As sociologist and network science pioneer Duncan Watts explains in this provocative book, the explanations that we give for the outcomes that we observe in life—explanation that seem obvious once we know the answer—are less useful than they seem.Drawing on the latest scientific research, along with a wealth of historical and contemporary examples, Watts shows how common sense reasoning and history conspire to mislead us into believing that we understand more about the world of human behavior than we do; and in turn, why attempts to predict, manage, or manipulate social and economic systems so often go awry.It seems obvious, for example, that people respond to incentives; yet policy makers and managers alike frequently fail to anticipate how people will respond to the incentives they create. Social trends often seem to have been driven by certain influential people; yet marketers have been unable to identify these “influencers” in advance. And although successful products or companies always seem in retrospect to have succeeded because of their unique qualities, predicting the qualities of the next hit product or hot company is notoriously difficult even for experienced professionals.Only by understanding how and when common sense fails, Watts argues, can we improve how we plan for the future, as well as understand the present—an argument that has important implications in politics, business, and marketing, as well as in science and everyday life.

     In this enormously entertaining first novel, a lovable, stressed-out guy nicknamed Mumbles tells the story of how he and his cohorts not only struggle to survive corporate purgatory, but also find satisfying ways to strike back at the system. Fueled by a constant flow of Starbucks coffee, Mumbles and his friends take on such tasks as secretly filming a despised colleague's boardroom romp with an assistant, creating footage they plan to broadcast at the company's holiday party. But true gratification comes only when they actually start standing up to the bank's evil minions, those who have no qualms about piling on a weekend's worth of work on a Friday afternoon. With sharp comedy, episodes of inspired hijinks, and its glimpse into a world of fleeting elevator romances and not-so-infrequent nervous breakdowns, Bank is a touching and lively novel that is, at its heart, about figuring out what really matters in life.

    Now this instant classic has been completely updated, outfitted with a whole new arsenal of indispensable knowledge on global affairs, popular culture, economic trends, scientific principles, and modern arts. Here's your chance to brush up on all those subjects you slept through in school, reacquaint yourself with all the facts you once knew (then promptly forgot), catch up on major developments in the world today, and become the Renaissance man or woman you always knew you could be! How do you tell the Balkans from the Caucasus? What's the difference between fission and fusion? Whigs and Tories? Shiites and Sunnis? Deduction and induction? Why aren't all Shakespearean comedies necessarily thigh-slappers? What are transcendental numbers and what are they good for? What really happened in Plato's cave? Is postmodernism dead or just having a bad hair day? And for extra credit, when should you use the adjective continual and when should you use continuous? An Incomplete Education answers these and thousands of other questions with incomparable wit, style, and clarity. American Studies, Art History, Economics, Film, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, Science, and World History: Here's the bottom line on each of these major disciplines, distilled to its essence and served up with consummate flair.

    Moved by the guilt of never having worked with his hands, Neruda opens with the despairing confession, “Why did I not make a broom? / Why was I given hands at all?” The themes of hands and work grow in significance as Neruda celebrates the carpenters, longshoremen, blacksmiths, and bakers—those laborers he admires most—and shares his exuberant adoration for the earth and the people upon it.Yes, I am guiltyof what I did not do,of what I did not sow, did not cut, did not measure,of never having rallied myself to populate lands,of having sustained myself in the desertsand of my voice speaking with the sand.Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) was a Chilean poet and diplomat who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. Recognized during his life as “a people’s poet,” he is considered one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.William O’Daly is the best-selling translator of six of Pablo Neruda’s books, including The Book of Questions and The Sea and the Bells. His work as a translator has been featured on The Today Show.

    In two concise, powerful essays, the award-winning author offers unique insight into the true nature of extremism and proposes a reasoned and respectful approach to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He also comments on related issues--the Gaza pullout, Yasser Arafat's death, and the war in Iraq--in an extended interview at the end of the book.The brilliant clarity of these essays, coupled with Oz's ironic sense of humor in illuminating the serious, breathes new life into this old debate. Oz argues that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a war of religion or cultures or traditions, but rather a real estate dispute--one that will be resolved not by greater understanding, but by painful compromise.Fresh, insightful, and inspiring, How to Cure a Fanatic brings a new voice of sanity to the cacophony on Israeli-Palestinian relations--a voice no one can afford to ignore.

    They are the nannies--not the stroller-pushing set but an invasive band of do-gooders who are subtly and steadily stripping us of our liberties, robbing us of the inalienable right to make our own decisions, and turning America into a nation of children.As you read this, countless busybodies across the nation are rolling up their sleeves to do the work of straightening out your life. Certain Massachusetts towns have banned schoolyard tag. San Francisco has passed laws regulating the amount of water you should use in dog bowls. The mayor of New York City has french fries and doughnuts in his sights. In some parts of California, smoking is prohibited...outside.The government, under pressure from the nanny minority, is twisting the public's arm into obedience. Playground police, food fascists, antiporn crusaders--whether they're legislating morality or well-being--are popping up all over America. In the name of health, safety, decency, and--shudder--good intentions, these ever-vigilant politicians and social activists are dictating what we eat, where we smoke, what we watch and read, and whom we marry.Why do bureaucrats think they know what's better for us than we do? And are they selectively legislating in the name of political expediency? For instance, why do we ban mini-motorbikes, responsible for five deaths each year, and not skiing, which accounts for fifty deaths each year? Why is medical marijuana, a substance yet to claim a single life, banned and not aspirin, which accounts for about 7,600 deaths?Exhaustively researched, sharply observed, and refreshingly lucid, Nanny Sate looks at the myriad ways we are turning the United States into a soulless and staid nation--eroding not only our personal freedoms but our national character.Jacket design by Jamie Keenan

    Or do they? In the first intellectual history of neoliberal globalism, Quinn Slobodian follows a group of thinkers from the ashes of the Habsburg Empire to the creation of the World Trade Organization to show that neoliberalism emerged less to shrink government and abolish regulations than to redeploy them at a global level.Slobodian begins in Austria in the 1920s. Empires were dissolving and nationalism, socialism, and democratic self-determination threatened the stability of the global capitalist system. In response, Austrian intellectuals called for a new way of organizing the world. But they and their successors in academia and government, from such famous economists as Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises to influential but lesser-known figures such as Wilhelm Röpke and Michael Heilperin, did not propose a regime of laissez-faire. Rather they used states and global institutions--the League of Nations, the European Court of Justice, the World Trade Organization, and international investment law--to insulate the markets against sovereign states, political change, and turbulent democratic demands for greater equality and social justice.Far from discarding the regulatory state, neoliberals wanted to harness it to their grand project of protecting capitalism on a global scale. It was a project, Slobodian shows, that changed the world, but that was also undermined time and again by the inequality, relentless change, and social injustice that accompanied it.

    The divide between the global economy’s winners and losers in today’s France has replaced the old left‑right split, leaving many on “the periphery.”As Guilluy shows, there is no unified French economy, and those cut off from the country’s new economic citadels suffer disproportionately on both economic and social fronts. In Guilluy’s analysis, the lip service paid to the idea of an “open society” in France is a smoke screen meant to hide the emergence of a closed society, walled off for the benefit of the upper classes. The ruling classes in France are reaching a dangerous stage, he argues; without the stability of a growing economy, the hope for those excluded from growth is extinguished, undermining the legitimacy of a multicultural nation.

    Ariely applies this scientific analysis of the human condition in his “Ask Ariely” Q & A column in the Wall Street Journal, in which he responds to readers who write in with personal conundrums ranging from the serious to the curious: What can you do to stay calm when you’re playing the volatile stock market? What’s the best way to get someone to stop smoking? How can you maximize the return on your investment at an all-you-can-eat buffet? Is it possible to put a price on the human soul? Can you ever rationally justify spending thousands of dollars on a Rolex?In Ask Ariely, a broad variety of economic, ethical, and emotional dilemmas are explored and addressed through text and images. Using their trademark insight and wit, Ariely and Haefeli help us reflect on how we can reason our way through external and internal challenges. Readers will laugh, learn, and most importantly gain a new perspective on how to deal with the inevitable problems that plague our daily life.

    Its political culture was less authoritarian than Russia's and less anti-Semitic than France's; representative institutions were thriving, and competing political parties and elections were a central part of life. How then can we explain the fact that in little more than a generation this stable modern country would be in the hands of a violent, racist, extremist political movement that would lead it and all of Europe into utter moral, physical, and cultural ruin?There is no story in twentieth-century history more important to understand, and Richard Evans has written the definitive account for our time. A masterful synthesis of a vast body of scholarly work integrated with important new research and interpretations, Evans's history restores drama and contingency to the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazis, even as he shows how ready Germany was by the early 1930s for such a takeover to occur. With many people angry and embittered by military defeat and economic ruin; a state undermined by a civil service, an army, and a law enforcement system deeply alienated from the democratic order introduced in 1918; beset by the growing extremism of voters prey to panic about the increasing popularity of communism; home to a tiny but quite successful Jewish community subject to widespread suspicion and resentment, Germany proved to be fertile ground for Nazism's ideology of hatred.The first book of what will ultimately be a complete three-volume history of Nazi Germany, The Coming of the Third Reich is a masterwork of the historian's art and the book by which all others on this subject will be judged.

    He doesn’t know who they are or where they came from, but one of them gives him a mysterious gold-and-diamond emblem before disembarking. Decades later, the captain’s son receives a substantial offer for it and is told an astounding story behind the object: it holds the key to Paul Reiner’s lifelong quest. . . . Munich, 1919. After his family falls into disgrace, fifteen-year-old Paul dreams of the heroic father he never knew. But one night, seconds before committing suicide, Paul’s cousin reveals a terrible secret about his father’s death. This discovery turns Paul’s world upside down and leads him on a hunt in Nazi Germany to uncover the mystery surrounding his father’s death. The Traitor’s Emblem is an epic novel spanning decades of family betrayal, impossible love, and the high price of vengeance. Set against the menacing streets of Depression-era Munich and the cruel rise of Nazism, Gómez-Jurado’s spellbinding thriller proves again that he is a master of narration.

    They all have one person in common, their beloved therapist Natasha who, though central to the lives of all of the women, is absent from their meeting. The women represent the many cultural and social groups that modern Chile is comprised of—from a housekeeper to celebrity television personality. They are of disparate ages and races and their lives have been touched by major political events from the dictatorship of Pinochet to the Israel-Palestine conflict. But despite their differences, as the women tell their stories, unlikely bonds are formed, and their lives are transformed in this intricately woven, beautifully rendered tale of the universal bonds between women from one of Latin America’s most celebrated novelists.

    Luckily, for the millions of American nonbelievers who have quietly stewed for years as the religious right made gains in politics and culture, the wait is over. Bestselling author Jack Huberman's zeitgeist sense has honed into the backlash building against religious fundamentalism and collected a veritable treasure trove of quotes by philosophers, scientists, poets, writers, artists, entertainers, and political figures. His colorful cast of atheists includes Karen Armstrong, Lance Armstrong, Jules Feiffer, Federico Fellini, H. L. Mencken, Ian McKellen, Isaac Singer, Jonathan Swift, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Virginia Woolf and the Marquis de Sade.

    Charting the rise of the working class, through two world wars to their fall in Thatcher's Britain and today, Todd tells their story for the first time, in their own words.Uncovering a huge hidden swathe of Britain's past, The People is the vivid history of a revolutionary century and the people who really made Britain great.

    The response was tremendous — clearly she articulated something many women had sensed for years: the problem is with capitalism, not with us.Ghodsee, an acclaimed ethnographer and professor of Russian and East European Studies, spent years researching what happened to women in countries that transitioned from state socialism to capitalism. She argues here that unregulated capitalism disproportionately harms women, and that we should learn from the past. By rejecting the bad and salvaging the good, we can adapt some socialist ideas to the 21st century and improve our lives.She tackles all aspects of a woman's life - work, parenting, sex and relationships, citizenship, and leadership. In a chapter called "Women: Like Men, But Cheaper," she talks about women in the workplace, discussing everything from the wage gap to harassment and discrimination. In "What To Expect When You're Expecting Exploitation," she addresses motherhood and how "having it all" is impossible under capitalism.Women are standing up for themselves like never before, from the increase in the number of women running for office to the women's march to the long-overdue public outcry against sexual harassment. Interest in socialism is also on the rise -- whether it's the popularity of Bernie Sanders or the skyrocketing membership numbers of the Democratic Socialists of America. It's become increasingly clear to women that capitalism isn't working for us, and Ghodsee is the informed, lively guide who can show us the way forward.