Is the American Dream Killing You or Milkshake Moment

Is the American Dream Killing You?: How The Market Rules Our Lives

Author: Paul Stiles

and/or stickers showing their discounted price. More about bargain books

Book review: Zig Ziglars Secrets of Closing the Sale or Scheisse

Milkshake Moment: Overcoming Stupid Systems, Pointless Policies and Muddled Management to Realize Real Growth

Author: Steven S Littl

Praise for The Milkshake Moment

"Little gives leaders a crucial reminder not to be their own worst enemies in their quest for growth. You'll never forget the hilarious milkshake story that gives the book its name. This book will help your organization get out of its own way."

DAN HEATH, coauthor of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

"Little's milkshake story is straightforward, compelling, and irresistible. It teaches leaders a hundred vital lessons on growth.

Sip it slowly and enjoy."

ROD BECKSTROM, coauthor of The Starfish and the Spider:The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations

"Little is a gifted storyteller, and his stories always lead to practical ways for organizations to reach another level. The Milkshake Moment is not only a great read, it is truly a call-to-arms for all of us looking for growth in the twenty-first century. Read it today so you can mix it up tomorrow."

JON GORDON, author of The Energy Bus: Ten Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work,

and Team with Positive Energy and The No Complaining Rule: Positive Ways

to Deal with Negativity at Work

The Contrarians Guide to Leadership or Mass Career Customization

The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership

Author: Steven B Sampl

In this offbeat approach to leadership, college president Steven B. Sample-the man who turned the University of Southern California into one of the most respected and highly rated universities in the country-challenges many conventional teachings on the subject. Here, Sample outlines an iconoclastic style of leadership that flies in the face of current leadership thought, but a style that unquestionably works, nevertheless. Sample urges leaders and aspiring leaders to focus on some key counterintuitive truths. He offers his own down-to-earth, homespun, and often provocative advice on some complex and thoughtful issues. And he provides many practical, if controversial, tactics for successful leadership, suggesting, among other things, that leaders should sometimes compromise their principles, not read everything that comes across their desks, and always put off decisions.

Soundview Executive Book Summaries

In The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership, Steven Sample, the president of the University of Southern California (USC) offers his no-holds-barred, unconventional wisdom on what it takes to be a great leader.

He writes that contrarian leaders think differently from other people. They maintain their intellectual independence by thinking gray, and enhance their intellectual creativity by thinking free. Contrarian wisdom holds that judgments should be arrived at slowly or not at all. Most people immediately categorize things as good or bad, true or false, friend or foe. Sample explains that truly effective leaders see shades of gray.

Thinking Gray and Free
Sample writes that the essence of thinking gray is this: Don't form an opinion about an important matter until you have heard all the relevant facts and arguments or until circumstances force you to form an opinion. Resist the temptation to immediately classify everything you read or hear as either true or false, good or bad, right or wrong, useless or useful.

A close cousin of thinking gray is thinking free - free from all prior restraints. Sample writes that the key to thinking free is to first allow your mind to contemplate really outrageous ideas, and only later apply constraints of practicality, practicability, legality, cost, time and ethics.

According to Sample, contrarian leaders know it is better to listen first and talk later. And when they listen, they do so artfully because artful listening is an excellent means of acquiring new ideas and gathering and assessing information. If leaders can listen attentively without rushing to judgment, they will often get a fresh perspective that will help them think independently. He writes that a good leader listens carefully to his or her inner circle and even the most obnoxious self-appointed advisers.

Listening gray requires open communication at all levels of the organization, he writes. It requires that leaders avoid categorizing people into an "A" list and a "B" list, and means they should not dismiss ideas strictly because of who they come from. He also adds that a leader should pay close attention to experts but never take them too seriously, and never trust them completely. Sample writes that it helps to clarify the roles experts and leaders should play. Experts are deep specialists whose role is to offer leaders greater insight than they have in one small area; the leader's role should be to integrate the advice of several experts into a coherent course of action.

Evenhanded Justice
According to Sample, to be an effective leader, a person must be able to lay down rules and evenhandedly punish those who violate them. Evenhanded but tough justice inspires a sense of security among followers.

Decision-making is another major element of leadership. It can be fun, exhilarating, an ego trip, a tremendous burden, agonizing and scary. A leader's legacy is determined by the long-term effects of his or her decisions. Sample summarizes the contrarian's approach to decision-making in two general rules:

1. Never make a decision yourself that can reasonably be delegated to a lieutenant.
2. Never make a decision today that can reasonably be put off until tomorrow.

Most people confuse good leadership with effective leadership, but the contrarian leader knows that there is an enormous difference between the two. Being a leader sometimes requires making tough moral decisions. Sample writes that moral choosing requires that you "decide which hill you're willing to die on." Good leaders need to perform a delicate balancing act. Sample explains that a contrarian leader must develop and hold moral convictions, but remain as open as possible to the strongly held moral beliefs of others.

Sample writes that contrarian leaders support those who work for them, and advises leaders to spend 90 percent of their time supporting their employees, and 10 percent hiring, evaluating and firing them. He writes that leaders should accept them as equals, and should work for those who work for them.

Hire Those Stronger Than You
Sample writes that leaders should hire the best possible people, and beware of the common tactic of hiring those who are weaker than themselves. In an ideal world, he writes, leaders would only hire those who are stronger than themselves.

Before one can lead, one must acquire followers. Sample writes that to gather followers, leaders must sell themselves first, and their visions and policies second. Contrarian leaders also understand that if they seek out leadership positions with a well-established podium, the task of getting followers will be easier.

Once a top leadership position has been attained, Sample advises, leaders should use the rule of 70/30. Up to 30 percent of their time should be spent on substantive matters and the remaining 70 percent on matters that are trivial or routine. He writes that 30 percent might not seem like a lot, but it really is.

Why Soundview Likes This Book
The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership is an inspiring book from a man who has spent much time leading and learning about successfully turning an organization around. His impressive academic background and business accomplishments lend credibility to his insightful book, and his no-nonsense approach makes it a fascinating look at how leaders can become more effective by eliminating many bad ideas from the leadership toolbox. Copyright (c) 2002 Soundview Executive Book Summaries

Table of Contents:

Look this: Menopause Homeopathy or The Complete Home Guide to Herbs Natural Healing and Nutrition

Mass Career Customization: Aligning the Workplace with Today's Nontraditional Workforce

Author: Cathleen Benko

Far-reaching changes in attitudes and family structures have been redefining the workforce for more than two decades-yet the workplace has remained much the same. During this time, many companies have learned that personalizing the customer experience is good for business. In Mass Career Customization, the authors argue convincingly to extend this popular and profitable concept to the workplace.

This book is centered on the powerful insight that career options in today's economy need to accommodate the rising and falling phases of employee engagement as it changes over time. The remarkable process unveiled in this book offers choices involving four important dimensions of career progression: role; pace; location and schedule; and workload.

As the working population shrinks, maintaining industry advantage will depend largely on keeping employees engaged and connected. Mass career customization provides a framework for organizational adaptability that will do just that

U.S. News and World Report

Mass Career Customization personalizes employees' careers to fit their lifestyles.

The Financial Times

There is much to commend this book.

November HR Magazine

Forget the corporate ladder. Employees at all levels are increasingly on a "corporate lattice" that lets them move up, sideways and even down as needed . . .

Hot Flat and Crowded or Fooled by Randomness

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew America

Author: Thomas L Friedman

Thomas L. Friedman's No. 1 bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see the world, and globalization, in a new way. With his latest book, Friedman brings a fresh and provocative outlook to another pressing issue: the interlinked crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for energy--both of which could poison our world if we do not act quickly and collectively. His argument speaks to the 2008 presidential election--and to all of us who are concerned about the state of America and its role in the global future.

"Green is the new red, white, and blue," Friedman declares, and proposes that an ambitious national strategy--which he calls geo-greenism--is not only what we need to save the planet from overheating, it is what we need to make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure in the coming E.C.E.--the Energy-Climate Era. Green-oriented practices and technologies, established at scale everywhere from Washington to Wal-Mart, are both the only way to mitigate climate change and the best way for America to "get its groove back"--to "reknit America at home, reconnect America abroad, retool America for the new century, and restore America to its natural place in the global order."

As in The World Is Flat and his previous bestseller The Lexus and the Olive Tree, he explains the future we are facing through an illuminating account of recent events. He explains how 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the flattening of the world by the Internet, which has brought three billion new consumers onto the world stage, have combined to bring the climate and energy issues to main street. But they have not really gone down main street yet. Indeed, it is Friedman's view that we are not really having the green revolution that the press keeps touting, or, if we are, "it is the only revolution in history," he says, "where no one got hurt." No, to the contrary, argues Friedman, we're actually having a "green party." We have not even begun to be serious yet about the speed and scale of change that is required.

With all that in mind, Friedman lays out his argument that if we are going to avoid the worst disruptions looming before us as we enter the Energy-Climate Era, we are going to need several disruptive breakthroughs in the clean-technology sphere--disruptive in the transformational sense. He explores what enabled the disruptive breakthroughs that created the IT (Information Technology) revolution that flattened the world in information terms and then shows how a similar set of disruptive breakthroughs could spark the ET--Energy Technology--revolution. Time and again, though, Friedman shows why it is both necessary and desirous for America to lead this revolution--with the first green president, a green New Deal, and spurred by the Greenest Generation--and why meeting the green challenge of the twenty-first century could transform America every bit as meeting the Red challenge, that of Communism, did in the twentieth century.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman--fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the world we live in today.

The New York Times - David G. Victor

The litany of dangers has been told many times before, but Mr. Friedman's voice is compelling and will be widely heard…Heads will be nodding across airport lounges, as readers absorb Mr. Friedman's common sense about how America and the world are dangerously addicted to cheap fossil fuels while we recklessly use the atmosphere as a dumping ground for carbon dioxide.

The Washington Post - Joseph S. Nye Jr.

Like it or not, we need Tom Friedman. The peripatetic columnist has made himself a major interpreter of the confusing world we inhabit. He travels to the farthest reaches, interviews everyone from peasants to chief executives and expresses big ideas in clear and memorable prose. While pettifogging academics (a select few of whom he favors) complain that his catchy phrases and anecdotes sometimes obscure deeper analysis, by and large Friedman gets the big issues right.

Publishers Weekly

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Friedman (The World Is Flat) is still an unrepentant guru of globalism, despite the looming economic crisis attributable, in Friendman's view, to the U.S. having become a "subprime nation that thinks it can just borrow its way to prosperity." Friedman covers familiar territory (the need for alternate energy, conservation measures, recycling, energy efficiency, etc.) as a build-up to his main thesis: the U.S. market is the "most effective and prolific system for transformational innovation.... There is only one thing bigger than Mother Nature and that is Father Profit." While he remains ostensibly a proponent of the free market, he does not flinch from using the government to create conditions favorable to investment, such as setting a "floor price for crude oil or gasoline," and imposing a new gasoline tax ($5-$10 per gallon) in order to make investment in green technologies attractive to venture capitalists: "America needs an energy technology bubble just like the information technology bubble." To make such draconian measures palatable, Friedman poses a national competition to "outgreen" China, modeled on Kennedy's proposal to beat the Soviets to the moon, a race that required a country-wide mobilization comparable to the WWII war effort. Recognizing the looming threat of "petrodicatorship" and U.S. dependence on imported oil, this warning salvo presents a stirring and far-darker vision than Friedman's earlier books.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Risa Getman - Library Journal

The audio edition of three-time Pulitzer® Prize winner/New York Times columnist Friedman's The World Is Flat, which won an Audie® Award in 2006, remains Macmillan Audio's top-selling title of all time. Audie® Award-winning actor/narrator Oliver Wyman, who skillfully voiced that title, does the same with this one, in which Friedman addresses the triple threat of global warming, overconsumption, and population explosion not just to the environment but to political stability and the economy. The currency and gravity of this topic cannot be overstated; regardless of their political leanings, readers will sit up and listen. Highly recommended for all library collections; expect heavy demand. [Audio clip available through us.macmillan.com.-Ed.]

Kirkus Reviews

The world is flat, New York Times columnist Friedman told us in his bestselling 2005 book of that name. Now things are getting worse, and the clock is ticking. Americans have squandered most of the goodwill extended since 9/11, writes Friedman, and in the years of the Bush administration no thought has been given to what 9/12 is supposed to look like. The climate is changing, but the administration has spent most of its tenure denying it and insisting on a particularist view that we deserve to be profligate because we're Americans. Our political blindness and ignorance vis-a-vis other nations now butts up against the world's instability and, Friedman continues, "the convergence of hot, flat, and crowded is tightening energy supplies, intensifying the extinction of plants and animals, deepening energy poverty, strengthening petrodictatorship, and accelerating climate change." The way out of those tangles, he says, is for America to go green in any way possible-and to do it right away, investing in every kind of alternative and renewable energy form imaginable, setting the best of examples for the rest of the world and exporting green technologies everywhere, thus winning back allies and influencing people. Readers who have been paying attention to Fareed Zakaria, Jared Diamond or similar writers know most of this, but still the word has been slow getting out. Many others have written about these subjects, but few enjoy Friedman's audience, so it's good that he's turning to such matters, if a touch belatedly. His case studies-from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's insistence on a fleet of hybrid taxis on the street to British firm Marks & Spencer's insistence that going green is PlanA and that "there is no Plan B" -are well-selected, detailed and, in the end, quite inspiring. That inspiration is needed, along with a lot of hard work. A timely, rewarding book. Agent: Esther Newberg/ICM

Table of Contents:

Pt. I Where We Are

1 Where Birds Don't Fly 3

2 Today's Date: 1 E.C.E. Today's Weather: Hot, Flat, and Crowded 26

Pt. II How We Got Here

3 Our Carbon Copies (or, Too Many Americans) 53

4 Fill'Er Up with Dictators 77

5 Global Weirding 111

6 The Age of Noah 140

7 Energy Poverty 154

8 Green Is the New Red, White, and Blue 170

Pt. III How We Move Forward

9 205 Easy Ways to Save the Earth 203

10 The Energy Internet: When IT Meets ET 217

11 The Stone Age Didn't End Because We Ran Out of Stones 241

12 If It Isn't Boring, It Isn't Green 267

13 A Million Noahs, a Million Arks 297

14 Outgreening al-Qaeda (or, Buy One, Get Four Free) 317

Pt. IV China

15 Can Red China Become Green China? 343

Pt. V America

16 China for a Day (but Not for Two) 371

17 A Democratic China, or a Banana Republic? 395

Acknowledgments 415

Index 423

Go to: Ugly Americans or The Answer

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Now in a striking new hardcover edition, Fooled by Randomness is the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. Nassim Nicholas Taleb–veteran trader, renowned risk expert, polymathic scholar, erudite raconteur, and New York Times bestselling author of The Black Swan–has written a modern classic that turns on its head what we believe about luck and skill.

This book is about luck–or more precisely, about how we perceive and deal with luck in life and business. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill–the world of trading–Fooled by Randomness provides captivating insight into one of the least understood factors in all our lives. Writing in an entertaining narrative style, the author tackles major intellectual issues related to the underestimation of the influence of happenstance on our lives.

The book is populated with an array of characters, some of whom have grasped, in their own way, the significance of chance: the baseball legend Yogi Berra; the philosopher of knowledge Karl Popper; the ancient world’s wisest man, Solon; the modern financier George Soros; and the Greek voyager Odysseus. We also meet the fictional Nero, who seems to understand the role of randomness in his professional life but falls victim to his own superstitious foolishness.

However, the most recognizable character of all remains unnamed–the lucky fool who happens to be in the right place at the right time–he embodies the “survival of the least fit.” Such individuals attract devoted followers who believe in their guru’sinsights and methods. But no one can replicate what is obtained by chance.

Are we capable of distinguishing the fortunate charlatan from the genuine visionary? Must we always try to uncover nonexistent messages in random events? It may be impossible to guard ourselves against the vagaries of the goddess Fortuna, but after reading Fooled by Randomness we can be a little better prepared.

PRAISE FOR FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS:

Named by Fortune One of the Smartest Books of All Time

A Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year

“[Fooled by Randomness] is to conventional Wall Street wisdom approximately what Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses were to the Catholic Church.”
–Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink

“The book that rolled down Wall Street like a hand grenade.”
–Maggie Mahar, author of Bull! A History of the Boom, 1982—1999

“Fascinating . . . Taleb will grab you.”
–Peter L. Bernstein, author of Capital Ideas Evolving

“Recalls the best of scientist/essayists like Richard Dawkins . . . and Stephen Jay Gould.”
–Michael Schrage, author of Serious Play: How the World’s Best Companies Simulate to Innovate

“We need a book like this. . . . Fun to read, refreshingly independent-minded.”
–Robert J. Shiller, author of Irrational Exuberance

“Powerful . . . loaded with crackling little insights [and] extreme brilliance.”
–National Review

“If asked to name the five best books written about markets, Fooled by Randomness would be on my list.”
–Jack D. Schwager, author of Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Traders

“Excellent and thought-provoking . . . an entertaining book.”
–Financial Times

Paul Wilmott

A blast of common sense. From classical to modern philosophers, via cab drivers, businessmen, and dentists . . .

Marco Avellaneda

Intelligent, honest, and revealing. There exists a distinct Taleb way of thinking and it is contagious.

Robert J. Shiller

I really liked this book. . . It is fun to read, refreshingly independently-minded and at the same time playful.

Peter L. Bernstein

. . . Taleb will grab you. As a non-random consequence, your understanding of life (and your money will expand exponentially.

Donald Geman

Taleb's book is mathematically sound as well as entertaining and informative for the general public, which is quite an achievement . . .

Victory Niederhoffer

Whether you agree with Mr. Taleb or not, his book will leave you with many suggestive queries.

Publishers Weekly

In this look at financial luck, hedge fund manager Taleb (Dynamic Hedging) addresses the apparently irrational movement of money markets around the world. Using his own investing experience and examples of others' successes and disappointments, he discusses theories like Monte Carlo math (easy; considered cheating by purists) and the concept of Russian roulette. Taleb tells interesting, well-wrought stories about individual behavior: "While Nero has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, both personally and intellectually, he is starting to consider himself as having missed a chance somewhere." While serious investors and mathematics enthusiasts will be intrigued, readers looking for practical investment strategies will be disappointed by this rambling intellectual discourse. Tables. 40,000-copy first printing; $150,000 marketing budget. (Oct. 30) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.