Powerful Non Fiction & Fiction Books

Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL (born 26 March 1941) is a British biological theorist with a background in ethology. He is a popular science author focusing on evolution.

Dawkins is one of Britain's best-known academics. He came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982, he further developed the gene-centred view with his book The Extended Phenotype:The Gene as the Unit of Selection, emphasizing that the phenotypic effects of genes are not necessarily limited to an organism's body but can stretch via biochemistry and behaviour into other organisms and the environment. He is well-known as a presenter of the case for rationalism and scientific thinking. His later works continued to expand upon these ideas and their implications.

Dawkins is one of the world's most widely publicised atheists. He is a prominent critic of religion, creationism and pseudoscience. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, he argued against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he described a dysteleological perspective on the process of evolution by natural selection as "blind", without a design or a goal. In his 2006 million-selling book The God Delusion, he contended that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist, writing that such beliefs, based on faith rather than on evidence, qualify as a delusion. He was a co-founder of the Out Campaign, as a means of advancing atheism and freethought.

Dawkins retired from Oxford University in 2008 and remains a writer and public figure.

Charles Robert Darwin FRS (12 February 1809 ? 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist who realised that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors, and published compelling supporting evidence of this in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species in which he presented his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.

The fact that evolution occurs became accepted by the scientific community and much of the general public in his lifetime, but it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed that natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution. In modified form, Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.The Complete Works of Darwin Online - Biography. darwin-online.org.uk. Retrieved on 2006-12-15As Darwinian scholar Joseph Carroll of the University of Missouri?St. Louis puts it in his introduction to a modern reprint of Darwin's work: "The Origin of Species has special claims on our attention. It is one of the two or three most significant works of all time?one of those works that fundamentally and permanently alter our vision of the world....It is argued with a singularly rigorous consistency but it is also eloquent, imaginatively evocative, and rhetorically compelling."

Darwin's early interest in nature led him to neglect his course in medicine at Edinburgh University and instead help to investigate marine invertebrates, then the University of Cambridge encouraged a passion for natural science. His five-year voyage on established him as an eminent geologist whose observations and theories supported Charles Lyell's uniformitarian ideas, and publication of his journal of the voyage made him famous as a popular author.

Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin investigated the transmutation of species and conceived his theory of natural selection in 1838. Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive research and his geological work had priority. He was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay which described the same idea, prompting immediate joint publication of both of their theories.Darwin - At last. American Museum of Natural History. Retrieved on 2007-03-21 Darwin's work established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature. In 1871 he examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. His research on plants was published in a series of books, and in his final book, he examined earthworms and their effect on soil.

In recognition of Darwin's pre-eminence as a scientist, he was one of only five 19th-century UK non-royal personages to be honoured by a state funeral, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to John Herschel and Isaac Newton.

Dan Ariely (born 1968) is an Israeli professor of behavioral economics. He teaches at Duke University and is head of the eRationality research group at the MIT Media Lab.

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 ? 2 February 1970) was a BritishSidney Hook, "Lord Russell and the War Crimes Trial", Bertrand Russell: critical assessments, Volume 1, edited by A. D. Irvine, (New York 1999) page 178 philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, socialist, pacifist and social critic.Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Bertrand Russell", 1 May 2003 Although he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died.

Russell led the British "revolt against idealism" in the early 1900s. He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his protégé Wittgenstein and his elder Frege, and is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians. He co-authored, with A. N. Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, an attempt to ground mathematics on logic. His philosophical essay "On Denoting" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy."Ludlow, Peter, "Descriptions", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = [http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/descriptions/]. Both works have had a considerable influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics, and philosophy.

He was a prominent anti-war activist, championing free trade between nations and anti-imperialism. Russell was imprisoned for his pacifist activism during World War I, campaigned against Adolf Hitler, for nuclear disarmament, criticised Soviet totalitarianism and the United States of America's involvement in the Vietnam War.The Bertrand Russell Gallery

In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought."The Nobel Foundation (1950). Bertrand Russell: The Nobel Prize in Literature 1950. Retrieved on 11 June 2007.

Brian Greene (born February 9, 1963) is an American theoretical physicist and one of the best-known string theorists. He has been a professor at Columbia University since 1996. Greene has worked on mirror symmetry, relating two different Calabi-Yau manifolds (concretely, relating the conifold to one of its orbifolds). He also described the flop transition, a mild form of topology change, showing that topology in string theory can change at the conifold point. He has become known to a wider audience through his books for the general public, The Elegant Universe, Icarus at the Edge of Time and The Fabric of the Cosmos, and a related PBS television special.

Edward de Bono (born May 19, 1933, in Malta) is a physician, author, inventor, and consultant. He is best known as the originator of the term lateral thinking and a proponent of the deliberate teaching of thinking as a subject in schools.

Timothy Ferriss is an American author, public speaker, and productivity guru. In 2007, he published The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, which was a New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller.New Times Bestseller List Feb. 2008

Watchmen is a twelve-issue comic book limited series created by writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins. The series was published by DC Comics during 1986 and 1987, and has been subsequently reprinted into a collected graphic novel. Watchmen originated from a story proposal Moore submitted to DC featuring superhero characters that the company had acquired from Charlton Comics. As Moore's proposed story would have left many of the characters unusable for future stories, managing editor Dick Giordano convinced the writer to create original characters instead.

Moore used the story as a means to reflect contemporary anxieties and to critique the superhero concept. Watchmen takes place on an alternate history Earth where superheroes emerged in the 1940s and 1960s, helping the United States to win the Vietnam War. The country is edging closer to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, freelance costumed vigilantes have been outlawed and most costumed superheroes are in retirement or working for the government. The story focuses on the personal development and struggles of the protagonists as an investigation into the murder of a government sponsored superhero pulls them out of retirement and eventually leads them to confront a plot to stave off nuclear war by killing millions of people.

Creatively, the focus of Watchmen is on its structure. Gibbons used a nine-panel grid layout throughout the series and added recurring symbols such as a blood-stained smiley. All but the last issue feature supplemental fictional documents that add to the series' backstory, and the narrative is intertwined with that of another story, a fictional pirate comic titled Tales of the Black Freighter, which one of the characters reads. The graphic novel skips through space, time and plot, classifiying itself as a true nonlinear narrative. Watchmen has received critical acclaim both in the comics and mainstream press, and is regarded by critics as a seminal text of the graphic novel medium. After a number of attempts to adapt the series into a feature film, director Zack Snyder's Watchmen was released in March 2009.

Douglas Noël Adams (11 March 1952 - 11 May 2001) was an English writer, dramatist, and musician. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television series, several stage plays, comics, a computer game, and in 2005 a feature film. Adams' contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame.

He also wrote Dirk Gentlys Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), and co-wrote The Meaning of Liff (1983), Last Chance to See (1990), and three stories for the television series Doctor Who. A posthumous collection of his work, including an unfinished novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt in 2002.

Known to some of his fans as "Bop Ad" for his illegible signature,FAQ posted to alt.fan.douglas-adams, Groups.google.com. Retrieved August 11, 2009. Adams became known as an advocate for animals and the environment, and a lover of fast cars, cameras, and the Apple Mac. He was a staunch atheist, famously imagining a sentient puddle who wakes up one morning and thinks, "This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesnt it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!"Adams 1998; Dawkins 2003, p. 169. The biologist Richard Dawkins dedicated his book, The God Delusion, to Adams, writing on his death that, "science has lost a friend, literature has lost a luminary, the mountain gorilla and the black rhino have lost a gallant defender."Dawkins 2001.

Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA (born 8 January 1942) is a British theoretical physicist, whose world-renowned scientific career spans over 40 years. His books and public appearances have made him an academic celebrity and he is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts,, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and in 2009 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.

He is known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes. He has also achieved success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general; these include the runaway best seller A Brief History of Time, which stayed on the British Sunday Times bestsellers list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.

Hawking's key scientific works to date have included providing, with Roger Penrose, theorems regarding singularities in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes should emit radiation, which is today known as Hawking radiation (or sometimes as Bekenstein-Hawking radiation).

Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for thirty years, taking up the post in 1979 and retiring on October 1, 2009.

He is also a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and a Distinguished Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario.

Hawking has a neuro-muscular dystrophy that is related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a condition that has progressed over the years and has left him almost completely paralyzed.

Masaaki Imai (born 1930, in Tokyo) is a consultant in the field of quality management.

Known as the ?Lean Guru? and the father of Continuous Improvement (CI) Masaaki Imai has been a pioneer and leader in spreading the KAIZEN philosophy all over the world.

Mr. Imai's ground breaking book, ?Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success? was an instant global best seller, firmly embedding the word Kaizen in the corporate lexicon. It was the first book (1986) to introduce the ?LEAN' philosophy to the world, four years before the book ?The Machine That Changed The World: The Story of Lean Production?. His firsthand account is based on his close associations and travels with such legendary giants as Shoichiro Toyoda and Taichi Ohno and reveals the secrets behind the success of Toyota and other Japanese companies.

Mr. Imai's sequel book on this subject ?Gemba KAIZEN: A Commonsense, Low-cost Approach to Management? was published in 1997. This book uses relevant case studies to detail 21 practical KAIZEN management practices, including methodologies and tools to be applied where the real action takes place. The result: greater productivity, quality and profits achieved with minimal cost and time.

The concept of KAIZEN is to make simple, common sense improvements and refinements to critical end-to-end business processes- supporting the overall CI strategy of the organization. In the mid-eighties Mr. Imai brought this message to executives of the leading North American carmakers. The message was premature and we see the results today. No one would have guessed that by 2009 Toyota would replace GM as the world leader. Today, companies around the world have used KAIZEN for greater productivity, speed, quality and profits with minimal cost, time and effort, to get results and to become recognized industry leaders.

Mr. Imai's journey started in 1950 at age 26, taking Japanese managers on tours of American plants looking for the secrets of high productivity. In 1961, he returned to Japan and became the first corporate headhunter and consultant to major corporations striving for a competitive advantage. Twenty years later, the situation was reversed, with Mr. Imai receiving visitors from all over the world intent on seeking out the secrets of their Japanese trading partners- via KAIZEN Tours (then known as Japan Study Tours).

In keeping with his philosophy of never-ending continuous improvement Mr. Imai founded Kaizen Institute in 1985, also now known as Kaizen Institute Consulting Group (KICG). He continues to play a significant role as the Ambassador and visionary of the organization, while actively participating in conferences around the world spreading his unique, convincing message of KAIZEN LEAN. The uniqueness is focused on a top down-bottom up approach that engages the entire enterprise to create a Lean culture that is sustainable.

Kaizen Institute supports organizations of all sizes in Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa, Middle East and the Americas, in all business sectors. It provides broad consulting, training and certification (KAIZEN College), and benchmarking services. All consultants must have practical field experience as well as having master the philosophy, methodologies and tools of Lean. The dynamic culture of the group remains the same, comfortably under the shadow of Masaaki Imai, while leveraging the global resources and reach of Kaizen Institute.

Books Authored By Masaaki Imai:

1975 Never Take Yes for an Answer: An Inside Look at Japanese Business

1986 KAIZEN: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success

1997 Gemba KAIZEN: A Commonsense, Low-cost Approach to Management

2009 New book pending (to be named)

Mr. Imai has had several other books published on non-related subjects

Other International Awards and Recognition:

1998 Asia-Pacific Human Resource Development Award

1999 Shingo Research and Professional Publication Prize for Gemba KAIZEN

Masaaki Imai has been featured keynote speaker at International Conferences and Universities in more than 40 countries, advocating his philosophies and Kaizen Institute's principles and methodologies.

Steve Biddulph (born Saltburn, England 1953) is an Australian author, activist and psychologist who has written a number of influential bestselling books and now lectures worldwide on parenting, and boys' education.

He is one of a group of child development specialists in the UK and elsewhere who argued successfully for the introduction of parental leave in that country, and cautioned on the dangers of institutional daycare for the under twos.

He also campaigned on Australia's mistreatment of refugee parents and children under the Howard Government, and lead and funded a five year project to create a permanent national memorial to the SIEV X sinking in Canberra. This memorial involving over a thousand student and community artists, was dedicated in October 2007.

With his wife and co-author Shaaron Biddulph he sponsors a number of activist organizations, and environmental causes. Biddulph was voted Australian Father of the Year in 2000 for his work encouraging the active role of fathers. He lives in Tasmania, Australia.

Thích Nh?t H?nh ; born October 11, 1926 in central Vietnam) is an expatriate Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, author, poet and peace activist. He joined a Zen monastery at the age of 16, studied Buddhism as a novice, and was fully ordained as a monk in 1949. Commonly referred to as Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese: Thích Nh?t H?nh), the title Thích is used by all Vietnamese monks and nuns, meaning that they are part of the Shakya (Shakyamuni Buddha) clan.Phap Dung, Brother (2006) "A Letter to Friends About Our Lineage", published on the Plum Village website[http://www.orderofinterbeing.org/wiki/index.php?title=Lineage]

In the early 1960s he founded the School of Youth for Social Services (SYSS) in Saigon. This grassroots relief organization rebuilt bombed villages, set up schools, established medical centers, and resettled families left homeless during the Vietnam War.04-04-2006, "Thich Nhat Hanh", feature article on the BBC website He traveled to the U.S. to study at Princeton University, and later to lecture at Cornell University and Columbia University. His main focus at the time however, was to urge the U.S. government to withdraw from Vietnam. He urged Martin Luther King, Jr. to publicly oppose the Vietnam War; King nominated Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize (January, 1967).

Thich Nhat Hanh has become an important influence in the development of Western Buddhism. His teachings and practices aim to appeal to people from various religious, spiritual, and political backgrounds, intending to offer mindfulness practices for more Western sensibilities.Laity, Annabel (date unknown) "About Our Teacher", Green Mountain Dharma Center website[http://www.greenmountaincenter.org/About%20Us/tnhinfo.htm] He created the Order of Interbeing in 1966, establishing monastic and practice centers around the world. As of 2007 his home is the Plum Village Monastery in the Dordogne region in the South of France and he travels internationally giving retreats and talks. He coined the term Engaged Buddhism in his book Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire.

A long-term exile from Vietnam, he was allowed to return for a trip in 2005 and again in 2007. He has published more than 100 books, including more than 40 in English. A journal for the Order of Interbeing, The Mindfulness Bell is published quarterly which includes a Dharma talk by him. Nhat Hanh continues to be active in the peace movement, promoting non-violent solutions to conflict. Farah, Samar (April 04, 2002), "An advocate for peace starts with listening", The Christian Science Monitor, Religion and Ethics online journal.[http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0404/p18s02-lire.html] . He conducted a peace walk in Los Angeles in 2005, and again in 2007;Be The Cause Gallery ."Thich Nhat Hanh on Burma", Buddhist Channel, accessed 11/5/2007 He was awarded the Courage of Conscience award June 16, 1991.The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Recipients List

Michael Coleman Talbot (September 29, 1953 ? May 27, 1992)"Michael Talbot". Contemporary Authors Online. Gale, 2003. Retrieved on December 1, 2008. was an American author of a number of books highlighting parallels between ancient mysticism and quantum mechanics, and espousing a theoretical model of reality that suggests the physical universe is akin to a giant hologram. According to Talbot ESP, telepathy, and other paranormal phenomena are real and are a product of his holographic model of reality.

Feng shui ( ,Random House, American Heritage, Merriam Webster formerly ; ) is an ancient Chinese system of aesthetics believed to use the laws of both Heaven (astronomy) and Earth (geography) to help one improve life by receiving positive qi. The original designation for the discipline is Kan Yu (; literally: Tao of heaven and earth).

The term feng shui literally translates as "wind-water" in English. This is a cultural shorthand taken from the following passage of the Zangshu (Book of Burial) by Guo Pu of the Jin Dynasty:

Qi rides the wind and scatters, but is retained when encountering water.

Traditional feng shui practice always requires an extremely accurate Chinese compass, or luo pan, in order to determine the directions in finding any auspicious sector in a desired location.

Lu Xun () or Lu Hsün (Wade-Giles), was the pen name of Zhou Shuren () (September 25, 1881 - October 19, 1936) is one of the major Chinese writers of the 20th century. Considered by many to be the founder of modern Chinese literature, he wrote in baihua (??) (the vernacular) as well as classical Chinese. Lu Xun was a short story writer, editor, translator, critic, essayist and poet. In the 1930s he became the titular head of the Chinese League of Left-Wing Writers in Shanghai.

Lu Xun's works exerted a very substantial influence after the May Fourth Movement to such a point that he was lionized by the Communist regime after 1949. Mao Zedong himself was a lifelong admirer of Lu Xun's works. Though sympathetic to the ideals of the Left, Lu Xun never actually joined the Chinese Communist Party. Lu Xun's works are known to English readers through numerous translations, especially Selected Stories of Lu Hsun translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang.

Seth Godin (born July 10, 1960) is an American author of business books. Godin popularized the topic of permission marketing.