TheBestseller
Observatory

Best Sellers

Hardcover Nonfiction

Week of April 27, 2014

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1
FLASH BOYS
Michael Lewis
Cover of FLASH BOYS

FLASH BOYS

by Michael Lewis · Norton

4 wks at #1 · 2 on list

El nuevo libro de Michael Lewis trata sobre el Trading de Alta Frecuencia y la manipulación de los índices bursátiles por operadores con acceso privilegiado. Son operaciones realizadas mediante algoritmos matemáticos, pero haciéndolas con enorme velocidad. Millones de operaciones que se realizan en poco tiempo, normalmente en milésimas de segundo. Hoy se estima que un 30% de las transacciones bursátiles realizadas son de algoritmos de High Frequency Trading (HFT). Buscan hacer muchas pequeñas operaciones en las que se obtenga una pequeñísima ganancia que poco a poco se va acumulando. Los mercados cada vez están más concentrados en grandes operadores, la tecnología y los algoritmos tienen un papel fundamental y los grandes bancos intentan recuperar cuota de mercado apoyando a estas máquinas que operan en pocos segundos. En el libro conoceremos ejemplos divertidos, apabullantes y curiosos. Su valor fundamental es que, como siempre, vuelve a poner el dedo en la llaga sobre las ineficiencias creadas en un mercado donde los grandes operadores mandan.

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FACE THE MUSIC
Paul Stanley
Cover of FACE THE MUSIC

FACE THE MUSIC

by Paul Stanley · HarperOne

1 wks on list

The rock icon and co-founder of KISS recounts his turbulent life behind the face paint in this New York Times bestselling memoir. With his onstage persona, the "Starchild", Paul Stanley made rock & roll history—thrilling countless fans with hard rock anthems and elaborate stage shows. But his famous makeup hid a difficult life. In Face the Music, Stanley shares a gripping blend of personal revelations and gritty war stories about the highs and lows both inside and outside of KISS. Born with a condition called microtia (an ear deformity rendering him deaf on the right side), Stanley's traumatic childhood experiences produced an inner drive to succeed in the most unlikely of places: music. Taking readers through the series of events that led to the founding of KISS, the personal relationships that helped shape his life, and the dynamics among his bandmates, this book leaves no one unscathed—including Stanley himself. With never-before-seen photos and images throughout, Face the Music is a colorful portrait of a man and the band he helped create, define, and sustain—made larger than life in artfully told stories that are shocking, funny, inspirational, and honest.

3
THRIVE
Arianna Huffington
Cover of THRIVE

THRIVE

by Arianna Huffington · Harmony

3 wks on list

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Arianna Huffington’s impassioned and compelling case for the need to redefine what it means to be successful in today’s world—now in a 10th anniversary edition featuring a new preface “A captivating look at what it takes to live a more meaningful, satisfying life. Brimming with passion, supported by science, and crowned with practical insights, Arianna Huffington’s exceptional book will transform our workplaces, schools, and families.”—Adam Grant, bestselling author of Think Again Arianna Huffington’s personal wake-up call came in the form of a broken cheekbone and a nasty gash over her eye—the result of a fall brought on by exhaustion. The cofounder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group—which became one of the fastest growing media companies in the world—and celebrated as one of the world’s most influential women, she was, by any traditional measure, extraordinarily successful. Yet as she found herself going from brain MRI to CAT scan to echocardiogram to find out if there was any underlying medical problem beyond exhaustion, she wondered, Is this really what success is like? In the past decade, and especially in today’s post-pandemic world, people are realizing there is far more to living a truly successful life than just earning a bigger salary and climbing the career ladder. Our relentless pursuit of the two traditional metrics of success—money and power—has led to an epidemic of burnout and illness, and an erosion in the quality of our relationships, our family life, and, ironically, our careers. In being connected to the world 24/7, we’re losing our connection to what truly matters. We need a new way forward. In Thrive, Huffington has written a passionate call to arms, as timely today as it was when it was first published more than ten years ago, looking to redefine what it means to be successful in today’s world. Huffington likens our drive for money and power to two legs of a three-legged stool. It may hold us up temporarily, but sooner or later we’re going to topple over. We need a third leg—a Third Metric for defining success. In this deeply personal book, Huffington talks candidly about her own challenges with managing time and prioritizing the demands of a career and a family, the harried dance that led to her collapse—and to her “aha moment.” Drawing on the latest groundbreaking research and scientific findings in the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and physiology that show the transformative effects of our five foundational daily behaviors—sleep, food, movement, stress management, and connection—Huffington shows us the way to a revolution in our culture, our thinking, our workplaces, and our lives.

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KILLING JESUS
Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard
Cover of KILLING JESUS

KILLING JESUS

by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard · Holt

29 wks on list

Millions of readers have thrilled to bestselling authors Bill O'Reilly and historian Martin Dugard's Killing Kennedy and Killing Lincoln, page-turning works of nonfiction that have changed the way we read history. The basis for the 2015 television film available on streaming. Now the iconic anchor of The O'Reilly Factor details the events leading up to the murder of the most influential man in history: Jesus of Nazareth. Nearly two thousand years after this beloved and controversial young revolutionary was brutally killed by Roman soldiers, more than 2.2 billion human beings attempt to follow his teachings and believe he is God. Killing Jesus will take readers inside Jesus's life, recounting the seismic political and historical events that made his death inevitable - and changed the world forever.

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CREATIVITY, INC
Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace
Cover of CREATIVITY, INC

CREATIVITY, INC

by Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace · Random House

1 wks on list

THE EXPANDED EDITION 'Just might be the best business book ever written' Forbes Magazine 'This book should be required reading for any manager' Charles Duhigg 'Full of detail about an interesting, intricate business' The Wall Street Journal ______________________________________________ The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands upon his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles used to build Pixar's singularly successful culture, including all he learned in the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve. For nearly twenty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story quartet, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner thirty Academy Awards. The joyous storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph. D. student, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter. A mere nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie's success-and in the movies that followed-was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar. Creativity, Inc. has been expanded to illuminate the continuing development of the unique culture at Pixar. Featuring a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and new reflections at the end, this updated edition details how Catmull built a culture that doesn't just pay lip service to the importance of things like honesty, communication, and originality, but commits to them. Pursuing excellence isn't a one-off assignment, but an ongoing, day-in, day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done. _________________________________________ Readers love Creativity, Inc. 'Incredibly inspirational' 'Great book. Wish I could give it more than 5 stars' 'Honestly, one of the best books I've read in a long time' 'Read it and read it again, then read it again and then again' 'Great book!! Fantastic read'

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THE DIVIDE
Matt Taibbi
Cover of THE DIVIDE

THE DIVIDE

by Matt Taibbi · Spiegel & Grau

1 wks on list

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST, NPR, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS A scathing portrait of an urgent new American crisis Over the last two decades, America has been falling deeper and deeper into a statistical mystery: Poverty goes up. Crime goes down. The prison population doubles. Fraud by the rich wipes out 40 percent of the world’s wealth. The rich get massively richer. No one goes to jail. In search of a solution, journalist Matt Taibbi discovered the Divide, the seam in American life where our two most troubling trends—growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration—come together, driven by a dramatic shift in American citizenship: Our basic rights are now determined by our wealth or poverty. The Divide is what allows massively destructive fraud by the hyperwealthy to go unpunished, while turning poverty itself into a crime—but it’s impossible to see until you look at these two alarming trends side by side. In The Divide, Matt Taibbi takes readers on a galvanizing journey through both sides of our new system of justice—the fun-house-mirror worlds of the untouchably wealthy and the criminalized poor. He uncovers the startling looting that preceded the financial collapse; a wild conspiracy of billionaire hedge fund managers to destroy a company through dirty tricks; and the story of a whistleblower who gets in the way of the largest banks in America, only to find herself in the crosshairs. On the other side of the Divide, Taibbi takes us to the front lines of the immigrant dragnet; into the newly punitive welfare system which treats its beneficiaries as thieves; and deep inside the stop-and-frisk world, where standing in front of your own home has become an arrestable offense. As he narrates these incredible stories, he draws out and analyzes their common source: a perverse new standard of justice, based on a radical, disturbing new vision of civil rights. Through astonishing—and enraging—accounts of the high-stakes capers of the wealthy and nightmare stories of regular people caught in the Divide’s punishing logic, Taibbi lays bare one of the greatest challenges we face in contemporary American life: surviving a system that devours the lives of the poor, turns a blind eye to the destructive crimes of the wealthy, and implicates us all. Praise for The Divide “Ambitious . . . deeply reported, highly compelling . . . impossible to put down.”—The New York Times Book Review “These are the stories that will keep you up at night. . . . The Divide is not just a report from the new America; it is advocacy journalism at its finest.”—Los Angeles Times “Taibbi is a relentless investigative reporter. He takes readers inside not only investment banks, hedge funds and the blood sport of short-sellers, but into the lives of the needy, minorities, street drifters and illegal immigrants. . . . The Divide is an important book. Its documentation is powerful and shocking.”—The Washington Post “Captivating . . . The Divide enshrines its author’s position as one of the most important voices in contemporary American journalism.”—The Independent (UK) “Taibbi [is] perhaps the greatest reporter on Wall Street’s crimes in the modern era.”—Salon

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LOVE LIFE
Rob Lowe
Cover of LOVE LIFE

LOVE LIFE

by Rob Lowe · Simon & Schuster

1 wks on list

A fresh pop-culture history of Hollywood,.. from the point of view of the man who lived it. He is as funny as he is thoughtful [and] as interested in the world as the world is interested in him - PEOPLE. Actor Rob Lowe is an entertaining raconteur whose bestselling first book, Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography, was hailed as ?self-deprecatingly funny? (The New York Times) and ?thoroughly entertaining? (Time) and earned the author the cover of Vanity Fair. After writing his acclaimed debut, Lowe wanted to share more of the stories he only tells his friends. Love Life serves up another delicious selection of intimate stories and observations from Lowe's life, told with humour, warmth, and brutal honesty. The result is a touching and hilarious memoir about the business and craft of acting, the pitfalls of success, family, love, and much more. A wildly entertaining series of celebrity revelations, as well as a heartfelt family story told with disarming candour that will surprise and move you, Love Life is fascinating, funny and poignant. If you love life, you'll love this book.

10
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A CALL TO ACTION
Jimmy Carter
Cover of A CALL TO ACTION

A CALL TO ACTION

by Jimmy Carter · Simon & Schuster

3 wks on list

In the highly acclaimed bestselling A Call to Action, President Jimmy Carter addresses the world’s most serious, pervasive, and ignored violation of basic human rights: the ongoing discrimination and violence against women and girls. President Carter was encouraged to write this book by a wide coalition of leaders of all faiths. His urgent report covers a system of discrimination that extends to every nation. Women are deprived of equal opportunity in wealthier nations and “owned” by men in others, forced to suffer servitude, child marriage, and genital cutting. The most vulnerable and their children are trapped in war and violence. A Call to Action addresses the suffering inflicted upon women by a false interpretation of carefully selected religious texts and a growing tolerance of violence and warfare. Key verses are often omitted or quoted out of context by male religious leaders to exalt the status of men and exclude women. And in nations that accept or even glorify violence, this perceived inequality becomes the basis for abuse. Carter draws upon his own experiences and the testimony of courageous women from all regions and all major religions to demonstrate that women around the world, more than half of all human beings, are being denied equal rights. This is an informed and passionate charge about a devastating effect on economic prosperity and unconscionable human suffering. It affects us all.

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THE OPPOSITE OF LONELINESS
Marina Keegan
Cover of THE OPPOSITE OF LONELINESS

THE OPPOSITE OF LONELINESS

by Marina Keegan · Scribner

1 wks on list

The instant New York Times bestseller and publishing phenomenon: Marina Keegan’s posthumous collection of award-winning essays and stories “sparkles with talent, humanity, and youth” (O, The Oprah Magazine). Marina Keegan’s star was on the rise when she graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at The New Yorker. Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car crash. Marina left behind a rich, deeply expansive trove of writing that, like her title essay, captures the hope, uncertainty, and possibility of her generation. Her short story “Cold Pastoral” was published on NewYorker.com. Her essay “Even Artichokes Have Doubts” was excerpted in the Financial Times, and her book was the focus of a Nicholas Kristof column in The New York Times. Millions of her contemporaries have responded to her work on social media. As Marina wrote: “We can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over…We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.” The Opposite of Loneliness is an unforgettable collection of Marina’s essays and stories that articulates the universal struggle all of us face as we figure out what we aspire to be and how we can harness our talents to impact the world. “How do you mourn the loss of a fiery talent that was barely a tendril before it was snuffed out? Answer: Read this book. A clear-eyed observer of human nature, Keegan could take a clever idea...and make it something beautiful” (People).

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LEAN IN
Sheryl Sandberg with Nell Scovell
Cover of LEAN IN

LEAN IN

by Sheryl Sandberg with Nell Scovell · Knopf

55 wks on list

#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • “A landmark manifesto" (The New York Times) that's a revelatory, inspiring call to action and a blueprint for individual growth that will empower women around the world to achieve their full potential. In her famed TED talk, Sheryl Sandberg described how women unintentionally hold themselves back in their careers. Her talk, which has been viewed more than eleven million times, encouraged women to “sit at the table,” seek challenges, take risks, and pursue their goals with gusto. Lean In continues that conversation, combining personal anecdotes, hard data, and compelling research to change the conversation from what women can’t do to what they can. Sandberg, COO of Meta (previously called Facebook) from 2008-2022, provides practical advice on negotiation techniques, mentorship, and building a satisfying career. She describes specific steps women can take to combine professional achievement with personal fulfillment, and demonstrates how men can benefit by supporting women both in the workplace and at home.

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LIVING WITH A WILD GOD
Barbara Ehrenreich
Cover of LIVING WITH A WILD GOD

LIVING WITH A WILD GOD

by Barbara Ehrenreich · Twelve

1 wks on list

Barbara Ehrenreich is an acclaimed social critic on both sides of the Atlantic, renowned for her trenchant, witty polemics, her pieces of journalism, and her trademark intelligence. She writes with unparalleled precision, insight and a rationalist's unwavering gaze. But in middle age, she rediscovered the journal she had kept during her tumultuous adolescence, which records an event so strange that she had never, in all the intervening years, written or spoken about it. It was the kind of event that people call a 'mystical experience' - and to a steadfast atheist and rationalist, was nothing less than shattering. In Living with a Wild God, Ehrenreich vividly explores her life-long quest to find 'the truth' about the universe and everything else, in an attempt to reconcile this cataclysmic, defining moment with her secular understanding of the world. The result is a profound reflection on science, religion and the human condition, and a personal insight into the inner life of one of our finest thinkers. It is a book that challenges us all to reassess our perceptions of the world and what it means to be alive.

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THE DEATH OF MONEY
James Rickards
Cover of THE DEATH OF MONEY

THE DEATH OF MONEY

by James Rickards · Portfolio/Penguin

1 wks on list

The next financial collapse will resemble nothing in history. . . . Deciding upon the best course to follow will require comprehending a minefield of risks, while poised at a crossroads, pondering the death of the dollar. The U.S. dollar has been the global reserve currency since the end of World War II. If the dollar fails, the entire international monetary system will fail with it. But optimists have always said, in essence, that confidence in the dollar will never truly be shaken, no matter how high our national debt or how dysfunctional our government. In the last few years, however, the risks have become too big to ignore. While Washington is gridlocked, our biggest rivals—China, Russia, and the oil-producing nations of the Middle East—are doing everything possible to end U.S. monetary hegemony. The potential results: Financial warfare. Deflation. Hyperinflation. Market collapse. Chaos. James Rickards, the acclaimed author of Currency Wars, shows why money itself is now at risk and what we can all do to protect ourselves. He explains the power of converting unreliable investments into real wealth: gold, land, fine art, and other long-term stores of value.

Historical bestseller data sourced from the New York Times Book Review, archived by Hawes Publications.