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No Place to Hide
Brief Summary
No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State
No Place to Hide is a groundbreaking look at the NSA surveillance scandal, from the reporter who broke the story
Investigative reporter for The Guardian and bestselling author Glenn Greenwald, provides an in-depth look into the NSA scandal that has triggered a national debate over national security and information privacy.
With further revelations from documents entrusted to Glenn Greenwald by Edward Snowden himself, this book explores the extraordinary cooperation between private industry and the NSA, and the far-reaching consequences of the government’s surveillance program, both domestically and abroad.
ISBN:9781627790734
Author:Glenn Greenwald
Private Empire ExxonMobil and America...
Brief Summary
In Private Empire Steve Coll investigates the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States, revealing the true extent of its power. ExxonMobil’s annual revenues are larger than the economic activity in the great majority of countries. In many of the countries where it conducts business, ExxonMobil’s sway over politics and security is greater than that of the United States embassy. In Washington, ExxonMobil spends more money lobbying Congress and the White House than almost any other corporation. Yet despite its outsized influence, it is a black box.
Private Empire pulls back the curtain, tracking the corporation’s recent history and its central role on the world stage, beginning with the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 and leading to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The action spans the globe, moving from Moscow, to impoverished African capitals, Indonesia, and elsewhere in heart-stopping scenes that feature kidnapping cases, civil wars, and high-stakes struggles at the Kremlin. At home, Coll goes inside ExxonMobil’s K Street office and corporation headquarters in Irving, Texas, where top executives in the "God Pod” (as employees call it) oversee an extraordinary corporate culture of discipline and secrecy.
The narrative is driven by larger than life characters, including corporate legend Lee "Iron Ass” Raymond, ExxonMobil’s chief executive until 2005. A close friend of Dick Cheney’s, Raymond was both the most successful and effective oil executive of his era and an unabashed skeptic about climate change and government regulation.. This position proved difficult to maintain in the face of new science and political change and Raymond’s successor, current ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, broke with Raymond’s programs in an effort to reset ExxonMobil’s public image. The larger cast includes countless world leaders, plutocrats, dictators, guerrillas, and corporate scientists who are part of ExxonMobil’s colossal story.
The first hard-hitting examination of ExxonMobil, Private Empire is the masterful result of Coll’s indefatigable reporting. He draws here on more than four hundred interviews; field reporting from the halls of Congress to the oil-laden swamps of the Niger Delta; more than one thousand pages of previously classified U.S. documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act; heretofore unexamined court records; and many other sources. A penetrating, newsbreaking study, Private Empire is a defining portrait of ExxonMobil and the place of Big Oil in American politics and foreign policy.
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ISBN:9781594203350
Author:Steve Coll
Making Sense of the Central African R...
Brief Summary
Despite its position at the center of a tumultuous region that has drawn substantial international attention and intervention over the decades, the Central African Republic is often overlooked when discussions turn to questions of postcolonial development, democracy, and change in Africa.
This book seeks to remedy that oversight, bringing together the foremost experts on the Central African Republic to offer the first in-depth analysis of the nation’s recent history of rebellion and instability.
Gathering contributions from nearly every scholar and international policy maker who has written on the Central African Republic in recent years, the book presents a close look at the two major coups of the past twenty years, the successes and failures of attempts at international intervention, the ongoing series of UN and regional peacekeeping efforts, and the potential for peaceful, democratic change in the nation’s future.
ISBN:9781783603794
Author:Tatiana Carayannis and Louisa Lombard
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
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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ISBN:9781844806201
Author:Elaine White and Jane Goldsbro
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 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.
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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 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.
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ISBN:9780670923212
Author:Nicholas Lovell
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.
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ISBN:9780544227224
Author:David Gelles
Leadership Transformed How Ordinary M...
Brief Summary
Leadership Transformed: How Ordinary Managers Become Extraordinary Leaders
How does a good manager become a great leader? Ask around in business circles and you’ll get a thousand different answers. But now, internationally renowned leadership expert Dr. Peter Fuda has created a single, coherent roadmap for leadership effectiveness in Leadership Transformed.
After more than a decade’s research and practice, Dr. Fuda shares the seven common themes that have enabled hundreds of CEOs around the world to transform themselves into highly effective leaders, and transform the performance of their organizations as well. Through his work, Dr. Fuda discovered that the best way to elicit deep and broad discussion of the seven leadership themes—and to describe the CEOs’ mastery of what they had learned—was through metaphor.
• Fire—motivational forces that initiate and sustain transformation efforts.
• Snowball—mutual accountability, and the consequent momentum that occurs when a critical mass of leaders commit to shared leadership principles.
• Master Chef—leadership frameworks, tools, and strategies that can be "artfully” deployed.
• Coach—how a "coaching staff” can collectively help leaders achieve their aspirations.
• Mask—leaders can shed the heavy burden of wearing a mask in favor of a more congruent "best self.”
• Movie—leaders can develop critical capabilities of self-awareness and reflection.
Russian Dolls—how a leader’s personal journey can align with the journeys of his or her colleagues and organization.
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ISBN:9781477850565
Author:Peter Fuda
From Silk to Silicon by Jeffrey E Garten
Brief Summary
From Silk to Silicon: The Story of Globalization through Ten Extraordinary Lives
The story of globalization, the most powerful force in history, as told through the life and times of ten people who changed the world by their singular, spectacular accomplishments.
This is the first book to look at the history of globalization through the lens of individuals who did something transformative, as opposed to describing globalization through trends, policies, or particular industries. From Silk to Silicon tells the story of who these men and women were, what they did, how they did it and how their achievements continue to shape our world today. They include:
• Genghis Khan, who united east and west by conquest and by opening new trade routes built on groundbreaking transportation, communications, and management innovations.
• Mayer Amschel Rothschild, who arose from an oppressive Jewish ghetto to establish the most powerful bank the world has seen, and ushered in an era of global finance.
• Cyrus Field, who became the father of global communications by leading the effort to build the transatlantic telegraph, the forerunner to global radio, TV, and the worldwide Internet.
• Margaret Thatcher, whose controversial policies opened the gusher of substantially free markets that linked economies across borders.
• Andy Grove, a Hungarian refugee from the Nazis who built the company—Intel—that figured out how to manufacture complex computer chips on a mass, commercial scale and laid the foundation for Silicon Valley’s computer revolution.
Through these stories Jeffrey E. Garten finds the common links between these figure and probes critical questions including: How much influence can any one person have in fundamentally changing the world? And how have past trends in globalization affected the present and how will they shape the future? From Silk to Silicon is an essential book to understanding the past—and the future—of the most powerful force of our times.
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ISBN:9780062409973
Author:Jeffrey E. Garten
Family Enterprises The Essentials
Brief Summary
Family firms are to be found in every sector of commercial activity. Commitment, family values and pride in the business are typically their special strengths, yet they also face major challenges in reconciling the needs of the business with those of the family.
Drawing on the author's extensive experience of working with and advising some of the world's most successful business families, this new and updated edition of Family Enterprises: The Essentials explains the pitfalls, tensions and competing demands that destroy too many family businesses.
These problems can be avoided, and Peter Leach reveals the techniques and strategies needed to do so. Running a successful family business is always a huge challenge, but this book offers real insight and guidance on how to keep both business and family united and buoyant.
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ISBN:9781781255483
Author:Peter Leach
Credibility How Leaders Gain and Lose It
Brief Summary
Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It
"Leadership is personal. It's not about the corporation, the community, or the country. It's about you. If people don't believe in the messenger, they won't believe the message. If people don't believe in you, they won't believe in what you say. And if it's about you, then it's about your beliefs, your values, and your principles."-- From Credibility
In this best-selling book, Kouzes and Posner (authors of The Leadership Challenge), explain why leadership is above all a relationship, with credibility as the cornerstone. They provide rich examples of real managers in action and reveal the six key disciplines and related practices that strengthen a leader's capacity for developing and sustaining credibility. Kouzes and Posner show how leaders can encourage greater initiative, risk-taking, and productivity by demonstrating trust in employees and resolving conflicts on the basis of principles, not positions.
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ISBN:9780787964641
Author:James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner