The New York Times bestselling guide to thinking like literature's greatest detective. "Steven Pinker meets Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" (Boston Globe), by the author of The Confidence Game. No fictional character is more renowned for his powers of thought and observation than Sherlock Holmes. But is his extraordinary intellect merely a gift of fiction, or can we learn to cultivate these abilities ourselves, to improve our lives at work and at home? We can, says psychologist and journalist Maria Konnikova, and in Mastermind she shows us how. Beginning with the “brain attic”—Holmes’s metaphor for how we store information and organize knowledge—Konnikova unpacks the mental strategies that lead to clearer thinking and deeper insights. Drawing on twenty-first-century neuroscience and psychology, Mastermind explores Holmes’s unique methods of ever-present mindfulness, astute observation, and logical deduction. In doing so, it shows how each of us, with some self-awareness and a little practice, can employ these same methods to sharpen our perceptions, solve difficult problems, and enhance our creative powers. For Holmes aficionados and casual readers alike, Konnikova reveals how the world’s most keen-eyed detective can serve as an unparalleled guide to upgrading the mind.

This comprehensive approach to functional musicianship at the keyboard includes varied repertoire, theory, technique, sight-reading, harmonization from lead sheets, ear training and ensembles. Great for college non-music majors, continuing education classes, music dealer in-store programs and group piano classes at the middle and high school levels. Book 1 contains 15 units each with a variety of repertoire, exercises, unit review worksheets and an assignment page.

The incredible true story of the decade-long quest to bring down Paul Le Roux—the creator of a frighteningly powerful Internet-enabled cartel who merged the ruthlessness of a drug lord with the technological savvy of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. “A tour de force of shoe-leather reporting—undertaken, amid threats and menacing, at considerable personal risk.”—Los Angeles Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR • Evening Standard • Kirkus Reviews It all started as an online prescription drug network, supplying hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of painkillers to American customers. It would not stop there. Before long, the business had turned into a sprawling multinational conglomerate engaged in almost every conceivable aspect of criminal mayhem. Yachts carrying $100 million in cocaine. Safe houses in Hong Kong filled with gold bars. Shipments of methamphetamine from North Korea. Weapons deals with Iran. Mercenary armies in Somalia. Teams of hit men in the Philippines. Encryption programs so advanced that the government could not break them. The man behind it all, pulling the strings from a laptop in Manila, was Paul Calder Le Roux—a reclusive programmer turned criminal genius who could only exist in the networked world of the twenty-first century, and the kind of self-made crime boss that American law enforcement had never imagined. For half a decade, DEA agents played a global game of cat-and-mouse with Le Roux as he left terror and chaos in his wake. Each time they came close, he would slip away. It would take relentless investigative work, and a shocking betrayal from within his organization, to catch him. And when he was finally caught, the story turned again, as Le Roux struck a deal to bring down his own organization and the people he had once employed. Award-winning investigative journalist Evan Ratliff spent four years piecing together this intricate puzzle, chasing Le Roux’s empire and his shadowy henchmen around the world, conducting hundreds of interviews and uncovering thousands of documents. The result is a riveting, unprecedented account of a crime boss built by and for the digital age. Praise for The Mastermind “The Mastermind is true crime at its most stark and vivid depiction. Evan Ratliff’s work is well done from beginning to end, paralleling his investigative work with the work of the many federal agents developing the case against LeRoux.”—San Francisco Book Review (five stars) “A wholly engrossing story that joins the worlds of El Chapo and Edward Snowden; both disturbing and memorable.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

'Doing everything admirably well matters very little if you can't finish the job.' Few people know better than Viswanathan Anand how to think strategically at lightning speed and work under immense pressure to overcome the toughest odds. From the time he learnt to move pieces on a chessboard as a six-year-old, Vishy - as Anand is fondly called - has racked up innumerable accolades. With five World Championship titles, he is a peerless ambassador of chess, and his is one of the most revered names in the sport. In Mind Master, Vishy looks back on a lifetime of games played, opponents tackled and circumstances overcome, and draws from its depths significant tools that will help every reader navigate life's challenges: What role do tactics and strategy play in the preparation for achieving a goal? How can emotions be harnessed to your advantage in tricky situations? What do you need to do to stay relevant in the face of rapidly changing realities? Is unlearning really the only way to learn? These are just some of the nuggets Vishy touches upon with characteristic wit, easy wisdom and disarming candour in this expanded edition of his critically acclaimed memoir, a delightful and invaluable exploration into the self that will thrill, inspire and motivate readers as few books have done before.

Napoleon Hill on two occasions wrote extensive memoirs about his life, starting with his youth in Wise County, Virginia, and ending, apparently, during World War II. I say “apparently” because the archives of the Napoleon Hill Foundation contain these two manuscripts, but they are obviously incomplete and end in the 1940s. Mr. Hill died in 1970. His last book, Grow Rich with Peace of Mind, was written in 1967 and sheds some light on his later years; but his own journals and memoirs of those years, if they ever existed, have not yet been found. The two memoirs were titled by Mr. Hill, Wheel of Fortune and Hand of Destiny. They contain details of his life, including his four marriages, two divorces and one annulment, which we at the Foundation have not seen in any of his other writings or speeches. They also contain many details about his successes and failures in business and there were more failures than successes, as he readily admits. The memoirs contain thoughtful insights into the state of mind of this great thinker—how he dealt with failure, profited from defeat, turned adversity into advantage, and ultimately achieved happiness with his last wife, Annie Lou, happiness which had eluded him for most of his life. Mr. Hill has said that the Master Mind principle, in which two or more minds work harmoniously to achieve a common goal, is the most important of the seventeen principles of success he studied during his decades of research into how people attain happy and successful lives. One of the many interesting stories in the memoirs is about how he and his third wife, Rosa Lee, used the Master Mind principle to discover the only one of the seventeen principles that no one had understood or realized before, Cosmic Habitforce. The Trustees of the Napoleon Hill Foundation have combined the two memoirs into one, editing out repetition and putting events in chronological order where it made sense to do so. They chose to title the combined memoirs Master Mind, in recognition of the importance this principle played in his philosophy and life, and as a tribute to the mental giant who was the greatest thinker and writer ever in the fields of personal achievement and self-improvement.

"Principals and other building leaders can take control of their own professional development through the structure of a mastermind"--