The Art of Ideas Creative Thinking for Work and Life by William Duggan and Am

y Murphy published by Columbia University Press focuses on the importance of developing a great idea for changing the world. And most times, these ideas "arrive" in the mind genially or because people, simply noticed behavior of other people in confrontation with other stressing experience as it happened with the suffragettes in London and later with Tolstoj's way of living. This one was the experience lived by Gandhi.  

Pablo Picasso decided to change in the Cubism his art also thinking that pictures, images at the moment would have given sufficient answer for viewers. It was necessary "the shock of the new" also in art, for trying to bring new life and new attraction and originality to art that differently wouldn't expressed itself well anymore according to his point of view.

Putting together an idea, seeing it clearly, and then projecting something in grade of changing the world as it happened for the arrival of smartphone, or for the pacific movement of Gandhi or for Picasso in art, means also passing through various steps of "understanding". 

Bur which advice for all of us?

Leaving the smartphone alone for some time, socializing, having some dinner with friends, gym, and staying happy. A leader, someone sure of himself/herself won't never permit of putting himself/herself in a position of criticism. Let's stay firm in our ideas and to everyone with a genail idea in his/her mind, good luck! Many more advice for the creative of the now and the future this book is beautiful because richly illustrated, and a great tool for understanding the world and the dynamics necessary for a talent, and for a new idea to become reality, talking its shape thanks to the geniality of a man.

Highrly recommended.

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Sex in the Brain by Amee Baird

I was anxious and at the same worried to read and review Sex in the Brain by Amee Baird

because in our family we spent terrible and serious experiences connected with brain strokes and other illness so it's a thematic I feel closely.

I found the book not just readable for every reader, also the most prophane ones, but also captivating, humoristic under many aspects, and written with passion. 

The author, a clinical neuro psychologist in fact, keep the topic, she interviewed wagons of people or familiars in contact with people afflicted by various brain illness, or with serious pathologies, in a light way so that people can understand, without to feel too much stress, and at the same time having some fun sometimes.

I had read when I was 17 a psyhologic book where the author, an American one asserted that maybe we won't never discover the most intimate secrets of our brain because brain is our thinkable organ and so he wants to hide to all of us his most profound secrets.

Maybe it is true, but this author thanks to a voyage in the existential experience of people tries to understand the most of it.

We speak of sex in this book an activity that should be in a daily base constantly in our mind, because like eating and sleeping a primordial activity of men. Not only: without sex no one would exist; children are the extension of our existence.

In most cases, when there are illness, brain injuries, or tumors affecting brain, or when there are operations for sorting out difficult cases in epileptic cases, we can assist at a complete different vision and mutation of behavior regarding sex from these patients.

In particular people operated in the right emisphere of brain for removing epileptic brain cells later tends to develope a drastic change of partner, sometimes becoming homosexual, so changing genre and experiencing new way of loving. 

Not only: the situation of difficult epileptic patients with many seizures, and not curable without operation create a condition of dependance and various family members will care for them. When the problem is sorted out, not just the patient will experience a new freedom under many different ways, but psychologically also the various carers who lived with the idea of taking good care of their sick familiars must change their vision and sometimes it's difficult to re-adjust the roles portrayed for so many years or decades.

I this book you'll read the clinic case of a lady who became compulsive regarding a star, collecting all his posters, dvds, etc, not admitting that the man was dead and dreaming of meeting him; there is the experience of a girl who, after that she made love with her partner, she completely forgot where she was. You can think that she wanted to delete that sexual making experience because delusional. No, no: it was a case of amnesia sorted out successfully.They were married, so a solid couple. That sex session you will read caused this problem.

There are also studies conducted through the most important available exams now, and I confess that here I laughed thinking at these "hardcore" MRI's and EEG's in which people during these exams stimulate sexually themselves or with the help of the partner for trying to see the effect that an orgasm has in their brain and the modifications during the orgasm in their brain; which areas are more awoken compared to other ones, and which ones should be "fixed". Differently it's possible to see which areas are giving hyperactivity or create too much sexual sleeping mood in a person.

Our brain still remains the most surprisingly and unknown organ of our body and "cheating" it remains a big fight.

Absolutely beautiful!

Highly recommended.

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

A Calm Fire and Other Travel Writings by Philippe Jaccottet Translated by John Taylor

It's not a common travel writing

book A Calm Fire and Other Travel Writings by Philippe Jaccottet Translated by John Taylor published by Seagull Press, but mostly an intellectual researched experience about travelling; travelling in disgraceful places where unfortunately war and dishamony have been the most important themese during the centuries; the travelling intended by Philippe Jaccottet is not descriptive of places, as you would wait from a common teavel-writing book, but a philosophic approach that will space in centuries, will capture religious thematic, understanding the mutation during the centuries of places and cultures, capturing episodes, reporting, and analyzing; an activity that absorbs the poet in various countries, from Italy to Lebanon, from Athen to Israel and much more, passing through literary remembrances and the research of the past in biblical passages when saint places are described as Bethlem the little town where Jesus was born for example. Sure the present, with the little church created where the moltiplication of loaves took place, the absence of fishermen but just swimmers in the Jordan, the presence of old women in the area, their existence just "dictated" by the holy presence of christian history create a strange harmony and disharmony with the following pages where Saul lived and biblical passages of his existence will be protagonists for then returning abruptly to the reality, writing of a country, Lebanon that means whiteness, the same name of the moon, where snow is falling down "on the rusted carcasses of tanks." Places the one of this area where you have the certainty that people for a while, maybe for little moments, lived in peace, tasted freedom as a precious dish, understood what meant peace, for them fighting back again, building graves that looked like fountains. As the poet writes citing Rumi: "Death breaks the cage, but doesn't kill the bird."

Israel is a peaceless place where the signs of violence are everywhere: whoever live in that place risk the contagion of evil as also wrote Hugo in Les Tragiques. Sometimes is more simple to hating and fighting against someone or some group of people without understanding reasons. All the Middle East is described, with also closest countries, like Italy for giving not just a fresco, but a historical, religious, philosophical touch of these realities and people who live, in a daily dramaticity sometimes.

I found fresh and interesting the first part of the book with the description of Italy; Rome, then Fregene, avoiding Ostia considered immensely ugly; Venice is seen after an additional day spent there as "an unhealthy town full of superficiality, fabricated to delude stupid couples dull by their conventional love and determine, having paid the price, to go into ecastasy about everything."

There is also to mention that the swiss poet remarks the poverty that there is in some corners of Italy.

I thank Chicago University Press and Seagull Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

The Scarecrow and the Servant by Philip Pullman

The Scarecrow and the Servant by Philip Pullman is a children's book I bought weeks ago at the second-hand bookstore of the charity Books for Dogs loc

ated in Umbertide.

It is a beautiful tale, plenty of imagination and rich of adventures and good feelings.

The story is this one: once a scarecrow becomes human and escape away from the field where he was living in. 

While mr Cercorelli, the owner of the scarecrow, is searching for him frantically, during all the adventure experienced by the scarecrow, this one is happy and cheerful. 

Without thinking too much of being a scarecrow, so with a physical body different from the one of humans, he just embraces this new state in which he has the possibility of walking, experiencing, speaking, thinking, loving, in a word: living.

Along the way, he meets a little boy called Jack; Jack doesn't have a family and was sleeping in a barn when he decided to go out for a wak. 

The character of the scarecrow fascinated him too much for not following him when the scarecrow asked him of becoming his servant.

The scarecrow's character? Elegant, sophisticated, absolutely dreaming, optimistic and open to all possible adventures that they will meet with enthusiasm and positivity. 

That's also why they will encounter along their way wagons of weird characters sometimes; searching for a job in a farm, they will later join the army; the scarecrow will perform on a stage; they will meet a fortune-teller, but first of all a band of bringants, later a crow and much much more.

Jack is prudent, constantly searching for food, unnecessary to the scarecrow, and more meditative but he won't never forget this weird, and fantastic friend, as you will see and also if reality wouldn't never permit something like that, what it is nonsense in Jack's life became a reality forever for the joy of everyone.

Beautiful! Wonderful Christmas's Gift!

Anna Maria Polidori

How to Write Special Feature Articles by Willard Grosvenor Bleyer PhD

How to Write Special Feature

Articles A handbook for Reporters, Correspondents and Free-Lance Writers who Desire to Contribute to Popular Magazines and Magazine Sections of Newspaper by Willard Grosvenor Bleyer PhD is an ebook I downloaded on the website gutenberg.org. In this book whoever is interested in writing can find good suggestions, tips, advice for being published by a newsmagazine or magazine. Good luck, first of all. In particular this book is dedicated to that reporters not too prepared but that anyway can give a contribution writing for various and different realities. A freelance who wants to send a piece at a magazine should start to studying that magazine or newsmagazine. What kind of magazine/newsmagazine is that one? Is a financial magazine? A local one? Is it a gardening, cooking magazine? Pieces are requested pretty long or short? What kind of style adopts the magazine/newsmagazine?

After these considerations the author will start examining the body of the article, giving extreme importance at that good beginnings but also at the rest of the body of the piece.

Important: once the piece has been revised, should be submitted in a clear form. A piece sent to an editor sometimes is like a job interview. The editor will develop a certain idea of the person who sent the manuscript, just seeing in which condition it arrived in his hands. 

The second part will let you show special articles published in the Boston Herald, New York Evening Post, The Independent, Detroit News and many more.

Anna Maria Polidori

La Via del Bosco Una Storia di Lutto, Funghi e Rinascita by Long Litt Woon

La Via del Bosco Una Storia di Lutto, Funghi e Rinascita by Long Litt

• Woon is a new intense book published by Iperborea. I have chosen this one also because of the theme. When I was little I loved to going to the forest and closest fields of our area for picking up mushrooms with my granny. It was an activity I loved to do so badly with her; I adored her. She was so sweet, compassionate and kind. I loved to searching for mushrooms with her so much that the day she died, I was 6-7 years I remember that the thing I said her, still thinking that she was alive in her beauty black dress, I hadn't never seen a dead person before, was: "Oh granny Marietta, how beauty you are. Now we can return to search for some mushrooms as soon as possible. You are fine now."When I kissed her and felt that ice I was not just scared but I knew that also if I would have continued to calling her she wouldn't never returned in the world of the living ones. Not in that shape.

So, yes mushrooms are magicals creatures of the forest for sure as also discovered this sunny Malaysian lady for study in Norway, who later discovered love in Eiolf and decided of staying forever in that country.

Eiolf and her were a sunny couple; abruptly,  one day, once arrived at work, Eiolf died.The author explains she was devastated by this departure; she was devastated by this unexpected, incredibly sad loss. She lost weight, she didn't have appetite; she could not read anything; she felt irritation for everything friends and relatives said her, because no one understood her feelings and no one could understand what she was feeling in that moment. A new hobby could be a moment of escapism and Long Litt discovered that a mycologic course could be the proper answer. It was an heterogeneous group of people that one with which she shared time with, first mushrooms's knowledge and experiences in forests. 

But the beauty of being a mushroom passionate is also the contact with the forest, and with that wildnerness in grade of rebalancing the soul: searching for mushrooms is also a relaxing and stimulating activity at the same time. Not only: a forest brings more oxygen to the brain and body benefits a lot by a strong contact with clean air and a good healthy walk.

With the time Long Litt became an inspector, a character that it is important in Norway and she re-discovered a new re-birth thanks to this hobby, passion and work, at the moment. As it happens in all the other part of the world, Long Litt tells that there is great secrecy regarding the places where mushrooms are found, and that she was particularly upset once, when asking to a person where she had found some mushroom he replied: "Oslo." She confessed she banned him from his contacts.

You will see chapter after chapter, what mushrooms mean for the author and at the same time what it meant to her this new start and at the same time the strong, intense connection created with her husband. 

Long Litt will also share with us some quick recipes starting from starters to first, seconds and so on.

Not only: she will tell us that dear ones passed away continue to assisting us in the other dimension where they live in.

I love the illustration in black and white of several mushrooms.

A beautiful book of new re-starts and new beginnings with a heavenly touch from her husband.

I thank Iperborea for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori 

George Washington A Life in Books by Kevin J.Hayes

If you love books, if you love history, this extraordinary new book by Oxford University Press George Wa

shington A Life in Books by Kevin J.Hayes is for you. And it can be a beautiful Christmas' Gift as well.

This one is more than a biography; it is a literary trip following the entire existence and...library of beloved President George Washington. Of course a lot of people, authors published books about Washington. 

Why Hayes thought at this special topic?

Because once, during a vacation in Australia when some people he met along his way asked him some questions of this President, Hayes didn't know what to tell them. He didn't remember a lot about him, after all. The genesys of this book is this one. 

Written with great gusto, love, passion, the reader will remain captivated till the last page by the story of this soldier and man of letters. In particular if in love for books, in love for reading. The life of President Washington became difficult once his dad died. He studied privately and in a local school, but without to attend the exclusive british school of his siblings. He started soon of falling in love for books and books brought him in lands he didn't know for sure. He fell passionate of poetry, travel-writers as Defoe, but also of all the works by Stevenson with Robinson Crusoe. He loved reading The Spectator and as writes  brilliantly at the end of chapter three the author: "The men Washington met and the those he read about in his teens would significantly shape the man he would become." Washington met along his way people who would have helped him to build his culture, putting at his disposition their libraries.

He loved to travelling and let's say that his first trip alone has been an adenture surrounded also by fleas and unexpected and unwanted guests. He preferred spending his time outside during the night with the rest of his friends.

Once Lawrence Washington, his second dad, and brother died, and a place left vacant, Washington accepted a mission for trying to diplomatically speak with the french for the Frontier and in that occasion, exploring the wilderness of the territory he wrote a journal. This journal became a real success and was published pretty soon. The vastity of culture of Washington was remarkable, and later, during a fight against french another letter he privately wrote was published.

The future statist, a soldier, was also intrigued by garden and agriculture's books. Washington would have expanded this passion and this section of his library during his entire existence.

Washington would have transmitted love for culture and books to his nephew as well, trying to avoid in the case of Jacky (and Patsy) Curtis the problems and deficiences of his own education. Latin, Greek, the Bible, stimulating reading and what it was necessary was offered to them. He would have followed his nephew till the end of his studies, with intense exchange of letters with his tutors and teachers, because sometimes Jacky problematic.

Once Revolution was over literature became a crucial point for American culture and George Washington encouraged the expansion, publication of new authors, understanding the power and beauty of good literature and books in general.

Beautiful cover.

Highly recommended.

I thank Oxford University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori