Download or read book Never Saw It Coming written by Karen A. Cerulo and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 691 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People—especially Americans—are by and large optimists. They're much better at imagining best-case scenarios (I could win the lottery!) than worst-case scenarios (A hurricane could destroy my neighborhood!). This is true not just of their approach to imagining the future, but of their memories as well: people are better able to describe the best moments of their lives than they are the worst. Though there are psychological reasons for this phenomenon, Karen A.Cerulo, in Never Saw It Coming, considers instead the role of society in fostering this attitude. What kinds of communities develop this pattern of thought, which do not, and what does that say about human ability to evaluate possible outcomes of decisions and events? Cerulo takes readers to diverse realms of experience, including intimate family relationships, key transitions in our lives, the places we work and play, and the boardrooms of organizations and bureaucracies. Using interviews, surveys, artistic and fictional accounts, media reports, historical data, and official records, she illuminates one of the most common, yet least studied, of human traits—a blatant disregard for worst-case scenarios. Never Saw It Coming, therefore, will be crucial to anyone who wants to understand human attempts to picture or plan the future. “In Never Saw It Coming, Karen Cerulo argues that in American society there is a ‘positive symmetry,’ a tendency to focus on and exaggerate the best, the winner, the most optimistic outcome and outlook. Thus, the conceptions of the worst are underdeveloped and elided. Naturally, as she masterfully outlines, there are dramatic consequences to this characterological inability to imagine and prepare for the worst, as the failure to heed memos leading up to both the 9/11 and NASA Challenger disasters, for instance, so painfully reminded us.”--Robin Wagner-Pacifici, Swarthmore College “Katrina, 9/11, and the War in Iraq—all demonstrate the costliness of failing to anticipate worst-case scenarios. Never Saw It Coming explains why it is so hard to do so: adaptive behavior hard-wired into human cognition is complemented and reinforced by cultural practices, which are in turn institutionalized in the rules and structures of formal organizations. But Karen Cerulo doesn’t just diagnose the problem; she uses case studies of settings in which people effectively anticipate and deal with potential disaster to describe structural solutions to the chronic dilemmas she describes so well. Never Saw It Coming is a powerful contribution to the emerging fields of cognitive and moral sociology.”--Paul DiMaggio, Princeton University

Download or read book Worst Cases written by Lee Clarke and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-04-02 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Al Qaeda detonates a nuclear weapon in Times Square during rush hour, wiping out half of Manhattan and killing 500,000 people. A virulent strain of bird flu jumps to humans in Thailand, sweeps across Asia, and claims more than fifty million lives. A single freight car of chlorine derails on the outskirts of Los Angeles, spilling its contents and killing seven million. An asteroid ten kilometers wide slams into the Atlantic Ocean, unleashing a tsunami that renders life on the planet as we know it extinct. We consider the few who live in fear of such scenarios to be alarmist or even paranoid. But Worst Cases shows that such individuals—like Cassandra foreseeing the fall of Troy—are more reasonable and prescient than you might think. In this book, Lee Clarke surveys the full range of possible catastrophes that animate and dominate the popular imagination, from toxic spills and terrorism to plane crashes and pandemics. Along the way, he explores how the ubiquity of worst cases in everyday life has rendered them ordinary and mundane. Fear and dread, Clarke argues, have actually become too rare: only when the public has more substantial information and more credible warnings will it take worst cases as seriously as it should. A timely and necessary look into how we think about the unthinkable, Worst Cases will be must reading for anyone attuned to our current climate of threat and fear.

Download or read book Good Strategy Bad Strategy written by Richard Rumelt and published by Currency. This book was released on 2011-07-19 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Good Strategy/Bad Strategy clarifies the muddled thinking underlying too many strategies and provides a clear way to create and implement a powerful action-oriented strategy for the real world. Developing and implementing a strategy is the central task of a leader. A good strategy is a specific and coherent response to—and approach for—overcoming the obstacles to progress. A good strategy works by harnessing and applying power where it will have the greatest effect. Yet, Rumelt shows that there has been a growing and unfortunate tendency to equate Mom-and-apple-pie values, fluffy packages of buzzwords, motivational slogans, and financial goals with “strategy.” In Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, he debunks these elements of “bad strategy” and awakens an understanding of the power of a “good strategy.” He introduces nine sources of power—ranging from using leverage to effectively focusing on growth—that are eye-opening yet pragmatic tools that can easily be put to work on Monday morning, and uses fascinating examples from business, nonprofit, and military affairs to bring its original and pragmatic ideas to life. The detailed examples range from Apple to General Motors, from the two Iraq wars to Afghanistan, from a small local market to Wal-Mart, from Nvidia to Silicon Graphics, from the Getty Trust to the Los Angeles Unified School District, from Cisco Systems to Paccar, and from Global Crossing to the 2007–08 financial crisis. Reflecting an astonishing grasp and integration of economics, finance, technology, history, and the brilliance and foibles of the human character, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy stems from Rumelt’s decades of digging beyond the superficial to address hard questions with honesty and integrity.

Download or read book The Secret written by Rhonda Byrne and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-07-07 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tenth-anniversary edition of the book that changed lives in profound ways, now with a new foreword and afterword. In 2006, a groundbreaking feature-length film revealed the great mystery of the universe—The Secret—and, later that year, Rhonda Byrne followed with a book that became a worldwide bestseller. Fragments of a Great Secret have been found in the oral traditions, in literature, in religions and philosophies throughout the centuries. For the first time, all the pieces of The Secret come together in an incredible revelation that will be life-transforming for all who experience it. In this book, you’ll learn how to use The Secret in every aspect of your life—money, health, relationships, happiness, and in every interaction you have in the world. You’ll begin to understand the hidden, untapped power that’s within you, and this revelation can bring joy to every aspect of your life. The Secret contains wisdom from modern-day teachers—men and women who have used it to achieve health, wealth, and happiness. By applying the knowledge of The Secret, they bring to light compelling stories of eradicating disease, acquiring massive wealth, overcoming obstacles, and achieving what many would regard as impossible.

Download or read book The Anxieties of Idleness written by Sarah Jordan and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Anxieties of Idleness: Idleness in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture investigates the preoccupation with idleness that haunts the British eighteenth century. Jordan argues that as Great Britain began to define itself as a nation during this period, one important quality it claimed was industriousness. However, this claim was undermined and complicated by many factors, such as leisure's importance to class status. Thus idleness was a subject of intense anxiety. One result of this anxiety was an increased surveillance of the supposed idleness of those members of society with less power to wield: the working classes, the nonwhite races, and women. Jordan analyzes how the "idleness" of these groups is figured, in traditional literature and in extra-literary works. Idleness was also a concern for writers of the day, as writing became a money-earning profession. Jordan examines the lives and works of two writers especially obsessed with idleness, Samuel Johnson and William Cowper.

Download or read book Bad Men written by Howard Rambsy II. and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2020-04-01 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How have African American writers drawn on "bad" black men and black boys as creative touchstones for their evocative and vibrant art? This is the question posed by Howard Rambsy’s new book, which explores bad men as a central, recurring, and understudied figure in African American literature and music. By focusing on how various iterations of the bad black man figure serve as creative muse and inspiration for literary production, Rambsy puts a wide variety of contemporary African American literary and cultural works in conversation with creativity research for the first time. Employing concepts such as playfulness, productivity, divergent thinking, and problem finding, Rambsy examines the works of a wide range of writers—including Elizabeth Alexander, Amiri Baraka, Paul Beatty, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Tyehimba Jess, Trymaine Lee, Adrian Matejka, Aaron McGruder, Evie Shockley, and Kevin Young—who have drawn on notions of bad black men and boys to create innovative and challenging works in a variety of genres. Through groundbreaking readings, Rambsy demonstrates the fruitfulness of viewing black literary art through the lens of creativity research.

Download or read book The Social Roots of Risk written by Kathleen Tierney and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-23 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This book about risk and disaster—and how they get amplified—is fascinating and hugely important as we face an ever-more-turbulent world.” —Rebecca Solnit, award-winning author of A Field Guide to Getting Lost The first decade of the twenty-first century saw a remarkable number of large-scale disasters. Earthquakes in Haiti and Sumatra underscored the serious economic consequences that catastrophic events can have on developing countries, while 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina showed that first world nations remain vulnerable. The Social Roots of Risk argues against the widespread notion that cataclysmic occurrences are singular events, driven by forces beyond our control. Instead, Kathleen Tierney contends that disasters of all types—be they natural, technological, or economic—are rooted in common social and institutional sources. Put another way, risks and disasters are produced by the social order itself—by governing bodies, organizations, and groups that push for economic growth, oppose risk-reducing regulation, and escape responsibility for tremendous losses when they occur. Considering a wide range of historical and looming events—from a potential mega-earthquake in Tokyo that would cause devastation far greater than what we saw in 2011, to BP’s accident history prior to the 2010 blowout—Tierney illustrates trends in our behavior, connecting what seem like one-off events to illuminate historical patterns. Like risk, human resilience also emerges from the social order, and this book makes a powerful case that we already have a significant capacity to reduce the losses that disasters produce. A provocative rethinking of the way that we approach and remedy disasters, The Social Roots of Risk leaves readers with a better understanding of how our own actions make us vulnerable to the next big crisis—and what we can do to prevent it. “Brilliant . . . Drawing on a trove of timely case studies, Tierney analyses how factors such as speculative finance and rampant development allow natural and economic blips to tip more easily into catastrophe.” —Nature

Download or read book Signs of Life in the USA written by Sonia Maasik and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-11-21 with total page 745 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Signs of Life in the USA teaches students to read and write critically about popular culture by giving them a conceptual framework to do it: semiotics, a field of critical theory developed specifically for the interpretation of culture and its signs. Written by a prominent semiotician and an experienced writing instructor, the text’s high-interest themes feature provocative and current reading selections that ask students to think analytically about America’s impressive popular culture: How is TV’s Mad Men a lightning rod for America’s polarized political climate? Has the nature of personal identity changed in an era when we spend so much of our lives online? Signs of Life bridges the transition to college writing by providing students with academic language to talk about our common, everyday cultural experience. Read the preface. Order Multimodal Readings for Signs of Life in the USA packaged with Signs of Life in the USA, Seventh Edition using ISBN-13: 978-1-4576-1989-2.

Download or read book The Daily Stoic written by Ryan Holiday and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the team that brought you The Obstacle Is the Way and Ego Is the Enemy, a daily devotional of Stoic meditations—an instant Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestseller. Why have history's greatest minds—from George Washington to Frederick the Great to Ralph Waldo Emerson, along with today's top performers from Super Bowl-winning football coaches to CEOs and celebrities—embraced the wisdom of the ancient Stoics? Because they realize that the most valuable wisdom is timeless and that philosophy is for living a better life, not a classroom exercise. The Daily Stoic offers 366 days of Stoic insights and exercises, featuring all-new translations from the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the playwright Seneca, or slave-turned-philosopher Epictetus, as well as lesser-known luminaries like Zeno, Cleanthes, and Musonius Rufus. Every day of the year you'll find one of their pithy, powerful quotations, as well as historical anecdotes, provocative commentary, and a helpful glossary of Greek terms. By following these teachings over the course of a year (and, indeed, for years to come) you'll find the serenity, self-knowledge, and resilience you need to live well.

Download or read book Spiritual Abuse written by William Bentonetti and published by Booktango. This book was released on 2013-02-06 with total page 981 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spiritual Abuse is a three part novel about two teenagers from two different families who are the victims of abuse. Teaming up to investigate their parents' pasts in order to learn the reasons for their parents' behavior, they discover shocking secrets that force them into a world of worse physical and mental dangers that they never imagined possible. Violence, sex, lies, drugs, kidnapping, murder and deception are but a few of the many obstacles that these two teens must deal with before reaching the goal of finding out what is going on. What they find is so shocking that nearly every second in this period of their lives ticks by with mystery. Each character in this novel is unique with a role to play in the intricate web of child abuse and relationships. Hopefully, this novel will arouse some to take action to finally eradicate all forms of abuse from the face of this planet forever.

Download or read book Re Envisioning Psychology written by Frank C. Richardson and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 1999-03-26 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does the practice of psychology make a significant and positive contribution to human welfare and the struggle for a good society? This book presents a reinvigorating look at psychology and its societal purpose, offering a bold new philosophical foundation from which professionals in the field can deeply examine their work.

Download or read book The Truth about Transformation written by Kevin Novak and published by Kevin Novak. This book was released on 2023-07-22 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Any organization that seeks transformation desires to take advantage of new opportunities and growth. Most organizations turn to technology as the major driver of change. But technology is an enabler, not a silver bullet. Mistaking technology for transformation will lead an organization to failure. True transformative change requires an understanding of the human factors at play, how conscious and subconscious behaviors can derail any plan, and how society is influencing your organization. Change is the only constant. An evolving reality is emerging, one that will fundamentally change who we are, how we work, and how organizations will be relevant today and in the future. The truth about transformation is not what you may think. This guide to organizational transformation will surprise, confound, provoke, and challenge every ingrained belief. The future is out there, and the truth about transformation will change how you lead.”

Download or read book Fearing the Black Body written by Sabrina Strings and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2020 Body and Embodiment Best Publication Award, given by the American Sociological Association Honorable Mention, 2020 Sociology of Sex and Gender Distinguished Book Award, given by the American Sociological Association How the female body has been racialized for over two hundred years There is an obesity epidemic in this country and poor black women are particularly stigmatized as “diseased” and a burden on the public health care system. This is only the most recent incarnation of the fear of fat black women, which Sabrina Strings shows took root more than two hundred years ago. Strings weaves together an eye-opening historical narrative ranging from the Renaissance to the current moment, analyzing important works of art, newspaper and magazine articles, and scientific literature and medical journals—where fat bodies were once praised—showing that fat phobia, as it relates to black women, did not originate with medical findings, but with the Enlightenment era belief that fatness was evidence of “savagery” and racial inferiority. The author argues that the contemporary ideal of slenderness is, at its very core, racialized and racist. Indeed, it was not until the early twentieth century, when racialized attitudes against fatness were already entrenched in the culture, that the medical establishment began its crusade against obesity. An important and original work, Fearing the Black Body argues convincingly that fat phobia isn’t about health at all, but rather a means of using the body to validate race, class, and gender prejudice.

Download or read book The Jeffrey Journey 2010 Edition written by Helen Baldwin and published by Milverstead Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2010-02-27 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revised and Updated - 2010 with new resources and dedications. In May, 1997, Randy and Helen Baldwin eagerly welcomed their third child, Jeffrey, as did his older siblings, Matthew and Katie. Jeffrey's arrival, unplanned but greatly anticipated, sparked a few adjustments in this family long removed from diaper duty, but Jeffrey was obviously a special gift. Eight weeks later, life took a completely unexpected downward spiral into the depths of despair when Jeffrey was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), a rare, progressive genetic neuromuscular disease with deadly ramifications. The neurologist handed over the utterly devastating news that Jeffrey had a severe case of the most destructive form without a morsel of hope that anything could be done to thwart the effects of the killer disease. Faced with the nightmare that their baby was expected to die within two years and that there was no treatment or cure, Randy and Helen took their faith in God to a higher level and embarked on a quest to defy SMA and its stranglehold on their precious baby's life. They sought the expertise of alternative practitioners and relentlessly relied on prayers for Jeffrey's health and for strength, courage, and wisdom for themselves and their family. The Jeffrey Journey is the story of how one family - with friends and family, prayer, and God's grace - rose to the challenge of caring for a dying child as they also realized the countless blessings left by their angel.

Download or read book Enhancing Patient Engagement in Pulmonary Healthcare written by Marilyn L. Moy and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-07-31 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the most up-to-date strategies that can be used to enhance the healthcare professional-patient interaction to influence positive behavior change and improve treatment adherence in pulmonary healthcare. This book is written by experts in the field who couple their experience with practical strategies (the art) with evidence-based theory (the science). Chapters discuss global concepts such as motivational interviewing on improving engagement and how to apply strategies to specific situations (for examples: smoking cessation, promoting physical activity, inhaler adherence, supplemental oxygen use, and non-invasive ventilation) commonly experienced on the front lines of caring for patients with pulmonary disorders. The textbook raises awareness of direct approaches and recent technological advances that healthcare professionals can use to support positive behavior change in their day-to-day clinical practice. Effective, patient-tailored self-management interventions are discussed, including the evidence for these interventions and ways to personalize the strategies to each patient’s unique needs. This book is an ideal guide for healthcare professionals working with patients experiencing chronic pulmonary conditions, including pulmonologists, primary care physicians, physician assistants, nurses, trainees, and the many allied health professionals involved in delivering care such as respiratory therapists, pharmacists, and behavioral psychologists. The concepts of this book can also be applied to the management of other chronic diseases such as coronary artery disease and diabetes mellitus.

Download or read book The Art of Fear written by Kristen Ulmer and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-06-13 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revolutionary guide to acknowledging fear and developing the tools we need to build a healthy relationship with this confusing emotion—and use it as a positive force in our lives. We all feel fear. Yet we are often taught to ignore it, overcome it, push past it. But to what benefit? This is the essential question that guides Kristen Ulmer’s remarkable exploration of our most misunderstood emotion in The Art of Fear. Once recognized as the best extreme skier in the world (an honor she held for twelve years), Ulmer knows fear well. In this conversation-changing book, she argues that fear is not here to cause us problems—and that in fact, the only true issue we face with fear is our misguided reaction to it (not the fear itself). Rebuilding our experience with fear from the ground up, Ulmer starts by exploring why we’ve come to view it as a negative. From here, she unpacks fear and shows it to be just one of 10,000 voices that make up our reality, here to help us come alive alongside joy, love, and gratitude. Introducing a mindfulness tool called “Shift,” Ulmer teaches readers how to experience fear in a simpler, more authentic way, transforming our relationship with this emotion from that of a draining battle into one that’s in line with our true nature. Influenced by Ulmer’s own complicated relationship with fear and her over 15 years as a mindset facilitator, The Art of Fear will reconstruct the way we react to and experience fear—empowering us to easily and permanently address the underlying cause of our fear-based problems, and setting us on course to live a happier, more expansive future.

Download or read book Imagine the Life You d Love to Live Then Live It written by Peg Conley and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-11-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peg Conley has been an artist all her life but, like many of us, took a long detour into the working world where she was a "corporate sales queen" in Seattle with a lot of success and a happy, busy family. Art became the thing she did on vacations, weekends and when she could carve time out of her busy life. Something gnawed at her, a nagging feeling that life might hold something else for her in the midst of it all. Then came the big "aha" moment—Peg heard a still small voice inside: "Imagine the life you want to live, then live it. It's that simple!" Her family encouraged Peg to pursue her passion. Despite a great deal of fear, Peg Conley did the thing she thought she could not do and dropped her big job, big house and big life and moved to San Francisco to start a business based on her artisan stationery. From a handful of handpainted cards, calendars and posters, her company Words & Watercolors was born and has been inspiring people, winning awards and raking in the sales ever since. Peg's intention with her work is to inspire and her art and writing all speak to life's great truths and those aha moments for which we all need reminders. What do you “imagine” your Ideal Life to be? It may take some time for it to unveil itself. You will need to have an idea of what it is you are looking to create. Spend some time in contemplation. For some that means a quiet meditation where images might come to you. For others, you might write about something you’ve always had a longing to create, or a dream that seemed far away and not attainable yet it doesn’t go away. The dream nudges at you, asking you to pay attention. Where words work for some people, pictures work for others. You may want to create a vision board. Gather your old magazines and begin ripping out the pictures that appeal to you, or draw your own images. Your Ideal Life will come alive via the images that resonate with you. Don’t hesitate to pick up a pen, pencil or crayons even and fill the blank pages with doodles of any kind. Do you still think of becoming a nurse? Don’t be disheartened, go online and research classes you can take at your local college to start the process. As someone once said, if you don’t start now, 5 years from now you still will be where you are but if you begin with baby steps, in 5 years you could be in a completely different place! So ask yourself the question: “What does the life I long to live look like?” Imagine it! Draw it, write it, collage it and just plain dream it. Believe you can have it and then go about creating it as you take daily steps towards becoming an enhanced version of yourself! All successful people are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.