Download or read book A Bigger Prize written by Margaret Heffernan and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Co-winner of the 2015 Salon London Transmission Prize Get into the best schools. Land your next big promotion. Dress for success. Run faster. Play tougher. Work harder. Keep score. And whatever you do -- make sure you win. Competition runs through every aspect of our lives today. From the cubicle to the race track, in business and love, religion and science, what matters now is to be the biggest, fastest, meanest, toughest, richest. The upshot of all these contests? As Margaret Heffernan shows in this eye-opening book, competition regularly backfires, producing an explosion of cheating, corruption, inequality, and risk. The demolition derby of modern life has damaged our ability to work together. But it doesn't have to be this way. CEOs, scientists, engineers, investors, and inventors around the world are pioneering better ways to create great products, build enduring businesses, and grow relationships. Their secret? Generosity. Trust. Time. Theater. From the cranberry bogs of Massachusetts to the classrooms of Singapore and Finland, from tiny start-ups to global engineering firms and beloved American organizations -- like Ocean Spray, Eileen Fisher, Gore, and Boston Scientific -- Heffernan discovers ways of living and working that foster creativity, spark innovation, reinforce our social fabric, and feel so much better than winning.
Download or read book A Bigger Prize written by Margaret Heffernan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-02-27 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the 100 best behavioural economic books of all time recommended by Jeff Bezos, Tim Ferriss, Satya Nadella, Brian Tracy and Erik Brynjolfsson. The Olympics. Britain's Got Talent. The Rich List. The Nobel Prize. Everywhere you look: competition - for fame, money, attention, status. We depend on competition and expect it to identify the best, make complicated decisions easy and, most of all, to motivate the lazy and inspire the dreamers. How has that worked out so far? Rising levels of fraud, cheating, stress, inequality and political stalemates abound. Siblings won't speak to each other they're so rivalrous. Kids can't make friends because they don't want to cede their top class ranking to their fellow students. (Their parents don't want them to either.) The richest men in the world sulk when they fall a notch or two in the rich list. Doping proliferates among athletes. Auditors and fund managers go to jail for insider trading. Our dog-eat-dog culture has decimated companies, incapacitated collaborators and sown distrust. Winners take all while the desire to win consumes all, inciting panic and despair. Just as we have learned that individuals aren't rational and markets aren't efficient but went ahead operating as though they were, we now know that competition quite regularly doesn't work, the best do not always rise to the top and the so-called efficiency of competition throws off a very great deal of waste. It might be comforting to designate these 'perverse outcomes' but as aberrations mount, they start to look more like a norm. It doesn't have to be that way. Around the world, individuals and organizations are finding creative, collaborative ways to work that don't pit people against each other but support them in their desire to work together. While the rest of the world remains mired in pitiless sniping, racing to the bottom, the future belongs to the people and companies who have learned that they are greater working together than against one another. Some call that soft but it's harder than anything they've done before. They are the real winners.
Download or read book The Big Door Prize written by M. O. Walsh and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling author of My Sunshine Away returns with another instant Southern classic: a gripping and heartfelt novel about a mysterious machine that upends a small Louisiana town, asking us all to wonder if who we truly are is who we truly could be. What would you do if you knew your life's potential? That's the question facing the residents of Deerfield, Louisiana, when the DNAMIX machine appears in their local grocery store. It's nothing to look at, really--it resembles a plain photo booth. But its promise is amazing: With just a quick swab of your cheek and two dollars, the device claims to use the science of DNA to tell you your life's potential. With enough credibility to make the townspeople curious, soon the former teachers, nurses, and shopkeepers of Deerfield are abruptly changing course to pursue their destinies as magicians, cowboys, and athletes--including the novel's main characters, Douglas Hubbard and his wife, Cherilyn, who both believed they were perfectly happy until they realized they could dream for more... Written with linguistic grace and a sense of wonder, The Big Door Prize sparkles with keen observations about what it might mean to stay true to oneself while honoring the bonds of marriage, friendship, and community, and how the glimmer of possibility can pull these bonds apart, bring them back together, and make second chances possible, even under the strangest of circumstances.
Download or read book A Bigger Prize written by Denis Gray and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2013-07 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When trainer Frank Black Machine Whaley of View Point, Texas, dies of a heart attack in 1946, Elegant Raines, an eighteen-year-old black prizefighter, must find a new trainer. Raines calls on Leemore Pee-Pot Manners, a boxing trainer who lives in Longwood, West Virginia. Any honest man would say Pee-Pot knows more about boxing than anyone alive whether that man is black or white. Raines's goal is to become the heavyweight champion of the world. Under Pee-Pot's tutelage Raines wins not only the middleweight championship, but the light heavyweight championship, marking him as one of the greatest fighters of his time. During his quest for the title, Raines falls in love with Gem Loving, a pastor's daughter whose father, Pastor Embry O. Loving, maintains a dim view of fighters. Gem must fight for Raines in ways her father will condemn. A Bigger Prize tells a fictional story of the boxing world in the 1940s and what the sport meant to both blacks and whites of the time. It considers the question of whether Elegant Raines's bigger prize is the world's heavyweight championship or something outside the ring more violent than boxing and its reward.
Download or read book Beyond Measure written by Margaret Heffernan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foundational introduction to the concept that organizations create major impacts by making small changes.
Download or read book The Prize written by Daniel Yergin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 1094 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Prize recounts the panoramic history of oil -- and the struggle for wealth power that has always surrounded oil. This struggle has shaken the world economy, dictated the outcome of wars, and transformed the destiny of men and nations. The Prize is as much a history of the twentieth century as of the oil industry itself. The canvas of this history is enormous -- from the drilling of the first well in Pennsylvania through two great world wars to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Operation Desert Storm. The cast extends from wildcatters and rogues to oil tycoons, and from Winston Churchill and Ibn Saud to George Bush and Saddam Hussein. The definitive work on the subject of oil and a major contribution to understanding our century, The Prize is a book of extraordinary breadth, riveting excitement -- and great importance.
Download or read book Losing the Nobel Prize A Story of Cosmology Ambition and the Perils of Science s Highest Honor written by Brian Keating and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Riveting."—Science A Forbes, Physics Today, Science News, and Science Friday Best Science Book Of 2018 Cosmologist and inventor of the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) experiment, Brian Keating tells the inside story of the mesmerizing quest to unlock cosmology’s biggest mysteries and the human drama that ensued. We follow along on a personal journey of revelation and discovery in the publish-or-perish world of modern science, and learn that the Nobel Prize might hamper—rather than advance—scientific progress. Fortunately, Keating offers practical solutions for reform, providing a vision of a scientific future in which cosmologists may finally be able to see all the way back to the very beginning.
Download or read book The Economy of Prestige written by James F. English and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-15 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about one of the great untold stories of modern cultural life: the remarkable ascendancy of prizes in literature and the arts. Such prizes and the competitions they crown are almost as old as the arts themselves, but their number and power--and their consequences for society and culture at large--have expanded to an unprecedented degree in our day. In a wide-ranging overview of this phenomenon, James F. English documents the dramatic rise of the awards industry and its complex role within what he describes as an economy of cultural prestige. Observing that cultural prizes in their modern form originate at the turn of the twentieth century with the institutional convergence of art and competitive spectator sports, English argues that they have in recent decades undergone an important shift--a more genuine and far-reaching globalization than what has occurred in the economy of material goods. Focusing on the cultural prize in its contemporary form, his book addresses itself broadly to the economic dimensions of culture, to the rules or logic of exchange in the market for what has come to be called "cultural capital." In the wild proliferation of prizes, English finds a key to transformations in the cultural field as a whole. And in the specific workings of prizes, their elaborate mechanics of nomination and election, presentation and acceptance, sponsorship, publicity, and scandal, he uncovers evidence of the new arrangements and relationships that have refigured that field.
Download or read book Eyes on the Prize written by Juan Williams and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-09-03 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eyes on the Prize traces the movement from the landmark Brown v. the Board of Education case in 1954 to the march on Selma and the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. This is a companion volume to the first part of the acclaimed PBS series.
Download or read book The Prize written by Dale Russakoff and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2015 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As serialized in the New Yorker, a roiling, behind-the-scenes look at the high-pressure race to turn around Newark's failing schools, with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Governor Chris Christie, and Senator Cory Booker in eyebrow-raising leading roles
Download or read book A Visit from the Goon Squad written by Jennifer Egan and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2010-06-08 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE WINNER • With music pulsing on every page, this startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption “features characters about whom you come to care deeply as you watch them doing things they shouldn't, acting gloriously, infuriatingly human” (The Chicago Tribune). One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs. “Pitch perfect.... Darkly, rippingly funny.... Egan possesses a satirist’s eye and a romance novelist’s heart.” —The New York Times Book Review
Download or read book Willful Blindness written by Margaret Heffernan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “With deft prose and page after page of keen insights, Heffernan shows why we close our eyes to facts that threaten our families, our livelihood, and our self-image--and, even better, she points the way out of the darkness.” --Daniel H. Pink In the tradition of Malcolm Gladwell and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Margaret Heffernan's Willful Blindness is a tour de force on human behavior that will open your eyes. Why, after every major accident and blunder, do we look back and say, How could we have been so blind? Why do some people see what others don't? And how can we change? Drawing on studies by psychologists and neuroscientists, and from interviews with business leaders, whistleblowers, and white collar criminals, distinguished businesswoman and writer Margaret Heffernan examines the phenomenon of willful blindness, exploring the reasons that individuals and groups are blind to impending personal tragedies, corporate collapses, engineering failures-even crimes against humanity. We turn a blind eye in order to feel safe, to avoid conflict, to reduce anxiety, and to protect prestige. But greater understanding leads to solutions, and Heffernan shows how-by challenging our biases, encouraging debate, discouraging conformity, and not backing away from difficult or complicated problems-we can be more mindful of what's going on around us and be proactive instead of reactive.
Download or read book Contest written by Matthew Reilly and published by Pan Australia. This book was released on 2007-11-10 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thrilling international bestseller from Australia's favourite novelist, author of the Scarecrow series and Jack West Jr series with new novel Mr Einstein's Secretary out now. "Reilly hurls readers into an adrenaline-drenched thrill ride ... impossible to put down." Orlando Sentinel "Reilly ... can inspire awe. Speed demons, take note." Publishers Weekly The New York State Library. A silent sanctuary of knowledge; a 100-year-old labyrinth of towering bookcases, narrow aisles and spiralling staircases. For Doctor Stephen Swain and his eight-year-old daughter, Holly, it is the site of a nightmare. For one night, the State Library is to be the venue for a contest. A contest in which Stephen Swain is to compete - whether he likes it or not. The rules are simple: seven contestants will enter, only one will leave. With his daughter in his arms, Swain is plunged into a terrifying fight for survival. He can choose to run, to hide or to fight - but if he wants to live, he has to win. Because in a contest like this, unless you leave as the victor, you do not leave at all. Fans of Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton will love Matthew Reilly.
Download or read book ONE Very Big Bear written by Alice Brière-Haquet and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As far as he can tell, Bear is the biggest thing around. He might even be a giant! It's not long before other, smaller animals set him straight in this charmingly illustrated book about counting and relative size. Together, two walruses, three foxes, and so on, are the same size as Bear, each teasing him for foolishly thinking that there is nothing bigger than he. When six sardines arrive to tell Bear that together, they are just as big as he is, Bear has had enough and gobbles them up for breakfast.
Download or read book Am I Big Or Little written by Margaret Park Bridges and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2004-10-07 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mother provides examples of how her toddler is both big and little, including little enough to ride through the park in a stroller but big enough to make the pigeons fly away. 3-7 yrs.
Download or read book The Book of Mother written by Violaine Huisman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book A Library Journal Best Book of 2021 A “marvelous…superbly effective” (The New Yorker) debut novel about a young woman coming of age with a dazzling yet damaged mother who lived and loved in extremes. Met by rave reviews in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and more, this stunning translation of Violaine Huisman’s “witty, immersive autofiction showcases a Parisian childhood with a charismatic, depressed parent” (Oprah Daily). Beautiful and magnetic, Catherine, a.k.a. “Maman,” smokes too much, drives too fast, laughs too hard, and loves too extravagantly, and her daughter Violaine wouldn’t have it any other way. But when Maman is hospitalized after a third divorce and a breakdown, everything changes. Even as Violaine and her sister long for their mother’s return, once she’s back Maman’s violent mood swings and flagrant disregard for personal boundaries soon turn their home into an emotional landmine. As the story of Catherine’s own traumatic childhood and adolescence unfolds, the pieces come together to form an indelible portrait of a mother as irresistible as she is impossible, as triumphant as she is transgressive. With spectacular ferocity of language, a streak of dark humor, and stunning emotional bravery, The Book of Mother is an exquisitely wrought story of a mother’s dizzying heights and devastating lows, and a daughter who must hold her memory close in order to surrender, and finally move on.
Download or read book The Beginner s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize written by Peter Doherty and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Beginner's Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize, Doherty recounts his unlikely path to becoming a Nobel Laureate. Beginning with his humble origins in Australia, he tells how he developed an interest in immunology and describes his award-winning, influential work with Rolf Zinkernagel on T-cells and the nature of immune defense. In prose that is at turns amusing and astute, Doherty reveals how his nonconformist upbringing, sense of being an outsider, and search for different perspectives have shaped his life and work. Doherty offers a rare, insider's look at the realities of being a research scientist. He lucidly explains his own scientific work and how research projects are selected, funded, and organized; the major problems science is trying to solve; and the rewards and pitfalls of a career in scientific research. For Doherty, science still plays an important role in improving the world, and he argues that scientists need to do a better job of making their work more accessible to the public. Throughout the book, Doherty explores the stories of past Nobel winners and considers some of the crucial scientific debates of our time, including the safety of genetically modified foods and the tensions between science and religion. He concludes with some "tips" on how to win a Nobel Prize, including advice on being persistent, generous, and culturally aware, and he stresses the value of evidence. The Beginner's Guide to Winning the Noble Prize is essential reading for anyone interested in a career in science.
