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$1.99 each for 5 “top-rated books about the power of the human brain” – today’s Kindle Daily Deal

June 18, 2012

Amazon.com’s Kindle Daily Deal for today (Monday 6/18/12) features five “top-rated books about the power of the human brain” for $1.99 each. [Amazon says “Individual Daily Deal titles may have additional territory restrictions, and not all deals are available in all territories.”]

The Misleading Mind

The Misleading Mind: How We Create Our Own Problems and How Buddhist Psychology Can Help Us Solve Them by Karuna Cayton

Book description from the publisher:

Buddhism asserts that we each have the potential to free ourselves from the prison of our problems. As practiced for more than twenty-six hundred years, the process involves working with, rather than against, our depression, anxiety, and compulsions. We do this by recognizing the habitual ways our minds perceive and react — the way they mislead. The lively exercises and inspiring real-world examples Cayton provides can help you transform intractable problems and neutralize suffering by cultivating a radically liberating self-understanding.

The Practicing Mind

The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life by Thomas M. Sterner

Book description from the publisher:

Early life is all about trial-and-error practice. If we’d given up in the face of failure, repetition, and difficulty, we’d never have learned to walk, tie our shoes, or ride a bike. So why, as adults, do we often throw in the towel when at first we don’t succeed? Modern life’s technological speed, habitual multitasking, and promises of instant gratification don’t help. But in his study of how we learn (prompted by his experiences as a musician and adult newbie golfer), Thomas Sterner has found that we have also lost the principles of practice; the process of picking a goal and applying steady effort to reach it. The methods Sterner teaches show that practice done properly isn’t drudgery on the way to mastery but a fulfilling process of building focus, mind-calming clarity, and joy-filled effort in and of itself. The practicing mind savors the baby steps that lead to great strides.

Brain Power

Brain Power: Improve Your Mind as You Age by Michael J. Gelb and Kelly Howell

Book description from the publisher:

Virtually everyone fears mental deterioration as they age. But in the past thirty years neuroscientists have discovered that the brain is actually designed to improve throughout life. How can you encourage this improvement? Brain Power shares practical, state-of-the-evidence answers in this inspiring, fun-to-read plan for action. The authors have interviewed physicians, gerontologists, and neuroscientists; studied the habits of men and women who epitomize healthy aging; and applied what they describe in their own lives. The resulting guidance — along with the accompanying downloadable Brain Sync audio program — can help you activate unused brain areas, tone mental muscles, and enliven every faculty.

Creative Thinkering

Creative Thinkering by Michael Michalko

Book description from the publisher:

Why isn’t everyone creative? Why doesn’t education foster more ingenuity? Why is expertise often the enemy of innovation? Bestselling creativity expert Michael Michalko shows that in every field of endeavor — from business and science to government, the arts, and even day-to-day life — natural creativity is limited by the prejudices of logic and the structures of accepted categories and concepts. Through step-by-step exercises, illustrated strategies, and inspiring real-world examples, he shows readers how to liberate their thinking and literally expand their imaginations by learning to synthesize dissimilar subjects, think paradoxically, and enlist the help of the subconscious mind. He also reveals the attitudes and approaches that diverse geniuses share — and anyone can emulate. Fascinating and fun, Michalko’s strategies facilitate the kind of lightbulb-moment thinking that changes lives — for the better.

Right-Brain Business Plan

The Right-Brain Business Plan by Jennifer Lee

Book description from the publisher:

Millions of artists, entrepreneurs, crafters, and solopreneurs dream of making a living doing what they love. But turning their vision into a viable business plan can feel like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Jennifer Lee knows what it’s like to make the entrepreneurial leap — and how to do it successfully. The key is showing creative types how to use — rather than stifle — the imagination and intuition that make them creative in the first place. Lee’s illustrated, colorful worksheets and step-by-step instructions are playful yet practical, enabling readers to get down to the essential business of defining their vision and nailing down plans for funding, marketing, networking, and long-term strategy. Both budding and seasoned business owners will benefit from Lee’s wonderfully original approach.

Comments (2) - mind,psychology

“The Big Deal” – 400 kindle ebooks as low as $0.99 at Amazon.com

June 16, 2012

(Prices subject to change and may vary by region so be sure to check before purchasing.)

Comments (0) - Uncategorized

new book – ‘The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust’ by John Coates

June 15, 2012

The Hour Between Dog and Wolf

The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust by John Coates (Penguin Press, 2012)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Book description from the publisher:

A successful Wall Street trader turned Cambridge neuroscientist reveals the biology of boom and bust and how risk taking transforms our body chemistry, driving us to extremes of euphoria and risky behavior or stress and depression

The laws of financial boom and bust, it turns out, have more than a little to do with male hormones. In a series of groundbreaking experiments, Dr. John Coates identified a feedback loop between testosterone and success that dramatically lowers the fear of risk in men, especially younger men—significantly, the fear of risk is not reduced in women. Similarly, intense failure leads to a rise in levels of cortisol, the antitestosterone hormone that lowers the appetite for risk across an entire spectrum of decisions.

Coates had set out to prove what was already a strong intuition from his previous life: Before he became a world-class neuroscientist, Coates ran a derivatives desk in New York. As a successful trader on Wall Street, “the hour between dog and wolf” was the moment traders transformed-they would become revved up, exuberant risk takers, when flying high, or tentative, risk-averse creatures, when cowering from their losses. Coates understood instinctively that these dispositions were driven by body chemistry-and then he proved it.

The Hour Between Dog and Wolf expands on Coates’s own research to offer lessons from the entire exploding new field-the biology of risk. Risk concentrates the mind-and the body-like nothing else, altering our physiology in ways that have profound and lasting effects. What’s more, biology shifts investors’ risk preferences across the business cycle and can precipitate great change in the marketplace.

Though Coates’s research concentrates on traders, his conclusions shed light on all types of high-pressure decision making-from the sports field to the battlefield. The Hour Between Dog and Wolf leaves us with a powerful recognition: To handle risk in a “highly evolved” way isn’t a matter of mind over body; it’s a matter of mind and body working together. We all have it in us to be transformed from dog into wolf; the only question is whether we can understand the causes and the consequences.

Google Books preview:

Comments (0) - new books,psychology

$2.99 kindle ebook: ‘Are You Sure? The Unconscious Origins of Certainty (Brain Talk: Conversations with Neuroscientists)’ by Ginger Campbell

June 14, 2012

(…prices may vary by region and are subject to change, so be sure to check before purchasing.)

Comments (0) - cognitive science,new books

new book – ‘Wait: The Art and Science of Delay’ by Frank Partnoy

Wait

Wait: The Art and Science of Delay by Frank Partnoy (PublicAffairs)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Book description from the publisher:

What do these scenarios have in common: a professional tennis player returning a serve, a woman evaluating a first date across the table, a naval officer assessing a threat to his ship, and a comedian about to reveal a punch line?

In this counterintuitive and insightful work, author Frank Partnoy weaves together findings from hundreds of scientific studies and interviews with wide-ranging experts to craft a picture of effective decision-making that runs counter to our brutally fast-paced world. Even as technology exerts new pressures to speed up our lives, it turns out that the choices we make––unconsciously and consciously, in time frames varying from milliseconds to years––benefit profoundly from delay. As this winning and provocative book reveals, taking control of time and slowing down our responses yields better results in almost every arena of life … even when time seems to be of the essence.

The procrastinator in all of us will delight in Partnoy’s accounts of celebrity “delay specialists,” from Warren Buffett to Chris Evert to Steve Kroft, underscoring the myriad ways in which delaying our reactions to everyday choices––large and small––can improve the quality of our lives.

Google Books preview:

See also: Author’s website

Comments (0) - cognitive science,new books