How to rebuild higher education from the ground up for the twenty-first century. Higher education is in crisis. It is too expensive, ineffective, and impractical for many of the world's students. But how would you reinvent it for the twenty-first century-how would you build it from the ground up? Many have speculated about changing higher education, but Minerva has actually created a new kind of university program. Its founders raised the funding, assembled the team, devised the curriculum and pedagogy, recruited the students, hired the faculty, and implemented a bold vision of a new and improved higher education. This book explains that vision and how it is being realized. The Minerva curriculum focuses on "practical knowledge" (knowledge students can use to adapt to a changing world); its pedagogy is based on scientific research on learning; it uses a novel technology platform to deliver small seminars in real time; and it offers a hybrid residential model where students live together, rotating through seven cities around the world. Minerva equips students with the cognitive tools they need to succeed in the world after graduation, building the core competencies of critical thinking, creative thinking, effective communication, and effective interaction. The book offers readers both the story of this grand and sweeping idea and a blueprint for transforming higher education.

Want the right words for the right moment? Read this book. It is a coffee-table-meets-"The Far Side" compilation of Shakespeare's best quotes from Hamlet. "To be or not to be," "There's the Rub," "Murder most foul," "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't." All famous quotes; why were they said, and what could they mean today? English teacher and professional wrestler Ben Nelson takes you through Hamlet, Shakespeare's most famous play. You will learn not just what Shakespeare meant, but what he would say today, only you can say it for him.

Something is rotten in the U.S. Senate, and the disease has been spreading for some time. But Ben Nelson, former U.S. senator from Nebraska, is not going to let the institution destroy itself without a fight. Death of the Senate is a clear-eyed look inside the Senate chamber and a brutally honest account of the current political reality. This book is not intended to tell old war stories, but to offer lessons for the future. It is meant to shame the current Senate to do the jobs they were elected to do. To warn Americans about the danger if they don't. Nelson understands we live in an age of "alternative realities" and "alternative facts'" and he gives readers an inside look as he walked the marble hallways alongside some of the last "lions of the Senate" - Ted Kennedy, John McCain, John Warner - legislators who understood the importance of country over party.