Business & Economics

In Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know (2019), journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell investigates why we face so many problems when interacting with strangers. He was inspired to search for the underlying causes of our miscommunications following the death of Sandra Bland, a black woman who was pulled over by a white police officer for a minor traffic infraction in 2015. Bland should have been let go with... Read Talking to Strangers Summary

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Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion (2020) is a New York Times bestseller on rhetoric by Jay Heinrichs, a journalist, writer, and publisher who specializes in argumentation methods. The book was published in 14 languages and 4 editions, selling over 500,000 copies. Structured like a manual, it boasts over 100 tools of persuasion and references notable figures such as Cicero, Barack Obama, and... Read Thank You For Arguing Summary

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Robert Greene (1959) is an American self-help book author with a focus on strategy and power. After training in Classical Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Greene worked numerous jobs before pitching The 48 Laws of Power to book packager Joost Elffers in 1995. The book was inspired by Greene’s time as a writer in Hollywood, where he learned that today’s powerful people share common traits with historic princes, leaders, and tyrants. As he... Read The 48 Laws Of Power Summary

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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Aug 1989) by Stephen R. Covey is one of the most influential self-help books of the late twentieth century. To date, the title has sold over 40 million copies and has been a New York Times bestseller. Covey was named as one of Time Magazine’s 25 Most Influential Americans of 1996. His book is classified under the categories of Business Management, Organizational Behavior, and Personal Success in Business... Read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Summary

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey was first published in 1998 but was revised in 2014 to meet the changing needs of its audience of tech-savvy teenagers. (This study guide refers to the 2019 Simon and Schuster trade paperback edition.) While the genre is self-help, the book’s focus on young adult readers is evident from Covey’s informal tone, which he uses to narrate entertaining stories about teenagers, as well as the... Read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens Summary

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The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation, originally published in 2003 by Oxford University Press, is a popular history book by American cultural historian Jim Cullen. As an overview and critical analysis of the American Dream, this book adds some meat to the bones of a traditionally ambiguous concept. Cullen maintains an optimistic outlook about the usefulness of the various American Dreams and about the promise of America, despite... Read The American Dream Summary

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Priya Parker’s book The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters (2018) is a series of chapter-length essays that provide a guide to organizing effective gatherings as well as a persuasive argument for thinking about them as tools for social transformation. As a highly experienced group facilitator, advisor, podcast host, and expert in conflict resolution, Parker brings a specialist’s insight to her topic. At the same time, she organizes and presents the... Read The Art of Gathering Summary

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The Art of War, written in China during the fifth century BCE by military expert Sun Tzu, has been favored reading among soldiers and strategists for two millennia. Its concise 13 chapters, studied to this day by world leaders and generals from Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong to US Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell, teach victory through studying the opponent, building impregnable defenses, confusing the enemy with diversions, and attacking forcefully its weak spots. The book... Read The Art of War Summary

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World is a 2008 nonfiction book by historian Niall Ferguson. As its title implies, the book covers the rise of money and financial systems (in the West) throughout history. Ferguson argues that some aspect of finance lies behind all great events in history and that financial innovation has been as important to progress as scientific and technological innovation. Chapter 1 discusses the nature of money and... Read The Ascent of Money Summary

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, published in 2010, examines the causes of the 2008 financial crisis, one of the greatest debacles in American economic history. Like many of financial journalist and author Michael Lewis’s other works, including Liar’s Poker and Moneyball, The Big Short is a bestseller. It becomes a sourcebook during Congressional hearings into the disaster.The crash results from years of financial malfeasance and incompetence among the top salesmen and executives at... Read The Big Short Summary

Author and journalist Charles Fishman published The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water in 2011. This nonfiction book examines the history and origins of water, the rising concern of water scarcity, and our changed relationship with the substance. Fishman asserts that people generally take water for granted, even though it is crucial to the environment and to society. The book examines how we can repair this dismissive attitude, which Fishman contends... Read The Big Thirst Summary