"Armed with wit, insight, and truly astonishing research, Falk utterly demolishes the notion of the enlightened guru who can lead devotees to nirvana.--John Horgan, author of "Rational Mysticism."

A MASTERPIECE of illuminative writing, Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing is mandatory reading for anyone following a spiritual path. Part exposé and part how-to manual, this is the first book to explain why failure seems to be the rule in the search for enlightenment, and how the rule can be broken. :: Book One of Jed McKenna's Enlightenment Trilogy. Contains Bonus Material.

Rarely has a book about advertising created such a commotion as this brilliant account of the principles of successful advertising. Published in 1961, Reality in Advertising was listed for weeks on the general best-seller lists, and is today acknowledged to be advertising's greatest classic. It has been translated into twelve languages and has been published in twenty-one separate editions in fifteen countries. Leading business executives, and the advertising cognoscenti, hail it as "the best book for professionals that has ever come out of Madison Avenue." Rosser Reeves says: "The book attempts to formulate certain theories of advertising, many quite new, and all based on 30 years of intensive research." These theories, whose value has been proved in the marketplace, all revolve around the central concept that success in selling a product is the key criterion of advertising. Get Your Copy Now

Statistical methods are a key part of of data science, yet very few data scientists have any formal statistics training. Courses and books on basic statistics rarely cover the topic from a data science perspective. This practical guide explains how to apply various statistical methods to data science, tells you how to avoid their misuse, and gives you advice on what's important and what's not. Many data science resources incorporate statistical methods but lack a deeper statistical perspective. If you’re familiar with the R programming language, and have some exposure to statistics, this quick reference bridges the gap in an accessible, readable format. With this book, you’ll learn: Why exploratory data analysis is a key preliminary step in data science How random sampling can reduce bias and yield a higher quality dataset, even with big data How the principles of experimental design yield definitive answers to questions How to use regression to estimate outcomes and detect anomalies Key classification techniques for predicting which categories a record belongs to Statistical machine learning methods that “learn” from data Unsupervised learning methods for extracting meaning from unlabeled data

A physician offers an impassioned and meticulously researched exposé of the alternative medicine industry, separating the sense from the nonsense. A half century ago, acupuncture, homeopathy, naturopathy, Chinese herbs, Christian exorcisms, dietary supplements, chiropractic manipulations, and ayurvedic remedies were considered on the fringe of medicine. Now these practices—known variably as alternative, complementary, holistic, or integrative medicine—have become mainstream, used by half of all Americans today to treat a variety of conditions, from excess weight to cancer. But alternative medicine is an unregulated industry under no legal obligation to prove its claims or admit its risks, and many popular alternative therapies are ineffective, expensive, or even deadly. In Do You Believe in Magic?, health advocate Dr. Offit debunks the treatments that don’t work and tells us why, and takes on the media celebrities who promote alternative medicine. Using dramatic real-life stories, he separates the sense from the nonsense, explaining why any therapy—alternative or traditional—should be scrutinized. As Dr. Offit explains, some popular therapies are remarkably helpful due to the placebo response, but “there’s no such thing as alternative medicine. There’s only medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t.”

"Steps to Knowledge" provides the lessons and practices necessary for learning and living the New Message from God. Presented in a self-study format, it contains 365 daily steps that teach how to see, to know, and to act with the certainty and the authority that the Creator has given.

Mountaineering has served as a metaphor for civilization triumphant. A fascinating study of the first ascents of the major Alpine peaks and Mt. Everest, The Summits of Modern Man reveals the significance of our encounters with the world’s most forbidding heights and how difficult it is to imagine nature in terms other than conquest and domination.

Author Rodman Philbrick writing as Chris Jordan “Jordan's full-throttle style makes this an emotionally rewarding thriller that moves like lightning."—Publishers Weekly A MOTHER'S WORST FEAR COMES TO LIFE In a small New York town, a deranged man holds over one hundred schoolchildren hostage... With the SWAT team about to go in, the gymnasium suddenly explodes in flames. Fortunately, all the students escape—except ten-year-old Noah Corbin. Noah's mother, Haley, is frantic. Was her son killed in the explosion? Did he somehow wander away from the scene, hurt and confused? Or did someone take him? Haley hires ex-FBI agent Randall Shane because she needs the truth. Their investigation leads them to a desolate area of the Rocky Mountains, and into the resort compound of a notoriously secretive cult ruled by the rich and powerful. Haley knows they have something to do with Noah's disappearance. But they will protect their secrets. No matter what. "...will send chills up your spine." -New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry on Taken

Look out for a new book from Garry Wills, What The Qur'an Meant, coming fall 2017. "The truth, we are told, will make us free. It is time to free Catholics, lay as well as clerical, from the structures of deceit that are our subtle modern form of papal sin. Paler, subtler, less dramatic than the sins castigated by Orcagna or Dante, these are the quiet sins of intellectual betrayal." --from the Introduction From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Garry Wills comes an assured, acutely insightful--and occasionally stinging--critique of the Catholic Church and its hierarchy from the nineteenth century to the present. Papal Sin in the past was blatant, as Catholics themselves realized when they painted popes roasting in hell on their own church walls. Surely, the great abuses of the past--the nepotism, murders, and wars of conquest--no longer prevail; yet, the sin of the modern papacy, as revealed by Garry Wills in his penetrating new book, is every bit as real, though less obvious than the old sins. Wills describes a papacy that seems steadfastly unwilling to face the truth about itself, its past, and its relations with others. The refusal of the authorities of the Church to be honest about its teachings has needlessly exacerbated original mistakes. Even when the Vatican has tried to tell the truth--e.g., about Catholics and the Holocaust--it has ended up resorting to historical distortions and evasions. The same is true when the papacy has attempted to deal with its record of discrimination against women, or with its unbelievable assertion that "natural law" dictates its sexual code. Though the blithe disregard of some Catholics for papal directives has occasionally been attributed to mere hedonism or willfulness, it actually reflects a failure, after long trying on their part, to find a credible level of honesty in the official positions adopted by modern popes. On many issues outside the realm of revealed doctrine, the papacy has made itself unbelievable even to the well-disposed laity. The resulting distrust is in fact a neglected reason for the shortage of priests. Entirely aside from the public uproar over celibacy, potential clergy have proven unwilling to put themselves in a position that supports dishonest teachings. Wills traces the rise of the papacy's stubborn resistance to the truth, beginning with the challenges posed in the nineteenth century by science, democracy, scriptural scholarship, and rigorous history. The legacy of that resistance, despite the brief flare of John XXIII's papacy and some good initiatives in the 1960s by the Second Vatican Council (later baffled), is still strong in the Vatican. Finally Wills reminds the reader of the positive potential of the Church by turning to some great truth tellers of the Catholic tradition--St. Augustine, John Henry Newman, John Acton, and John XXIII. In them, Wills shows that the righteous path can still be taken, if only the Vatican will muster the courage to speak even embarrassing truths in the name of Truth itself.

Jobless and adrift in a workaday society he no longer recognizes, Greg is rattled in unexpected ways by the heartbreak in Haiti that clear January morning when he spots an unusual opportunity in the looped nightly news, something he can do - a small way he just might be able to help. Facing divorce and an anesthetized hereafter, Greg shucks tradition and packs his motorcycle, headed to a shattered country to unexpectedly find the one thing he's abandoned. "Refreshing stuff for us bookish riders ... A little Zen [and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance], a little Jupiter's Travels, fans of Pirsig and Simon will feel right at home." -Cycle Gurus "Montgomery's debut recalls aspects of Laurence Sterne, with an introspective protagonist both pursued and pursuing some great intangible, the destination secondary to the many digressions along the way ... The colloquial manner that Greg engages with his own challenges, from dropped bikes to sleepless nights, steers the book clear of heavy-handedness. Engrossing prose..." -Kirkus Readers may also enjoy the following: Jupiter's Travels | The Sea Wolf | Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road | The Bell Jar | The Great Gatsby | The Road | Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work | The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey | Gravity's Rainbow | Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance