Take Pride Why the Deadliest Sin Holds the secret to Human Success

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Narrating this eye-opening examination of the uniquely human emotion of pride, Coleen Marlo combines a deft understanding of the author's academic thinking with a practical grasp of why her ideas are relevant to everyday life. Marlo's subtle intensity and vocal clarity make her an excellent choice to perform this book. Authentic human pride, which goes beyond the survival emotions shared by our primate cousins, is the feeling that who we are and what we're doing counts for something. It drives us to care about our place in the world and to accomplish feats that have meaning. With inspiring stories and Marlo's down-to-earth performance, it's easy for listeners to apply these lessons to themselves. The book also explains how narcissism, hubris, and arrogance represent corruptions of authentic pride that pit us against others instead of earning their genuine affirmation. T.W. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2016]

A leading psychologist reveals how our most misunderstood emotion - pride - has shaped our minds and our culture, and shows how we can harness its power.
Why did Paul Gauguin abandon middle-class life to follow the path of a starving artist? What inspired Bill Gates to give away so much of his hard-won fortune? How has Donald Trump succeeded so excessively, when his winning style could easily be his greatest liability?
As the renowned emotion researcher Jessica Tracy reveals in Take Pride, each of these superachievers has been motivated by an often maligned emotion: pride. Its dark, hubristic side is well known, but Tracy shows that pride is also essential for helping us become our best, brightest selves. By making us care about how others see us and how we see ourselves, pride makes us strive for excellence. In the right doses and the right contexts, it has been proven to boost creativity, motivate altruism, and confer status and power on those who display it. In Take Pride, Tracy explains why we came to feel pride and how we can make this double-edged emotion serve us - rather than the other way around.

The Hamilton Affair

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Cobbs uses fiction to flesh out one of the most important--and, these days, the most heralded--of the Founding Fathers. Alexander Hamilton, brilliant but illegitimate, was intent on establishing his own legitimacy, placing him in opposition to many of the Founding Fathers who put limits on who was eligible for liberty and freedom. Coleen Marlo's narration brings to life the political maneuvering that is still such a basic part of our system. Without using accents, she manages to make each member of this large group of characters unique and recognizable through his or her dialogue, helping the listener to understand the characters and their motivations. Her pacing and tone through stretches of narrative show that the times may have changed, but people and their motivations remain the same. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2016]

Set against the dramatic backdrop of the American Revolution, and featuring a cast of iconic characters such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the Marquis de Lafayette, The Hamilton Affair tells the sweeping, tumultuous, true love story of Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler, from tremulous beginning to bittersweet ending - his at a dueling ground on the shores of the Hudson River, hers more than half a century later after a brave, successful lifeWith its flawless writing, brilliantly drawn characters, and epic scope, The Hamilton Affair will take its place among the greatest novels of American history.