In this surreal atmosphere created to disorient us and undermine our sense of truth, we’ve lost not only our grip on peace and democracy — but our very notion of what those words even mean.Peter Pomerantsev takes us to the front lines of the disinformation age, where he meets Twitter revolutionaries and pop-up populists, “behavioral change” salesmen, Jihadi fanboys, Identitarians, truth cops, and many others. Forty years after his dissident parents were pursued by the KGB, Pomerantsev finds the Kremlin re-emerging as a great propaganda power. His research takes him back to Russia — but the answers he finds there are not what he expected.Blending reportage, family history, and intellectual adventure, This Is Not Propaganda explores how we can reimagine our politics and ourselves when reality seems to be coming apart.

    Content is the first collection of Doctorow’s infamous articles, essays, and polemics.Here’s why Microsoft should stop treating its customers as criminals (through relentless digital-rights management); how America chose copyright and Happy Meal toys over jobs; why Facebook is taking a faceplant; how Wikipedia is a poor cousin of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; and, of course, why free e-books kick ass.Accessible to geeks and noobs (if you’re not sure what that means, it’s you) alike, Content is a must-have compilation from Cory Doctorow, who will be glad to take you along for the ride as he effortlessly surfs the zeitgeist.

    The various sectors of our communities--businesses, schools, social service organizations, churches, government--do not work together. They exist in their own worlds. As do so many individual citizens, who long for connection but end up marginalized, their gifts overlooked, their potential contributions lost. This disconnection and detachment makes it hard if not impossible to envision a common future and work towards it together. We know what healthy communities look like--there are many success stories out there, and they've been described in detail. What Block provides in this inspiring new book is an exploration of the exact way community can emerge from fragmentation: How is community built? How does the transformation occur? What fundamental shifts are involved? He explores a way of thinking about our places that creates an opening for authentic communities to exist and details what each of us can do to make that happen.

    Our personal fulfillment depends on how well we choose and execute these commitments. In The Second Mountain, Brooks looks at a range of people who have lived joyous, committed lives, and who have embraced the necessity of dependence. He gathers their wisdom on how to choose a partner, how to pick a vocation, how to live out a philosophy, and how we can begin to integrate our commitments into one overriding purpose.In short, this book is meant to help us all lead more meaningful lives. But it’s also a provocative social commentary. We live in a society, Brooks argues, that celebrates freedom, that tells us to be true to ourselves, at the expense of surrendering to a cause, rooting ourselves in a neighborhood, binding ourselves to others by social solidarity and love. We have taken individualism to the extreme—and in the process we have torn the social fabric in a thousand different ways. The path to repair is through making deeper commitments. In The Second Mountain, Brooks shows what can happen when we put commitment-making at the center of our lives.

    Their clockwork precision and incredibly low error rate has got the world to sit up and take note of this awesome army of 5000 men, who make sure office-goers get a hot, home-cooked meal every day, come rain or shine. It is a stupendous feat of coordination, efficiency, honesty and sheer hard work that could teach many a corporate honcho a lesson or two in running a business successfully. The humble dabbawalas of Mumbai shot into fame when Prince Charles requested a meeting with them on a visit to the city in 2003, after having seen a BBC documentary on them. It was a meeting that the heir to the British throne did not forget. In April 2005, the Dabbawalas Association received an invitation to the wedding of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, Camilla Parker-Bowles. A few days later, Sopan Rao Rao Mare and Raghunath Medge attended the royal wedding as representatives of the Dabbawalas Association. The story is narrated alternately by the man who has made it happen – Raghunath Medge, president of the Dabbawalas Association, and the author Shobha Bondre. .

    His unique approach—thematic rather than verse-by-verse—makes the ancient treatise eminently accessible, combined as it is with his trademark illustrations and simple diagrams.In a world that seems spellbound by argument over dialogue, vi-vaad over sam-vaad, Devdutt highlights how Krishna nudges Arjuna to understand rather than judge his relationships. This becomes relevant today when we are increasingly indulging and isolating the self (self-improvement, self-actualization, self-realization—even selfies!).We forget that we live in an ecosystem of others, where we can nourish each other with food, love and meaning, even when we fight.So let My Gita inform your Gita.

    The book vividly portrays the difficulties encountered by a young intellectual trying to shape himself under the oppressive Ceausescu regime and provides a stark depiction of a man's intellectual suffocation under hard-line socialist rule. The book's overall significance is therefore far more wideranging than just Romania or the 1980s.

    Joe Hagan provides readers with a backstage pass to storied concert venues and rock-star hotel rooms; he tells never before heard stories about the lives of rock stars and their handlers; he details the daring journalism (Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, P.J. O'Rourke) and internecine office politics that accompanied the start-up; he animates the drug and sexual appetites of the era; and he reports on the politics of the last fifty years that were often chronicled in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine.Supplemented by a cache of extraordinary documents and letters from Wenner's personal archives, Sticky Fingers depicts an ambitious, mercurial, wide-eyed rock and roll fan of who exalts in youth and beauty and learns how to package it, marketing late sixties counterculture as a testament to the power of American youth. The result is a fascinating and complex portrait of man and era, and an irresistible biography of popular culture, celebrity, music, and politics in America.

    Ranging from tiny sketches and prose poems to longer, more conventional narratives, the stories included here are:A Country Doctor - In the Gods - An Old Folio - Before the Law - Jackals and Arabs - A Visit to the Mine - The Next Village - An Imperial Message - A Paterfamilias Perplexed - Eleven Sons - A Fratricide - A Dream - Bucket Rider - Of Metaphors - The Silence of the Sirens - Gracchus the Hunter - The Knock on the Courtyard Door - Advocates - The Vulture - At Night - A Little Fable.This e-book has a total length of around 16,000 words.

    Presenting its subject in five parts, the text provides grounding in the elements and applications of classical rhetoric; the strategies and tactics of argumentation; the effective presentation and organization of discourses; the development of power, grace, and felicity in expression; and the history of rhetorical principles. Numerous examples of classic and contemporary rhetoric, from paragraphs to complete essays, appear throughout the book, many followed by detailed analyses. The fourth edition of Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student features a new section on the Progymnasmata (classical composition exercises), a new analysis of a color advertisement in the Introduction, an updated survey of the history of rhetoric, and an updated section on External Aids to Invention.

    Loy uses an intriguing mixture of quotations from familiar and less-familiar sources and brief stand-alone micro-essays, engaging the reader in challenging and illuminating dialogue. As we come to see that the world is made--in a word--of stories, we come to a richer understanding of that most elusive of Buddhist ideas: shunyata, the "generative emptiness" that is the all-pervading quality inherent to all mental and physical forms in our ever-changing world. Reminiscent of Zen koans and works of sophisticated poetry, this book will reward both a casual read and deep reflection.

     Imagine how you would feel when people are cheering, applauding and saying ‘wow’ after your presentation. What if you could give a speech and an audience member comes and says, “I felt you were just talking to me”. Multiple Award winning speaker, Ramakrishna Reddy, presents the secrets, tools and devices that helped him create 18 laughs 3 applauses in a 7-minute persuasive speech in his 5th book ‘Connect with Humor and Story’. This is not theory. It’s absolute content based on his research, his experience and his testing. In this book, you’ll learn: How to convert a real world experience into a humorous story that can be delivered in a speech How to synergize a story and speech structure by using SST technique How to open a speech with a story in ‘the right’ way (many get it wrong all the time) A proven thesis to maximize and virtually guarantee your success to create humor Seven humor devices that you MUST know to leverage the humor creation process (if you know this, you can derive humor out of anything) The best-kept secret to create the persuasive effect in the audiences mind (you might know what it is but you'll learn how to use it) How to craft a message that does not look preachy yet persuade your audience (do this and you are going to Rock on stage) What it takes to create applause during the course (not after) of the speech Eleven Editing strategies that nobody teaches Twelve Execution strategies that is rarely talked…. Buy this book NOW to create a connection with the audience through story and humor Pick up your copy today by clicking the BUY NOW button at the top of this page

    Terms and phrases such as "the global village" and "the medium is the message" are now part of the lexicon, and McLuhan's theories continue to challenge our sensibilities and our assumptions about how and what we communicate.There has been a notable resurgence of interest in McLuhan's work in the last few years, fueled by the recent and continuing conjunctions between the cable companies and the regional phone companies, the appearance of magazines such as WiRed, and the development of new media models and information ecologies, many of which were spawned from MIT's Media Lab. In effect, media now begs to be redefined. In a new introduction to this edition of Understanding Media, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham reevaluates McLuhan's work in the light of the technological as well as the political and social changes that have occurred in the last part of this century.

    This “privileged moment for change” prepares people to be receptive to a message before they experience it. Optimal persuasion is achieved only through optimal pre-suasion. In other words, to change “minds” a pre-suader must also change “states of mind.”His first solo work in over thirty years, Cialdini’s Pre-Suasion draws on his extensive experience as the most cited social psychologist of our time and explains the techniques a person should implement to become a master persuader. Altering a listener’s attitudes, beliefs, or experiences isn’t necessary, says Cialdini—all that’s required is for a communicator to redirect the audience’s focus of attention before a relevant action.From studies on advertising imagery to treating opiate addiction, from the annual letters of Berkshire Hathaway to the annals of history, Cialdini draws on an array of studies and narratives to outline the specific techniques you can use on online marketing campaigns and even effective wartime propaganda. He illustrates how the artful diversion of attention leads to successful pre-suasion and gets your targeted audience primed and ready to say, “Yes.”

    In that decision, the faith she had always talked about became the faith she was going to learn how to live. In the years since, God has given Angela a passionate desire . . . to live an amazing life, even while raising four kids as a single mom. In this book she shares her hard-earned wisdom on loneliness, dating, finances, and parenting, encouraging every solo mom. "As a gift to our children," she says, "we can become healthy moms who are strong and amazing women in spite of our circumstances."