QUICK DELIVERY
Swift dispatch
Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood M...
Brief Summary
Mary Dudziak's Exporting American Dreams tells the little-known story of Thurgood Marshall's work with Kenyan leaders as they fought with the British for independence in the early 1960s. Not long after he led the legal team in Brown v. Board of Education, Marshall aided Kenya's constitutional negotiations, as adversaries battled over rights and land--not with weapons, but with legal arguments.
Set in the context of Marshall's civil rights work in the United States, this transnational history sheds light on legal reform and social change in the midst of violent upheavals in Africa and America. While the struggle for rights on both continents played out on a global stage, it was a deeply personal journey for Marshall.
Even as his belief in the equalizing power of law was challenged during his career as a Supreme Court justice, and in Kenya the new government sacrificed the rights he cherished, Kenya's founding moment remained for him a time and place when all things had seemed possible.
ISBN:9780691152448
Author:Mary L. Dudziak
Fat Chance The Hidden Truth About Sugar
Brief Summary
Fat Chance: The Hidden Truth about Sugar, Obesity and Disease
Sugar is toxic, addictive and everywhere. So what chance do you have of living sugar-free?
With busy lives and little time left for cooking we find ourselves relying on a diet of processed food. But this is what’s responsible for our chronically expanding waistlines, soaring levels of diabetes and a catalogue of diseases.
Dr Robert Lustig reveals the truth about our sugar-laden food:
• Why conventional low-fat weight loss advice won’t work: not every calorie is the same, and skipping lunch doesn’t mean it’s ok to eat dessert
• Why too much sugar can cause serious illness even if you are not overweight
• How the food industry is filling our diets with hidden sugars – and which foods you must cut out to avoid them
• How governments are complacent about, and even complicit in, exacerbating our food debacle
He will radically change the way you see your food and give you more than a fat chance of a healthier, happier and smarter life!
"
ISBN:9780007514144
Author:Dr. Robert Lustig
Civilization The West and the Rest
Brief Summary
Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries
How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or "killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors.
Yet now, Ferguson shows how the Rest have downloaded the killer apps the West once monopolized, while the West has literally lost faith in itself. Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside clashes (and fusions) of civilizations, Civilization: The West and the Rest recasts world history with force and wit. Boldly argued and teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.
"
ISBN:9781846142734
Author:Niall Ferguson
At Home A Short History of Private Life
Brief Summary
"Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.”
Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home.
To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to "write a history of the world without leaving home.” The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has figured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.
"
ISBN:9780767919388
Author:Bill Bryson
The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for th...
Brief Summary
In his long-awaited and provocative new book, George Friedman turns his eye on the future—offering a lucid, highly readable forecast of the changes we can expect around the world during the twenty-first century. He explains where and why future wars will erupt (and how they will be fought), which nations will gain and lose economic and political power, and how new technologies and cultural trends will alter the way we live in the new century.
The Next 100 Years draws on a fascinating exploration of history and geopolitical patterns dating back hundreds of years. Friedman shows that we are now, for the first time in half a millennium, at the dawn of a new era—with changes in store, including:
• The U.S.-Jihadist war will conclude—replaced by a second full-blown cold war with Russia.
• China will undergo a major extended internal crisis, and Mexico will emerge as an important world power.
• A new global war will unfold toward the middle of the century between the United States and an unexpected coalition from Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and the Far East; but armies will be much smaller and wars will be less deadly.
• Technology will focus on space—both for major military uses and for a dramatic new energy resource that will have radical environmental implications.
• The United States will experience a Golden Age in the second half of the century.
Written with the keen insight and thoughtful analysis that has made George Friedman a renowned expert in geopolitics and forecasting, The Next 100 Years presents a fascinating picture of what lies ahead.
ISBN:9780385517058
Author:George Friedman
The Squeeze
Brief Summary
‘The Squeeze’ is an invaluable account of the modern oil industry and vital to understanding the awful truth about the current disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. With unprecedented access to their engineers and executives in London and Houston, Tom Bower tells the inside story of BP's history of alleged negligence.
Over the last 20 years, oil prices have soared from $7 a barrel to $147 and down to $37. Amid economic boom and bust, speculators, traders, politicians and monarchs have plotted to earn fortunes from oil, and prayed for salvation from unpredictable natural and man-made disasters.
Behind the headlines are the crushing rivalries between men and women exploring for oil five miles beneath the sea, battling for control of the world’s biggest corporations and gambling billions of dollars twenty-four hours every day on oil prices. Success or failure for all those extraordinary personalities depends on squeezing their rivals and squeezing the crude out of the rocks. Overweening vanity and greed absorb those titans whose ambitions are forging the world’s quest for oil.
Exploiting unprecedented close access to the lives of irrepressible traders in New York, oil-oligarchs in Moscow, corporate chieftains in Dallas and London and wily politicians floating in jets across the globe, Tom Bower presents the untold story of the most important quandary of our times: why, if there is plentiful oil in the earth, does mankind face a dire shortage threatening our lives? Self-interest is propelling the squeeze and there seems to be no salvation.
ISBN:9780007276554
Author:Tom Bower
Free Lunch Easily Digestible Economics
Brief Summary
The economy has never been so relevant to so many people as it is now, and it's vital that we understand how it affects our lives. 'There's no such thing as a free lunch' is the one phrase everyone has heard from economics - not even for bankers. But why not? What does economics tell us about the price of lunch - and everything else?
Free Lunch makes the economics pages of the newspaper intelligible and addresses the concerns that worry us all. It will enable you to understand - and challenge - the claims made by politicians Set out like a good lunch-time conversation, the book will guide you through the mysteries of the economy.
Your guides will be some of the greatest names in the field, including Smith, Marx and Keynes. This clever and witty introduction to economics costs less than even the cheapest meal. It is essential reading in these times of economic uncertainty, and is far more satisfying than even the most gourmet banquet.
"
ISBN:9781781250112
Author:David Smith
The Winner Take All Society
Brief Summary
The Winner-Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us
Disney chairman Michael Eisner topped the 1993 Business Week chart of America's highest-paid executives, his $203 million in earnings roughly 10,000 times that of the lowest paid Disney employee.
During the last two decades, the top one percent of U.S. earners captured more than 40 percent of the country's total earnings growth, one of the largest shifts any society has endured without a revolution or military defeat. Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook argue that behind this shift lies the spread of "winner-take-all markets"—markets in which small differences in performance give rise to enormous differences in reward.
Long familiar in sports and entertainment, this payoff pattern has increasingly permeated law, finance, fashion, publishing, and other fields. The result: in addition to the growing gap between rich and poor, we see important professions like teaching and engineering in aching need of more talent. This relentless emphasis on coming out on top—the best-selling book, the blockbuster film, the Super Bowl winner—has molded our discourse in ways that many find deeply troubling.
ISBN:9780140259957
Author:Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook
The Global Minotaur America Europe an...
Brief Summary
The Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the Global Economy.
In this provocative book, Yanis Varoufakis—the fiery former finance minister in Greek’s new Syriza-led government—explodes the myth that financialization, ineffective regulation of banks, and generalized greed and globalization were the root causes of the global economic crisis.
Rather, he shows, they are symptoms of a much deeper malaise, one that can be traced all the way back to the Great Depression, then through the stagflation of the 1970s, when a "Global Minotaur” was born. Today’s deepening crisis in Europe, Varoufakis shows, is just one of the inevitable signs of the weakening Minotaur—of a global system that is now as unsustainable as it is unbalanced. Rather than simply diagnose a problem, however, Varoufakis also offers a solution, a program for introducing reason into what has become a perniciously irrational economic order.
An essential, powerfully polemical account of the hidden histories that continue to shape our world and economy today, this book from a major player on the stage of world finance, and with a new introduction by Paul Mason, will be essential reading for economists, policy makers, and regular citizens alike.
"
ISBN:9781783606108
Author:Paul Mason and Yanis Varoufakis
The Cutting Book The Official Guide t...
Brief Summary
The Cutting Book: The Official Guide to Cutting at S/NVQ Levels 2 and 3 (Mixed media product) – Common.
A resource for trainee hairdressers, covering various things you need to know about cutting hair at levels 2 and This book features step-by-step photographs, and explains the theory and cutting of Caucasian, Asian, African-Caribbean, male and female hair at levels 2 and 3.
"
ISBN:9781844806201
Author:Elaine White and Jane Goldsbro
The Origins of Political Order by Fra...
Brief Summary
The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution
Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today's developing countries?with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.
Francis Fukuyama, author of the bestselling The End of History and the Last Man and one of our most important political thinkers, provides a sweeping account of how today's basic political institutions developed. The first of a major two-volume work, The Origins of Political Order begins with politics among our primate ancestors and follows the story through the emergence of tribal societies, the growth of the first modern state in China, the beginning of the rule of law in India and the Middle East, and the development of political accountability in Europe up until the eve of the French Revolution.
Drawing on a vast body of knowledge?history, evolutionary biology, archaeology, and economics?Fukuyama has produced a brilliant, provocative work that offers fresh insights on the origins of democratic societies and raises essential questions about the nature of politics and its discontents.
"
ISBN:9780374533229
Author:Francis Fukuyama
Lola and the Boy Next Door
Brief Summary
Lola Nolan is a budding costume designer, and for her, the more outrageous, sparkly, and fun the outfit, the better. And everything is pretty perfect in her life (right down to her hot rocker boyfriend) until the Bell twins, Calliope and Cricket, return to the neighborhood.
When Cricket, a gifted inventor, steps out from his twin sister's shadow and back into Lola's life, she must finally reconcile a lifetime of feelings for the boy next door.
ISBN:9780525423287
Author:Stephanie Perkins
The Stupidity Paradox The Power and P...
Brief Summary
The Stupidity Paradox: The Power and Pitfalls of Functional Stupidity at Work
Why do smart people do stupid things at work?
Welcome to the idea of functional stupidity.
Functional stupidity can be catastrophic. It can cause organizational collapse, financial meltdown and technical disaster. And there are countless, more everyday examples of organizations accepting the dubious, the absurd and the downright idiotic, from unsustainable management fads to the cult of leadership or an over-reliance on brand and image. And yet a dose of stupidity can be useful and produce good, short-term results: it can nurture harmony, encourage people to get on with the job and drive success.
This is the stupidity paradox.
The Stupidity Paradox tackles head-on the pros and cons of functional stupidity. You'll discover what makes a workplace mindless, why being stupid might be a good thing in the short term but a disaster in the longer term, and how to make your workplace a little less stupid by challenging thoughtless conformity. It shows how harmony and action in the workplace can be balanced with a culture of questioning and challenge.
The book is a wake-up call for smart organizations and smarter people. It encourages us to use our intelligence fully for the sake of personal satisfaction, organizational success and the flourishing of society as a whole.
"
ISBN:9781781255414
Author:Mats Alvesson and André Spicer
The Startup Way How Entrepreneurial M...
Brief Summary
The Startup Way: Making Entrepreneurship a Fundamental Discipline of Every Enterprise
Entrepreneur and bestselling author of The Lean Startup Eric Ries reveals how entrepreneurial principles can be used by businesses ranging from established companies to early-stage startups to grow revenues, drive innovation, and emerge as truly modern organizations poised to take advantage of the enormous opportunities of the 21st century.
In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries laid out the practices of successful startups - building minimal viable products ("MVPs"), extensive customer-focused testing based on a build, measure, learn method of continuous innovation, and deciding whether to persevere or pivot.
In The Startup Way, he turns his attention to a whole new group of organizations: iconic multinationals like GE and Toyota, Silicon Valley tech titans like Amazon and Facebook, and the next generation of Silicon Valley upstarts like Airbnb and Twilio. Drawing on his experiences over the past five years working with these organizations, as well as nonprofits, NGOs, and governments, Ries lays out a new management system that leads to sustainable growth and long-term impact. Filled with in-the-field stories, insights, and tools, The Startup Way is an essential roadmap for any organization navigating the uncertain waters of the century ahead.
"
ISBN:9780147523303
Author:Eric Ries
The Test Book: 64 Tools to Lead You t...
Brief Summary
The bestselling authors of the decision book return with their most fascinating and practical book yet. This pocket-sized compendium of the world's fifty most useful tests is a vital tool for anyone looking to gauge their abilities and improve their performance.
From intelligence to personality type via creativity and leadership skills, krogerus and tschäppeler will help you see how you fare on every essential trait you need to succeed. Beyond your own abilities, the test book also provides sample diagnostic tests for your career, relationship and business, sketching out not just what your skills are but how well you're utilizing them too.
Some are old favorites - gmat, mbti, iq, eq - and many more are little-known tests with genuinely new insights. Every single one has been condensed to just a few pages, leading you to the quickest route to self-knowledge. With in-depth analysis of the history, strengths and weaknesses of each test and what your answers mean for you, the test book is the fastest and most entertaining way to equip yourself for happiness and success.
ISBN:9781781253205
Author:Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler
The Decision Book Fifty Models for St...
Most of us face the same questions every day: What do I want? And how can I get it? How can I live more happily and work more efficiently?
A UK bestseller, The Decision Book distils into a single volume the fifty best decision-making models used on MBA courses and elsewhere that will help you tackle these important questions - from the well-known (the Eisenhower matrix for time management) to the less familiar but equally useful (the Swiss Cheese model). It will even show you how to remember everything you will have learned by the end of it.
Stylish and compact, this little black book is a powerful asset. Whether you need to plot a presentation, assess someone's business idea or get to know yourself better, this unique guide will help you simplify any problem and take steps towards the right decision.
The Curve Turning Followers Into Supe...
Brief Summary
The Curve is a new way of doing business and of seeing the world.
In the digital age everyone struggles to answer one question: how do I get people to pay when so much is free?
The answer is the Curve.
Whatever business or creative field you are in, Nicholas Lovell's startling book encourages you to embrace giving some things away for free. By stimulating interest and cultivating communities, you'll build relationships with your audience and your fans, who'll want more of what they love.
With stories ranging from musicians and artists to gaming and flour companies, from Kick starter to Angry Birds, The Curve shows how to connect with people - and make them happy to pay up for the very best you can offer.
"
ISBN:9780670923212
Author:Nicholas Lovell
Platform Revolution How Networked Mar...
Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy--and How to Make Them Work for You.
Uber. Airbnb. Amazon. Apple. PayPal. All of these companies disrupted their markets when they launched. Today they are industry leaders. What’s the secret to their success?
These cutting-edge businesses are built on platforms: two-sided markets that are revolutionizing the way we do business. Written by three of the most sought-after experts on platform businesses, Platform Revolution is the first authoritative, fact-based book on platform models. Whether platforms are connecting sellers and buyers, hosts and visitors, or drivers with people who need a ride, Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, and Sangeet Paul Choudary reveal the what, how, and why of this revolution and provide the first "owner’s manual” for creating a successful platform business.
Platform Revolution teaches newcomers how to start and run a successful platform business, explaining ways to identify prime markets and monetize networks. Addressing current business leaders, the authors reveal strategies behind some of today’s up-and-coming platforms, such as Tinder and Skill Share, and explain how traditional companies can adapt in a changing marketplace. The authors also cover essential issues concerning security, regulation, and consumer trust, while examining markets that may be ripe for a platform revolution, including healthcare, education, and energy.
As digital networks increase in ubiquity, businesses that do a better job of harnessing the power of the platform will win. An indispensable guide, Platform Revolution charts out the brilliant future of platforms and reveals how they will irrevocably alter the lives and careers of millions.
Oversubscribed How to Get People Lini...
Brief Summary
Oversubscribed: How to Get People Lining Up to Do Business with You
Don't fight for customers, let them fight over you!
Have you ever queued for a restaurant? Pre-ordered something months in advance? Fought for tickets that sell out in a day? Had a hairdresser with a six-month waiting list? There are people who don't chase clients, clients chase them. In a world of endless choices, why does this happen? Why do people queue up? Why do they pay more? Why will they book months in advance? Why are these people and products in such high demand? And how can you get a slice of that action?
In Oversubscribed, entrepreneur and bestselling author Daniel Priestley explains why…and, most importantly, how. This book is a recipe for ensuring demand outstrips supply for your product or service, and you have scores of customers lining up to give you money.
Oversubscribed:
Shows leaders, marketers, and entrepreneurs how they can get customers queuing up to use their services and products while competitors are forced to fight for business Explains how to become oversubscribed, even in a crowded marketplace Is full of practical tips alongside inspiring examples to alter our mindsets and get us bursting with ideas Is written by a successful entrepreneur who's used these ideas to excel in the ventures he has launched
"
ISBN:9780857086198
Author:Daniel Priestley
Mindful Work How Meditation Is Changi...
Brief Summary
Mindful Work: How Meditation Is Changing Business from the Inside Out
A New York Times reporter reveals what business leaders around the country are already discovering: Meditation may be the key to fostering a happier, more productive workplace.
For the past few years, mindfulness has begun to transform the American workplace. Many of our largest companies, such as General Mills, Ford, Target, and Google, have built extensive programs to foster mindful practices among their workers. Mindful Work is the first book to explain how all sorts of businesses and any kind of worker can benefit from meditation, yoga, and other mindful techniques.
As a business reporter for the New York Times who has also practiced meditation for two decades, David Gelles is uniquely qualified to chart the growing nexus between these two realms. As he proves, mindfulness lowers stress, increases mental focus, and alleviates depression among workers. He also offers real-world examples of how mindfulness has benefited companies that have adopted it — from the millions of dollars Aetna has saved in health-care costs to the ways Patagonia has combined leadership in its market with a pervasively mindful outlook.
Gelles's revelatory book picks up where bestsellers like Thriveand 10% Happier leave off, by detailing how mindfulness works in and for the companies that adopt it, revealing the profound impact mindfulness can have on the world of work. Mindful Work goes beyond other books on the subject by providing evidence for the practical benefits of mindfulness and showing readers how to become more mindful themselves.
"
ISBN:9780544227224
Author:David Gelles
