Knowledge = Power

The real Hugh Hefner-the extraordinary inside story of an American icon

""Riveting... Watts packs in plenty of gasp-inducing passages.""-Newark Star Ledger

""Like it or not, Hugh Hefner has affected all of us, so I treasured learning about how and why in the sober biography.""-Chicago Sun Times

""This  is a fun book. How could it not be? Watts aims to give a full account  of the man, his magazine and their place in social history. Playboy is no longer the cultural force it used to be, but it made a stamp on society.""-Associated Press

At the age of twenty-four, in 1913, Adolf Hitler was eking out a living as a painter of pictures for tourists in Munich. Nothing marked him in any way as exceptional, but he did possess certain distinguishing characteristics: a capacity to hate, an inability to accept criticism, and a massive overconfidence in his own abilities. He was a socially and emotionally inadequate individual without direction, from whence came a sense of personal mission that would transform these weaknesses and liabilities into strengths—certainties that would provide him not only with a sense of identity, but of purpose in a communal enterprise. This is the focus of Laurence Rees’s social, psychological, and historical investigation into a personality that would end up articulating the hopes and dreams of millions of Germans.

Revolution 1989 is the first in-depth, authoritative account of a few months that changed the world.

Poker champion turned business  consultant Annie Duke teaches you how to get comfortable with  uncertainty and make better decisions as a result.

In Super  Bowl XLIX, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll made one of the most  controversial calls in football history: With 26 seconds remaining, and  trailing by four at the Patriots' one-yard line, he called for a pass  instead of a handing off to his star running back. The pass was  intercepted, and the Seahawks lost. Critics called it the dumbest play  in history. But was the call really that bad? Or did Carroll actually  make a great move that was ruined by bad luck?

Even the best  decision doesn't yield the best outcome every time. There's always an  element of luck that you can't control, and there is always information  that is hidden from view. So the key to long-term success (and avoiding  worrying yourself to death) is to think in bets: How sure am I? What are  the possible ways things could turn out? What decision has the highest  odds of success? Did I land in the unlucky 10% on the strategy that  works 90% of the time? Or is my success attributable to dumb luck rather  than great decision making?

Annie Duke, a former World Series  of Poker champion turned business consultant, draws on examples from  business, sports, politics, and (of course) poker to share tools anyone  can use to embrace uncertainty and make better decisions. For most  people, it's difficult to say "I'm not sure" in a world that values, and  even rewards, the appearance of certainty. But professional poker  players are comfortable with the fact that great decisions don't always  lead to great outcomes and bad decisions don't always lead to bad  outcomes.

By shifting your thinking from a need for certainty to  a goal of accurately assessing what you know and what you don't, you'll  be less vulnerable to reactive emotions, knee-jerk biases, and  destructive habits in your decision making. You'll become more  confident, calm, compassionate, and successful in the long run.

Includes a bonus PDF of charts and graphs.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

”This book takes an impossibly broad area of computer science and  communicates what working developers need to understand in a clear and  thorough way.” - David Jacobs, Product Advance Local

Newly adapted for audiobook listeners.

Today,  software engineers need to know not only how to program effectively but  also how to develop proper engineering practices to make their codebase  sustainable and healthy. This book emphasizes this difference between  programming and software engineering.

How can software engineers  manage a living codebase that evolves and responds to changing  requirements and demands over the length of its life? Based on their  experience at Google, software engineers Titus Winters and Hyrum Wright,  along with technical writer Tom Manshreck, present a candid and  insightful look at how some of the world’s leading practitioners  construct and maintain software. This book covers Google’s unique  engineering culture, processes, and tools and how these aspects  contribute to the effectiveness of an engineering organization.

You’ll  explore three fundamental principles that software organizations should  keep in mind when designing, architecting, writing, and maintaining  code:

Whatever has happened to you, it is not who you are.

The  world may know Chris Duffin as the "mad scientist of strength", but you  wouldn't have ever guessed that if you saw the scrawny kid skinning  rattlesnakes and chasing dragonflies in the early '80s. The story of his  unconventional life will take you from gripping tales of murder,  trauma, heartbreak, and survival deep in the Pacific Northwest  wilderness all the way to an idealization of the self-made man - still  flawed, but never broken.

In The Eagle and the Dragon,  you'll follow one man's journey into the darkness of his own heart and  witness the transformation of alcoholism, pain, and defeat into vision,  character, and victory. Through Chris's powerful self-realization,  you'll see how the human spirit can be either shackled by circumstance  or freed from it.

Are you ready to walk through the fire and make your vision a reality?  This audiobook will show you how.

This fascinating history tells the story of the people of Japan, from  ancient teenage priest-queens to teeming hordes of salarymen, a nation  that once sought to conquer China, yet also shut itself away for two  centuries in self-imposed seclusion.

From a leading expert in Japanese history, this is one of the first full  histories of the art and culture of the Samurai warrior. The Samurai  emerged as a warrior caste in Medieval Japan and would have a powerful  influence on the history and culture of the country from the next 500  years. Clements also looks at the Samurai wars that tore Japan apart in  the 17th and 18th centuries and how the caste was finally demolished in  the advent of the mechanized world.

The Romanovs were the most  successful dynasty of modern times, ruling a sixth of the world's  surface for three centuries. How did one family turn a war-ruined  principality into the world's greatest empire? And how did they lose it  all?

This is the intimate story of 20 tsars and tsarinas,  some touched by genius, some by madness, but all inspired by holy  autocracy and imperial ambition. Simon Sebag Montefiore's gripping  chronicle reveals their secret world of unlimited power and ruthless  empire building, overshadowed by palace conspiracy, family rivalries,  sexual decadence, and wild extravagance, with a global cast of  adventurers, courtesans, revolutionaries, and poets, from Ivan the  Terrible to Tolstoy and Pushkin to Bismarck, Lincoln, Queen Victoria,  and Lenin.

To rule Russia was both imperial-sacred mission and  poisoned chalice: Six of the last 12 tsars were murdered. Peter the  Great tortured his own son to death while making Russia an empire and  dominated his court with a dining club notable for compulsory  drunkenness, naked dwarfs, and fancy dress. Catherine the Great  overthrew her own husband (who was murdered soon afterward), enjoyed  affairs with a series of young male favorites, conquered Ukraine, and  fascinated Europe. Paul I was strangled by courtiers backed by his own  son, Alexander I, who in turn faced Napoleon's invasion and the burning  of Moscow, then went on to take Paris. Alexander II liberated the serfs,  survived five assassination attempts, and wrote perhaps the most  explicit love letters ever composed by a ruler. The Romanovs  climaxes with a fresh, unforgettable portrayal of Nicholas II and  Alexandra, the rise and murder of Rasputin, war, and revolution - and  the harrowing massacre of the entire family.

Dazzlingly entertaining and beautifully written from start to finish, The Romanovs brings these monarchs - male and female, great and flawed, their  families and courts - blazingly to life. Drawing on new archival  research, Montefiore delivers an enthralling epic of triumph and  tragedy, love and murder, encompassing the seminal years 1812, 1914, and  1917, that is both a universal study of power and a portrait of an  empire that helps define Russia today.