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You can feel it. Or maybe you can't. It doesn't matter whether you feel it or not. It's happening. The story of the United States of America as we know it -- not merely as the world's dominant superpower, but as a discrete political, economic, and geographic entity -- is drawing to a close due to a convergence of emerging economic, environmental, and political crises. Nothing lasts forever, empires least of all. And this one, which only began to expand in earnest circa the year 1900, doesn't feel like it has the staying power of ancient Rome. Not at all.

A wonderfully told story of the pain of individuals using each other for their own purposes. I enjoyed this book very much and as the author diligently builds upon two people using each other to satisfy their loneliness and then the numbness of the suffering that is created from such a codependent relationship. The unfortunate pain of almost redemption but never resolution at the end of the book left me feeling the way I should feel: a bit saddened for both of the characters.

"After so many years, and so many lists, you might think the task of choosing the 10 Best Books would get easier. If only. The sublime story collections alone created agonies of indecision. So did the superb literary biographies we read - and deeply admired. But in the end the decisions had to be made."

A new book looks at the personal stories behind some of history's best-known thinkers, with fascinating results

As Jeff writes in the introduction, the first part of Age of Greed "is mostly a story of business pioneers who fought government regulation or, through innovation, escaped government oversight," building on fear from punishing inflation in the seventies and a new post-Watergate distrust of government, "all the while diminishing the power of government and reinforcing the changing national attitudes." In the second part, "Once government was no longer a counterweight and a new political ideology cleared their path, financiers led the way... Debts more than innovation and technological progress became the economy's driving force. Financial businesses doubled in size compared to the economy and profits grew still faster. Hundreds of billions of precious American savings were wasted."

This book does what it says on the tin. Over 240 pages the author provides short entries in alphabetical order in which she describes herself and her life. She says in the foreword: "I have not survived against all odds. I have not lived to tell. I have not witnessed the extraordinary. This is my story." And if you think that sounds boring that is where you would be wrong.

One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions: Where do good ideas come from? With Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson pairs the insight of his bestselling Everything Bad Is Good for You and the dazzling erudition of The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air to address an urgent and universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward. Beginning with Charles Darwin's first encounter with the teeming ecosystem of the coral reef and drawing connections to the intellectual hyperproductivity of modern megacities and to the instant success of YouTube, Johnson shows us that the question we need to ask is, What kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas? His answers are never less than revelatory, convincing, and inspiring as Johnson identifies the seven key principles to the genesis of such ideas, and traces them across time and disciplines. Most exhilarating is Johnson's conclusion that with today's tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. Where Good Ideas Come From is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how to come up with tomorrow's great ideas.

From the Desk of: Eleanor Ruse

Dear Friend,

I want to tell you a story about myself and my previous online business ideas that I used to make money online. I started working online in 2004 and had moderate success and managed to generate income online with The Rich Jerk program and similar

Tamarisk Row is the story of a young boy growing up in Australia. He is a solitary-type and prefers to immerse himself in an imaginary world rather than mingle with kids his own age. His father is a compulsive gambler and because of this the world of horse racing becomes central to the boy's fantasies which feature a complex web of images involving calendars, colours, grasslands, creeks and rivers, Catholic rituals, priests' houses, horse races and racking skills, marbles, stones, freckles, books and libraries, and tunnels and secret places, that have all been used repeatedly and with remarkable consistency by Murnane in his subsequent fiction. It has been called "one of the very best books about childhood and the world as the child finds it."

This is the story of Gurion Maccabee, age 10: a lover, a fighter, a scholar, and a truly spectacular talker. Gurion has been expelled from 3 Jewish schools for acts of violence and messianic tendencies. He ends up in a special lockdown program for the most hopeless cases at Aptakisic Junior High. But in just 4 days Gurion's search for righteousness sparks a violent, unstoppable rebellion. Driven equally by moral fervour and teenage exuberance, The Instructions is hilarious, troubling, empathetic, monumental, breakneck, romantic and unforgettable.

Saving Christ is a love story between Jesus and a modern-day woman sent back in time. Time travel sends the woman back to the last seven days of Jesus' life from a modern viewpoint.

This is a must-see site. This book is on the cutting-edge of psychedelic writing, a crazy story about hippies who travel through time and cross dimensions to encounter the Goddess Kali.

"Then one day I went out to see a friend, and I didn't have much cash on me. This weaselly kid, who I didn't really like, came up to me and gave me this whole cock-and-bull story about he was getting thrown out of his place, blah, blah, and I was getting impatient, and I told him flat: I couldn't help him that day."

More books

Almost. Historian David Goldfield exposes how evangelical Protestants turned a conflict into a bloody conflagration

With "Sophie's Choice," he became a legend -- but his temper and depression haunted my family