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How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race: Practical Tools for Necessary Change in the Workplace and Beyond
by Kwame ChristianIf we want a more equitable workplace—and a more equitable world—we have to talk to each other about race. But, for so many of us, that&’s easier said than done. When we avoid conversations about race, it&’s often because of fear: fear of discomfort, or of damaging important relationships; fear of being misunderstood, &“canceled,&” ostracized. Negotiation expert Kwame Christian&’s motto is: "The best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations." How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race equips you with the skills you need to make these crucial conversations both easier and more productive. You&’ll not only gain the confidence to talk about race, but also learn how to actually make a difference when you do. Whether you&’re looking to create change for yourself and other BIPOC, or are a white ally seeking to support your coworkers or clients, you&’ll learn how to: Overcome your internal barriers to talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Work around others&’ barriers to productive discussion. Be strategic about the outcome you want and guide the conversation accordingly. Use &“Compassionate Curiosity&” to connect and persuade. Avoid common mistakes. Tackle some of the most common race-related conversations that come up in the workplace. If you&’ve ever struggled to turn your passion for change into persuasion or been too afraid to speak up at work (or outside of it), this book is for you. The first step toward lasting social change is productive discussion. With How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race, you&’ll never shy away from those crucial conversations again.
Expand: Stretching the Future By Design
by Christian Bason Jens Martin SkibstedToday, it can seem as if the world has nothing but problems. And more than ever the boundaries of those problems are expanding in terms of the speed, scale, and impact by which they can alter business conditions, public governance, entire societies, the health of our planet, and the quality of our lives. Meeting these growing challenges requires ambitious new ways of designing solutions. With Expand: Stretching the Future By Design, authors Jens Martin Skibsted, a multiple-award winning designer, entrepreneur, and design philosopher, and Christian Bason, political scientist and CEO of the Danish Design Centre, take readers beyond &“design thinking&” to challenge current habits and carve out new space for more sustainable innovation. From transforming the ways we do business and reimagining health care, to creating planet-restoring housing and humanizing our digital lives in an age of AI, Expand explores how expansive thinking across six key areas—time, proximity, value, life, dimensions, and sectors—can provide radical, useful solutions to a whole host of current problems around the globe. With powerful real-world examples, the book challenges our freewheeling belief in technological determinism and its insensitivity toward ethics, humanity, and the environment. Expand is the first book to not just critique design thinking, but welcome it as a starting point for an ambitious, wide-ranging tale of how to expand and think beyond it. The best way to predict the future is to design it. Expand is the book that shows us how.
The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity--and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race
by Daniel Z. Lieberman Michael E. LongWhy are we obsessed with the things we want only to be bored when we get them? Why is addiction perfectly logical to an addict? Why does love change so quickly from passion to indifference? Why are some people die-hard liberals and others hardcore conservatives? Why are we always hopeful for solutions even in the darkest times—and so good at figuring them out? The answer is found in a single chemical in your brain: dopamine. Dopamine ensured the survival of early man. Thousands of years later, it is the source of our most basic behaviors and cultural ideas—and progress itself. Dopamine is the chemical of desire that always asks for more—more stuff, more stimulation, and more surprises. In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality. Dopamine is the source of our every urge, that little bit of biology that makes an ambitious business professional sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, or that drives a satisfied spouse to risk it all for the thrill of someone new. Simply put, it is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper. Yet, at the same time, it's why we gamble and squander. From dopamine's point of view, it's not the having that matters. It's getting something—anything—that's new. From this understanding—the difference between possessing something versus anticipating it—we can understand in a revolutionary new way why we behave as we do in love, business, addiction, politics, religion—and we can even predict those behaviors in ourselves and others. In The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and will Determine the Fate of the Human Race, George Washington University professor and psychiatrist Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD, and Georgetown University lecturer Michael E. Long present a potentially life-changing proposal: Much of human life has an unconsidered component that explains an array of behaviors previously thought to be unrelated, including why winners cheat, why geniuses often suffer with mental illness, why nearly all diets fail, and why the brains of liberals and conservatives really are different.
Design Any Disaster: The Revolutionary Blueprint to Master Your Next Crisis or Emergency
by Patrick HardyNever experience a disaster again—ever. Hurricanes, wildfires, mass shootings, and pandemics are a reality for 21st century families and small businesses. But here&’s the truth: Not one of these has to be a disaster. What determines whether an unexpected event becomes a disaster is you. In Design Any Disaster, certified emergency manager and master business continuity practitioner Patrick Hardy reveals to you the secrets of disaster preparedness that helped him build the largest and most successful small business and family disaster planning company in the world. He explains why: You should never, ever &“remain calm&” during a disaster. 99% of all disaster plans are a complete waste of time. Fancy disaster equipment and supplies actually leave you less prepared. Design Any Disaster is not a survival manual. It&’s a revolutionary approach to disaster preparedness, response, and recovery for families and small businesses that can be used whether you live in the middle of a big city, in a quiet suburban neighborhood, or in a rural county with more cows than people. Using the powerful C3 Method Hardy uses with his clients, from Fortune 500 CEOs to average families, you will discover how to get ready (plan effectively), react (focus without panicking), respond (protect yourself and your possessions), and recover (overcome swiftly). And in a revolutionary section you will not find in any other disaster book, Hardy also reveals how to reverse disaster, converting the experience into an opportunity to become wiser and happier. Control the disaster so that it doesn&’t control you—that&’s how you Design Any Disaster.
Sustainable Happiness: Live Simply, Live Well, Make a Difference
by Sarah Van GelderWe're bombarded by messages telling us that bigger and better things are the keys to happiness—but after we pile up the stuff and pile on the work hours, we end up exhausted and broke on a planet full of trash. Sarah van Gelder and her colleagues at YES! Magazine have been exploring the meaning of real happiness for eighteen years. Here they offer fascinating research, in-depth essays, and compelling personal stories by visionaries such as Annie Leonard, Matthieu Ricard, and Vandana Shiva, showing us that real well-being is found in supportive relationships and thriving communities, opportunities to make a contribution, and the renewal we receive from a thriving natural world. In the pages of this book, you'll find creative and practical ways to cultivate a happiness that is nurturing, enduring, and life affirming.
Plain Language in Government Writing: A Step-by-Step Guide (Management Concepts)
by Judith Gillespie MyersA Plain-English Guide to Government Writing Whether you're in the public or private sector, good writing skills are critical to your success in the workplace. Plain Language in Government Writing: A Step-by-Step Guide shows you how to apply federal plain-language guidelines to every type of writing — from emails, memos, and letters to agency communications, technical procedures, and budget justification statements. Through numerous exercises as well as examples from a variety of federal and state agencies, this practical guide walks you step-by-step through every phase of the writing process, providing tips for improved clarity, conciseness, and completeness. This valuable reference will help you: Write for diverse audiences in reader-friendly, plain languageOvercome writer's blockGain confidence in your ability to write — and get resultsMake your writing visually appealingPrepare for briefings and presentationsRecognize successful writing and identify what makes it effectiveA Plain-English Guide to Government Writing will enable you to express yourself more clearly and concisely, produce documents more efficiently, and work more effectively with others throughout the writing process.
Ownership: Reinventing Companies, Capitalism, and Who Owns What
by John Case Corey RosenWinner of the William Foote Whyte and Kathleen King Whyte Book Prize from the Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit SharingEmployee ownership creates stronger companies, helps workers build wealth, and fosters a fairer, more stable society. In this book, two leading experts show how it works-and how it can be greatly expanded. Why are wages stagnant and wealth inequality increasing? One factor has inexplicably been left out: who owns the companies that drive the economy. Ownership gives people a claim to the fruits of free enterprise. Employee ownership gives workers-the people who have a stake in the company-a fair chance to benefit from their labors. In three simple parts, Corey Rosen and John Case create a powerful argument for why employee ownership is the answer to capitalism's crisis and how to implement it: 1. What's wrong with what we have-The authors explain why companies usually end up being sold off to investors and the often-horrific consequences that result for workers, communities, and the environment.2. How can we change things?-This section shows how overlooking ownership limits attempts to reform capitalism and why employee ownership is a realistic and practical way to save capitalism from its own excesses.3. Reinventing capitalism for the 21st century-This section describes how employee ownership has been done, is being done, and can be expanded and gives examples of companies of all sizes and sectors.
Benefit Corporation Law and Governance: Pursuing Profit with Purpose
by Frederick H. AlexanderCorporations with a ConscienceCorporations today are embedded in a system of shareholder primacy. Nonfinancial concerns—like worker well-being, environmental impact, and community health—are secondary to the imperative to maximize share price. Benefit corporation governance reorients corporations so that they work for the interests of all stakeholders, not just shareholders. This is the first authoritative guide to this new form of governance. It is an invaluable guide for legal and financial professionals, as well as interested entrepreneurs and investors who want to understand how purposeful corporate governance can be put into practice.
Pharmacy on a Bicycle: Innovative Solutions for Global Health and Poverty
by Marc J. Epstein Eric G. BingEvery four minutes, over 50 children under the age of five die. In the same four minutes, 2 mothers lose their lives in childbirth. Every year, malaria kills nearly 1.2 million people, despite the fact that it can be prevented with a mosquito net and treated for less than $1.50.Sadly, this list goes on and on. Millions are dying from diseases that we can easily and inexpensively prevent, diagnose, and treat. Why? Because even though we know exactly what people need, we just can’t get it to them. They are dying not because we can’t solve a medical problem but because we can’t solve a logistics problem. In this profoundly important book, Eric G. Bing and Marc J. Epstein lay out a solution: a new kind of bottom-up health care that is delivered at the source. We need microclinics, micropharmacies, and microentrepreneurs located in the remote, hard-to-reach communities they serve. By building a new model that “scales down” to train and incentivize all kinds of health-care providers in their own villages and towns, we can create an army of on-site professionals who can prevent tragedy at a fraction of the cost of top-down bureaucratic programs. Bing and Epstein have seen the model work, and they provide example after example of the extraordinary results it has achieved in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This is a book about taking health care the last mile—sometimes literally—to prevent widespread, unnecessary, and easily avoided death and suffering. Pharmacy on a Bicycle shows how the same forces of innovation and entrepreneurship that work in first-world business cultures can be unleashed to save the lives of millions.
Thriving in the Fight: A Survival Manual for Latinas on the Front Lines of Change
by Denise Padín CollazoSocial justice work is more crucial than ever, but it can be physically and emotionally draining. Longtime activist Denise Collazo offers three keys to help Hispanic women keep their focus, morale, and energy high.Winner of the gold medal at the International Latino Book Awards for Best Latina-Themed Book and Best Self-Transformational Book!Doing the work of social change is hard. Waking up every day to take on the biggest challenges of our time can be overwhelming, and sometimes progress is hard to see. She understands that Latina and all women of color activists do their best work when they are thriving, not simply surviving. Denise Pad√≠n Collazo has been there. She is the first Latina, the first woman of color, and the first woman period to raise a family and stay in the work of community organizing at Faith in Action, an international progressive network of 3,000 congregations and 2 million members. Drawing on her own experiences of triumph and failure, and those of other Latina activists, Collazo lays out three keys to thriving in the movement for social change: leading into your vision, living into the fullest version of yourself, and loving past negatives that hold you back. She also warns about the three signs that you may be surrendering: wishing for a future reality to emerge, wondering where your limits are, and waiting for permission and answers to come from others. Using this framework, Collazo offers wise and compassionate advice on some of the most important leadership challenges facing Latina activists. She explains how you can integrate family and work, step out of the background and claim your leadership potential, confront anti-Blackness in your own culture, keep focused on your ultimate purpose, and raise the necessary resources to keep fighting for justice. This honest, practical, and inspirational book will help Latina activists to burn bright, not burn out.
The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles
by Ron GaranFor astronaut Ron Garan, living on the International Space Station was a powerful, transformative experience—one that he believes holds the key to solving our problems here on Earth. On space walks and through windows, Garan was struck by the stunning beauty of the Earth from space but sobered by knowing how much needed to be done to help this troubled planet. And yet on the International Space Station, Garan, a former fighter pilot, was working work side by side with Russians, who only a few years before were “the enemy.” If fifteen nationalities could collaborate on one of the most ambitious, technologically complicated undertakings in history, surely we can apply that kind of cooperation and innovation toward creating a better world. That spirit is what Garan calls the “orbital perspective.”Garan vividly conveys what it was like learning to work with a diverse group of people in an environment only a handful of human beings have ever known. But more importantly, he describes how he and others are working to apply the orbital perspective here at home, embracing new partnerships and processes to promote peace and combat hunger, thirst, poverty, and environmental destruction. This book is a call to action for each of us to care for the most important space station of all: planet Earth. You don't need to be an astronaut to have the orbital perspective. Garan's message of elevated empathy is an inspiration to all who seek a better world.
Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families
by Wade RathkeAmerica’s safety net is torn and tattered. Income inequality continues to grow—the gap between rich and poor has expanded fivefold in the last 25 years. For millions of working families achieving basic middle class comforts has begun to seem as distant a dream as winning the lottery. What is needed, and what veteran organizer and ACORN founder Wade Rathke provides in this hard-hitting new book, is a comprehensive grassroots strategy to create what he calls citizen wealth: an enduring foundation on which working people can build a future that extends beyond paying next month’s rent.Rathke shares breakthrough strategies that have enabled ACORN and other organizations help people secure the basics of citizen wealth—a house and a decent income—offering from-the-trenches advice on mounting successful living wage campaigns, battling unscrupulous and predatory lending practices, and developing new forms of worker organizations to protect wages and benefits. The anti-poverty programs still out there can provide critical support for citizen wealth-building efforts, but they’re woefully underutilized. Rathke shows how to cut through government indifference and bureaucratic obstacles to provide those in need with access to these vital resources. But community organizations can’t do it alone. Rathke describes ACORN partnerships with HSBC Bank and H & R Block that helped these businesses see building citizen wealth as a new market opportunity—a win for them and for the people they once exploited. And he looks at other examples of strange bedfellows in the fight for citizen wealth, including Citibank, once the target of massive protests by ACORN and now, working with them, a major investor in working class communities.“We need to create a national economic and political consensus that increasing family income, wealth and assets is not `welfare’ or an entitlement ‘give-away” program but an investment in the public good and well-being.” Rathke writes. Based on forty years of hard-won experience, Wade Rathke offers a new blueprint for helping millions to achieve the American Dream.
Dreamcrafting: The Art of Dreaming Big, The Science of Making It Happen: Five Skills for Achieving Any Goal
by Paul Levesque Art McNeilMany people set out to achieve a dream-starting a business or learning to play the piano or publishing a book-but they don't succeed, and the dream fizzles away. In many cases, these people have lots of skills and expertise, such as deep knowledge of the business or career they are interested in, so why don't they succeed? Paul Levesque and Art McNeil have discovered that making a dream come true requires cultivating skills of a higher order-macroskills-that inevitably spell the difference between success and failure no matter what the specifics of a person's dreams are. These are the skills Dreamcrafting outlines in detail.
A Covenant of Justice: Trackers, Book Two
by David GerroldIn A Covenant of Justice, the sequel to Gerrold's classic space opera Under the Eye of God, The Phaestor, a genetically altered vampiric race, have set in motion their final plan for the complete enslavement of the galaxy. However, they will not go unopposed, for on numerous worlds, humans, androids, and bioforms have joined forces against their vampiric overlords. A government of vampires, dragons, and mutated humans display their galactic dominance, and while those entrusted with the wisdom of the galaxy sanction the struggle against the Phaestor, a cunning Vampire war queen, her ambitious suitor, and the fierce and invincible Dragon Lord vie for total domination. The last hope for the galaxy remains in the hands of rebels from Thoska-Roole: a band of malcontents, outnumbered and pursued, fighting for their freedom, their lives, and the future of the stars.
The Geraldo Show: A Memoir
by Geraldo RiveraDuring my half a century in public life, my image and reputation have had more ups and downs than the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island. I have been called savior and sinner, fool and wise man, crusader and exploiter, hothead and dope. I am routinely scorned, admired, beloved, and belittled—which one is usually based on when the viewer tuned in. Were you around for my early days as a crusading local newsman? Did you waste an evening with me inside Al Capone's empty vault? Were you watching when the bombs dropped in Afghanistan or Iraq, or did you tune in to the raucous talk show when my nose was broken in the best television studio brawl ever caught on tape? Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, and my employment by the conservative rabble-rousers of Fox News—and, more recently, with the coming of the Age of Trump—my professional life has been even more difficult to define. How could a sincerely progressive native-born Jew-Rican New Yorker like me ever work for an outfit better suited to the vibes of Orange County, California, the Dixie, Appalachia, or the Mountain West? How could I not condemn and obstruct a wrecking ball like Donald Trump? Over five decades, I have met most of the era's good and bad guys, from Ronald Reagan to Charles Manson, Fidel Castro to Yasser Arafat, Muhammad Ali to John Lennon, and Elvis Presley to Michael Jackson. Two figure heavily in this book, both longtime friends: Roger Ailes, the disgraced yet undeniably brilliant creator of Fox News; and Donald Trump, once a flamboyant playboy, billionaire businessman, and now 45th President of the United States. At the vigorous twilight of a long and largely improvised life lived in plain sight, I have little left to prove. Faced with a series of random chances, for better and worse, what I made of my life is what I made of those chances. Time has enlightened and humbled me. Sincerely, Geraldo Rivera
NeuroScience Fiction: How Neuroscience Is Transforming Sci-Fi into Reality-While Challenging Our Belie fs About the Mind, Machines, and What Makes us Human
by Rodrigo Quian QuirogaWhat if science fiction stopped being fiction? Developments in neuroscience are turning sci-fi scenarios into reality, and causing us to revisit some of the philosophical questions we have been asking ourselves for centuries. Science fiction often takes its inspiration from the latest science . . . and our oldest questions. After all, the two are inextricably linked. At a time when advances in artificial intelligence are genuinely leading us closer to a computer that thinks like a human, we can't help but wonder: What makes a person a person? Countless writers and filmmakers have created futuristic scenarios to explore this issue and others like it. But these scenarios may not be so futuristic after all. In the movie Inception, a group of conspirators implants false memories; in Until the End of the World, a mad scientist is able to read dreams; in 2001: A Space Odyssey, a supercomputer feels and thinks like a person. And in recent years, the achievements described in leading scientific journals have included some that might sound familiar: implanting memories using optogenetics, reading the mind during sleep thanks to advanced decoding algorithms, and creating a computer that uses deep neural networks to surpass the abilities of human thought. In NeuroScience Fiction, neuroscientist and author Rodrigo Quiroga reveals the futuristic present we are living in, showing how the far-out premises of 10 seminal science fiction movies are being made possible by discoveries happening right now, on the cutting edge of neuroscience. He also explores the thorny philosophical problems raised as a result, diving into Minority Report and free will, The Matrix and the illusion of reality, Blade Runner and android emotion, and more. A heady mix of science fiction, neuroscience, and philosophy, NeuroScience Fiction takes us from Vanilla Sky to neural research labs, and from Planet of the Apes to what makes us human. This is a book you'll be thinking about long after the last page—and once you've read it, you'll never watch a sci-fi blockbuster the same way again.
The Freedom Formula: How to Succeed in Business Without Sacrificing Your Family, Health, or Life
by David FinkelBuilding a successful company and career doesn't mean sacrificing your family, health, or life. You check email the moment you lift your head off the pillow in the morning. You bring work with you on vacation, sneak glances at your smart phone during family dinners, and take business calls and texts at your kid's sports games. It's as if you've been forced to make a choice between your company or your life, sacrificing time for yourself and family for the sake of career success. But it doesn't have to be that way. The most successful business leaders have learned to bust through the direct one-to-one relationship between hours worked and value created by refocusing their company, department, or team's best talent and attention on their highest value activities—generating hundreds, even thousands, of hours of value in the process. In The Freedom Formula, Wall Street Journal bestselling author and successful entrepreneur David Finkel will help you operationalize working smarter. No fluff, no theory, Finkel shares the detailed blueprint to create maximum value for your company without working nights, weekends, or while on "vacation." You'll learn: Why working longer and harder doesn't pay off (and what actually does) Why the 80-20 principle doesn't go far enough (and how to take it to its most productive extreme) How to escape the Time and Effort Economy How to structure your day and week so that you reclaim five or more hours each week in usable blocks of your best time How to leverage the five Freedom Accelerators to get your life back faster And much more! Whether you're a business owner, top executive, key manager—or aspire to be one—The Freedom Formula offers a radical new approach to structuring your time and priorities (and your team's) in order to reclaim hours of your day—and the freedom to live your life, not just your job.
Five Seasons Of Angel: Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Discuss Their Favorite Vampire
by Glenn YeffethThe constellation of characters and themes created in Angel, the popular Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin-off, are explored in this collection of essays. A vampire author, a sex expert, a TV critic, a science fiction novelist, and Buffy writer Nancy Holder provide essays examining the different issues relating to the series, including Angelus as the prototypical high school bully, Angel as victim, Wesley's many transformations, how Spike fits into Angel, the takeover of Wolfram & Hart, and Lindsey's moral center.
From Wags to Riches: How Dogs Teach Us to Succeed in Business & Life
by Robert VetereMove over Jack Welch and Warren Buffett. The new role model for business leaders isn't a corporate superstar or one of America's wealthiest tycoons. It's the family dog. What can man's best friend teach us about building stronger, more collaborative organizations? Plenty. In From Wags to Riches, management expert Robert Vetere explores how our partnership with dogs, going back to the first human settlements, provides an intriguing model for teamwork in the corporate world. As president of The American Pet Products Association, Vetere has partnered with Purdue University researchers to explore the human-animal bond. Here, he also considers what dogs teach us about intimacy and relationships and tells why they've become the center of American family life. With interviews from CEOs who've learned important lessons from their dogs, From Wags to Riches shows how you can apply insights from dog trainers and animal behavior experts to boost creativity and build a playful environment where people feel free to innovate. Vetere demonstrates that canine-like qualities such as sharing responsibility across pack members and tuning into each other's needs and emotions by observing facial expressions and body cues can dramatically improve your personal effectiveness and ability to lead. From Wags to Riches contains practical tips and canine insights for any dog lover who aspires to become leader of his or her pack.
Kick Ass Social Commerce for E-preneurs: It's Not About Likes--It's About Sales
by John Lawson Debra ScheppIt's not about Likes—it's about sales. You're not alone. Almost all businesses are marketing online these days—everyone tweets, posts to social networks, and blogs. What you're doing now is not enough to make your business stand out. Forget what all the self-proclaimed &“social media gurus" are telling you. Being active on social media and being successful in social commerce are not the same things. Simply getting a bunch of followers or Likes doesn't cut it anymore. In Kick Ass Social Commerce for E-Preneurs, award-winning digital media strategist John Lawson gives you a straight-shooting, no-holds-barred guide to social commerce. In other words, he shows you how to make money online using social media. One of the most-respected and listened-to voices in the worlds of e-commerce and small business, Lawson stands alone because he can actually back up his words. Lawson is a multi-platform PowerSeller, whose internet businesses have rung up millions of dollars in sales. In Kick Ass Social Commerce for E-Preneurs, Lawson and bestselling e-commerce author Debra Schepp take you step-by-step through: Creating a business plan using a simple, effective template, a proven blueprint for all stages of marketing—from start-up to empire Employing the best social commerce strategy for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and the hottest new social media sites Building a thriving e-commerce business and keeping it vibrant and growing What are you waiting for? Read this book and start kicking social commerce ass.
The Secret Science of Baby: The Surprising Physics of Creating a Human, from Conception to Birth--and Beyond
by Michael BanksWhat stops pregnant women from falling over all the time? What makes infant cries so captivating? How do sperm swim? The Secret Science of Baby answers these questions and many more, revealing the fascinating physics behind conception, birth, and babyhood. Parents and parents-to-be are bombarded with information, from what to expect to what to do (and not to do) when it happens. But what they may not realize is that from the chemistry of pregnancy tests to the vacuum physics of breastfeeding, there is fascinating science at the heart of every aspect of creating and raising a new human. Written by science journalist Michael Banks, The Secret Science of Baby won&’t tell you how to raise a perfect violin-playing, mandarin-speaking toddler, but it will shed a new light on how and why things happen as they do—from conception and pregnancy to cooing and pooing. Exploring the hidden physics behind uterine contractions, the fluid dynamics of diapers, and more, both parents and curious non-parents (who, after all, were once babies themselves) will gain a fresh perspective on the infant universe . . . and the thrilling science that makes it possible. In these pages, readers will discover: The physics of the playground and common toys—from the swing to the Slinky What it really means to "sleep like a baby" The surprising shared vocal cord features of lions and (human) infants The miracle of a baby's first breath and how surface tension provided the key to helping preemies breathe Banks draws from his own experience, interviews with scientists, and the latest research (including some involving conception inside an MRI machine) to offer a book that focuses on &“how?&” rather than &“how-to.&” The result is an illuminating and hilarious journey through the everyday science of making, baking, and bringing up baby.
Bouncing Off the Moon
by David GerroldCharles thought the Moon would be a new beginning. Now, he knows he'll be lucky just to stay alive. Having escaped both an Earth on the verge of global collapse and their squabbling parents in a "divorce" at Geosynchronous Station, a newly independent Charles "Chigger" Dingillian and his two brothers find themselves alone on the Moon with very few prospects. Worse, they are being hunted by ruthless interplanetary corporations who would stop at nothing to come in possession of a memory bar the boys smuggled on board. Totally unsure of who they can trust—if anyone—the three boys must find a way to make it on their own in unfamiliar territory. Only one thing is certain: The Moon is not a safe place to be.
Raising Kids: Your Essential Guide to Everyday Parenting
by Olaf Jorgenson Sheri Glucoft WongIn Raising Kids, family therapist and parent educator Sheri Glucoft Wong and Silicon Valley private school head Olaf Jorgenson team up to deliver a down-to-earth guide to parenting that is as encouraging as it is illuminating. With its easy-to-grasp language and tools, Raising Kids is there for you, from managing family routines, screen time, and homework, to supporting friendships, self-esteem, and resilience. You&’ll find out how being &“on your spot&” leads to fewer conflicts and replaces threats, nagging, and punishment with clear, effective messages that make sense to your kids. The authors focus on everyday parenting because how we relate to our children day-to-day forms their sense of themselves, their connection to us, and their ways of being in the world. No interaction we have with our kids is too small to strengthen our bond with them, impart our values, build their confidence, and to demonstrate communicating, relating, and caring. You&’ll learn how to be on your kids&’ side and get them on yours as you navigate daily life. Thousands of parents with toddlers through adolescents have benefited from the wisdom and reassurance that is now available in this straightforward guide. Along with offering approaches to address the challenges, Raising Kids shows you how to build on what you&’re already doing well to maximize the good times in your family life today and in the years ahead.
The Good Country Equation: How We Can Repair the World in One Generation
by Simon AnholtWhy doesn't the world work? Why, despite all the power, technology, money and knowledge that humanity has accumulated, are we are still unable to defeat global challenges like climate change, war, poverty, migration, extremism, and inequality? Simon Anholt has spent decades helping countries from Austria to Zambia to improve their international standing. Using colorful descriptions of his experiences--dining with Vladimir Putin at his country home, taking a group of Felipe Calderon's advisors on their first Mexico City subway ride, touring a beautiful new government hospital in Afghanistan that nobody would use because it was in Taliban-controlled territory--he tells how he began finding answers to that question. Ultimately, Anholt hit on the Good Country Equation, a formula for encouraging international cooperation and reinventing education for a globalized era. Anholt even offers a "selfish" argument for cooperation: he shows that it generates goodwill, which in turn translates into increased trade, foreign investment, tourism, talent attraction, and even domestic electoral success. Anholt insists we can change the way countries behave and the way people are educated in a single generation--because that's all the time we have.
Dangerous Love: Transforming Fear and Conflict at Home, at Work, and in the World
by Chad Ford“Chad Ford reminds us that humanity lies within all of us, and although conflict is everywhere in today's world, we have the tools we need to overcome obstacles and to thrive. This is a fantastic, timely book that I highly recommend."-Steve Kerr, Head Coach, Golden State WarriorsKnowing how to transform conflict is critical in both our personal and professional lives. Yet, by and large, we are terrible at it. The reason, says longtime mediator Chad Ford, is fear. When conflict comes, our instincts are to run or fight. To transform conflict, Ford says we need to turn toward the people we are in conflict with, put down our physical and emotional weapons, and really love them with the kind of love that leads us to treat others as fellow human beings, not as objects in our way. We have to open ourselves up with no guarantee that anyone on the other side will do the same. While this can feel even more dangerous than conflict itself, it allows us to see the humanity of others so clearly that their needs and desires matter to us as much as our own. Ford shows dangerous love in action through examples ranging from his work in the Middle East to a deeply moving story about reconciling with his father. He explains why we disconnect from people at the very time we need to be most connected and the predictable patterns of justification and escalation that ensue. Most importantly, he gives us a path to practice dangerous love in the conflicts that matter most to us.