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One of the most original and provocative books of the past decade is "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt (Rowman & Littlefield). "A critical look at salaried professionals," says the cover, "and the soul-battering system that shapes their lives." Its theme is postmodern America, but also applies to Britain, where the corporate state has bred a new class of Americanized manager to run the private and public sectors: the banks, the main parties, corporations, important committees, the BBC.

Imagine, Michael Chorost proposes, that four police officers on a drug raid are connected mentally in a way that allows them to sense what their colleagues are seeing and feeling. Tony Vittorio, the captain, is in the center room of the three-room drug den. He can sense that his partner Wilson, in the room on his left, is not feeling danger or arousal and thus has encountered no one. But suddenly Vittorio feels a distant thump on his chest. Sarsen, in the room on the right, has been hit with something, possibly a bullet fired from a gun with a silencer. Vittorio glimpses a flickering image of a metallic barrel pointed at Sarsen, who is projecting overwhelming shock and alarm. By deducing how far Sarsen might have gone into the room and where the gunman is likely to be standing, Vittorio fires shots into the wall that will, at the very least, distract the gunman and allow Sarsen to shoot back. Sarsen is saved; the gunman is dead. That scene, from his new book, "World Wide Mind," is an example of what Mr. Chorost sees as "the coming integration of humanity, machines, and the Internet." The prediction is conceptually feasible, he tells us, something that technology does not yet permit but that breaks no known physical laws.

One last full moon - then it will all be over. Jacob Marlowe has lost the will to live. For two hundred years he has wandered the world, enslaved by his lunatic appetites and tormented by the memory of his first and most monstrous crime. Now, the last of his kind, he knows he cannot go on. But as Jake counts down a violent murder and an extraordinary meeting plunge him straight back into the desperate pursuit of life - and love. An intelligent and literate addition to the genre.

Glenn Greenwald studied law and spent ten years as a litigator in federal and state courts across the country. Now he's a big two-fisted progressive blogger and columnist for Salon.com. And he's out with a blistering critique of what has happened to American law. We've stopped applying it to everyone, says Greenwald. We've carved out an exemption for Americans in the halls of power. We've created what Greenwald calls a "lawless elite" that is running roughshod over our economy and national policy. Over American law. This hour On Point: Glenn Greenwald, and liberty and justice for some.

Everyone thinks that talent and creativity are the first determinants of a writer's success, but people who have actually made an attempt in writing, know that there is much more to it. The greatest struggle that writers face is their inability to manage their time and find the energy to stick to the given schedule.

"Writing is a creative, inexact science. It's a process, but it's also intuitive. For many people, that makes it intimidating. If you are sitting at your computer desperately trying to compose the perfect business plan, investor pitch or company newsletter -- typing and deleting, typing and deleting, typing and deleting -- try standing up, pushing away from the computer and grabbing a pen. Yes, a pen. And some paper."

"I love this infographic from NinjaEssays.com - I started on a typewriter, aeons ago: it was an Olivetti Lettera 35! What was particularly annoying about typewriters (slipping into old folk mode now kids) was you had to hit the keys hard and there was always a chance of getting your fingers caught between them and ripping a cuticle back. "

According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the world: nobody ever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal selves, as they appear in conscious experience. The phenomenal self, however, is not a thing but an ongoing process; it is the content of a "transparent self-model." In Being No One, Metzinger, a German philosopher, draws strongly on neuroscientific research to present a representationalist and functional analysis of what a consciously experienced first-person perspective actually is. Building a bridge between the humanities and the empirical sciences of the mind, he develops new conceptual toolkits and metaphors; uses case studies of unusual states of mind such as agnosia, neglect, blindsight, and hallucinations; and offers new sets of multilevel constraints for the concept of consciousness. Metzinger's central question is: How exactly does strong, consciously experienced subjectivity emerge out of objective events in the natural world? His epistemic goal is to determine whether conscious experience, in particular the experience of being someone that results from the emergence of a phenomenal self, can be analyzed on subpersonal levels of description. He also asks if and how our Cartesian intuitions that subjective experiences as such can never be reductively explained are themselves ultimately rooted in the deeper representational structure of our conscious minds.

When it comes to reading during the Superbowl, we are pros here at the Quirk HQ. Our own Blair Thornburgh dished out some handy tips last year. But what if you actually want to get into football, like all your pals at the Superbowl party you've been dragged to? The crew over at Ninja Essays whipped up this great NFL Reads Infographic, which we've embeded below. Lots of great books worth checking out!

A great book which covers the basic and most important things that proves that you can achieve whatever you dream for, just by thinking big. It will teach you principles on using the law of attraction in a way that you can have positive thinking and get whatever you desire in life. In this book, you will get to know that successful people reach the top only with their beliefs. Step by step, simple

Super Intelligence [Renne B. Williams] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. SuperIntelligence and SuperIntelligent People A lot of people will definitely wonder what the word ‘Super Intelligence’ means and how it forms or helps in our daily lives. Well

Another client of THGM Writing Services publishes a best seller. Saving Christ: Starway Seven is a time-travel novel by Francis T. Perry Williams. It takes readers back to Biblical times to answer the infamous question: "What if?"

Google Book Search lets you download books, but only if they're in public domain, like Hamlet. All the other books are available as a limited preview or as a snippet view in Google Book Search. You could download the image corresponding to each page of a book or you could automatize the process using a download manager. Another option is to use Google Book Downloader, a third-party Windows tool that downloads the pages from Google Book Search using several proxies and merges the images in a PDF file. Google Book Downloader will only retrieve the pages that are available online, so you won't be able to download entire books in most cases. The application requires .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and it's not very clear if it breaks the terms of use for Google Book Search.

Trump tweeted about his writing record in 2018, saying, in part, he had "written many best selling books." To which Tim O'Brien, who wrote "TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald," tweeted a contradiction, saying it was ghostwriters who did the writing work on Trump's books.

This is more than just a book. In 2014, after over three decades as a lawyer, Boryla wrote and performed The Disappearing Quarterback as a one-man autobiographical stage play. It included history and humor, as well as commentary on concussions in professional sports. "It's a psychopathic blood sport," he told the Denver Post in 2018.