《Fish》

FISH is written in a parable (short story using fictional characters) format, reminiscent of the style apparent in the classic, bestseller The One Minute Manager. The goal of the FISH Philosophy is to learn how to boost morale and improve operational results in a business organization. As the authors put it "Enclosed are the keys to creating an innovative and accountable work environment where a playful, attentive, and engaging attitude leads to more energy, enthusiasm, productivity, and creativity."

The four key points of the philosophy are:
Play - have fun and create energy at home or at the office.
* Make their day - how can you engage fellow employees, customers and make each other's day?
* Be Present - How can you make sure you are fully available and aware during conversations with people? It is about create a greater sense of intimacy between individuals.
* Choose Your Attitude - Each day you choose how you are going to act or which "side of the bed" you wake up on. The choice is yours and, the way you act, affects others.

This book is an analogy of mice vs. men (simple and complicated) in a maze, about how many things such as over-analyzing, stubbornness, and fear can over-complicate simple things, making anything, even life, unnecessarily unbearable.
It is intended to help readers get the most out of anything situation, stay content, and increase their confidence levels. Contrary to the title, the book is neither cliché nor "cheesy." Few if any things stay the same forever, and the book emphasizes the importance of accepting change, and even capitalizing on it. In context, it includes many inspirational quotes such as, "What would I do, if I wasn't afraid?"
`The Story' itself is very short and to the point, and includes a section where the storyteller and his classmates reflect on how `The Story' can be applied to their lives. This provides many examples on how the overall wisdom can easily be applied to many situations in everyday life, from personal relationships, to running businesses. Read this story with an open mind and it just may improve the quality of your daily life, whatever it entails.

In this book, Spencer Johnson tells a story of an old man and his relationship and communication with a young boy that lasts throughout his life to that of a grown man.
The old man has offered the young boy A Present. The boy who is busy playing and then busy with chores listens and then goes on with his life. He thinks of the Present frequently as he grows older. One day the thought of The Present brings him back to the old man where they talk about The Present and what it means. Throughout this book, The Present is explored in many ways. It is not a physical thing but a feeling, a thought, a memory, a decided method to help focus on what is important, what is necessary to help make you happy and successful.
We need to fully understand how our actions play in our life. By focusing on the Present, What Is Right Now, and using purpose to respond to what is important right now we can become happy and successful.
We often need to look at what happened in the past to learn something valuable from it, so that we can do things differently in the Present.
And when we want to make the future better than the Present, we need to see what a wonderful future would look like. We need to make plans to help this happen, and put our plan into action in the Present.
All of these moments that we reflect upon can be used to help us understand where we came from, what we want and where we are right now. As I said we need to be ready to fully understand these simple truths. Some are skeptics, but the truth is there and available for them when they need it and are open to it.
The Past and the Future depend upon The Present.

Book Description:
In "Silent Spring", Rachel Carson vividly and meticulously depicted, in a unique style of a female writer, the calamitous and irrevocable impacts caused by the widespread use of pesticides, as represented by DDT. It is this potential and far-reaching threat, which ultimately points at humanity itself, that kindled the public awareness of the graveness of the issue, thus setting a stage for a mass environmental protection campaign of the modern age.
More than that, Miss Carson also indicated poignantly that the fundamental cause of environmental problems lied with human beings’ arrogance and ignorance. And she called for people to adjust their attitude toward nature and rethink the development approach of the human society.
Today’s China is experiencing continued economic growth and continuously worsening of the environment. Pollution is no longer a potential problem long ago but striking facts. Seven of the ten most seriously polluted cities in the world (i.e. Taiyuan, Milan, Beijing, Urumqi, Mexico City, Lanzhou, Chongqing, Jinan, Shijiazhuang and Teheran) were in China. Two-thirds of our cities fail to reach National Air Quality Standard Grade II, which is lower. Contamination of lakes and rivers are pervasive and endangers residential water supply. Pollution is also to be blame for the drastically increasing number of cancer victims, which also indicates a notable trend of lower ages. Cancer villages are springing up like mushrooms, another miracle going side by side with the economic take-off. In contrast to the abominable pollution, the environmental awareness of different social strata in China is terribly low. Many believe that such problems will be resolved with scientific and technological development; while the fact that such problems derive right from the modernity of human world is simply overlooked. The solution to environmental problems demands a total transformation of our mindset, institution and ways of living and production, for which the first step is full awareness of the problem itself.
The book, published 45 years ago, might seem out-dated for Americans. Yet, for us Chinese, it is still something inspiring for our reflection upon the current happenings. The environment belongs to the world, and ultimately to the younger generation. By reading this book, which was written with poetic English, young people will not only improve your English skills, but also impressed by the hymns of the living world and the deep concerns for the future of the author, which will surely provoke reflections upon the existence of the modern human society and a strong sense of mission to change the world.
The Author:
On May 27, 1907, Rachel Carson was born at Springland, Pittsburgh. In 1932, she got her M.Sc. in biology from The Johns Hopkins University, and from 1936 to 1952, she worked at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Her works include "Under the Sea Wind" (1941), "The Sea Around Us" (1951), "The Edge of The Sea" (1955), and "Silent Spring" (1962). She was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963 and died from cancer on April 14 the following year. In 1980, she was awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Book Description:
In "The World Without Us", Alan Weisman offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity’s impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us.

In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.
"The World Without Us" reveals how, just days after humans disappear, floods in New York’s subways would start eroding the city’s foundations, and how, as the world’s cities crumble, asphalt jungles would give way to real ones. It describes the distinct ways that organic and chemically treated farms would revert to wild, how billions more birds would flourish, and how cockroaches in unheated cities would perish without us.
Drawing on the expertise of engineers, atmospheric scientists, art conservators, zoologists, oil refiners, marine biologists, astrophysicists, religious leaders from rabbis to the Dali Lama, and paleontologists---who describe a prehuman world inhabited by megafauna like giant sloths that stood taller than mammoths---Weisman illustrates what the planet might be like today, if not for us.
In addition, he also shows which human devastations are indelible, and which examples of our highest art and culture would endure longest, Weisman’s narrative ultimately drives toward a radical but persuasive solution that needn't depend on our demise. It is narrative nonfiction at its finest, and in posing an irresistible concept with both gravity and a highly readable touch, it looks deeply at our effects on the planet in a way that no other book has.
The Author:
Alan Weisman is an award-winning journalist whose reports have appeared in "Harper's", "The New York Times Magazine", "The Atlantic Monthly", "Discover", and on NPR, among others. A former contributing editor to "The Los Angeles Times Magazine", he is a senior radio producer for "Homelands Productions" and teaches international journalism at the University of Arizona. His essay "Earth Without People" ("Discover" magazine, February 2005), on which "The World Without Us" expands, was selected for "Best American Science Writing 2006".