About this product: In the universally acclaimed and award-winning The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier reveals that fifty failed states--home to the poorest one billion people on Earth--pose the central challenge of the developing world in the twenty-first century. The book shines much-needed light on this group of small nations, largely unnoticed by the industrialized West, that are dropping further and further behind the majority of the world's people, often falling into an absolute decline in living standards. A struggle rages within each of these nations between reformers and corrupt leaders--and the corrupt are winning. Collier analyzes the causes of failure, pointing to a set of traps that ensnare these countries, including civil war, a dependence on the extraction and export of natural resources, and bad governance. Standard solutions do not work, he writes; aid is often ineffective, and globalization can actually make matters worse, driving development to more stable nations. What the bottom billion need, Collier argues, is a bold new plan supported by the Group of Eight industrialized nations. If failed states are ever to be helped, the G8 will have to adopt preferential trade policies, new laws against corruption, new international charters, and even conduct carefully calibrated military interventions. Collier has spent a lifetime working to end global poverty. In The Bottom Billion, he offers real hope for solving one of the great humanitarian crises facing the world today. "Terrifically readable." --Time.com "Set to become a classic. Crammed with statistical nuggets and common sense, his book should be compulsory reading." --The Economist "If Sachs seems too saintly and Easterly too cynical, then Collier is the authentic old Africa hand: he knows the terrain and has a keen ear.... If you've ever found yourself on one side or the other of those arguments--and who hasn't?--then you simply must read this book." --Niall Ferguson, The New York Times Book Review "Rich in both analysis and recommendations.... Read this book. You will learn much you do not know. It will also change the way you look at the tragedy of persistent poverty in a world of plenty." --Financial Times
Failure has become a bad word. This is the book that straightens out the misconception.
The big secret is that failure is actually a valuable opportunity and often-necessary first step on the road to success. The Secret of Successful Failing shows why failure is a good thing and how you can leverage it.
It provides workable ways of reframing how you look at failure so you can use the inherent lessons in support of yourself and your dreams. It delivers a wealth of practical techniques for turning yourself around so you can confidently move toward your objectives.
And there are more secrets, including... Why switching the order of HAVE-DO-BE to BE-DO-HAVE is the key to being happy; How to use the mirror principle to become adept at changing from the inside-out; How to take the im out of imPOSSIBLE so that anything will be possible for you; How to take action in spite of your fear instead of freezing in fear; How to increase your chances of success by creating SMASHing goals.
Can you have the life of your dreams? Absolutely! When you know and use the secrets revealed in this book, failure will no longer be a concern. This is the only book that guarantees you can succeed. Not because you cannot fail. Because you can fail successfully!
About this product: As the baby boomer generation moves into the ranks of the elderly in the next decade or two, the number of Alzheimer cases expected to develop will be staggering. Since current medical care cannot offer a cure, and even significantly effective treatment is at least ten years away, there is a pressing need for novel solutions to address the multifaceted issues raised by this devastating disease. This book offers a measure of hope and coping strategies for people facing Alzheimer's now or in the future. The authors propose the creation of community centers devoted to Alzheimer's. Here patients and their families could access programs of care, treatment, and most importantly, prevention, outside of the traditional medical setting. They outline a bold vision of one-stop centers that would provide expertise and reliable information on a range of topics: pharmaceutical developments, dietary regimens, physical and cognitive exercise programs that may help to slow the disease process, and palliative measures to reduce suffering. Most importantly, the centers they describe would take a family-oriented, personalized approach to care and prevention, creating an atmosphere conducive to adult learning and facilitating personal growth in areas that patients have enjoyed over a lifetime, including the arts, dance, socializing, and a host of other possibilities. The authors explain why the current health care system is poorly equipped to deal with Alzheimer patients, why the standard medical model is inappropriate for cognitive disorders, how market economics stymies physician creativity, and how new initiatives that work outside the existing system could go a long way toward providing the help that is lacking today. For people prepared to take action now to prevent Alzheimer's, as well as health care professionals seeking ways to help their patients, this book is a health care read.
About this product: The most gripping portion of Stephen Flynn's examination of America's defense shortcomings in the war on terror arrives early. The entire second chapter imagines an elaborate but feasible dirty-bomb attack that brings the nation's transportation system to a halt and presents the President with two dreadful options: reopen borders closed by the emergency and risk further attack, or inspect everything that comes into the country and accept the cataclysmic economic consequences. Flynn, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations and veteran of the George H. W. Bush and Clinton administrations, paints a picture of a government that is flailing in its efforts to protect its citizens. We are, Flynn argues, hamstrung by entrenched intelligence bureaucracies and ideological power centers on the right and left, and he isn't optimistic about the near-term likelihood that we'll meet our greatest challenge: "identifying how to formally engage the broader civil society and private sector, not just the federal government, in a national effort to make America a less attractive terrorist target." America the Vulnerable isn't as powerful or contentious as the bestseller Imperial Hubris; Flynn is a practical government veteran who keeps his outrage largely in check. It's clear he aims to have an impact with this expose of a national defense he compares to France's in the days of the Maginot line. And we know how effective that "impenetrable" defense stood up in the face of an unconventional opponent. --Steven Stolder
About this product: Over time, the stock market creates great wealth for investors. And yet, most investors do not become wealthy by investing in the stock market, instead having experiences that range from inadequate to disastrous.So why the disconnect?The answer is found in a set of widely held, mistaken beliefs about what it takes to be a successful investor. At first glance, these investment myths seem grounded in logic. In reality, though, these beliefs provide investors with perfect blueprints for investment failure by encouraging in them an emotion-driven, trading-intensive mentality. These myths are propagated by Wall Street, which reaps huge profits from this behavior and by the financial media that is starving for sensationalistic content.As an independent investment advisor, Jack Calhoun has spent much of the past 15 years educating investors about the dangers of these mistaken ideas. In The 12 Investment Myths, he explores and debunks these myths one-by-one and in the process sets investors on a path to harness the tremendous wealth-creation machine that is the stock market.
Small and bean shaped, the kidneys are sophisticated organs that filter waste from the blood. A number of diseases and disorders -- including diabetes and hypertension -- can harm the kidneys and cause them to fail.
Historian and nephrologist Steven J. Peitzman traces the medical history of kidney disease alongside the personal experience of illness. Drawing on diaries, letters, literary narratives, and scientific writings, Peitzman charts the triumphs of medical innovators like Richard Bright, Thomas Addis, and Belding Scribner as well as the stories of persons, famous and not, who have struggled with the disease.
Conditions once known as "Bright's Disease" are now recognized as complex disorders with names such as glomerulopathy and acute tubular necrosis. Treatments have evolved from abdominal tapping and dietetics to hemodialysis and transplantation. Medical advances have improved the well-being and prognosis of persons with failing kidneys. Yet such persons continue on an arduous journey of chronic illness. Peitzman travels with them, from diagnosis to treatment, and witnesses their remarkable ability to cope.
Joining the clinician's perspective with the historian's analysis, this fascinating chronicle offers insight into how diseases are defined, categorized, and understood and explains current concepts of how kidney disease behaves and how modern therapy works.
About this product: Thanks to enormous funding for educational programs, the whole world "knows" that HIV causes AIDS. But is what we know compatible with the facts? This book challenges the conventional wisdom on this issue. Collating and analyzing, for the first time, the results of more than two decades of HIV testing, it reveals that the common assumptions about HIV and AIDS are incompatible with the published data. Among the many topics explored are the failings of HIV testing, statistical evidence that HIV is neither sexually transmitted nor increasingly prevalent, and problems caused by the differing diagnostic criteria for AIDS around the world.
But how could everyone have been so wrong for so long? This vital question, unaddressed in previous works questioning the HIV-AIDS connection, is central to this book. The author considers comparable missteps of modern science, and discusses how funding influences discovery in today's scientific circles.
About this product: Our public schools are in danger of collapse, and if they do, we will all pay the price
Healthy public schools are essential for a healthy economy and creating informed citizens. But we are neglecting our schools in a perversely malicious way: making impossible demands on them, strangling them financially, creating trivial changes for the sake of ideology, avoiding necessary changes, and just plain ignoring them.
In this forcefully argued and convincing book, education expert Charles Ungerleider makes our situation plain. Canadians have never placed a higher value on education, but if we do not do something about public schools now, we may lose the benefits that they provide and miss the opportunity to fix them.
Drawing on the latest research and using examples from across the country, Ungerleider describes what’s right and what’s wrong about our public schools system and provides solutions for making them a lot better. He looks at the conflict between “traditional” and “progressive” approaches to education. He argues that the public school curriculum has become bloated, fragmented, and mired in trivia. He examines the effects of the changing family and the influence on children of television, the Internet, video games, and their peers. He discusses the work of teachers and teachers’ unions, the changes in public school finance and governance, and the issue of accountability. And he takes on the issue of school choice and competition, where, more than anywhere else, rhetoric prevails over reason.
About this product: From the mountains of Argentina the losers of WWII are making plans for the Fourth Reich. But when the Destroyer's brain is downloaded, he almost puts an end to the idea. Adolf Kluge plans to save the dream with a centuries-old treasure. But then, the Master of Sinanju may have different plans.
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