Name Subject Date Period Persuasive Speech: Fill & Download for Free

Already MentionedGödel, Escher, Bach; Thinking, Fast and Slow; Predictably Irrational; Darwin's Dangerous Idea; Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking; Amazon.com: The Selfish Gene; The Black Swan; Antifragile; The Symbolic Species; The User Illusion; The Beginning of Infinity;My Top Picks For General ReadersThe Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution: Richard WranghamWrangham is a primatologist who theorizes (along with other biologists) that humans are a domesticated animal. Sounds silly? Who or what domesticated us? Read the book!Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress: Steven PinkerThis book is misunderstood, presumably by people who haven’t actually read it, because the prose is pretty clear. It’s doesn’t argue that the Enlightenment has been perfectly realized or that enlightenment values are perfect values.It argues that we’ve made progress and that we need to be as honest about the wins of Western Civilizations as we are about its crimes and losses—not to pat ourselves on the back, and certainly not to ignore the plight of the disenfranchised. It’s important to focus on what works so we can keep doing it and refine it, to make it better.The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life: Kevin Simler, Robin Hanson: Books"If you want to know what makes people tick, read The Elephant in the Brain. Simler and Hanson have created the most comprehensive, powerful, unified explanation of human nature and behavior to date." --Jason Brennan, Professor of Business, Georgetown UniversityCo-author Robin Hanson describes himself as “nerdy.” I would call this book An Autistic’s Guide to Human Nature. It’s a deep look at behavior, by “an anthropologist on Mars.”Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them: Joshua GreeneThis is the best book about morality I've ever read. The first half is a tour of the current science (social science, anthropology, animal studies, brain-imaging, evolutionary theory, etc) that is connected with morality. The second half is a philosophical (and psychological) defense of the moral theory called Utilitarianism. Even if you're wind up rejecting that theory, you'll find huge value in this book. The writing is crystal clear, provocative, and laced with humor.“After two and a half millennia, it’s rare to come across a genuinely new idea on the nature of morality, but in this book Joshua Greene advances not one but several. Greene combines neuroscience with philosophy not as a dilettante but as an expert in both fields, and his synthesis is interdisciplinary in the best sense of using all available conceptual tools to understand a deep phenomenon. Moral Tribes is a landmark in our understanding of morality and the moral sense.” -- Steven PinkerSapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.This is one of the top-ten non-fiction books I've read in my life. Whether or not you agree with everything in it, the book will give you something interesting to think about on almost every page. Some of it might piss you off, too.Harari's thesis is that what makes humans unique is our capacity to invent fictions and use them to structure our lives. Without believing in them, or acting as if we do, we would not be able to live together in cities or collaborate on large-scale projects. The obvious fiction is religion (well, it's fiction to those of us who aren't religious), but other fictions include free will, morality, nations, money, liberal values, legal systems, etc."Sapiens" makes its arguments using a fusion of History, Economics, Psychology, Biology, Philosophy, and pure confidence.UPDATE: I also highly recommend the sequel, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, which uses current and historical trends to discuss the future of humanity.You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation: Deborah Tannen.Tannon, a linguist, had the clever idea of framing women and men are two different cultures—and to study their "languages" the way one would study English and French. The book made me think beyond "the battle of the sexes" to the many ways words can both clarify our ideas and befuddle our listeners. This is a great books for couples, writers, actors, and students of human nature.The Little Schemer - 4th Edition: Daniel P. Friedman, Matthias Felleisen, Duane Bibby, Gerald J. Sussman.The authors use a Socratic approach to teach a difficult subject: recursion. This is a book you work through with pencil and paper, and, if you work through it, the way it stretches your mind will be more meaningful to you than the subject it teaches. It begins with the simplest of ideas and very gradually ramps up the complexity, until, by the end, your understanding is at a high level. This book is takes teaching and elevates it to a work of art. It's sort of a computer-programming book, but you don't need any programming experience to work through it.From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present: Jacques Barzun.Barzun tells the entire story of Modern Western History, making a brilliant case that there really is such a thing: that, in a sense, our culture began on its current (and future) course 500 years ago, at the birth of the Reformation. As with the best of this sort of book, it doesn't matter if you agree or disagree with its premise. It's value is that it makes a clear statement, one that will prompt you towards a sharp reaction.A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction: Christopher Alexander."Brilliant....Here's how to design or redesign any space you're living or working in--from metropolis to room. Consider what you want to happen in the space, and then page through this book. Its radically conservative observations will spark, enhance, organize your best ideas, and a wondrous home, workplace, town will result."--San Francisco ChronicleThis book's influence has leaked into other fields, notably Computer Science.The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion: Jonathan Haidt.Why are Conservatives and Liberals they way they are? Why are they so often at odds? Is it due to Nature or Nurture? This book delves into why we so often argue each other. It explores the core values we live by, both consciously and unconsciously. Check out the author's TED talks!Jonathan Haidt: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives | Video on TED.comJonathan Haidt: Religion, evolution, and the ecstasy of self-transcendence | Video on TED.comEvolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives: David Sloan Wilson.This is a great companion to "The Selfish Gene," and it's a good recommendation for people who are interested in the subject but turned off by Dawkins."Evolution for Everyone is a remarkable contribution. No other author has managed to combine mastery of the subject with such a clear and interesting explanation of what it all means for human self-understanding. Aimed at the general reader, yet peppered with ideas original enough to engage scholars, it is truly a book for our time. "—Edward O. Wilson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of On Human NatureThe Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires: Tim Wu.This book puts the Internet, and, more specifically, the forces that control it, in a historical context. Rather than seeing the web as a unique and new thing, Wu considers it along with the telegraph, radio, telephone, and television networks. His book is a good general history of communication networks.Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis: Eric Berne.The three people in the world who are still believers in Transactional Analysis will be upset by the following claim: it's a "toy psychology." As far as I'm concerned, it's an oversimplified model of how humans work. And that's its strength. It's a kind of "Humans for Dummies." It's a marvelous books for fiction writers and actors, and even though it's an oversimplified model, it contains many grains of truth. Berne thought of all human interactions as games with winners and losers. And the book is a compendium of those games.How to Solve It: G. Polya.If you ever have to solve problems (of any type), it's worth reading this book."Every prospective teacher should read it. In particular, graduate students will find it invaluable. The traditional mathematics professor who reads a paper before one of the Mathematical Societies might also learn something from the book: 'He writes a, he says b, he means c; but it should be d.' "--E. T. Bell, Mathematical Monthly"[This] elementary textbook on heuristic reasoning, shows anew how keen its author is on questions of method and the formulation of methodological principles. Exposition and illustrative material are of a disarmingly elementary character, but very carefully thought out and selected."--Herman Weyl, Mathematical ReviewWhat Is the Name of This Book?: The Riddle of Dracula and Other Logical Puzzles: Raymond M. Smullyan.Smullyan wrote many puzzle books, and I picked this one pretty much at random. When I was a kid, I worked through all of them, and it was as if I could feel my brain growing. Here's an example to give you a taste:Dr. Tarr is a psychologist with the Department of Health. Her job is to inspect asylums to determine whether they are in compliance with the law. Asylums have Doctors and Patients. In a compliant asylum, all the doctors are sane and all the patients are insane. Clearly, an asylum with an insane doctor or a sane patient is Not A Good Thing.Sane persons are correct in all of their beliefs. Insane persons are incorrect in all of their beliefs. Both sane and insane persons are scrupulously honest: they always state what they believe to be the case. Unfortunately, the asylums are very modern and do not use identifying devices such as uniforms, ID tags, or other devices to show which persons are doctors and which are patients. Nor is it possible to know whether a person is sane or insane by any means other than questioning them.One day, after inspecting a number of asylums, Dr. Tarr was having a drink and cigar with her good friend Professor Feather. The professor found her work interesting and asked her to recount some of her findings.“Well,” said Dr. Tarr, “at the first asylum I visited, I met an inhabitant who made a single statement. I immediately took steps to have them released.”“Wait,” interjected the professor, “so you’re saying this person was not an insane patient?”“Of course,” replied Dr. Tarr.Professor Feather thought for a moment, then asked “How is that possible? This sounds like the old Liar and Truth Teller puzzle. This person either told the truth or they lied. But there are four possibilities for any person in an asylum: Sane Doctor, Insane Patient, Insane Doctor, or Sane Patient.“Even if you knew whether they were lying or telling the truth, that would only narrow the matter down to two possibilities. For example, if they told a truth such as ‘two plus two equals four’, you would know that they were Sane. But how would you know that they were a Patient, not a Doctor?”Dr. Tarr replied with a chuckle “I agree that I could not have deduced what to do based on an inhabitant saying ‘two plus two equals four’. But in this case, the patient was quite intelligent and thought of a single statement which could establish the fact that only a Sane Patient could make that statement.“I’m sure if you think about it, you could construct such a statement. Name a statement which could only be uttered by a Sane Patient.”-- A Few Easy Ones from Raymond Smullyan.The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World: Steven Johnson.This is one of the most entertaining History books I've ever read, but it goes beyond that. As it explores the biases that keep smart people from understanding "obvious" truths, it delves into Psychology and even Philosophy.UPDATE: And if you enjoy that, you’ll surely love The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York by Matthew Goodman, which is the story of an incredible (and widely-believed) series of news stories that claimed the moon was teaming with life—including intelligent life.Metaphors We Live By: George Lakoff, Mark Johnson.This book explores a fascinating thesis about how we think. The authors believe that metaphor is a core part of human cognition and that our writing, speech, and ideas are laced with metaphors and metaphorical frameworks we often fail to notice. It's terrific food for thought, whether you wind up agreeing or disagreeing.The Hero with a Thousand Faces: Joseph Campbell.“Campbell’s words carry extraordinary weight, not only among scholars but among a wide range of other people who find his search down mythological pathways relevant to their lives today....The book for which he is most famous, The Hero with a Thousand Faces [is] a brilliant examination, through ancient hero myths, of man’s eternal struggle for identity.” — TimeMind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence: Hans Moravec.One would be making a mistake to let Mind Children recede unopened into a guiltless oblivion. It's a tonic book, thought-provoking on every page. And it reminds us that, in our accelerating, headlong era, the future presses so close upon us that those who ignore it inhabit not the present but the past.--Brad Leithauser (New Yorker )Moravec, by his own admission, is an intellectual joyrider, and riding his runaway trains of thought is an exhilarating experience...This is an intellectual party that shouldn't be pooped, no matter how much it may disturb the neighbours and encourage over-indulgence.--Brian Woolley (Guardian )In the Blink of an Eye Revised 2nd Edition: Walter Murch.This book, by one of Hollywood's greatest editors, goes beyond explaining a single craft. It's a door into the brain of a brilliant technician and problem solver, and many pages of it gifted me new ways of thinking, even though I'm not an editor. For instance, Murch came up with the simple (but genius) idea of taping two tiny, cut-out paper people to the bottom of his monitor. They continually remind him of the scale at which people will see movie images when they are in the theatre.The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present: Eric Kandel.This is an Art History/Criticism book written by a neuroscientist.“Eric Kandel has succeeded in a brilliant synthesis that would have delighted and fascinated Freud: Using Viennese culture of the twentieth century as a lens, he examines the intersections of psychology, neuroscience, and art. The Age of Insight is a tour-de-force that sets the stage for a twenty-first-century understanding of the human mind in all its richness and diversity.”—Oliver Sacks, author of The Mind’s Eye and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat“In a polymathic performance, a Nobel laureate weaves together the theories and practices of neuroscience, art and psychology to show how our creative brains perceive and engage art—and are consequently moved by it. . . . A transformative work that joins the hands of Art and Science and makes them acknowledge their close kinship.”—Kirkus Reviews (STARRED)“Engrossing … Nobel-winning neuroscientist Kandel excavates the hidden workings of the creative mind. Kandel writes perceptively about a range of topics, from art history—the book’s color reproductions alone make it a great browse—to dyslexia. … Kandel captures the reader’s imagination with intriguing historical syntheses and fascinating scientific insights into how we see—and feel—the world.”—Publisher’s Weekly“A fascinating meditation on the interplay among art, psychology and brain science. The author, who fled Vienna as a child, has remained captivated by Austrian artists Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele, each of whom was profoundly influenced by Sigmund Freud and by the emerging scientific approach to medicine in their day … [calls] for a new, interdisciplinary approach to understanding the mind, one that combines the humanities with the natural and social sciences.”—Scientific American“Eric Kandel’s book is a stunning achievement, remarkable for its scientific, artistic, and historical insights. No one else could have written this book—all its readers will be amply rewarded.”—Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education“Eric Kandel’s training as a psychiatrist and his vast knowledge of how the brain works enrich this thoroughly original exploration of the relationship between the birth of psychoanalysis, Austrian Expressionism, and Modernism in Vienna.”—Margaret Livingstone, Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School“This is the book that Charles Darwin would have produced, had he chosen to write about art and aesthetics. Kandel, one of the great pioneers of modern neuroscience, has effectively bridged the ‘two cultures’—science and humanities. This is a task that many philosophers, especially those called ‘new mysterians,’ had considered impossible.”—V. S. Ramachandran, author of The Tell-Tale BrainSex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships: Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jetha.If you want to grapple with understanding human sexuality, I recommend you read this book and its criticism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_at_Dawn#ReceptionUncommon Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science by Alan CromerRecommended to me by William Archibald, this is a paradigm-shifting book about the history of Science, though Cromer disputes the whole idea of paradigms. According to Cromer, Science was anything but inevitable. The forces that started it got invented once in history, in ancient Greece. Had that not happened, there's no reason to believe we'd have Science and scientists today.The book spans all the way from the origin of our species to speculation about intelligent life on other planets.EducationHow Children Fail: John Holt.A better title might be "How Teachers Fail." When I was in my teens and first starting to grapple with problems in Education, this book opened my eyes. It started me thinking in ways that had never occurred to me before.Wounded by School: Recapturing the Joy in Learning and Standing Up to Old School Culture: Kirsten Olson.Kirsten Olson's book is refreshingly unlike the general run of sludge I associate with writing about pedagogy: It seems to be entirely free of the familiar platitudes which replace thought when we read about school matters, is scrubbed clean of pretentious jargon, and offers up the twists and turns of Olson's analysis and citations with beautiful clarity. I can't imagine anyone not being better for reading this book Twice! --John Taylor Gatto, Author, Dumbing Us DownSummerhill School: A New View of Childhood: A. S. Neill, Albert Lamb.This book will challenge your ideas about education, whether you wind up agreeing with it or raging against it. While I was suffering through a traditional American public high school, this book showed me there were other possibilities, which both fascinated and depressed me. I longed to go to Summerhill.Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas: Seymour A. Papert."This is the best book I have ever read on how to assist people to learn for themselves. Papert began his work by collaborating with Jean Piaget, and then applied those perspectives in a self-programming language designed to help children learn math and physics.Papert explains Piaget's work and provides case studies of how the programming language, LOGO, can help. He provides a wonderful contrasting explanation of the weaknesses of how math and physics are usually taught in schools." -- from an Amazon reader review.See also Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre: Keith Johnstone, below (in the theatre section).The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding by Kieran EganThis book, despite its boring title, is one of the most exciting intellectual adventures I've ever had. (And also despite its boring title, it's readable and witty.) It's an exciting book even if you have no specific interest in education.Egan's thesis (which will make your neurons tingle, even if you disagree with it) is that human civilizations have gone through five intellectual stages, which he calls somatic, mythic, romantic, philosophic, and ironic. His second thesis is that education is best when kids are allowed to fully experience and integrate each of these thinking styles.Somatic learners experience through their bodies, and we are born to learn this way. Babies learn somatically when they go from crawling to walking and when they come to understand gravity's effects by knocking over block towers.Mythic understanding involves binary categories, most famously good and evil. Pretty much everything is understood as an epic (and often magical) opposition: wicked stepmother vs handsome prince; David vs Goliath; Bilbo vs Smaug...Egan believes pre-literate cultures understand the world primarily in terms of the somatic and mythic. As they become literate, people are able to think in other forms, with the romantic bridging mythic and philosophic modes.Romantic thinking is a sort of taming of mythic thinking. It's still extreme, but instead of thinking in terms of cosmic forces or gods and goddesses, it focusing on human and natural extremes. When children become romantic thinkers, they tend to lose some of their interest in monsters and superheroes and become obsessed with human feats, like the ones in the Guinness Book of World Records. Or their gods and monsters become more human-like, as are the troubled citizens of the Marvel Universe.As people focus less on the realm of demons and dragons and more on the real world (even if mostly on the extreme parts of it), they begin to notice patterns and abstractions. Maybe there are traits all lizards have in common; maybe tall is a useful category for both mountains and skyscrapers. These thoughts lead to philosophic thinking, which gives us the tools we need to do math, science, and to theorize about history, literature and to think about any topic in an abstract or algorithmic form.In the end, we notice that our abstractions have holes in them. They are useful, but they don't perfectly model reality. And they tend to get tarnished by social and political biases. These realizations lead to ironic thinking, which is impossible to do in any major sense without first developing philosophic thinking, which in turn is founded on romantic, mythic, and somatic thinking.Egan doesn't champion any of these modes over the others. He doesn't rank them. He also takes pains to say that though they have a hierarchical relationship, it's not a neat one. They leak into each other and coexist. Mythic thinkers may not be all that good at thinking ironically, but they still manage to do it sometimes, and while the philosophic mind loses some of its nimbleness with romance, it never totally loses its romantic inclinations.His main suggestion, in the parts of the book dealing with education, is that to realize their full potential as thinkers, children must be allowed and encouraged to pass through all these stages, and depending on where his chargers are in terms of intellectual maturity, a teacher must have the ability to teach in ways that stimulate all these modes. Most eight-year-olds are romantic thinkers, and teachers do them a disservice by leaping into philosophic mode rather than capitalizing on the strengths of romance.The book also explores what's wrong with current educational systems. Egan suggests (and I agree) that the fundamental problem is that schools have three incompatible goals (and Egan explains the history behind them). Schools attempt to socialize, which in most First World countries means preparing kids for work in corporations; they also attempt to indoctrinate kids into a core curriculum of some kind; finally, they attempt to spur kids into becoming individuals--into being creative, emotionally satisfied, unique beings. The inevitable muddle comes when the needs of the business world (or the requirements of the core curriculum) collide with the needs of the individual.Most schools and teachers don't acknowledge (or even understand) this conflict exists and give kids no help in putting all the pieces together. They just say, "Here's all the stuff. Some parts don't fit well with other parts. Don't complain about that. Figure out a way to cope on your own. Sink or swim."When I was just halfway through with "The Educated Mind," I knew it was going to be a a game-changing book for me. Ever since reading it, I've examined my work to see if it contains all the levels of thought (and experience). I'm talking about my writing, my reading, and my work in the theatre. Am I communicating on somatic, mythic, romantic, philosophic, and ironic levels? If not, is there some way I can enrich my work so that it at least touches on all those modes.The greatest works of art do. That's a subjective call, of course, but it's true in my opinion. Think "2001," "The Great Gatsby," "One Hundred Years of Solitude," "King Lear" ...The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money by Bryan CaplanTerrific, challenging book by a heretical economist who slaughters every sacred cow in the pasture. Even if all the book does is make you angry, it will give you things to think about.This is the only book I know of that tackles both the problems with eduction for the individual and whether or not the huge amount we spend on education is a good value for society.WritingIn my view, despite frequent references to "Elements of Style" and Stephen King's "On Writing," there are few good books on how to write. Most of what learned was either by reading and imitation or from short essays, such as Orwell's Politics and the English Language and Twain's "Finmore Cooper's Literary Offenses": http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3172/3172-h/3172-h.htm.I've tried to list most of my core beliefs about writing, here: Marcus Geduld's answer to What should every aspiring writer know about writing?These three books (really four, since the first is a collection of two books) stand out. The first ...Hat Box: The Collected Lyrics of Stephen Sondheim: Stephen Sondheim.... is a thorough analysis of Sondheim's lyrics—by Sondheim. In case you don't know who he is, he's the generally-acknowledge "greatest muscial-theatre composer/lyricist of all time." His shows include "Sweeney Todd," "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum", and "West Side Story" (lyrics only). What sets his books apart is the care he takes over evert single word and the lucid explanations with which he explains his choices. Read these books even if you're a non-lyricist.The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker.This is the best guide to prose style I've ever read. It's biased towards a simple style, but if you can master that, you can use it as a foundation to build on.Clear and Simple as the Truth: Francis-Noël Thomas, Mark Turner.Though somewhat dry, this is the only book I know of that clearly explains how to write in a very specific style. And it's kind-of the ur-style: the one I'd argue all writers should master before going on to anything more complicated. It's what "Elements of Style" should be but isn't.TheatreA Practical Handbook for the Actor: Melissa Bruder, Lee Michael Cohn, Madeleine Olnek, Nathaniel Pollack, Robert Previtio, Scott Zigler, David Mamet.This is the best introduction I've ever read to Stanislavsky-based acting. (See Constantin Stanislavski). I think of it as book one in a three-book trilogy. (Composed of this book and the next two in my list.)It helps actors avoid playing murky emotional states and become active on stage. Its core approach is to have actors choose goals for each moment they are on stage.If you know someone who is thinking of becoming an actor, get him this book.The Actor and the Target: Declan Donnellan.This book (part two of my ad-hoc trilogy) delves into one specific aspect of Stanislavsky-based acting: the person (the other actor) or object you're trying to affect when you're on stage. As a director, I find motivating actors towards targets tremendously useful. For instance, if an actor is trying to "be sexy" I ask him to stop and, instead, to try to get the actress (the target) to kiss him.How to Stop Acting: Harold Guskin.In my mind, there's tremendous value in Stanislavky's system, which forms the basis of the first two books on this list. But in the end, most actors need to let all frameworks go, stop thinking about them, and just improvise. They must "be in the moment."This is the best treatment I've found of this slippery subject. Guskin was the acting coach to James Gandalfini, Kevin, Kline, Glenn Close and many other famous actors.Different Every Night: Putting the play on stage and keeping it fresh: Mike Alfreds.This book clearly explores what to me is the core difference between theatre and film. Filmmakers must sweat to get the best performance possible onto film. Theatre practitioners should, if they're smart, create an environment where there is no "best." Great theatre should be different every night (or why not see a film, instead?). Each actor in each performance should try something new, and all the performances, taken together, should explore every avenue of the story, every possible interpretation.Notes on Directing: 130 Lessons in Leadership from the Director's Chair: Frank Hauser, Russell Reich.The ideas behind directing are very, very simple: watch and listen; avoid doing anything most of the time; step in with a suggestion when necessary. But, boy oh boy, is it hard to put these simple procedures into practice! Most directors do too much. Or they focus on the wrong things. I read this smart little book before every rehearsal period.Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre: Keith Johnstone.Impro ought to be required reading not only for theatre people generally but also for teachers, educators, and students of all kinds and persuasions. Readers of this book are not going to agree with everything in it; but if they are not challenged by it, if they do not ultimately succumb to its wisdom and whimsicality, they are in a very sad state indeed . . . .Johnstone seeks to liberate the imagination, to cultivate in the adult the creative power of the child . . . .Deserves to be widely read and tested in the classroom and rehearsal hall . . . Full of excellent good sense, actual observations and inspired assertions.–CHOICE: Books for College LibrariesShakespeareThinking Shakespeare: A How-to Guide for Student Actors, Directors, and Anyone Else Who Wants to Feel More Comfortable With the Bard: Barry Edelstein.This is the only worthwhile Shakespeare book I've ever found for beginning actors, and seasoned actors who are new to Shakespeare. Even pros will probably learn something from it. And it's a cool book for Shakespeare fans, too, who want to learn how to read the plays better and who want an understanding of how Shakespeare's approach it.Hamlet in Purgatory: Stephen Greenblatt."Hamlet" has a bewildering and brilliant relationship to Religion, and this is the best book on the subject.Hamlet and Revenge: Eleanor Prosser.Elizabethan morality considered revenge to be a great sin. So how is it possible that Shakespeare's audience considered Hamlet a hero? This is one of the most eye-opening pieces of dramaturgy I've read. I discuss it, here: Marcus Geduld's answer to What is the meaning of "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune"?Pick this up used if you can. It's expensive new.Shakespeare's Metrical Art: George T. Wright.If you want to understand what Shakespeare was doing poetically, this is the bible. If you're new to blank verse, I recommend your read "Thinking Shakespeare" before tackling this.I delve into lots of other Shakespearean issues, here: Directing "Hamlet".FictionI gobble down fiction, so if this question was "What are some great novels?" I could list hundreds of books. Ones that would definitely make the list are "Sense and Sensibility," "Pride and Prejudice," "Emma," "Wuthering Heights," "House of Mirth", "One Hundred Years of Solitude," "Watership Down," "Cat's Eye", "Bleak House," "Lonesome Dove," "Catcher in the Rye," "The Queen's Gambit," and ... well, I could go on and on.While all great novels expand my mind, I've included two, below, that did so via formal experimentation. In general, I hate experimental novels. Most of them are Sophomoric: "What if the author was a character in his own work? What if the characters knew the were living in a work of fiction? Like, wow men! Cool!"Here are two exceptions:1Q84: Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin, Philip ­Gabriel.War and Peace: Leo Tolstoy.And this, to me and many others, is the greatest novel of all time:The Great Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald.I've read it over a hundred times and it still keeps giving. Several famous writers, like Hemmingway, copied it out by hand, so that they could study each sentence. I've often thought of doing the same thing. Here's a lesson I learned from just one of Fitzgerald's sentences: PostUPDATE: Someone recently PMed me, asking me to recommend two fiction and two non-fiction books to him. What follows is my reply, in which I cheated and recommend more. It's interesting to compare the following list with the one above, and see how some books have a stable placement in the front of my mind while others shift.As a lifelong reader, it's almost impossible for me to pick four books without doing so at random, but I'll try, as long as you understand these aren't my four favorites. They're just four books that are meaningful to me chosen somewhat arbitrarily.I'm going pick books that I first read at least five years ago, because I want to give you recommendations that haven't just temporarily dazzled me. Otherwise, I'd suggest"Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel KahnemanAmazon: Thinking, Fast and Slowand"Antifragile" by Nassim Nicholas TalebAmazon: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorderwhich both struck me as deeply profound and deeply useful. But they're too recent to be "canonized" in my mind.Finally, my favorite novel is"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott FitzgeraldAmazon: The Great Gatsbybut I won't list it, because it's on so many great-works list. It's probably more helpful for me to suggest books you're less-likely to have heard about.Non-fiction:- "The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World," by Steven Johnson, is a book about one event in history (and a fascinating one), but it manages to delve into deep matters of philosophy, science, and psychology, too. It's very exciting and readable, like a "page-turner" novel.Amazon: The Ghost Map- "From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present," by Jacques Barzun. The best modern-Western history I've ever read.Amazon: From Dawn to DecadenceFiction:- "Lonesome Dove," by Larry McMurtry, is, to me, a Great American Novel. It belongs on shelves next to "The Great Gatsby," "Moby Dick," and "The Scarlet Letter." It's a quest story, similar in that sense to "Lord of the Rings," but its setting is the American West in 1876.Amazon: Lonesome Dove- "Cat's Eye," by Margaret Atwood, is one of the most brutally-honest stories about childhood ever written. It's "Lord of the Flies" without the the island. And it's about little girls instead of little boys.Amazon: Cat's Eye: Margaret AtwoodHere are some other books I love:Fiction:- "One Hundred Years of Solitude," by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Magic Realism. Maybe the best fantasy novel ever written. Marquez creates an absolutely unique world that runs via its own surreal logic. You emerge from it a different person. The English translation is gorgeous.Amazon: One Hundred Years of Solitude- "1Q84," by Haruki Murakami is the Japanese "One Hundred Year of Solitude." It's worth reading both of them, to understand what fiction can do and where it can go—and how it can play by its own rules.Amazon: 1Q84- "House of Mirth," by Edith Wharton. A fantastic portrait of 19th-Century New York and a young woman who has to maneuver in that complex, suffocating society.Amazon: The House of Mirth- "The Queens Gambit," by Walter Tevis is simply a perfect tale. It's like a masterclass on how to write a honed but unpretentious novel. It's about a child chess prodigy. Tevis isn't a well-known guy, but many people are aware of his novels via their film adaptations. These include "The Man Who Fell to Earth," "The Hustler," and "The Color of Money."Amazon: The Queen's Gambit: A Novel- "This Perfect Day," by Ira Levin is, in my mind, the best dystopia ever written. Few agree with me, because its politics are naive compared to books like "1984" (which I also love). But Levin isn't playing politics. Nor is he doing social criticism. He's weaving a yarn, and his spare prose and world-building do just that with immense confidence. I'd say it's one of the best sci-fi books of all time. Levin's mystery "A Kiss Before Dying" is also terrific. Don't watch either of the movie versions.Amazon: This Perfect Day- "Amy and Isabelle," by Elizabeth Strout is the best story about a mother/daughter relationship I've ever read.Amazon: Amy and Isabelle- "The Box of Delights," by John Masefield is my favorite children's fantasy novel. Though not nearly as well-known as "The Hobbit" or the Narnia books, for my taste it's superior.Amazon: The Box of DelightsOther novels I love include "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte; "The Time Machine" and "The Island of Dr. Moreau" by H.G. Wells; "Emma," "Sense and Sensibility," and "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen; pretty much any Jeeves book by P.G. Wodehouse; "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens; "Plain Song" by Ken Haruf; "Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain; "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy; "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger; "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee; and "Secret History" by Donna Tartt.Non-fiction:- "Godel, Escher, Bach," and "Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies," by Douglas Hoffstadter, two of the most thought-provoking books I've read about the human mind and artificial intelligence.Amazon: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden BraidAmazon: Fluid Concepts And Creative Analogies- "Shadow Divers," by Robert Kurson is the most exciting non-fiction book I've ever read. It's about deep-sea divers, a subject that (prior to reading this book) didn't interest me in the slightest.Amazon: Shadow Divers- "The Botany of Desire," by Michael Pollan is about the symbiotic way humans live with plants. Pollan is better known for "The Omnivore's Dilemma," which is fantastic, but, for my money, not quite as much the masterpiece as this earlier book.Amazon: The Botany of Desire- "Against Joie De Vivre" and "Being With Children," by Phillip Lopate. Lopate is the best personal essayist of the 20th Century and one of the best of all times.Amazon: Against Joie de VivreAmazon: Being with Children- Essays by George Orwell. I love all of Orwell's writing, but I find his essays—especially "Shooting an Elephant" and "Such, Such Were the Joys" to be the best of his writing.Amazon: Essays Free, online: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html- "How Children Fail," by John Holt; "Summerhill School," by A.S. Neal; "A Mathematician's Lament" by Paul Lockhart; and the much more recent "Wounded by School," by Kristin Olson, were all deeply important to forming and informing my ideas about education.Amazon: How Children FailAmazon: A Mathematician's LamentFree online (shorter) version (pdf): http://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/mnewman/LockhartsLament.pdfAmazon: Summerhill SchoolAmazon: Wounded by School- "The Little Schemer," by Daniel Friedman and Matthias Felleisen, is the only computer-programming book I've read that's a work of art. (Really it's a puzzle book, since one doesn't need to use a computer to work through it. It explores the subject of recursion.)Amazon: The Little Schemer- "In the Blink of an Eye" by Walter Murch, about the art of film editing.Amazon: In the Blink of an EyeFacebook: Friends of ol' marcus

​Are you tired of working hard for monthly salary or wages?Would you like to start your own business but you don’t have any money to do it?Would you like a passive income to cover all the monthly expenses even if you didn’t work for months?Would you like to free yourself from your soul stealing job?Have you ever wondered what should you do with the money you earned working hard?If not, then start thinking now. Many may have also started thinking about how they can use their money in a well optimized manner in order to cultivate maximum return from their existing capital but the most crucial part where most of the people lose their momentum is deciding Where and How to lock their money in best possible manner.If you had not planned anything yet then don't worry because that’s exactly what I’m going to demonstrate now. So, spare some of your time and read it fully.In this answer you’ll came over some interesting facts about stock market investing in four section (with many lucrative examples)First section deals with deciding the best investment vehicle where one can invest to get best out of his efforts.Second section deals with perfect way to drive profit from your investment vehicle with an example of cattle and dairy farmingThird section deals with – why long run is the best run. Always be the lambi race ka ghoda.Forth section deals with Coin flipping and Chimpanzee. What chimpanzee……..!! Oh damn it! I opened the surprise. No no no…. don’t directly switch to the last section.If you think that you are super intelligent then you can skip sections as per your wish but I’ll recommend you to read it fully. At the end you’ll came to know the usefulness of sparing 15 min of your life reading it. This answer is somehow 5000 words so grab a coffee and start reading.Section - #1) Best Investment Vehicle​​You can lock your money in many income sources like:Equity (20%)Mutual Funds (15%)Debentures (12%)Public Provident Funds (9%)Real Estate (9%)Fixed Deposits (7%)Unit Trust of Funds (6%)Precious Metals (5%)Saving A/c (4%) orInside your locker (0%)So on..........Above, you can also observe % of returns pertaining to respective sources above. This % are the base quorum for detecting the best source of income. With no further ado, let us try to understand it.As a rational being, you’ll always grab the opportunity where you can avail maximum benefit. Equity is the best return giver. Then why most of the people falter to invest in stock market? Simple, because they knows many bullshit stories about people who turned from lakhs to zero and even many had committed suicide - Financial crisis caused 5,000 suicides. Is investing in stock market is like risking your life and money?Don’t get confused between Investing and Speculating. Latter simply means putting your money in an unknown deal and then praying. Those who speculate, lose and those who invest, win. Let me directly hit to the nail.How much return do you expect every month? 5K, 20K, 50K or so on….. Lets say 10K.In order to earn 10K bucks every month, you’ll need following amount pertaining to different sources. (only 4 popular sources are taken for better understanding)If you totally rely on equity, then 50K bucks.If MF, then around 65KIf Debts, then around 85KIf FD, then around 150KYou can note one thing that more are the returns, less are the funds requirement and vise versa. So, it is now quite clear that equity is the best source of return and also equities are a good hedge against inflation whereas other sources are not.I’ve read many answers on Quora that How should I invest Rs 10000 every month? OR How can I earn Rs 1 crore from Rs 25000 in 6 months?.If above formula is applied then hardly 5K bucks can be earned from 25K and that too yearly. And the first question is demanding 3000% p.a. return from 10K bucks and second, next to impossible. Is it possible to earn 150 times more return than the above stated 20% return on Equity? Don’t worry, everything is possible in stock market. But HOW?All the sources except equity have fixed return, not subject to any fluctuation. Whereas equity are volatile but the fact remained unnoticed by readers is that the 20% return of equity reflects the average not actual rate of individual stocks. Some stock may give you a return of +200% and some may not even 5% or even in negative. Whereas the 12%, 10% and 8% of other sources shows individual return. Lets me make it easy with an example.Assume, you invested in 2 different stocks X & Y. X gave you the return of 5% p.a. and Y gave you the return of 35% p.a. At an average you get 20% return {(5+35)/2} but individually you get 5% and 35% return.Again assume, you invested your money in FDs of two different banks (normally all banks have same interest rates), Individual ROR of both the banks are around 7%. So, individually you get 7% from both and averagely, you get 7% {(7+7)/2}.What I want to point out is that there’s no difference between smart and fool peoples, if they invested in FD. Even a fool will earn the same amount of return that a sound minded person earns from FD but in stock market a fool will lose and wise people will win. You can show your talent on stock market but if you are wise enough to cultivate a decent return otherwise you can also lose your whole amount.Have you ever heard that – “xyz become millionaire by investing in FD or PPF……” instead – “How Warren Buffett made wealth by investing in stock market”. That’s what make the difference in fixed return source and fluctuating return source. Equity can make a person and break a person. So, if you are smart enough and want to create a vast wealth then you should chose equity as source. Here a definition of smart investors, If you can earn more than average i.e. >20% then you are a wise investor and <20%, fool.Hence, if you are smart enough to predict market nerves than you can earn 1000 times more than you have but be cautious one mistake can also break you in thousand pieces. So, be wise while investing.However, if you are not capable enough to detect the best stocks from market then choose fixed return, but remember even a fool can earn some amount as you can. Decide weather you are a fool or not?Section #2) Best way to drive profit from stock market.There are two ways to drive profits:Cashflow gain (Dividend income)Capital gain (Notional income)Be attentive, it is the most crucial part to have a deep insight into stock market investing.As I promised to give you a example earlier. So, lets start with an interesting example.There are two ways to earn money from farming associated with animals; cattle farming and dairy farming. I read this example in a book named “Stocks to Riches” by “Late Sir Parag Parikh”. Found it valuable, so illustrated here.In cattle farming, the only asset is Cattle are bred, reared to yield good value when they are sold to slaughter house. This is what known as speculation. You bought a stock, waited till the price hiked, then sold it off in the market for a profit. Thisis how capital gain investing works.On the other hand, In dairy farming, the only asset is also cattle. And even here too cattle are bred and reared but what made the difference is that they are not sold to slaughter house. Here the cattle are used for long term purpose, they are used to obtain a regular supply of milk. So, ultimately here you earn from selling dairy products. This is what known as investment. You bought a stock at cheap rates, then price hiked and dropped but you didn’t sold it to other investors. You retain it for long term purpose. They are used to obtain regular supply of dividends (cashflow/bonus shares/rights issue). Read How a chap turned 10,000 Rs into 704 crores in long run but first read the whole answer. I’ll remind it to you at the end.What I want to point out is – there’s no shortcut or perfect way to earn huge wealth in short run. You’ve to wait for years.I started my investment at a legal age of 18 and I can predict that how much wealth will I have by the age of 30 so that their will be no need to work for other half of my life. Other half fully devoted to me. This is what known as financial literacy. Always remember a secret of growing wealth. Never let any penny out of your portfolio which you invested instead grow up your portfolio. Every penny in your portfolio will invent an another new penny for you.Think of it this way; Once a penny goes into your portfolio, it becomes your employee. The best thing about money is that it works 24 hours a day and can work for generation, for my son, grandson, so on, until someone destroy it.Don’t get confuse between rich and wealthy. I also have my own definition for wealth. Actually, I borrowed it from a man named R. Buckminster Fuller. It was pretty confusing at first, but after reading it, it began to make some sense:"Wealth is a person’s ability to survive so many number of days – or, if I stopped working today, how long could I survive"So, while I’m not rich but I’m wealthy. Now, I’ve income generating investment vehicles that fully cover my monthly expenses. If I want to increase my expenses, I must increase employees in my portfolio. And also note that at this point, I’m no longer dependent on my salary.Read my another writings regarding how to create a sustainable portfolio Charlie: My Portfolio but first continue read this answer, I’ll remind it to you at the end.Section #3) Always be lambi race ka ghoda.​“Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a seed a long time ago”Thousands of people write answers on Quora daily and all of them (even did I) love to receive feedbacks from readers in the form of views, upvotes or comments. But if you are expecting these feedbacks in short run then Quora is not your cup of tea. It is mostly not possible that you wrote a charming answer and next day your answer was surrounded by many readers or thousands of upvotes. It’s a long term process. I read many 5 line answer with great views and upvotes like this one, Ian Peters-Campbell's answer to What are the best possible jobs for someone who is extremely intelligent but extremely lazy? What made him so successful is patience regardless of the fact that his answer has any quality. when I asked him - What's the matter? He replied - "I wrote this answer in 2010, time and patience valued it the most. I didn't got anything in short run"Same as millions of people invests in stock market daily and all of them (even did I) love to receive excellent return in form of capital gain, bonus issue, dividends etc. But if you are expecting that return in short run then stock market is not your cup of tea. It is mostly not possible that you invested and next day many newsreporter surrounded you asking "how you turned 1K into 1 millions...……..?"It’s a long term process. Patience is main profit driving force to fetch money from stock market. I have read many rags to riches stories and what I found common in them is patience, not selling a single stock he bought for many years. That's how time value money in stock market.No doubt, there are many answers which gone trending in short run like this one; "What would a modern-day evil genius have to do in order to take over the world?" delivered by Oliver Emberton. Within 3 days, after writing this answer, he got half a million views and within days, Oliver was approached by multiple publishers about book, movie, and TV rights. And the most astonishing fact was that he had written that answer on his phone, in between helping his girlfriend move home. May be you're also dreaming that you invested your money in some bullshit stocks. Within days you earned half a million bucks and within days many reporters approached you to ask about your success story. Stop day dreaming. It is possible on Quora but not in stock market. Writing answers is somewhat related to your writing skills and imagination power but investing in stock is all about peculiar vision and perfect prediction to detect market behavior. It is not easy to perfectly predict market nerve in short run. Within couple of minutes market get up and down.(See more at: How Oliver Emberton Used Quora to Build a Popular Blog in Less Than One Year but first read out full answer. I'll remind you at the end)Many maybe thinking – “I’ve seen many peoples who earned huge wealth from short term trading, so it is not a yardstick rule that nobody can earn from short term”.Yes, you’re right. There are many investors who earned millions of money in just a month or so because it's a common rule of market that money is not created while trading it is just transferred from one person to another. So, there are 50-50 chances that you’ll win or lose. Whenever a trade is executed, it is pre-planned that one will gain and one will lose. Money goes from one hand to another. Therefore you may had saw many people gaining as the proportion of losing is equal to winning side. Even I saw many people earning huge amount from Poker but there is no perfect way to play a poker game. It’s all depends on luck. Same applies here in stock market, only lucky people gains from short term trading. If you find yourself lucky, then start speculating.Always remember, you may have always be on winning side, even your luck may work for long time. But whenever a pharaoh curse will appear, your whole capital will erode making you unable to invest in market again. It'll take years to recover your capital. My eyeball witnessed many peoples who are crying for their act and will be regretful rest of their life. It is better to gain from the experience of others, not yours. What more to say? Once I was asked – “How can we become a day trading millionaire?” I replied – “Easy, just start out as a day trading billionaire”Section #4) Exploit the discrepancies of price and valueI can bet that after reading this section you’ll become a great follower of value investing philosophy. You’ll worship Mr. Buffet and follow his preaching. Be prepared.The common intellectual value investing is that find the discrepancies between the value of a business and the price of small pieces of that business (also known as share) in the market. It doesn’t matter whether the stocks are bought on Monday or Thursday, or whether it is January or July, etc. What matter is price and value.When value investors buy stocks, they see it as a medium of buying a business, not a product which goes up and down. They are just purchasing a business through the purchase of marketable stocks -- I doubt that many are cranking into their purchase decision the day of the week or the month in which the transaction is going to occur. If it doesn't make any difference whether all of a business is being bought on a Monday or a Friday, I am baffled why academicians invest extensive time and effort to see whether it makes a difference when buying small pieces of those same businesses. Many professionals talk about beta factor and some other factors. In fact, most of them would have difficulty defining those terms. The value investors simply focus on two variables: price and value.I always find it extraordinary that so many studies are made of price and volume behavior, the stuff of chartists. Can you imagine buying an entire business simply because the price of the business had been marked up substantially last week and the week before? Of course, the reason a lot of studies are made of these price and volume variables is that now, in the age of computers, there are almost endless data available about them. It isn't necessarily because such studies have any utility; it's simply that the data are there and academicians have [worked] hard to learn the mathematical skills needed to manipulate them. Once these skills are acquired, it seems sinful not to use them, even if the usage has no utility or negative utility. As a friend said, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.Let me make it easy with a lucrative example of Coin flipping and Chimpanzees.​Actually its not mine corpus. I took it from a sarcastic speech of Mr. Buffett at Columbia University back in 1984. You’ll find it interesting. I've edited some parts to make it reader friendly.“……….Before we begin this examination, I would like you to imagine a national coin-flipping contest. Let's assume we get 225 million Americans up tomorrow morning and we ask them all to wager a dollar. They go out in the morning at sunrise, and they all call the flip of a coin. If they call correctly, they win a dollar from those who called wrong. Each day the losers drop out, and on the subsequent day the stakes build as all previous winnings are put on the line. After ten flips on ten mornings, there will be approximately 220,000 people in the United States who have correctly called ten flips in a row. They each will have won a little over $1,000.Now this group will probably start getting a little puffed up about this, human nature being what it is. They may try to be modest, but at cocktail parties they will occasionally admit to attractive members of the opposite sex what their technique is, and what marvelous insights they bring to the field of flipping.Assuming that the winners are getting the appropriate rewards from the losers, in another ten days we will have 215 people who have successful called their coin flips 20 times in a row and who, by this exercise, each have turned one dollar into a little over $1 million. $225 million would have been lost, $225 million would have been won.By then, this group will really lose their heads. They will probably write books on "How I turned a Dollar into a Million in Twenty Days Working Thirty Seconds a Morning." Worse yet, they'll probably start jetting around the countryattending seminars on efficient coin-flipping and tackling skeptical professorswith, " If it can't be done, why are there 215 of us?"By then some business school professor will probably be rude enough to bring up the fact that if 225 million chimpanzees had engaged in a similar exercise, the results would be much the same - 215 egotistical chimpanzees with 20 straight winning flips.I would argue, however, that there are some important differences in the examples I am going to present. For one thing, if (a) you had taken 225 million orangutans distributed roughly as the U.S. population is; if (b) 215 winners were left after 20 days; and if (c) you found that 40 came from a particular zoo in Omaha, you would be pretty sure you were on to something. So you would probably go out and ask the zookeeper about what he's feeding them, whether they had special exercises, what books they read, and who knows what else. That is, if you found any really extraordinary concentrations of success, you might want to see if you could identify concentrations of unusual characteristics that might be causal factors.Scientific inquiry naturally follows such a pattern. If you were trying to analyze possible causes of a rare type of cancer -- with, say, 1,500 cases a year in the United States -- and you found that 400 of them occurred in some little mining town in Montana, you would get very interested in the water there, or the occupation of those afflicted, or other variables. You know it's not random chance that 400 come from a small area. You would not necessarily know the causal factors, but you would know where to search.I submit to you that there are ways of defining an origin other than geography. In addition to geographical origins, there can be what I call an intellectual origin. I think you will find that a disproportionate number of successful coin-flippers in the investment world came from a very small intellectual village. A concentration of winners that simply cannot be explained by chance can be traced to this particularintellectual village.Conditions could exist that would make even that concentration unimportant. Perhaps 100 people were simply imitating the coin-flipping call of some terribly persuasive personality. When he called heads, 100 followers automatically called that coin the same way. If the leader was part of the 215 left at the end, the fact that 100 came from the same intellectual origin would mean nothing. You would simply be identifying one case as a hundred cases.Similarly, let's assume that you lived in a strongly patriarchal society and every family in the United States conveniently consisted of ten members. Further assume that the patriarchal culture was so strong that, when the 225 million people went out the first day, every member of the family identified with the father's call. Now, at the end of the 20-day period, you would have 215 winners, and you would find that they came from only 21.5 families. Some naive types might say that this indicates an enormous hereditary factor as an explanation of successful coin-flipping. But, of course, it would have no significance at all because it would simply mean that you didn't have 215 individual winners, but rather 21.5 randomly distributed families who were winners.In this group of successful investors that I want to consider, there has been a common intellectual patriarch, Ben Graham. But the children who left the house of this intellectual patriarch have called their "flips" in very different ways. They have gone to different places and bought and sold different stocks and companies, yet they have had a combined record that simply cannot be explained by the fact that they are all calling flips identically because a leader is signaling the calls for them to make. The patriarch has merely set forth the intellectual theory for making coin-calling decisions, but each student has decided on his own manner ofapplying the theory………..……….. The exact opposite is true with value investing. If you buy a dollar bill for 60 cents, it's riskier than if you buy a dollar bill for 40 cents, but the expectation of reward is greater in the latter case. The greater the potential for reward in the value portfolio, the less risk there is.One quick example: The Washington Post Company in 1973 was selling for $80 million in the market. At the time, that day, you could have sold the assets to any one of ten buyers for not less than $400 million, probably appreciably more. The company owned the Post,Newsweek, plus several television stations in major markets. Those same properties are worth $2 billion now, so the person who would have paid $400 million would not have been crazy.Now, if the stock had declined even further to a price that made the valuation $40 million instead of $80 million, its beta would have been greater. And to people that think beta measures risk, the cheaper price would have made it look riskier. This is truly Alice in Wonderland. I have never been able to figure out why it's riskier to buy $400 million worth of properties for $40 million than $80 million. And, as a matter of fact, if you buy a group of such securities and you know anything at all about business valuation, there is essentially no risk in buying $400 million for $80 million, particularly if you do it by buying ten $40 million piles of $8 million each. Since you don't have your hands on the $400 million, you want to be sure you are in with honest and reasonably competent people, but that's not a difficult job.You also have to have the knowledge to enable you to make a very general estimate about the value of the underlying businesses. But you do not cut it close. That is what Ben Graham meant by having a margin of safety. You don't try and buy businesses worth $83 million for $80 million. You leave yourself an enormous margin. When you build a bridge, you insist it can carry 30,000 pounds, but you only drive 10,000 pound trucks across it. And that same principle works in investing………..”Further Mr. Buffett demonstrated the portfolios of all value investors of his time. You can read it here, superinvestors but first read this answer full.He also gave a good insights of risk and reward further in his speech, “I would like to say one important thing about risk and reward. Sometimes risk and reward are correlated in a positive fashion. If someone were to say to me, "I have here a six-shooter and I have slipped one cartridge into it. Why don't you just spin it and pull it once? If you survive, I will give you $1 million." I would decline -- perhaps stating that $1 million is not enough. Then he might offer me $5 million to pull the trigger twice -- now that would be a positive correlation between risk and reward!...........”And now the most important part,“…………I can only tell you that the secret has been out for 50 years, ever since Ben Graham and Dave Dodd wrote Security Analysis, yet I have seen no trend toward value investing in the 35 years that I've practiced it. There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult. The academic world, if anything, has actually backed away from the teaching of value investing over the last 30 years. It's likely to continue that way. Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace, and those who read their Graham & Dodd will continue to prosper…………”Maybe you got my point, value investing is not a luck by chance game you’ll absolutely win the game whereas speculation is just putting your money in some deal and then praying.While they differ greatly in style, these investors are, mentally, always buying the business, not buying the stock. A few of them sometimes buy whole businesses. Far more often they simply buy small pieces of businesses. Their attitude, whether buying all or a tiny piece of a business, is the same. Some of them hold portfolios with dozens of stocks; others concentrate on a handful. But all exploit the difference between the market price of a business and its intrinsic value.Now about it - Is the "look for values with a significant margin of safety relative to prices" approach to stock analysis, out of date?Let me end my answer with an thought expressed by Walter Schloss,“I doesn't worry about whether it is January or December, I doesn't worry about whether it's Monday or Friday, I doesn't worry about whether it's an election year. I simply thinks, if a business is worth a dollar and I can buy it for 40 cents, something good may happen to me. And I does it over and over and over again”What? You can't seek any opportunity?Okay, don't worry just stay connected with me. I'll update you time to time with this types of precious information. Best way to get notified about it is to get subscribed to my blog. Not joking, I treat my subscribers as inner "caucus". They are the only one who get notified about my new writings.I promised you to remind many stuff while you are reading the answer. So, below are the links….,Rags to Riches; How a chap turned 10,000 Rs into 704 crores - Stock Market InsightsCharlie: My Portfolio - Stock Market InsightsHow Oliver Emberton Used Quora to Build a Popular Blog in Less Than One Year"What would a modern-day evil genius have to do in order to take over the world?"Portfolio of value investors of Buffett's time​​(Image credit - 29 Warren Buffett Quotes on Investing & Life)

Here is what Turkey thinks about this (officially). I copied it from From Rep. of Turkey Ministry of Foreign AffairsIf you really want to know the truth, read it to the end…———-The Armenian Allegation of Genocide: The issue and the factsTHE ISSUE: Whether within the events leading to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire genocide was perpetrated against Armenian Ottoman citizens in Eastern Anatolia.The Ottoman Empire ruled over all of Anatolia and significant parts of Europe, North Africa, the Caucasus and Middle East for over seven hundred years. Lands once Ottoman dominions today comprise more than 30 independent nations.A century of ever-increasing conflict, beginning roughly in 1820 and culminating with the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, characterized the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire participated in no fewer than a dozen named wars, nearly all to the detriment of the empire and its citizens. The empire contracted against an onslaught of external invaders and internal nationalist independence movements. In this context -- an imperiled empire waging and losing battles on remote and disparate fronts, grasping to continue a reign of over seven years -- must the tragic experience of the Ottoman Armenians of Eastern Anatolia be understood. For during these waning days of the Ottoman Empire did millions die, Muslim, Jew, and Christian alike.Yet Armenian have attempted to extricate and isolate their history from the complex circumstances in which their ancestors were embroiled. In so doing, they describe a world populated only by white-hatted heroes and black-hatted villains. The heroes are always Christian and the villains are always Muslim. Infusing history with myth, Armenian Americans vilify the Republic of Turkey, Turkish Americans, and ethnic Turks worldwide. Armenian bent on this prosecution choose their evidence carefully, omitting all evidence that tends to exonerate those whom they presume guilty, ignoring important events and verifiable accounts, and sometimes relying on dubious or prejudiced sources and even falsified documents. Though this portrayal is necessarily one-sided and steeped in bias, the Armenian community presents it as a complete history and unassailable fact.RELEVANCE: The truth demands that every side of a story be told. Fundamental freedoms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution protect those who choose to challenge the Armenian view.To oppose Armenian orthodoxy on this issue has become risky. Any attempt to challenge the credibility of witnesses, or the authenticity of documents, or to present evidence that some of the claimed victims were responsible for their own fate is either wholly squelched or met with accusations of genocide denial. Moreover, any attempt to demonstrate the suffering and needless death of millions of innocent non-Christians enmeshed in the same events as the Anatolian Armenians is greeted with sneers, as if to say that some lives are inherently more valuable than others and that one faith is more deserving than another. The lack of real debate, enforced with a heavy hand by Armenian, ensures that any consideration of what genuinely occurred nearly a century ago in Eastern Anatolia will utterly fail as a search for the truth.Ultimately, whether to blindly accept the Armenian portrayal is an issue of fundamental fairness and the most cherished of American rights -- free speech. Simply put, in America every person has the opportunity to tell his or her story. Armenian possess the right to promote and celebrate their heritage and even to discuss ancient grievances. However, Armenian seek to deny these very rights to others. This is proven by the punitive nature and sheer volume of legislation proposed in the state and federal legislatures, the one-sided curricula proposed to state boards of education, and by the vast sums of money and energy devoted to this cause. Together, these efforts only increase acrimony and antagonism.The complete story of the vast suffering of this period has not yet been written. When that story is told, the following facts must not be forgotten.FACT 1: Demographic studies prove that prior to World War I, fewer than 1.5 million Armenians lived in the entire Ottoman Empire. Thus, allegations that more than 1.5 million Armenians from eastern Anatolia died must be false.Figures reporting the total pre-World War I Armenian population vary widely, with Armenian sources claiming far more than others. British, French and Ottoman sources give figures of 1.05-1.50 million. Only certain Armenian sources claim a pre-war population larger than 1.5 million. Comparing these to post-war figures yields a rough estimate of losses. Historian and demographer, Dr. Justin McCarthy of the University of Louisville, calculates the actual losses as slightly less than 600,000. This figure agrees with those provided by British historian Arnold Toynbee, by most early editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and approximates the number given by Monseigneur Touchet, a French missionary, who informed the Oeuvre d'Orient in February 1916 that the number of dead is thought to be 500,000. Boghos Nubar, head of the Armenian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1920, noted the large numbers who survived the war. He declared that after the war 280,000 Armenians remained in the Anatolian portion of the occupied Ottoman Empire while 700,000 Armenians had emigrated to other countries.Clearly then, a great portion of the Ottoman Armenians were not killed as claimed and the 1.5 million figure should be viewed as grossly erroneous. Each needless death is a tragedy. Equally tragic are lies meant to inflame hatred.FACT 2: Armenian losses were few in comparison to the over 2.5 million Muslim dead from the same period.Reliable statistics demonstrate that slightly less than 600,000 Anatolian Armenians died during the war period of 1912-22. Armenians indeed suffered a terrible mortality. But one must likewise consider the number of dead Muslims and Jews. The statistics tell us that more than 2.5 million Anatolian Muslims also perished. Thus, the years 1912-1922 constitute a horrible period for humanity, not just for Armenians.The numbers do not tell us the exact manner of death of the citizens of Anatolia, regardless of ethnicity, who were caught up in both an international war and an intercommunal struggle. Documents of the time list intercommunal violence, forced migration of all ethnic groups, disease, and, starvation as causes of death. Others died as a result of the same war-induced causes that ravaged all peoples during the period.FACT 3: Certain oft-cited Armenian evidence is of diminished value, having been derived from dubious and prejudicial sources.Armenian purport that the wartime propaganda of the enemies of the Ottoman Empire constitutes objective evidence. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, who is frequently quoted by Armenian, visited the Ottoman Empire with political, not humanitarian aims. His correspondence with President Wilson reveals his intent was to uncover or manufacture news that would goad the U.S. into joining the war. Given that motive, Morgenthau sought to malign the Ottoman Empire, an enemy of the Triple Entente. Morgenthau’s research and reporting relied in large part on politically motivatedArmenians; his primary aid, translator and confidant was Arshag Schmavonian, his secretary was Hagop Andonian. Morgenthau openly professed that the Turks were an inferior race and possessed "inferior blood." Thus, his accounts can hardly be considered objective.One ought to compare the wartime writings of Morgenthau and the oft-cited Gen. J.G. Harbord to the post-war writings of Rear Admiral Mark L. Bristol, U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Turkey 1920 - 1926. In a March 28, 1921 letter he writes,"[R]eports are being freely circulated in the United States that the Turks massacred thousands of Armenians in the Caucasus. Such reports are repeated so many times it makes my blood boil. The Near East Relief have the reports from Yarrow and our own American people which show absolutely that such Armenian reports are absolutely false. The circulation of such false reports in the United States, without refutation, is an outrage and is certainly doing the Armenians more harm than good. … Why not tell the truth about the Armenians in every way?"FACT 4: The Armenian deaths do not constitute genocide.The totality of evidence thus far uncovered by historians tells a grim story of serious inter-communal conflict, perpetrated by both Christian and Muslim irregular forces, complicated by disease, famine, and many other of war’s privations. The evidence does not, however, describe genocide.A. The Armenians took arms against their own government. Their violent political aims, not their race, ethnicity or religion, rendered them subject to relocation.Armenian ignore the dire circumstances that precipitated the enactment of a measure as drastic as mass relocation. Armenians cooperated with Russian invaders of Eastern Anatolia in wars in 1828, 1854, and 1877. Between 1893 and 1915 Ottoman Armenians in eastern Anatolia rebelled against their government -- the Ottoman government -- and joined Armenian revolutionary groups, such as the notorious Dashnaks and Hunchaks. They armed themselves and spearheaded a massive Russian invasion of eastern Anatolia. On November 5, 1914, the President of the Armenian National Bureau in Tblisi declared to Czar Nicholas II, "From all countries Armenians are hurrying to enter the ranks for the glorious Russian Army, with their blood to serve the victory of Russian arms. … Let the Russian flag wave freely over the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus." Armenian treason is also plainly documented in the November 1914 issue of the Hunchak Armenian [Revolutionary] Gazette, published in Paris. In a call to arms it exhorted,"The entire Armenian Nation will join forces -- moral and material, and waving the sword of Revolution, will enter this World conflict ... as comrades in arms of the Triple Entente, and particularly Russia. They will cooperate with the Allies, making full use of all political and revolutionary means for the final victory...."Boghos Nubar addressed a letter to the Times of London on January 30, 1919 confirming that the Armenians were indeed belligerents in World War I. He stated with pride,"In the Caucasus, without mentioning the 150,000 Armenians in the Russian armies, about 50,000 Armenian volunteers under Andranik, Nazarbekoff, and others not only fought for four years for the cause of the Entente, but after the breakdown of Russia they were the only forces in the Caucasus to resist the advance of the Turks...."One of those who answered the Armenian call to arms was Gourgen Yanikian who, as a teenager, joined the Russians to fight the Ottoman government, and who as an elderly man, on January 27, 1973, assassinated two Turkish diplomats in Santa Barbara, California.B. Logic and evidence controvert the allegation of genocide.1. No logic can reconcile the two positions that Armenian promote. Eminent historian Bernard Lewis, speaking to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz on January 23, 1998, expanded on this notion,"The Armenians want to benefit from both worlds. On the one hand, they speak with pride of their struggle against Ottoman despotism, while on the other hand, they compare their tragedy to the Jewish Holocaust. I do not accept this. I do not say that the Armenians did not suffer terribly. But I find enough cause for me to contain their attempts to use the Armenian massacres to diminish the worth of the Jewish Holocaust and to relate to it instead as an ethnic dispute." (translation)2. None of the Ottoman orders commanding the relocation of Armenians, which have been reviewed by historians to date, orders killings. To the contrary, they order Ottoman officials to protect relocated Armenians.3. Where Ottoman control was weakest Armenian relocatees suffered most. The stories of the time give many examples of columns of hundreds of Armenians guarded by as few as two Ottoman gendarmes. When local Muslims attacked the columns, Armenians were robbed and killed. It must be remembered that these Muslims had themselves suffered greatly at the hands of Armenians and Russians. In the words of U.S. Ambassador Mark Bristol, "While the Dashnaks [Armenian revolutionaries] were in power they did everything in the world to keep the pot boiling by attacking Kurds, Turks and Tartars; [and] by committing outrages against the Moslems …."Where Ottoman control was strong, Armenians went unharmed. In Istanbul and other major western Anatolian cities, large populations of Armenians remained throughout the war. In these areas Ottoman power was greatest and genocide would have been easiest to carry out. By contrast, during World War II, the Jews of Berlin were killed, their synagogues defiled. The Armenians of Istanbul lived through World War I, their churches open.C. The Armenian Allegation of Genocide Fails the Minimum Standards of Proof Required by the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.The term "genocide" did not exist prior to 1944. The term was subsequently defined quite specifically by the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide. This high crime is now recognized by most nations, including the Republic of Turkey.The standard of proof in establishing the crime of genocide is formidable given the severity of the crime, the opportunity for overlap with other crimes, and the stigma of being charged with or found guilty of the crime. While presenting the Convention for ratification, the Secretary General of the U.N. emphasized that genocide is a crime of "specific intent," requiring conclusive proof that members of a group were targeted simply because they were members of that group. The Secretary General further cautioned that those merely sharing political aims are not protected by the convention.Under this standard of proof, the Armenian claim of genocide fails. First, no direct evidence has been discovered demonstrating that any Ottoman official sought the destruction of the Ottoman Armenians as such. Second, Ottoman Armenian Dashnak and Hunchak guerrillas and their civilian accomplices admittedly organized political revolutionary groups and waged war against their own government. Under these circumstances, it was the Ottoman Armenians’ violent political alliance with the Russian forces, not their ethnic or religious identity, which rendered them subject to the relocation.A recent comment on the U.N. position was rendered by, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq on October 5, 2000 when he confirmed that the U.N. has not approved or endorsed a report labeling the Armenian experience as genocide.FACT 5: The British convened the Malta Tribunals to try Ottoman officials for crimes against Armenians. All of the accused were acquitted.The Peace Treaty of Sevres, which was imposed upon the defeated Ottoman Empire, required the Ottoman government to hand over to the Allied Powers people accused of "massacres." Subsequently, 144 high Ottoman officials were arrested and deported for trial by the British to the island of Malta. The principal informants to the British High Commission in Istanbul leading to the arrests were local Armenians and the Armenian Patriarchate. While the deportees were interned on Malta, the British appointed an Armenian scholar, Mr. Haig Khazarian, to conduct a thorough examination of documentary evidence in the Ottoman, British, and U.S. Archives to substantiate the charges. Access to Ottoman records was unfettered as the British and French occupied and controlled Istanbul at the time. Khazarian’s corps of investigators revealed an utter lack of evidence demonstrating that Ottoman officials either sanctioned or encouraged killings of Armenians.At the conclusion of the investigation, the British Procurator General determined that it was "improbable that the charges would be capable of proof in a court of law," exonerated and released all 144 detainees -- after two years and four months of detention without trial. No compensation was ever paid to the detainees.FACT 6: Despite the verdicts of the Malta Tribunals, Armenian terrorists have engaged in a vigilante war that continues today.In 1921, a secret Armenian network based in Boston, named Nemesis, took the law into its own hands and hunted down and assassinated former Ottoman Ministers Talaat Pasha and Jemal Pasha as well as other Ottoman officials. Following in Nemesis’ footsteps, during the 1970’s and 1980’s, the Armenian terrorist groups, Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) and Justice Commandos for the Armenian Genocide (JCAG), committed over 230 armed attacks, killing 71 innocent people, including 31 Turkish diplomats, and seriously wounding over 520 people in a campaign of blood revenge.Most recently, Mourad Topalian, former Chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America, was tried and convicted in federal court in Ohio of terrorist crimes associated with bombings in New York and Los Angles and with the attempted assassination of the Turkish Honorary Consul General in Philadelphia. The Armenian youths whom Topalian directed and who conducted these attacks were recruited from the Armenian Youth Federation and Armenian Revolution Federation in Boston.FACT 7: The archives of many nations ought to be carefully and thoughtfully examined before concluding whether genocide occurred.Armenian make frequent reference to the archives of many nations while carefully avoiding calls for the examination of those archives. They know that no evidence of genocide has been found to date, as was the case in the Malta Tribunals. They also know that the national archives of several nations, including the U.S., speak primarily of the deaths of Armenians because the recorders were only interested in the Armenians, while intentionally omitting reports of Muslim deaths. Take, for example, the 1915 Armenian revolt in Van where at least 60,000 Muslims perished. Though the evidence for this is overwhelming, the official archives of several countries mention only Christian deaths.Still, Armenian carefully avoid calls for the collection and examination of all records regarding the events in question. Such would include Ottoman records describing the activities of Armenian rebels and the Russian invaders whom they supported, as well as the archives of Germany, Russia, France, Britain, Iran, Syria and the United States. Most importantly, the unedited records of the Armenian Republic in Yerevan, Armenian Revolutionary Federation in Boston, and ASALA in Yerevan, ought to be examined but remain closed. Only those who fear the truth would limit the scope of an investigation.FACT 8: The Holocaust bears no meaningful relation to the Ottoman Armenian experience.1. Jews did not demand the dismemberment of the nations in which they had lived. By contrast, the Ottoman Armenians openly agitated for a separate state in lands in which they were numerically inferior. The Hunchak and Dashnak revolutionary organizations, which survive to this day, were formed expressly to agitate against the Ottoman government.2. Jews did not kill their fellow citizens in the nations in which they had lived. By contrast, the Ottoman Armenians committed massacres against local Muslims.3. Jews did not openly join the ranks of their countries’ enemies during World War II. By contrast, during World War I, Ottoman Armenians openly and with pride committed mass treason, took up arms, traveled to Russia for training, and sported Russian uniforms. Others, non-uniformed irregulars, operated against the Ottoman government from behind the lines.4. Solemn tribunal at Nuremberg proved the guilt of the perpetrators of the Holocaust and sentences were carried out in accordance with agreed-upon procedures. By contrast, the Malta Tribunals, which were convened by the World War I victors, exonerated those alleged to have been responsible for the maladministration of the relocation policies.5. Open Armenian-Nazi collaboration is evident in the activities of the 812th Armenian Battalion of the [Nazi] Wehrmacht, commanded by Drastamat Kanayan (a.k.a. "Dro"), and its successor, the Armenian Legion. Anti-Jewish, pro-Nazi propaganda was published widely in the Armenian-language Hairenik daily and the weekly journal, Armenian.6. Hitler did not refer to the Armenians in plotting the Final Solution; the infamous quote is fraudulent. All sources attribute the alleged quote, "Who remembers the Armenians?" to a November 24, 1945 Times of London article, "Nazi Germany’s Road to War." The article’s unnamed author says Hitler uttered the phrase in an address on August 22, 1939 at Obersalzburg. The Times of London author claims the speech was introduced as evidence during the November 23, 1945 session of the Nuremberg Tribunal. Yet the Nuremberg transcripts do not contain the alleged quote.In fact, the quote first appeared in a 1942 book by Louis Lochner, the AP’s Berlin bureau chief during World War II. Lochner, like the Times of London author, never disclosed his source. The Nuremberg Tribunal examined and then rejected Lochner’s third-hand version of Hitler’s address and rejected it. Instead, it entered into evidence two official versions of the August 22, 1939 address found in captured German military records. Neither document contains any reference to Armenians, nor in fact do they refer to the Jews. Hitler’s address was an anti-Polish invective, delivered years before he conceived the Final Solution.7. The depth, breadth, and volume of scholarship on the Holocaust are tremendous. The physical and documentary evidence is vast and proves indisputably the aims, methods, and results of the racist Nazi policies. By contrast, scholarship on the late Ottoman Empire is comparatively scarce. Much research has yet to be completed and many conclusions have yet to be drawn. Non-biased research from that period has thus far revealed tragedies afflicting all sides in a conflict with numerous belligerents. Nothing has yet been uncovered which establishes genocide. In light of the ongoing research and the other distinctions raised above, it would be improper, if not malicious, to equate a desire to challenge Armenian assertions with Holocaust denial.BIBLIOGRAPHY:Armenian Atrocities and Terrorism ed. by the Assembly of Turkish AmericanAssociations (Assembly of Turkish American Associations, Washington, DC 1997);Death and Exile: the Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922 by JustinMcCarthy (Darwin Press, Princeton, NJ 1995);Muslims and Minorities, The Population of the Ottoman Anatolia and the End ofthe Empire by Justin McCarthy (New York University Press, New York, 1983).Pursuing the Just Cause of Their People by Michael Gunter (Greenwood Press,New York 1986);The Armenian File: The Myth of Innocence Exposed by Kamuran Gürün (K. Rustem& Bro. and Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd., London 1985);The Armenian Question 1914-1923 by Mim Kemal Öke (K. Rustem & Bro. London1988);The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story by Heath W. Lowry (Isis Press, Istanbul 1990);The Talât Pasha Telegrams: Historical Fact or Armenian Fiction by SinasiOrel and Süreyya Yuca (K. Rustem & Bro., London 1986);The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians, by Heath W. Lowry (Vol. 3, no. 2, Political Communication and Persuasion, 1985);Proceedings of Symposium on Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey (1912-1926), (Bogazici University Publications, Istanbul, 1984).