Search results for ""PublicAffairs""

In May 1923, when Shanghai publisher and reporter John Benjamin Powell bought a first-class ticket for the Peking Express, he pictured an idyllic overnight journey on a brand-new train of unprecedented luxury-exactly what the advertisements promised. Seeing his fellow passengers, including mysterious Italian lawyer Giuseppe Musso, a confidante of Mussolini and lawyer for the opium trade, and American heiress Lucy Aldrich, sister-in-law of John D. Rockefeller Jr., he knew it would be an unforgettable trip.Charismatic bandit leader and populist rabble rouser Sun Mei-yao had also taken notice of the new train from Shanghai to Peking. On the night of Powell's trip of a lifetime, Sun launched his plan to make a brazen political statement: he and a thousand fellow bandits descended on the train, capturing dozens of hostages.Aided by local proxy authorities, the humiliated Peking government soon furiously gave chase. At the bandits' mountain stronghold, a five-week siege began.Brilliantly written, with new and original research, The Peking Express tells the incredible true story of a clash that shocked the world-becoming so celebrated it inspired several Hollywood movies-and set the course for China's two-decade civil war.

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Jews in America are in a period of unprecedented status and impact, but for many their identity as Jews--religiously, historically, culturally--is increasingly complicated. Many are becoming Jews without Judaism. It appears success and acceptance will accomplish what even the most virulent anti-Semitism never could---if not the disappearance of Jews themselves, the undermining of what it means to be Jewish.In this thoughtful, personal, deeply-reasoned book, Robert Mnookin explores the conundrums of Jewish identity, faith and community in America by delving deep into Jewish history, law, and custom. He talks to rabbis, scholars, and other Jews of many perspectives to explore the head, heart, and heritage of Judaism and confronts key challenges in the Jewish debate from the issue of intermarriage to the matter of Israeli policies.Mnookin shares provocative stories of the ways American Jews have forged (or disavowed) their Jewish identity over the past half-century, including his own to answer the standing question: How can Jews who have different values, perspectives, and relationships with their faith, keep the community open, vibrant, and thriving?

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The European Union could soon be a thing of the past. Xenophobia is rampant and commonly reflected in elections across the continent. Great Britain may hold a referendum on whether to abandon the union altogether. Spurred by anti-EU sentiments due to the euro crisis, national interests conflict with a shared vision for the future of Europe. Is it too late to preserve the union that generated unprecedented peace for more than half a century?This is no mere academic question with limited importance for America and the rest of the world. In the past decade, the EU has declined from a unified global power to a fractious confederation of states with staggering unemployment resentfully seeking relief from a reluctant Germany. If the EU collapses and the former member states are transformed again from partners into rivals, the US and the world will confront the serious economic and political consequences that follow.In a series of revealing interviews conducted by Dr. Gregor Peter Schmitz, George Soros -- a man of vast European experience whose personal past informs his present concerns -- offers trenchant commentary and concise, prescriptive advice: The euro crisis was not an inevitable consequence of integration, but a result of avoidable mistakes in politics, economics, and finance; and excessive faith in the self-regulating financial markets that Soros calls market fundamentalism inspired flawed institutional structures that call out for reform. Despite the considerable perils of this period, George Soros maintains his faith in the European Union as a model of open society. This book is a testament to his vision for a peaceful and productive Europe.

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Tower of Basel is the first investigative history of the world's most secretive global financial institution. Based on extensive archival research in Switzerland, Britain, and the United States, and in-depth interviews with key decision-makers,including Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England and former senior Bank for International Settlements managers and officials,Tower of Basel tells the inside story of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS): the central bankers' own bank.Created by the governors of the Bank of England and the Reichsbank in 1930, and protected by an international treaty, the BIS and its assets are legally beyond the reach of any government or jurisdiction. The bank is untouchable. Swiss authorities have no jurisdiction over the bank or its premises. The BIS has just 140 customers but made tax-free profits of 1.17 billion in 2011-2012.Since its creation, the bank has been at the heart of global events but has often gone unnoticed. Under Thomas McKittrick, the bank's American president from 1940-1946, the BIS was open for business throughout the Second World War. The BIS accepted looted Nazi gold, conducted foreign exchange deals for the Reichsbank, and was used by both the Allies and the Axis powers as a secret contact point to keep the channels of international finance open.After 1945 the BIS,still behind the scenes,for decades provided the necessary technical and administrative support for the trans-European currency project, from the first attempts to harmonize exchange rates in the late 1940s to the launch of the Euro in 2002. It now stands at the centre of efforts to build a new global financial and regulatory architecture, once again proving that it has the power to shape the financial rules of our world. Yet despite its pivotal role in the financial and political history of the last century and during the economic current crisis, the BIS has remained largely unknown,until now.

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This substantially updated edition of the Business Week bestseller and an Economist Best Book of the year" tells the story of the secretive billionaire-turned-philanthropist, who is determined to give away his fortune before he dies.Chuck Feeney was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to a blue-collar Irish-American family during the Depression. After service in the Korean War, he made a fortune as founder of Duty Free Shoppers, the world's largest duty-free retail chain. By 1988, he was hailed by Forbes Magazine as the twenty-fourth richest American alive. But secretly Feeney had already transferred all his wealth to his foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies. Only in 1997 when he sold his duty free interests, was he outed" as one of the greatest and most mysterious American philanthropists in modern times. After going underground" again, he emerged in 2005 to cooperate on a biography promoting giving while living. Now in his mid-seventies, Feeney is determined his foundation should spend down the remaining 4 billion in his lifetime.

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How the autonomous digital forces jolting our lives - as uncontrollable as the weather and plate tectonics - are transforming life, society, culture, and politics.David Auerbach's exploration of the phenomenon he has identified as the meganet begins with a simple, startling revelation: There is no hand on the tiller of some of the largest global digital forces that influence our daily lives: from corporate sites such as Facebook, Amazon, Google, YouTube, Instagram, and Reddit to the burgeoning metaverse encompassing cryptocurrencies and online gaming to government systems such as China's Social Credit System and India's Aadhaar.As we increasingly integrate our society, culture and politics within a hyper-networked fabric, Auerbach explains how the interactions of billions of people with unfathomably large online networks have produced a new sort of beast: ever-changing systems that operate beyond the control of the individuals, companies, and governments that created them.Meganets, Auerbach explains, have a life of their own, actively resisting attempts to control them as they accumulate data and produce spontaneous, unexpected social groups and uprisings that could not have even existed twenty years ago. And they constantly modify themselves in response to user behavior, resulting in collectively authored algorithms none of us intend or control. These enormous invisible organisms exerting great force on our lives are the new minds of the world, increasingly commandeering our daily lives and inner realities.Auerbach's analysis of these gargantuan opaque digital forces yield important insights such as:- The conventional wisdom that the Googles and Facebook of this world are tightly run algorithmic entities is a myth. No one is really in control.- The efforts at reform - to get lies and misinformation off meganets - run into a brick wall because the companies and executives who run them are trapped by the persistent, evolving, and opaque systems they have created.- Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are uncontrollable and their embrace by elite financial institutions threatens the entire economy- We are asking the wrong questions in assuming that if only the Facebooks of this world could be better regulated or broken up that they would be better, more ethical citizens- Why questions such as making algorithms fair and bias-free and whether AI can be a tool for good or evil are wrong and misinformedAuerbach then comes full circle, showing that while we cannot ultimately control meganets we can tame them through the counterintuitive measures he describes in detail.

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Young women today face an uncertain job market, the pressure to ascend at all costs, and a fear of burning out. But the landscape is changing, and women are taking an assertive role in shaping our careers and lives, while investing more and more in our community of support.Bossed Up teaches you how to:* Break out of the "martyrdom mindset," and cultivate your Boss Identity by getting clear on what you really want for your career and life without apology;* Hone the self-advocacy skills necessary for success;* Understand the differences between being assertive (which is part of being a leader) and being aggressive (which is more like being a bully) - and how that clarity can transform your trajectory;* Beat burnout by identifying how the warning signs may be showing up in your life and how to prioritize bringing more rest, purpose, agency, and community to your day-to-day life;* Unpack the steps to cultivating something more than just confidence; a boss identity, which will establish your ability to be the boss of your life no matter what comes your way.Drawing from timely research, and with personal stories, and spotlights on a diverse group of women from the Bossed Up community, this book will show you how to craft a happy, healthy, and sustainable career path you'll love.

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The 2016 Election, which altered American political history, was not decided by the Russians or in Ukraine or by Steve Bannon. The event that broke Hillary's blue wall in the Midwest and swung Florida and North Carolina was an October Surprise, and it was wholly a product of the leadership of the FBI. This is the inside story by the reporter closest to its center.In September 2016, Hillary Clinton was the presumptive next president of the US. She had a blue wall of states leaning her way in the Midwest, and was ahead in North Carolina and Florida, with a better than even shot at taking normally Republican Arizona. The US was about to get its first woman president. Yet within two months everything was lost. An already tightening race saw one seismic correction: it came in October when the FBI launched an investigation into the Clinton staff's use of a private server for their emails. Clinton fell 3-4 percent in the polls instantly, and her campaign never had time to rebut the investigation or rebuild her momentum so close to election day. The FBI cost her the race.October Surprise is a pulsating narrative of an agency seized with righteous certainty that waded into the most important political moment in the life of the nation, and has no idea how to back out with dignity. So it doggedly stands its ground, compounding its error. In a momentous display of self-preservation, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and key Justice Department officials decide to protect their own reputations rather than save the democratic process. Once they make that determination, the race is lost for Clinton, who is helpless in front of their accusation even though she has not intended to commit, let alone actually committed, any crime. A dark true-life thriller with historic consequences set at the most crucial moment in the electoral calendar, October Surprise is a warning, a morality tale and a political and personal tragedy.

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The core tenets of a capitalist system that dominated the world for more than a century are being challenged as never before. Narratives about the failures of capitalism, the greed of the 1 percent, and the blindness of corporations to public need have made their mark and are driving change. These aren't the superficial cosmetic fixes that generated so much cynicism in the past, but a revolution in the way corporations are imagined and run. Tomorrow's Capitalist reveals how corporate CEOs-the ultimate pragmatists-realized that they could lose their "operating license" unless they tackle the fundamental issues of our time: climate, diversity and inclusion, and inequality and workforce opportunity. Responding to their employees and customers who are demanding corporate change, they have taken the lead in establishing the bold new principles of stakeholder capitalism, ensuring that for the first time in more than a half a century it is not just shareholders who have a say in how corporations are run.Alan Murray vividly captures the zeitgeist of the real and compelling dynamic that is transforming much of the corporate world.

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A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR "Powerful, important, and searing." -General David Petraeus, U.S. Army (ret.), former commander, U.S. Central Command, former CIA directorIn 2015, the White House claimed triumphantly "the longest war in American history is over." But for some, it was just the beginning of a new and covert war, fought far from public view, with limited resources, little governmental oversight, and contradictory orders.Take Hutch, a battle-worn Green Beret on his fifth combat tour in 2015, tasked with a high-stakes mission: lead a small band of men into Kunduz, recapture the city from the Taliban, and turn it over to the Afghan government. The U.S. role was meant to be a secret-after all, the war was over. Then, disaster struck. He called in an airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital, killing dozens of doctors and patients.Or Caleb, who stepped on a bomb during a raid on a Taliban hideout in notorious Sangin. Or Andy, trapped in Marjah with a crashed Black Hawk and no air support. From Hutch to Caleb to Andy, Eagle Down is a dramatic and intimate portrayal of this ongoing forgotten war that moves from the desperate battlegrounds in muddy Afghan villages all the way to the White House.Pulitzer Prize Finalist Jessica Donati, with big picture insight and on-the-ground grit, reveals how America came to rely on U.S. Special Forces, through successive policy directives that ramped up the war under the Obama and Trump administrations. Donati shows how the covert war failed to stabilize Afghanistan, and undermined U.S. interests both at home and abroad.Relying on Donati's daring on-the-ground reporting, first-hand accounts from Special Forces, military documents, and declassified reports, Eagle Down is an account of the heroism, sacrifice, and tragedy experienced by those that fought America's longest war.

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In 1915, two men,one a journalist agitator, the other a technically brilliant filmmaker,incited a public confrontation that roiled America, pitting black against white, Hollywood against Boston, and free speech against civil rights.Monroe Trotter and D. W. Griffith were fighting over a film that dramatized the Civil War and Reconstruction in a post-Confederate South. Griffith's film, The Birth of a Nation , included actors in blackface, heroic portraits of Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and a depiction of Lincoln's assassination. Freed slaves were portrayed as villainous, vengeful, slovenly, and dangerous to the sanctity of American values. It was tremendously successful, eventually seen by 25 million Americans. But violent protests against the film flared up across the country.Almost fifty years earlier, Monroe's father, James, was a sergeant in an all-black Union regiment that marched into Charleston, South Carolina, just as the Kentucky cavalry,including Roaring Jack Griffith, D. W.'s father,fled for their lives. Monroe Trotter's titanic crusade to have the film censored became a blueprint for dissent during the 1950s and 1960s. This is the fiery story of a revolutionary moment for mass media and the nascent civil rights movement, and the men clashing over the cultural and political soul of a still-young America standing at the cusp of its greatest days.

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Antoine van Agtmael coined the term "emerging markets" and built a career and a multibillion-dollar investing firm centered on these surging economies that would, over time, supplant the West as engines of wealth and prosperity. The trend held for decades, but a few years ago van Agtmael and Alfred Bakker, a renowned European journalist, began seeing signs that the tide might be turning. For example, during a visit to an enormously successful chip company in Taiwan, the company's leaders told them that their American competitors were now eating their lunch. And Taiwan was not the only place giving them this message.Thus began a remarkable two-year journey to reassess the conventional wisdom that the United States and Europe are yesterday's story and to determine whether there something profound is happening that points the way to the creation of the next economy. In The Smartest Places on Earth, van Agtmael and Bakker present a truly hopeful and inspiring investigation into the emerging sources of a new era of competitiveness for America and Europe that are coming from unlikely places--those cities and areas once known as "rustbelts" that have, from an economic perspective, been written off. Take Akron, Ohio, whose economy for decades was dependent on industries such as tire manufacturing, a product now made cheaply elsewhere. In Akron and other such communities, a combination of forces--including visionary thinkers, government initiatives, start-ups making real products, and even big corporations--have succeeded in creating what van Agtmael and Bakker call a "brainbelt." These brainbelts depend on a collaborative work style that is unique to the societies and culture of America and Europe, since they involve levels of trust and freedom of thinking that can't be replicated elsewhere. They are producing products and technologies that are transforming industries such as vehicles and transportation, farming and food production, medical devices and health care.For several decades, American and European industry focused on cost by outsourcing production to those emerging markets that can make things cheaper. The tide has now turned toward being smart, as van Agtmael and Bakker report, and the next emerging market, may, in fact, be the West.

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In the mid-1800s, Charleston, South Carolina, embodied the combustible spirit of the slave South. No city was more fervently attached to slavery, and no city was seen by the North as a greater threat of rebellion. And so, in 1860, with Abraham Lincoln's election looming, Charleston's leaders faced a climactic decision: they could submit to abolition-or they could drive South Carolina out of the Union and hope that the rest of the South would follow.Madness Rules the Hour tells the story of how Charleston succumbed to war fever as its leaders demanded secession and its white masses joined in the uprising with a wild excitement. Through in-depth research and vibrant storytelling, Paul Starobin brings to life the city's propagandists, politicians, populists, and pro-slavery pastor to chart the relentless progress of the contagion. The result is a portrait of a culture in crisis and an insightful investigation into the folly that fractured the Union and started the Civil War-with echoes in our raucous politics today.

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Cities that stand still perish. Especially one that is supposed to never sleep.Alongside Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Dan Doctoroff led New York's dramatic economic resurgence following the September 11th terrorist attacks. The five-borough economic development strategy included the most ambitious land-use transformation in the city's modern history; the largest affordable housing program ever launched by an American city; the formation of new Central Business Districts and Industrial Business Zones; and the creation of new destinations like the Harbor District, which will link together new parkland and miles of waterfront esplanades in Lower Manhattan, Governors Island, and Brooklyn. These projects have helped lead New York to its strongest economic position in decades.During his tenure at City Hall, Doctoroff also led the creation of PlaNYC, a 127-point plan designed to make New York the first environmentally sustainable twenty-first-century city. The plan focuses on every facet of New York's physical environment--its transportation network, housing stock, land and park system, energy network, water supply, and air quality--and sets the course for a 30% reduction in global warming emissions by 2030.All of this, plus the rejuvenation of Brooklyn, the flourishing art scene around the High Line, and the signal failure to land the Olympics, took place in a city with more complicated vested interests, local tribal politics, and gigantic egos than any other. The story of the reinvention of New York is a high-octane drama with some memorable cameo performances. At the middle is Doctoroff: intense, driven, determined to save a city from a monstrous outside attack and its own worst demons.

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Christopher Award Winner Los Angeles Times Bestseller Washington Post Top 100 Books of the Year SelectionA stunning literary survival story of three young Sudanese boys, two brothers and a cousin,hailed by the Los Angeles Times as a moving, beautifully written account, by turns warm and tender."Between 1987 and 1989, Alepho, Benjamin, and Benson, like tens of thousands of young boys, took flight from the massacres of Sudan's civil war. They became known as the Lost Boys. With little more than the clothes on their backs, sometimes not even that, they streamed out over Sudan in search of refuge. Their journey led them first to Ethiopia and then, driven back into Sudan, toward Kenya. They walked nearly one thousand miles, sustained only by the sheer will to live. They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky is the three boys' account of that unimaginable journey. With the candour and the purity of their child's-eye-vision, Alephonsian, Benjamin, and Benson recall by turns: how they endured the hunger and strength-sapping illnesses,dysentery, malaria, and yellow fever how they dodged the life-threatening predators,lions, snakes, crocodiles and soldiers alike,that dogged their footsteps and how they grappled with a war that threatened continually to overwhelm them. Their story is a lyrical, captivating, timeless portrait of a childhood hurled into wartime and how they had the good fortune and belief in themselves to survive.

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During the next twenty years, as part of the largest transfer of wealth in history, more than $500 billion is expected to pour into the philanthropic sector. Some of it will come from retiring baby boomers, but even more will come from newly rich Silicon Valley billionaires. Since 2006, the appeal of "giving while living" has grown, so much so that many philanthropic donors now expect not just to give money during their lifetimes, but to create organizations or ventures-some for profit, others not for profit-whose missions are expected to be completed within the lifetime of the donors. The combination of these two trends has transformed the not-for-profit sector in scale and dynamism, attracting some skeptical scrutiny along the way. Philanthrocapitalism has acquired some of the trappings of financialization, and has the potential to deliver ever greater impact. But will it? And will the demand that the impact be quickly realized mean that longer-term institution-building missions will be neglected?Joel L. Fleishman is one of the wisest of wise men in philanthropy whose advice is routinely sought by organizations and individuals across the country. In Putting Wealth to Work, he tells the story of a uniquely American financial sector, all but created by Andrew Carnegie's example, that since 1995 has become more dynamic with every passing year. Staggering personal fortunes are made and given away, from Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg, as in no previous era since the golden age of American capitalism. America currently leads the world in this trend-of the 138 signers of the giving-while-living pledge, 110 were American-but the world is following in its footsteps. This movement of socially motivated capital is unprecedented and its consequences are potentially transformative for the American economy and the world at large.

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Are you winning the battle but losing the war?Every leader has to deliver the goods,make budget, meet deadlines, and deftly manage people,to provide the inspirational fuel that keeps their business running day-in and day-out. But therein lies the danger of winning today's battle and losing the war,that is the long game of creating sustainable value in a volatile, uncertain world that is becoming ever-more complex and ambiguous. The number one business challenge,is winning the long game by being more strategic developing the skills to look outside the four walls of the organization and see the world from the future back. Steven Krupp and Paul J. H. Schoemaker bridge the gap between what many see as the separate domains of strategy and leadership to show how to develop the discipline of strategic leadership in a world of growing uncertainty. Pragmatic to the core, Winning the Long Game creates vivid insights into the discipline of strategic leadership by applying it systemically through personal portraits of successful business leaders. The book profiles Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Sara Blakely, as well as world-renowned figures like Pope Francis, Oprah Winfrey, and Nelson Mandela. What makes these strategic leaders successful is highlighted by contrasting them with others who are either mediocre or outright failures. Winning the Long Game is the must-have playbook for every leader and for any manager seeking to be become more strategic in today's topsy-turvy world.

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When Reynold Levy became the new president of Lincoln centre in 2002, New York Magazine described the situation he walked in to as a community in deep distress, riven by conflict." Ideas for the redevelopment of Lincoln centre's artistic facilities and public spaces required spending more than 1.2 billion, but there was no clear pathway for how to raise that kind of unprecedented sum. The individual resident organizations that were the key constituents of Lincoln centre,the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Juilliard School, and eight others,could not agree on a common capital plan or fundraising course of action. Instead, intramural rivalries and disputes filled the vacuum.Besides, some of those organizations had daunting problems of their own. Levy tells the inside story of the demise of the New York City Opera, the Metropolitan Opera's need to use as collateral its iconic Chagall tapestries in the face of mounting operating losses, and the New York Philharmonic's dalliance with Carnegie Hall.Yet despite these and other challenges, Levy and the extraordinary civic leaders at his side were able to shape a consensus for the physical modernization of the sixteen-acre campus and raise the money necessary to maintain Lincoln centre as the country's most vibrant performing arts destination. By the time he left, Lincoln centre had prepared itself fully for the next generation of artists and audiences. They Told Me Not to Take That Job is more than a memoir of life at the heart of one of the world's most prominent cultural institutions. It is also a case study of leadership and management in action. How Levy and his colleagues triumphantly steered Lincoln centre,through perhaps the most tumultuous decade of its history to a startling transformation,is fully captured in his riveting account.

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At the dawn of the 1970s, waves of hopeful idealists abandoned the city and headed for the country, convinced that a better life awaited. They were full of dreams, mostly lacking in practical skills, and soon utterly out of money. But they knew paradise when they saw it.When Loraine, Craig, Pancake, Hershe, and a dozen of their friends came into possession of 116 acres in Vermont, they had big plans: to grow their own food, build their own shelter, and create an enlightened community. They had little idea that at the same moment, all over the country, a million other young people were making the same move,back to the land. We Are As Gods follows the Myrtle Hill commune as its members enjoy a euphoric Free Love summer. Nearby, a fledgling organic farm sets to work with horses, and a couple,the author's parents,attempts to build a geodesic dome. Yet Myrtle Hill's summer ends in panic as they rush to build shelter while they struggle to reconcile their ideals with the somber realities of physical hardship and shifting priorities,especially when one member goes dangerously rogue.Kate Daloz has written a meticulously researched testament to the dreams of a generation disillusioned by their parents' lifestyles, scarred by the Vietnam War, and yearning for rural peace. Shaping everything from our eating habits to the Internet, the 1970s Back-to-the-Land movement is one of the most influential yet least understood periods in recent history. We Are As Gods sheds light on one generation's determination to change their own lives and, in the process, to change the world.

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A member in the Society of the Sacred Heart for nearly thirty years president of Manhattanville College in New York recipient of a doctorate in philosophy philanthropic advisor to the Rockefeller family beloved wife of Jerome I. Aron pivotal board member of some of the most generous foundations in the world, including Atlantic Philanthropies and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Today, Elizabeth McCormack is regarded by many as the very soul of philanthropy. Her unstinting practical advice and compassion have helped to inform the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars to worthy causes around the world.

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The last signatory to the Declaration of Independence was one of the earliest to sign up for the Revolution: Thomas McKean lived a radical, boisterous, politically intriguing life and was one of the most influential and enduring of America's Founding Fathers.Present at almost all of the signature moments on the road to American nationhood, from the first Continental Congress onward, Thomas McKean was a colonel in the Continental Army president of the Continental Congress governor of Pennsylvania and, perhaps most importantly, chief justice of the new country's most influential state, Pennsylvania, a foundational influence on American law. His life uniquely intersected with the many centres of power in the still-formative country during its most vulnerable years, and shows the degree of uncertainty that characterized newly independent America, unsure of its future or its identity.Thomas McKean knew intimately not only the heroic figures of the Revolutionary era,George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin,but also the fascinating characters who fought over the political identity of the new country, such as Caesar Rodney, Francis Hopkinson, and Alexander Dallas. His life reminds us that America's creation was fraught with dangers and strife, backstabbing and bar-brawling, courage and stubbornness. McKean's was an epic ride during utterly momentous times.

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In the last two decades, free markets have swept the globe. But traditional capitalism has been unable to solve problems like inequality and poverty. In Muhammad Yunus' groundbreaking sequel to Banker to the Poor, he outlines the concept of social business -- business where the creative vision of the entrepreneur is applied to today's most serious problems: feeding the poor, housing the homeless, healing the sick, and protecting the planet. Creating a World Without Poverty reveals the next phase in a hopeful economic and social revolution that is already underway.

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Larry Devlin arrived as the new chief of station for the CIA in the Congo five days after the country had declared its independence, the army had mutinied, and governmental authority had collapsed. As he crossed the Congo River in an almost empty ferry boat, all he could see were lines of people trying to travel the other way,out of the Congo. Within his first two weeks he found himself on the wrong end of a revolver as militiamen played Russian-roulette, Congo style, with him. During his first year, the charismatic and reckless political leader, Patrice Lumumba, was murdered and Devlin was widely thought to have been entrusted with (he was) and to have carried out (he didn't) the assassination. Then he saved the life of Joseph Desire Mobutu, who carried out the military coup that presaged his own rise to political power. Devlin found himself at the heart of Africa, fighting for the future of perhaps the most strategically influential country on the continent, its borders shared with eight other nations. He met every significant political figure, from presidents to mercenaries, as he took the Cold War to one of the world's hottest zones. This is a classic political memoir from a master spy who lived in wildly dramatic times.

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Marjorie Williams knew Washington from top to bottom. Beloved for her sharp analysis, elegant prose and exceptional ability to intuit character, Williams wrote political profiles for the Washington Post and Vanity Fair that came to be considered the final word on the capital's most powerful figures. Her accounts of playing ping-pong with Richard Darman, of Barbara Bush's stepmother quaking with fear at the mere thought of angering the First Lady, and of Bill Clinton angrily telling Al Gore why he failed to win the presidency , to name just three treasures collected here , open a window on a seldom-glimpsed human reality behind Washington's determinedly blank façade. Williams also penned a weekly column for the Post's op-ed page and epistolary book reviews for the online magazine Slate. Her essays for these and other publications tackled subjects ranging from politics to parenthood. During the last years of her life, she wrote about her own mortality as she battled liver cancer, using this harrowing experience to illuminate larger points about the nature of power and the randomness of life. Marjorie Williams was a woman in a man's town, an outsider reporting on the political elite. She was, like the narrator in Randall Jarrell's classic poem, "The Woman at the Washington Zoo," an observer of a strange and exotic culture. This splendid collection , at once insightful, funny and sad , digs into the psyche of the nation's capital, revealing not only the hidden selves of the people that run it, but the messy lives that the rest of us lead.

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Few people have sat across from the Iranians and the North Koreans at the negotiating table. Wendy Sherman has done both. During her time as the lead US negotiator of the historic Iran nuclear deal and throughout her distinguished career, Wendy Sherman has amassed tremendous expertise in the most pressing foreign policy issues of our time. Throughout her life-from growing up in civil-rights-era Baltimore, to stints as a social worker, campaign manager, and business owner, to advising multiple presidents-she has relied on values that have shaped her approach to work and leadership: authenticity, effective use of power and persistence, acceptance of change, and commitment to the team.Not for the Faint of Heart takes readers inside the world of international diplomacy and into the mind of one of our most effective negotiators-often the only woman in the room. She shows why good work in her field is so hard to do, and how we can learn to apply core skills of diplomacy to the challenges in our own lives.

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An exploration of why people all over the world love to engage in pain on purpose--from dominatrices, religious ascetics, and ultramarathoners to ballerinas, icy ocean bathers, and sideshow performersMasochism is sexy, human, reviled, worshipped, and can be delightfully bizarre. Deliberate and consensual pain has been with us for millennia, encompassing everyone from Black Plague flagellants to ballerinas dancing on broken bones to competitive eaters choking down hot peppers while they cry. Masochism is a part of us. It lives inside workaholics, tattoo enthusiasts, and all manner of garden variety pain-seekers.At its core, masochism is about feeling bad, then better-a phenomenon that is long overdue for a heartfelt and hilarious investigation. And Leigh Cowart would know: they are not just a researcher and science writer-they're an inveterate, high-sensation seeking masochist. And they have a few questions: Why do people engage in masochism? What are the benefits and the costs? And what does masochism have to say about the human experience?By participating in many of these activities themselves, and through conversations with psychologists, fellow scientists, and people who seek pain for pleasure, Cowart unveils how our minds and bodies find meaning and relief in pain-a quirk in our programming that drives discipline and innovation even as it threatens to swallow us whole.

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As chairman of the Federal Reserve (1979-1987), Paul Volcker slayed the inflation dragon that was consuming the American economy and restored the world's faith in central bankers. That extraordinary feat was just one pivotal episode in a decades-long career serving six presidents.Told with wit, humour, and down-to-earth erudition, the narrative of Volcker's career illuminates the changes that have taken place in American life, government, and the economy since World War II. He vibrantly illustrates the crises he managed alongside the world's leading politicians, central bankers, and financiers. Yet he first found his model for competent and ethical governance in his father, the town manager of Teaneck, NJ, who instilled Volcker's dedication to absolute integrity and his "three verities" of stable prices, sound finance, and good government.

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A Washington Post BestsellerWinner of the 2017 Axiom Business Book Award in Business TechnologyAmy Webb is a noted futurist who combines curiosity, skepticism, colorful storytelling, and deeply reported, real-world analysis in this essential book for understanding the future. The Signals Are Talking reveals a systemic way of evaluating new ideas bubbling up on the horizon-distinguishing what is a real trend from the merely trendy. This book helps us hear which signals are talking sense, and which are simply nonsense, so that we might know today what developments-especially those seemingly random ideas at the fringe as they converge and begin to move toward the mainstream-that have long-term consequence for tomorrow.With the methodology developed in The Signals Are Talking, we learn how to think like a futurist and answer vitally important questions: How will a technology-like artificial intelligence, machine learning, self-driving cars, biohacking, bots, and the Internet of Things-affect us personally? How will it impact our businesses and workplaces? How will it eventually change the way we live, work, play, and think-and how should we prepare for it now?Most importantly, Webb persuasively shows that the future isn't something that happens to us passively. Instead, she allows us to see ahead so that we may forecast what's to come-challenging us to create our own preferred futures.

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From Abraham Lincoln's political savvy and rhetorical gifts to James Buchanan's indecisiveness, this book teaches much about what makes a great leader--and what does not.Over a period of decades, C-SPAN has surveyed leading historians on the best and worst of America's presidents across a variety of categories -- their ability to persuade the public, their leadership skills, their moral authority, and more. The crucible of the presidency has forged some of the very best and very worst leaders in our national history, along with much in between.Based on interviews conducted over the years with a variety of presidential biographers, this book provides not just a complete ranking of our presidents, but stories and analyses that capture the character of the men who held the office. As America looks ahead to our next election, this book offers perspective and criteria that may help us choose our next leader wisely.

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The Space Barons is the story of a group of billionaire entrepreneurs who are pouring their fortunes into the epic resurrection of the American space program. Nearly a half-century after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, these Space Barons-most notably Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, along with Richard Branson and Paul Allen-are using Silicon Valley-style innovation to dramatically lower the cost of space travel, and send humans even further than NASA has gone. These entrepreneurs have founded some of the biggest brands in the world-Amazon, Microsoft, Virgin, Tesla, PayPal-and upended industry after industry. Now they are pursuing the biggest disruption of all: space.Based on years of reporting and exclusive interviews with all four billionaires, this authoritative account is a dramatic tale of risk and high adventure, the birth of a new Space Age, fueled by some of the world's richest men as they struggle to end governments' monopoly on the cosmos. The Space Barons is also a story of rivalry-hard-charging startups warring with established contractors, and the personal clashes of the leaders of this new space movement, particularly Musk and Bezos, as they aim for the moon and Mars and beyond.

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In That Time tells the story of the American experience in Vietnam through the life of Michael O'Donnell, a promising young poet who became a soldier and helicopter pilot in Vietnam. O'Donnell wrote with great sensitivity and poetic force about his world and especially the war that was slowly engulfing him and his most well-known poem is still frequently cited and reproduced. Nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honour, O'Donnell never fired a shot in Vietnam. During an ill-fated attempt to rescue fellow soldiers, O'Donnell's helicopter was shot down in the jungles of Cambodia where he and his crew remained missing for almost 30 years. In telling O'Donnell's story, In That Time also tells the stories of those around him, both famous and ordinary, who helped to shape the events of the time and who were themselves shaped by them. The book is both a powerful personal story and a compelling, universal one about how America lost its way in the 1960s.

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The definitive story of the California redwoods, their discovery and their exploitation, as told by an activist who fought to protect their existence against those determined to cut them down.Every year millions of tourists from around the world visit California's famous redwoods. Yet few who strain their necks to glimpse the tops of the world's tallest trees understand how unlikely it is that these last isolated groves of giant trees still stand at all. In this gripping historical memoir, journalist and famed redwood activist Greg King examines how investors and a growing U.S. economy drove the timber industry to cut down all but 4 percent of the original two-million-acre redwood ecosystem. King first examined redwood logging in the 1980s-as an award-winning reporter. What he found in the woods convinced him to leap the line of neutrality and become an activist dedicated to saving the very last ancient redwood groves remaining in private hands. The land grab began in 1849, when a "green gold rush" of migrants came to exploit the legendary redwoods that grew along the Russian River. Several generations later, in 1987, Greg King discovered and named Headwaters Forest-at 3,000 acres the largest ancient redwood habitat remaining outside of parks-and he led the movement to save this grove. After a decade of one of the longest, most dramatic, and violent environmental campaigns in US history, in 1999 the state and federal governments protected Headwaters Forest. The Ghost Forest explores a central question, an overhanging mystery: What was it like, this botanical Elysium that grew only along the Northern California coast, a forest so spectacular-but also uniquely valuable as a cornerstone of American economic growth-that in the end it would inspire life-and-death struggles? Few but loggers and surveyors ever saw such magnificent trees, ancient sentinels that, like ghosts, have informed King's understanding of the world. On a lifelong journey, King finds himself through the generations, and through the trees.

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Western exceptionalism-the idea that European civilizations are freer, wealthier, and less violent-is a widespread and powerful political idea. It has been a source of peace and prosperity in some societies, and of ethnic cleansing and havoc in others.Yet in The Invention of Power, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita draws on his expertise in political maneuvering, deal-making, and game theory to present a revolutionary new theory of Western exceptionalism: that a single, rarely discussed event in the twelfth century changed the course of European and world history. By creating a compromise between churches and nation-states that, in effect, traded money for power and power for money, the 1122 Concordat of Worms incentivized economic growth, facilitated secularization, and improved the lot of the citizenry, all of which set European countries on a course for prosperity. In the centuries since, countries that have had a similar dynamic of competition between church and state have been consistently better off than those that have not.The Invention of Power upends conventional thinking about European culture, religion, and race and presents a persuasive new vision of world history.

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The enduring story of Thomas Watson Jr.-a figure more important to the creation of the modern world than Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and MorganNearly fifty years into IBM's existence, Thomas Watson Jr. undertook the biggest gamble in business history when he "bet the farm" on the creation of the IBM System/360, the world's first fully integrated and compatible mainframe computer. As CEO, Watson drove a revolution no other company-then or now-would dare, laying the foundation for the digital age that has transformed every society, corporation, and government.The story of Watson being "present at the creation" of the digital age is intertwined with near-Shakespearean personal drama. While he put IBM and its employees at risk, Watson also carried out a family-shattering battle over the future of the company with his brother Dick. This titanic struggle between brothers led to Dick's death and almost killed Watson Jr. himself.Though he was eventually touted by Fortune magazine as "the greatest capitalist who ever lived," Watson's directionless, playboy early years made him an unlikely candidate for corporate titan. How he pulled his life together and, despite personal demons, paved the way for what became a global industry is an epic tale full of drama, inspiration, and valuable lessons in leadership, risk-taking, and social responsibility.

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The twenty-first century's great geopolitical contest has begun. A major trade war has broken out. American and Chinese naval vessels are having close encounters in the South China Sea. American congressmen and businessmen are cheering their government's public attacks on China. China is standing firm and resolute. Who will win this contest? What is at stake? And who will judge the winner?In this book, Kishore Mahbubani evaluates the two sides, and shows how China has been thinking on a global scale, launching ambitious initiatives under some of the world's most pragmatic and competent leaders. Most critically, the Chinese people have regained their cultural confidence. Chinese society is now infused with innovation and dynamism. Meanwhile, America has seen the power of its economic model badly damaged by the 2008 financial crisis. To many it is no longer the indispensable nation but an awkward interloper.The global rise of China and the relative strategic decline of the US presents a political challenge that the US has never faced before. American policymakers must shake off their complacency and launch a major strategic reboot of both domestic and foreign policies that have weakened the nation's social foundations and global standing. Otherwise, the start-up nation, barely two hundred and fifty years old, with only a quarter of China's population, cannot expect to defeat the world's oldest continuous civilization. With his trademark candor, Mahbubani delivers impartial and incisive insights on the strategic stakes and mistakes in this new great game.

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The long buried story of three extraordinary female journalists who permanently shattered the official and cultural barriers to women covering war. Kate Webb, an Australian iconoclast, Catherine Leroy, a French dare devil photographer, and Frances FitzGerald, a blue-blood American intellectual, arrived in Vietnam with starkly different life experiences but one shared purpose: to report on the most consequential story of the decade. At a time when women were considered unfit to be foreign reporters, Frankie, Catherine and Kate paid their own way to war, arrived without jobs, challenged the rules imposed on them by the military, ignored the belittlement and resentment of their male peers and found new ways to explain the war through the people who lived through it. In You Don't Belong Here, Elizabeth Becker uses these women's work and lives to illuminate the Vietnam War from the 1965 American buildup, through the Tet Offensive, the expansion into Cambodia, the American defeat and its aftermath. Arriving herself in the last years of the war, Elizabeth writes as an historian and a witness to what these women accomplished.What emerges is an unforgettable story of three journalists forging their place in a land of men, often at great personal sacrifice, and forever altering the craft of war reportage for generations. Deeply reported and filled with personal letters, interviews, and profound insight, You Don't Belong Here fills a void in the history of women and of war.

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Hunter S. Thompson is best remembered today as a caricature: drug-addled, sharp-witted, and passionate; played with bowlegged aplomb by Johnny Depp; memorialized as a Doonesbury character. In all this entertainment, the true figure of Thompson has unfortunately been forgotten.In this perceptive, dramatic book, Tim Denevi recounts the moment when Thompson found his calling. As the Kennedy assassination and the turmoil of the 60s paved the way for Richard Nixon, Thompson greeted him with two very powerful emotions: fear and loathing. In his fevered effort to take down what he saw as a rising dictator, Thompson made a kind of Faustian bargain, taking the drugs he needed to meet newspaper deadlines and pushing himself beyond his natural limits. For ten years, he cast aside his old ambitions, troubled his family, and likely hastened his own decline, along the way producing some of the best political writing in our history.This remarkable biography reclaims Hunter Thompson for the enigmatic true believer he was: not a punchline or a cartoon character, but a fierce, colorful opponent of fascism in a country that suddenly seemed all too willing to accept it.

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In How to Live Forever, social entrepreneur Marc Freedman argues that we don't need medical or scientific intervention to live forever. Instead of trying to be young, we can live forever (and save money) by being there for those who are young. Investing time with young people, mentoring, and passing wisdom from generation to generation, is truly living one's legacy. For the first time ever, we have more older people than young people, more people over 60 than under 20. In these new demographics we are more dependent than ever as societies on the flourishing of young people. Freedman will show how various innovations around the world are beginning to bring the generations together in ways that are mutually beneficial and suited to the realities of the 21st century. With insights from brain science, human development, and other research, he provides a blueprint for how societies can remain vital even as they age, and how to find great purpose and joy in the second half of life.

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In their short history, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have gone through booms, busts, and internecine wars, recently reaching a market valuation of more than $2 trillion. The central promise of crypto endures-vast fortunes made from decentralized networks not controlled by any single entity and not yet regulated by many governments.The recent growth of crypto would have been all but impossible if not for a brilliant young man named Vitalik Buterin and his creation: Ethereum. In this book, Laura Shin takes readers inside the founding of this novel cryptocurrency network, which enabled users to launch their own new coins, thus creating a new crypto fever. She introduces readers to larger-than-life characters like Buterin, the Web3 wunderkind; his short-lived CEO, Charles Hoskinson; and Joe Lubin, a former Goldman Sachs VP who became one of crypto's most well-known billionaires. Sparks fly as these outsized personalities fight for their piece of a seemingly limitless new business opportunity.This fascinating book shows the crypto market for what it really is: a deeply personal struggle to influence the coming revolution in money, culture, and power.

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In the summer of 1940, following France's surrender to Germany, Casablanca was transformed from an exotic travel destination to a key military target. Nazi agents and collaborators soon overran the city looking to capitalize on the new Vichy regime. The resistance was not far behind, as bartenders, shopkeepers, taxi drivers, celebrities, and disgruntled bureaucrats formed a network of Allied spies. Meanwhile, Jewish refugees from Europe flooded the city, hoping to obtain visas to the United States and beyond.In November 1942, Casablanca's wartime fate changed in 74 hours, when 33,000 American soldiers stormed the beaches of French Morocco as part of Operation TORCH. In Allied hands, Casablanca's port became a crucial logistical hub in British and American plans to return to Europe and defeat Germany. Two months later, Roosevelt and Churchill traveled to Casablanca to plot the next phase of war and achieve Germany's "unconditional surrender." Rife with rogue soldiers, power grabs, plot twists, and diplomatic intrigue, Destination Casablanca is the riveting and untold history of this glamorous and beloved city--memorialized in the classic film--at the heart of World War II.

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The untold story of how America once created the most successful economy the world has ever seen-and how we can do it again.The American economy glitters on the outside, but the reality is quite different. Job opportunities and economic growth are increasingly concentrated in a few crowded coastal enclaves. Corporations and investors are disproportionately developing technologies that benefit the wealthiest Americans in the most prosperous areas -- and destroying middle class jobs elsewhere. To turn this tide, we must look to a brilliant and all-but-forgotten American success story and embark on a plan that will create the industries of the future -- and the jobs that go with them.Beginning in 1940, massive public investment generated breakthroughs in science and technology that first helped win WWII and then created the most successful economy the world has ever seen. Private enterprise then built on these breakthroughs to create new industries -- such as radar, jet engines, digital computers, mobile telecommunications, life-saving medicines, and the internet-- that became the catalyst for broader economic growth that generated millions of good jobs. We lifted almost all boats, not just the yachts.Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson tell the story of this first American growth engine and provide the blueprint for a second. It's a visionary, pragmatic, sure-to-be controversial plan that will lead to job growth and a new American economy in places now left behind.

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In 1916, a nearly unknown German-born theoretical physicist named Albert Einstein had developed his theory of relativity, but hadn't yet been able to prove it. The only way to do that was through the clear view and measurement of a solar eclipse. In May of 1919, one of the longest total solar eclipses of the 20th century was visible for almost seven minutes in the Southern Hemisphere. And so, two teams of intrepid astronomers set out on a treacherous journey-one to a remote town in Brazil, the other to the small African island of Principe. Their task was to answer the question: during the eclipse, would the stars' light waves follow Newton's law of gravitation, or Einstein's new theory of relativity?Proving Einstein Right is an epic chronicle of this decade-long mission. Hindered by everything from cloudy weather to world war, and travelling halfway around the globe, four men observed a solar eclipse that would catapult Albert Einstein to fame, set the framework for the Big Bang theory, and forever change the way we look at the universe.

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Every business faces the existential threat of competitors producing cheaper copies. Even patent filings, market dominance and financial resources can't shield them from copycats. So what can we do--and, what can we learn from companies that have endured and even prospered for centuries despite copycat competition?In a book of narrative history and practical strategy, IMD professor of management and innovation Howard Yu shows that succeeding in today's marketplace is no longer just a matter of mastering copycat tactics, companies also need to leap across knowledge disciplines, and to reimagine how a product is made or a service is delivered. This proven tactic can protect a company from being overtaken by new (and often foreign) copycat competitors.Using riveting case studies of successful leaps and tragic falls, Yu illustrates five principles to success that span a wide range of industries, countries, and eras. Learn about how P&G in the 19th century made the leap from handcrafted soaps and candles to mass production of its signature brand Ivory, leaped into the new fields of consumer psychology and advertising, then leaped again, at the risk of cannibalizing its core product, into synthetic detergents and won with Tide in 1946. Learn about how Novartis and other pharma pioneers stayed ahead by making leaps from chemistry to microbiology to genomics in drug discovery; and how forward-thinking companies, including China's largest social media app--WeChat, Tokyo-based Internet service provider Recruit Holdings, and Illinois-headquartered John Deere are leaping ahead by leveraging the emergence of ubiquitous connectivity, the inexorable rise of intelligent machines, and the rising importance of managerial creativity.Outlasting competition is difficult; doing so over decades or a century is nearly impossible--unless one leaps. Ultimately, Leap is a manifesto for how pioneering companies can endure and prosper in a world of constant change and inevitable copycats.

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How America’s biggest company began taking better care of its workers--and why such efforts will never be enough.Fifteen years ago, Walmart was the most controversial company in America. By offering incredibly low prices, it had come to dominate the retail landscape. But with this dominance came a suite of ethical concerns. Walmart was accused of wiping out of mom-and-pop businesses across the country; ruthlessly pressuring suppliers to cut costs, even if it meant closing up U.S. factories and moving production overseas; and, above all, not taking adequate care of its own employees, who were paid so little that many wound up on public assistance. Today, while Walmart remains America's largest employer, the picture is very different. It has become an environmental leader among businesses, and has taken many other steps to use its immense scale to have a positive social impact. Most notably, its starting wage has risen from $7.25 to $12, and employee benefits have improved. With internal and external threats to its business looming, the company began to change directions in 2005—a transformation that accelerated in 2014, with the arrival of CEO Doug McMillon. By undertaking such large-scale change without a legal mandate to do so, Walmart has joined a number of major corporations that say they are dedicated to practicing a new, socially conscious form of capitalism.In Still Broke, award-winning author Rick Wartzman goes inside the company's transformation, showing in novelistic detail how the company has gotten to where it is. Yet he also asks a critical question: is it enough? With a still-simmering public debate around the minimum wage and widespread movements by workers demanding better treatment, how far will $12 an hour go in today's economy? Or even $15? Or Walmart’s average wage, which now hovers above $16—but, even so, doesn’t pencil out to so much as $35,000 a year for a fulltime worker? In the richest nation on earth, how did the bar get set so low? How did America find itself relying on an army of low-wage workers without ever acknowledging their most basic needs? And if Walmart's brand of change is the best we have, how can we ever expect to build a healthy society?With unparalleled access to the key executives and change-makers at Walmart, Still Broke does more than document a remarkable business makeover. It interrogates the role of business in American life, and asks what the future of our economy and country can be—and whose job it is to make it.

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If, in the ancient world, it was guns and germs and steel that determined the fates of people and nations, in modern times it is electricity. No other form of power translates into affluence and influence like it. Though demand for it is growing exponentially, it remains one of the most difficult forms of energy to supply and to do so reliably. Storage is even harder. This paradox has shaped global politics, affected the outcome of wars, and underlies the growing chasm between rich and poor, educated and uneducated. It is changing the game for business, and the requirements of national defence. It is altering the landscape and complicating the task of dealing effectively with climate change.In this book, Robert Bryce explains the unique nature of electricity as a commodity. He draws on stories from history to illustrate the stunning impact of our quest to harness it, illuminates exactly what is required to successfully sustain it, and explores the impact on societies and individuals when it collapses.As billions of people around the world still live in darkness, the gap between the electricity haves and have-nots widens, with profound political and ethical consequences. Modern life, even civilisation, has become ever more dependent on a source of energy that must be produced locally and in the moment, in a reliably steady stream at particular wattage, conveyed on wires strung on poles or threaded through pipes. If the lights go out, so does our manner of living, with potentially devastating consequences.

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When you feel that pull to be part of social change, where do you start? How can you ensure that your good intentions create a positive impact? How do you focus your scattered efforts? And how do you sustain yourself throughout?Impact brings you the answers. Drawing on their network and experience as founders of She's the First, Christen Brandt and Tammy Tibbetts show you how to create your own impact strategy, one that fits into your life and allows you to match what you have with what the world needs.Their guidance, paired with interactive activities, will lead you to identify your North Star, find the right partners, and plug into movements for long-term, systemic change. Equally important, you'll learn how to address biases, practice allyship, and shift power to become more inclusive and effective in your journey.

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Everyone wants to create meaningful change, but most people aren't sure where to start or where to find a roadmap to guide them. Why is it that we have career coaches, therapists, and financial advisers for all of life's big decisions-but no Impact Advisors for our legacy?In Impact, two Impact Advisors who have built a successful nonprofit from the ground-up show how anyone, anywhere can make reasonable adjustments to their lives to support the world they want to see, and live lives they'll be proud of fifty years from now. This book teaches you how to:* Identify the issue(s) that light you up and motivate you toward change ('Finding your North Star')* Decide where to put your energy and resources and learn how to stick with it ('Craft Your Impact Plan')* Design a network to support your goals ('Create an Impact Advisory Board')* Build resilience and grit ('Make Plans to Keep Going')Whether it means changing careers, ramping up volunteer service, or putting dollars to work more effectively, Impact is going to walk you through the everyday steps you must take to lead to transformative change.

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The newest generation of children is exposed to ubiquitous technology, more than any generation that preceded them. They are photographed with smartphones from the moment they're born, and begin interacting with screens at around four months old. Is this good news or bad news? A wonderful opportunity to connect around the world? Or the first step in creating a generation of addled screen zombies? The truth is, there's no road map for navigating this territory.But while many have been quick to declare this the dawn of a neurological and emotional crisis, solid science on the subject is surprisingly hard to come by. In this book, Anya Kamenetz--an expert on both education and technology, as well as a mother of two young children--takes a refreshingly practical look at the subject. Surveying hundreds of fellow parents on their practices and ideas, and cutting through a thicket of inconclusive studies and overblown claims, she hones a simple message, a riff on Michael Pollan's well-known "food rules": Enjoy Screens. Not too much. Mostly with others.This brief but powerful dictum forms the backbone of a philosophy that will help parents survive the ubiquity of technology in their children's lives, curb their panic, and create room for a happy, healthy family life. Kamenetz's sophisticated yet practical thinking is a necessary cure for an age of anxiety.

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