UAE Year of Reading

Workplace Wellbeing is a complete guide to understanding and implementing the principles of a psychologically healthy workplace for psychologists and other practitioners. Grounded in the latest theory and research yet filled with plenty of case studies and proven techniques Introduces the core components of psychologically healthy workplaces, including health and safety, leadership, employee involvement, development, recognition, work-life balance, culture and communication Addresses important issues such as the role of unions, the importance of leadership, healthy workplaces in small businesses, respectful workplace cultures, and corporate social responsibility Discusses factors that influence the physical safety of employees, as well as their physical and psychological health Brings together stellar scholars from around the world, including the US, Canada, Europe, Israel, and Australia

Organizations accomplish results when they powerfully engage employees and capture their discretionary time. This is more important than ever during this period where employees are facing unprecedented time poverty. Technology has blurred the lines between employees’ work and personal lives, and they are faced with the challenges of successfully navigating and integrating work and personal demands. When organizations provide the right benefits, policies, and cultural practices, they win and they serve employees in the process.

Workplace Wellbeing is a complete guide to understanding and implementing the principles of a psychologically healthy workplace for psychologists and other practitioners. Grounded in the latest theory and research yet filled with plenty of case studies and proven techniques Introduces the core components of psychologically healthy workplaces, including health and safety, leadership, employee involvement, development, recognition, work-life balance, culture and communication Addresses important issues such as the role of unions, the importance of leadership, healthy workplaces in small businesses, respectful workplace cultures, and corporate social responsibility Discusses factors that influence the physical safety of employees, as well as their physical and psychological health Brings together stellar scholars from around the world, including the US, Canada, Europe, Israel, and Australia

We're bombarded by messages telling us that bigger and better things are the keys to happiness--but after we pile up the stuff and pile on the work hours, we end up exhausted and broke on a planet full of trash. Sarah van Gelder and her colleagues at YES! Magazine have been exploring the meaning of real happiness for eighteen years. Here they offer fascinating research, in-depth essays, and compelling personal stories by visionaries such as Annie Leonard, Matthieu Ricard, and Vandana Shiva, showing us that real well-being is found in supportive relationships and thriving communities, opportunities to make a contribution, and the renewal we receive from a thriving natural world. In the pages of this book, you'll find creative and practical ways to cultivate a happiness that is nurturing, enduring, and life affirming.

In The Pursuit of Happiness, the latest addition to the Brookings FOCUS series, Carol Graham explores what we know about the determinants of happiness, across and within countries at different stages of development. She then takes a look at just what we can do with that new knowledge and clearly presents both the promise and the potential pitfalls of injecting the "economics of happiness” into public policymaking. This burgeoning field, largely a product of collaboration betweeneconomists and psychologists, is gaining great currency worldwide. One of a handful of pioneers to study this topic a mere decade ago, Graham is understandably excited about how far the concept has come and its possible utility in the future. The British, French, and Brazilian governments already have introduced happiness metrics into their benchmarks of national progress, and the U.S. government could follow suit. But "happiness” as a yardstick to help measure a nation’s well-being is still a relatively new approach, and many questions remain unanswered. The Pursuit of Happiness spotlights the innovative contributions of happiness research to the dismal science. But it also raises a cautionary note about the issues that still need to be addressed before policymakers can make best use of them. An effective definition of well-being that goes beyond measuring income--the Gross National Product approach--could very well lead to improved understanding of povertyand economic welfare. But the question remains: how best to measure and quantify happiness? While scholars have developed rigorous measures of well-being that can be included in our statistics--as the British are already doing--to what degree should we use such metrics to shape and evaluate policy, particularly in assessing development outcomes? Graham considers a number of unanswered questions, such as whether policy should be more concerned with increasing day-to-day contentment or with providing greater opportunity to build a fulfilling life. Other issues include whether we care more about the happiness of today’s citizens or that of future generations. Policies such as reducing our fiscal deficits or reforming our health care system, for example, typically require sacrificing current consumption and immediate well-being for better long-run outcomes. Another is whether policy should focus on reducing misery or raising general levels of well-being beyond their relatively high levels, in the same way that reducing poverty is only one choice among many objectives in our macroeconomic policy. Employing the new metrics without attention to these questions could produce mistakes that might undermine the long-term prospects for a truly meaningful economics of well-being. Despite this cautionary note, Graham points out that it is surely a positive development that some of our public attention is going to better understanding and enhancing the well-being of our citizens, rather than emphasizing the roots of their divide.

What is happiness? How is it related to morality and virtue? Does living with illusion promote or diminish happiness? Is it better to pursue happiness with a partner than alone? Philosopher Mike W. Martin addresses these and other questions as he connects the meaning of happiness with thephilosophical notion of "the good life." Defining happiness as loving one's life and valuing it in ways manifested by ample enjoyment and a deep sense of meaning, Martin explores the ways in which happiness interacts with all other dimensions of good lives - in particular with moral decency andgoodness, authenticity, mental health, self-fulfillment, and meaningfulness. He interweaves a variety of examples from memoirs, novels, and films along the way, connecting his discussion of the philosophical issues to related topics that interest all of us: virtue, love, philanthropy, suffering, simplicity, balancing work and leisure, and much more. Drawing on wide-rangingand robust evidence, Martin also makes the case that we need a "politics of happiness" whereby government would apply the results of recent "happiness studies" in psychology to public policy.

Have you seen the movie? The books are better!
Summary After the sudden death of their parents, the three Baudelaire children must depend on each other and their wits when it turns out that the distant relative who is appointed their guardian is determined to use any means necessary to get their fortune.
162 pages with nice illustrations

The third book in the Harry Potter series-- this is where the story really gets exciting! This is many people's favorite book of the series-- if you like it you can go back and read the first two.
Summary: During his third year at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry Potter must confront the devious and dangerous wizard responsible for his parents' deaths.
461 pages

Many popular books in English have been translated to Arabic. Try reading a "contemporary classic" such as Harry Potter in Arabic, then read it again in English.
424 pages

Since their mother's death, Carter and Sadie have become near strangers. While Sadie has lived with her grandparents in London, her brother has traveled the world with their father, the brilliant Egyptologist, Dr. Julius Kane. One night, Dr. Kane brings the siblings together for a "research experiment" at the British Museum, where he hopes to set things right for his family. Instead, he unleashes the Egyptian god Set, who banishes him to oblivion and forces the children to flee for their lives. Soon, Sadie and Carter discover that the gods of Egypt are waking, and the worst of them--Set has his sights on the Kanes. To stop him, the siblings embark on a dangerous journey across the globe -- a quest that brings them ever closer to the truth about their family, and their links to a secret order that has existed since the time of the pharaohs.

A darkly humorous tale of crime and punishment Stanley Yelnat's family has a history of bad luck, so he isn't too surprised when a miscarriage of justice sends him to a boys' juvenile detention center, Camp Green Lake. There is no lake - it has been dry for over a hundred years - and it's hardly a camp. As punishment, the boys must each dig a hole a day, five feet deep, five feet across, in the hard earth of the dried-up lake bed. The warden claims that this pointless labor builds character, but she is really using the boys to dig for loot buried by the Wild West outlaw Kissin' Kate Barlow. The story of Kissin' Kate, and of a curse put on Stanley's great-great-grandfather by a one-legged gypsy, weaves a narrative puzzle that tangles and untangles, until it becomes clear that the hand of fate has been at work in the lives of the characters - and their forebears - for generations. With this wonderfully inventive, compelling novel that is both serious and funny, Louis Sachar has written his best book to date. Holes is a 1998 New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of the Year and the winner of the 1998 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the 1999 Boston Globe - Horn Book Award for Fiction and the 1999 Newbery Medal.

Summary Having lost his mother and his hearing in a short time, twelve-year-old Ben leaves his Minnesota home in 1977 to seek the father he never knew in New York City, and meets there Rose, who is also longing for something missing from her life. Ben's story is told in words; Rose's in pictures.
637 pages mostly illustrations (graphic novel)

This lavish edition of Brian Selznick's breathtaking Wonderstruck is a must have for collectors and fans alike. Playing with the form he created in his trailblazing debut novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick once again sails into uncharted territory and takes readers on an awe-inspiring journey. Ben and Rose secretly wish their lives were different. Ben longs for the father he has never known. Rose dreams of a mysterious actress whose life she chronicles in a scrapbook. When Ben discovers a puzzling clue in his mother’s room and Rose reads an enticing headline in the newspaper, both children set out alone on desperate quests to find what they are missing. Set fifty years apart, these two independent stories--Ben’s told in words, Rose’s in pictures--weave back and forth with mesmerizing symmetry. How they unfold and ultimately intertwine will surprise you, challenge you, and leave you breathless with wonder. Rich, complex, affecting, and beautiful--with over 460 pages of original artwork--Wonderstruck is a stunning achievement from a uniquely gifted artist and visionary.

A breathtaking illustrated novel from Pura Belpre Award winner, Pam Ryan, and MacArthur fellow and three-time Caldecott Honoree, Peter Sis! From the time he is a young boy, Neftalí hears the call of a mysterious voice. Even when the neighborhood children taunt him, and when his harsh, authoritarian father ridicules him, and when he doubts himself, Neftalí knows he cannot ignore the call. Under the canopy of the lush rain forest, into the fearsome sea, and through the persistent Chilean rain, he listens and he follows. . . Combining elements of magical realism with biography, poetry, literary fiction, and sensorial, transporting illustrations, Pam Muñoz Ryan and Peter Sís take readers on a rare journey of the heart and imagination.

A hero with an incredible talent for breaking things. A life or death mission to rescue a bag of sand. A fearsome threat from the powerful secret network that rules the world the evil librarians. Alcatraz Smedry doesn't seem destined for anything but disaster. But on his thirteenth birthday he receives a bag of sand and his life takes a bizarre turn. This is no ordinary bag of sand and it is quickly stolen by the cult of evil Librarians who are taking over the world by spreading misinformation and suppressing the truth. The sand will give the evil Librarians the edge they need to achieve world domination. Alcatraz must stop them all by infiltrating the local library, armed with nothing but eyeglasses and a talent for klutziness.

Following THE CRY OF THE ICEMARK, a huge success in England and critically acclaimed in the U.S., the next epic adventure in The Icemark Chronicles. Many years have passed since Queen Thirrin and her allies defended the Icemark against a brutal invasion. But now General Bellorum is back, along with his bloodthirsty spawn--twin sons even more vicious than him. Thirrin and Oskan also have a family: two girls and three boys. But darkness lurks within the House of Lindenshield: Medea, the couple's cold-hearted fifteen-year-old daughter, is just coming into her magical powers, and she may be the downfall of the kingdom. It's up to her brother, Charlemagne, crippled by polio as a child, to return from exile and rescue the land he loves.

Zeuxis is a 'lighthouse boy', but his dream is to become a charioteer, and he gets his chance when Julius Caesar plans his invasion of Egypt in 48 BC to overthrow Queen Cleopatra. To accomplish this, they need an inexperienced charioteer they can bend to their will.

A woman who enjoys chess for a hobby is offered the chance to collect the pieces of a very old chess service, which when all of the pieces are reassembled, gives the players a game of unlimited power.

In the late twenty-first century, dramatic climate change has made life in Ireland almost impossible, and soon Tir na n'Og is faced with a refugee problem, partly because of a warlord who is a member of the Liddy family.

A group of unpopular fifth graders run a spy network from inside their school. With the help of cutting-edge science, they transform their nerdy qualities into incredible abilities! In the series’ second installment, Duncan Dewey (code name: Gluestick) leads the team against a supervillain who used to be a member of NERDS. But has the team become too dependent on their supergadgets? It will take old-fashioned brainpower and bravery to save the world again. Publishers Weekly raved, “Buckley has a flair for exaggerated humor.”