BOOK OF THE DAY

Despite unprecedented levels of material success, billions today feel unfulfilled, anxious, and disconnected.

In Love, Learn, Play, Akhil Gupta—a former driver equity leader turned global seeker—offers radical yet deeply intuitive solution: real well-being arises when we engage our deepest human longings to love to learn and to play in whatever we do.

Drawing from his remarkable journey—from global finance to Harvard classrooms—Gupta explores how ancient wisdom and modern science point to three essential forces that lead to true well-being: love, learning, and play. These are not luxuries, he argues, but our deepest human needs.

This powerful, research-backed framework helps readers:

• Break free from false cultural narratives
• Reconnect with their authentic self
• Balance meaning and happiness without burnout
• Bring wholeness to work, parenting, and personal life
• Create a life that feels deeply alive—every day

Whether you're leading a team, raising a family, or reevaluating what really matters, Love, Learn, Play offers a practical and inspiring guide to a life that’s not just successful—but truly flourishing.

If you've ever asked, “Is this all there is?” this book is your answer.

BOOK OF THE DAY:: MOVING TOWARD FREEDOM BY SUSAN EVA O'DONOVAN

A magisterial, groundbreaking new study of the lives of enslaved Americans on the cusp of the Civil War that places them—and their hard-won political knowledge—rightly at the center of the fight for freedom

The enduring image of American slavery has been of workers trapped on plantations, shuttling from squalid quarters to the fields and back again, or confined to the homes of abusive owners, constantly under surveillance and restriction. But if that were the whole picture, how would black Southerners have organized into such a formidable force the moment war erupted?

With Moving Toward Freedom, eminent historian Susan Eva O’Donovan radically widens the lens to reveal a new landscape of the slaveholding South: one in which enslaved workers were not pinned in place but mobile, deployed as laborers—and even as captains—on steamboats and ferries, or as teamsters transporting staple crops across the expanding country, or as ladies’ maids waiting on their mistresses on European vacations. While performing brutal and involuntary work, O’Donovan argues, enslaved Americans managed to accumulate the crucial experience and knowledge that they would use to bring about their own liberation.

Piecing together an extraordinary archive of letters, travel passes, receipts, and other documentation of lives in which literacy was illegal, O’Donovan allows her subjects to speak for themselves as they move through markets, jails, waterways, gold mines, and foreign lands. In so doing, O’Donovan demonstrates that slavery’s incredible profitability depended on a fundamentally unsustainable balance between commercial imperatives and slaveholders’ drive for control—one that enslaved workers eventually succeeded in using to their advantage, bringing slavery to its knees.

BOOK OF THE DAY:: MARCUS AURESLIAS BY FRANK McLYNN

The life story of the renowned stoic philosopher—and the last Roman emperor who presided over the empire's golden age.

Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD) is one of the great figures of antiquity who still speaks to us today, more than two thousand years after his death. His Meditations has been compared by John Stuart Mill to the Sermon on the Mount. A guide to how we should live, it remains one of the most widely read books from the classical world.

But Marcus Aurelius was much more than a philosopher. As emperor he stabilized the empire, issued numerous reform edicts, and defended the borders with success. His life itself represented the fulfillment of Plato's famous dictum that mankind will prosper only when philosophers are rulers and rulers philosophers.

Frank McLynn's Marcus Aurelius, based on all available original sources, is the definitive and most vivid biography to date of this monumental historical figure.

"That rare thing: a portrait of a figure from ancient history that manages to be both psychologically nuanced and true to the original sources." —Tom Holland, award-winning historian and author of Rubicon

BOOK OF THE DAY:

From an acclaimed historian comes a “richly textured” (The Wall Street Journal) tale of power and betrayal: the dual biography of Richard II and Henry IV, two cousins whose tumultuous reigns shaped the course of English history.

Richard of Bordeaux and Henry of Bolingbroke, cousins born just three months apart, were ten years old when Richard became king of England. They were thirty-two when Henry deposed him and became king in his place. Now, the story behind one of the strangest and most fateful events in English history (and the inspiration behind Shakespeare’s most celebrated history plays) is brought to vivid life by the acclaimed author of Blood and Roses, Helen Castor.

Castor showcases the enigmatic Richard II, a king who clung to his divine right to rule but lacked the leadership to sustain his throne. His reign, marred by narcissism and disdain for constitutional principles, spiraled into chaos, ultimately leading to his downfall at the hands of his cousin. Enter Henry IV—a stark contrast. Castor portrays him as a chivalric hero, a leader who inspired loyalty and camaraderie. Yet, his journey to the throne was anything but smooth, plagued by rebellion and political turmoil. What makes Castor’s account so compelling is her ability to weave these personal stories into the bigger picture. She explores the turbulent themes of masculinity, identity, and the fragile nature of power, offering a timely reminder of the perils of self-obsessed rulers—and the challenges faced by those who follow in their wake.

Richly researched and beautifully written, The Eagle and the Hart isn’t just a history book—it’s a “luminous” (The Guardian) tale of leadership, legacy, and the timeless struggle for power. For anyone fascinated by medieval England or the universal dynamics of power and ambition, this is not to be missed.

BOOK OF THE DAY: TRY HARD BY LAURA MAYER

"Funny, brutally honest and compulsively readable.” — BookPage, STARRED review

"An insightful, funny, and refreshingly personal journey into workaholism and the pathological Type A mind." — Cat Marnell, New York Times bestselling author of How to Murder Your Life

A superstar podcast producer delivers a unique, laugh-out-loud, cry quietly invitation to examine our delusional obsessions with work in this eye-opening book—part memoir, part mentoring, part confessional guide—that dissects the emotional ties that bind us . . . to our desks.

For any type-A, high achiever out there, this is the book that sees you. And provides a cathartic, funny, emotionally charged insight into what drives the perfection-oriented.

Laura Mayer was born a girlboss. As a child in suburban Illinois, she played "V.P. of Sales" in her bedroom, dictating important memos to her twin brother and swapping Judy Blume for the buzzy business books of the day. While other kids dreamed of being pop stars or pro athletes, little Laura had a single-minded focus: the corporate ladder.

Some thirty years later, from a dizzying perch on that very ladder—as Executive Producer of Podcasts at ABC News, with such blockbuster shows as Revisionist History, Bad Blood, and Happier with Gretchen Rubin to her credit—and with an identity shaped by annual reviews, performance indicators, and “executive presence” (whatever that means) a disillusioned Laura is calling "bullshit" on the whole work-is-life thing. Sort of.

Tryhard is a gonzo memoir for 9-to-5 devotees who have read every business book and C-suite-or-bust instruction manual yet still find we’re burnt out and unhappy. It is also a deeply personal and poignant examination of why we race at all. Laura detangles this delusional mess of priorities we've created, rejects the “boss-at-any-cost” culture, and invites us to laugh at ourselves (and her) along the way. She offers the modern office worker a new path forward through her own revelations, and implores us, for the love of God, to chill out a little bit.

This is Laura's messy, somewhat enlightened, possibly transformative, heart-wrenching and always entertaining story—a one-of-a-kind sightseeing trip on the Great American hamster wheel.

BOOK OF THE DAY:: 1968. BY MARK KURLANSKY

n this monumental new book, award-winning author Mark Kurlansky has written his most ambitious work to date: a singular and ultimately definitive look at a pivotal moment in history.

With 1968, Mark Kurlansky brings to teeming life the cultural and political history of that world-changing year of social upheaval. People think of it as the year of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Yet it was also the year of the Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy assassinations; the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago; Prague Spring; the antiwar movement and the Tet Offensive; Black Power; the generation gap, avant-garde theater, the birth of the women’s movement, and the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union. From New York, Miami, Berkeley, and Chicago to Paris, Prague, Rome, Berlin, Warsaw, Tokyo, and Mexico City, spontaneous uprisings occurred simultaneously around the globe.

Everything was disrupted. In the Middle East, Yasir Arafat’s guerilla organization rose to prominence . . . both the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Biennale were forced to shut down by protesters . . . the Kentucky Derby winner was stripped of the crown for drug use . . . the Olympics were a disaster, with the Mexican government having massacred hundreds of students protesting police brutality there . . . and the Miss America pageant was stormed by feminists carrying banners that introduced to the television-watching public the phrase “women’s liberation.”

Kurlansky shows how the coming of live television made 1968 the first global year. It was the year that an amazed world watched the first live telecast from outer space, and that TV news expanded to half an hour. For the first time, Americans watched that day’s battle–the Vietnam War’s Tet Offensive–on the evening news. Television also shocked the world with seventeen minutes of police clubbing demonstrators at the Chicago convention, live film of unarmed students facing Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia, and a war of starvation in Biafra. The impact was huge, not only on the antiwar movement, but also on the medium itself. The fact that one now needed television to make things happen was a cultural revelation with enormous consequences.

Thoroughly researched and engagingly written–full of telling anecdotes, penetrating analysis, and the author’s trademark incisive wit–1968 is the most important book yet of Kurlansky’s noteworthy career.

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BOOK OF THE DAY: HOUSE OF BOLEYN

“Historical fiction at its absolute best.”—Alison Weir

Acclaimed Tudor historian Tracy Borman weaves the dramatic history of the Boleyn family into a richly imagined novel of ambition, bloodlines, and the opulent and deadly court of Henry VIII

When nobleman Thomas Boleyn, lord of Hever Castle, is called to London in 1509 to present himself to a newly anointed King Henry VIII, he sets in train events that ensure the Boleyn name will never be forgotten. His daughters Mary and Anne were young then, and though he was ambitious for his family to prosper, he could not imagine what would transpire in the two decades to come.

Blending the history she knows so well with the creativity of her imagination, Tracy Borman brings the Boleyn family’s three-decade rise and precipitous fall to vivid life. Borman surrounds the main dramatic events of the Boleyn saga with a colorful tableau in which familial and inter-familial rivalries threaten and true love often loses out to keen ambition. Anne’s ever-loyal attendant Esther Frideswide and Thomas Boleyn’s perfidious steward Robert Cranwell are as memorable as Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, or anyone in the increasingly dangerous orbit of the royal court. Henry VIII pursues Anne relentlessly, showering her with gifts as the Boleyns are catapulted to political prominence. But when she can’t give him the son and heir he desperately seeks, the family faces a terrible and bloody fate. With lavish and compelling historical detail, Tracy Borman displays her keen gift for storytelling in this resonant novel of family, fate, and intrigue.

BOOK OF THE DAY

The Nobel laureate in physics explains his experiments in quantum entanglement: "An accessible popular account of this fascinating field." —Science

Einstein's steadfast refusal to accept certain aspects of quantum theory was rooted in his insistence that physics has to be about reality. Accordingly, he once derided as "spooky action at a distance" the notion that two elementary particles far removed from each other could nonetheless influence each other's properties—a hypothetical phenomenon his fellow theorist Erwin Schrödinger termed "quantum entanglement."

In a series of ingenious experiments conducted in various locations—from a dank sewage tunnel under the Danube River to the balmy air between a pair of mountain peaks in the Canary Islands—the author and his colleagues have demonstrated the reality of such entanglement using photons, or light quanta, created by laser beams. In principle the lessons learned may be applicable in other areas, including the eventual development of quantum computers. In Dance of the Photons, Anton Zeilinger guides us on a "rewarding exploration of the weird world of quantum physics" (Kirkus Reviews).

"This delightful little book, by one of the world's leading practitioners in this area, explains these recent advances in a way that should be accessible even to readers with no physics background." —Anthony J. Leggett, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics

BOOK OF THE DAY

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this “beautifully written and superbly researched dual biography” (Los Angeles Times Book Review), Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Jon Meacham “paints a powerful portrait of the enormous friendship between World War II allies [Franklin] Roosevelt and [Winston] Churchill” (Vanity Fair).
 
“Intense and compelling reading.”—The Washington Post

Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were the greatest leaders of “the Greatest Generation.” In Franklin and Winston, Jon Meacham explores the fascinating relationship between the two men who piloted the free world to victory in World War II. 

Born in the nineteenth century and molders of the twentieth and twenty-first, Roosevelt and Churchill had much in common. In their own time both men were underestimated, dismissed as arrogant, and faced skeptics in their own nations—yet both magnificently rose to the central challenges of the twentieth century. Theirs was a kind of love story, with an emotional Churchill courting an elusive Roosevelt. The British prime minister, who rallied his nation in its darkest hour, standing alone against Adolf Hitler, was always somewhat insecure about his place in FDR’s affections—which was the way Roosevelt wanted it. A man of secrets, FDR liked to keep people off balance, including his wife, Eleanor, his White House aides—and Winston Churchill.

Meacham’s sources—including unpublished letters of FDR’ s great secret love, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, the papers of Pamela Churchill Harriman, and interviews with people who were in FDR and Churchill’s joint company—shed light on the characters of both men as he engagingly chronicles the hours in which they decided the course of the struggle.

Charting the personal drama behind the discussions of strategy and statecraft, Meacham has written the definitive account of the most remarkable friendship of the modern age.

BOOK OF THE DAY: JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH BY JULES VERNE

Grateful thanks to ChatGPT for its wonderful help and generous support!🙏🙏🙏