Memoir of a Visionary

Memoir of a Visionary
Author: Antonia Pantoja
Publisher: Arte Publico Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2002-03-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781611922202

This compelling autobiography traces the trajectory of the groundbreaking Puerto Rican leader Antonia Pantoja, from a struggling school teacher in Puerto Rico to her work as principal engineer of the most enduring Puerto Rican organizations in New York City.

Beyond Business

Beyond Business
Author: John Browne
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2010-02-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0297859188

An inspirational memoir from a remarkable leader. Once a lacklustre organisation, BP became one of the world's biggest, most successful and most admired companies in the new millennium. John Browne, the company's CEO for 12 years, invented the oil 'supermajor' and led the way on issues such as climate change, human rights and transparency. In BEYOND BUSINESS, Browne brings to life what he learned about leadership in a tough industry. His story encompasses the insights gained as he transformed a national company, challenged an entire industry and prompted political and business leaders to change. He takes us across the world on adventures that include going toe-to-toe with both tyrants and elected leaders, and involve engineering feats which in many ways rival those of going to the moon. And he shares his views on the true purpose of business and the leadership needed to tackle the grand challenges of our era. It is also a story of failure and human frailty, as Browne reveals how his private and public lives collided at frightening speed in full view of the world, prompting his abrupt resignation as CEO of BP.

Escape Artist

Escape Artist
Author: William A. Noguera
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Total Pages: 548
Release: 2018-01-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1609807987

An ABA Indies Introduce Top Ten Title for Winter 2018 William A. Noguera has spent thirty-four years at the notorious San Quentin Prison, home to the nation’s largest and deadliest death row. Each day, men plot against you and your life rests on a razor’s edge. In Escape Artist, he describes his personal growth as a man and artist and shares his insights into daily life and the fight to survive in the underworld of prison culture. After being sentenced to death, he arrived at San Quentin Prison and was thrown into a rat-infested cell—it was there that he discovered the key to his escape: art. Over the next three decades, Noguera rebelled against conventional prison behavior, and instead forged the code he lives by today—accepting responsibility for his actions, and a self-imposed discipline of rehabilitation. In the process, he has explored his capacity to bring focus and clarity to his artistic vision. Escape Artist exposes the violence, politics and everyday existence within the underbelly of society that is prison life. In an unprecedented narrative, Noguera reveals the emotional and heart-wrenching loss that landed him on death row and the journey he has taken to become an award-winning artist, speaker, and author—a tale of one man’s transformation through tragedy.

Visionary

Visionary
Author: Graham Hancock
Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser
Total Pages: 642
Release: 2022-04-04
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1633412636

The latest archaeology and history redefining book from bestselling author Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods), who is featured in Ancient Apocalypse, a hit Netflix original docuseries. "With the original unabridged text of Supernatural, I offer the reader an investigation that explores the human experience with psychedelics from the Stone Age to the Space Age and the role of these extraordinary plant medicines as tools to investigate the nature of reality itself."—Graham Hancock Discover the pathway to the gods. Less than 50,000 years ago mankind had no art, no religion, no sophisticated symbolism, no innovative thinking. Then, in a dramatic and electrifying change, described by scientists as "the greatest riddle in human history," all the skills and qualities that we value most highly in ourselves appeared already fully formed, as though bestowed on us by hidden powers. In Visionary, Graham Hancock sets out to investigate this mysterious "before-and-after moment" and to discover the truth about the influences that gave birth to modern human mind. His quest takes him on a journey of adventure and detection from the stunningly beautiful painted caves of prehistoric France, Spain, and Italy to remote rock shelters in the mountains of South Africa, where he finds a treasure trove of extraordinary Stone Age art. Hancock uncovers clues that lead him to travel to the depths of the Amazon rainforest to drink the powerful plant hallucinogen ayahuasca with Indian shamans, whose paintings contain images of "supernatural beings" identical to the animal-human hybrids depicted in prehistoric caves and rock shelters. Hallucinogens such as mescaline also produce visionary encounters with exactly the same beings. Scientists at the cutting edge of consciousness research have begun to consider the possibility that such hallucinations may be real perceptions of other "dimensions." Could the "supernaturals" first depicted in the painted caves and rock shelters be the ancient teachers of mankind? Could it be that human evolution is not just the "blind," "meaningless" process that Darwin identified, but something more purposive and intelligent, something that we have barely even begun to understand? Previously published as Supernatural, this definitive edition includes a new Introduction by Graham Hancock as well as restored chapters that were omitted from the original paperback release.

Flourish

Flourish
Author: Martin E. P. Seligman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2011
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1439190763

Explains the four pillars of well-being--meaning and purpose, positive emotions, relationships, and accomplishment--placing emphasis on meaning and purpose as the most important for achieving a life of fulfillment.

Rewriting Magic

Rewriting Magic
Author: Claire Fanger
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2015-06-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0271072016

In Rewriting Magic, Claire Fanger explores a fourteenth-century text called The Flowers of Heavenly Teaching. Written by a Benedictine monk named John of Morigny, the work all but disappeared from the historical record, and it is only now coming to light again in multiple versions and copies. While John’s book largely comprises an extended set of prayers for gaining knowledge, The Flowers of Heavenly Teaching is unusual among prayer books of its time because it includes a visionary autobiography with intimate information about the book’s inspiration and composition. Through the window of this record, we witness how John reconstructs and reconsecrates a condemned liturgy for knowledge acquisition: the ars notoria of Solomon. John’s work was the subject of intense criticism and public scandal, and his book was burned as heretical in 1323. The trauma of these experiences left its imprint on the book, but in unexpected and sometimes baffling ways. Fanger decodes this imprint even as she relays the narrative of how she learned to understand it. In engaging prose, she explores the twin processes of knowledge acquisition in John’s visionary autobiography and her own work of discovery as she reconstructed the background to his extraordinary book. Fanger’s approach to her subject exemplifies innovative historical inquiry, research, and methodology. Part theology, part historical anthropology, part biblio-memoir, Rewriting Magic relates a story that will have deep implications for the study of medieval life, monasticism, prayer, magic, and religion.

Winnebagos on Wednesdays

Winnebagos on Wednesdays
Author: Scott Cowen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2018-02-20
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1400889537

Why a strong mission and inspired leadership are vital to the success of America’s colleges and universities In 1998, soon after assuming the presidency of Tulane University, Scott Cowen was confronted with a setback. Despite an undefeated football season and putting the best financial deal on the table, Cowen was unable to retain the school's football coach. The coach wanted something the president didn't have--a football program so popular, as the coach put it, that fans would line up their Winnebagos on Wednesdays in anticipation of Saturday games. In that moment, Cowen improbably found himself in the entertainment business—and his university was deemed wanting. At a time when schools seem overrun by sports programs, spiraling costs, and absurd ranking systems, Winnebagos on Wednesdays argues that colleges and universities of all stripes and sizes can achieve their educational aims if they possess two things: visionary leadership and a strong mission. Cowen, named one of the nation's top university presidents by Time magazine in 2009, gives a behind-the-scenes look at the critical demands faced by many education leaders. He profiles a range of situations, from how Diana Natalicio of the University of Texas at El Paso expanded a school serving a specific demographic into an academic powerhouse to how Michael Sorrell shifted Paul Quinn College's mission to urban entrepreneurship in order to save the institution. Cowen also draws from his own hard-won experiences, including the rebuilding of Tulane and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the decision to maintain Tulane's football program. He shows how crucial choices in tough situations shape organizations, for better or ill. A sweeping overview of the higher education landscape, Winnebagos on Wednesdays demonstrates that the courage of transformative leadership is essential for colleges and universities to remain vital.

Visionary Women

Visionary Women
Author: Andrea Barnet
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 663
Release: 2018-03-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0062310747

Winner of The Green Prize for Sustainable Literature A Finalist for the PEN/Bograd Weld Prize for Biography Four influential women we thought we knew well—Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson, Jane Goodall, and Alice Waters—and how they spearheaded the modern progressive movement This is the story of four visionaries who profoundly shaped the world we live in today. Together, these women—linked not by friendship or field, but by their choice to break with convention—showed what one person speaking truth to power can do. Jane Jacobs fought for livable cities and strong communities; Rachel Carson warned us about poisoning the environment; Jane Goodall demonstrated the indelible kinship between humans and animals; and Alice Waters urged us to reconsider what and how we eat. With a keen eye for historical detail, Andrea Barnet traces the arc of each woman’s career and explores how their work collectively changed the course of history. While they hailed from different generations, Carson, Jacobs, Goodall, and Waters found their voices in the early sixties. At a time of enormous upheaval, all four stood as bulwarks against 1950s corporate culture and its war on nature. Consummate outsiders, each prevailed against powerful and mostly male adversaries while also anticipating the disaffections of the emerging counterculture. All told, their efforts ignited a transformative progressive movement while offering people a new way to think about the world and a more positive way of living in it.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Author: Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 732
Release: 2010-10-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1586489208

When Daniel Patrick Moynihan died in 2003 the Economist described him as "a philosopher-politician-diplomat who two centuries earlier would not have been out of place among the Founding Fathers." Though Moynihan never wrote an autobiography, he was a gifted author and voluminous correspondent, and in this selection from his letters Steven Weisman has compiled a vivid portrait of Moynihan's life, in the senator's own words. Before his four terms as Senator from New York, Moynihan served in key positions under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. His letters offer an extraordinary window into particular moments in history, from his feelings of loss at JFK's assassination, to his passionate pleas to Nixon not to make Vietnam a Nixon war, to his frustrations over healthcare and welfare reform during the Clinton era. This book showcases the unbridled range of Moynihan's intellect and interests, his appreciation for his constituents, his renowned wit, and his warmth even for those with whom he profoundly disagreed. Its publication is a significant literary event.

Blind Ambition

Blind Ambition
Author: Chad E. Foster
Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2021-02-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1400222656

For anyone seeking to live life to its fullest potential, Blind Ambition is an eye-opening account of a tech industry executive who overcame fear and hopelessness to turn his blindness disability into a powerful, competitive strength. While most people were preparing for the adventure of adult life, Chad E. Foster was watching the world he grew up with fade to black but that didn’t stop him from becoming the first blind person to graduate from the Harvard Business School leadership program and climbing the corporate ladder as a successful finance/sales executive. With determination, ambition, and drive, Chad created what Oracle said would be impossible. He gave millions of people the ability to earn a living by becoming the first to create customer relationship software for the visually impaired. Even if you've been robbed of your self-identity and dreams for the future, you can change your story and achieve your goals. In Blind Ambition, readers and listeners will: Be inspired by Chad’s story of how he transformed the loss of his vision into a gift with unique strengths and abilities he did not have before. See how we choose the stories we tell ourselves about our circumstances and how this either limits us or propels us toward our goals. Gain new perspective on what is possible when you shift your mindset, give up making excuses, and decide that you oversee who you want to be. Learn the mental model that Chad uses to quickly overcome frustrations and stressors. Overcoming the challenges of blindness improved Chad’s perspective, making him more resilient and grateful for the life that he has. Ultimately, Chad's unforgettable lessons and outlook will inspire listeners to overcome their perceived limitations and explore new possibilities where they once may have only seen obstacles. Blind Ambition will teach you how to take advantage of your disadvantages.