BiblioVault - Books about Self-help

Team Chemistry

The History of Drugs and Alcohol in Major League Baseball

Nathan Corzine

University of Illinois Press, 2016

In 2007, the Mitchell Report shocked traditionalists who were appalled that drugs had corrupted the "pure" game of baseball. Nathan Corzine rescues the story of baseball's relationship with drugs from the sepia-toned tyranny of such myths. In Team Chemistry , he reveals a game splashed with spilled whiskey and tobacco stains from the day the first pitch was thrown. Indeed, throughout the game's history, stars and scrubs alike partook of a pharmacopeia that helped them stay on the field and cope off of it:

In 1889, Pud Galvin tried a testosterone-derived "elixir" to help him pile up some of his 646 complete games.
Sandy Koufax needed Codeine and an anti-inflammatory used on horses to pitch through his late-career elbow woes.
Players returning from World War II mainstreamed the use of the amphetamines they had used as servicemen.
Vida Blue invited teammates to cocaine parties, Tim Raines used it to stay awake on the bench, and Will McEnaney snorted it between innings.

Corzine also ventures outside the lines to show how authorities handled--or failed to handle--drug and alcohol problems, and how those problems both shaped and scarred the game. The result is an eye-opening look at what baseball's relationship with substances legal and otherwise tells us about culture, society, and masculinity in America.

[more]

Templeton Plan

21 Steps to Personal Success and Real Happiness

Sir John Templeton

Templeton Press, 2013

Sir John Templeton (1912–2008), the Wall Street legend who has been described as “arguably the greatest global stock picker of the twentieth century,” clearly knew what it took to be successful. The most important thing, he observed, was to have strong convictions that guided your life—this was the common denominator he saw in all successful people and enterprises. Fortunately for us, he was eager to share his own blueprint for personal success and happiness with the rest of the world. In The Templeton Plan, he laid out the twenty-one guiding principles by which he governed both his professional and personal life.

These principles were grounded in virtues that he considered important enough to be considered the “laws of life”—they include honesty, perseverance, thrift, enthusiasm, humility, and altruism. From this moral foundation, Templeton formulated a step-by-step plan to help improve anyone’s personal and professional life. Among the steps he enumerates, readers will find:

· Four exercises that will help anyone find the positive in every negative

· How to be the one person in ten that will productively use more time than they waste

· The secret trait that separates great workers from good workers

· How to control your thoughts for effective action

· The practical applications of a sense of humility

· How successful people approach risks differently from most people

Taken as a whole, the lessons contained within his twenty-one steps will help readers make lasting friendships, reap significant financial rewards, and find personal satisfaction.

Ever a believer in the future’s vast potential, Templeton hoped that sharing his principles would inspire others to seek their own laws of life, formulate their own plans, and find success and happiness on a scale exponentially greater than his own. He freely admitted that he didn’t know everything and that there was yet much to be discovered about prosperity and joy. The Templeton Plan not only offers his recipe for success, but also shows us the way to formulate our own plans.

[more]

Thrift & Generosity

Joy Of Giving

John M. Templeton

Templeton Press, 2004

In these difficult economic times, thrift may seem like a necessity, rather than a route to joy. But in this handbook, the reader learns about the virtue of thrift, and how, in combination with gratitude and generosity, it can lead to deep, lasting contentment.

The book explores the qualities that distinguish thriftiness from merely being cheap; it looks at thrift and wisdom, thrift and gratitude, thrift and ethical standards, and thrift and hard work. With references from the Bible, literature, poetry, and philosophy, as well as examples from daily life, thrift is shown to be more than just understanding the bottom line. Indeed, thrift is part of a religious and cultural understanding of how we use our time, our talents, and our resources.

[more]

A Time for Wisdom

Knowledge, Detachment, Tranquility, Transcendence

Paul T. McLaughlin

Templeton Press, 2022

These are volatile times. Fear, suspicion, and cynicism are chronic. A mere tweet inflames the passions of millions while click-bait “hot takes” stoke the amygdalas of everyone with an Internet connection. We treat those not in our tribe as a threat and deem anyone with a different opinion as evil. Mistaking myopia for measure, we lack all sense of proportion in our judgments. We are shortsighted, mired in the present, ignorant of history, and blind to the future. We thought that technology would save us by connecting us to each other and the world’s information. Instead, it enticed our vices, encouraged our biases, and eroded the one virtue we need now more than ever: wisdom.

A Time for Wisdom is for readers who feel beleaguered by the incivility of the modern world, dispirited by its coarse rhetoric and toxic partisanship. It is an invitation to escape the shallow cacophony and restore peace and perspective to our daily lives. Written by two psychologists, the book takes the best scientific research on wisdom and integrates it with timeless concepts that have, for ages, guided troubled souls through life’s hardships. From this foundation, the authors present four steps we can follow to practice wisdom in the 21st Century:

Receiving knowledge.
Practicing detachment.
Experiencing tranquility.
Cultivating transcendence.

These are profound and spiritual principles that can bring us immense satisfaction when we aspire to live by them.

In A Time for Wisdom, the authors show us how. They commend a course of action towards the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, towards calm and clear moral reasoning. They lead us out of the circus of contemporary life and show us a path beyond our petty self-centeredness. By journeying along that path, we can, like the great sages and scientists before us, rise above the immediacy of the moment and partake of the numinous and the infinite.

[more]

Time to Get Real!

Turning Uncertainty into an Action Plan for Personal and Professional Success

Alex J. Plinio

Rutgers University Press, 2019

You chose this book because there are important things on your mind. This is a market and time-tested guide to leading an intentional life. Our Life and Career Planning Model requires attention and work on your part but the time and effort will pay off. It’s Time to Get Real! helps you take control, directing you through a process leading to actions that result in personal and professional success. Manage unforeseen challenges with resilience, confidence, and self-direction. Make decisions and choices that create opportunities for you. Integrate your life and career and build the future that you desire.

The Life and Career Planning Model in Time to Get Real! has been utilized by individuals in early, mid and later career and life. Too many individuals let life happen to them. Control more of your life through readiness and preparation. We can help you visualize a future that you desire and a road that you can travel to get there.

Written by Alex J. Plinio, and Melissa Smith, acclaimed business leaders and life and career planning specialists, this book is filled with instructive case studies, illuminating stories, interactive exercises, and inspirational quotes enabling you to unlock those things leading to personal satisfaction and success. The Life and Career Planning Model helps you target what matters the most to you in your life while providing the impetus to move you forward in a positive direction. Whether you are 21, 41, or 61, it is now Time to Get Real!

[more]

Toleration

Nicholas G. Fotion

University of Alabama Press, 1992

Most regard toleration as an unattractive fallback position of compromise and so tend to overlook it in favor of such active concepts as freedom, equality, and justice. Fotion and Elfstrom argue that toleration offers us the useful possibility of responding to a difficult situation with a degree of flexibility not possible with the dichotomous concepts of good-bad, right-wrong, ethical-unethical, Right-Left.

Tolerating saturates ordinary human life and infuses public discussions of religion, morality, and politics. It forms a major strand in the history of Western European thought. Yet the word “toleration” and similar terms are rarely used. Unnoticed and unremarked, they are like the air that surrounds us, vitally important yet invisible.

The authors seek to address this oversight in several ways. They begin with a thorough conceptual analysis of toleration and its kindred concepts. They are convinced that an appreciation of the importance of the family of toleration concepts must be founded on an understanding of the various ways in which they function in our language and our lives.

In addition, they examine the historical development of the concept of toleration and canvass the major arguments people have employed either to urge toleration or to disparage it. They examine the role of toleration in liberal political philosophy and respond to the major critics of liberal toleration.

The authors also discuss a number of factors that cause toleration to be overlooked in political debate and personal reflection and offer evidence to support the view that this omission is unfortunate. In particular, they argue that toleration has the crucial role of helping people live with one another with respect and dignity in the fractious and contentious world we inhabit.

With the rise of racism and other forms of religious, political, and social intolerance, people on all sides of the present debates concerning multi-culturalism and diversity will benefit from this timely and lucidly argued philosophical discussion of the concepts of toleration and its possible application in a less-than-perfect world.

[more]

Trails of Little Rock

Hiking, Biking, and Kayaking Trails in Little Rock

Johnnie Chamberlin

Parkhurst Brothers, Inc., 2009

Residents and visitors have an urban-outdoor haven in Little Rock: actually more than two dozen of them. They are the hiking trails, biking trails as well as the canoe and kayak-read waterways within the city and immediate area. Whether your passion is a quiet walk in the woods, a mountain-climb, fishing, bird-watching, or a quiet float, this handbook will help you find and use the trails and waterways of Little Rock.

[more]