In it, some of the best international specialists working on the subject today examine terrorism's long and complex history from antiquity to the present day and find that terror, long the weapon of the weak against the strong, is a tactic as old as warfare itself. Beginning with the Zealots of Antiquity, the contributors discuss the Assassins of the Middle Ages, the 1789 Terror movement in Europe, Bolshevik terrorism during the Russian Revolution, Stalinism, "resistance" terrorism during World War II, and Latin American revolutionary movements of the late 1960s. Finally, they consider the emergence of modern transnational terrorism, focusing on the roots of Islamic terrorism, al Qaeda, and the rise of the contemporary suicide martyr. Along the way, they provide a groundbreaking analysis of how terrorism has been perceived throughout history. What becomes powerfully clear is that only through deeper understanding can we fully grasp the present dangers of a phenomenon whose repercussions are far from over.Includes essays by François Géré, Rohan Gunaratna, Olivier Hubac-Occhipinti, Ariel Merari, Philippe Migaux, Yves Ternon

    Forty years later, Bridgewater has made more money for its clients than any other hedge fund in history and grown into the fifth most important private company in the United States, according to Fortune magazine. Dalio himself has been named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Along the way, Dalio discovered a set of unique principles that have led to Bridgewater’s exceptionally effective culture, which he describes as “an idea meritocracy that strives to achieve meaningful work and meaningful relationships through radical transparency.” It is these principles, and not anything special about Dalio—who grew up an ordinary kid in a middle-class Long Island neighborhood—that he believes are the reason behind his success.In Principles, Dalio shares what he’s learned over the course of his remarkable career. He argues that life, management, economics, and investing can all be systemized into rules and understood like machines. The book’s hundreds of practical lessons, which are built around his cornerstones of “radical truth” and “radical transparency,” include Dalio laying out the most effective ways for individuals and organizations to make decisions, approach challenges, and build strong teams. He also describes the innovative tools the firm uses to bring an idea meritocracy to life, such as creating “baseball cards” for all employees that distill their strengths and weaknesses, and employing computerized decision-making systems to make believability-weighted decisions. While the book brims with novel ideas for organizations and institutions, Principles also offers a clear, straightforward approach to decision-making that Dalio believes anyone can apply, no matter what they’re seeking to achieve.Here is a rare opportunity to gain proven advice unlike anything you’ll find in the conventional business press.

    In this first, thematic popular history of the decade, David Frum argues that it was the 1970s, not the 1960s, that created modern America and altered the American personality forever. A society that had valued faith, self-reliance, self-sacrifice, and family loyalty evolved in little more than a decade into one characterized by superstition, self-interest, narcissism, and guilt. Frum examines this metamorphosis through the rise to cultural dominance of faddish psychology, astrology, drugs, religious cults, and consumer debt, and profiles such prominent players of the decade as Werner Erhard, Alex Comfort, and Jerry Brown. How We Got Here is lively and provocative reading.

     Tim accepted, and after extensive meetings with Elon and his staff, he wrote four blog posts that Vox’s David Roberts called “the meatiest, most fascinating, most satisfying posts I've read in ages.” Here is the whole series, in one ebook.

    Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks.Nobody needs telling there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless battle against distraction; and we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and “life hacks” to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks.Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern fixation on “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing finitude, showing how many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society—and that we could do things differently.

    These innovations produced a genuine revolution—the democratization of money—in which the middle class became financial players.Author Joe Nocera’s 2013 introduction describes where this revolution took those who embraced it, that is, practically all of us. We have gone into debt, made dicey investments, and lived through many bursting bubbles. We used the financial tools we now had at our disposal to act on bets and dares we didn’t yet understand. We bet on the Internet, borrowed on our homes, and compromised our retirements in pursuit of the American dream.A Piece of the Action is an important piece of financial and social history, and Nocera’s 2013 critique of the uses of the revolution is a powerful warning and admonition to understand what is at stake before we act.

    The reader is guided through the process of "getting" this new vision, and then through the specifics of applying it. It's simple, believable, and mechanical; not mystical or theoretical.

    Bush campaigned for the White House, he was such a novice in foreign policy that he couldn't name the president of Pakistan and momentarily suggested he thought the Taliban was a rock-and-roll band. But he relied upon a group called the Vulcans--an inner circle of advisers with a long, shared experience in government, dating back to the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and first Bush administrations. After returning to power in 2001, the Vulcans were widely expected to restore U.S. foreign policy to what it had been under George H. W. Bush and previous Republican administrations. Instead, the Vulcans put America on an entirely new and different course, adopting a far-reaching set of ideas that changed the world and America's role in it. Rise of the Vulcans is nothing less than a detailed, incisive thirty-five-year history of the top six members of the Vulcans--Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, and Condoleezza Rice--and the era of American dominance they represent. It is the story of the lives, ideas and careers of Bush's war cabinet--the group of Washington insiders who took charge of America's response to September 11 and led the nation into its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.Separately, each of these stories sheds astonishing light not only on the formative influences that brought these nascent leaders from obscurity to the pinnacle of power, but also on the experiences, conflicts and competitions that prefigured their actions on the present world stage. Taken together, the individuals in this book represent a unique generation in American history--a generation that might be compared to the wise men who shaped American policy after World War II or the best and brightest who prosecuted the war in Vietnam. Over the past three decades, since the time of Vietnam, these individuals have gradually led the way in shaping a new vision of an unchallengeable America seeking to dominate the globe through its military power.

    For more than four decades he has served as Director of the Office of Net Assessment, the Pentagon's internal think tank, under twelve defense secretaries and eight administrations. Yet Marshall has been on the cutting edge of strategic thinking even longer than that. At the RAND Corporation during its golden age in the 1950s and early 1960s, Marshall helped formulate bedrock concepts of US nuclear strategy that endure to this day; later, at the Pentagon, he pioneered the development of "net assessment" -- a new analytic framework for understanding the long-term military competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Following the Cold War, Marshall successfully used net assessment to anticipate emerging disruptive shifts in military affairs, including the revolution in precision warfare and the rise of China as a major strategic rival of the United States. In The Last Warrior, Andrew Krepinevich and Barry Watts -- both former members of Marshall's staff -- trace Marshall's intellectual development from his upbringing in Detroit during the Great Depression to his decades in Washington as an influential behind-the-scenes advisor on American defense strategy. The result is a unique insider's perspective on the changes in US strategy from the dawn of the Cold War to the present day. Covering some of the most pivotal episodes of the last half-century and peopled with some of the era's most influential figures, The Last Warrior tells Marshall's story for the first time, in the process providing an unparalleled history of the evolution of the American defense establishment.

    Articles from Game Theory Tuesdays have been referenced in The Freakonomics Blog, Yahoo Finance, and CNN.com. The second edition includes many streamlined explanations and incorporates suggestions from readers of the first edition. Game theory is the study of interactive decision making--that is, in situations where each person's action affects the outcome for the whole group. Game theory is a beautiful subject and this book will teach you how to understand the theory and practically implement solutions through a series of stories and the aid of over 30 illustrations. This book has two primary objectives. (1) To help you recognize strategic games, like the Prisoner's Dilemma, Bertrand Duopoly, Hotelling's Game, the Game of Chicken, and Mutually Assured Destruction. (2) To show you how to make better decisions and change the game, a powerful concept that can transform no-win situations into mutually beneficial outcomes. You'll learn how to negotiate better by making your threats credible, sometimes limiting options or burning bridges, and thinking about new ways to create better outcomes. As these goals indicate, game theory is about more than board games and gambling. It all seems so simple, and yet that definition belies the complexity of game theory. While it may only take seconds to get a sense of game theory, it takes a lifetime to appreciate and master it. This book will get you started.

    'Asking the Right Questions' helps students bridge the gap between simply memorising or blindly accepting information, and the greater challenge of critical analysis and synthesis.

    Photos.