Gates stresses the need for managers to view technology not as overhead but as a strategic asset, and offers detailed examples from Microsoft, GM, Dell, and many other successful companies. Companion Web site.

    Laughlin transports us two centuries into the future, when we've ceased to use carbon from the ground--either because humans have banned carbon burning or because fuel has simply run out. Boldly, Laughlin predicts no earth-shattering transformations will have taken place. Six generations from now, there will still be soccer moms, shopping malls, and business trips. Firesides will still be snug and warm.How will we do it? Not by discovering a magic bullet to slay our energy problems, but through a slew of fascinating technologies, drawing on wind, water, and fire. Powering the Future is an objective yet optimistic tour through alternative fuel sources, set in a world where we've burned every last drop of petroleum and every last shovelful of coal.The Predictable: Fossil fuels will run out. The present flow of crude oil out of the ground equals in one day the average flow of the Mississippi River past New Orleans in thirteen minutes. If you add the energy equivalents of gas and coal, it's thirty-six minutes. At the present rate of consumption, we'll be out of fossil fuels in two centuries' time. We always choose the cheapest gas. From the nineteenth-century consolidation of the oil business to the California energy crisis of 2000-2001, the energy business has shown, time and again, how low prices dominate market share. Market forces--not green technology--will be the driver of energy innovation in the next 200 years. The laws of physics remain fixed. Energy will still be conserved, degrade entropically with use, and have to be disposed of as waste heat into outer space. How much energy a fuel can pack away in a given space is fixed by quantum mechanics--and if we want to keep flying jet planes, we will need carbon-based fuels. The Potential: Animal waste. If dried and burned, the world's agricultural manure would supply about one-third as much energy as all the coal we presently consume. Trash. The United States disposes of 88 million tons of carbon in its trash per year. While the incineration of waste trash is not enough to contribute meaningfully to the global demand for energy, it will constrain fuel prices by providing a cheap supply of carbon. Solar energy. The power used to light all the cities around the world is only one-millionth of the total power of sunlight pouring down on earth's daytime side. And the amount of hydropump storage required to store the world's daily electrical surge is equal to only eight times the volume of Lake Mead. PRAISE FOR ROBERT B. LAUGHLIN -Perhaps the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Richard Feynman---George Chapline, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory -Powerful but controversial.--- Financial Times -[Laughlin's] company ... is inspirational.- --New Scientist

    Yet, for the digital natives soon to enter the workforce, the technologies and principles behind crowdsourcing are perfectly intuitive. This generation collaborates, shares, remixes, and creates with a fluency and ease the rest of us can hardly understand. Crowdsourcing, just now starting to emerge, will in a short time simply be the way things are done.

    Lee, the founding father of modern Singapore and its prime minister from 1959 to 1990, has honed his wisdom during more than fifty years on the world stage. Almost single-handedly responsible for transforming Singapore into a Western-style economic success, he offers a unique perspective on the geopolitics of East and West. American presidents from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama have welcomed him to the White House; British prime ministers from Margaret Thatcher to Tony Blair have recognized his wisdom; and business leaders from Rupert Murdoch to Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, have praised his accomplishments. This book gathers key insights from interviews, speeches, and Lee's voluminous published writings and presents them in an engaging question and answer format.Lee offers his assessment of China's future, asserting, among other things, that "China will want to share this century as co-equals with the U.S." He affirms the United States' position as the world's sole superpower but expresses dismay at the vagaries of its political system. He offers strategic advice for dealing with China and goes on to discuss India's future, Islamic terrorism, economic growth, geopolitics and globalization, and democracy. Lee does not pull his punches, offering his unvarnished opinions on multiculturalism, the welfare state, education, and the free market. This little book belongs on the reading list of every world leader--including the one who takes the oath of office on January 20, 2013.

    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.

    D. and 1700, providing a general theoretical framework for institutional change geared to the general reader.

    Even After Reading the Whole Book.Einstein’s Theory of Relativity allows us to understand the universe on a macro scale and the relationships between space, time, and gravity. The Theory of People allows us to understand people’s psychology and the relationships between aspects such as behaviors, feelings, business, and learning.• Control your behaviors, such as anger, laziness, and 20 other ones.• Manage your feelings to become happier and overcome stress, shyness, and 15 other ones.• Create a successful business by understanding what the perfect solution looks like and what makes people buy.• Become a visionary, just like Steve Jobs, by learning his motives.• Learn faster and improve your memory by discovering how our minds decide what information to save.• Increase your intelligence, creativity, and wisdom by learning what they are.• Understand what makes one country or person wealthier than other thanks to the golden law of economy.A Unique Book• Quick Read: Theory of People explains people on 2 pages. 70 pages are real-life applications. You would need to read tens of other books to get the same solutions.• Easy to Apply in Life: You do not need a scientific background or have to work hard to understand complicated subjects. It presents knowledge in a simple way.• Money-Back Guarantee: If you are unsatisfied, you can apply for a refund via Amazon within seven days of purchase. No questions asked.If you want to understand yourself and other people and apply that knowledge to real-life, buy the Theory of People now.

    Taking the lessons Machiavelli derived from his experience as an official in fifteenth-century Florence, Powell shows how these lessons can still apply today. Illustrating each of Machiavelli's maxims with a description of events that occurred during Tony Blair's time as Prime Minister, The New Machiavelli is designed to be The Prince for modern times.* Tony Blair's Chief of Staff from 1994 - 2007, Jonathan Powell recounts the inside story of that period - drawing on his own unpublished diaries. He tackles the critics of Blair's 'sofa government' and gives a frank account of the intimate details of the internal political rows, the failure to join the Euro or hold a referendum on the European constitution, the struggle with the hauliers strike and the foot-and-mouth outbreak that postponed the 2001 election, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo, as well as the peace negotiations in Northern Ireland, the relations with Clinton, Bush and Chirac, thebanning of fox-hunting, the triumphs and failures of spin and the scandals and inquiries - ranging from Bernie Ecclestone to the police investigation into 'cash for peerages'.* Like The Prince, The New Machiavelli is short, stark and clear. It provides a gripping account of life inside 'the bunker' of Number 10 and draws lessons from those experiences, not just for political leaders but for anyone today who has access to the levers of power.

    Stewart and Knaus parse carefully the philosophies that have informed interventionism—from neoconservative to liberal imperialist—and draw on their diverse experiences in the military, nongovernmental organizations, and the Iraqi provincial government to reveal what we can ultimately expect from large-scale interventions, and how they might best realize positive change in the world.

    Bill Gates. George W. Bush. Osama bin Laden. Leaders and leadership are perennial topics of debate. What is leadership? How does one become a leader? Do we actually need leaders? In this Very Short Introduction, Keith Grint offers provocative answers to these questions, prompting readers to rethink their assumptions about what leadership is. Indeed, Grint argues that leadership is a very elusive quality, and that there are few definitive answers to be found, which explains why most books on leadership produce so much heat and so little light. But there are important questions to ask, questions which shed light on why leadership so resists definition. Grint looks at the way leadership has evolved from its earliest manifestations in ancient societies, highlights the early ideas about leadership found in Plato, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli and others, considers how social, economic, and political forces can undermine particular modes of leadership, and discusses the practice of management, its history, future, and influence on all aspects of society.

    Moving far beyond the strict confines of politics, George F. Will offers a fascinating look at the people, stories, and events–often unheralded–that make the American drama so endlessly entertaining and instructive. With Will’s signature erudition and wry wit always on display, One Man’s America chronicles a spectacular, eclectic procession of figures who have shaped our cultural landscape–from Playboy founder Hugh Hefner to National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr., from Victorian poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from cotton picker— turned—country singer Buck Owens to actor-turned-president Ronald Reagan. Will crisscrosses the country to illuminate what it is that makes America distinctive. He visits the USS Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor and ponders its enduring links to the present. He travels to Milwaukee to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of an iconic brand, Harley-Davidson. In Los Angeles he finds the inspiring future of education, while in New York he confronts the dispiriting didacticism of the avant-garde. He ventures to the Civil War battlefields of Virginia to explore what we risk when we efface our own history. And on the outskirts of Chicago he investigates one of the darkest chapters in American history, only to discover a shining example of resilience and grace–the best the country has to offer. Will’s wide lens takes in much more as well–everything from the “most emblematic novel of the 1930s” (and no, it is not about the Joads) to the cult of ESPN to Brooks Brothers and Ben & Jerry’s. And of course, One Man’s America would not be complete without the author’s insights on the national pastime, baseball–the icons and the cheats, the hapless and the greats. Finally, in a personal and reflective turn, Will writes movingly of his thirty-five-year-old son Jon, born with Down syndrome, and pays loving and poignant tribute to his mother, who died at the age of ninety-eight after a long struggle with dementia. The essays in One Man’s America, even when critiquing American culture, reflect Will’s deep affection and regard for our nation. After all, he notes, when America falls short, it does so only as compared to “the uniquely high standards it has set for itself.” In the end, this brilliantly informative and entertaining book reminds us of the enduring value of “the simple virtues and decencies that can make communities flourish and that have made America great and exemplary.”

    Peek behind the counter and learn how sportsbooks operate. Combine that insider knowledge with why-didn’t-I-think-of-that sports betting logic, and you have the winning formula.Ed Miller is a best-selling (over 300,000 copies sold) author of books on poker and gambling. This is his first book on sports betting, but maybe his favorite book to write so far.Matthew Davidow is a sports modeler, using proprietary methods to beat major sports betting markets for over 15 years, and co-founding two leading private sports analytics firms along the way.What people are saying about The Logic Of Sports Betting:"Matt and Ed are two of the smartest minds in sports betting." - Rufus Peabody, professional sports bettor"As a sportsbook employee for 30-plus years, I find it difficult to read or watch anything about sports betting. But I could not put The Logic Of Sports Betting down. It’s that good." - Robert Walker, Las Vegas bookmaker

    As they see matters, wealth in the form of means of production and wealth in the form of consumers’ goods are essentially indistinguishable. For all practical purposes, they have no awareness of the existence of capital and of its importance. Thus, capitalists are generally depicted as fat men, whose girth allegedly signifies an excessive consumption of food and of wealth in general, while their alleged victims, the wage earners, are typically depicted as substantially underweight, allegedly signifying their inability to consume, thanks to the allegedly starvation wages paid by the capitalists.The truth is that in a capitalist economic system, the wealth of the capitalists is not only overwhelmingly in the form of means of production, such as factory buildings, machinery, farms, mines, stores, warehouses, and means of transportation and communication, but all of this wealth is employed in producing for the market, where its benefit is made available to everyone in the economic system who is able to afford to buy its products.Consider. Whoever can afford to buy an automobile benefits from the existence of the automobile factory and its equipment where that car was made. He also benefits from the existence of all the other automobile factories, whose existence and competition served to reduce the price he had to pay for his automobile. He benefits from the existence of the steel mill that provided the steel for his car, and from the iron mine that provided the iron ore needed for the production of that steel, and, of course, from the existence of all the other steel mills and iron mines whose existence and competition served to hold down the prices of the steel and iron ore that contributed to the production of his car.And, thanks to the great magnitude of wealth employed as capital, the demand for labor, of which capital is the foundation, is great enough and thus wages are high enough that virtually everyone is able to afford to a substantial degree most of the products of the economic system. For the capital of the capitalists is the foundation both of the supply of products that everyone buys and of the demand for the labor that all wage earners sell. More capital—a greater amount of wealth in the possession of the capitalists—means a both a larger and better supply of products for wage earners to buy and a greater demand for the labor that wage earners sell. Everyone, wage earners and capitalists alike, benefits from the wealth of the capitalists, because, as I say, that wealth is the foundation of the supply of the products that everyone buys and of the demand for the labor that all wage earners sell. More capital in the hands of the capitalists always means a more abundant, better quality of goods and services offered for sale and a larger demand for labor. The further effect is lower prices and higher wages, and thus a higher standard of living for wage earners.Furthermore, the combination of the profit motive and competition operates continually to improve the products offered in the market and the efficiency with which they are produced, thus steadily further improving the standard of living of everyone.In the alleged conflict between the so-called 99 percent and the so-called 1 percent, the program of the 99 percent is to seize as far as possible the wealth of the 1 percent and consume it. To the extent that it is enacted, the effect of this program can only be to impoverish everyone, and the 99 percent to a far greater extent than the 1 percent. To the extent that the 1 percent loses its mansions, luxury cars, and champagne and caviar, 99 times as many people lose their houses, run-of-the mill cars, and steak and hamburger.

    In doing do, we do them and ourselves a grave disservice. We are indeed facing an unprecedented crisis of leadership, Ronald Heifetz avows, but it stems as much from our demands and expectations as from any leader's inability to meet them. His book gets at both of these problems, offering a practical approach to leadership for those who lead as well as those who look to them for answers. Fitting the theory and practice of leadership to our extraordinary times, the book promotes a new social contract, a revitalization of our civic life just when we most need it.Drawing on a dozen years of research among managers, officers, and politicians in the public realm and the private sector, among the nonprofits, and in teaching, Heifetz presents clear, concrete prescriptions for anyone who needs to take the lead in almost any situation, under almost any organizational conditions, no matter who is in charge, His strategy applies not only to people at the top but also to those who must lead without authority--activists as well as presidents, managers as well as workers on the front line.

    As a result of the Supreme Court upholding the McAlister Hate Speech and Hate Weapons Elimination Act, over half of America’s guns are turned over to the government. Though it is a felony to own a gun, over seventy million firearms are retained by Americans. A confidential memo goes viral on the internet revealing that the White House, mainstream media, the entertainment industry and many in Congress are in fact Marxists, actively changing their country from capitalism to Communism. Americans nervously watch the President to see what will happen next.Car bombs explode near federal buildings across the U.S. The President accuses religious and Tea Party zealots of trying to overthrow the government. A U.S. Senator learns from his brother, a CIA official, that the bombings were a ‘false flag’, concocted by the DHS as an excuse to arrest, imprison and re-educate conservatives, veterans and Christians. Pastors are arrested. Blood is shed.Patriots and veterans from across the country secretly organize are an armed attack on the White House to remove the President from office. At the same time, Russia and Iran move military equipment and troops to the northern border of Israel and covertly install nuclear devices in U.S. cities. Will the President honor America’s treaty obligation to defend Israel from attack? Are these events tomorrow's headlines? Will ancient prophecies of the fall of a rich, powerful and influential end times nation come to pass? WE'VE BEEN WARNED!