Book picks similar to
The Ostrich Paradox by Robert Meyer


non-fiction
business
psychology
nonfiction

Economics: The Remarkable Story of How the Economy Works


Ben Mathew - 2013
    Get a new and powerful understanding of the world around you. Save yourself from the nonsense spouted by politicians, TV pundits, right-wingers, left-wingers, shamans, uncles, and best friends.

How To Create Wealth Investing In Real Estate: How to Build Wealth with Multi-Family Real Estate


Grant Cardone - 2018
     This is not a book about flipping or wholesaling homes, its about investing in real estate that is a proven method for creating massive wealth. This book is about how you can buy income producing real estate, protect your capital, and provide you and your family with passive while the property pays down debt and you wait for asset appreciation. This easy-to-read guide can be read from cover-to-cover in one sitting. You will learn: • The precise type of real estate that will ensure you the best chance at cash flow and appreciation. • How to ensure positive cash flow during all economies. • How to evaluate a property to know what a fair price is. • How to determine where to find the best deals in your market. • What price, cap rated and how to ensure appreciation in the future. • What the perfect first deal is for you and what deals you should never do. • Why a lower cap rates may provide you with the greatest gain. • How to use good debt and make the bank your partner. • How to know what price you will exit at and even who the buyer profile will be. • You also get an inside look at the exact deals he is looking at today. •This is not a book about what someone did decades ago nor is it about how to buy real estate with no money down. • It is about how to use find and buy real estate that is sure to create multiple flows of income for your family, • and explode your net worth over time using debt pay down and forced appreciation. “Grant Cardone is the master of real estate investing and he simplifies it in his newest release. Get it and apply what he is telling you.” - Daymond John, SharkTank Star and CEO Fubu. "Cardone is to real estate investing what I am to the bar and restaurant business. He shows you exactly what he has done to build a multi-hundred million dollar business.” - Jon Taffer, Bar Rescue The first edition sold out in six days and the reviews are already coming in. IF YOU'VE ENJOYED ANY OF GRANT'S BOOKS, THIS IS A MUST ADD TO YOUR LIBRARY.

Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World


Rutger Bregman - 2014
    A 15-hour workweek. Open borders. Does it sound too good to be true? One of Europe's leading young thinkers shows how we can build an ideal world today. "A more politically radical Malcolm Gladwell."—The New York Times After working all day at jobs we often dislike, we buy things we don't need. Rutger Bregman, a Dutch historian, reminds us it needn't be this way—and in some places it isn't. Rutger Bregman's TED Talk about universal basic income seemed impossibly radical when he delivered it in 2014. A quarter of a million views later, the subject of that video is being seriously considered by leading economists and government leaders the world over. It's just one of the many utopian ideas that Bregman proves is possible today. Utopia for Realists is one of those rare books that takes you by surprise and challenges what you think can happen. From a Canadian city that once completely eradicated poverty, to Richard Nixon's near implementation of a basic income for millions of Americans, Bregman takes us on a journey through history, and beyond the traditional left-right divides, as he champions ideas whose time have come. Every progressive milestone of civilization—from the end of slavery to the beginning of democracy—was once considered a utopian fantasy. Bregman's book, both challenging and bracing, demonstrates that new utopian ideas, like the elimination of poverty and the creation of the fifteen-hour workweek, can become a reality in our lifetime. Being unrealistic and unreasonable can in fact make the impossible inevitable, and it is the only way to build the ideal world.

The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance


Eswar S. Prasad - 2021
    We bank from laptops and buy coffee with the wave of a phone. But these are minor miracles compared with the dizzying experiments now underway around the globe, as businesses and governments alike embrace the possibilities of new financial technologies. As Eswar S. Prasad explains, the world of finance is at the threshold of major disruption that will affect corporations, bankers, states, and indeed all of us. The transformation of money will fundamentally rewrite how ordinary people live.Above all, Prasad foresees the end of physical cash. The driving force won’t be phones or credit cards but rather central banks, spurred by the emergence of cryptocurrencies to develop their own, more stable digital currencies. Meanwhile, cryptocurrencies themselves will evolve unpredictably as global corporations like Facebook and Amazon join the game. The changes will be accompanied by snowballing innovations that are reshaping finance and have already begun to revolutionize how we invest, trade, insure, and manage risk.Prasad shows how these and other changes will redefine the very concept of money, unbundling its traditional functions as a unit of account, medium of exchange, and store of value. The promise lies in greater efficiency and flexibility, increased sensitivity to the needs of diverse consumers, and improved market access for the unbanked. The risk is instability, lack of accountability, and erosion of privacy. A lucid, visionary work, The Future of Money shows how to maximize the best and guard against the worst of what is to come.

The Motley Fool Million Dollar Portfolio: How to Build and Grow a Panic-Proof Investment Portfolio


David Gardner - 2008
    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.

Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time


Brigid Schulte - 2014
    It is a deeply reported and researched, honest and often hilarious journey from feeling that, as one character in the book said, time is like a "rabid lunatic" running naked and screaming as your life flies past you, to understanding the historical and cultural roots of the overwhelm, how worrying about all there is to do and the pressure of feeling like we're never have enough time to do it all, or do it well, is "contaminating" our experience of time, how time pressure and stress is resculpting our brains and shaping our workplaces, our relationships and squeezing the space that the Greeks said was the point of living a Good Life: that elusive moment of peace called leisure.Author Brigid Schulte, an award-winning journalist for the Washington Post - and harried mother of two - began the journey quite by accident, after a time-use researcher insisted that she, like all American women, had 30 hours of leisure each week. Stunned, she accepted his challenge to keep a time diary and began a journey that would take her from the depths of what she described as the Time Confetti of her days to a conference in Paris with time researchers from around the world, to North Dakota, of all places, where academics are studying the modern love affair with busyness, to Yale, where neuroscientists are finding that feeling overwhelmed is actually shrinking our brains, to exploring new lawsuits uncovering unconscious bias in the workplace, why the US has no real family policy, and where states and cities are filling the federal vacuum.She spent time with mothers drawn to increasingly super intensive parenting standards, and mothers seeking to pull away from it. And she visited the walnut farm of the world's most eminent motherhood researcher, an evolutionary anthropologist, to ask, are mothers just "naturally" meant to be the primary parent? The answer will surprise you.Along the way, she was driven by two questions, Why are things the way they are? and, How can they be better? She found real world bright spots of innovative workplaces, couples seeking to shift and share the division of labor at home and work more equitably and traveled to Denmark, the happiest country on earth, where fathers - and mothers - have more pure leisure time than parents in other industrial countries. She devoured research about the science of play, why it's what makes us human, and the feminist leisure research that explains why it's so hard for women to allow themselves to. The answers she found are illuminating, perplexing and ultimately hopeful. The book both outlines the structural and policy changes needed - already underway in small pockets - and mines the latest human performance and motivation science to show the way out of the overwhelm and toward a state that time use researchers call ... Time Serenity.

Managing in the Next Society


Peter F. Drucker - 1980
    Following in the successful vein of Managing for the Future (1992) and Managing in a Time of Great Change (1995), the incomparable Peter Drucker is back with fresh thoughts, insights, and knowledge about the ever-changing business society around us and the ever-expanding management roles required of us all-chiefs, executives, managers, and knowledge workers alike.Two main themes are explored in many of the chapters in Managing in the Next Society: the rapidly expanding information shock wave that had its Internet Big Bang as recently as 1995; and the changing shape of our society to come-six major trends that are rapidly transforming our world into what Peter Drucker calls The Next Society.

Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials


Malcolm Harris - 2017
    An Australian millionaire says Millennials could all afford homes if we'd just give up avocado toast. Thanks, millionaire. This Millennial is here to prove them all wrong.Millennials have been stereotyped as lazy, entitled, narcissistic, and immature. We've gotten so used to sloppy generational analysis filled with dumb clichés about young people that we've lost sight of what really unites Millennials. Namely:-We are the most educated and hard-working generation in American history.-We poured historic and insane amounts of time and money into preparing ourselves for the 21st century labor market.- We have been taught to consider working for free (homework, internships) a privilege for our own benefit.- We are poorer, more medicated, and more precariously employed than our parents, grandparents, even our great grandparents, with less of a social safety net to boot. Kids These Days, is about why. In brilliant, crackling prose, early Wall Street occupier Malcolm Harris gets mercilessly real about our maligned birth cohort. Examining trends like runaway student debt, the rise of the intern, mass incarceration, social media, and more, Harris gives us a portrait of what it means to be young in America today that will wake you up and piss you off. Millennials were the first generation raised explicitly as investments, Harris argues, and in Kids These Days he dares us to confront and take charge of the consequences now that we are grown up.

Non-Obvious: How to Think Different, Curate Ideas & Predict The Future


Rohit Bhargava - 2012
    And that’s exactly the point. For the past 4 years, marketing expert and Georgetown University Professor Rohit Bhargava has curated his best-selling list of “non-obvious” trends by asking the questions that most trend predictors miss. It’s why his insights on future trends and the art of curating trends have been utilized by dozens of the biggest brands and organizations in the world like Intel, Under Armour and the World Bank. In this all-new fifth edition, discover what more than half a million others already have: how to use the power of non-obvious thinking to grow your business and make a bigger impact in the world. Non-Obvious is filled with entertaining insights like how a pioneering comedy club charging audiences per laugh may forecast the future of consumption or how a wave of tech firms hiring yogis and offering classes in mindfulness may change the overall culture of business.Other trends featured in the report include:• The Reluctant Marketer - Why brands are focusing less on traditional marketing and promotion and more on content marketing and customer experience. • Glanceable Content - How companies are leveraging our shrinking attention span to create experiences designed for rapid consumption.• Small Data - How all the excitement about “big data” in business may be misguided and true value comes from learning to leverage the tiny focal points that matter. In total, Non-Obvious features 15 all-new trends for 2015 across 5 categories including Culture & Consumer Behavior, Marketing & Social Media, Media & Education, Technology & Design plus Economics & Entrepreneurship. Each is designed to help you take a deeper look at the changing landscape of business and prepare your business for the future.For the first time ever, Non-Obvious also delves into the curation process the author has used for years to build his Trend Reports and takes readers behind the scenes of “trend curation” (much to the delight of past readers who have been asking about this for years), and show them the methodology they can use to predict the future for themselves. Finally, Non-Obvious takes a brutally honest look back at more than 60 previous trends from 2011 to 2014, providing an honest assessment of what came true, what was a dud, and why it matters. In the end Non-Obvious is a book that will show you how to think different, curate your ideas and get better at predicting what will be important tomorrow based on learning to better observe patterns in the world today. Isaac Asimov once wrote that he was not a speed reader, but he was a “speed understander.” If you want to improve your business or your career by seeing those things that others miss, and becoming a speed understander for yourself, this book can help you get there.

The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future


Andrew Yang - 2018
    The shift toward automation is about to create a tsunami of unemployment. Not in the distant future—now. One recent estimate predicts 45 million American workers will lose their jobs within the next twelve years—jobs that won't be replaced. In a future marked by restlessness and chronic unemployment, what will happen to American society? In The War on Normal People, Andrew Yang paints a dire portrait of the American economy. Rapidly advancing technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics and automation software are making millions of Americans' livelihoods irrelevant. The consequences of these trends are already being felt across our communities in the form of political unrest, drug use, and other social ills. The future looks dire-but is it unavoidable? In The War on Normal People, Yang imagines a different future—one in which having a job is distinct from the capacity to prosper and seek fulfillment. At this vision's core is Universal Basic Income, the concept of providing all citizens with a guaranteed income-and one that is rapidly gaining popularity among forward-thinking politicians and economists. Yang proposes that UBI is an essential step toward a new, more durable kind of economy, one he calls "human capitalism."

Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life


Bill Perkins - 2020
    You worked hard, saved your money, and looked forward to financial freedom when you retired.   The only thing you wasted along the way was…your life.  Die with Zero presents a startling new and provocative philosophy as well as practical guide on how to get the most out of your money—and out of your life. It’s intended for those who place lifelong memorable experiences far ahead of simply making and accumulating money for one’s so-called Golden Years.   In short, Bill Perkins wants to rescue you from over-saving and under-living. Regardless of your age, Die with Zero will teach you Perkins’ plan for optimizing your life, stage by stage, so you’re fully engaged and enjoying what you’ve worked and saved for.   You’ll discover how to maximize your lifetime memorable moments with “experience bucketing,” how to convert your earnings into priceless memories by following your “net worth curve,” and find out how to navigate whether to invest in, or delay, a meaningful adventure based on your “spend curve” and “personal interest rate.”   Using his own life experiences as well as the inspiring stories and cautionary tales of others—and drawing on eye-opening insights about time, money, and happiness from psychological science and behavioral finance —Perkins makes a timely, convincing, and contrarian case for living large.

The Laws of Money, the Lessons of Life: 5 Timeless Secrets to Get Out and Stay Out of Financial Trouble


Suze Orman - 2003
    Orman guides readers to safeguarding what they have and creating the future they want.

Common Sense: The Investor's Guide to Equality, Opportunity, and Growth


Joel Greenblatt - 2020
    It shouldn't take a worldwide pandemic and nationwide protests to bring economic and racial inequality to the forefront of problems we desperately need to solve. But now that the opportunity is here, what should we do? How can we create more equality, opportunity, and growth for everyone? Not someday, but what can government and the private sector do right now to disrupt a status quo that almost everyone wants to change?In Common Sense, the New York Times best-selling author Joel Greenblatt offers an investor's perspective on building an economy that truly works for everyone. With dry wit and engaging storytelling, he makes a lively and provocative case for disruptive new approaches--some drawn from personal experience, some from the outside looking in. How can leading corporations immediately disrupt our education establishment while creating high-paying job opportunities for those currently left behind? If we want a living wage for everyone, how can we afford it while using an existing program to get it done now? If we subsidize banks, what simple changes can we make to the way we capitalize and regulate them to help grow the economy, increase access, and create more jobs (while keeping the risks and benefits where they belong)? Greenblatt also explains how dramatically increasing immigration would be like giving every American a giant bonus and the reason Australia might be the best place to learn about saving for retirement.Not everyone will agree with what Greenblatt has to say--but all of us can benefit from the conversations he aims to start.

A Framework for Understanding Poverty


Ruby K. Payne - 1995
    The reality of being poor brings out a survival mentality, and turns attention away from opportunities taken for granted by everyone else. If you work with people from poverty, some understanding of how different their world is from yours will be invaluable. Whether you're an educator--or a social, health, or legal services professional--this breakthrough book gives you practical, real-world support and guidance to improve your effectiveness in working with people from all socioeconomic backgrounds. Since 1995 A Framework for Understanding Poverty has guided hundreds of thousands of educators and other professionals through the pitfalls and barriers faced by all classes, especially the poor. Carefully researched and packed with charts, tables, and questionnaires, Framework not only documents the facts of poverty, it provides practical yet compassionate strategies for addressing its impact on people's lives.

Wait: The Art and Science of Delay


Frank Partnoy - 2012
    Even as technology exerts new pressures to speed up our lives, it turns out that the choices we make--unconsciously and consciously, in time frames varying from milliseconds to years--benefit profoundly from delay. As this winning and provocative book reveals, taking control of time and slowing down our responses yields better results in almost every arena of life ... even when time seems to be of the essence.The procrastinator in all of us will delight in Partnoy's accounts of celebrity "delay specialists," from Warren Buffett to Chris Evert to Steve Kroft, underscoring the myriad ways in which delaying our reactions to everyday choices--large and small--can improve the quality of our lives.