A smart and funny book by a prominent Harvard psychologist, which uses groundbreaking research and (often hilarious) anecdotes to show us why we’re so lousy at predicting what will make us happy – and what we can do about it. Most of us spend our lives steering ourselves toward the best of all possible futures, only to find that tomorrow rarely turns out as we had expected. Why? As Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains, when people try to imagine what the future will hold, they make some basic and consistent mistakes. Just as memory plays tricks on us when we try to look backward in time, so does imagination play tricks when we try to look forward. Using cutting-edge research, much of it original, Gilbert shakes, cajoles, persuades, tricks and jokes us into accepting the fact that happiness is not really what or where we thought it was. Among the unexpected questions he poses: Why are conjoined twins no less happy than the general population? When you go out to eat, is it better to order your favourite dish every time, or to try something new? If Ingrid Bergman hadn’t gotten on the plane at the end of Casablanca, would she and Bogey have been better off? Smart, witty, accessible and laugh-out-loud funny, Stumbling on Happiness brilliantly describes all that science has to tell us about the uniquely human ability to envision the future, and how likely we are to enjoy it when we get there.

"Each of us must come to terms with the full scope of human questions, emotions, and possibilities. This wide-ranging book will provide assistance for those who wish to bring all these currents together"--Amazon.com.

Just about everything today comes with an operating manual—from your computer to your car, from your cell phone to your iPad. Is it possible that Life comes with an operating manual as well? That’s the simple but powerful premise of Tom Shadyac’s inspiring and provocative first book. Written as a series of essays and dialogues, we are invited into a conversation that is both challenging and empowering. The question now is, can we discern what is written inside this operating manual and garner the courage to live in accordance with its precepts?

YOU: The Owner's Manual by Mehmet Oz, M.D. has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, and Allies community (abbreviated LGBTQIA or "LGBT") is responding to a radically changed social and political environment. While a host of books have analyzed legal dimensions of LGBT public policy, this authoritative Routledge handbook is the first to utilize up-to-the-minute empirical data to examine and unpick the corrosive "post-factual" changes undermining LGBT public policy development. Taking an innovative look at a wide range of social and policy issues of broad interest—including homelessness, transgender rights, healthcare, immigration, substance abuse, caring for senior members of the community, sexual education, resilience, and international policy—through contributions from established scholars and rising stars, this comprehensive and cutting-edge volume will be a landmark reference work on LGBT administration and policy for decades to come.

Offering a unique approach to spiritual integration and self-mastery, Merlin’s Handbook for Seekers and Starseeds presents techniques to release karmic ties, integrate past life information, understand galactic karmic imprints, and attain mastery by reawakening your divine gifts. Based on author Margaret Doner’s twenty years of experience as an angelic channel, past life regression therapist, and healer, this guide challenges you to awaken and remember knowledge that may be deeply buried within your soul. From angels to demons, Merlin’s Handbook for Seekers and Starseeds touches upon all these topics and more as it assists you step by step to release fear and return to mastery. Doner offers personal vignettes and clients’ stories to reinforce the idea that only by sharing what we experience with one another do we draw closer and learn how to love without judgment. With exercises to expand awareness, Merlin’s Handbook for Seekers and Starseeds can help you learn to trust yourself, your heart, your intuition, and your common sense. It is about growing up and taking responsibility for your choices. It is about learning to love more deeply and awaken compassion for yourself and others.

From the Introduction: "Stoic philosophy, of which Epictetus (c. a.d. 50-130) is a representative, began as a recognizable movement around 300 b.c. Its founder was Zeno of Cytium (not to be confused with Zeno of Elea, who discovered the famous paradoxes). He was born in Cyprus about 336 b.c., but all of his philosophical activity took place in Athens. For more than 500 years Stoicism was one of the most influential and fruitful philosophical movements in the Graeco-Roman world. The works of the earlier Stoics survive only in fragmentary quotations from other authors, but from the Renaissance until well into the nineteenth century, Stoic ethical thought was one of the most important ancient influences on European ethics, particularly because of the descriptions of it by Cicero, through surviving works by the Stoics Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and also Epictetus--and also because of the effect that it had had in antiquity, and continued to have into the nineteenth century, on Christian ethical views. Nowadays an undergraduate or graduate student learning about ancient philosophy in a university course may well hear only about Plato and Aristotle, along perhaps with the presocratics; but in the history of Western thought and education this situation is somewhat atypical, and in most periods a comparable student would have learned as much or more about Stoicism, as well as two other major ancient philosophical movements, Epicureanism and Scepticism. In spite of this lack of explicit acquaintance with Stoic philosophers and their works, however, most students will recognize in Epictetus various ideas that are familiar through their effects on other thinkers, notably Spinoza, in our intellectual tradition."