirit of TED by reading a book recommended by one of the speakers. They are available to borrow from the Lititz Public Library.
The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born, It’s Grown, Here’s How by Daniel Coyle
Learn about three key brain mechanisms that allow the development of natural gifts in sports, art, music, math, or just about anything.
The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone – Especially Ourselves by Dan Ariely
The author explores how unethical behavior works in the personal, professional and political worlds.
The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames by Kai Bird
Ames was one of America’s most influential and effective intelligence officers in the Middle East, a man who had he lived, might have helped heal the rift between the Arabs and the West.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
The author shows how the mass incarceration of a disproportionate number of black men amounts to a system of racial control.
How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character by Paul Tough
The author argues that, as opposed to high scores on tests, the qualities that matter most to success have more to do with skills like perseverance, curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism, and self-control.
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
An investigation of the discoveries and inventions at the end of the 18th century highlights three lives: William Herschel and his sister Caroline whose study of the stars changed the public conception of the solar system, and Humphry Davy whose near-suicidal gas experiments led to the invention of the miners’ lamp.
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
The author shares examples of how simple checklists provide striking and immediate improvements in fields like medicine, disaster response, investment banking, skyscraper construction, aircraft flights, and businesses of all kinds.
The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks
People are able to communicate and navigate the world despite losing the power of speech, the capacity to recognize faces, the sense of three-dimensional space the ability to read, and the sense of sight.
The Spark: A Mother’s Story of Nurturing Genius by Kristine Barnett
The mother of an autistic child who was eventually recognized as a genius recounts her rejection of conventional advice from developmental experts and shares the strategies she utilized for tapping her son’s potential.
Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble by Marilyn Johnson
The author follows archeologists through the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and Machu Picchu where they share stories that would otherwise be buried and lost.
Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick
An account of the unraveling of the seventy-five-year rule of the Communist Party includes interviews with Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, Andrei Sakharov, and others.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles C. Mann
An analysis of America prior to 1492 describes how the research of archaeologists and anthropologists has transformed myths about the Americas, revealing that the cultures were far older and more advanced than previously known.
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin
The close relationship between Roosevelt and Taft strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912 when they engage in a brutal fight for the Republican presidential nomination that causes Democratic Woodrow Wilson to be elected and change the country’s history.
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
The author was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the criminal justice system.
May 20, 2016