He returned with stories of exotic people, tremendous riches, and the most powerful ruler in the world – Kublai Khan. The explorer told of inventions ranging from gunpowder to paper money. The intellectual ferment and cultural diversity he described helped move Europe out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance. In his lifetime, people scoffed at his stories. But as this book explains, he changed the world.

    Have you ever stopped to think about what it is that will make your life worth living? Is it the large amount of money that you have in the bank? The prestigious education that you have? The family and friends that surround you? Or your spiritual belief that there is someone greater than you in the world? Most people will spend their entire lifetimes trying to figure it out, but only a few will have the privilege of really understanding and experiencing themselves what it means to live a fulfilled life. Over the past years, we’ve seen many life philosophies take center stage, all claiming to hold to secret to happiness and fulfillment. While all of them may have very convincing premises, only one truly stands out. Ikigai, or the Japanese concept of finding your purpose, is the key to living a meaningful life. If there’s one people group who have mastered the art of living - and living well, it’s definitely the Okinawans of Japan. Famous for being the world’s longest-living people, they attribute their joy and contentment to finding their ikigai. It’s the reason why they live longer, happier, and better lives than the rest of us. So how does knowing your ikigai change your life? And what should you do to help you uncover your ikigai? Well, you’ll discover all that and more after you’ve listened to this audiobook. This audiobook is packed with helpful insights that will change not just the way you think, but also the way you live. You’ll learn how to slow down and let go of the things that stop you from finding your ultimate purpose. This audiobook will also give you the blueprint to living the life that you always wanted so you won’t have to feel your life is meaningless ever again. I hope that through this audiobook, you will see joy, meaning, and purpose in every single day of your life.©2018 Zen Mastery (P)2018 Zen Mastery

    With a new introduction by the authors, Motley Fool Million Dollar Portfolio offers irreverent investing wisdom ideal for any financial market, even the most bearish.

     Small cap stocks are best for all time. Bunk! A trade deficit is bad for markets. Bunk! Stocks can't rise on high unemployment. Bunk! Many investors think they are safest following widely accepted Wall Street wisdom—but much of Wall Street wisdom isn't so wise. In fact, it can be costly bunk.In Debunkery: Learn It, Do It, and Profit From It—Seeing Through Wall Street's Money-Killing Myths, Ken Fisher—named one of the 30 most influential individuals of the last three decades by Investment Advisor magazine—details why so many investors fail to get the long-term results they desire. The short answer is many investors fail to question if what they believe is true—and are therefore blinded by tradition, biases, ideology, or any number of cognitive errors.Your goal as an investor shouldn't be to be error-free—that's impossible. Rather, to be more successful, you should aim to lower your error rate. Debunkery gets you started by debunking 50 common myths—but that's just the beginning. It also gives you the tools you need to continue to do your own debunkery for the rest of your investing career.

    A collection of stupid utterances, mostly unintentional--although not always--from politics, show business, sports, and anywhere else people can put their feet in their mouths.

    No Jobs. No friends. Just buckets of our own ignorance. Follow along in horror and hilarity as the family acclimates to the new small town way of life and the author bounces from jobs working in a school cafeteria to selling women’s clothing in a call center to opening a barbecue restaurant. Written in a smart, self-deprecating, salty style, Small Town Ho is all at once poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, full of the struggle of an ordinary family consisting of three boys, one big black lab, one assassin of a cat, and two very tired parents.

    In helping Memorial Medical Center build a culture of ownership, Carol Jean Hawtrey with the help of Florence Nightingale create a roadmap that every hospital can follow to create a more positive and productive workplace and a build a sustainable source of competitive advantage. In the form of a business parable, the story shows readers why the invisible architecture of core values, corporate culture, and emotional climate is more important than bricks and mortar for creating patient, physician and employee loyalty, and describes eight essential characteristics of a culture of ownership. Dozens of practical strategies for fostering a more positive and productive organization are woven into the story.

    World History

    Bernstein’s A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, an Economist and Financial Times Best Book of the Year, placed him firmly among the top flight of historians like Jared Diamond and Bill Bryson, capable of distilling major trends and reams of information into insightful, globe-spanning popular narrative. Bernstein explains how new communication technologies and in particular our access to them, impacted human society. Writing was born thousands of years ago in Mesopotamia. Spreading to Sumer, and then Egypt, this revolutionary tool allowed rulers to extend their control far and wide, giving rise to the world’s first empires. When Phoenician traders took their alphabet to Greece, literacy’s first boom led to the birth of drama and democracy. In Rome, it helped spell the downfall of the Republic. Later, medieval scriptoria and vernacular bibles gave rise to religious dissent, and with the combination of cheaper paper and Gutenberg’s printing press, the fuse of Reformation was lit. The Industrial Revolution brought the telegraph and the steam driven printing press, allowing information to move faster than ever before and to reach an even larger audience. But along with radio and television, these new technologies were more easily exploited by the powerful, as seen in Germany, the Soviet Union, even Rwanda, where radio incited genocide. With the rise of carbon duplicates (Russian samizdat), photocopying (the Pentagon Papers), the internet, social media and cell phones (the recent Arab Spring) more people have access to communications, making the world more connected than ever before. In Masters of the Word, Bernstein masterfully guides the reader through the vast history of communications, illustrating each step with colorful stories and anecdotes. This is a captivating, enlightening book, one that will change the way you look at technology, history, and power.

    Leo Babauta of Zen Habits shares his best tips for traveling light, ultralight backpacking/hiking, and applying the same ideas to living a simple life.

    With authors from Marcus Buckingham to Herminia Ibarra and company examples from Google to Deloitte, this volume brings the most current and important management conversations to your fingertips.This book will inspire you to:• Tap into the new technologies that are changing the way businesses compete• Fuel performance by redesigning your organization’s practices around feedback• Learn techniques to move beyond intuition for better decision making• Understand why your strategy execution isn’t working—and how to fix it• Lead with authenticity by moving beyond your comfort zone• Transform your physical office space to promote creativity and productivityThis collection of best-selling articles includes:• “Reinventing Performance Management,” by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall• “The Transparency Trap,” by Ethan Bernstein• “Profits Without Prosperity,” by William Lazonick• “Outsmart Your Own Biases,” by Jack B. Soll, Katherine L. Milkman, and John W. Payne• “The 3-D Printing Revolution,” by Richard D’Aveni• “Why Strategy Execution Unravels—and What to Do About It,” by Donald Sull, Rebecca Homkes, and Charles Sull• “The Authenticity Paradox,” by Herminia Ibarra• “The Discipline of Business Experimentation,” by Stefan Thomke and Jim Manzi• “When Senior Managers Won’t Collaborate,” by Heidi K. Gardner• “Workspaces That Move People,” by Ben Waber, Jennifer Magnolfi, and Greg Lindsay• “Digital Ubiquity: How Connections, Sensors, and Data Are Revolutionizing Business,” by Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani

    The true measure of any leader is his or her ability to react based on past experience and gut feelings, respond in real time to current circumstances, and then to recover quickly and move on with new lessons learned. The Little Book of Leadership combines classic style with the latest innovations to challenges the reader to self-evaluate every facet of their leadership, coaching, and communication abilities in order to better formulate what actions can be taken to improve their natural skills. Ideas and answers are provided for every challenge.Chapters include information about the 12.5 leadership strengths: From insights to legacy and every element in between. Morale, Attitude, Resilience, Opportunity, Guts, Measurement, Coach, Celebration, Next-level, and Lost Secret of Leadership Foreword by Dr. Paul "Doc" Hersey, creator of Situational Leadership Other books by Gitomer: The Sales Bible: The Ultimate Sales Resource, Revised Edition, also by Wiley, The Little Red Book of Selling (Bard Press) The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude (Pearson) Whereas other books rely on theory or philosophy, The Little Book of Leadership takes leadership into the real world of business, providing proven methods for becoming a successful leader.

    An accessible look at how the government promoted the housing bubble that it is now using for its own ends.

    The paper back version is available. The ISBN# is0-916990-46-X. If you can not order this book from Amazon.com. Please contact us at metapub@prodigy.net.

    Now Disney is under attack by family and religious organizations. Are the complaints hysterical censorship, or has Disney really lost its way? Investigative journalists Peter Schweizer and Rochelle Schweizer set out to find the answer. Exclusive interviews with Disney employees, internal corporate documents, and law enforcement records reveal a story of a great American institution corrupted by greed and perverted by the lust for power - and even more bizarre vices. The Schweizers reveal: how Walt Disney put safety first, but the current management allows Disney World to have an injury rate twice the industry average - for money; how Disney became a partner in the nation's largest pay-per-view pornography distributor; Disney World's rampant pedophile and sexual abuser problem - and how the company prefers cover-ups to simple and inexpensive solutions; the weird message Disney sends when employees are caught peeping on - even filming - coworkers and guests in their dressing room; how Disney thwarts the efforts of local law enforcement at its theme parks; and how Disney licensees have been repeatedly charged with violating federal child labor laws.