"Why do so many of us stop learning new skills as adults? Are we afraid to fail? Have we forgotten the sheer pleasure of being a beginner? Or is it simply a fact that you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Inspired by his young daughter's insatiable need to know how to do almost everything, and stymied by his own rut of mid-career competence, Tom Vanderbilt begins a year of learning purely for the sake of learning. He tackles five main skills (and...

As he grieves his best friend Benny's death, Mason and his friend Calvin, who are targeted by the neighborhood bullies, create an underground haven for themselves, but when Calvin goes missing Mason finds himself in trouble.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • For anyone who wants to learn a foreign language, this is the method that will finally make the words stick.
 
“A brilliant and thoroughly modern guide to learning new languages.”—Gary Marcus, cognitive psychologist and author of the New York Times bestseller Guitar Zero
 
At thirty years old, Gabriel Wyner speaks six languages fluently....

"In The Real Work-the term magicians use for the accumulated craft that makes for a great trick-Gopnik becomes a dedicated student of several masters of their craft: a classical painter, a boxer, a dancing instructor, a driving instructor, and others. Rejecting self-help bromides and bullet points, he nevertheless shows that the top people in any field share a set of common qualities and methods. For one, their mastery is always a process of breaking...

"A fresh take on George Orwell as a far more nature-loving figure than is often portrayed, and a dazzlingly rich meditation on roses, gardens, and the value and use of beauty and pleasure in the face of brutality and horror. "In the spring of 1936 a man planted roses." That man was George Orwell, shortly before he went off to fight against fascism in Spain. Today, those rosebushes are still thriving. This is the starting point for Rebecca Solnit's...

"A spirited, metaphysical exploration into math's deepest mysteries and conundrums at the crux of middle age"-- "Decades after struggling to understand math as a boy, Alec Wilkinson decides to embark on a journey to learn it as a middle-aged man. What begins as a personal challenge-and it's challenging-soon transforms into something greater than a belabored effort to learn math. Despite his incompetence, Wilkinson encounters a universe of unexpected...

Zoe is sure that she can be anything she wants to be, despite a little voice of doubt that points out the problems with her ideas--but first she needs to learn how to read.

Examines how the educations of America's first four presidents, and in particular their scholarly devotion to ancient Greek and Roman classics, informed the beliefs and ideals that shaped the nation's constitution and government.

"Hank's sister Emily wants Ralph's Reptile Show to perform at her birthday party more than anything, but Ralph is booked solid. So Hank comes up with a plan: he'll disguise himself as a magician called The Westside Wizard and pull a snake from thin air! But when Hank's true identity is revealed during his performance, his good deed might just turn into a huge disaster"--

Describes how a teacher named Miss Chew encouraged individuality, and accepted learning differences, and helped a young student with academic difficulties get extra time to take tests and permission to be in advanced art classes. Inspired by the author's memories of her art teacher.