Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks.
Audiobooks Narrated by Stephen R. Thorne
Browse audiobooks narrated by Stephen R. Thorne, listen to samples and when you're ready head over to Audiobooks.com where you can get 3 FREE audiobooks on us
Humans are the most intelligent beings this planet has ever produced. But how is it that we find ourselves faced with an existential crisis that threatens to overwhelm us?
Leading archaeogeneticist Johannes Krause and journalist Thomas Trappe investigate what DNA can tell us about how we got where we are and what our future might be. They show how the first humans were defeated again and again and suffered fatal setbacks, and how Homo sapiens succeeded in conquering continents, overcoming natural borders, and bringing other species under its control. But the genetic blueprint that enabled us to get to the place where we are today had one flaw: it didn't factor in planetary boundaries. Now that we are approaching those boundaries for the first time after millions of years of evolution, an urgent question arises: can we learn to live within the planetary limits, or are we doomed by our DNA to continue to expand, consume, and absorb the resources around us to the point of exhaustion, consigning ourselves and other species to extinction?
While the looming climate crisis does not augur well for humanity's capacity to adapt to the new situation in which it finds itself, we are not at the mercy of our DNA—or at least we don't have to be. But can we harness the lessons of the past to survive the present?
In the US we are nearing four million road deaths since we began counting them in 1899. The numbers are getting worse, yet we continue to accept these deaths as part of doing business. There has been no examination of why we engineer roads that are literally killing us.
In Killed by a Traffic Engineer, civil engineering professor Wes Marshall shines a spotlight on how little science there is behind the way that our streets are engineered, which leaves safety as an afterthought. While traffic engineers are not trying to cause deliberate harm to anyone, he explains, they are guilty of creating a transportation system whose designs remain largely based on plausible, but unproven, conjecture.
Killed by a Traffic Engineer shows how traffic engineering 'research' is outdated and unexamined (at its best) and often steered by an industry and culture considering only how to get from point A to B the fastest way possible, to the detriment of safety, quality of life, equality, and planetary health.
Killed by a Traffic Engineer is ultimately hopeful about what is possible once we shift our thinking and demand streets engineered for the safety of people, both outside and inside of cars.
Most of us spend a third of our waking lives at work. Work shapes our schedules, relationships, identities, and economies—but is it actually making us happy? This crucial question is explored in depth by leading Oxford researchers Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and George Ward, who provide the richest, most comprehensive picture of workplace wellbeing yet.
In Why Workplace Wellbeing Matters, the authors clarify what workplace wellbeing is (and is not) and offer a framework for how businesses can approach and improve it. Drawing on extensive large-scale data—including the world's largest data set on employee wellbeing, gathered in partnership with the jobs platform Indeed—the book reveals the remarkable ways in which wellbeing at work varies across workers, occupations, companies, and industries.
The authors present new, evidence-based insights into the origins of workplace wellbeing and how businesses can enhance the employee experience. Integrating work from multiple academic disciplines, they show that workplace wellbeing encompasses both how we think about our work as a whole and how we feel while doing it. Their research demonstrates that improving wellbeing can boost productivity, aid in talent retention and recruitment, and ultimately improve financial performance.
There is no CEO task more significant than leading change in an organization whose old business model needs updating. Large-scale change involves rethinking how to engage customers, partners, and suppliers with new technology and hard decisions about how to reorganize internal operations—plus the challenges of executing the transformation. Too many things can go wrong, from natural organizational resistance and inertia, to lack of strategic focus, to execution problems. And yet, organizations today must be more dynamic than ever before. Strategy is dynamic, not static, and requires agility, nimbleness, rapid resource deployment, and organizational change.
This practical playbook helps CEOs and other key leaders reduce the risks and see through the overwhelming complexity of a major change in organizational strategy. Unlike many other books on leading change that focus narrowly on overcoming resistance, The CEO Playbook for Strategic Transformation offers a comprehensive framework involving four major tasks for leaders: 1) Establish and Communicate the Urgent Need; 2) Engage Stakeholders; 3) Mobilize the Organization; and 4) Develop Organizational Agility. Leaders who guide their organizations through these stages are far more likely to succeed than those who lack a playbook.
In The Go-to-Market Cheat Code: The Secret to Unlocking B2B Growth, award-winning entrepreneur Justin Gray and seasoned executive Josh Wagner deliver a research-rich and example-based exploration of why trust and relationships are the true foundation of every thriving business, and how you can build, maintain, and leverage trust in your own business dealings to gain an edge over competitors. This book avoids flash-in-the-pan trends and focuses instead on timeless, proven principles that can help you scale your organization to the next level.
Backed by a wealth of research and case studies, this book provides all of the practical tools listeners need to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Listeners will learn about topics including the 'digital mask' and how it has influenced the starting point of trust in any business relationship; the perfect enterprise sales cycle and customer journey to get results without rushing through crucial trust-building stages; and culture, customers, and context, and how the joining of these three elements creates a perfect business relationship.
The Go-to-Market Cheat Code is a timely, essential listen for all executives and founders seeking to understand the importance of trust in business relationships and unlock the secret to stronger, more lucrative business partnerships.
In 1954, the American labor movement reached its historic height, with one-third of all nonagricultural workers belonging to a union—and much higher percentages in the nation's key industries. That same year, a group of writers and activists, many with close ties to organized labor, founded Dissent magazine, which quickly became the publishing home for the most important progressive voices on American unions.
Today, at a time of both resurgent union organizing and socialist politics, the need for this rich tradition of ideas is as pressing as ever.
With over twenty-five contributions by some of the nation's most influential progressive voices, Labor's Partisans brings to life a history of labor that is of immediate relevance to our own times. Introduced and edited by leading labor historians Nelson Lichtenstein and Samir Sonti, this essential volume reveals the powerful currents and debates running through the labor movement, from the 1950s to today.
Combining stunning writing, political passion, and deep historical perspective, Labor's Partisans will be a source of ideas and inspiration for anyone concerned with a more just future for working people.
Feeling uneasy about AI? Worried it'll make your job obsolete and your once-solid training outdated? You're not alone.
As the automation tsunami crashes over the workforce, forget fearmongering headlines and confusing jargon. This book will be your life raft through the chaos, leading you to shore.
Random Acts of Automation dives deep into the hidden consequences of our rapid automation, examining the forces that will reshape the current workforce. This book focuses on real people—fast-food workers, warehouse staff, customer service agents, even lawyers and tech professionals—all facing the impact of automation. In its chapters, you will find practical solutions to your workplace concerns about AI. This isn't just about understanding your current job; it's about seeing where automation will take you and how you can thrive.
Author and AI analyst Craig Le Clair isn't waiting for politicians to catch up on the latest advancements in automation. Instead, this is your guide to tackle the coming changes head-on, filled with relatable stories, actionable advice, and a clear path forward.
NOW A WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER
A ground-breaking book at the intersection of strategy and leadership!
This insightful guide provides a proven process for strategy design combined with The Nine Elements of Organizational Identity framework to align action for success. Whether you're a seasoned executive or a budding entrepreneur, this book is packed with valuable resources.
The Strategy Legacy is a must-listen to future-proof your organization and become a strategic leader.
Messy code is a nuisance. 'Tidying' code, to make it more readable, requires breaking it up into manageable sections. In this practical guide, author Kent Beck, creator of Extreme Programming and pioneer of software patterns, suggests when and where you might apply tidyings to improve your code while keeping the overall structure of the system in mind.
Instead of trying to master tidying all at once, this book lets you try out a few examples that make sense for your problem. If you have a big function containing many lines of code, you'll learn how to logically divide it into smaller chunks. Along the way, you'll learn the theory behind software design: coupling, cohesion, discounted cash flows, and optionality. This book helps you:
● Understand the basic theory of how software design works and the forces that act on it
● Explore the difference between changes to a system's behavior and changes to its structure
● Improve your programming experience by sometimes tidying first and sometimes tidying after
● Learn how to make large changes in small, safe steps
● Approach software design as an exercise in human relationships
The growing movement for universal basic income (UBI) has been gaining attention from politics and the media with the audacious idea of a regular, unconditional cash grant for everyone as a right of citizenship. This volume in the Essential Knowledge series presents the first short, solid UBI introduction that is neither academic nor polemic. It takes a position in favor of UBI, but its primary goal remains the provision of essential knowledge by answering the fundamental questions about it: What is UBI? How does it work? What are the arguments for and against it? What is the evidence?
Karl Widerquist discusses how UBI functions, showing how it differs from other redistributional approaches. He summarizes the common arguments for and against UBI and presents the reasons for believing it is a tremendously important reform. The book briefly discusses the likely cost of UBI; options for paying for it; the existing evidence on the probable effects of UBI; and the history of UBI from its inception more than two hundred years ago to today. Now more than ever, conditions in much of the world are ripe for such enthusiasm to keep growing, and there are good reasons to believe that this current wave of support will eventually lead to the adoption of UBI in several countries around the world-making this volume an especially timely and necessary listen.
In the footsteps of Desert Solitaire, these essays by an award-winning writer and student of culture sift decades of experience backpacking and boating for a stance that questions the mainstream. More than mere tales of bravado, they offer glimpses into the heart of the places explored, with the Grand Canyon as their center of gravity. Vivid, finely crafted, shot through with humor, self-effacing while deeply opinionated, No Walk in the Park shows what it means to meet nature on nature's terms. Listen at home in an armchair, or at a river camp, or before you go wandering.
Join this author on a night hike to the great chasm's bottom; trek forty days in his company below one rim, or snowshoe the other; visit a Hopi mesa for a ceremony; marvel at hidden rock art; sip epic solitude; tag threatened fish; and float next to Glen Canyon's slickrock or below Niagara-size fleeting falls.
American households are awash in expensive credit card debt. But where did all this debt come from? In this history of the rise of postwar American finance, Sean H. Vanatta shows how bankers created our credit card economy and, with it, the indebted nation we know today.
America's consumer debt machine was not inevitable. In the years after World War II, state and federal regulations ensured that many Americans enjoyed safe banks and inexpensive credit. Bankers, though, grew restless amid restrictive rules that made profits scarce. They experimented with new services and new technologies. They settled on credit cards, and in the 1960s mailed out reams of high-interest plastic to build a debt industry from scratch.
In the 1960s and 70s consumers fought back, using federal and state policy to make credit cards safer and more affordable. But bankers found ways to work around local rules. Beginning in 1980, Citibank and its peers relocated their card plans to South Dakota and Delaware, states with the weakest consumer regulations, creating 'on-shore' financial havens and drawing consumers into an exploitative credit economy over which they had little control. We live in the world these bankers made.
We use cookies to give you the best online experience. Please let us know if you agree to all of these cookies. To learn more view privacy and cookies policy.
