Are you more likely to become a professional footballer if your surname is Ball? How can you be one hundred per cent sure you will win a bet? Why did so many Pompeiians stay put while Mount Vesuvius was erupting? How do you prevent a nuclear war? Ever since the dawn of human civilisation, we have been trying to make predictions about what's in store for us. We do this on a personal level, so that we can get on with our lives efficiently (should I...

"The former editor of Mashable and cofounder of DominateFund examines the psychological phenomena that captivate our attention--and how we can leverage them to draw and retain attention for our ideas, work, companies, and more.Whether you're an artist or a salesperson, a teacher or an engineer, a marketer or a parent--putting the spotlight on your ideas, insights, projects and products requires a deep understanding of the science of attention. In...

Video games are big business. They can be addicting. They are available almost anywhere you go and are appealing to people of all ages. They can eat up our time, cost us money, even kill our relationships. But it's not all bad! This book will show that rather than being a waste of time, video games can help us develop skills, make friends, succeed at work, form good habits, and be happy. Taking the time to learn what's happening in our heads as we...

Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does--humans are a musical species. Oliver Sacks's compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological...

A look at the major components of romantic love--sex, idealization, aggression, self-pity, guilt, and commitment.

"From the acclaimed author of How to Sell--and based on his viral Huffington Post article--comes a deeply intimate, insightful, and at times even funny portrait of the suicidal mind, combining the author's personal experience with a philosophical, literary, and journalistic inquiry into the subject "If you're going to write a book about suicide, you have to be willing to say the true things, the scary things, the humiliating things. Because everybody...

Originally written in 1938 but never published due to its controversial nature, an insightful guide reveals the seven principles of good that will allow anyone to triumph over the obstacles that must be faced in reaching personal goals.

Each year, Americans invest more time, more energy, and more money -- $33 billion! -- trying to lose weight. Yet, the rates of obesity and related illnesses, such as diabetes and heart disease, continue to climb at an alarming pace. Statistically, heroin addicts have better odds of kicking their habit than food junkies do of kicking theirs. After decades of crash dieting and self-recrimination, Victoria Moran chanced upon a very basic truth about...