QUICK DELIVERY
Swift dispatch
The Sixth Man
Brief Summary
Edgar Roy--an alleged serial killer held in a secure, fortress-like Federal Supermax facility-is awaiting trial. He faces almost certain conviction. Sean King and Michelle Maxwell are called in by Roy's attorney, Sean's old friend and mentor Ted Bergin, to help work the case. But their investigation is derailed before it begins--en route to their first meeting with Bergin, Sean and Michelle find him murdered.
It is now up to them to ask the questions no one seems to want answered: Is Roy a killer? Who murdered Bergin? With help from some surprising allies, they continue to pursue the case. But the more they dig into Roy's past, the more they encounter obstacles, half-truths, dead-ends, false friends, and escalating threats from every direction.
Their persistence puts them on a collision course with the highest levels of the government and the darkest corners of power. In a terrifying confrontation that will push Sean and Michelle to their limits, the duo may be permanently parted.
ISBN:9780446573108
Author:David Baldacci
Small Data The Tiny Clues that Uncove...
Brief Summary
Martin Lindstrom, a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, harnesses the power of "small data” in his quest to discover the next big thing
Hired by the world's leading brands to find out what makes their customers tick, Martin Lindstrom spends 300 nights a year in strangers’ homes, carefully observing every detail in order to uncover their hidden desires, and, ultimately, the clues to a multi-million dollar product.
Lindstrom connects the dots in this globetrotting narrative that will enthrall enterprising marketers, as well as anyone with a curiosity about the endless variations of human behavior. You’ll learn…
1. How a noise reduction headset at 35,000 feet led to the creation of Pepsi’s new trademarked signature sound.
2. How a worn down sneaker discovered in the home of an 11-year-old German boy led to LEGO’s incredible turnaround.
3. How a magnet found on a fridge in Siberia resulted in a U.S. supermarket revolution.
4. How a toy stuffed bear in a girl’s bedroom helped revolutionize a fashion retailer’s 1,000 stores in 20 different countries.
5. How an ordinary bracelet helped Jenny Craig increase customer loyalty by 159% in less than a year.
6. How the ergonomic layout of a car dashboard led to the redesign of the Roomba vacuum.
ISBN:9781250080684
Author:Martin Lindstrom
The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
In her ground-breaking reporting from Iraq, Naomi Klein exposed how the trauma of invasion was being exploited to remake the country in the interest of foreign corporations. She called it "disaster capitalism." Covering Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, and New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar.
People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic "shock treatment" losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers. The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq.
At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. By capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, Klein argues that the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.
The Boy Next Door
Brief Summary
Two days after I turned fourteen the son of our neighbor set his stepmother alight.
Or so Lindiwe Bishop believes, though eighteen months later the charges against Ian McKenzie are dropped and he returns home, full of charm and swagger.
Intrigued, Lindiwe strikes up a covert friendship with the mysterious white boy next door. As a bond grows between them, they cannot foresee how severely it will be tested in the years ahead - by secrets and by a world that wants nothing more than to divide them.
Vividly evoking Zimbabwe's slide from independence into chaos, THE BOY NEXT DOOR tells an engrossing tale about what it means to witness, change, love and remain whole when all around you is falling apart.
ISBN:9780340918838
Author:Irene Sabatini
Rework by Jason Fried and David Heine...
Most business books give you the same old advice: Write a business plan, study the competition, and seek investors, yadda yadda. If you're looking for a book like that, put this one back on the shelf.
Rework shows you a better, faster, easier way to succeed in business. Read it and you'll know why plans are actually harmful, why you don't need outside investors, and why you're better off ignoring the competition. The truth is, you need less than you think. You don't need to be a workaholic. You don't need to staff up. You don't need to waste time on paperwork or meetings. You don't even need an office.
Those are all just excuses.
What you really need to do is stop talking and start working. This book shows you the way. You'll learn how to be more productive, how to get exposure without breaking the bank, and tons more counterintuitive ideas that will inspire and provoke you.
With its straightforward language and easy-is-better approach, Rework is the perfect playbook for anyone who’s ever dreamed of doing it on their own. Hardcore entrepreneurs, small-business owners, people stuck in day jobs they hate, victims of "downsizing," and artists who don’t want to starve anymore will all find valuable guidance in these pages.
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success ...
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.
One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you'll achieve extraordinary results.
Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy.
And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way.
In Deep Work, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.
A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, Deep Work takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. Deep Work is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.
The Way to Wealth
Brief Summary
The Way to Wealth is an essay written by Benjamin Franklin in 1758. It is a collection of adages and advice presented in Poor Richard's Almanac during its first 25 years of publication, organized into a speech given by "Father Abraham" to a group of people. Many of the phrases Father Abraham quotes continue to be familiar today. The essay's advice is based on the themes of work ethic and frugality. Some phrases from the almanac quoted in The Way to Wealth include: • "There are no gains, without pains"
1. "One today is worth two tomorrows"
2. "A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things" • "Get what you can, and what you get hold"
3. "Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is always bright"
4. "Have you somewhat to do tomorrow, do it today"
5. "The eye of a master will do more work than both his hands"
6. "Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise"
A renowned polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity.
As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among other inventions. He facilitated many civic organizations, including Philadelphia's fire department and a university. Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity, initially as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies. As the first United States Ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging American nation. Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment.
In the words of historian Henry Steele Commager, "In a Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat." To Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become."
ISBN:9780918222886
Author:Benjamin Franklin
Das Kapital Media Eight Business Classic
Brief Summary
One of the most notorious works of modern times, as well as one of the most influential, "Capital" is an incisive critique of private property and the social relations it generates. Living in exile in England, where this work was largely written, Marx drew on a wide-ranging knowledge of its society to support his analysis and generate fresh insights.
Arguing that capitalism would create an ever-increasing division in wealth and welfare, he predicted its abolition and replacement by a system with common ownership of the means of production.
"Capital" rapidly acquired readership among the leaders of social democratic parties, particularly in Russia and Germany, and ultimately throughout the world, to become a work described by Marx's friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels as 'the Bible of the Working Class'.
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ISBN:9788173142598
Author:Karl Marx
How I raised myself from failure to s...
A business classic endorsed by Dale Carnegie, how I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling is for anyone whose job it is to sell. Whether you are selling houses or mutual funds, advertisements or ideas—or anything else—this book is for you.
When Frank Bettger was twenty-nine he was a failed insurance salesman. By the time he was forty he owned a country estate and could have retired. What are the selling secrets that turned Bettger’s life around from defeat to unparalleled success and fame as one of the highest paid salesmen in America?
The answer is inside How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling. Bettger reveals his personal experiences and explains the foolproof principles that he developed and perfected. He shares instructive anecdotes and step-by-step guidelines on how to develop the style, spirit, and presence of a winning salesperson. No matter what you sell, you will be more efficient and profitable—and more valuable to your company—when you apply Bettger’s keen insights on:
1. The power of enthusiasm
2. How to conquer fear
3. The key word for turning a skeptical client into an enthusiastic buyer
4. The quickest way to win confidence
5. Seven golden rules for closing a sale
The Thirty Six Stratagems
Brief Summary
Modern businesses can learn a great deal from this tactics classic, a Chinese essay that was used to illustrate a series of frequently unorthodox or deceptive stratagems used in politics, and in military and civil situations.
The first three chapters generally describe tactics for use in attack, whereas the last three chapters contain mainly defensive stratagems.
ISBN:9788173143106
Author:Calum Roberts
Gray Mountain
Brief Summary
John Grisham has a new hero . . . and she’s full of surprises
The year is 2008 and Samantha Kofer’s career at a huge Wall Street law firm is on the fast track—until the recession hits and she gets downsized, furloughed, escorted out of the building. Samantha, though, is one of the "lucky” associates. She’s offered an opportunity to work at a legal aid clinic for one year without pay, after which there would be a slim chance that she’d get her old job back.
In a matter of days Samantha moves from Manhattan to Brady, Virginia, population 2,200, in the heart of Appalachia, a part of the world she has only read about. Mattie Wyatt, lifelong Brady resident and head of the town’s legal aid clinic, is there to teach her how to "help real people with real problems.” For the first time in her career, Samantha prepares a lawsuit, sees the inside of an actual courtroom, gets scolded by a judge, and receives threats from locals who aren’t so thrilled to have a big-city lawyer in town. And she learns that Brady, like most small towns, harbors some big secrets.
Her new job takes Samantha into the murky and dangerous world of coal mining, where laws are often broken, rules are ignored, regulations are flouted, communities are divided, and the land itself is under attack from Big Coal. Violence is always just around the corner, and within weeks Samantha finds herself engulfed in litigation that turns deadly.
ISBN:9780385537148
Author:John Grisham
Tom Clancy Duty and Honor
Brief Summary
Even though he’s on forced leave from the clandestine intelligence group known as The Campus, Jack Ryan, Jr., still finds himself caught in the crosshairs after an attempt on his life is thwarted when he turns the tables on his would-be dispatcher. Convinced that the attack is linked to his recent covert actions with the convalescing Iranian national Ysabel Kashini, Jack sets out to find out who wants him dead, and why.
Using clues found on the now dead assassin, Jack pursues the investigation, following a growing trail of corpses to the European Union’s premier private security firm, Rostock Security Group, and its founder, Jürgen Rostock—a former general in the German Special Forces Command. Rostock is world-renowned as a philanthropist and human rights advocate. But Jack knows him from a Campus mission revolving around a company linked to RSG—a mission that has put him on Rostock’s lethal radar.
Without any Campus resources, Jack launches his own shadow campaign to uncover the truth about Rostock and a long-running false-flag war of terror that has claimed thousands of lives. Yet all of that bloodshed is but a precursor to a coming catastrophic event that will solidify Rostock’s place among the global powers. An event that Jack must stop at any cost.
ISBN:9780399176807
Author:Grant Blackwood
The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon
Natasha: I’m a girl who believes in science and facts. Not fate. Not destiny. Or dreams that will never come true. I’m definitely not the kind of girl who meets a cute boy on a crowded New York City street and falls in love with him. Not when my family is twelve hours away from being deported to Jamaica. Falling in love with him won’t be my story.
Daniel: I’ve always been the good son, the good student, living up to my parents’ high expectations. Never the poet. Or the dreamer. But when I see her, I forget about all that. Something about Natasha makes me think that fate has something much more extraordinary in store—for both of us.
The Universe: Every moment in our lives has brought us to this single moment. A million futures lie before us. Which one will come true?
Thomas Jefferson The Art of Power
Brief Summary
In this magnificent biography, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Lion and Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his remarkable times. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power gives us Jefferson the politician and president, a great and complex human being forever engaged in the wars of his era. Philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson’s genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.
Thomas Jefferson hated confrontation, and yet his understanding of power and of human nature enabled him to move men and to marshal ideas, to learn from his mistakes, and to prevail. Passionate about many things—women, his family, books, science, architecture, gardens, friends, Monticello, and Paris—Jefferson loved America most, and he strove over and over again, despite fierce opposition, to realize his vision: the creation, survival, and success of popular government in America.
Jon Meacham lets us see Jefferson’s world as Jefferson himself saw it, and to appreciate how Jefferson found the means to endure and win in the face of rife partisan division, economic uncertainty, and external threat. Drawing on archives in the United States, England, and France, as well as unpublished Jefferson presidential papers, Meacham presents Jefferson as the most successful political leader of the early republic, and perhaps in all of American history.
The father of the ideal of individual liberty, of the Louisiana Purchase, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and of the settling of the West, Jefferson recognized that the genius of humanity—and the genius of the new nation—lay in the possibility of progress, of discovering the undiscovered and seeking the unknown. From the writing of the Declaration of Independence to elegant dinners in Paris and in the President’s House; from political maneuverings in the boardinghouses and legislative halls of Philadelphia and New York to the infant capital on the Potomac; from his complicated life at Monticello, his breathtaking house and plantation in Virginia, to the creation of the University of Virginia, Jefferson was central to the age. Here too is the personal Jefferson, a man of appetite, sensuality, and passion.
The Jefferson story resonates today not least because he led his nation through ferocious partisanship and cultural warfare amid economic change and external threats, and also because he embodies an eternal drama, the struggle of the leadership of a nation to achieve greatness in a difficult and confounding world.
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ISBN:9781400067664
Author:Jon Meacham
Thieves of State Why Corruption Threa...
Brief Summary
Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security
The world is blowing up. Every day a new blaze seems to ignite: the bloody implosion of Iraq and Syria; the East-West standoff in Ukraine; abducted schoolgirls in Nigeria. Is there some thread tying these frightening international security crises together? In a riveting account that weaves history with fast-moving reportage and insider accounts from the Afghanistan war, Sarah Chayes identifies the unexpected link: corruption.
Since the late 1990s, corruption has reached such an extent that some governments resemble glorified criminal gangs, bent solely on their own enrichment. These kleptocrats drive indignant populations to extremes—ranging from revolution to militant puritanical religion. Chayes plunges readers into some of the most venal environments on earth and examines what emerges: Afghans returning to the Taliban, Egyptians overthrowing the Mubarak government (but also redesigning Al-Qaeda), and Nigerians embracing both radical evangelical Christianity and the Islamist terror group Boko Haram. In many such places, rigid moral codes are put forth as an antidote to the collapse of public integrity.
The pattern, moreover, pervades history. Through deep archival research, Chayes reveals that canonical political thinkers such as John Locke and Machiavelli, as well as the great medieval Islamic statesman Nizam al-Mulk, all named corruption as a threat to the realm. In a thrilling argument connecting the Protestant Reformation to the Arab Spring, Thieves of State presents a powerful new way to understand global extremism. And it makes a compelling case that we must confront corruption, for it is a cause—not a result—of global instability.
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ISBN:9780393352283
Author:Sarah Chayes
Thank You for Being Late by Thomas L....
Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations
The new international bestseller from the Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The World is flat - this is an essential and entertaining field guide to thriving in the twenty-first century.
'As a guide for perplexed Westerners, this book is very hard to beat . . . Thank You for Being Late is a master class in explaining. After your session with Dr. Friedman, you have a much better idea of the forces that are upending your world, how they work together - and what people, companies and governments can do to prosper' John Micklethwait, The New York Times Book Review
'The globe-trotting New York Times columnist's most famous book was about the world being flat. This one is all about the world being fast. His main piece of advice for individuals, corporations, and countries is clear: Take a deep breath and adapt. This world isn't going to wait for you' Fortune
We all sense it - something big is going on. You feel it in your workplace. You feel it when you talk to your children. You can't miss it when you read the newspapers or watch the news. Our lives are speeding up - and it is dizzying.
In Thank You for Being Late, a work unlike any he has attempted before, Thomas L. Friedman exposes the tectonic movements that are reshaping the world today and explains how to get the most out of them.
Friedman's thesis is that to understand the twenty-first century, you need to understand that the planet's three largest forces - Moore's law (technology), the market (globalization) and Mother Nature (climate change and biodiversity loss) - are all accelerating at once, transforming the workplace, politics, geopolitics, ethics and community. An extraordinary release of energy is reshaping everything from how we hail a taxi to the fate of nations to our most intimate relationships. It is creating vast new opportunities for individuals and small groups to save the world - or perhaps to destroy it.
Thank You for Being Late is a work of contemporary history that serves as a field manual for how to think about this era of accelerations. It's also an argument for 'being late' - for pausing to appreciate this amazing historical epoch we're passing through and reflecting on its possibilities and dangers. He shows us how we can anchor ourselves as individuals in the eye of this storm, and how communities can create a 'topsoil of trust' to do the same for their increasingly diverse and digital populations.
Written with his trademark vitality, wit, and optimism, and with unequalled access to many of those at the forefront of the changes he is describing all over the world, Thank You for Being Late is Friedman's most ambitious book - and an essential guide to the present and the future.
The Truth About Markets
Brief Summary
Truth about Markets: Why Some Countries Are Rich and Others Remain Poor.
Capitalism faltered at the end of the 1990s as corporations were rocked by fraud, the stock-market bubble burst and the American business model – unfettered self-interest, privatization and low tax – faced a storm of protest.
But what are the alternatives to the mantras of market fundamentalism? Leading economist John Kay unravels the truth about markets, from Wall Street to Switzerland, from Russia to Mumbai, examining why some nations are rich and some poor, why ‘one-size-fits-all’ globalization hurts developing countries and why markets can work – but only in a humane social and cultural context. His answers offer a radical new blueprint for the future.
ISBN:9780140296723
Author:John Kay
Tom Mboya The Man Kenya Wanted to Forget
Brief Summary
This book is a must read by all Kenyans, particularly those born after 1963. No nationalist, dynamic, intelligent and patriotic leader who can be compared to the late Thomas Joseph Mboya anywhere in Eastern Africa today.
He did so much for Kenya during his short life on the earth. From Trade Unions to fighting for Kenya’s Independence from the British Colonial Rule. The assassin’s bullet ended his life at 39 years of age, but ordinary Kenyans will not FORGET him!
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Thus Bad Begins
Brief Summary
Standing in a corridor, watching a shadowy figure pleading with another through a closed door: Javier MarÃas’s novels are as intimate as they are weird and fascinating.
And Thus Bad Begins is an intimate book, based in a single Madrid apartment where Juan de Vere works for film director Eduardo Muriel as an assistant-dogsbody. Juan’s clear on his place in the pecking order: "There’s nothing original about me”, he says.
Juan is a very junior bystander, simply watching, as it becomes clear that something catastrophic has happened in his boss’s marriage to the beautiful Beatriz. But what?
MarÃas often makes use of an apparently dull narrator to tell an increasingly extraordinary story (from the race-track loiterer of the 1992 short "Broken Binoculars”, to the café-going voyeur of 2013’s The Infatuations).
ISBN:9781101946084
Author:Javier MarÃas
Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus
Brief Summary
Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity
Capital in the Twenty-First Century meets The Second Machine Age in this stunning and optimistic tour de force on the promise and peril of the digital economy, from one of the most brilliant social critics of our time.
Digital technology was supposed to usher in a new age of endless prosperity, but so far it has been used to put industrial capitalism on steroids, making it harder for people and businesses to keep up. Social networks surrender their original missions to more immediately profitable data mining, while brokerage houses abandon value investing for algorithms that drain markets and our 401ks alike--all tactics driven by the need to stoke growth by any means necessary. Instead of taking this opportunity to reprogram our economy for sustainability, we have doubled down on growth as its core command. We have reached the limits of this approach. We must escape the growth trap, once and for all.
Media scholar and technology author Douglas Rushkoff--one of today's most original and influential thinkers--argues for a new economic program that utilizes the unique distributive power of the internet while breaking free of the winner-take-all system the growth trap leaves in its wake. Drawing on sources both contemporary and historical, Rushkoff pioneers a new understanding of the old economic paradigm, from central currency to debt to corporations and labor.
Most importantly, he offers a series of practical steps for businesses, consumers, investors, and policymakers to remake the economic operating system from the inside out--and prosper along the way. Instead of boycotting Wal-Mart or overtaxing the wealthy, we simply implement strategies that foster the creation of value by stakeholders other than just ourselves. From our currency to our labor to the corporation, every aspect of the economy can be reprogrammed with minimal disruption to create a more equitably distributed prosperity for all.
Inspiring and challenging, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus provides a pragmatic, optimistic, and human-centered model for economic progress in the digital age.
ISBN:9781617230172
Author:Douglas Rushkoff
