Radley Balko

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

New Mexico

The Militarization of America's Police Forces

The last days of colonialism taught America's revolutionaries that soldiers in the streets bring conflict and tyranny. As a result, our country has generally worked to keep the military out of law enforcement. But according to investigative reporter Radley Balko, over the last several decades, America's cops have increasingly come to resemble ground troops. The consequences have been dire: the home is no longer a place of sanctuary, the Fourth Amendment has been gutted, and police today have been conditioned to see the citizens they serve as an other--an enemy.

Today's armored-up policemen are a far cry from the constables of early America. The unrest of the 1960s brought about the invention of the SWAT unit--which in turn led to the debut of military tactics in the ranks of police officers. Nixon's War on Drugs, Reagan's War on Poverty, Clinton's COPS program, the post-9/11 security state under Bush and Obama: by degrees, each of these innovations expanded and empowered police forces, always at the expense of civilliberties. And these are just four among a slew of reckless programs.

InRise of the Warrior Cop, Balko shows how politicians' ill-considered policies and relentless declarations of war against vague enemies like crime, drugs, and terror have blurred the distinction between cop and soldier. His fascinating, frightening narrative shows how over a generation, a creeping battlefield mentality has isolated and alienated American police officers and put them on a collision course with the values of a free society.


Rise of the Warrior Cop

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Jonathan Witt

Jay W. Richards

James V. Schall

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

The Vision of Freedom That Tolkien Got, and the West Forgot

Anyone who has read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings can gather that their author hated tyranny, but few know that the novelist who once described himself as a hobbit "in all but size" was--even by hobbit standards--a zealous proponent of economic freedom and small government. There is a growing concern among many that the West is sliding into political, economic, and moral bankruptcy. In his beloved novels of Middle-Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien has drawn us a map to freedom.

Scholar Joseph Pearce, who himself has written articles and chapters on the political significance of Tolkien's work, testified in his book Literary Giants, Literary Catholics, "If much has been written on the religious significance of The Lord of the Rings, less has been written on its political significance--and the little that has been written is often erroneous in its conclusions and ignorant of Tolkien's intentions.... Much more work is needed in this area, not least because Tolkien stated, implicitly at least, that the political significance of the work was second only to the religious in its importance."

Several books ably explore how Tolkien's Catholic faith informed his fiction. None until now have centered on how his passion for liberty and limited government also shaped his work, or how this passion grew directly from his theological vision of man and creation. The Hobbit Party fills this void.

The few existing pieces that do focus on the subject are mostly written by scholars with little or no formal training in literary analysis, and even less training in political economy. Witt and Richards bring to The Hobbit Party a combined expertise in literary studies, political theory, economics, philosophy, and theology.

The Hobbit Party

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Vanessa Van Edwards

The Science of Succeeding with People

Do you feel awkward at networking events? Do you wonder what your date really thinks of you? Do you wish you could decode people? You need to learn the science of people.
 
As a human behavior hacker, Vanessa Van Edwards created a research lab to study the hidden forces that drive us. And she's cracked the code. In Captivate, she shares shortcuts, systems, and secrets for taking charge of your interactions at work, at home, and in any social situation. These aren't the people skills you learned in school. This is the first comprehensive, science backed, real life manual on how to captivate anyone--and a completely new approach to building connections.
 
Just like knowing the formulas to use in a chemistry lab, or the right programming language to build an app, Captivate provides simple ways to solve people problems. You'll learn, for example...
 
· How to work a room: Every party, networking event, and social situation has a predictable map. Discover the sweet spot for making the most connections.
· How to read faces: It's easier than you think to speed-read facial expressions and use them to predict people's emotions.
· How to talk to anyone: Every conversation can be memorable--once you learn how certain words generate the pleasure hormone dopamine in listeners.

When you understand the laws of human behavior, your influence, impact, and income will increase significantly. What's more, you will improve your interpersonal intelligence, make a killer first impression, and build rapport quickly and authentically in any situation--negotiations, interviews, parties, and pitches. You'll never interact the same way again.

Captivate

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Scott Stratten

Alison Stratten

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Everything Has Changed and Nothing Is Different

UnMarket to build trust and make lifelong customers! In 2009, Scott Stratten and Alison Stratten wrote the bestselling UnMarketing: Stop Marketing, Start Engaging and began a journey that would take them around the world sharing their message of engagement with corporations, entrepreneurs, and students.They are now back with this second edition, because Everything has Changed and Nothing is Different, with all the brilliance of the first edition, plus new content and commentary to reflect the rapidly changing landscape we all live, buy, and work in today. For generations, marketing has been hypocritical. We've been taught to market to others in ways we hate being marketed to (cold-calling, flyers, ads, etc.). So why do we still keep trying the same stale marketing moves? UnMarketing shows you how to unlearn the old ways and consistently attract and engage the right customers. You'll stop just pushing out your message and praying that it sticks somewhere. Potential and current customers want to be listened to, validated, and have a platform to be heard-especially online. With UnMarketing, you'll create a relationship with your customers, and make yourself the logical choice for their needs. We know you've been told to act like other people, talk like other people, and market like all the people, but it is time for you to unlearn everything and start to UnMarket yourself. UnMarketing includes the latest information on: Idea Creation, Viral Marketing and Video, Marketing to Millennials, Authenticity, Transparency and Immediacy, Ethics and Affiliates, Social Media Platforming, UnPodcasting, Word of Mouth, Customer Service, Consumer Advocacy and Leadership. With examples of what to do, and what not to do, from small business right up to worldwide corporations in areas such as real estate, travel, service, retail, and B2B.

UnMarketing

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Brian J. Robertson

The New Management System for a Rapidly Changing World

Holacracy is a revolutionary management system that redefines management and turns everyone into a leader. Some of the many champions of Holacracy include Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com (author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Delivering Happiness).

Holacracy

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Eric Ries

How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

Outlines a revisionist approach to management while arguing against common perceptions about the inevitability of startup failures, explaining the importance of providing genuinely needed products and services as well as organizing a business that can adapt to continuous customer feedback.

The Lean Startup

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Virginia Postrel

How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness

From airport terminals decorated like Starbucks to the popularity of hair dye among teenage boys, one thing is clear: we have entered the Age of Aesthetics. Sensory appeals are everywhere, and they are intensifying, radically changing how Americans live and work. We expect every strip mall and city block to offer designer coffee, a copy shop with do-it-yourself graphics workstations, and a nail salon for manicures on demand. Every startup, product, or public space calls for an aesthetic touch, which gives us more choices, and more responsibility. By now, we all rely on style to express identity. And aesthetics has become too important to be left to the aesthetes. In this penetrating, keenly observed book, Virginia Postrel shows that the "look and feel" of people, places, and things are more important than we think. Aesthetic pleasure taps deep human instincts and is essential for creativity and growth. Drawing from fields as diverse as fashion, real estate, politics, design, and economics, Postrel deftly chronicles our culture’s aesthetic imperative and argues persuasively that it is a vital component of a healthy, forward-looking society. Intelligent, incisive, and thought provoking, The Substance of Style is a groundbreaking portrait of the democratization of taste and a brilliant examination of the way we live now.

The Substance of Style

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David T. Z. Mindich

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Why Americans under 40 Don't Follow the News

Drawing on interviews across the country with young professionals, college students, and even some preteens, the author of Just the Facts discovers that more young people are turning their backs on political news and explores the roots of the problem.

Tuned Out

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Steven D. Levitt

Stephen J. Dubner

Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

Freakonomics lived on the New York Times bestseller list for an astonishing two years. Now authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with more iconoclastic insights and observations in SuperFreakonomics--the long awaited follow-up to their New York Times Notable blockbuster. Based on revolutionary research and original studies SuperFreakonomics promises to once again challenge our view of the way the world really works.

SuperFreakonomics

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Charles G. Koch

How Market-Based Management Built the World's Largest Private Company

Praise for THE SCIENCE OF SUCCESS "Evaluating the success of an individual or company is a lot like judging a trapper by his pelts. Charles Koch has a lot of pelts. He has built Koch Industries into the world's largest privately held company, and this book is an insider's guide to how he did it. Koch has studied how markets work for decades, and his commitment to pass that knowledge on will inspire entrepreneurs for generations to come." —T. Boone Pickens "A must-read for entrepreneurs and corporate executives that is also applicable to the wider world. MBM is an invaluable tool for engendering excellence for all groups, from families to nonprofit entities. Government leaders could avoid policy failures by heeding the science of human behavior." —Richard L. Sharp, Chairman, CarMax "My father, Sam Walton, stressed the importance of fundamental principles—such as humility, integrity, respect, and creating value—that are the foundation for success. No one makes a better case for these principles than Charles Koch." —Rob Walton, Chairman, Wal-Mart "What accounts for Koch Industries' spectacular success? Charles Koch calls it Market-Based Management: a vision that nurtures personal qualities of humility and integrity that build trust and the confidence to enhance future success through learning from failure, and a culture of thinking in terms of opportunity cost and comparative advantage for all employees." —Vernon Smith, 2002 Nobel laureate in economics "In a very thoughtful, creative, and understandable way, Charles Koch explains how he has used the science of human behavior to create a culture that has produced one of the world's largest and most successful private companies. A must-read for anyone interested in creating value." —William B. Harrison Jr., Former Chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase & Co. "The same exacting thought, rooted in the realities of human nature, that the framers of the U.S. Constitution put into building a nation of entrepreneurs, Charles Koch has framed to build an enduring company of entrepreneurs—a company larger than Microsoft, Dell, HP, and other giants. Every entrepreneur should study this book." —Verne Harnish, founder, Young Entrepreneurs' Organization, author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, CEO, Gazelles Inc.

The Science of Success

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Steven Johnson

How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter

From the New York Times bestselling author of How We Got To Now and Farsighted

Forget everything you've ever read about the age of dumbed-down, instant-gratification culture. In this provocative, unfailingly intelligent, thoroughly researched, and surprisingly convincing big idea book, Steven Johnson draws from fields as diverse as neuroscience, economics, and media theory to argue that the pop culture we soak in every day--from Lord of the Rings to Grand Theft Auto to The Simpsons--has been growing more sophisticated with each passing year, and, far from rotting our brains, is actually posing new cognitive challenges that are actually making our minds measurably sharper. After reading Everything Bad is Good for You, you will never regard the glow of the video game or television screen the same way again.

With a new afterword by the author.



Everything Bad Is Good for You

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Ben Horowitz

Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

The Hard Thing about Hard Things

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Malcolm Gladwell

And Other Adventures

Malcolm Gladwell focuses on "minor geniuses" and idiosyncratic behavior to illuminate the ways all of us organize experience in this "delightful" (Bloomberg News) collection of writings from The New Yorker. 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.

What the Dog Saw

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Drew Curtis

How Mass Media Tries to Pass off Crap As News

A hilarious exposé on the media gone awry, from the creator of the wildly popular Fark.com. Have you ever noticed certain patterns in the news you see and read each day? Perhaps it’s the blatant fear-mongering in the absence of facts on your local six o’clock news (“Tsunami could hit the Atlantic any day!” Everybody panic!), or the seasonal articles that appear year after year (“Roads will be crowded this holiday season.” Thanks, AAA.). It’s Not News, It’s Fark is Drew Curtis’s clever examination of the state of the media today and a hilarious look at the go-to stories mass media uses when there’s just not enough hard news to fill a newspaper or a news broadcast. Drew exposes eight stranger-than-fiction media patterns that prove just how little reporting is going on in the world of reporters today. It’s Not News, It’s Fark examines all the “news” that was never fit for print in the first place, and promises to have you laughing along the way.

It's Not News, It's Fark

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Stephen Baker

"Steve Baker puts his finger on perhaps the most important cultural trend today: the explosion of data about every aspect of our world and the rise of applied math gurus who know how to use it." --Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine (Wired Magazine )

An urgent look at how a global math elite is predicting and altering our behavior -- at work, at the mall, and in bed

Every day we produce loads of data about ourselves simply by living in the modern world: we click web pages, flip channels, drive through automatic toll booths, shop with credit cards, and make cell phone calls. Now, in one of the greatest undertakings of the twenty-first century, a savvy group of mathematicians and computer scientists is beginning to sift through this data to dissect us and map out our next steps. Their goal? To manipulate our behavior -- what we buy, how we vote -- withoutour even realizing it.

In this tour de force of original reporting and analysis, journalist Stephen Baker provides us with a fascinating guide to the world we're all entering -- and to the people controlling that world. The Numerati have infiltrated every realm of human affairs, profiling us as workers, shoppers, patients, voters, potential terrorists -- and lovers. The implications are vast. Our privacy evaporates. Our bosses can monitor and measure our every move (then reward or punish us). Politicians can findthe swing voters among us, by plunking us all into new political groupings with names like "Hearth Keepers" and "Crossing Guards." It can sound scary. But the Numerati can also work on our behalf, diagnosing an illness before we're aware of the symptoms, or even helping us find our soul mate. Surprising, enlightening, and deeply relevant, The Numerati shows how a powerful new endeavor -- the mathematical modeling of humanity -- will transform every aspect of our lives.

STEPHEN BAKER has written for BusinessWeek for over twenty years, covering Mexico and Latin America, the Rust Belt, European technology, and a host of other topics, including blogs, math, and nanotechnology. But he's always considered himself a foreign correspondent. This, he says, was especially useful as he met the Numerati. "While I came from the world of words, they inhabited the symbolic realms of math and computer science. This was foreign to me. My reporting became an anthropologicalmission." Baker has written for many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe. He won an Overseas Press Club Award for his portrait of the rising Mexican auto industry. He is the coauthor of blogspotting.net, featured by the New York Times as one of fifty blogs to watch.


The Numerati

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Tom Mathews

Steve Siebold

Stop Being a SUCKER

Financial illiteracy is the #1 economic crisis in the world, impacting more than 5 billion people across the planet. The few who know how money works take advantage of those who do not - the suckers. This book is designed to help you break the cycle of endless debt, foolish spending and financial cluelessness so you can stop being a sucker, start being a student and take control of your financial future.

How Money Works

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John Gray

A Guide for Navigating the 5 Stages of Dating to Create a Loving and Lasting Relationship

Will I Ever Find My Soul Mate? Whether you are recently separated, divorced, or you have been in the singles scene for longer than you want, this insightful guide will help you navigate the dating maze and find that special person you've been waiting for. By discussing the differences between men and women, Mars and Venus on a Date provides singles with: A thorough understanding of the five stages of dating -- attraction, uncertainty, exclusivity, intimacy, and engagement How to know what kind of person is right for you Answers to burning questions such as why don't men call, or why do some women stay single? The best places to meet your soul mate And advice on creating a loving and mutually fulfilling relationship Filled with practical guidelines, inventive techniques, and witty insight, Mars and Venus on a Date will help single men and women explore the world of dating, understand how to make good choices, and discover the secret to finding a soul mate.

Mars and Venus on a Date

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Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Bruce Schneier

The Hidden Battles to Capture Your Data and Control Your World

You are under surveillance right now. Your cell phone provider tracks your location and knows who’s with you. Your online and in-store purchasing patterns are recorded, and reveal if you're unemployed, sick, or pregnant. Your e-mails and texts expose your intimate and casual friends. Google knows what you’re thinking because it saves your private searches. Facebook can determine your sexual orientation without you ever mentioning it. The powers that surveil us do more than simply store this information. Corporations use surveillance to manipulate not only the news articles and advertisements we each see, but also the prices we’re offered. Governments use surveillance to discriminate, censor, chill free speech, and put people in danger worldwide. And both sides share this information with each other or, even worse, lose it to cybercriminals in huge data breaches. Much of this is voluntary: we cooperate with corporate surveillance because it promises us convenience, and we submit to government surveillance because it promises us protection. The result is a mass surveillance society of our own making. But have we given up more than we’ve gained? In Data and Goliath, security expert Bruce Schneier offers another path, one that values both security and privacy. He shows us exactly what we can do to reform our government surveillance programs and shake up surveillance-based business models, while also providing tips for you to protect your privacy every day. You'll never look at your phone, your computer, your credit cards, or even your car in the same way again.

Browse by categories

Radley Balko

Rise of the Warrior Cop

Jonathan Witt; Jay W. Richards; James V. Schall

The Hobbit Party

Vanessa Van Edwards

Captivate

Scott Stratten; Alison Stratten

UnMarketing

Brian J. Robertson

Holacracy

Eric Ries

The Lean Startup

Virginia Postrel

The Substance of Style

David T. Z. Mindich

Tuned Out

Steven D. Levitt; Stephen J. Dubner

SuperFreakonomics

Charles G. Koch

The Science of Success

Steven Johnson

Everything Bad Is Good for You

Ben Horowitz

The Hard Thing about Hard Things

Malcolm Gladwell

What the Dog Saw

Drew Curtis

It's Not News, It's Fark

Stephen Baker

The Numerati

Tom Mathews; Steve Siebold

How Money Works

John Gray

Mars and Venus on a Date

Vanessa Van Edwards

Captivate

Scott Stratten; Alison Stratten

UnMarketing

Bruce Schneier

Data and Goliath

Brian J. Robertson

Holacracy

Wess Roberts

Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun

Eric Ries

The Lean Startup

Virginia Postrel

The Substance of Style

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