Good to Great Summarized for Busy People

    Vicki Robin offers Your Money or Your Life, an original audio adaptation of the New York Times bestselling book that has helped more than 600,000 people worldwide gain greater financial freedom. Join this acclaimed author for hands-on tools and insights that will help you reach new levels of comfort, competence, and consciousness around your personal finances. Building on the recent updates and revisions to the book Your Money or Your Life (Penguin, 2008), this two-CD program reflects the major social, technological, and environmental changes since its first publication in 1992 plus wisdom from 15 years of readers lived experiences including: --How to develop your financial intelligence, integrity, and independence--the three keys to lasting fulfillment. --A million-and-one sure ways to save money how controlling your spending starts with controlling your thoughts. --How to manage your money so that you have a life you love with the money you have. Whether you're trying to plan for your future, recover from poor choices in the past, or manage your finances better, Your Money or Your Lifeprovides proven tools and powerful teachings to help you get there no matter what financial storm blows your way.

    Specifically, we don’t understand evil—what it is, how it works, and why it so routinely and effortlessly ruins our lives.In How Evil Works , veteran newsman and bestselling author David Kupelian takes a fresh and insightful look at this ancient subject. Diving into the most electrifying news stories of the day—from terrorism and school violence to high-profile sex scandals and dysfunctional Hollywood celebrities—Kupelian explores the secret world of seduction, corruption, and daily temptations in everyday life, demonstrating his uncanny knack for breaking down complex, elusive, and intimidating topics.Kupelian shows that once we really understand “how evil works”—not just in the headline-making disasters and crimes that dominate the news, but also in our own lives—evil loses much of its power, and the way out becomes more clear. And that’s precisely why this book bears a powerful message of genuine hope.

    Tanous to send Americans an urgent message: We risk losing the exceptional standard of living that has made us the envy of the rest of the world if the pro-growth policies of the last twenty-five years are reversed by a new president. Since the early 1980s, the United States has experienced a wave of prosperity almost unprecedented in history in terms of wealth creation, new jobs, and improved living standards for all. Under the leadership of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, Americans changed the incentive structure on taxes, inflation, and regulation, and as a result the economy roared back to life after the anti-growth, high-inflation 1970s. Now the rest of the world is following the American economic growth model of lower tax rates, more economic freedom, and sound money. Paradoxically, one country is moving away from these growth policies and putting its prosperity at risk -- America. On the eve of a critical presidential election, Laffer, Moore, and Tanous provide the factual information every American needs in order to understand exactly how we achieved the prosperity many people have come to take for granted, and explain how the policies of Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi can cause America to lose its status as the world's growth and job creation machine. The End of Prosperity is essential reading for all Americans who value our nation's free enterprise system and high standard of living, and want to know how to protect their own investments in the coming storm.

    Open any newspaper, and what do you find? Violence and crime, child abuse and neglect, expenses scandals, addiction, fraud and corruption, environmental melt-down Is Britain indeed broken? How did modern society get to this point? Who is to blame? How can we change? We have come to inhabit a culture of selfish individualism which has confused material well-being with happiness. As society became bigger and more competitive, working life was cut off from child-rearing and the new economics ignored people's emotional needs. We have lived with this culture so long that it is hard to imagine it being any different. Yet we are now at a turning point where the need for change is becoming urgent. If we are to build a more reflective and collaborative society, Gerhardt argues, we need to support the caring qualities that are learnt in early life and integrate them into our political and economic thinking. Inspiring and thought-provoking, The Selfish Society sets out a roadmap to a more positive and compassionate future.

    The Tall Book also offers well-researched explanations into the great unanswered questions of tallness, including: Why are people tall to begin with? How have tall people figured throughout history? Why are CEOs so tall? And how does tallness affect the dating game? Filled with illustrative graphics, charts, and piles of tall miscellanea and factoids, The Tall Book is a wonderful and much-needed exploration of life from on high.

    Here, a reprinting of the seminal underground essay by Bob Black.

    He planned to land a solid job after college, repay his student loan debt, and then simply forget the loans ever existed. Like millions of Americans, however, in spite of working hard, Collinge fell behind on payments and entered a labyrinthine student loan nightmare.High school graduates can no longer put themselves through college for a few thousand dollars in loan debt. Today, the average undergraduate borrower leaves school with more than $20,000 in student loans, and for graduate students the average is a whopping $42,000. For the past twenty years, college tuition has increased at more than double the rate of inflation, with the cost largely shifting to student debt. The Student Loan Scam is an exposé of the predatory nature of the $85-billion student loan industry. In this in-depth exploration, Collinge argues that student loans have become the most profitable, uncompetitive, and oppressive type of debt in American history. This has occurred in large part due to federal legislation passed since the mid-1990s that removed standard consumer protections from student loans-and allowed for massive penalties and draconian wealth-extraction mechanisms to collect this inflated debt.Collinge covers the history of student loans, the rise of Sallie Mae, and how universities have profited at the expense of students. The book includes candid and compelling stories from people across the country about how both nonprofit and for-profit student loan companies, aided by poor legislation, have shattered their lives-and livelihoods. With nearly 5 million defaulted loans, this crisis is growing to epic proportions. The Student Loan Scam takes an unflinching look at this unprecedented and pressing problem, while exposing the powerful organizations and individuals who caused it to happen. Ultimately, Collinge argues for the return of standard consumer protections for student loans, among other pragmatic solutions, in this clarion call for social action.

     Many of the prices we pay seem to make little sense. We shell out $2.29 for a coffee at Starbucks when a nearly identical brew can be had at the corner deli for less than a dollar. We may be less willing to give blood for $25 than to donate it for free. Americans hire cheap illegal immigrants to fix the roof or mow the lawn, and vote for politicians who promise to spend billions to keep them out of the country. And citizens of the industrialized West pay hundreds of dollars a year in taxes or cash for someone to cart away trash that would be a valuable commodity in poorer parts of the world. The Price of Everything starts with a simple premise: there is a price behind each choice that we make, whether we're deciding to have a baby, drive a car, or buy a book. We often fail to appreciate just how critical prices are as a motivating force shaping our lives. But their power becomes clear when distorted prices steer our decisions the wrong way. Eduardo Porter uncovers the true story behind the prices we pay and reveals what those prices are actually telling us. He takes us on a global economic adventure, from comparing the relative price of a vote in corrupt São Tomé and in the ostensibly uncorrupt United States, to assessing the cost of happiness in Bhutan, to deducing the dollar value we assign to human life. His unique approach helps explain: * Why polygamous societies actually place a higher value on women than monogamous ones. * Why someone may find more value in a $14 million license plate than the standard issue, $95 one. * Why some government agencies believe one year of life for a senior citizen is four times more valuable than that of a younger person. Porter weaves together the constant-and often unconscious-cost and value assessments we all make every day. While exploring the fascinating story behind the price of everything from marriage and death to mattresses and horsemeat, Porter draws unexpected connections that bridge a wide range of disciplines and cultures. The result is a cogent and insightful narrative about how the world really works.Watch a Video

    Never in the course of human history has the market for celebrities been as saturated as it is today. Nearly every day most Americans will consume something a celebrity is selling—a fragrance, a sneaker, a song, a movie, a show, a tweet, or a photo in a magazine.With the benefits of Piazza’s unique access to the celebrity market, Celebrity, Inc. explains in detail what generates cash for the industry and what drains value faster than a starlet downs cChampagne—in twelve fascinating case studies that tackle celebrities the way industry analysts would dissect any consumer brand.“An economist at heart, Jo Piazza has consistently dug deeper to try to figure out why celebrities behave the way they do and what the consequences of their behavior will be. This book puts celebrities in context, but it also puts the consumer of celebrity in context. No one should feel bad about enjoying pop culture, but they should understand how it is being marketed to them. [Celebrity, Inc.] gives the reader the tools to do exactly that.”—Bonnie Fuller, President of HollywoodLife.com

    That is the scenario media guru Nicholas Negroponte predicted in the 1990s, with his hypothetical online newspaper The Daily Me—and it is one we experience now in daily ways. But, as media expert Joseph Turow shows, the customized media environment we inhabit today reflects diminished consumer power. Not only ads and discounts but even news and entertainment are being customized by newly powerful media agencies on the basis of data we don’t know they are collecting and individualized profiles we don’t know we have. Little is known about this new industry: how is this data being collected and analyzed? And how are our profiles created and used? How do you know if you have been identified as a “target” or “waste” or placed in one of the industry’s finer-grained marketing niches? Are you, for example, a Socially Liberal Organic Eater, a Diabetic Individual in the Household, or Single City Struggler? And, if so, how does that affect what you see and do online?Drawing on groundbreaking research, including interviews with industry insiders, this important book shows how advertisers have come to wield such power over individuals and media outlets—and what can be done to stop it.

    Decades-long patterns in fertility, migration, and immigration persistently nudge the country toward the Hispanic Southwest. As a result, the Northeast and Midwest--traditional higher education strongholds--expect to lose 5 percent of their college-aged populations between now and the mid-2020s. Furthermore, and in response to the Great Recession, child-bearing has plummeted. In 2026, when the front edge of this birth dearth reaches college campuses, the number of college-aged students will drop almost 15 percent in just 5 years.In Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education, Nathan D. Grawe has developed the Higher Education Demand Index (HEDI), which relies on data from the 2002 Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) to estimate the probability of college-going using basic demographic variables. Analyzing demand forecasts by institution type and rank while disaggregating by demographic groups, Grawe provides separate forecasts for two-year colleges, elite institutions, and everything in between. The future demand for college attendance, he argues, depends critically on institution type. While many schools face painful contractions, for example, demand for elite schools is expected to grow by more than 15 percent in future years.Essential for administrators and trustees who are responsible for recruitment, admissions, student support, tenure practices, facilities construction, and strategic planning, this book is a practical guide for navigating coming enrollment challenges.

    After water, tea is the second most-consumed drink in the world. Almost every corner of the globe is addressed in this comprehensive look at 4,500 years of tea history. Tea has affected international relations, exposed divisions of class and race, shaped the ethics of business, and even led to significant advances in medicine. Thoroughly researched and captivating, this is a unique study of the little green leaf.

    It sounds crazy, but it has become one of the most influential and hotly debated policy ideas of our time. Futurists, radicals, libertarians, socialists, union representatives, feminists, conservatives, Bernie supporters, development economists, child-care workers, welfare recipients, and politicians from India to Finland to Canada to Mexico--all are talking about UBI.In this sparkling and provocative book, economics writer Annie Lowrey looks at the global UBI movement. She travels to Kenya to see how a UBI is lifting the poorest people on earth out of destitution, India to see how inefficient government programs are failing the poor, South Korea to interrogate UBI's intellectual pedigree, and Silicon Valley to meet the tech titans financing UBI pilots in expectation of a world with advanced artificial intelligence and little need for human labor.Lowrey examines the potential of such a sweeping policy and the challenges the movement faces, among them contradictory aims, uncomfortable costs, and, most powerfully, the entrenched belief that no one should get something for nothing. She shows how this arcane policy offers not only a potential answer for our most intractable economic and social problems, but also a better foundation for our society in this age of turbulence and marvels.

    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.