The Great Mental Models, Volume 1


Book Description

Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.




The Long Game


Book Description

Now in paperback with a foreword by President Donald J. Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's memoir shows how one of the most successful public figures of our time has worked to advance conservative values in Washington. Under Mitch McConnell’s famously quiet and strategic leadership, Republicans in the Senate have seen win after win—from tax cuts and deregulation to major improvements for veterans, farmers, and our national defense. In 2018, President Donald Trump dubbed McConnell “the greatest leader in history”—and even his harshest critics on the Left acknowledge his skill. Now with a new foreword by President Trump and an afterword that details McConnell’s friendship with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, this paperback edition of McConnell’s memoir reveals the backdrop of his decision not to fill Scalia’s vacant seat until after the 2016 presidential election. Of this decision, New York Times chief Washington correspondent Carl Hulse wrote that “McConnell not only preserved a Supreme Court seat, he elected Donald Trump president.” The years of the McConnell-led Senate have proved that lasting change can only be won by playing the long game. Leading up to the 2020 election, when the system of government our Founding Fathers created will again be threatened by the Left, this book is necessary reading for anyone who wants to avoid repeating the mistakes of our recent past.




Winning the Loser's Game


Book Description

"Winning the Loser's Game is considered by many to be a classic analysis of investing."­­Financial Planning The premise of the bestselling Winning the Loser's Game­­that individual investors can achieve far greater success working with financial markets than against them­­has grown increasingly popular in today's hard-to-predict markets. The latest edition of this concise yet comprehensive classic offers updated strategies to leverage the power of time and compounding, protect against down cycles, and more.




Mustang Miracle


Book Description

In 1957, when very few Mexican-Americans were familiar with the game of golf, and even less actually played it, a group of young caddies which had been recruited to form the San Felipe High School Golf Team by two men who loved the game, but who had limited access to it, competed against all-white schools for the Texas State High School Golf Championship. Despite having outdated and inferior equipment, no professional lessons or instructions, four young golfers with self-taught swings from the border city of Del Rio, captured the State title. Three of them took the gold, silver and bronze medals for best individual players. This book tells their story from their introduction to the game as caddies to eventually becoming champions.




The Long Game


Book Description

A Wall Street Journal Bestseller Your personal goals need a long-term strategy. It's no secret that we're pushed to the limit. Today's professionals feel rushed, overwhelmed, and perennially behind. So we keep our heads down, focused on the next thing, and the next, without a moment to breathe. How can we break out of this endless cycle and create the kind of interesting, meaningful lives we all seek? Just as CEOs who optimize for quarterly profits often fail to make the strategic investments necessary for long-term growth, the same is true in our own personal and professional lives. We need to reorient ourselves to see the big picture so we can tap into the power of small changes that, made today, will have an enormous and disproportionate impact on our future success. We need to start playing The Long Game. As top business thinker and Duke University professor Dorie Clark explains, we all know intellectually that lasting success takes persistence and effort. And yet so much of the relentless pressure in our culture pushes us toward doing what's easy, what's guaranteed, or what looks glamorous in the moment. In The Long Game, she argues for a different path. It's about doing small things over time to achieve our goals—and being willing to keep at them, even when they seem pointless, boring, or hard. In The Long Game, Clark shares unique principles and frameworks you can apply to your specific situation, as well as vivid stories from her own career and other professionals' experiences. Everyone is allotted the same twenty-four hours—but with the right strategies, you can leverage those hours in more efficient and powerful ways than you ever imagined. It's never an overnight process, but the long-term payoff is immense: to finally break out of the frenetic day-to-day routine and transform your life and your career.




The Long Game


Book Description

For more than a century, no US adversary or coalition of adversaries - not Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or the Soviet Union - has ever reached sixty percent of US GDP. China is the sole exception, and it is fast emerging into a global superpower that could rival, if not eclipse, the United States. What does China want, does it have a grand strategy to achieve it, and what should the United States do about it? In The Long Game, Rush Doshi draws from a rich base of Chinese primary sources, including decades worth of party documents, leaked materials, memoirs by party leaders, and a careful analysis of China's conduct to provide a history of China's grand strategy since the end of the Cold War. Taking readers behind the Party's closed doors, he uncovers Beijing's long, methodical game to displace America from its hegemonic position in both the East Asia regional and global orders through three sequential "strategies of displacement." Beginning in the 1980s, China focused for two decades on "hiding capabilities and biding time." After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, it became more assertive regionally, following a policy of "actively accomplishing something." Finally, in the aftermath populist elections of 2016, China shifted to an even more aggressive strategy for undermining US hegemony, adopting the phrase "great changes unseen in century." After charting how China's long game has evolved, Doshi offers a comprehensive yet asymmetric plan for an effective US response. Ironically, his proposed approach takes a page from Beijing's own strategic playbook to undermine China's ambitions and strengthen American order without competing dollar-for-dollar, ship-for-ship, or loan-for-loan.




Winning the Long Game


Book Description

Are you winning the battle but losing the war? Every leader has to deliver the goods -- make budget, meet deadlines, and deftly manage people -- to provide the inspirational fuel that keeps their business running day-in and day-out. But therein lies the danger of winning today's battle and losing the war -- that is the long game of creating sustainable value in a volatile, uncertain world that is becoming ever-more complex and ambiguous. The number one business challenge -- is winning the long game by being more strategic; developing the skills to look outside the four walls of the organization and see the world from the future back. Steven Krupp and Paul J. H. Schoemaker bridge the gap between what many see as the separate domains of strategy and leadership to show how to develop the discipline of strategic leadership in a world of growing uncertainty. Pragmatic to the core, Winning the Long Game creates vivid insights into the discipline of strategic leadership by applying it systemically through personal portraits of successful business leaders. The book profiles Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Sara Blakely, as well as world-renowned figures like Pope Francis, Oprah Winfrey, and Nelson Mandela. What makes these strategic leaders successful is highlighted by contrasting them with others who are either mediocre or outright failures. Winning the Long Game is the must-have playbook for every leader and for any manager seeking to be become more strategic in today's topsy-turvy world.




The Long Game


Book Description

"Describes how President Obama has changed and improved the course of American foreign policy through the way he approached difficult global challenges including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, turbulence in Syria and the rise of ISIS, "--NoveList.




Losing the Long Game


Book Description

One of Foreign Affairs' Best of Books of 2021 and "Books For The Century"! "Book of the Week" on Fareed Zakaria GPS Financial Times Best Books of 2020 The definitive account of how regime change in the Middle East has proven so tempting to American policymakers for decades—and why it always seems to go wrong. "It's a first-rate work, intelligently analyzing a complex issue, and learning the right lessons from history." —Fareed Zakaria Since the end of World War II, the United States has set out to oust governments in the Middle East on an average of once per decade—in places as diverse as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan (twice), Egypt, Libya, and Syria. The reasons for these interventions have also been extremely diverse, and the methods by which the United States pursued regime change have likewise been highly varied, ranging from diplomatic pressure alone to outright military invasion and occupation. What is common to all the operations, however, is that they failed to achieve their ultimate goals, produced a range of unintended and even catastrophic consequences, carried heavy financial and human costs, and in many cases left the countries in question worse off than they were before. Philip H. Gordon's Losing the Long Game is a thorough and riveting look at the U.S. experience with regime change over the past seventy years, and an insider’s view on U.S. policymaking in the region at the highest levels. It is the story of repeated U.S. interventions in the region that always started out with high hopes and often the best of intentions, but never turned out well. No future discussion of U.S. policy in the Middle East will be complete without taking into account the lessons of the past, especially at a time of intense domestic polarization and reckoning with America's standing in world.




The Infinite Game


Book Description

From the New York Times bestselling author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last, a bold framework for leadership in today’s ever-changing world. How do we win a game that has no end? Finite games, like football or chess, have known players, fixed rules and a clear endpoint. The winners and losers are easily identified. Infinite games, games with no finish line, like business or politics, or life itself, have players who come and go. The rules of an infinite game are changeable while infinite games have no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers—only ahead and behind. The question is, how do we play to succeed in the game we’re in? In this revelatory new book, Simon Sinek offers a framework for leading with an infinite mindset. On one hand, none of us can resist the fleeting thrills of a promotion earned or a tournament won, yet these rewards fade quickly. In pursuit of a Just Cause, we will commit to a vision of a future world so appealing that we will build it week after week, month after month, year after year. Although we do not know the exact form this world will take, working toward it gives our work and our life meaning. Leaders who embrace an infinite mindset build stronger, more innovative, more inspiring organizations. Ultimately, they are the ones who lead us into the future.