Download or read book Hard Facts Dangerous Half Truths and Total Nonsense written by Jeffrey Pfeffer and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2006-02-14 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The best organizations have the best talent. . . Financial incentives drive company performance. . . Firms must change or die. Popular axioms like these drive business decisions every day. Yet too much common management “wisdom” isn’t wise at all—but, instead, flawed knowledge based on “best practices” that are actually poor, incomplete, or outright obsolete. Worse, legions of managers use this dubious knowledge to make decisions that are hazardous to organizational health. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton show how companies can bolster performance and trump the competition through evidence-based management, an approach to decision-making and action that is driven by hard facts rather than half-truths or hype. This book guides managers in using this approach to dismantle six widely held—but ultimately flawed—management beliefs in core areas including leadership, strategy, change, talent, financial incentives, and work-life balance. The authors show managers how to find and apply the best practices for their companies, rather than blindly copy what seems to have worked elsewhere. This practical and candid book challenges leaders to commit to evidence-based management as a way of organizational life—and shows how to finally turn this common sense into common practice.
Download or read book Hard Facts written by Philip Fisher and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1986-08-07 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American culture has often been described in terms of paradigmatic images--the wilderness, the Jeffersonian landscape of family farms, the great industrial cities at the turn of the 19th century. But underlying these cultural ideals are less happy paradoxes. Settling the land meant banishing the Indians and destroying the wilderness; Jeffersonian landscapes were created with the help of the new country's enslaved citizens; and economic opportunities in the cities were purchased at the high price of self-commercialization. In this study of the popular 19th- and early 20th-century American novel, Philip Fisher demonstrates how such works as Dreiser's Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy, Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Cooper's The Deerslayer worked to make these three "hard facts" of the 19th-century American experience familiar and tolerable--or familiar and intolerable--to their wide audience of readers. His perceptive analysis proves that the most important cultural "work" was accomplished not by novels generally taken to be at the core of the American literary canon--those of Hawthorne, Melville, or Twain--but rather by books which never abandoned the ambition to be widely read.
Download or read book Facts and Fears written by James R. Clapper and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-05-21 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The former Director of National Intelligence speaks out in this New York Times bestseller When he stepped down in January 2017 as the fourth United States Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper had been President Obama's senior intelligence advisor for six and a half years, longer than his three predecessors combined. He led the US Intelligence Community through a period that included the raid on Osama bin Laden, the Benghazi attack, the leaks of Edward Snowden, and Russia's influence operation on the 2016 U.S election. In Facts and Fears, Clapper traces his career through the growing threat of cyberattacks, his relationships with Presidents and Congress, and the truth about Russia's role in the presidential election. He describes, in the wake of Snowden and WikiLeaks, his efforts to make intelligence more transparent and to push back against the suspicion that Americans' private lives are subject to surveillance. Finally, it was living through Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and seeing how the foundations of American democracy were--and continue to be--undermined by a foreign power that led him to break with his instincts grown through more than five decades in the intelligence profession, to share his inside experience. Clapper considers such controversial questions as, is intelligence ethical? Is it moral to intercept communications or to photograph closed societies from orbit? What are the limits of what we should be allowed to do? What protections should we give to the private citizens of the world, not to mention our fellow Americans? Is there a time that intelligence officers can lose credibility as unbiased reporters of hard truths by asserting themselves into policy decisions? Facts and Fears offers a privileged look inside the United States intelligence community and addresses with the frankness and professionalism for which James Clapper is known some of the most difficult challenges in our nation's history.
Download or read book The Hard Facts of the Grimms Fairy Tales written by Maria Tatar and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I. Children's literature? -- 1. Sex and violence : the hard core of fairy tales -- 2. Fact and fantasy : the art of reading fairy tales -- 3. Victims and seekers : the family romance of fairy tales -- II. Heroes -- 4. Born yesterday : The spear side -- 5. Spinning tales : the distaff side -- III. Villains -- 6. From nags to witches : stepmothers and other ogres -- 7. Taming the beast : Bluebeard and other monsters -- Epilogue : getting even -- Appendixes -- A. Six fairy tales from the Nursery and household tales, with commentary -- B. Selected tales from the first edition of the Nursery and household tales -- C. Prefaces to the first and second editions of the Nursery and household tales -- D. English titles, tale numbers, and German titles of stories cited -- E. Bibliographical note.
Download or read book The Hard Facts about Soft Skills written by Richard A. Celestin and published by . This book was released on 2018-05-09 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite its name, soft skills are increasingly becoming the hard skills of today's professional world. It is not enough to be highly trained in technical skills without understanding and developing the softer, interpersonal, and relationship-building skills that are critical for professional growth. While technical, "harder" skills may present opportunities for you, it is your soft skills that will maintain those opportunities and provide avenues for new opportunities to present themselves. Your ability to identify and master these soft skills, ranging from critical thinking, dressing for success, networking and personal branding, are critical for achieving professional success. While these soft skills are often undervalued and/or not presented sufficiently to young professionals and pre-professionals, you will learn in this book that...Soft skills are anything but soft!
Download or read book True Facts That Sound Like Bull t written by Shane Carley and published by Cider Mill Press. This book was released on 2023-04-18 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prove you are the smartest schmuck in the room with 500 true trivia facts that sound absurd. These facts are so absurd some might even say that they sound like bull$#*t! Knowledge is power! Crush the competition at trivia night, or start the most interesting conversation ever with real facts that are hard to believe. This book is loaded with mind-blowing facts that are sure to keep you wondering, "How are these even true?" while equipping you to outsmart everyone around and blow their minds. Topics include: Science American Sports History Pop Culture Nature Put your game face on, and prove once and for all that you are the real know-it-all! Gather your friends and family 'round and get ready to learn some wild and crazy trivia and facts such as: True or False? A chicken once survived almost two years after having its head cut off. True or False? The dog that played Toto in The Wizard of Oz was paid a salary. How many baseballs does the MLB use every season? What state has jousting as its official sport? True or False? Most Canadians live south of Seattle. Stump everyone with True Facts That Sound Like Bull$#*t!
Download or read book Hard Facts written by Howard Spring and published by Hesperides Press. This book was released on 2008-11 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HARD FACTS BY HOWARD SPRING AUTHORS FOREWORD IN a celebrated essay, Jfacaulay sums up Bacons career as a chequered spectacle of so much glory and so much shame. The words may fitly enough be applied not only to Bacons life but to most mens lives and to most large experiments of human action. In 1942 I began to write a novel whose purpose was to trace the course of one such experiment from its beginnings In the eighties of last century up to our present time. I intended to call this novel, which would, have been very long, So Much Glory: So Much Shame. It seemed to me as time went on that the war years, with the paper shortage, were not the best for the publication of so long a book as I had in mind. And, too, my writing during the war is so sporadic and occasional that progress was slow, and it might be years before the book as I con ceived it or at any rate as my conception worked out in practice was finished. Things being thus, I decided that it would be better to publish the book piecemeal. In my plan, it was divided into three parts called Hard Fads, Dunkerleys and The Banner. The first of these is the present volume, which makes, I think, a rounded and selfsufficient story. I hope that, in due course, the other volumes will do so, too and that finally it may be possible to publish the three as one book bearing the title originally chosen for it. H. S. "CHAPTER ONE AT FIVE OCLOCK on a Wednesday afternoon in March, 1885, Theodore Chrystal was walking to his lodgings in Hardiman Street, in the Levenshulme district of Manchester. He was happy enough, though no physical reason for happiness was apparent. It was a vile day the darkness had come down on the breath of a thin fog, and the street lamps had not yet been lit. Even had the full light of a summers day fallen upon the scene, it would have been hideous. Theo knew this, although Manchester was a strange town to him, for there had been light enough when he set out to take tea with Mr. Burnside, the Vicar of St. Ninians. He had seen then the little houses standing in rows, with their bare sooty patches of earth railed off from the streets as though they were precious he had seen the sky low upon the grey slate roofs, an immense and everlasting frown that seemed to lie over the whole city he had seen something of the pale artisan population, depressing and respectable, appearing now and then from behind doors whose front steps were yellowed with the daily rubbing of stone, or glancing through windows hung with lace curtains looped back to reveal ferns in pots of fantastic shapes, A swan with outspread wings was the most popular, he noted. The fern fitted neatly down on to the swans backan improbability alike in botany and ornithology. He crossed the main road which runs from Manchester to Stockport, and was impressed by its granitic and uncom promising hideousness. A stony waste, a weary wilderness, an abomination of desolation: these were the sort of phrases that crossed his young mindhe was twentyfourbut he murmured them almost gaily.
Download or read book Hard Facts About Soft Machines written by Rani Lueder and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 1994-11-23 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although work furniture has had so much more attention recently there is a long way to go before this is translated into action in the wider world. Increased international concern for the health and safety of people at work is one of the driving forces behind this book.; The Science of Seating brings together researchers in ergonomics and posture with industrial designers, to review and assess the current state of chair design, with implications for cultural, behavioural and occupational aspects of health. The contributions are a significant step in the science of seating and should lead to a better understanding of the mechanics, dynamics and the effects of seating on the sitter.; They point to ways in which seats might become easier-to-use and adjust, offering both comfort and postural support without compromising freedom of movement: and in the not-too-distant furture, "the intelligent chair" will "remember" the sitter's preferences for position, cushiness and so on.; Topics covered include: Adjustability, Anthropometics, Posture, Back Pain, Biomechanics, Seat Pressure Distributions, School children, Special Needs of Users, Design Applications, Industry Perspectives, VDT Standards.; It is aimed at researchers and practising seating designers, ergonomists, design engineers, occupational health workers and physiotherapists and furniture manufacturers.
Download or read book Weird But True 5 written by National Geographic Kids and published by National Geographic Children's Books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of fun and surprising facts about our world.
Download or read book National Lampoon Presents True Facts the Big Book written by John Bendel and published by McGraw-Hill Education. This book was released on 1995-09-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now, for the first time, fans of National Lampoon's popular True Facts books can enjoy the complete True Facts collection in one hilarious edition. Every weird and wacky photo, advertisement, announcement, and news article is in one handy volume. It's a guaranteed hit.
Download or read book The Half Life of Facts written by Samuel Arbesman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New insights from the science of science Facts change all the time. Smoking has gone from doctor recommended to deadly. We used to think the Earth was the center of the universe and that the brontosaurus was a real dinosaur. In short, what we know about the world is constantly changing. Samuel Arbesman shows us how knowledge in most fields evolves systematically and predictably, and how this evolution unfolds in a fascinating way that can have a powerful impact on our lives. He takes us through a wide variety of fields, including those that change quickly, over the course of a few years, or over the span of centuries.
Download or read book Hard Times written by Charles Dickens and published by . This book was released on 1854 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Data Detective written by Tim Harford and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From “one of the great (greatest?) contemporary popular writers on economics” (Tyler Cowen) comes a smart, lively, and encouraging rethinking of how to use statistics. Today we think statistics are the enemy, numbers used to mislead and confuse us. That’s a mistake, Tim Harford says in The Data Detective. We shouldn’t be suspicious of statistics—we need to understand what they mean and how they can improve our lives: they are, at heart, human behavior seen through the prism of numbers and are often “the only way of grasping much of what is going on around us.” If we can toss aside our fears and learn to approach them clearly—understanding how our own preconceptions lead us astray—statistics can point to ways we can live better and work smarter. As “perhaps the best popular economics writer in the world” (New Statesman), Tim Harford is an expert at taking complicated ideas and untangling them for millions of readers. In The Data Detective, he uses new research in science and psychology to set out ten strategies for using statistics to erase our biases and replace them with new ideas that use virtues like patience, curiosity, and good sense to better understand ourselves and the world. As a result, The Data Detective is a big-idea book about statistics and human behavior that is fresh, unexpected, and insightful.
Download or read book Hard Facts written by Howard Spring and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a celebrated essay, Macaulay sums up Bacon’s career as a “chequered spectacle of so much glory and so much shame.” The words may fitly enough be applied not only to Bacon’s life but to most men’s lives and to most large experiments of human action. In 1942 I began to write a novel whose purpose was to trace the course of one such experiment from its beginnings in the eighties of last century up to our present time. I intended to call this novel, which would have been very long, So Much Glory: So Much Shame. It seemed to me as time went on that the war years, with the paper shortage, were not the best for the publication of so long a book as I had in mind. And, too, my writing during the war is so sporadic and occasional that progress was slow, and it might be years before the book as I conceived it (or at any rate as my conception worked out in practice) was finished. Things being thus, I decided that it would be better to publish the book piecemeal. In my plan, it was divided into three parts called Hard Facts, Dunkerley’s and The Banner. The first of these is the present volume, which makes, I think, a rounded and self-sufficient story. I hope that, in due course, the other volumes will do so, too; and that finally it may be possible to publish the three as one book bearing the title originally chosen for it.
Download or read book Facts vs Opinions vs Robots written by Michael Rex and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hilarious, timely conversation about the differences between facts and opinions, by the creator of the #1 New York Times bestseller Goodnight Goon Do you know the difference between a fact and an opinion? It can be a hard thing to understand. Some things are facts--like the number of robots in this book. Other things are opinions--like which robot would make the best friend, or which robot dances best. And sometimes to tell the difference between a fact and an opinion, you need to wait to get more information--that's because facts can be proven true or false, and opinions are things you feel and believe--but that you can't prove. Mike Rex introduces young readers to the very important distinction between facts and opinions, and he reminds us that it is nice to listen to one another's opinions, and to stand up for the facts!
Download or read book The Hard Facts of the Grimms Fairy Tales written by Maria Tatar and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Murder, mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide, and incest: the darker side of classic fairy tales is the subject of this groundbreaking and intriguing study of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Nursery and Household Tales. This expanded edition includes a new preface and an appendix featuring translations of six tales with commentary by Maria Tatar. Throughout the book, Tatar draws on the disciplinary tools of psychoanalysis and folklore while also providing historical context to explore the harsher aspects of these stories, presenting new interpretations of tales that engage in a kind of cultural repetition compulsion. No other book so thoroughly challenges us to rethink the happily-ever-after of these classic stories.
Download or read book Hard Facts written by Howard Spring and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 1944 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
