Download or read book The First Serious Optimist written by Ian Kumekawa and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking intellectual biography of one of the twentieth century's most influential economists The First Serious Optimist is an intellectual biography of the British economist A. C. Pigou (1877–1959), a founder of welfare economics and one of the twentieth century's most important and original thinkers. Though long overshadowed by his intellectual rival John Maynard Keynes, Pigou was instrumental in focusing economics on the public welfare. And his reputation is experiencing a renaissance today, in part because his idea of "externalities" or spillover costs is the basis of carbon taxes. Drawing from a wealth of archival sources, Ian Kumekawa tells how Pigou reshaped the way the public thinks about the economic role of government and the way economists think about the public good. Setting Pigou's ideas in their personal, political, social, and ethical context, the book follows him as he evolved from a liberal Edwardian bon vivant to a reserved but reform-minded economics professor. With World War I, Pigou entered government service, but soon became disenchanted with the state he encountered. As his ideas were challenged in the interwar period, he found himself increasingly alienated from his profession. But with the rise of the Labour Party following World War II, the elderly Pigou re-embraced a mind-set that inspired a colleague to describe him as "the first serious optimist." The story not just of Pigou but also of twentieth-century economics, The First Serious Optimist explores the biographical and historical origins of some of the most important economic ideas of the past hundred years. It is a timely reminder of the ethical roots of economics and the discipline's long history as an active intermediary between the state and the market.
Download or read book The First Serious Optimist written by Ian Kumekawa and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking intellectual biography of one of the twentieth century's most influential economists The First Serious Optimist is an intellectual biography of the British economist A. C. Pigou (1877–1959), a founder of welfare economics and one of the twentieth century's most important and original thinkers. Though long overshadowed by his intellectual rival John Maynard Keynes, Pigou was instrumental in focusing economics on the public welfare. And his reputation is experiencing a renaissance today, in part because his idea of "externalities" or spillover costs is the basis of carbon taxes. Drawing from a wealth of archival sources, Ian Kumekawa tells how Pigou reshaped the way the public thinks about the economic role of government and the way economists think about the public good. Setting Pigou's ideas in their personal, political, social, and ethical context, the book follows him as he evolved from a liberal Edwardian bon vivant to a reserved but reform-minded economics professor. With World War I, Pigou entered government service, but soon became disenchanted with the state he encountered. As his ideas were challenged in the interwar period, he found himself increasingly alienated from his profession. But with the rise of the Labour Party following World War II, the elderly Pigou re-embraced a mind-set that inspired a colleague to describe him as "the first serious optimist." The story not just of Pigou but also of twentieth-century economics, The First Serious Optimist explores the biographical and historical origins of some of the most important economic ideas of the past hundred years. It is a timely reminder of the ethical roots of economics and the discipline's long history as an active intermediary between the state and the market.
Download or read book Optimists Die First written by Susin Nielsen and published by Wendy Lamb Books. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning author Susin Nielsen has written a laugh-out-loud and heartrending novel for fans of Robyn Schneider’s Extraordinary Means and Cammie McGovern’s Say What You Will. Beware: Life ahead. Sixteen-year-old Petula de Wilde is anything but wild. A former crafting fiend with a happy life, Petula shut herself off from the world after a family tragedy. She sees danger in all the ordinary things, like crossing the street, a bug bite, or a germy handshake. She knows: life is out to get you. The worst part of her week is her comically lame mandatory art therapy class with a small group of fellow misfits. Then a new boy, Jacob, appears at school and in her therapy group. He seems so normal and confident, though he has a prosthetic arm; and soon he teams up with Petula on a hilarious project, gradually inspiring her to let go of some of her fears. But as the two grow closer, a hidden truth behind why he’s in the group threatens to derail them, unless Petula takes a huge risk. . . Praise: Bank Street Best Children’s Books of the Year “Nielsen writes with sensitivity, empathy, and humor.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred “Nielsen excels at depicting troubled, clever teenagers in familiar environments.” —School Library Journal, Starred “[An] empathic and deeply moving story, balanced by sharply funny narration and dialogue.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred “A poignant exploration into the nuances of healing.” —Quill and Quire, Starred
Download or read book No Time Like the Future written by Michael J. Fox and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A moving account of resilience, hope, fear and mortality, and how these things resonate in our lives, by actor and advocate Michael J. Fox. The entire world knows Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, the teenage sidekick of Doc Brown in Back to the Future; as Alex P. Keaton in Family Ties; as Mike Flaherty in Spin City; and through numerous other movie roles and guest appearances on shows such as The Good Wife and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Diagnosed at age 29, Michael is equally engaged in Parkinson’s advocacy work, raising global awareness of the disease and helping find a cure through The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, the world’s leading non-profit funder of PD science. His two previous bestselling memoirs, Lucky Man and Always Looking Up, dealt with how he came to terms with the illness, all the while exhibiting his iconic optimism. His new memoir reassesses this outlook, as events in the past decade presented additional challenges. In No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality, Michael shares personal stories and observations about illness and health, aging, the strength of family and friends, and how our perceptions about time affect the way we approach mortality. Thoughtful and moving, but with Fox’s trademark sense of humor, his book provides a vehicle for reflection about our lives, our loves, and our losses. Running through the narrative is the drama of the medical madness Fox recently experienced, that included his daily negotiations with the Parkinson’s disease he’s had since 1991, and a spinal cord issue that necessitated immediate surgery. His challenge to learn how to walk again, only to suffer a devastating fall, nearly caused him to ditch his trademark optimism and “get out of the lemonade business altogether.” Does he make it all of the way back? Read the book.
Download or read book The Optimist written by Joshua Mehigan and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2005-05-10 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Joshua Mehigan’s award-winning poetry, one encounters a lucid, resolute vision driven by an amazing facility with the metrical line. Most of the poems in The Optimist unapologetically employ traditional poetic technique, and, in each of these, Mehigan stretches the fabric of living language over a framework of regular meter to produce a compelling sonic counterpoint. The Optimist stares at contemporary darkness visible, a darkly lit tableau that erases the boundary between the world and the perceiving self. Whether narrative or lyric, dramatic or satirical, Mehigan’s poems explore death, desire, and change with a mixture of reason and compassion. In choosing The Optimist for the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, final judge James Cummins, wrote: “The world is given its due in these poems, but its due is the subjective voice making ‘objective’ reality into the reality of art. To do this Mehigan accesses a tradition of voices—the echoes in The Optimist are, to name a few, of Frost, Robinson, Kees, and Justice; and more in terms of point of view, Bishop and Jarrell—to form with great integrity his own. It isn’t that Mehigan is concerned more with what’s outside himself than inside; nor merely that he travels the highway between the two with such humility and grace. It’s also that these voices, this great tradition, infuses his line with what the best verse, metrical or free, must have: wonder.”
Download or read book The Future We Choose written by Christiana Figueres and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cautionary but optimistic book about the world’s changing climate and the fate of humanity, from Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac—who led negotiations for the United Nations during the historic Paris Agreement of 2015. The authors outline two possible scenarios for our planet. In one, they describe what life on Earth will be like by 2050 if we fail to meet the Paris Agreement’s climate targets. In the other, they lay out what it will be like to live in a regenerative world that has net-zero emissions. They argue for confronting the climate crisis head-on, with determination and optimism. The Future We Choose presents our options and tells us what governments, corporations, and each of us can, and must, do to fend off disaster.
Download or read book Believing Cassandra written by Alan AtKisson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-07-26 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bestseller on Amazon.com within months of its first release, Alan AtKisson's debut book quickly became a modern classic of sustainability literature. Global companies, grassroots groups, university courses, government agencies, and even the US Army ordered it by the box. Now fully revised and updated, Believing Cassandra: How to be an Optimist in a Pessimist's World is even more relevant, fresh, and motivating than when it first appeared in 1999. In a style that's refreshingly candid and vivid, with unforgettable personal anecdotes, AtKisson provides us with a bridge over the sea of despair, and shows us how to catch the wave to an enticing, sustainable future. He empowers the reader to join the pioneers who created the ideas, techniques and practices of sustainable living - the people who prove Cassandra's warnings wrong, by believing in them, and taking strategic action.
Download or read book Fierce Optimism written by Leeza Gibbons and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-04-12 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Attitude can be sexy— a practical and inspirational guide for using kindness and positivity as a winning strategy from Celebrity Apprentice champion, Hollywood veteran, and New York Times bestselling author Leeza Gibbons. We live in a winner-take-all world, in which only the toughest thrive. On the surface, from the living room to the boardroom, it’s certainly no place for nice. Civility and kindness are often the price of admission, and empowering communication is checked at the door. Leeza Gibbons is a culture changer who doesn’t “mess with mean.” She has fiercely redefined optimism, and used positive communication as an empowerment strategy to win with class. She refuses to to sacrifice kindness as she has succeeded in getting ahead. Working for decades in an intense, often merciless industry that rewards novelty, ruthlessness, and the next big thing she has applied smart principles and excelled through savviness—without having to sell her soul or fake it. But redefining nice does not mean being a pushover. As the winning contestant on the hit show Celebrity Apprentice, the former host of Entertainment Tonight relied on her fresh and authentic “no drama” mentality and smart strategies to outmaneuver the other contestants without disempowering them. Throughout the competition, Leeza kept her cool and, most importantly, remained true to herself and her values. In this book, she reveals the secrets of her years of success and bares the stories and vulnerable moments that led to where she is today. Her success is proof that optimism works. You can play it your way and still win. In Fierce Optimism Leeza combines stories from her own life and tales of other pioneering business leaders with core principles that others can apply to take them to the next level of success: • Engage optimism and kindness as your competitive edge • See success unshared as failure • Empower the team, and you win • Pay it forward by mentoring others • Be transparently you Filled with down-to-earth advice and empowering stories, Fierce Optimism makes clear that with kindness, authenticity, and smart teamwork, you can be nice—and win.
Download or read book The Optimist written by David Coggins and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The perfect fly fishing book for today's novice, enthusiastic amateur, as well as the devoted angler is part narration of the author's own angling obsessions and adventures, part practical how-to, and part meditation on a connection to the natural world.
Download or read book Rock Bone and Ruin written by Adrian Currie and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-02-16 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument that we should be optimistic about the capacity of “methodologically omnivorous” geologists, paleontologists, and archaeologists to uncover truths about the deep past. The “historical sciences”—geology, paleontology, and archaeology—have made extraordinary progress in advancing our understanding of the deep past. How has this been possible, given that the evidence they have to work with offers mere traces of the past? In Rock, Bone, and Ruin, Adrian Currie explains that these scientists are “methodological omnivores,” with a variety of strategies and techniques at their disposal, and that this gives us every reason to be optimistic about their capacity to uncover truths about prehistory. Creative and opportunistic paleontologists, for example, discovered and described a new species of prehistoric duck-billed platypus from a single fossilized tooth. Examining the complex reasoning processes of historical science, Currie also considers philosophical and scientific reflection on the relationship between past and present, the nature of evidence, contingency, and scientific progress. Currie draws on varied examples from across the historical sciences, from Mayan ritual sacrifice to giant Mesozoic fleas to Mars's mysterious watery past, to develop an account of the nature of, and resources available to, historical science. He presents two major case studies: the emerging explanation of sauropod size, and the “snowball earth” hypothesis that accounts for signs of glaciation in Neoproterozoic tropics. He develops the Ripple Model of Evidence to analyze “unlucky circumstances” in scientific investigation; examines and refutes arguments for pessimism about the capacity of the historical sciences, defending the role of analogy and arguing that simulations have an experiment-like function. Currie argues for a creative, open-ended approach, “empirically grounded” speculation.
Download or read book The Rational Optimist written by Matt Ridley and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-06-07 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For two hundred years the pessimists have dominated public discourse, insisting that things will soon be getting much worse. But in fact, life is getting better—and at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before. In his bold and bracing exploration into how human culture evolves positively through exchange and specialization, bestselling author Matt Ridley does more than describe how things are getting better. He explains why. An astute, refreshing, and revelatory work that covers the entire sweep of human history—from the Stone Age to the Internet—The Rational Optimist will change your way of thinking about the world for the better.
Download or read book Angry Optimist written by Lisa Rogak and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-09-09 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling biography of the influential and beloved (by liberals, at least) host of The Daily Show.
Download or read book Believing Cassandra written by Alan AtKisson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2010. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book The Optimist s Telescope written by Bina Venkataraman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Best Book of 2019 by NPR “How might we mitigate losses caused by shortsightedness? Bina Venkataraman, a former climate adviser to the Obama administration, brings a storyteller’s eye to this question. . . . She is also deeply informed about the relevant science.” —The New York Times Book Review A trailblazing exploration of how we can plan better for the future: our own, our families’, and our society’s. Instant gratification is the norm today—in our lives, our culture, our economy, and our politics. Many of us have forgotten (if we ever learned) how to make smart decisions for the long run. Whether it comes to our finances, our health, our communities, or our planet, it’s easy to avoid thinking ahead. The consequences of this immediacy are stark: Deadly outbreaks spread because leaders failed to act on early warning signs. Companies that fail to invest stagnate and fall behind. Hurricanes and wildfires turn deadly for communities that could have taken more precaution. Today more than ever, all of us need to know how we can make better long-term decisions in our lives, businesses, and society. Bina Venkataraman sees the way forward. A journalist and former adviser in the Obama White House, she helped communities and businesses prepare for climate change, and she learned firsthand why people don’t think ahead—and what can be done to change that. In The Optimist’s Telescope, she draws from stories she has reported around the world and new research in biology, psychology, and economics to explain how we can make decisions that benefit us over time. With examples from ancient Pompeii to modern-day Fukushima, she dispels the myth that human nature is impossibly reckless and highlights the surprising practices each of us can adopt in our own lives—and the ones we must fight for as a society. The result is a book brimming with the ideas and insights all of us need in order to forge a better future.
Download or read book Learned Optimism written by Martin E.P. Seligman and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-08-10 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The father of positive psychology draws on more than twenty years of clinical research to show you how to overcome depression, boost your immune system, and make yourself happier. "Vaulted me out of my funk.... So, fellow moderate pessimists, go buy this book." —The New York Times Book Review Offering many simple techniques anyone can practice, Dr. Seligman explains how to break an “I–give–up” habit, develop a more constructive explanatory style for interpreting your behavior, and experience the benefits of a more positive interior dialogue. With generous additional advice on how to encourage optimistic behavior at school, at work and in children, Learned Optimism is both profound and practical—and valuable for every phase of life.
Download or read book Start with Why written by Simon Sinek and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-12-27 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspirational bestseller that ignited a movement and asked us to find our WHY Discover the book that is captivating millions on TikTok and that served as the basis for one of the most popular TED Talks of all time—with more than 56 million views and counting. Over a decade ago, Simon Sinek started a movement that inspired millions to demand purpose at work, to ask what was the WHY of their organization. Since then, millions have been touched by the power of his ideas, and these ideas remain as relevant and timely as ever. START WITH WHY asks (and answers) the questions: why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over? People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers had little in common, but they all started with WHY. They realized that people won't truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it. START WITH WHY shows that the leaders who have had the greatest influence in the world all think, act and communicate the same way—and it's the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.
Download or read book Leave Me Alone and I ll Make You Rich written by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-10-30 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “thought-provoking” one-volume distillation of the author’s powerful trilogy in praise of the middle class’s role in creating a better, and richer, world (Library Journal). The economist and historian Deirdre Nansen McCloskey has been best known recently for her Bourgeois Era trilogy, a vigorous defense, unrivaled in scope, of commercially tested betterment. Its massive volumes, The Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity, and Bourgeois Equality, solve Adam Smith’s puzzle of the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, and of the moral sentiments of modernity. The world got rich, she argues, not chiefly by material causes but by an idea and a sentiment, a new admiration for the middle class and its egalitarian liberalism. For readers looking for a distillation of McCloskey’s magisterial work, Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich is what you’ve been waiting for. In this lively volume, McCloskey and the economist and journalist Art Carden bring together the trilogy’s key ideas and its most provocative arguments. The rise of the west, and now the rest, is the story of the rise of ordinary people to a dignity and liberty inspiring them to have a go. The outcome was an explosion of innovation after 1800, and a rise of real income by an astounding 3,000 percent. The Great Enrichment, well beyond the conventional Industrial Revolution, did not, McCloskey and Carden show, come from the usual suspects, capital accumulation or class struggle. It came from the idea of economic liberty in Holland and the Anglosphere, then Sweden and Japan, then Italy and Israel and China and India, an idea that bids fair in the next few generations to raise up the wretched of the earth. The original shift to liberalism arose from 1517 to 1789 from theological and political revolutions in northwest Europe, upending ancient hierarchies. McCloskey and Carden contend further that liberalism and “innovism” made us better humans as well as richer ones. Not matter but ideas. Not corruption but improvement. Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich draws in entertaining fashion on history, economics, literature, philosophy, and popular culture, from growth theory to the Simpsons. It is the perfect introduction for a broad audience to McCloskey’s influential explanation of how we got rich. At a time when confidence in the economic system is under challenge, this book mounts an optimistic and persuasive defense of liberal innovism, and of the modern world it has wrought. Praise for the Bourgeois Era Trilogy “A contender for the great book of our age.” —The Times, Book of the Week “Persuasive . . . richly detailed and erudite.” —Financial Times
