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How Big Things Get Done

10,000.00

Nothing is more inspiring than a big vision that becomes a triumphant, new reality. Think of how the Empire State Building went from a sketch to the jewel of New York’s skyline in twenty-one months, or how Apple’s iPod went from a project with a single employee to a product launch in eleven months.

These are wonderful stories. But most of the time big visions turn into nightmares. Remember Boston’s “Big Dig”? Almost every sizeable city in the world has such a fiasco in its backyard. In fact, no less than 92% of megaprojects come in over budget or over schedule, or both. The cost of California’s high-speed rail project soared from $33 billion to $100 billon—and won’t even go where promised. More modest endeavors, whether launching a small business, organizing a conference, or just finishing a work project on time, also commonly fail. Why?

Understanding what distinguishes the triumphs from the failures has been the life’s work of Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg, dubbed “the world’s leading megaproject expert.” In How Big Things Get Done, he identifies the errors in judgment and decision-making that lead projects, both big and small, to fail, and the research-based principles that will make you succeed with yours

How Democracies Die

14,500.00

Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang—in a revolution or military coup—but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one.

Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die—and how ours can be saved.

How Fascism Works

7,000.00

As the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don’t have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism’s roots have been present in the United States for more than a century. Alarmed by the pervasive rise of fascist tactics both at home and around the globe, Stanley focuses here on the structures that unite them, laying out and analyzing the ten pillars of fascist politics—the language and beliefs that separate people into an “us” and a “them.” He knits together reflections on history, philosophy, sociology, and critical race theory with stories from contemporary Hungary, Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations. He makes clear the immense danger of underestimating the cumulative power of these tactics, which include exploiting a mythic version of a nation’s past; propaganda that twists the language of democratic ideals against themselves; anti-intellectualism directed against universities and experts; law and order politics predicated on the assumption that members of minority groups are criminals; and fierce attacks on labor groups and welfare. These mechanisms all build on one another, creating and reinforcing divisions and shaping a society vulnerable to the appeals of authoritarian leadership.

By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, Stanley reveals that the stuff of politics—charged by rhetoric and myth—can quickly become policy and reality. Only by recognizing fascists politics, he argues, may we resist its most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals.

How I Built This

7,000.00

Great ideas often come from a simple spark: A soccer player on the New Zealand national team notices all the unused wool his country produces and figures out a way to turn them into shoes (Allbirds). A former Buddhist monk decides the very best way to spread his mindfulness teachings is by launching an app (Headspace). A sandwich cart vendor finds a way to reuse leftover pita bread and turns it into a multimillion-dollar business (Stacy’s Pita Chips).

Award-winning journalist and NPR host Guy Raz has interviewed more than 200 highly successful entrepreneurs to uncover amazing true stories like these. In How I Built This, he shares tips for every entrepreneur’s journey: from the early days of formulating your idea, to raising money and recruiting employees, to fending off competitors, to finally paying yourself a real salary. This is a must-read for anyone who has ever dreamed of starting their own business or wondered how trailblazing entrepreneurs made their own dreams a reality.

How Infrastructure Works

28,000.00

A new way of seeing the essential systems hidden inside our walls, under our streets, and all around us

Infrastructure is a marvel, meeting our basic needs and enabling lives of astounding ease and productivity that would have been unimaginable just a century ago. It is the physical manifestation of our social contract—of our ability to work collectively for the public good—and it consists of the most complex and vast technological systems ever created by humans.

A soaring bridge is an obvious infrastructural feat, but so are the mostly hidden reservoirs, transformers, sewers, cables, and pipes that deliver water, energy, and information to wherever we need it. When these systems work well, they hide in plain sight. Engineer and materials scientist Deb Chachra takes readers on a fascinating tour of these essential utilities, revealing how they work, what it takes to keep them running, just how much we rely on them—but also whom they work well for, and who pays the costs.

Across the U.S. and elsewhere, these systems are suffering from systemic neglect and the effects of climate change, becoming unavoidably visible when they break down. Communities that are already marginalized often bear the brunt of these failures. But Chachra maps out a path for transforming and rebuilding our shared infrastructure to be not just functional but also equitable, resilient, and sustainable. The cost of not being able to rely on these systems is unthinkably high. We need to learn how to see them—and fix them, together—before it’s too late.

How Innovation Works

6,500.00

Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society. Forget short-term symptoms like Donald Trump and Brexit, it is innovation that will shape the twenty-first century. Yet innovation remains a mysterious process, poorly understood by policy makers and businessmen alike.

Matt Ridley argues that we need to see innovation as an incremental, bottom-up, fortuitous process that happens as a direct result of the human habit of exchange, rather than an orderly, top-down process developing according to a plan. Innovation is crucially different from invention, because it is the turning of inventions into things of practical and affordable use to people. It speeds up in some sectors and slows down in others. It is always a collective, collaborative phenomenon, involving trial and error, not a matter of lonely genius. It happens mainly in just a few parts of the world at any one time. It still cannot be modeled properly by economists, but it can easily be discouraged by politicians. Far from there being too much innovation, we may be on the brink of an innovation famine.

Ridley derives these and other lessons from the lively stories of scores of innovations, how they started and why they succeeded or failed. Some of the innovation stories he tells are about steam engines, jet engines, search engines, airships, coffee, potatoes, vaping, vaccines, cuisine, antibiotics, mosquito nets, turbines, propellers, fertilizer, zero, computers, dogs, farming, fire, genetic engineering, gene editing, container shipping, railways, cars, safety rules, wheeled suitcases, mobile phones, corrugated iron, powered flight, chlorinated water, toilets, vacuum cleaners, shale gas, the telegraph, radio, social media, block chain, the sharing economy, artificial intelligence, fake bomb detectors, phantom games consoles, fraudulent blood tests, hyperloop tubes, herbicides, copyright, and even life itself.

How Markets Fail

14,000.00

For fifty years, economists have been developing elegant theories or how markets facilitate innovation, create wealth, and allocate society’s resources efficiently. But what about when they fail, when they lead us to stock market bubbles, glaring inequality, polluted rivers, and credit crunches?

In this updated and expanded edition of How Markets Fail, John Cassidy describes the rising influence of “utopian economies”―the thinking that is blind to how real people act and that denies the many ways an unregulated free market can bring on disaster. Combining on-the-ground reporting and clear explanations of economic theories Cassidy warns that in today’s economic crisis, following old orthodoxies isn’t just misguided―it’s downright dangerous.

How Not To Hire

6,500.00

It’s the same cycle: you diligently sort through résumés to find the cream of the crop. You have amazing interviews and confidently land on the one, but two weeks into the job and the one turns out to be the wrong one. What gives? Well, you’re clearly screwing something up, and it’s time to find out what it is.

It’s frustrating. You’re up to date on all the newest interview techniques. You know what to look for on candidates’ résumés. You inspect social media profiles for red flags and put them through an in-depth panel interview. They pass with flying colors.

But still, a week or two into the job, it’s clearly not working out. They turn out to be less motivated than they claimed. They didn’t reveal their tendencies in the interview, and they don’t have the skills necessary to do the job. Chances are it’s not about what you’re doing right in the hiring process–it’s about what you’re doing wrong.

How Not to Hire is filled with interviews and stories of people who were being held back by the things they didn’t realize were working against them. The workplace is a minefield filled with politics and unspoken rules. This book is here to teach you:

-How you’re screwing it up and what to do about it
-How other people screwed it up before figuring it out
-What you should stop doing immediately
-What you should be doing more of

Now, stop panicking and letting frustration hold you back. This book is the tool you need to get the best candidates for the interview and the right person for the job!

How Not To Manage People

6,000.00

You play it cool, letting your team take half days on Friday and overlooking the occasional latecomer to the office. You stand up for your people and make sure they know you’re there for them, but they still hate working for you. What gives? Well, you’re clearly screwing something up, and it’s time you find out what it is.

It’s frustrating. You’ve put in the work and finally made it to the management team, and you haven’t stopped there. You show up first and leave last. You’re there every time one of your employees needs something. To any outsider looking in, you’re killing this management thing.

But still, your employees want nothing to do with you. They scoff when you tell them what to do and suddenly get quiet when you walk into the room. You know you have to get your team behind you if you’re going to stay on the management team. Chances are it’s not about what you’re doing right–it’s about what you’re doing wrong.

How Not to Manage is filled with interviews and stories of people who were being held back by the things they didn’t realize were working against them. The workplace is a minefield filled with politics and unspoken rules. This book is here to teach you:

-How you’re screwing it up and what to do about it
-How other people screwed it up before figuring it out
-What you should stop doing immediately
-What you should be doing more of

Now, stop panicking and letting frustration hold you back. This book is the tool you need to get your team on your side and rock the manager title!

How Reading Changed My Life

4,000.00

THE LIBRARY OF CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT is a groundbreaking series where America’s finest writers and most brilliant minds tackle today’s most provocative, fascinating, and relevant issues. Striking and daring, creative and important, these original voices on matters political, social, economic, and cultural, will enlighten, comfort, entertain, enrage, and ignite healthy debate across the country

How Stella Got Her Groove Back

6,000.00

Stella Payne is forty-two, divorced, a high-powered investment analyst, mother of eleven-year-old Quincy- and she does it all. In fact, if she doesn’t do it, it doesn’t get done, from Little League carpool duty to analyzing portfolios to folding the laundry and bringing home the bacon. She does it all well, too, if her chic house, personal trainer, BMW, and her loving son are any indication. So what if there’s been no one to share her bed with lately, let alone rock her world? Stella doesn’t mind it too much; she probably wouldn’t have the energy for love—and all of love’s nasty fallout—anyway.

But when Stella takes a spur-of-the-moment vacation to Jamaica, her world gets rocked to the core—not just by the relaxing effects of the sun and sea and an island full of attractive men, but by one man in particular. He’s tall, lean, soft-spoken, Jamaican, smells of citrus and the ocean—and is half her age. The tropics have cast their spell and Stella soon realizes she has come to a cataclysmic juncture: not only must she confront her hopes and fears about love, she must question all of her expectations, passions, and ideas about life and the way she has lived it.

How The Mighty Fall

8,000.00

Decline can be avoided. Decline can be detected. Decline can be reversed.

Amidst the desolate landscape of fallen great companies, Jim Collins began to wonder: How do the mighty fall? Can decline be detected early and avoided? How far can a company fall before the path toward doom becomes inevitable and unshakable? How can companies reverse course?

In How the Mighty Fall, Collins confronts these questions, offering leaders the well-founded hope that they can learn how to stave off decline and, if they find themselves falling, reverse their course. Collins’ research project—more than four years in duration—uncovered five step-wise stages of decline:

Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success
Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More
Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril
Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation
Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death
By understanding these stages of decline, leaders can substantially reduce their chances of falling all the way to the bottom. Great companies can stumble, badly, and recover.

Every institution, no matter how great, is vulnerable to decline. There is no law of nature that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top. Anyone can fall and most eventually do. But, as Collins’ research emphasizes, some companies do indeed recover—in some cases, coming back even stronger—even after having crashed into the depths of Stage 4.

Decline, it turns out, is largely self-inflicted, and the path to recovery lies largely within our own hands. We are not imprisoned by our circumstances, our history, or even our staggering defeats along the way. As long as we never get entirely knocked out of the game, hope always remains. The mighty can fall, but they can often rise again.

How The One Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

6,000.00

In Baxter’s Beach, Barbados, Lala’s grandmother Wilma tells the story of the one-armed sister, a cautionary tale about what happens to girls who disobey their mothers.

For Wilma, it’s the story of a wilful adventurer, who ignores the warnings of those around her, and suffers as a result.

When Lala grows up, she sees it offers hope – of life after losing a baby in the most terrible of circumstances and marrying the wrong man.

And Mira Whalen? It’s about keeping alive, trying to make sense of the fact that her husband has been murdered, and she didn’t get the chance to tell him that she loved him after all.

HOW THE ONE-ARMED SISTER SWEEPS HER HOUSE is the powerful, intense story of three marriages, and of a beautiful island paradise where, beyond the white sand beaches and the wealthy tourists, lies poverty, menacing violence and the story of the sacrifices some women make to survive.

How To Attract Money

5,500.00

From the beloved author of The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, this compact book is a classic guide to financial prosperity. Filled with simple, powerful mindset shifts, How to Attract Money will fundamentally change how you approach your finances. By learning to accept that money is a solution, not a problem and that wealth is a state of consciousness, your mind can truly become your main path to prosperity.

Murphy’s approach to money is liberating and joyful. Instead of the shame and guilt―craving more or not having enough―he firmly declares that “it is your right to be rich.” Happiness, luxury, and delight are the birthright of every human.

Joseph Murphy’s work has changed the lives of millions of people and continues to do so. This new, pocket-sized edition of How to Attract Money brings his empowering message to the next generation of readers.

How To Bake

22,000.00

Paul Hollywood was the son of a baker long before he became a household name as a judge on The Great British Baking Show. Raised to make perfect breads, scones, and sponges, he advanced from his father’s kitchen to become head baker at hotels around the world. As he worked, Hollywood became passionate about busting the myths that surround baking, sharing his finely honed skills, and showing that with the right guidance, anybody can achieve success time after time.

Now, in How to Bake, Hollywood introduces readers to his tried and true techniques. He has filled this book with easy-to-follow, clearly explained, utterly delicious recipes for an abundance of breads, pastries, cakes and biscuits from ciabatta to focaccia and fresh croissants to a classic Victoria sponge.

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