Business

Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? How much do parents really matter? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He studies the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to parenting and sports—and reaches conclusions that turn conventional wisdom on its head. Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They set out to explore the inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real estate agents, the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan, and much more. Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, they show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives—how people get what they want or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. more...

Price: $9.99

From Daniel H. Pink, the author of the groundbreaking bestseller A Whole New Mind , comes his next big idea book: a paradigm-changing examination of what truly motivates us and how to harness that knowledge to find greater satisfaction in our lives and our work. We’ve been conditioned to think that the best way to motivate ourselves and others is through external rewards like money—the carrot-and-the-stick approach. That’s a mistake, Daniel H. Pink says in his transformative new book. The key to high performance and satisfaction is intrinsic, internal motivation: the desire to follow your own interests and understand the benefits in them for you. And Pink has discovered thirty years of scientific data that confirm these ideas and show an exciting way forward. As he did in his groundbreaking bestseller A Whole New Mind , Pink lays out the hard science for these surprising insights, describes how people and corporations can embrace such ideas (some of them are already doing it), offers details about how we can master them, and provides concrete examples on how intrinsic motivation works on the job, at home, and in ourselves. This is a book of big ideas that explains how each of us can find the surest pathway to high performance, creativity, and even health and well-being. more...

Price: $19.99

A real-life tale of international intrigue and corruption, this work reveals the hidden mechanics of imperial control behind such major international events as the fall of the Shah, the death of Panamanian president Omar Torrijos, and the invasions of Panama and Iraq, as well as provides an inside view of the corrupt US-Saudi Arabian relationship. more...

Price: $10.50

The New York Times ' William Safire calls How to Write 'The most helpful book the beginning writer can buy.' No wonder it's sold more than 200,000 copies worldwide! Whether you are a student, a professional - or an aspiring writer - this little handbook will teach you how to communicate your ideas and information clearly and concisely. It will show you how to organize for any writing project, how to turn out a first draft, and how to polish that draft into a finished product. more...

Price: $5.00

Now nearing its 60th printing in English and translated into nineteen languages, Michael E. Porter's Competitive Strategy has transformed the theory, practice, and teaching of business strategy throughout the world. Electrifying in its simplicity -- like all great breakthroughs -- Porter's analysis of industries captures the complexity of industry competition in five underlying forces. Porter introduces one of the most powerful competitive tools yet developed: his three generic strategies -- lowest cost, differentiation, and focus -- which bring structure to the task of strategic positioning. He shows how competitive advantage can be defined in terms of relative cost and relative prices, thus linking it directly to profitability, and presents a whole new perspective on how profit is created and divided. In the almost two decades since publication, Porter's framework for predicting competitor behavior has transformed the way in which companies look at their rivals and has given rise to the new discipline of competitor assessment. More than a million managers in both large and small companies, investment analysts, consultants, students, and scholars throughout the world have internalized Porter's ideas and applied them to assess industries, understand competitors,, and choose competitive positions. The ideas in the book address the underlying fundamentals of competition in a way that is independent of the specifics of the ways companies go about competing. Competitive Strategy has filled a void in management thinking. It provides an enduring foundation and grounding point on which all subsequent work can be built. By bringing a disciplined structure to the question of how firms achieve superior profitability, Porter's rich frameworks and deep insights comprise a sophisticated view of competition unsurpassed in the last quarter-century. more...

Price: $25.00