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Fifty Things that Made the Modern Eco...
Brief Summary
Who thought up paper money? How did the contraceptive pill change the face of the legal profession? Why was the horse collar as important for human progress as the steam engine? How did the humble spreadsheet turn the world of finance upside-down?
The world economy defies comprehension. A continuously-changing system of immense complexity, it offers over ten billion distinct products and services, doubles in size every fifteen years, and links almost every one of the planet's seven billion people.
It delivers astonishing luxury to hundreds of millions. It also leaves hundreds of millions behind, puts tremendous strains on the ecosystem, and has an alarming habit of stalling. Nobody is in charge of it. Indeed, no individual understands more than a fraction of what's going on.
How can we make sense of this bewildering system on which our lives depend?
From the tally-stick to Bitcoin, the canal lock to the jumbo jet, each invention in Tim Harford's fascinating new book has its own curious, surprising and memorable story, a vignette against a grand backdrop. Step by step, readers will start to understand where we are, how we got here, and where we might be going next.
Hidden connections will be laid bare: how the barcode undermined family corner shops; why the gramophone widened inequality; how barbed wire shaped America. We'll meet the characters who developed some of these inventions, profited from them, or were ruined by them. We'll trace the economic principles that help to explain their transformative effects. And we'll ask what lessons we can learn to make wise use of future inventions, in a world where the pace of innovation will only accelerate.
ISBN:9781408709115
Author:Tim Harford
The Girls Guide to Being a Boss Witho...
Brief summary
The Girl's Guide to Being a Boss (Without Being a Bitch): Valuable Lessons, Smart Suggestions, and True Stories for Succeeding as the Chick-in-Charge.
As women, we haven’t always had the best role models at work. We’ve either worked for men or we’ve had female bosses who are, well, big bitches. Woman still don’t have much of a road map right now when it comes to taking charge at the office, so the team who brought you the national bestseller The Girl’s Guide to Starting Your Own Business is drawing one for us.
Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio will teach you to be powerful without being possessive, to be opinionated without being brassy, and to have a strong voice without micromanaging. You’ll learn just how to own the role of queen bee in a positive way so that you can be more mentor than manager, one who leads, inspires, and motivates.
So, you finally got that promotion. You’re the boss now. The supervisor. The manager. The captain. The taskmaster. Those days of taking orders, running errands, and clock-watching are over. As exciting as all this might seem, once the rush of the promotion is over, you might be scratching your head wondering exactly what to do.
Being the boss is never easy, but it's twice as hard for a woman. It seems like there's no middle ground. Either you're the dragon lady who rules with an iron fist or the mousey girl who gets drowned out at every meeting. When a woman wields authority and dares to make tough decisions, how often is the "B-word" bandied about by her employees? How can she strike that balance between pushover and dictator?
Fear not. You can do the job. All you need is a little helpful advice to send you on your way. Whether you supervise two as a shift manager or lord over an entire corporate empire, Caitlin Friedman and Kim Yorio will show you how to step gracefully into your new position of power. They’ll teach you how to motivate your team without alienating them, how to delegate without feeling guilty, how to deal with office politics and how to handle evaluations, promotions, and even firings. And for those of you who are already running the show, they can help you become the mentor your employees deserve.
Inside, there are self-assessment questionnaires to help you find out where you land on the bitch or wimp scale; interviews with prominent female bosses, human-resources directors, and therapists; and advice from a whole host of experts. In addition, there are funny and informative checklists and tips to make sure you’re the Good Witch around the office and not the Big Bitch.And, most important, Caitlin and Kim will teach you the secrets to owning your role and loving it. You’ve earned your promotion, so enjoy it!
ISBN:9780767922852
Author:Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio
Rat Roads One Mans Incredible Journey
Brief summary
In this extraordinary book, celebrated journalist Jacques Pauw gives a human face to some of the most tumultuous events in recent African history. Rat Roads chronicles the remarkable journey of Kennedy Gihana, a young Tutsi man who fought against the genocidaires in Rwanda, but was part of an army that committed horrifying atrocities in Africa’s bloodiest conflict.
Seeking education instead of war, he walked thousands of kilometers to South Africa, where he slept in parks, lived on the street and worked as a low-paid security guard until he had saved enough money to enroll for a law degree. In 2011 he took the podium at the University of Pretoria to receive a master’s degree in international law.
Rat Roads combines many strands of life in Africa. Besides being the chronicle of one man’s incredible journey, it addresses issues such as civil conflict, xenophobia and the plight of refugees. It also explores the nature of war crimes and guilt, and gives insight into present-day Rwanda, showing how one tyranny has replaced another.
Rat Roads is a searing story of hardship and survival, and an unforgettable tale of courage and triumph.
ISBN:9781770223370
Author:Jacques Pauw
The Bonfire of the Vanities
Brief Summary
Tom Wolfe's modern American satire tells the story of Sherman McCoy, a Wall Street "Master of the Universe" who has it all - a Park Avenue apartment, a job that brings wealth, power and prestige, a beautiful wife, an even more beautiful mistress.
Suddenly, one wrong turn makes it all go wrong, and Sherman spirals downward in a sudden fall from grace that sucks him into the ravenous heart of a New York City gone mad during the go-go, racially turbulent, socially hilarious 1980s.
ISBN:9780553381344
Author:Tom Wolfe
Another World is Possible
Brief Summary
Another World Is Possible: World Social Forum Proposals for an Alternative Globalization.
In 2001 the first World Social Forum was held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The meeting was viewed by many at the time as a new manifestation of the global Left, a people's opposition to the World Economic Forum that stood as the first real front to global capitalism since the collapse of the Soviet Union. While many activists and intellectuals on the left have since become deeply critical of the Forum, newer movements, such as Occupy, the Arab Spring and the indignados, have built upon its successes and innovations.
Another World is Possible is the original collection of essays and demands from the heart of the ‘movement of movements’. Based on the work of the first two annual meetings of the WSF, this classic collection not only set out the initial aims of the movements that came together, it also paved the way for the theoretical study of new social movements, their multiple and participatory character. Today, as many crises affect all our lives, it is time to revisit the original demands of a global solidarity movement, united in its determination to fight against the concentration of wealth, the proliferation of poverty and inequalities, and the destruction of our earth, and to reconstitute a global left.
ISBN:9781783605170
Author:William F. Fisher and Thomas Ponniah
Around the Way Girl A Memoir by Taraj...
Brief Summary
From Academy Award nominee, Golden Globe winner, and star of the new motion picture Hidden Figures, Taraji P. Henson, comes an inspiring and funny book about family, friends, the hustle required to make it from DC to Hollywood, and the joy of living in your own truth.
With a sensibility that recalls her beloved screen characters, including NASA physicist mathematician Katherine G. Johnson, Yvette, Queenie, Shug, and the iconic Cookie from Empire, yet is all Taraji, the screen actress writes of her family, the one she was born into and the one she created. She shares stories of her father, a Vietnam vet who was bowed but never broken by life's challenges, and of her mother who survived violence both in the home and on DC's volatile streets. Here too she opens up about her experiences as a single mother, a journey some saw as a burden but which she saw as a gift.
Around the Way Girl is also a classic actor’s memoir in which Taraji reflects on the world-class instruction she received at Howard University and the pitfalls that come with being a black actress. With laugh-out-loud humor and candor, she shares the challenges and disappointments of the actor’s journey and shows us that behind the red carpet moments, she is ever authentic. She is at heart just a girl in pursuit of her dreams.
ISBN:9781501125997
Author:Taraji P. Henson
Brave Rose McGowan
Brief Summary
My life, as you will read, has taken me from one cult to another. Braveis the story of how I fought my way out of these cults and reclaimed my life. I want to help you do the same.-Rose McGowan
A revealing memoir and empowering manifesto – A voice for generations.
Rose McGowan was born in one cult and came of age in another, more visible cult: Hollywood.
In a strange world where she was continually on display, stardom soon became a personal nightmare of constant exposure and sexualization. Rose escaped into the world of her mind, something she had done as a child, and into high-profile relationships. Every detail of her personal life became public, and the realities of an inherently sexist industry emerged with every script, role, public appearance, and magazine cover. The Hollywood machine packaged her as a sexualized bombshell, hijacking her image and identity and marketing them for profit.
Hollywood expected Rose to be silent and cooperative and to stay the path. Instead, she rebelled and asserted her true identity and voice. She reemerged unscripted, courageous, victorious, angry, smart, fierce, unapologetic, controversial, and real as f*ck.
Brave is her raw, honest, and poignant memoir/manifesto—a no-holds-barred, pull-no-punches account of the rise of a millennial icon, fearless activist, and unstoppable force for change who is determined to expose the truth about the entertainment industry, dismantle the concept of fame, shine a light on a multibillion-dollar business built on systemic misogyny, and empower people everywhere to wake up and be Brave.
ISBN:9780062655998
Author:Rose McGowan
This Is Just My Face Try Not to Stare
Brief Summary
The Oscar-nominated Precious star and Empire actress delivers a much-awaited memoir—wise, complex, smart, funny—that is different from anything we’ve read
Gabourey Sidibe—"Gabby” to her legion of fans—skyrocketed to international fame in 2009 when she played the leading role in Lee Daniels’s acclaimed movie Precious. In This is Just My Face, she shares a one-of-a-kind life story in a voice as fresh and challenging as many of the unique characters she’s played onscreen.
With full-throttle honesty, Sidibe paints her Bed-Stuy/Harlem family life with a polygamous father and a gifted mother who supports her two children by singing in the subway. Sidibe tells the engrossing, inspiring story of her first job as a phone sex "talker.” And she shares her unconventional (of course!) rise to fame as a movie star, alongside "a superstar cast of rich people who lived in mansions and had their own private islands and amazing careers while I lived in my mom's apartment.”
Sidibe’s memoir hits hard with self-knowing dispatches on friendship, depression, celebrity, haters, fashion, race, and weight ("If I could just get the world to see me the way I see myself,” she writes, "would my body still be a thing you walked away thinking about?”). Irreverent, hilarious, and untraditional, This Is Just My Face takes its place and fills a void on the shelf of writers from Mindy Kaling to David Sedaris to Lena Dunham.
ISBN:9780544786769
Author:Gabourey Sidibe
Lovers and Players
Brief Summary
Dangerous sex, family secrets, irresistible power, mega money, and two murders equal one reckless week in New York...
In Lovers & Players, the Diamond family rules. Red Diamond is an abusive and much-loathed billionaire. His three sons, Max, Chris, and Jett, are summoned to New York for a family meeting which rocks their world.
Diahann, a beautiful black ex-singer, works as Red's housekeeper-a job her daughter, Liberty, does not approve of. A waitress and would-be singer herself, Liberty has dreams of her own and while she pursues them, Damon P. Donnell, married hip-hop mogul supreme, pursues her.
Young New York heiress Amy Scott-Simon is engaged to marry Max. At her bachelorette party she runs into Jett. Jett has no idea who Amy is. She also doesn't realize who he is. A one-night fling leads to major complications.
Now the lives of these characters will intertwine, forever changing their destinies, in this highly charged love story about family relationships and deadly choices.
ISBN:9780312937089
Author:Jackie Collins
Business Icons Who Changed the World
Brief Summary
Business icons, moguls, tycoons - the people who create and master industries, bringing them to their fullest fruition - are usually many different things to different people. To some they are exemplars and saints who show us that democratic capitalism creates innovation and economic well-being.
To others, they are villains and demonstrate all that is wrong in a system that tolerates and even seemingly encourages economic disparity between the top and bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder.
Business Leaders Who Changed the World presents 11 entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and mavericks whose influence extends beyond business into society at large. From Michael Dell to Ben and Jerry, Bill Gates to Lee Iacocca, Business Leaders Who Changed the World offers in-depth profiles of the business leaders whose names and products have become household words. Each profile includes discussion of the subject's background, career, accomplishments, supporters and detractors, and lasting influence.
ISBN:9788184950977
Author:Kateri Drexler
The Truth About Employee Engagement
Brief Summary
The Truth about Employee Engagement: A Fable about Addressing the Three Root Causes of Job Misery.
In his sixth fable, bestselling author Patrick Lencioni takes on a topic that almost everyone can relate to: job misery. Millions of workers, even those who have carefully chosen careers based on true passions and interests, dread going to work, suffering each day as they trudge to jobs that make them cynical, weary, and frustrated. It is a simple fact of business life that any job, from investment banker to dishwasher, can become miserable.
Through the story of a CEO turned pizzeria manager, Lencioni reveals the three elements that make work miserable -- irrelevance, immeasurability, and anonymity -- and gives managers and their employees the keys to make any job more engaging.
As with all of Lencioni’s books, this one is filled with actionable advice you can put into effect immediately. In addition to the fable, the book includes a detailed model examining the three root causes of job misery and how they can be remedied. It covers the benefits of managing for job engagement within organizations -- increased productivity, greater retention, and competitive advantage -- and offers examples of how managers can use the applications in the book to deal with specific jobs and situations.
Patrick Lencioni is President of The Table Group, a management consulting firm specializing in executive team development and organizational health. As a consultant and keynote speaker, he has worked with thousands of senior executives and executive teams in organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to high-tech startups to universities and nonprofits.
His clients include. AT&T, Direct TV, JCPenney, Microsoft, Nestle, Northwestern Mutual, Southwest Airlines and St. Jude Chilren’s Research Hospital. Lencioni is the author of ten bestselling books, including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Advantage. He previously worked for Oracle, Sybase, and the management consulting firm Bain & Company.
ISBN:9781119237983
Author:Patrick Lencioni
Drop the Ball Achieving More by Doing...
Brief Summary
A bold and inspiring memoir and manifesto from a renowned voice in the women's leadership movement who shows women how to cultivate the single skill they really need in order to thrive: the ability to let go.
Once the poster girl for doing it all, after she had her first child, Tiffany Dufu struggled to accomplish everything she thought she needed to in order to succeed. Like so many driven and talented women who have been brought up to believe that to have it all, they must do it all, Dufu began to feel that achieving her career and personal goals was an impossibility. Eventually, she discovered the solution: letting go. In Drop the Ball, Dufu recounts how she learned to reevaluate expectations, shrink her to-do list, and meaningfully engage the assistance of others--freeing the space she needed to flourish at work and to develop deeper, more meaningful relationships at home.
Even though women are half the workforce, they still represent only eighteen per cent of the highest level leaders. The reasons are obvious: just as women reach middle management they are also starting families. Mounting responsibilities at work and home leave them with no bandwidth to do what will most lead to their success. Offering new perspective on why the women's leadership movement has stalled, and packed with actionable advice, Tiffany Dufu's Drop the Ball urges women to embrace imperfection, to expect less of themselves and more from others--only then can they focus on what they truly care about, devote the necessary energy to achieving their real goals, and create the type of rich, rewarding life we all desire.
Leading the Revolution How to Thrive ...
Brief Summary
Leading the Revolution: How to Thrive in Turbulent Times by Making Innovation a Way of Life.
One of the world's preeminent business thinkers and co-author of the bestseller, competing for the Future, Gary Hamel has helped set the management agenda for three decades. Now, he brings us into the twenty-first century with leading the Revolution, which spent time on The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Business Week bestseller lists, among others.
Hamel lays out an innovative action plan for any company or individual intent on becoming—and staying—an industry revolutionary, for years to come. By drawing on the success of "gray haired revolutionaries" like Charles Schwab, Virgin, and GE Capital—companies that are always thinking ahead of the game and growing in new directions—and profiling individuals such as Ken Kutaragi, one of the pioneers of Sony Playstation, Hamel explains how companies can continue to grow, innovate, and achieve success, even in a chaotic world market. With insight culled from years of experience, Hamel:
• Explores where revolutionary new business concepts come from
• Identifies the key design criteria for building companies that are activist-friendly and revolution-ready
• Shows how to avoid becoming "one-vision wonders"
• Demonstrates how to harness the imagination of every employee
• Explains how to develop new financial measures that focus on creating new wealth
Packed with practical advice, Leading the Revolution is an accessible read, perfect for both businesses and individuals that don't want to get caught in the slow lane in the race for success in the twenty-first century.
ISBN:9780452283244
Author:Gary Hamel
Conversational Intelligence
Brief Summary
Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results.
The key to success in life and business is to become a master at Conversational Intelligence. It’s not about how smart you are, but how open you are to learn new and effective powerful conversational rituals that prime the brain for trust, partnership, and mutual success. Conversational Intelligence translates the wealth of new insights coming out of neuroscience from across the globe, and brings the science down to earth so people can understand and apply it in their everyday lives.
Author Judith Glaser presents a framework for knowing what kind of conversations trigger the lower, more primitive brain; and what activates higher-level intelligences such as trust, integrity, empathy, and good judgment. Conversational Intelligence makes complex scientific material simple to understand and apply through a wealth of easy to use tools, examples, conversational rituals, and practices for all levels of an organization.
ISBN:9781937134679
Author:Judith E. Glaser
Designed for Success
Brief Summary
Designed For Success: The 10 Commandments for Women in the Workplace
How to step up, step out, and break through at work
Discover how to make the most of your career opportunities and perform your job with passion and excellence. Tapping into more than a decade of experience talking to, listening to, and helping women navigate their careers, Dondi Scumaci teaches you—step-by-step—how to:
• Gain the confidence you need to fully engage at work
• Communicate actively, but without aggression
• Negotiate instead of just accepting
• Update, upgrade, and develop yourself
• Think strategically and market your results in quantifiable ways
• Never settle for less than you were designed for
ISBN:9781599792378
Author:Dondi Scumaci
The Female Brand Using the Female Min...
Brief Summary
The Female Brand: Using the Female Mindset to Succeed in Business.
Women make up 51 per cent of the workforce, but only a tiny two per cent are Fortune 500 CEOs. Which begs the question: why do talented women have trouble succeeding in business? Catherine Kaputa provides the answer in this how-to and how-to-think guide for women who want to maximize their potential.
The real world rewards perception as well as talent and hard work. That's why the author believes the most important application for branding is not for products, places and companies, but for individuals. To succeed beyond the mid-level in corporations, women must build a successful career identity-- a brand-- one that's authentic, focused and relevant.
Drawing on the latest findings of experts in fields of brain science and gender research, Kaputa shows women how to build a brand around their personal strengths and their aptitude as women.
This inspirational guide will help any woman come away motivated and with a clear perspective on how to create more confidence, happiness and career success.
ISBN:9780891062844
Author:Catherine Kaputa
Driving Down Cost How to Manage
Brief Summary
Driving Down Cost: How to Manage and Cut Costs-Intelligently
With chaos in the markets and a worldwide recession on the horizon, Driving down Cost: How to Manage and Cut Costs- Intelligently could not be timelier. Cost management is not just for downturns; it should be practiced at all times.
Further, it's not an issue that concerns only CEOs and those involved in the behind-the-scenes functions of finance, production control and customer call centers-cost management is an important issue for every manager and executive, at every level in every company, large or small, public or private.
Driving down Cost is the first accessible and practical book to address cost management for managers across the board.
ISBN:9781857885125
Author:Andrew Wileman
Fools and Other Stories
Brief Summary
These stories from the closing days of apartheid rule in South Africa won the Noma Award, Africa's highest literary award, and announced Njabulo Ndebele as an assured and impressive literary voice. He has gone on to become one of the most powerful voices for cultural freedom on the whole of the African continent today.
Ndebele evokes township life with humor and subtlety, rejecting the image of black South Africans as victims and focusing on the complexity and fierce energy of their lives. "Our literature," says Ndebele, "ought to seek to move away from an easy preoccupation with demonstrating the obvious existence of oppression. It exists. The task is to explore how and why people can survive under such harsh conditions." About Njabulo Ndebele: now Chancellor of Witwatersrand University in South Africa. Ndebele began publishing these stories from exile in Lesotho during the 1980s.
Ndebele is now recognized as a major voice in South Africa's cultural life. This is his only fiction collection available in Europe or North America. Ndebele's stories first began appearing in Staffrider magazine, an innovative publishing venture linked to the Soweto branch of South African PEN. Founded after the bloody Soweto riots of the mid-1970s, the magazine took as its symbol the staffriders, un-ticketed commuters from the black townships who every day clung onto or balanced on top of buses and trains to get into the cities to work. Staffrider magazine, and in particular Ndebele's stories, helped define a new tone in black South African literature that went beyond and finally overcame apartheid.
ISBN:9780930523206
Author:Njabulo S. Ndebele
Your Erroneous Zones: Step-by-Step Ad...
If you're plagued by guilt or worry and find yourself unwittingly falling into the same old self-destructive patterns, then you have "erroneous zones" – whole facets of your approach to life that act as barriers to your success and happiness.
Perhaps you believe that you have no control over your feelings and reactions – Dyer shows how you can take charge of yourself and manage how much you will let difficult times and people affect you. Or maybe you spend more time worrying what others think than working on what you want and need – Dyer points the way to true self-reliance. From self-image problems to over-dependence on others, Dyer gives you the tools you need to break free from negative thinking and enjoy life to the fullest.
How I Changed My Mind About Women In ...
Brief Summary
This book features a number of autobiographical accounts as to how various persons have come to change their minds about women in leadership.
Well-known Evangelical leaders?individuals and couples, males and females from a broad range of denominational affiliation and ethnic diversity?share their surprising journeys from a more or less restrictive view to an open inclusive view that recognizes a full shared partnership of leadership in the home and in the church based on gifts not gender.
How I Changed My Mind About Women in Leadership offers a positive vision for the future of women and men together as partners of equal worth without competitiveness in the work of equipping this and the next generation of Christian disciples for the ‘work of ministry’ and service in the Kingdom of God.
ISBN:9780310293156
Author:Alan F. Johnson