Book picks similar to
Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation Across Cultures by John Paul Lederach
non-fiction
peace
peace-studies
5-star-reads
Austerity: The Demolition of the Welfare State and the Rise of the Zombie Economy
Kerry-Anne Mendoza - 2014
In its name, wages have been frozen, benefits have been slashed and public spending squeezed. The pain of a financial crisis caused by bankers and speculators has been borne by ordinary people all over the country – and by the poor and disabled most of all.
How to Change the World
John-Paul Flintoff - 2012
John-Paul Flintoff offers a powerful reminder that through the generations, society has been transformed by the actions of individuals who understood that if they didn’t like something, they could change it. Combining fresh new insights from history, politics and modern culture, this book will give you a sense of what might just be possible, as well as the inspiration and the courage you need to go about improving and changing the world we live in. One in the new series of books from The School of Life, launched May 2012: How to Stay Sane by Philippa Perry How to Find Fulfilling Work by Roman Krznaric How to Worry Less About Money by John Armstrong How to Change the World by John-Paul Flintoff How to Thrive in the Digital Age by Tom Chatfield How to Think More About Sex by Alain de Botton.
Treat Your Poker Like a Business
Dusty Schmidt - 2009
But this isn't the ability to which he attributes his success. Instead, Schmidt says his multi-million dollar achievements are due to his ability to apply old-fashioned business concepts to the game of poker. Six years into his career, Schmidt's resume is legendary: Nearly 10 million hands and 15,000 hours played. Mind-blowing win rates spanning massive sample sizes. $5 million won, and never a losing month. With "Treat Your Poker Like A Business," Schmidt teaches other online poker players to monetize their abilities as he did. He shows readers how to manage bankroll, rationalize variance, move up in stakes, avoid tilt, create new sources of revenue, and most importantly, become more profitable. Just as "Moneyball" did for baseball, "Treat Your Poker Like A Business" gives players an entirely new way to gain a competitive advantage.
NDTV Frauds
Sree Iyer - 2017
It introduced Psephology to the eager Indian masses and used state-of-the-art tools to bring slick programming and made an instant connect with its audience. Prannoy Roy, one of the promoters was an instant hit with his earnest demeanor and sly smile. This is the story of how this dynamic young man ended up presiding over one of the most corrupt media houses in Indian history. The two Promoters of NDTV, along with key top management colluded over the years with government functionaries and politicians to break laws, evade taxes and deceive shareholders of a public listed company. All this obviously through political patronage and “wheeling-and-dealing” as part of the Lutyens club and how they created a biased public discourse for a select elite class. Multinational corporations such as General Electric wittingly or otherwise aided NDTV by investing $150 million into a shell company with zero employees and zero revenue! In the minds of the Indian citizen, there is a space and respect for media. Using the halo of journalism and under the garb of Freedom of Press, media owners misuse this position and in the end, degrade the values of journalism. On several occasions media became the tool of false propaganda, blackmailing and illegal money making with the blessing of uncouth politicians and corporate icons with hidden agendas. This ought to be exposed and that is the reason for this book.
Social Psychology: Goals in Interaction
Douglas T. Kenrick - 2005
In addition to an overhauled design in the 4e, Social Psychology: Goals in Interaction has two elements that continue to set it apart from other social psychology textbooks. A unique integrated approach to social behavior: Rather than providing a laundry list of unconnected facts and theories, the authors organize each chapter around the two broad questions: (1) what are the goals that underlie the behavior in question? (2) what factors in the person and the situation connect to each goal? The book thus presents the discipline as a coherent framework for understanding human behavior. The new subtitle, Goals in Interaction underscores this integrated approach to understanding behavior.
On Equilibrium
John Ralston Saul - 2001
Saul explains how our different qualities give us the intelligence, self-confidence and ability to think and act as responsible individuals.Saul argues that when human qualities are worshipped in isolation they become weaknesses, even forces of destruction or self-destruction. In short, they become ideologies. But as he explores the qualities he has identified as being necessary to integrated human behaviour, he shows us that the key is to use these qualities in combination. How can we use these qualities as positive forces in our own lives and in society? How can we use them to reinforce us as humans?On Equilibrium is an intelligent, persuasive and controversial exploration of the essential qualities of humanity and how to use them to achieve equilibrium for the self and for an ethical society. It is a logical, compelling and humane successor to his bestselling trilogy.
Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love
Dave Zirin - 2010
Complaints abound: from inflated ticket prices, $6 hot dogs, and $9 beers to owners endlessly demanding new multimillion-dollar stadiums funded by public tax dollars. Those sitting in the owners’ boxes are increasingly placing profit over players’ performances and fan loyalty. Bad Sports cuts through the hype and bombast to zero in on tales of abusive, dictatorial owners who move their teams thousands of miles away from their fan base, use their stadiums as religious and political platforms, or hold communities ransom for millions of dollars of taxpayer money to fund their gargantuan stadiums.As the multibillion-dollar sports-industrial complex continues to lumber along, Dave Zirin is the voice in the wilderness, speaking out for the common fan with a tough, passionate, and intelligent voice that will remind readers that there is more to sportswriting than glowing athlete profiles.
Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive
Bruce Schneier - 2012
We don't do a chemical analysis on food we eat.Trust and cooperation are the first problems we had to solve before we could become a social species. In the 21st century, they have become the most important problems we need to solve — again. Our global society has become so large and complex that our traditional trust mechanisms no longer work.Bruce Schneier, world-renowned for his level-headed thinking on security and technology, tackles this complex subject head-on. Society can't function without trust, and yet must function even when people are untrustworthy.Liars and Outliers reaches across academic disciplines to develop an understanding of trust, cooperation, and social stability. From the subtle social cues we use to recognize trustworthy people to the laws that punish the noncompliant, from the way our brains reward our honesty to the bank vaults that keep out the dishonest, keeping people cooperative is a delicate balance of rewards and punishments. It's a series of evolutionary tricks, social pressures, legal mechanisms, and physical barriers.In the absence of personal relationships, we have no choice but to substitute security for trust, compliance for trustworthiness. This progression has enabled society to scale to unprecedented complexity, but has also permitted massive global failures.At the same time, too much cooperation is bad. Without some level of rule-breaking, innovation and social progress become impossible. Society stagnates.Today's problems require new thinking, and Liars and Outliers provides that. It is essential that we learn to think clearly about trust. Our future depends on it.
Emotional Vampires at Work: Dealing with Bosses and Coworkers Who Drain You Dry
Albert J. Bernstein - 2012
These people try your patience, sap your energy, and add an entirely unhealthy dynamic to workplace productivity. The bestselling author of Emotional Vampires and Dinosaur Brains shows you how to spot and deal effectively with these dysfunctional elements in the workplace:ANTISOCIALS, who crave excitement in all its forms, including aggression If your boss or a coworker is trying to push you around . . . Learn that the most important battle to fight with a bully is in your own mind.HISTRIONICS, who believe that what it looks like is more important than what it is If your boss thinks any problem can be solved with a motivational seminar . . . Learn how to get a manager wannabe to actually manage.NARCISSISTS, who believe that the universe revolves around them If your CEO makes Louis XVI look like Gandhi . . . Learn techniques that diplomats have used throughout history to teach infantile monarchs to act like grown-ups.OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVES, who can't seem to see the forest for the trees If there is absolutely no task that your boss considers too small to micromanage . . . Learn to be a Control-Freak Whisperer by seeing your boss's fear rather than your own irritation.PARANOIDS, who think they've found the simple truths that explain everything If you work in a place where you can't get ahead unless you drink the Kool-Aid . . . Learn how to recognize a toxic belief system before it poisons you.VAMPIRE CULTURES: when vampires get promoted to positions of power, they remake organizations in their own image . . . Learn the 15 warning signs that tell you to get out before sunset.PRAISE FOR EMOTIONAL VAMPIRES: We love so much about this book! A great complement to Dealing with People You Can't Stand, it goes beyond dealing with the merely difficult behavior to the truly pathological. Bernstein offers believable examples and useful descriptions. This is the book to recommend when the topic of truly horrible behavior comes up! -- Dr. Rick Kirschner and Dr. Rick Brinkman, authors of the international bestseller Dealing with People You Can't StandThis book equips individuals with the tools to identify and defend against a wide array of emotional vampires at work. It offers well-developed tactics for navigating the most difficult people in any organization. -- Katherine Crowley and Kathi Elster, bestselling authors of Working with You Is Killing Me and Mean Girls at WorkIt's amazing how one manipulative, territorial, or otherwise self-serving boss or employee can make the lives of everyone around miserable. In Emotional Vampires at Work, Albert Bernstein offers concrete, step-by-step guidance to manage life around these misfits. You'll learn to take care of your and your valued colleagues' needs, while contributing your best to your organization--with maturity and sanity. -- Nancy Ancowitz, author of Self-Promotion for Introverts
Compassionate Capitalism
Rich DeVos - 1993
It is a plan. A proven plan. A plan that has made him one of America's richest men, and that has made Amway one of the great corporate success stories of our time. Compassionate Capitalism spells out clearly and eloquently the guiding principles and concrete steps to making your life and your world better. Rich DeVos shows how your energy, your ambition, and your spirit of enterprise can travel together down a path in which the spirit of capitalism and moral values inextricably merge. Interweaving his own amazing story with vivid personal histories of men and women around the world, Rich DeVos illustrates both how success is achieved and what it truly means. He demonstrates that compassionate capitalism is the only solution to the most crucial issues of our time, and to the many other challenges that face us in the closing decade of this century and in the beginning of the next.
Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom
bell hooks - 2007
The issues are varied and broad, from whether meaningful teaching can take place in a large classroom setting to confronting issues of self-esteem. One professor, for example, asked how black female professors can maintain positive authority in a classroom without being seen through the lens of negative racist, sexist stereotypes. One teacher asked how to handle tears in the classroom, while another wanted to know how to use humor as a tool for learning.Addressing questions of race, gender, and class in this work, hooks discusses the complex balance that allows us to teach, value, and learn from works written by racist and sexist authors. Highlighting the importance of reading, she insists on the primacy of free speech, a democratic education of literacy. Throughout these essays, she celebrates the transformative power of critical thinking. This is provocative, powerful, and joyful intellectual work. It is a must read for anyone who is at all interested in education today.
Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity
Lawrence Lessig - 2004
Never before have the cultural powers- that-be been able to exert such control over what we can and can't do with the culture around us. Our society defends free markets and free speech; why then does it permit such top-down control? To lose our long tradition of free culture, Lawrence Lessig shows us, is to lose our freedom to create, our freedom to build, and, ultimately, our freedom to imagine.
The Terrorist's Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations
Jacob N. Shapiro - 2013
Employing a broad range of agency theory, historical case studies, and terrorists' own internal documents, Jacob Shapiro provocatively discusses the core managerial challenges that terrorists face and illustrates how their political goals interact with the operational environment to push them to organize in particular ways.Shapiro provides a historically informed explanation for why some groups have little hierarchy, while others resemble miniature firms, complete with line charts and written disciplinary codes. Looking at groups in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America, he highlights how consistent and widespread the terrorist's dilemma--balancing the desire to maintain control with the need for secrecy--has been since the 1880s. Through an analysis of more than a hundred terrorist autobiographies he shows how prevalent bureaucracy has been, and he utilizes a cache of internal documents from al-Qa'ida in Iraq to outline why this deadly group used so much paperwork to handle its people. Tracing the strategic interaction between terrorist leaders and their operatives, Shapiro closes with a series of comparative case studies, indicating that the differences in how groups in the same conflict approach their dilemmas are consistent with an agency theory perspective.The Terrorist's Dilemma demonstrates the management constraints inherent to terrorist groups and sheds light on specific organizational details that can be exploited to more efficiently combat terrorist activity.
A Force More Powerful: A Century of Non-Violent Conflict
Peter Ackerman - 2000
Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall depict how nonviolent sanctions--such as protests, strikes and boycotts--separate brutal regimes from their means of control. They tell inside stories--how Danes outmaneuvered the Nazis, Solidarity defeated Polish communism, and mass action removed a Chilean dictator--and also how nonviolent power is changing the world today, from Burma to Serbia.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
Shoshana Zuboff - 2018
The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth.Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification."The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit--at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future.With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future--if we let it.Table of contentsINTRODUCTION1. Home or exile in the digital futureI. THE FOUNDATIONS OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM2. August 9, 2011: Setting the stage for Surveillance Capitalism3. The discovery of behavioral surplus4. The moat around the castle5. The elaboration of Surveillance Capitalism: Kidnap, corner, compete6. Hijacked: The division of learning in societyII. THE ADVANCE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM7. The reality business8. Rendition: From experience to data9. Rendition from the depths10. Make them dance11. The right to the future tenseIII. INSTRUMENTARIAN POWER FOR A THIRD MODERNITY12. Two species of power13. Big Other and the rise of instrumentarian power14. A utopia of certainty15, The instrumentarian collective16. Of life in the hive17. The right to sanctuaryCONCLUSION18. A coup from aboveAcknowledgementsAbout the authorDetailed table of contentsNotesIndex