I have included this month's music video by a little girl, Hannah who plays Chopin's Nocturne #20 in C Sharp Minor. I hope you find the music a good match as you read this blog. Enjoy.
This month read are: -
This month read are: -
Number 5: Grande Expectations: A Year in the Life of Starbucks' Stock by Karen Blumenthal
The book I read from is a 2007 version.
About the Book
Wall Street Journal bureau chief Blumenthal is a seasoned financial reporter, yet she admits that the stock market mystifies her. Her mission: to follow one stock closely for a year (2005) to gain insights on how the market works, and, ultimately, become a better investor. There could not have been a better choice than Starbucks (stock symbol SBUX). A favorite of the growth investing crowd, it's sexy, yet familiar, a phenomenal achiever that tends to go through stomach-churning gyrations. As the year unfolds, we attend the annual shareholders' meeting, learn the history of Starbucks, and find out the significance of stock buybacks, (legal) insider trading, stock splits, and analysts' reports. We get an inside view on how institutional investors, the big players like mutual funds and hedge funds, value a stock, as these big guns trade in and out of SBUX in blocks of 10,000 or more shares. While managing to take some of the mystery out of the market's machinations, Blumenthal provides insights and tools for the individual investor looking to "take the plunge." David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
About the AuthorKAREN BLUMENTHAL has been a business reporter or editor for nearly twenty-five years, including two decades at The Wall Street Journal. Her previous book, Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX, won the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award for older children. Six Days in October, a book for young people on the 1929 stock market crash, was named a Robert F. Sibert Honor Book by the American Library Association.
Number 4: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle
About the Book (from Wikipedia)
Tolle's purpose and hope for The Power of Now was that it would "play its part in … the transformation of human consciousness," by acting as a catalyst to those who are ready for a radical inner transformation or, as he sometimes calls it, for enlightenment.
This purpose has affected the format of the book. Tolle has tried to write it in such a way as to "draw you into this new consciousness as you read … to give you a taste of enlightenment."
As a result, the book avoids intellectual discussion and argument. He tries not merely to present the reader's mind with information, which the mind might find interesting, or might not, which it might agree with, or disagree with. From Tolle's judgment, none of that would change readers, who would still be using their minds to judge these new ideas and to respond to them. Rather Tolle uses a variety of devices to try to engage with the reader at a deeper level than that of the mind.
The book is cast in a question and answer format, and originated in Tolle's work with individuals and small groups over a ten-year period. Most of the questions arose while he was teaching and counseling. This format allows Tolle to engage with how his readers are likely to be thinking or responding to his teaching, and allows him to move the focus of attention away from a merely intellectual response to the readers' own consciousness.
The book does not follow a strictly linear sequence of thought. The question and answer format allows for digressions and repetitions. An earlier point can be made again in a new way, or brief summaries of earlier material may help to clarify misunderstandings the questioners still have. The terminology is also varied: Being and Unmanifested, presence and consciousness, acceptance and surrender, enlightenment and transformation. The words are used as signposts, pointing beyond themselves.
Other Reviews
Much more than simple principles and platitudes, The Power of Now takes readers on an inspiring spiritual journey to find their true and deepest self and reach the ultimate in personal growth and spirituality: the discovery of truth and light.
It's no wonder that The Power of Now has sold over 2 million copies worldwide and has been translated into over 30 foreign languages. Much more than simple principles and platitudes, the book takes readers on an inspiring spiritual journey to find their true and deepest self and reach the ultimate in personal growth and spirituality: the discovery of truth and light. In the first chapter, Tolle introduces readers to enlightenment and its natural enemy, the mind. He awakens readers to their role as a creator of pain and shows them how to have a pain-free identity by living fully in the present.
Tolle's purpose and hope for The Power of Now was that it would "play its part in … the transformation of human consciousness," by acting as a catalyst to those who are ready for a radical inner transformation or, as he sometimes calls it, for enlightenment.
This purpose has affected the format of the book. Tolle has tried to write it in such a way as to "draw you into this new consciousness as you read … to give you a taste of enlightenment."
As a result, the book avoids intellectual discussion and argument. He tries not merely to present the reader's mind with information, which the mind might find interesting, or might not, which it might agree with, or disagree with. From Tolle's judgment, none of that would change readers, who would still be using their minds to judge these new ideas and to respond to them. Rather Tolle uses a variety of devices to try to engage with the reader at a deeper level than that of the mind.
The book is cast in a question and answer format, and originated in Tolle's work with individuals and small groups over a ten-year period. Most of the questions arose while he was teaching and counseling. This format allows Tolle to engage with how his readers are likely to be thinking or responding to his teaching, and allows him to move the focus of attention away from a merely intellectual response to the readers' own consciousness.
The book does not follow a strictly linear sequence of thought. The question and answer format allows for digressions and repetitions. An earlier point can be made again in a new way, or brief summaries of earlier material may help to clarify misunderstandings the questioners still have. The terminology is also varied: Being and Unmanifested, presence and consciousness, acceptance and surrender, enlightenment and transformation. The words are used as signposts, pointing beyond themselves.
Other Reviews
Much more than simple principles and platitudes, The Power of Now takes readers on an inspiring spiritual journey to find their true and deepest self and reach the ultimate in personal growth and spirituality: the discovery of truth and light.
It's no wonder that The Power of Now has sold over 2 million copies worldwide and has been translated into over 30 foreign languages. Much more than simple principles and platitudes, the book takes readers on an inspiring spiritual journey to find their true and deepest self and reach the ultimate in personal growth and spirituality: the discovery of truth and light. In the first chapter, Tolle introduces readers to enlightenment and its natural enemy, the mind. He awakens readers to their role as a creator of pain and shows them how to have a pain-free identity by living fully in the present.
The journey is thrilling, and along the way, the author shows how to connect to the indestructible essence of our Being, the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. Featuring a new preface by the author, this paperback shows that only after regaining awareness of Being, liberated from Mind and intensely in the Now, is there Enlightenment.
About the Author
Tolle's first book, The Power of Now, was first published in 1997 by Namaste Publishing. Only 3000 copies were published of the first edition, and Tolle has said "I would personally deliver a few copies every week to some small books stores in Vancouver ... Friends helped by placing copies of the book in spiritual bookstores farther afield". The book was first published under copyright by the New World Library in 1999, and in August 2000, it reached the New York Times Best Seller list for "Hardcover Advice". After two more years, it was number one on the list. In May 2010, The Power of Now appeared on the "Paperback Advice" for the 92nd time, at number 8. By 2008 the book had been translated into 33 languages, and has since also been translated into Arabic. Tolle published his second book, Stillness Speaks, in 2003. In 2005, Tolle published his third book, A New Earth .
Number 3: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
About the Book (Wikipedia)
The book is a collection of economic articles written by Levitt, an expert who has already gained a reputation for applying economic theory to diverse subjects not usually covered by "traditional" economists; he does, however, accept the standard neoclassical microeconomic model of rational utility-maximization. In Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner argue that economics is, at root, the study of incentives.
The book's topics include:
Chapter 1: Discovering cheating as applied to teachers and sumo wrestlers
Chapter 2: Information control as applied to the Ku Klux Klan and real-estate agents
Chapter 3: The economics of drug dealing, including the surprisingly low earnings and abject working conditions of crack cocaine dealers
Chapter 4: The controversial role legalized abortion may have played in reducing crime. (Levitt explored this topic in an earlier paper entitled "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime.")
Chapter 5: The negligible effects of good parenting on education
Chapter 6: The socioeconomic patterns of naming children
About the Author
Levitt was born in 1967 and attended St. Paul Academy and Summit School, graduated from Harvard University in 1989 with his B.A. in economics, and received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1994. He is currently the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor and the director of the The Becker Center on Price Theory at the University of Chicago. In 2004 he won the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded bi-annually by the American Economic Association to the most promising U.S. economist under the age of 40. In April 2005 Levitt published his first book, Freakonomics (coauthored with Stephen J. Dubner), which became a New York Times bestseller. Levitt and Dubner also started a blog (www.freakonomics.com).
Dubner grew up in Duanesburg, New York as the youngest of eight children in a devout Roman Catholic family. His parents, Paul and Veronica Dubner, had converted to Catholicism from Judaism. Stephen Dubner explains his own choice to practice Judaism as an adult as follows: "I did not grow up Jewish, but my parents did. . . . But for my parents -- and now, for me, as I am becoming a Jew -- there is a pointed difference. We have chosen our religion, rejecting what we inherited for what we felt we needed."
Dubner's first published work was in the American children's magazine Highlights for Children.[citation needed] Dubner received a scholarship from Appalachian State University in North Carolina, and graduated in 1984. At Appalachian he formed a band, "The Right Profile," which was signed to Arista Records. In 1988, he stopped playing music to focus more on writing, going on to receive an MFA in Writing from Columbia University (1990), where he also taught in the English Department.
Dubner currently resides in New York City with his wife, Ellen Binder, and their two children
Number 2: The Logic of Life: Uncovering The New Economics of Everything by Tim Harford
Levitt was born in 1967 and attended St. Paul Academy and Summit School, graduated from Harvard University in 1989 with his B.A. in economics, and received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1994. He is currently the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor and the director of the The Becker Center on Price Theory at the University of Chicago. In 2004 he won the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded bi-annually by the American Economic Association to the most promising U.S. economist under the age of 40. In April 2005 Levitt published his first book, Freakonomics (coauthored with Stephen J. Dubner), which became a New York Times bestseller. Levitt and Dubner also started a blog (www.freakonomics.com).
Dubner grew up in Duanesburg, New York as the youngest of eight children in a devout Roman Catholic family. His parents, Paul and Veronica Dubner, had converted to Catholicism from Judaism. Stephen Dubner explains his own choice to practice Judaism as an adult as follows: "I did not grow up Jewish, but my parents did. . . . But for my parents -- and now, for me, as I am becoming a Jew -- there is a pointed difference. We have chosen our religion, rejecting what we inherited for what we felt we needed."
Dubner's first published work was in the American children's magazine Highlights for Children.[citation needed] Dubner received a scholarship from Appalachian State University in North Carolina, and graduated in 1984. At Appalachian he formed a band, "The Right Profile," which was signed to Arista Records. In 1988, he stopped playing music to focus more on writing, going on to receive an MFA in Writing from Columbia University (1990), where he also taught in the English Department.
Dubner currently resides in New York City with his wife, Ellen Binder, and their two children
Number 2: The Logic of Life: Uncovering The New Economics of Everything by Tim Harford
Financial Times and Slate.com columnist Harford (The Undercover Economist) provides an entertaining and provocative look at the logic behind the seemingly irrational. Arguing that rational behavior is more widespread than most people expect, Harford uses economic principles to draw forth the rational elements of gambling, the teenage oral sex craze, crime and other supposedly illogical behaviors to illustrate his larger point. Utilizing John von Neumann and Thomas Schelling's conceptions of game theory, Harford applies their approach to a multitude of arenas, including marriage, the workplace and racism. Contrarily, he also shows that individual rational behavior doesn't always lead to socially desired outcomes. Harford concludes with how to apply this thinking on an even bigger scale, showing how rational behavior shapes cities, politics and the entire history of human civilization. Well-written with highly engaging stories and examples, this book will be of great interest to Freakonomics and Blink fans as well as anyone interested in the psychology of human behavior. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Number 1: SuperFreakonomics by Steven D Levitt & Stephen J Dubner
I read from the Penguin Books 2010 Edition.
Economist Levitt and journalist Dubner capitalize on their megaselling Freakonomics with another effort to make the dismal science go gonzo. Freaky topics include the oldest profession (hookers charge less nowadays because the sexual revolution has produced so much free competition), money-hungry monkeys (yep, that involves prostitution, too) and the dunderheadedness of Al Gore.
There’s not much substance to the authors’ project of applying economics to all of life. Their method is to notice some contrarian statistic (adult seat belts are as effective as child-safety seats in preventing car-crash fatalities in children older than two), turn it into “economics” by tacking on a perfunctory cost-benefit analysis (seat belts are cheaper and more convenient) and append a libertarian sermonette (governments “tend to prefer the costly-and-cumbersome route”).
The point of these lessons is to bolster the economist’s view of people as rational actors, altruism as an illusion and government regulation as a folly of unintended consequences. The intellectual content is pretty thin, but it’s spiked with the crowd-pleasing provocations—“'A pimp’s services are considerably more valuable than a realtor’s’” —that spell bestseller. (Nov.)
About the Authors
Steven D. Levitt teaches economics at the University of Chicago. His idiosyncratic economic research into areas as varied as guns and game shows has triggered debate in the media and academic circles. He recently received the American Economic Association's John Bates Clark Medal, awarded every two years to the best American economist under forty.Stephen J. Dubner lives in New York City. He writes for The New York Times and the New Yorker, and is the bestselling author of Turbulent Souls and Confessions of a Hero-Worshipper. In August 2003 Dubner wrote a profile of Levitt in The New York Times magazine. The extraodinary response that article received led to a remarkable collaboration.
While attending Appalachian State University, Stephen J. Dubner started a rock band that was signed to Arista Records. He eventually stopped playing music to earn an M.F.A. in writing at Columbia University, where he also taught in the English Department. From 1990 to 1994, he was an editor and writer at New York magazine. He has written for numerous publications including The New Yorker, Time, and The Washington Post. He is an award-winning author and journalist. He is the coauthor, with Steven D. Levitt, of Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. It won the inaugural Quill Award for best business book; a Visionary Award from the National Council on Economic Education; and was named a Notable Book of 2005 by the New York Times. His other works include Turbulent Souls: A Catholic Son's Return to His Jewish Family (1998), Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper (2003), and The Boy with Two Belly Buttons (2007).
