Professor Geert Hofstede's 30 years of field research on cultural differences and the software of the mind helps us look at how we think - and how we fail to think - as members of groups. This newly revised and expanded edition is based on the latest data from Professor Hofstede ongoing field research, and provides detailed comparisons of cross-cultural differences among 70 nations. business, family, schools and political organizations. Professor Hofstede explains phenomena such as culture shock, ethnocentrism, stereotyping, differences in language and humor. Most importantly, he discusses the practical implications of the culture differences described in the book and how understanding these cultural differences can enable people from different cultures to work together more productively. parents. Melding powerful intellectual analysis and hard social, cultural, and organizational research, Hofstede gives a sobering picture of a world perilously lacking in self-knowledge - unaware of serious difference between the businesses, organizations, cultures, and nations that populate our planet despite the fact of globalization. But culture shock - whether between an individual and a new country, between organizations, between the sexes, or between opposing diplomats - can be turned to our advantage, Hofstede says-if we understand it. Cultures and Organizations helps to explain the differences in the way leaders and their followers think, offering practical solutions for those in business and politics to help solve conflict between different groups.

    Brexit, Trump, the recent British and French elections saw millions of people shouting that they were sick to death of things never getting better. In WTF Robert Peston gives us his highly personal account of what those who have ruled us for years got so badly wrong, and what we need to do to mend the terrible fractures in our society.Peston wrote WTF because the elections of Trump, the Corbyn surge, the vote for Brexit all challenged how he thought the world could and should be run. With characteristic passion and clarity he looks at how and whether it is possible to make a success of leaving the EU, what the lessons should be of the appalling Grenfell Tower tragedy, whether robots can be stopped from taking our work, what can be done to staunch the widening gap between rich and poor, how to raise living standards for all, and what must happen to prevent democracy being subverted by technocratic geniuses with the ability to manipulate social media. These are the challenges of our age, because the combination of economic stagnation and a technological revolution is killing jobs, enriching the few and undermining the institutions we used to trust as the foundations of the state. What and who can we believe when it is almost impossible to know whether posts on Facebook and Twitter are hard news or the fabrication of a Russian agent?As in his bestsellers, WHO RUNS BRITAIN? and HOW DO WE FIX THIS MESS?, Robert Peston draws on his years of experience as a political, economics and business journalist, to show us what has gone bad, and gives us a manifesto to put at least some of it right. WTF is a trenchant, often entertaining account of the recent past. It is also a call to action, giving hope to all of us who believe that taking back control is not only vital, but possible.

    The twentieth century—a time of unprecedented progress—has produced a tremendous strain on the very elements that comprise life itself: This raises the key question of the twenty-first century: How much longer can this go on? With wit and erudition, Ronald Wright lays out a-convincing case that history has always provided an answer, whether we care to notice or not. From Neanderthal man to the Sumerians to the Roman Empire, A Short History of Progress dissects the cyclical nature of humanity's development and demise, the 10,000-year old experiment that we've unleashed but have yet to control. It is Wright's contention that only by understanding and ultimately breaking from the patterns of progress and disaster that humanity has repeated around the world since the Stone Age can we avoid the onset of a new Dark Age. Wright illustrates how various cultures throughout history have literally manufactured their own end by producing an overabundance of innovation and stripping bare the very elements that allowed them to initially advance. Wright's book is brilliant; a fascinating rumination on the hubris at the heart of human development and the pitfalls we still may have time to avoid.

    Yet a chorus of intellectuals and politicians laments our current condition -- as slaves to technology, coarsened by popular culture, and insecure in the face of economic change. The future, they tell us, is dangerously out of control, and unless we precisely govern the forces of change, we risk disaster. In The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel explodes the myths behind these claims. Using examples that range from medicine to fashion, she explores how progress truly occurs and demonstrates that human betterment depends not on conformity to one central vision but on creativity and decentralized, open-ended trial and error. She argues that these two opposing world-views -- "stasis" vs. "dynamism" -- are replacing "left" and "right" to define our cultural and political debate as we enter the next century. In this bold exploration of how civilizations learn, Postrel heralds a fundamental shift in the way we view politics, culture, technology, and society as we face an unknown -- and invigorating -- future.

    Companies are shutting down and laying off workers, 401ks are melting away, and the government is spending $700 billion dollars to bail out banks and financial institutions -- and that's only the beginning. The financial services industry, and the many industries that depend on it -- from housing to cars -- is in intensive care. So what happened? How did we get to this point of financial disaster? Is the economy just a huge, Madoff-esque Ponzi scheme? It is a complicated and confusing story -- but Daniel Gross of Newsweek has a special gift for making complicated matters easy to understand and even entertaining. In Dumb Money, he offers a guide to the debacle and to what the future may hold. This is not so much a book about who did what, though that's part of the story. Rather, it pieces together the building blocks of the debt-fueled economy, and distills the theory and personalities behind our late, lamented easy money culture. Dumb Money is a book that finally lays it all out in an engaging way, and might just help people invest their money smartly until the gloom passes.

    But much of their work is based on assumptions that are untested generalizations at best, harmful misperceptions at worst.Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo have pioneered the use of randomized control trials in development economics. Work based on these principles, supervised by the Poverty Action Lab, is being carried out in dozens of countries. Drawing on this and their 15 years of research from Chile to India, Kenya to Indonesia, they have identified wholly new aspects of the behavior of poor people, their needs, and the way that aid or financial investment can affect their lives. Their work defies certain presumptions: that microfinance is a cure-all, that schooling equals learning, that poverty at the level of 99 cents a day is just a more extreme version of the experience any of us have when our income falls uncomfortably low.This important book illuminates how the poor live, and offers all of us an opportunity to think of a world beyond poverty.Learn more at www.pooreconomics.com

    With blazing originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about how America's past will predict its future.Strauss and Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history. The authors look back five hundred years and uncover a distinct pattern: Modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting about the length of a long human life, each composed of four eras--or turnings--that last about twenty years and that always arrive in the same order. In The Fourth Turning, the authors illustrate these cycles using a brilliant analysis of the post-World War II period.First comes a High, a period of confident expansion as a new order takes root after the old has been swept away. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion against the now-established order. Then comes an Unraveling, an increasingly troubled era in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions. Last comes a Crisis--the Fourth Turning--when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history. Together, the four turnings comprise history's seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth.The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for America's next rendezvous with destiny.

    Russ Roberts argues that the true underlying cause of the mess was the past bailouts of large financial institutions that allowed these institutions to gamble carelessly because they were effectively using other people’s money. The author warns that despite the passage of Dodd-Frank, it is widely believed that we have done nothing to eliminate ‘Too Big to Fail.’ That perception allows the largest financial institutions to continue to gamble with taxpayer money.

    In this witty, often terrifying work of cultural criticism, the author of Amusing Ourselves to Death chronicles our transformation into a Technopoly: a society that no longer merely uses technology as a support system but instead is shaped by it--with radical consequences for the meanings of politics, art, education, intelligence, and truth.

    Lawson carefully and succinctly examines all aspects of the global warming issue: the science, the economics, the politics, and the ethics. He concludes that the conventional wisdom on the subject is suspect on a number of grounds, that global warming is not the devastating threat to the planet it is widely alleged to be, and that the remedy that is currently being proposed, which is in any event politically unattainable, would be worse that the threat it is supposed to avert. Argued with logic, common sense, and even wit, and thoroughly sourced and referenced, Lawson has written a long overdue corrective to the barrage of spin and hype to which the politicians and media have been subjecting the public on this important issue.

    Indeed, as Tom Standage reveals in his scintillating new book, social media is anything but a new phenomenon.From the papyrus letters that Roman statesmen used to exchange news across the Empire to the advent of hand-printed tracts of the Reformation to the pamphlets that spread propaganda during the American and French revolutions, Standage chronicles the increasingly sophisticated ways people shared information with each other, spontaneously and organically, down the centuries. With the rise of newspapers in the nineteenth century, then radio and television, “mass media” consolidated control of information in the hands of a few moguls. However, the Internet has brought information sharing full circle, and the spreading of news along social networks has reemerged in powerful new ways.A fresh, provocative exploration of social media over two millennia, Writing on the Wall reminds us how modern behavior echoes that of prior centuries-the Catholic Church, for example, faced similar dilemmas in deciding whether or how to respond to Martin Luther's attacks in the early sixteenth century to those that large institutions confront today in responding to public criticism on the Internet. Invoking the likes of Thomas Paine and Vinton Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet, Standage explores themes that have long been debated: the tension between freedom of expression and censorship; whether social media trivializes, coarsens or enhances public discourse; and its role in spurring innovation, enabling self-promotion, and fomenting revolution. As engaging as it is visionary, Writing on the Wall draws on history to cast new light on today's social media and encourages debate and discussion about how we'll communicate in the future.

    Over the course of more than three years, anthropologist John Osburg accompanied, and in some instances assisted, wealthy Chinese businessmen as they courted clients, partners, and government officials.Drawing on his immersive experiences, Osburg invites readers to join him as he journeys through the new, highly gendered entertainment sites for Chinese businessmen, including karaoke clubs, saunas, and massage parlors—places specifically designed to cater to the desires and enjoyment of elite men. Within these spaces, a masculinization of business is taking place. Osburg details the complex code of behavior that governs businessmen as they go about banqueting, drinking, gambling, bribing, exchanging gifts, and obtaining sexual services.These intricate social networks play a key role in generating business, performing social status, and reconfiguring gender roles. But many entrepreneurs feel trapped by their obligations and moral compromises in this evolving environment. Ultimately, Osburg examines their deep ambivalence about China's future and their own complicity in the major issues of post-Mao Chinese society—corruption, inequality, materialism, and loss of trust.

    As conservatives correctly observe, people who amass great fortunes are almost always talented and hardworking. But liberals are also correct to note that countless others have those same qualities yet never earn much. In recent years, social scientists have discovered that chance plays a much larger role in important life outcomes than most people imagine. In Success and Luck, bestselling author and New York Times economics columnist Robert Frank explores the surprising implications of those findings to show why the rich underestimate the importance of luck in success--and why that hurts everyone, even the wealthy.Frank describes how, in a world increasingly dominated by winner-take-all markets, chance opportunities and trivial initial advantages often translate into much larger ones--and enormous income differences--over time; how false beliefs about luck persist, despite compelling evidence against them; and how myths about personal success and luck shape individual and political choices in harmful ways.But, Frank argues, we could decrease the inequality driven by sheer luck by adopting simple, unintrusive policies that would free up trillions of dollars each year--more than enough to fix our crumbling infrastructure, expand healthcare coverage, fight global warming, and reduce poverty, all without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone. If this sounds implausible, you'll be surprised to discover that the solution requires only a few, noncontroversial steps.Compellingly readable, Success and Luck shows how a more accurate understanding of the role of chance in life could lead to better, richer, and fairer economies and societies.

    In this book, David Batstone profiles the new generation of abolitionists who are leading the struggle to end this appalling epidemic.