Africa Development Indicators 2010: Silent And Lethal: How Quiet Corruption Undermines Africa's Development Efforts

Take a look at Americans in their natural habitat. You see suburban guys at Home Depot doing that special manly, waddling walk that American men do in the presence of large amounts of lumber; super-efficient ubermoms who chair school auctions, organize the PTA, and weigh less than their children; workaholic corporate types boarding airplanes while talking on their cell phones in a sort of panic because they know that when the door closes they have to turn their precious phone off and it will be like somebody stepped on their trachea.

Looking at all this, you might come to the conclusion that we Americans are not the most profound people on earth. Indeed, there are millions around the world who regard us as the great bimbos of the globe: hardworking and fun, but also materialistic and spiritually shallow.

They've got a point. As you drive through the sprawling suburbs or eat in the suburban chain restaurants (which if they merged would be called Chili's Olive Garden Hard Rock Outback Cantina), questions do occur. Are we really as shallow as we look? Is there anything that unites us across the divides of politics, race, class, and geography? What does it mean to be American?

Well, mentality matters, and sometimes mentality is all that matters. As diverse as we are, as complacent as we sometimes seem, Americans are united by a common mentality, which we have inherited from our ancestors and pass on, sometimes unreflectingly, to our kids.

We are united by future-mindedness. We see the present from the vantage point of the future. We are tantalized, at every second of every day, by the awareness of grand possibilities ahead of us, by the bounty we can realize just over the next ridge.

This mentality leads us to work feverishly hard, move more than any other people on earth, switch jobs, switch religions. It makes us anxious and optimistic, manic and discombobulating.

Mina Parker, tireless mom and author of 365 Excuse Me...(inspired by the late Lynn Grabhorn), introduces the new Hampton Roads Collection of motivational classics. These affordable digital shorts will help the harried and the hurried to breathe deep, reassess, and re-purpose their day in the time it takes to drink a large latte.

This book, more than a hundred years old and based on the earliest teachings of the New Thought movement, brings us face to face with the some of the most authentic and open-hearted explorations of the power of thought to change our lives. In our most enlightened moments, we can feel it vibrating through us: we are made of the fabric of the universe, the all encompassing and supremely creative life force.

"Hypnosis is a very old technique and a very useful one, it allows you to put a person into a highly suggestive state, or yourself into a highly suggestive state. Hypnosis is widely used to help people with self-improvement issues such as low self-esteem, gaining confidence, losing weight, etc.

It is also used to help people overcome bad habits that they want to break and have not been able to break on their own, such as smoking, drinking, overeating or nail biting, just to name a few.

The other aspect of hypnosis is the entertainment factor, from giving shows to street hypnotists, hypnosis is a crowd please and have a certain wow factor.

This book will help you with all of the above, we will go over the basics of hypnosis, how to induce the hypnotic trance in your subjects, or even yourself, and how to use hypnotic suggestions. Anybody with an interest in hypnosis will find this book to be extremely useful.

The Presidents Club, established at Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration by Harry Truman and Herbert Hoover, is a complicated place: its members are bound forever by the experience of the Oval Office and yet are eternal rivals for history’s favor. Among their secrets: How Jack Kennedy tried to blame Ike for the Bay of Pigs. How Ike quietly helped Reagan win his first race in 1966. How Richard Nixon conspired with Lyndon Johnson to get elected and then betrayed him. How Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter turned a deep enmity into an alliance. The letter from Nixon that Bill Clinton rereads every year. The unspoken pact between a father and son named Bush. And the roots of the rivalry between Clinton and Barack Obama.