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For the last several years Adm. James Stavridis and his co-author, R. Manning Ancell, have surveyed over 200 active and retired four-star military officers about their reading habits and favorite books, asking each for a list of titles that strongly influenced their leadership skills and provided them with special insights that helped propel them to success in spite of the many demanding challenges they faced. The Leader's Bookshelf synthesizes their responses to identify the top 50 books that can help virtually anyone become a better leader.

From 1918 to 1941, even as she penned masterpiece upon masterpiece, Virginia Woolf kept a diary. She poured into it her thoughts, feelings, concerns, objections, interests, and disappointments -resulting in 26 volumes that give unprecedented insight into the mind of a genius. Collected here are the passages most relevant to her work and writing.

When you're fumbling for words and pressed for time, you might be tempted to dismiss good business writing as a luxury. But it's a skill you must cultivate to succeed: You'll lose time, money, and influence if your e-mails, proposals, and other important documents fail to win people over.

How do master storytellers compel us? There have been many attempts to understand what makes a good story, but few have used a scientific approach. In The Science of Storytelling, Will Storr applies dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to our myths and archetypes to show how we can tell better stories, revealing, among other things, how storytellers - and also our brains - create worlds by being attuned to moments of unexpected change.

In her 93 remarkable years, veteran freelance writer, memoirist, and writing teacher Brenda Ueland published some six million words. She once said there were two simple rules that she followed absolutely: to tell the truth, and to not do anything she didn't want to do. Such integrity both distinguishes and defines If You Want to Write, her best-selling classic that first appeared in the late 1930s and has inspired thousands to find their own creative center.

For anyone who's trying to make sense of their life, who wants to get unstuck from the patterns that hold them back, hear this incredible news: everything you need for the freedom you want is entirely within reach. This practice and pathway is free, it's readily available every day of your life, it takes just minutes of your time, and anyone can do it.

Edited and annotated by H. L. M., this is a selection from his out-of-print writings. They come mostly from books - the six installments of the Prejudices series, A Book of Burlesques, In Defense of Women, Notes on Democracy, Making a President, A Book of Calumny, Treatise on Right and Wrong - but there are also magazine and newspaper pieces that never got between covers (from the American Mercury, the Smart Set, and the Baltimore Evening Sun) and some notes that were never previously published at all.

For a quarter century, more than a million readers and listeners—scribes and scribblers of all ages and abilities—have been inspired by Anne Lamott’s hilarious, big-hearted, homespun advice. Advice that begins with the simple words of wisdom passed down from Anne’s father—also a writer—in the iconic passage that gives the book its title.

The key to good and efficient writing lies in the intelligent organization of ideas and notes. This audiobook helps students, academics, and other knowledge workers to get more done, write intelligent texts, and learn for the long run. It teaches you how to take smart notes and ensure they bring you and your projects forward.

In this revealing compendium, acclaimed writer Diana Gabaldon shares her invaluable lessons for creating an immersive reading experience, from evoking a mood to using the power of emotions to communicate physical intimacy. You'll learn the difference between gratuitous sex and genuine encounters that move the story forward and how to handle less-than-savory acts that nevertheless serve a narrative purpose. Gabaldon also notes that sex can be conveyed instead of described.

Our unique audioteach method features the voice of a real tutor, Chris Sykes. He will guide you through your course with over seven hours of audio material, giving you tips and advice based on his many years of teaching and writing experience and helping you to avoid common mistakes and pitfalls. This course takes you from complete beginner or committed amateur to the point where you've completed, edited and redrafted your work and are ready for publication.

Get ready for a one-of-a-kind audio experience: discover Paris through intimate, guided audio walking tours of the city's most historic and enchanting quarters. There are four tours for you to listen to as you walk through the City of Light, plus essential French words and phrases that every traveler wants to know.

Lawrence Block is a best-selling author of popular mystery fiction. With over 30 of his works in print, he is as prolific as he is skilled. This collection of essays and articlesfrom his Writer’s Digest columns has been in print for over 20 years. Here he provides invaluable advice to the aspiring writer and the established author. Featuring a witty and honest narration from the author himself, Block presents an illuminating look into the world of the professional writer.

The Power of Memoir is a pioneering how-to book that provides a new step-by-step program to use memoir writing as a therapeutic process. By going through these steps, you'll learn how to choose the significant milestones and turning points that make up a coherent story leading to a life-changing epiphany.

Over time, literary agent Elizabeth Kracht noticed that many submissions had similar problems, so she began to make a list of the pitfalls. She knew that even excellent projects could be rejected based on these surmountable issues because those on the receiving end of proposals most often don’t have the time to walk writers through needed adjustments. The checklist Kracht has created helps writers make their manuscripts good to go. It offers short, easy-to-implement bites of advice, illustrated by inspiring - and cautionary - real-world examples.

In How to Read Literature like a Professor: For Kids, New York Times best-selling author and Professor Thomas C. Foster gives tweens the tools they need to become thoughtful readers. With funny insights and a conversational style, he explains the way writers use symbol, metaphor, characterization, setting, plot, and other key techniques to make a story come to life.

The Complete Book of Grant Writing is the ultimate grant book that shows you how to write a grant proposal if you're seeking funding through government grants, foundation grants, and specialty grants. Grant proposal writing is an intricate process where any bits of misinformation or formatting errors can mean the difference between securing funding or not. Professional grant writer Nancy Burke Smith and philanthropy consultant and grant maker E. Gabriel Works unveil the secrets behind how to find and successfully apply for grants.

This revised and updated edition is a complete resource for anyone who wants to write and produce a television drama series or create an original series, as well as for teachers in screenwriting classes and workshops. It leads listeners step-by-step through each stage of the development and writing process, offering practical industry information and artistic inspiration. This edition also takes listeners into the future, engaging provocative issues about the interface between traditional TV and emerging technologies.

Ten years ago, Roy Peter Clark, America's most influential writing teacher, whittled down almost 30 years of experience in journalism, writing, and teaching into a series of 50 short essays on different aspects of writing. In the past decade, Writing Tools has become a classic guidebook for novices and experts alike and remains one of the best loved books on writing available. This new edition includes five brand-new, never-before-shared tools.

After a decade of teaching writing using the same methods he'd experienced as a student many years before, writer, editor, and educator John Warner realized he could do better. Drawing on his classroom experience and the most persuasive research in contemporary composition studies, he devised an innovative new framework: a step-by-step method that moves the student through a series of writing problems, an organic, bottom-up writing process that exposes and acculturates them to the ways writers work in the world.