The essential guide to looking at literature with your own two eyes. What students know about Shakespeare, Orwell, Dickens, and Twain is primarily what their instructors tell them. Here’s a book that teaches the students how to move on to the next level—evaluate and read critically on their own, trust their own opinions, develop original ideas, analyze characters, and find a deeper appreciation for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and more. • Ideal companion for college students and accessible for the casual reader as well. • Covers fiction, poetry, narrative nonfiction, biographies and memoirs, essays and editorials, and newspapers, magazines, and journals. • Features examples from published writing. • Includes a reading list and a glossary of literary terms.

Great reads for busy people. This is a guide to help busy people find great reads in fiction and nonfiction. Filled with recommendations of popular, entertaining reading, this book covers mystery and suspense, romance, women’s fiction and chick lit, Westerns, science fiction, such nonfiction topics as animals, art, biography, memoirs, business, true crime, and more. Plus, each entry includes a summary of the book, its significance, and a critique/observation/comment.

Presents strategies and techniques designed to increase reading speed, and improve comprehension and retention of a variety of reading materials.

What do you really want to do? Finding the perfect career isn't easy, but it's certainly attainable. This guide offers readers the chance to trade in their unsatisfying jobs for fulfilling careers. This book helps them by providing a process of self-assessment that includes questions on personality, talents, values, interests, and goals; advice on how to make a smooth transition from one career to another; and an action plan to take the steps toward landing the perfect career. -According to The Conference Group, only 48.9% of working Americans are satisfied with their jobs, the lowest level of job satisfaction since pollsters first began surveying the topic in 1995 -Career self-discovery books are among the best-performing in the career category

In this heart-stopping novel by #1 New York Times bestselling author James Rollins, an elite team of ex-Special Forces soldiers turned scientific specialists must uncover a secret society and the treasure that could destroy the world. When a group of parishioners are burned to death in a German cathedral, the U.S. sends in the Sigma force. The tragedy is more than a case of arson; someone has stolen the priceless treasure stored in the cathedral’s golden reliquary: the bones of the Biblical Magi, the legendary Three Kings. Commander Logan Pierce, new to Sigma, will lead a team on the hunt for the Royal Dragon Court, a clandestine aristocratic fraternity of alchemists dating back to the Middle Ages, who seek to establish a New World Order using the mystical bones. The Sigma team will follow a labyrinth of clues leading from Europe’s gothic cathedrals, through the remnants of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, to a mystical place where science and religion will unite to unleash a threat not seen since the beginning of time itself.

Get it while you can ... Complex, ever-changing, and controversial, the future of our current system of Social Security and Medicare is uncertain. This indispensable guide explains the proposed changes and current status of these important social programs. Completely revised to incorporate changes to compensation scales and survivor benefits, and with an expanded section on Medicare and the new drug programs, this book is the most up-to-date overview of Social Security and Medicare currently available. * Revised and updated with the latest 2006 statistics on income scales and cost of living; such Social Security Benefits as survivor benefits and disability payments; tax codes; and more * Completely new chapters on Medicare, the Medicare Drug Programs, and the current political climate and proposed changes * Completely revised section on resources

Looks at American authors from Washington Irving to John Updike and provides brief biographical sketches, excerpts and summaries of major works, and explanations of major literary movements