About this product: A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.
Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.”
For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don’t know. He offers surprisingly simple tricks for dealing with black swans and benefiting from them.
Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world. Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory. The Black Swan is a landmark book–itself a black swan.
*2nd Edition, With a new essay: "On Robustness and Fragility"
About this product: Teach Like a Champion offers effective teaching techniques to help teachers, especially those in their first few years, become champions in the classroom. These powerful techniques are concrete, specific, and are easy to put into action the very next day. Training activities at the end of each chapter help the reader further their understanding through reflection and application of the ideas to their own practice.
Among the techniques:
Technique #1: No Opt Out. How to move students from the blank stare or stubborn shrug to giving the right answer every time.
Technique #35: Do It Again. When students fail to successfully complete a basic task?from entering the classroom quietly to passing papers around?doing it again, doing it right, and doing it perfectly, results in the best consequences.
Technique #38: No Warnings. If you're angry with your students, it usually means you should be angry with yourself. This technique shows how to effectively address misbehaviors in your classroom.
The book includes a DVD of 25 video clips of teachers demonstrating the techniques in the classroom.
About this product: There are plenty of books about coping with adversity. But isn't until now, with WHO SURVIVES, that we discover the human factors that determine survival. It's a combination instruction book and security blanket that blends compelling true stories with cutting-edge science to deliver some of the most important lessons we'll ever need to learn.
The book will: --list the most important traits necessary for survival (e.g., adaptability, tenacity, faith) --identify the 5 types of survivors --debunk myths (like only the strong survive), explore the frontiers of survival science (How much strain and punishment can a human body endure?), and introduce readers to counterintuitive thinking (Ever heard of posttraumatic growth?) --provide a Survivors Tool Kit, including an online test that measures one's Survivor's Quotient
Each one of us eventually joins the club of millions who face life's inescapable tribulations and tragedies. WHO SURVIVES is the companion we need to prepare us for and guide us through the worst.
About this product: In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.
Brilliant and entertaining, OUTLIERS is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.
About this product: Americas most sought-after executive coach shows how to climb the last few rungs of the ladder
The corporate world is filled with executives, men and women who have worked hard for years to reach the upper levels of management. Theyre intelligent, skilled, and even charismatic. But only a handful of them will ever reach the pinnacle -- and as executive coach Marshall Goldsmith shows in this book, subtle nuances make all the difference. These are small "transactional flaws" performed by one person against another (as simple as not saying thank you enough), which lead to negative perceptions that can hold any executive back. Using Goldsmiths straightforward, jargonfree advice, its amazingly easy behavior to change.
Executives who hire Goldsmith for one-on-one coaching pay $250,000 for the privilege. With this book, his help is available for 1/10,000th of the price.
About this product: This classic has now taught generations of gardeners how to use the natural benefits of plants to protect and support each other. Here is a reader's complete reference to which plants nourish the soil, which keep away bugs and pests, and which plants just don't get along. Here is a complete guide to using companion planting to grow a better garden. 555,000 copies in print.
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