Monday, November 30, 2009

The SPIN Selling Fieldbook or Effective Executive

The S.P.I.N. Selling Fieldbook: Practical Tools, Methods, Exercises and Resources

Author: Neil Rackham

Strategies and tools that guarantee big-ticket sales!

Neil Rackham's national bestseller SPIN Selling revolutionized high-end selling. Now, The SPIN Selling Fieldbook shows you how to actually put into practice the proven tools and techniques outlined in that cutting-edge guide. After a review of the SPIN method of selling, Neil Rackham zeroes in on the critical SPIN® questioning behaviors. He shows you how to apply the tools and techniques to your own selling situation, using practical, skill-building exercises incorporated into each chapter. Addressing the sales of services as well as capital goods, the Fieldbook provides you with a hands-on implementation guide for applying SPIN in a wide range of businesses from localized companies to large multinationals. Real-life case studies of sales forces at leading-edge companies such as Motorola, Johnson & Johnson, and AT&T help you explore additional techniques that go beyond the basics to boost sales with even the toughest customers and clients.



Table of Contents:
This Book.The SPIN Model. Check It Out. Putting Spin in Context. Putting Spin to Work. Buyer Needs. Situation Questions. Problem Questions. Implication Questions. Need-Payoff Questions. Demonstrating Capability. Increasing Your Impact. Putting It All Together. Beyond Spin. Forms and Other Tools.

Book review: Country Range Cookbook or Frying of Food

Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

Author: Peter F Drucker

What makes an effective executive?

The measure of the executive, Peter F. Drucker reminds us, is the ability to "get the right things done." This usually involves doing what other people have overlooked as well as avoiding what is unproductive. Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge may all be wasted in an executive job without the acquired habits of mind that mold them into results.

Drucker identifies five practices essential to business effectiveness that can, and must, be learned:
  • Managing time
  • Choosing what to contribute to the organization
  • Knowing where and how to mobilize strength for best effect
  • Setting the right priorities
  • Knitting all of them together with effective decision-making

Ranging widely through the annals of business and government, Peter F. Drucker demonstrates the distinctive skill of the executive and offers fresh insights into old and seemingly obvious business situations.



Encore Effect or Free to Choose

Encore Effect: How to Achieve Remarkable Performance in Anything You Do

Author: Mark Sanborn

Whether you want to win that new account or inspire your family and friends, bestselling author and acclaimed speaker Mark Sanborn shows us how to make every performance count.

Every day, we are called to perform— at work, at home, in our communities. But is it possible to make every performance outstanding, the kind that leaves people applauding for an encore?

Mark Sanborn, leadership expert and bestselling author of The Fred Factor, says that anyone can achieve remarkable performance time after time—no matter what their personality, strengths, or weaknesses. In The Encore Effect Sanborn demonstrates, through his own experiences as well as those of the people he’s worked with in his career, how you can cultivate the traits shared by remarkable performers and achieve extraordinary results in all aspects of your life. The secrets lie in five steps:

Passion: The fuel for remarkable performance
Prepare: How remarkable performance begins
Practice: It won’t make you perfect, but it will make you better
Perform: How to engage your audience
Polish: Making your performance shine

Whether your “stage” is an office, a sales floor, the boardroom, or your own home, Sanborn’s sound advice and rousing encouragement will help you shine in every situation where it matters most.



Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments     ix
Warning!     1
Introduction     3
Understanding the Encore Effect
The Power of Encore Performances     7
From Routine to Remarkable-Make Them Want More!     13
Why Remarkable Performance Matters     23
A Different Kind of PDA     37
Achieving the Encore Effect
Passion: The Fuel for Remarkable Performance     47
Preparation: Where Remarkable Performance Begins     57
Practice: It Won't Make You Perfect, but It Will Make You Better     67
Performance: How to Engage Your Audience     81
Polish: Making Your Performance Shine     91
Pitfalls: How to Keep from Stumbling     101
Sharing the Encore Effect
How to Help Others Perform Remarkably     113
From Remarkable Performer to Remarkable Person     121
Epilogue     131

Interesting textbook: Disciplinary Revolution or The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation

Free to Choose: A Personal Statement: A Personal Statement

Author: Milton Friedman

The international bestseller on the extent to which personal freedom has been eroded by government regulations and agencies while personal prosperity has been undermined by government spending and economic controls. New Foreword by the Authors; Index.



Sunday, November 29, 2009

Mr Playboy or The Shock Doctrine

Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream

Author: Steven Watts

When Hugh Hefner quit his job at Esquire to start a magazine called Playboy, he didn't just want to make money.  He wanted to make dreams come true.  The first issue of Playboy had a Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an article on the Dorsey brothers, and a feature on desk design for the modern office, called "Gentlemen, Be Seated." Hefner wrote much of the copy himself and drew all the cartoons.  But the most memorable part by far was the set of pictures he bought from a local calendar printer of a scantily clad Marilyn Monroe. 

In this wise and penetrating biography, intellectual historian Steven Watts looks at what Hugh Hefner went onto become, and how he took America with him.  Hefner became one of the most hated and envied celebrities in America, dating a long list of his magazine's beauties and always standing just barely on the wrong side of decency and moral uprightness. He also, at one time, had 7 million subscribers to his magazine.  Though in time he would lose readers to more explicit magazines on one side and "lad" magazines on the other, the Playboy brand never lost its luster.

Publishers Weekly

As he did in his previous books on Henry Ford (The People's Tycoon) and Walt Disney (The Magic Kingdom), Watts carefully details the life of Hugh Hefner and the influence his Playboy magazine has had on American culture. Using unrestricted access to the magazine's archives, Watts skillfully charts the intersection of Hefner's professional and personal history: the "sexual titillation" of his first issue; his mid- to late-1960s championing of leftist politics and writers such as Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut; his 1970s retrenchment after assaults by the women's liberation movement; his financial and personal troubles in the '80s and '90s; and his current position as the "retro cool" figurehead of an institution that is now a "midsize communications and entertainment company." Watts evokes a time when Playboy was seen by its critics as a key "symptom of decadence in American life," and is at his best when exploring his subject's early years, showing how Hefner's sexual and material "ethic of self-fulfillment" drove him to challenge "the social conventions of postwar America." (Oct.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Lani Smith - Library Journal

Hugh Hefner started Playboy magazine in 1953 using purchased photos of Marilyn Monroe, and including the article "Miss Gold Digger 1953" about women who "manipulate the legal system for alimony." Hefner positioned the magazine as respectable, with articles by celebrated writers, interviews, and advice columns, accompanied with photos of nude models and ads, all combined to help promote a notion of "the good life." And so it was in his publicly lead private life, complete with famous people, naked women (he was allowed to date other people, his girlfriends were not), and a home in the "Playboy mansion." Watts outlines the man and magazine's influence on the country's notions of personal liberation, sexual freedom, and material abundance. Clocking in at over 500 pages, this is not a gossip book but a well-documented biography written with access to Hefner's over 1800 scrapbooks, the company archives, and interviews. Watts finds Hefner comparable to the subjects of his other books about Henry Ford and Walt Disney in that all were major contributors to aspects of the American dream. Recommended for public libraries and cultural studies collections.

Kirkus Reviews

Detailed assessment of the debatably enviable life of America's bachelor. Examining Playboy archives (Hef is something of a pack rat) and Hefner's own journals, Watts (History/Univ. of Missouri; The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century, 2005, etc.) constructs a nuanced portrait of Hefner's life that also serves as a panorama of hip culture from the 1950s onward-Sinatra, JFK and many others put in appearances. Watts convincingly argues that Hefner anticipated a number of distinct trends that transformed American society, including postwar consumerism, feminism (whose adherents, generally speaking, castigated Hef) and, of course, the'60s sexual revolution. Watts unearths the narrative of Hefner's childhood in Chicago in the '30s. Within his deeply religious family, he was doted on by his mother and neglected by a mostly absent father, creating "a child who was extraordinarily self-absorbed." Certainly, Hefner was fascinated by sexuality and how its acknowledgement was forbidden, but as he noted later, "Pop culture was my other parent." As an unhappy young man with fond memories of his high-school popularity, Hefner synthesized these personal interests into the legendary 1953 "homemade" first issue of Playboy. (An early nude picture of Marilyn Monroe demonstrated his acumen.) Hefner described the magazine as "a pleasure-primer styled to the masculine taste," and it took off. By the '60s, Hefner was engaged in controversy, via his "Playboy Philosophy," and expansion, as the famed Playboy Clubs helped him build a business empire that reflected his sybaritic lifestyle in his notorious mansion. Circulation peaked in the swinging '70s (as did an ugly drug controversy); the'80s were less kind, as the brand seemed dated. Hefner resembles a chameleon in Watts's mostly sympathetic portrait, variously appearing as a prescient social critic, an early supporter of civil rights, a generous Gatsby figure and a cranky, obsessive sex addict. The author captures the transitions in American society, though he's repetitive in details and themes, and rather tame, if tasteful, in depicting the sexual exploits that always surrounded Hefner and his empire. Probably the last word on the man behind a million adolescent fantasies. Agent: Ron Goldfarb/Goldfarb & Associates



Table of Contents:

Introduction The Boy Next Door 1

Pt. I Beginnings

1 A Boy at Play 11

2 Boot Camp, College, and Kinsey 34

3 The Tie That Binds 49

Pt. II Ascent

4 How to Win Friends and Titillate People 69

5 Hedonism, Inc 85

6 The Pursuit of Happiness 105

7 An Abundant Life 123

8 Living the Fantasy 143

Pt. III Triumph

9 The Philosopher King 169

10 The Happiness Explosion 187

11 Make Love, Not War 206

12 What Do Women Want? 228

13 Down the Rabbit Hole 250

14 Disneyland for Adults 272

Pt. IV Malaise

15 A Hutch Divided 297

16 The Dark Decade 323

17 The Party's Over 346

18 Strange Bedfellows 367

Pt. V Resurgence

19 The Bride Wore Clothes 391

20 All in the Family 407

21 Back in the Game 426

Epilogue: Playboy Nation 447

Notes 455

Index 515

New interesting book: The Future of Ideas or Implementing SAP ERP Sales Distribution

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Author: Naomi Klein

The bestselling author of No Logo shows how the global "free market" has exploited crises and shock for three decades, from Chile to Iraq

In her groundbreaking reporting over the past few years, Naomi Klein introduced the term "disaster capitalism." Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S. occupation, Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic "shock treatment," losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers.

The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq.

At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. Klein argues that by capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years.

Author Biography
Naomi Klein is the award-winning author of the acclaimed international bestseller No Logo and the essay collection Fences and Windows. An internationally syndicated columnist, she co-created with Avi Lewis, The Take, a documentary film.

The New York Times - Joseph E. Stiglitz

One of the world's most famous antiglobalization activists and the author of the best seller No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, Klein provides a rich description of the political machinations required to force unsavory economic policies on resisting countries, and of the human toll. She paints a disturbing portrait of hubris, not only on the part of Friedman but also of those who adopted his doctrines, sometimes to pursue more corporatist objectives.

The Washington Post - Shashi Tharoor

The Shock Doctrine is a valuable addition to the corpus of popular books that have attempted to rethink the big ideas of our post-Cold War age. Francis Fukuyama's notion of the "end of history"—the idea that all societies would be governed by liberal democracy and free markets—started the process of reflection; Samuel Huntington's concept of the "clash of civilizations" underpinned much of the anxiety that followed the realization that reports of history's demise were exaggerated. Thomas Friedman's celebration of the flatness of the globalized world is now countered by Klein's argument that when disasters flatten societies, capitalists see opportunities to profit and spread their influence. Each thesis has its flaws, but each contributes to the contest of ideas about the shape and direction of our current Age of Uncertainty. For this reason, and for the vigor and accessibility with which she marshals her argument, Naomi Klein is well worth reading.

Mark Engler - Dissent

This is an ambitious book, an accomplished book, and an important one, too. It makes contributions in several key ways.

Publishers Weekly

The neo-liberal economic policies-privatization, free trade, slashed social spending-that the "Chicago School" and the economist Milton Friedman have foisted on the world are catastrophic in two senses, argues this vigorous polemic. Because their results are disastrous-depressions, mass poverty, private corporations looting public wealth, by the author's accounting-their means must be cataclysmic, dependent on political upheavals and natural disasters as coercive pretexts for free-market "reforms" the public would normally reject. Journalist Klein (No Logo) chronicles decades of such disasters, including the Chicago School makeovers launched by South American coups; the corrupt sale of Russia's state economy to oligarchs following the collapse of the Soviet Union; the privatization of New Orleans's public schools after Katrina; and the seizure of wrecked fishing villages by resort developers after the Asian tsunami. Klein's economic and political analyses are not always meticulous. Likening free-market "shock therapies" to electroshock torture, she conflates every misdeed of right-wing dictatorships with their economic programs and paints a too simplistic picture of the Iraq conflict as a struggle over American-imposed neo-liberalism. Still, much of her critique hits home, as she demonstrates how free-market ideologues welcome, and provoke, the collapse of other people's economies. The result is a powerful populist indictment of economic orthodoxy. (Sept.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Kirkus Reviews

Klein (Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate, 2002, etc.) tracks the forced imposition of economic privatization, rife with multinational corporate parasites, on areas and nations weakened by war, civil strife or natural disasters. The author follows John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 2004) and others in pointing an alarmed finger at a global "corporatocracy" that combines the worst features of big business and small government. The difference is that Klein's book incorporates an amount of due diligence, logical structure and statistical evidence that others lack. As a result, she is persuasive when she links past and present events, including the war in Iraq and trashing of its economy, to the systematic march of laissez-faire capitalism and the downsizing of the public sector as both a worldview and a political methodology. Klein fully establishes the influence of U.S. economist Milton Friedman, who died in November 2006, as champion of the free-market transformations that occurred initially in South America, where Friedmanite minions trained at the University of Chicago in the 1960s worked their wiles on behalf of some of the 20th century's most repressive regimes. On to China's Tiananmen Square, then to the collapsed Soviet Union, where oligarchs soared and the underclass was left to starve in the 1990s. More recent developments include forcing private development on the tsunami-ravaged beachfronts of South Asia and junking the public-school system in favor of private charter schools in post-Katrina New Orleans. Just as provocative is Klein's analysis of the Bush administration's rampant outsourcing of U.S. governmentresponsibilities, including the entire "homeland security industry," to no-bid corporate contractors and their expense-laden chains of subcontractors. Her account of that methodology's consequences in Iraq, as mass unemployment coincided with the disbanding of a standing army whose soldiers took their guns home, leaves little doubt as to why there is an enduring insurgency. Required reading for anyone trying to pierce the complexities of globalization.



The No Asshole Rule or Basic Economics

The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't

Author: Robert I Sutton

The No Asshole Rule is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Business Week bestseller. It won a Quill Award for the top business book of 2007, and was recently chosen as one of audible.com's top picks as well.

Publishers Weekly

This meticulously researched book, which grew from a much buzzed-about article in the Harvard Business Review, puts into plain language an undeniable fact: the modern workplace is beset with assholes. Sutton (Weird Ideas that Work), a professor of management science at Stanford University, argues that assholes-those who deliberately make co-workers feel bad about themselves and who focus their aggression on the less powerful-poison the work environment, decrease productivity, induce qualified employees to quit and therefore are detrimental to businesses, regardless of their individual effectiveness. He also makes the solution plain: they have to go. Direct and punchy, Sutton uses accessible language and a bevy of examples to make his case, providing tests to determine if you are an asshole (and if so, advice for how to self-correct), a how-to guide to surviving environments where assholes freely roam and a carefully calibrated measure, the "Total Cost of Assholes," by which corporations can assess the damage. Although occasionally campy and glib, Sutton's work is sure to generate discussions at watercoolers around the country and deserves influence in corporate hiring and firing strategies. (Feb.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Stephen Turner - Library Journal

Sutton (Weird Ideas That Work) has taught management science and engineering for more than a decade at Stanford University, where he formed his early opinions about recruiting, hiring, and retaining pleasant yet effective colleagues. Here he deals with organizational dynamics. Unlike many books (e.g., Jean A. Hollands's Red Ink Behavior and Robert Herbold's The Fiefdom Syndrome), Sutton's does not postulate that destructive behaviors need to be corrected or that the employees responsible for these behaviors need to be fired. Instead, he suggests that we are all difficult sometimes and that being difficult can, in certain scenarios, actually contribute to our effectiveness as managers. He balances this argument with the premise that some people are "certified assholes" who are difficult to fire because they are often in positions of authority and are mistakenly deemed talented and effective by their superiors. Sutton's book is very readable, and people in any type of organization with "people problems" would benefit from using it to inspire some fresh thinking. Large general circulation libraries might include it in a section about careers or management; corporate libraries with a human resources section should also consider.



New interesting book: Factory Girls or Moneyball

Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy

Author: Thomas Sowell

Basic Economics is a citizen’s guide to economics-for those who want to understand how the economy works but have no interest in jargon or equations. Sowell reveals the general principles behind any kind of economy-capitalist, socialist, feudal, and so on. In readable language, he shows how to critique economic policies in terms of the incentives they create, rather than the goals they proclaim. With clear explanations of the entire field, from rent control and the rise and fall of businesses to the international balance of payments, this is the first book for anyone who wishes to understand how the economy functions.

George Will

Basic Economics is not only valuable for a general lay-person audience; it would also benefit lawyers, politicians and, yes, economists. . .

Deseret News

All Democrats should be required to read Thomas Sowell's book 'Basic Economics'...

American Spectator

Sowell fans will find it a good read and a good resource.

Laissez-Faire Books

Basic Economics complements Henry Hazlitt's great classic Economics in One Lesson.

Wall Street Journal

Clear and concise . . . Among economists of the past 30 years, [Sowell] stands very proud indeed.

The American Spectator

Basic Economics might do a great service in the hands of the lay voter for whom it is intended. Sowell fans will find it a good read and a good resource. His enemies will be no more inclined than usual to forgive him for deflating their most dearly held myths.

The Washington Times

Dr. Thomas Sowell has just released his latest treasure . . . Basic Economics is not only valuable for a general lay-person audience; it would also benefit lawyers, politicians, and, yes, economists, as well.

Ideas On Liberty

Thomas Sowell is one of the fine scholars of our time.

Policy

If there is a single recent book that can advance economic literacy in this country, it is Thomas Sowell's latest book, Basic Economics . . . Sowell has managed to make economics humane again, relevant and interesting to young people and ordinary citizens . . . Buy a copy and read it immediately-no: buy two, and give one to a school teacher, a journalist, or a politician near you!

Claremont Review

Badly needed . . . Anyone who has been subjected to biased and dreary economics textbooks should read Basic Economics as a bracing corrective.

Business Wire

At last there is a citizen's guide to the economy, written by an economist who uses plain English . . . A comprehensive survey.

Library Journal

Syndicated columnist Sowell (economics, Hoover Inst.) is the author of 31 books and monographs on a broad range of topics, including race, culture, education, social policy, philosophy, and economics. In this groundbreaking work, he explains the basics of economics without resorting to the graphs, equations, and jargon that typically fill the textbooks and literature in the field. Along the way, he explains exactly what economics is and what its guiding principles are. Sowell covers a broad range of topics, from scarcity, the balance of trade, and price controls to minimum-wage laws, competition, profits and losses, and the role of government. Intended as a primer for the citizen not trained in the basics of economic theory, this book is flawed only in a somewhat confusing organization that leads to repetition. Recommended for public libraries. Norm Hutcherson, California State Univ., Bakersfield Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

Sowell, one of America's best-known economists and a fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, explains the economy in plain English for general readers, covering everything from rent control to the international balance of payments. He uses examples drawn from around the world and from different time periods to show how whole societies create property or poverty for their people by the way they organize their economies. Chapters are in sections on prices, industry and commerce, work and pay, time and risk, the national economy, the international economy, and popular economic fallacies. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)



Table of Contents:
Preface     vii
What is Economics?     1
Prices and Markets     9
The Role of Prices     11
Price Controls     38
An Overview     62
Industry and Commerce     87
The Rise and Fall of Businesses     89
The Role of Profits-and Losses     108
Big Business and Government     138
An Overview     162
Work and Pay     181
Productivity and Pay     183
Controlled Labor Markets     207
An Overview     237
Time and Risk     255
Investment and Speculation     257
Risks and Insurance     282
An Overview     307
The National Economy     323
National Output     325
Money and the Banking System     342
Government Functions     364
Government Finance     393
An Overview     419
The International Economy     431
International Trade     433
International Transfers of Wealth     457
An Overview     480
Special Economic Issues     493
Myths about Markets     495
"Non-Economic" Values     518
Parting Thoughts     544
Questions     553
Sources     569
Index     615

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Hot Flat and Crowded or The Ascent of Money

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew America

Author: Thomas L Friedman

Thomas L. Friedman's No. 1 bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see the world, and globalization, in a new way. With his latest book, Friedman brings a fresh and provocative outlook to another pressing issue: the interlinked crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy--both of which could poison our world if we do not act quickly and collectively. His argument speaks to the 2008 presidential election--and to all of us who are concerned about the state of America and its role in the global future.

"Green is the new red, white, and blue," Friedman declares, and proposes that an ambitious national strategy--which he calls geo-greenism--is not only what we need to save the planet from overheating, it is what we need to make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure in the coming E.C.E.--the Energy-Climate Era. Green-oriented practices and technologies, established at scale everywhere from Washington to Wal-Mart, are both the only way to mitigate climate change and the best way for America to "get its groove back"--to "reknit America at home, reconnect America abroad, retool America for the new century, and restore America to its natural place in the global order."

As in The World Is Flat and his previous bestseller The Lexus and the Olive Tree, he explains the future we are facing through an illuminating account of recent events. He explains how 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the flattening of the world by the Internet, which has brought three billion new consumers onto the world stage, have combined to bring the climate and energy issues to main street. But they have not really gone down main street yet. Indeed, it is Friedman's view that we are not really having the green revolution that the press keeps touting, or, if we are, "it is the only revolution in history," he says, "where no one got hurt." No, to the contrary, argues Friedman, we're actually having a "green party." We have not even begun to be serious yet about the speed and scale of change that is required.

With all that in mind, Friedman lays out his argument that if we are going to avoid the worst disruptions looming before us as we enter the Energy-Climate Era, we are going to need several disruptive breakthroughs in the clean-technology sphere--disruptive in the transformational sense. He explores what enabled the disruptive breakthroughs that created the IT (Information Technology) revolution that flattened the world in information terms and then shows how a similar set of disruptive breakthroughs could spark the ET--Energy Technology--revolution. Time and again, though, Friedman shows why it is both necessary and desirous for America to lead this revolution--with the first green president, a green New Deal, and spurred by the Greenest Generation--and why meeting the green challenge of the twenty-first century could transform America every bit as meeting the Red challenge, that of Communism, did in the twentieth century.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman--fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the world we live in today.

The New York Times - David G. Victor

The litany of dangers has been told many times before, but Mr. Friedman's voice is compelling and will be widely heard…Heads will be nodding across airport lounges, as readers absorb Mr. Friedman's common sense about how America and the world are dangerously addicted to cheap fossil fuels while we recklessly use the atmosphere as a dumping ground for carbon dioxide.

The Washington Post - Joseph S. Nye Jr.

Like it or not, we need Tom Friedman. The peripatetic columnist has made himself a major interpreter of the confusing world we inhabit. He travels to the farthest reaches, interviews everyone from peasants to chief executives and expresses big ideas in clear and memorable prose. While pettifogging academics (a select few of whom he favors) complain that his catchy phrases and anecdotes sometimes obscure deeper analysis, by and large Friedman gets the big issues right.

Publishers Weekly

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Friedman (The World Is Flat) is still an unrepentant guru of globalism, despite the looming economic crisis attributable, in Friendman's view, to the U.S. having become a "subprime nation that thinks it can just borrow its way to prosperity." Friedman covers familiar territory (the need for alternate energy, conservation measures, recycling, energy efficiency, etc.) as a build-up to his main thesis: the U.S. market is the "most effective and prolific system for transformational innovation.... There is only one thing bigger than Mother Nature and that is Father Profit." While he remains ostensibly a proponent of the free market, he does not flinch from using the government to create conditions favorable to investment, such as setting a "floor price for crude oil or gasoline," and imposing a new gasoline tax ($5-$10 per gallon) in order to make investment in green technologies attractive to venture capitalists: "America needs an energy technology bubble just like the information technology bubble." To make such draconian measures palatable, Friedman poses a national competition to "outgreen" China, modeled on Kennedy's proposal to beat the Soviets to the moon, a race that required a country-wide mobilization comparable to the WWII war effort. Recognizing the looming threat of "petrodicatorship" and U.S. dependence on imported oil, this warning salvo presents a stirring and far-darker vision than Friedman's earlier books.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Risa Getman - Library Journal

The audio edition of three-time Pulitzer® Prize winner/New York Times columnist Friedman's The World Is Flat, which won an Audie® Award in 2006, remains Macmillan Audio's top-selling title of all time. Audie® Award-winning actor/narrator Oliver Wyman, who skillfully voiced that title, does the same with this one, in which Friedman addresses the triple threat of global warming, overconsumption, and population explosion not just to the environment but to political stability and the economy. The currency and gravity of this topic cannot be overstated; regardless of their political leanings, readers will sit up and listen. Highly recommended for all library collections; expect heavy demand. [Audio clip available through us.macmillan.com.-Ed.]

Kirkus Reviews

The world is flat, New York Times columnist Friedman told us in his bestselling 2005 book of that name. Now things are getting worse, and the clock is ticking. Americans have squandered most of the goodwill extended since 9/11, writes Friedman, and in the years of the Bush administration no thought has been given to what 9/12 is supposed to look like. The climate is changing, but the administration has spent most of its tenure denying it and insisting on a particularist view that we deserve to be profligate because we're Americans. Our political blindness and ignorance vis-a-vis other nations now butts up against the world's instability and, Friedman continues, "the convergence of hot, flat, and crowded is tightening energy supplies, intensifying the extinction of plants and animals, deepening energy poverty, strengthening petrodictatorship, and accelerating climate change." The way out of those tangles, he says, is for America to go green in any way possible-and to do it right away, investing in every kind of alternative and renewable energy form imaginable, setting the best of examples for the rest of the world and exporting green technologies everywhere, thus winning back allies and influencing people. Readers who have been paying attention to Fareed Zakaria, Jared Diamond or similar writers know most of this, but still the word has been slow getting out. Many others have written about these subjects, but few enjoy Friedman's audience, so it's good that he's turning to such matters, if a touch belatedly. His case studies-from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's insistence on a fleet of hybrid taxis on the street to British firm Marks & Spencer's insistence that going green is PlanA and that "there is no Plan B" -are well-selected, detailed and, in the end, quite inspiring. That inspiration is needed, along with a lot of hard work. A timely, rewarding book. Agent: Esther Newberg/ICM



Table of Contents:

Pt. I Where We Are

1 Where Birds Don't Fly 3

2 Today's Date: 1 E.C.E. Today's Weather: Hot, Flat, and Crowded 26

Pt. II How We Got Here

3 Our Carbon Copies (or, Too Many Americans) 53

4 Fill'Er Up with Dictators 77

5 Global Weirding 111

6 The Age of Noah 140

7 Energy Poverty 154

8 Green Is the New Red, White, and Blue 170

Pt. III How We Move Forward

9 205 Easy Ways to Save the Earth 203

10 The Energy Internet: When IT Meets ET 217

11 The Stone Age Didn't End Because We Ran Out of Stones 241

12 If It Isn't Boring, It Isn't Green 267

13 A Million Noahs, a Million Arks 297

14 Outgreening al-Qaeda (or, Buy One, Get Four Free) 317

Pt. IV China

15 Can Red China Become Green China? 343

Pt. V America

16 China for a Day (but Not for Two) 371

17 A Democratic China, or a Banana Republic? 395

Acknowledgments 415

Index 423

Interesting book: New Hope for People with Diabetes or Tibetan AyurVeda

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

Author: Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance.

Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it's the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it's the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What's more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history.

Through Ferguson's expert lens familiar historical landmarks appear in a new and sharper financial focus. Suddenly, the civilization of the Renaissance looks very different: a boom in the market for art and architecture made possible when Italian bankers adopted Arabic mathematics. The rise of the Dutch republic is reinterpreted as the triumph of the world's first modern bond market over insolvent Habsburg absolutism. And the origins of the French Revolution are traced back to a stock market bubble caused by a convicted Scot murderer.

With the clarity and verve for which he is known, Ferguson elucidates key financial institutions and concepts by showing where they came from. What is money? What do banks do? What's the difference between a stock and a bond? Why buy insurance or real estate? And what exactly does a hedge fund do?

This is history for the present. Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to ask why the free market can't provide adequate protection against catastrophe. He delves into the origins ofthe subprime mortgage crisis.

Perhaps most important, The Ascent of Money documents how a new financial revolution is propelling the world's biggest countries, India and China, from poverty to wealth in the space of a single generation-an economic transformation unprecedented in human history.

Yet the central lesson of the financial history is that sooner or later every bubble bursts-sooner or later the bearish sellers outnumber the bullish buyers, sooner or later greed flips into fear. And that's why, whether you're scraping by or rolling in it, there's never been a better time to understand the ascent of money.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

…the book as a whole is animated by Mr. Ferguson's narrative gifts, among them his ability to discuss complex ideas in user-friendly terms. He also has a knack for illustrating his larger hypotheses with colorful stories about people like Nathan Rothschild (the subject of one of his earlier books); the Scottish economist and gambler John Law (described as "the man who invented the stock market bubble"); and the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman and his so-called Chicago Boys

The Washington Post -

The pleasure of reading Ferguson's treatment comes partly from the clarity of his explanations of financial concepts but mostly from his pen portraits of the extravagantly gifted and flawed characters who have led money's long rise. He shows us how far we have come since Mesopotamian moneylenders developed rudimentary accounting around 1,000 B.C. and the Medici created elements of modern banking in 14th- and 15th-century Florence…an admirably illuminating book that will take its place beside such modern classics as John Train's The Money Masters, Peter L. Bernstein's Against the Gods, and Adam Smith's Supermoney.

Lawrence Maxted - Library Journal

With global financial markets experiencing severe turbulence, Harvard historian Ferguson (The Pity of War) presents a timely history of money and finance from the advent of coins to J.P Morgan Chase's takeover of Bear Stearns earlier this year. He describes humanity's major financial innovations such as banks, bonds, joint stock companies, insurance, and property ownership as well as the pitfalls of inflation, recessions, and asset bubbles. Ferguson finishes by discussing the various iterations of globalization over the past 100 years and one of the newest and currently most notorious financial developments: hedge funds. He keeps his story interesting with humor and unexpected twists such as how a fund to provide for the widows of Scottish clergymen laid the foundations for modern insurance theory. Commenting on the safety normally ascribed to investing in property, he observes ironically that the only real security entailed is for lenders who in the event of loan defaults can seize properties. Though not comprehensive in scope, Ferguson's lighthearted but thoughtful stroll through financial history is a welcome and recommended addition for public libraries and undergraduate collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ7/08.]



The Snowball or Hot Flat and Crowded

Outliers: The Story of Success

Author: Alice Schroeder

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.
Brilliant and entertaining, OUTLIERS is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.

The New York Times - David Leonhardt

has much in common with Gladwell's earlier work. It is a pleasure to read and leaves you mulling over its inventive theories for days afterward.

Publishers Weekly

Signature

Reviewed by Leslie Chang

In Outliers, Gladwell (The Tipping Point) once again proves masterful in a genre he essentially pioneered-the book that illuminates secret patterns behind everyday phenomena. His gift for spotting an intriguing mystery, luring the reader in, then gradually revealing his lessons in lucid prose, is on vivid display. Outliers begins with a provocative look at why certain five-year-old boys enjoy an advantage in ice hockey, and how these advantages accumulate over time. We learn what Bill Gates, the Beatles and Mozart had in common: along with talent and ambition, each enjoyed an unusual opportunity to intensively cultivate a skill that allowed them to rise above their peers. A detailed investigation of the unique culture and skills of Eastern European Jewish immigrants persuasively explains their rise in 20th-century New York, first in the garment trade and then in the legal profession. Through case studies ranging from Canadian junior hockey champions to the robber barons of the Gilded Age, from Asian math whizzes to software entrepreneurs to the rise of his own family in Jamaica, Gladwell tears down the myth of individual merit to explore how culture, circumstance, timing, birth and luck account for success-and how historical legacies can hold others back despite ample individual gifts. Even as we know how many of these stories end, Gladwell restores the suspense and serendipity to these narratives that make them fresh and surprising.

One hazard of this genre is glibness. In seeking to understand why Asian children score higher on math tests, Gladwell explores the persistence andpainstaking labor required to cultivate rice as it has been done in East Asia for thousands of years; though fascinating in its details, the study does not prove that a rice-growing heritage explains math prowess, as Gladwell asserts. Another pitfall is the urge to state the obvious: "No one," Gladwell concludes in a chapter comparing a high-IQ failure named Chris Langan with the brilliantly successful J. Robert Oppenheimer, "not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires and not even geniuses-ever makes it alone." But who in this day and age believes that a high intelligence quotient in itself promises success? In structuring his book against that assumption, Gladwell has set up a decidedly flimsy straw man.

In the end it is the seemingly airtight nature of Gladwell's arguments that works against him. His conclusions are built almost exclusively on the findings of others-sociologists, psychologists, economists, historians-yet he rarely delves into the methodology behind those studies. And he is free to cherry-pick those cases that best illustrate his points; one is always left wondering about the data he evaluated and rejected because it did not support his argument, or perhaps contradicted it altogether. Real life is seldom as neat as it appears in a Malcolm Gladwell book. (Nov.)

Leslie T. Chang is the author of Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China (Spiegel & Grau).

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Ellen Gilbert - Library Journal

Let's cut to the chase and say that all libraries should buy this book, if only because people will be asking for it. Gladwell, New Yorker staff writer, TEDTalks (Technology, Entertainment, Design) personality, and author of the best sellers The Tipping Point and Blink, has, well, reached a tipping point in the consciousness of observers of popular culture. Following a format similar to his previous books, Gladwell gloms onto an apparent phenomenon-in this case people who seem significantly different from other people, whether for good or for ill-and offers what we're all apparently supposed to believe are startlingly logical explanations for why they stand out. Gladwell's reasons have largely to do with things like where they come from and what month they were born in. It's all very readable, but not particularly surprising. No matter, libraries will need to acquire it. [See Prepub Alert, LJ7/08.]

Kirkus Reviews

There is a logic behind why some people become successful, and it has more to do with legacy and opportunity than high IQ. In his latest book, New Yorker contributor Gladwell (Blink, 2005, etc.) casts his inquisitive eye on those who have risen meteorically to the top of their fields, analyzing developmental patterns and searching for a common thread. The author asserts that there is no such thing as a self-made man, that "the true origins of high achievement" lie instead in the circumstances and influences of one's upbringing, combined with excellent timing. The Beatles had Hamburg in 1960-62; Bill Gates had access to an ASR-33 Teletype in 1968. Both put in thousands of hours-Gladwell posits that 10,000 is the magic number-on their craft at a young age, resulting in an above-average head start. The author makes sure to note that to begin with, these individuals possessed once-in-a-generation talent in their fields. He simply makes the point that both encountered the kind of "right place at the right time" opportunity that allowed them to capitalize on their talent, a delineation that often separates moderate from extraordinary success. This is also why Asians excel at mathematics-their culture demands it. If other countries schooled their children as rigorously, the author argues, scores would even out. Gladwell also looks at "demographic luck," the effect of one's birth date. He demonstrates how being born in the decades of the 1830s or 1930s proved an enormous advantage for any future entrepreneur, as both saw economic booms and demographic troughs, meaning that class sizes were small, teachers were overqualified, universities were looking to enroll and companies were looking foremployees. In short, possibility comes "from the particular opportunities that our particular place in history presents us with." This theme appears throughout the varied anecdotes, but is it groundbreaking information? At times it seems an exercise in repackaged carpe diem, especially from a mind as attuned as Gladwell's. Nonetheless, the author's lively storytelling and infectious enthusiasm make it an engaging, perhaps even inspiring, read. Sure to be a crowd-pleaser.



Table of Contents:

Introduction The Roseto Mystery: "These people were dying of old age. That's it" 3

Pt. 1 Opportunity

1 The Matthew Effect: "For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." - Matthew 25:29 15

2 The 10,000-Hour Rule: "In Hamburg, we had to play for eight hours" 35

3 The Trouble with Geniuses, Part 1: "Knowledge of a boy's IQ is of little help if you are faced with a formful of clever boys" 69

4 The Trouble with Geniuses, Part 2: "After protracted negotiations, it was agreed that Robert would be put on probation" 91

5 The Three Lessons of Joe Flom: "Mary got a quarter." 116

Pt. 2 Legacy

6 Harlan, Kentucky: "Die like a man, like your brother did!" 161

7 The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes: "Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot" 177

8 Rice Paddies and Math Tests: "No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich" 224

9 Marita's Bargain: "All my friends now are from KIPP" 250

Epilogue: A Jamaican Story: "If a progeny of young colored children is brought forth, these are emancipated" 270

Notes 287

Acknowledgments 297

Index 301

Books about: Generation Text or Managing Humans

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

Author: Thomas L Friedman

Here is THE book recounting the life and times of one of the most respected men in the world, Warren Buffett. The legendary Omaha investor has never written a memoir, but now he has allowed one writer, Alice Schroeder, unprecedented access to explore directly with him and with those closest to him his work, opinions, struggles, triumphs, follies, and wisdom. The result is the personally revealing and complete biography of the man known everywhere as “The Oracle of Omaha.”

Although the media track him constantly, Buffett himself has never told his full life story. His reality is private, especially by celebrity standards. Indeed, while the homespun persona that the public sees is true as far as it goes, it goes only so far. Warren Buffett is an array of paradoxes. He set out to prove that nice guys can finish first. Over the years he treated his investors as partners, acted as their steward, and championed honesty as an investor, CEO, board member, essayist, and speaker. At the same time he became the world’s richest man, all from the modest Omaha headquarters of his company Berkshire Hathaway. None of this fits the term “simple.”

When Alice Schroeder met Warren Buffett she was an insurance industry analyst and a gifted writer known for her keen perception and business acumen. Her writings on finance impressed him, and as she came to know him she realized that while much had been written on the subject of his investing style, no one had moved beyond that to explore his larger philosophy, which is bound up in a complex personality and the details of his life. Out of this came his decision to cooperate with her on the book about himself thathe would never write.

Never before has Buffett spent countless hours responding to a writer’s questions, talking, giving complete access to his wife, children, friends, and business associates—opening his files, recalling his childhood. It was an act of courage, as The Snowball makes immensely clear. Being human, his own life, like most lives, has been a mix of strengths and frailties. Yet notable though his wealth may be, Buffett’s legacy will not be his ranking on the scorecard of wealth; it will be his principles and ideas that have enriched people’s lives. This book tells you why Warren Buffett is the most fascinating American success story of our time.


The New York Times - Janet Maslin

[Buffett's] opinions are so hotly sought that The Snowball, a biography with which he has enthusiastically cooperated, would be of interest even if it answered only softball questions. It approaches him seriously, covers vast terrain and tells a fascinating story. Mr. Buffett made a smart choice when he chose Alice Schroeder as his Boswell. Yes, he found an appreciative biographer with whom he seems to have a warm rapport. But he also found a writer able to keep pace with the wild swerves in the Buffett story and the intricacies of Mr. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway business empire. Ms. Schroeder is as insightful about her subject's precise anticipation of current financial crises as she is about his quirky personal story. And she is a clear explicator of fiscal issues. This sprawling, colorful biography will mesmerize anyone interested in who Mr. Buffett is or how he got that way.

The Washington Post - James Rosen

The Snowball, whose title is derived from one of the Oracle's homespun aphorisms—"Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill"—marks a titanic achievement of research and reporting. It's the definitive portrait of a complex man of simple tastes, a power player who trembled from anxieties worthy of Charlie Brown, a triumphant outsider who revolutionized Wall Street from a modest office in Omaha, a money-obsessed genius who amassed unprecedented wealth and then gave it all away. To be sure, Schroeder could have used an editor; at 960 pages, her book devotes pages and pages of description, however thoroughly researched, to peripheral characters, family histories and houses that could have been sketched, no less ably or helpfully, in a few sentences…But if the replication of any great achievement first requires knowledge of how it was done, then The Snowball, the most detailed glimpse inside Warren Buffett and his world that we likely will ever get, should become a Bible for capitalists.

Publishers Weekly

Successful investor Warren Buffett sits down with author Schroeder to give readers deep and erudite insights into his work and personal life. Detailing his views on current trends in the economy and society, Buffet speaks with tremendous wisdom about everything from his family to his business ethics. Richard McGonagle gives an eloquent, straightforward reading. He has a knack for delivering words with a profound importance in his voice, drawing in listeners and holding their interest for hours. Schroeder reads her introduction and sets the tone for this revealing biography. A Bantam hardcover (reviewed online). (Oct.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.