Obsessives, Pioneers, and Other Varieties of Minor Genius


Book Description

!--StartFragment--What is the difference between choking and panicking? Why are there dozens of varieties of mustard-but only one variety of ketchup? What do football players teach us about how to hire teachers? What does hair dye tell us about the history of the 20th century? In the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has written three books that have radically changed how we understand our world and ourselves: The Tipping Point; Blink; and Outliers. Now, in What the Dog Saw, he brings together, for the first time, the best of his writing from The New Yorker over the same period. Here is the bittersweet tale of the inventor of the birth control pill, and the dazzling inventions of the pasta sauce pioneer Howard Moscowitz. Gladwell sits with Ron Popeil, the king of the American kitchen, as he sells rotisserie ovens, and divines the secrets of Cesar Millan, the "dog whisperer" who can calm savage animals with the touch of his hand. He explores intelligence tests and ethnic profiling and "hindsight bias" and why it was that everyone in Silicon Valley once tripped over themselves to hire the same college graduate. "Good writing," Gladwell says in his preface, "does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head." What the Dog Saw is yet another example of the buoyant spirit and unflagging curiosity that have made Malcolm Gladwell our most brilliant investigator of the hidden extraordinary. !--EndFragment--




Handbook of Research on Autopoiesis and Self-Sustaining Processes for Organizational Success


Book Description

Autopoietic systems show a remarkable property in the way they interact with their environment: on the one hand building blocks and energy (including information) are exchanged with the environment, which characterizes them as open systems; on the other hand, any functional mechanisms—the way the system processes, incorporates building blocks, and responds to information—are totally self-determined and cannot be controlled by interventions from the environment. Information systems in an organization seem to accept the autopoietic system way of development and can help managers to understand the operations of their organizations better. The Handbook of Research on Autopoiesis and Self-Sustaining Processes for Organizational Success is an innovative reference book that presents the meaning of autopoietic organizations for social and information science, examines how autopoietic organizations are information self-producing and self-controlled, and provides a framework for its development in modern organizations. The book focuses on analyzing autopoiesis features such as self-managing, self-sustaining, self-producing, self-regulating, etc. Moreover, as the aforementioned characteristics receive a new interpretation in IT environments, the book also includes an exploration of IT solutions that enable the development of these characteristics. This book is ideal for professionals, academicians, researchers, and students working in the field of information economics and management in various disciplines such as information and communication sciences, administrative sciences and management, education, computer science, and information technology.




Quicklet on What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell


Book Description

Quicklets: Learn More. Read Less. Malcolm Gladwell is a bestselling author, journalist, and speaker. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996, and reported on business and science for The Washington Post from 1987 to 1996. He has written four books, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference (2000), Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005), Outliers: The Story of Success (2008), and What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (2009). All four of these books were New York Times Bestsellers. His 1999 profile in the The New Yorker of Ron Popeil won a National Magazine Award, and in 2005 he was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People. Gladwell was born in England, grew up in Ontario, and currently lives in New York City. What the Dog Saw is a compilation of stories published in The New Yorker. It debuted at #3 on the New York Times Bestseller List, where it stayed within the top 3 listings for 3 weeks, and spent a total of 16 weeks on the list. It was an Amazon.com Top 25 seller for the month of November 2009. What the Dog Saw was also named to Bloomberg's Top Business Books of 2009.




To Live and Defy in LA


Book Description

How gangsta rap shocked America, made millions, and pulled back the curtain on an urban crisis. How is it that gangsta rap—so dystopian that it struck aspiring Brooklyn rapper and future superstar Jay-Z as “over the top”—was born in Los Angeles, the home of Hollywood, surf, and sun? In the Reagan era, hip-hop was understood to be the music of the inner city and, with rare exception, of New York. Rap was considered the poetry of the street, and it was thought to breed in close quarters, the product of dilapidated tenements, crime-infested housing projects, and graffiti-covered subway cars. To many in the industry, LA was certainly not hard-edged and urban enough to generate authentic hip-hop; a new brand of black rebel music could never come from La-La Land. But it did. In To Live and Defy in LA, Felicia Viator tells the story of the young black men who built gangsta rap and changed LA and the world. She takes readers into South Central, Compton, Long Beach, and Watts two decades after the long hot summer of 1965. This was the world of crack cocaine, street gangs, and Daryl Gates, and it was the environment in which rappers such as Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Eazy-E came of age. By the end of the 1980s, these self-styled “ghetto reporters” had fought their way onto the nation’s radio and TV stations and thus into America’s consciousness, mocking law-and-order crusaders, exposing police brutality, outraging both feminists and traditionalists with their often retrograde treatment of sex and gender, and demanding that America confront an urban crisis too often ignored.




Marketing Greatest Hits Volume 2


Book Description

Hard on the heels of the popular Marketing Greatest Hits comes volume II, the definitive compendium of everything you need to know from the best minds in modern marketing - abridged, condensed, and ready for immediate action. As well as saving hundreds of hours of reading time, the reader is able to grasp ideas with pithy accuracy, explain them authoritatively to colleagues and, crucially, avoid being hoodwinked by those who claim to understand a concept when in fact they have got the wrong end of the stick. 40 books are summarised in six short chapters, one-minute summaries, and one-sentence summaries to give an immediate feel for the subjects. All the wisdom forms an intriguing 40-point manifesto to inspire your approach.




Personality, Character, and Intelligence


Book Description

!--StartFragment--What is the difference between choking and panicking? Why are there dozens of varieties of mustard-but only one variety of ketchup? What do football players teach us about how to hire teachers? What does hair dye tell us about the history of the 20th century? In the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has written three books that have radically changed how we understand our world and ourselves: The Tipping Point; Blink; and Outliers. Now, in What the Dog Saw, he brings together, for the first time, the best of his writing from The New Yorker over the same period. Here is the bittersweet tale of the inventor of the birth control pill, and the dazzling inventions of the pasta sauce pioneer Howard Moscowitz. Gladwell sits with Ron Popeil, the king of the American kitchen, as he sells rotisserie ovens, and divines the secrets of Cesar Millan, the "dog whisperer" who can calm savage animals with the touch of his hand. He explores intelligence tests and ethnic profiling and "hindsight bias" and why it was that everyone in Silicon Valley once tripped over themselves to hire the same college graduate. "Good writing," Gladwell says in his preface, "does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head." What the Dog Saw is yet another example of the buoyant spirit and unflagging curiosity that have made Malcolm Gladwell our most brilliant investigator of the hidden extraordinary. !--EndFragment--




Obsessive Genius


Book Description

"Using original research (diaries, letters, and family interviews) to peel away the layers of myth, Goldsmith offers a portrait of Marie Curie, her amazing discoveries, and the immense price she paid for fame."--BOOK JACKET.




What the Dog Saw


Book Description

Malcolm Gladwell is the master of playful yet profound insight. And in What the Dog Saw his adventurous curiosity is at full stretch, as he takes everyday subjects and shows us surprising new ways of looking at them. What can hair dye tell us about the history of the twentieth century? Why are there dozens of varieties of mustard but only one of ketchup? What didn't the inventor of the birth control pill know about women's health? Why may a problem like homelessness be easier to solve than to manage? Who do we hire when we can't tell who's right for the job? What's the difference between choking and panicking? What can pit bulls teach us about crime? And are smart people actually rather overrated? Gladwell introduces us to obsessives, pioneers and other varieties of minor genius, diagnoses some of our greatest and most overlooked problems, and explores the confounding mysteries of our characters, personalities and intelligence. What the Dog Saw is Malcolm Gladwell at his very best, as he shows us the intriguing story within everyone and everything. Whether it's criminal profiling or dog training, Gladwell always gives us a completely new perspective, and a glimpse into someone else's head.




Signifying Rappers


Book Description

David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello's exuberant exploration of rap music and culture. Living together in Cambridge in 1989, David Foster Wallace and longtime friend Mark Costello discovered that they shared "an uncomfortable, somewhat furtive, and distinctively white enthusiasm for a certain music called rap/hip-hop." The book they wrote together, set against the legendary Boston music scene, mapped the bipolarities of rap and pop, rebellion and acceptance, glitz and gangsterdom. Signifying Rappers issued a fan's challenge to the giants of rock writing, Greil Marcus, Robert Palmer, and Lester Bangs: Could the new street beats of 1989 set us free, as rock had always promised? Back in print at last, Signifying Rappers is a rare record of a city and a summer by two great thinkers, writers, and friends. With a new foreword by Mark Costello on his experience writing with David Foster Wallace, this rerelease cannot be missed.




Hetty


Book Description

When J. P. Morgan called a meeting of New York's financial leaders after the stock market crash of 1907, Hetty Green was the only woman in the room. The Guinness Book of World Records memorialized her as the World's Greatest Miser, and, indeed, this unlikely robber baron -- who parlayed a comfortable inheritance into a fortune that was worth about 1.6 billion in today's dollars -- was frugal to a fault. But in an age when women weren't even allowed to vote, never mind concern themselves with interest rates, she lived by her own rules. In Hetty, Charles Slack reexamines her life and legacy, giving us, at long last, a splendidly "nuanced portrait" (Newsweek) of one of the greatest -- and most eccentric -- financiers in American history. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.