Culture Power

In this sweeping history of popular music in the United States, NPR's acclaimed music critic examines how popular music shapes fundamental American ideas and beliefs, allowing us to communicate difficult emotions and truths about our most fraught social issues, most notably sex and race.

We are witnessing the emergence of ordinary people working together to solve big problems in all aspects of our society, rooted in a communal desire to make the world a better place in which to live: The student organizing a mass global protest, inspiring millions to take action. A school achieving great academic outcomes because of its commitment to diversity. The successful brewery giving customers the opportunity to become co-producers.

As Audrey Kurth Cronin explains in Power to the People, what we are seeing now is an exacerbation of an age-old trend. Over the centuries, the most surprising developments in warfare have occurred because of advances in technologies combined with changes in who can use them. Indeed, accessible innovations in destructive force have long driven new patterns of political violence. When Nobel invented dynamite and Kalashnikov designed the AK-47, each inadvertently spurred terrorist and insurgent movements that killed millions and upended the international system.

Your employees and teams may be quite capable of handling their specific areas of focus, but unless you get them to work together, your products, services, and profits will suffer. While progress has been made, maximizing collaboration is still a challenge for many companies. They need a new approach. Over the last quarter century, California's Silicon Valley has become synonymous with building complex, successful businesses. Companies and leaders there have succeeded because they did more than apply existing business models - they created a new model.

The unprecedented access to other humans that technology provides has ironically freed us from engaging with them. According to social psychologist Adam Waytz, our increasingly human-free lives come with a serious cost that we’ve already begun to pay: the loss of our humanity. Humans have superpowers. More than any other psychological stimulus, our presence can make experiences feel significant, inspire moral behavior, and encourage action. The Power of Human shows us how to rehumanize and harness these unique abilities to improve our lives, beginning with our jobs.

The most successful, disruptive companies are propelled forward by mandate-driven leaders. These leaders are inspired by a compelling belief, idea, strategy or tactic. Through their willpower, organizations are thrust into the future. The mandate-driven leadership model is the hallmark of visionaries who have changed entire industries and sustained consistent innovation in their own companies. The Power of Mandate reveals what it takes to be an effective leader in today's disruptive business environment.

In a world of endless distraction, we have given away two of our most valuable assets: time and attention. Technology has given us the incredible gift of access to an ever-increasing amount of information and has opened the door to a vast array of choices and opportunities. However, having more options doesn’t correlate to an increase in our success. Research shows that having more to choose from causes anxiety and decreases our likelihood of taking action.

For many organizations, workplace culture is now as important as strategy and execution—many would argue it's even more important, since it drives everything from employee productivity to customer retention. But where do you start, and how do you know if it's working? There's a surprisingly simple answer, and it's work anniversaries. Because unlike other paths to improving workplace culture, work anniversaries are (1) visible, (2) measurable, and (3) easy to improve ... if you know how.

Lukas wants only two things: to rebuild his castle home in time to make it through the coming winter and to reconnect with the sister who was stolen from him in a plot against his family. But then an astrologer appears with foreboding news: his old adversary, Inquisitor Waldemar von Schönborn, has stolen three royal artifacts, which are required to coronate a new German emperor. With these valuable objects - the sword, the crown, and the scepter - he could blackmail the empire. The treasures are currently hidden in three different places in the old imperial city of Prague.

If you’ve ever hidden your real self to belong, Embrace the Power of You will resonate. Timm’s journey toward self-acceptance provides a wealth of insight into the reasons why people feel alienated and invisible in the workplace. Timm knows firsthand the fear and shame that comes from hiding your identity, and shows how to overcome those feelings one small step at a time. By offering practical tips and strategies based on research and personal experience, Timm proves an expert guide for those who want to bring their authentic selves to work and don’t know where to begin.

Self-discipline isn't just another trait - it's real game-changer. Learn how to build daily habits, develop systems, and create environment to empower you with iron-like self-discipline. This audiobook is sincere attempt to educate you about the psychology of self-discipline and why you succumb to your impulses. You will learn the practical and actionable techniques to build an iron-like self discipline.

Jamie Buckingham's remarkable book Miracle Power takes us on an exciting adventure through the history and culture that surrounded some of Jesus' most notable miracles. If you believe in your head but doubt in your heart that God still works miracles, you will find a great way to take a closer that this look at the miracles of Jesus—then and now.

Devouring Cultures brings together contributors from a wide range of disciplines including media studies, rhetoric, gender studies, philosophy, anthropology, literary criticism, film criticism, race theory, history, and linguistics to examine the ways food signifies both culture and identity. The essays in Devouring Cultures show how our choices about what we eat, where we eat, and with whom we eat are linked to identity and meaning.

Rediscover the "most important book on black-white relationships" in America in this special 50th anniversary edition.

For too long, humans have been following others based largely on that person's sense of physical strength, appearance, and dominance. It's a model that dates back to the Neanderthals and which, incredibly, we continue to apply—consciously or not. The Power of Evolved Leadership establishes a new standard for leadership. It shifts you away from a leadership profile of power, command, and control to move your toward the nuance of motivation, inspiration, and, most critically, the shedding of "ego."

For most of us, the better we perform the more attention we receive. Yet for many “Invisibles”—skilled professionals whose role is critical to whatever enterprise they’re a part of—it’s the opposite: The better they do their jobs the more they disappear. In fact, often it’s only when something goes wrong that they are noticed at all. Millions of these Invisibles are hidden in every industry. You may be one yourself. And despite our culture’s increasing celebration of fame in our era of superstar CEOs and assorted varieties of “genius”—they’re fine with remaining anonymous.

Barely funded, technologically inept, conceptually derivative, and driven by rivalries, the company that was to morph into the biggest internet site in the world had an unlikely beginning. This is the fascinating and surprising story that includes all the elements of a great business narrative: obsessive characters from cofounders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe to Rupert Murdock, relentless and unlikely innovation, and dizzying backroom dealmaking; all centered around an epic battle for control.

From Major League Baseball's inception in the 1880s through World War II, team owners enjoyed monopolistic control of the industry. Despite the players' desire to form a viable union, every attempt to do so failed. In the mid-1960s, star players Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale staged a joint holdout for multiyear contracts and much higher salaries. Their holdout quickly drew support from the public; for the first time, owners realized they could ill afford to alienate fans, their primary source of revenue.

In Move On Up, Aaron Cohen tells the remarkable story of the explosion of soul music in Chicago. Record producers and songwriters broadcast optimism for black America's future through their sophisticated, jazz-inspired productions for the Dells and many others. Musicians like Phil Cohran and the Pharaohs used their music to voice Afrocentric philosophies that challenged racism and segregation, while Maurice White of Earth, Wind, and Fire and Chaka Khan created music that inspired black consciousness.

“Fake it till you make it.” The old adage may be a hallmark of our personal and professional lives, but the truth is inauthenticity leads to dissatisfaction and disaster. To be happy, successful, and sustainable, you need to be genuine and be yourself. Years of working in public relations, along with her personal experiences, have shown Anna Crowe that authenticity is the most important skill in business, today.