Life is getting better at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before.

Exploring a wide range of everyday topics - from credit card debt and household budgeting to holiday sales - Ariely and Kreisler demonstrate how our ideas about dollars and cents are often wrong and cost us more than we know. Mixing case studies and anecdotes with tangible advice and lessons, they cut through the unconscious fears and desires driving our worst financial instincts and teach us how to improve our money habits.

Influence Without Authority is the classic guide to getting what you need from people you don't control. Getting things done requires collaboration, and convincing others to contribute requires political skill; this book introduces the Exchange Model, in which you get what you need by offering something of value in return. The key lies in knowing what the other person values - that's their "currency", and it's your immediate tool for coaxing their cooperation. This model has been proven over decades, as organizations around the world have turned toward collaboration.

This reissue of Thomas Sowell’s classic study of decision making, which includes a preface by the author, updates his seminal work in the context of The Vision of the Anointed. Sowell, one of America’s most celebrated public intellectuals, describes in concrete detail how knowledge is shared and disseminated throughout modern society. He warns that society suffers from an ever-widening gap between firsthand knowledge and decision making—a gap that threatens not only our economic and political efficiency but our very freedom.

This practical and groundbreaking guide reveals seven paths to fighting the effects of stress - to strengthen our natural defenses so that our minds remain sharp, and our bodies resilient, no matter what life throws at us. Each chapter examines a common stress agent - including inflammation, an out-of-sync body clock, cortisol levels, and emotional triggers - and presents simple ways to minimize its harmful effects with changes in diet, exercise, and other daily habits - including surprising hacks involving music, eye movements, body temperature, daily routine, and more.

In the years following her role as the lead author of the international best seller, Limits to Growth - the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet - Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem-solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute's Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world....

Human beings are primates, and primates are political animals. Our brains, therefore, are designed not just to hunt and gather but also to help us get ahead socially, often via deception and self-deception. But while we may be self-interested schemers, we benefit by pretending otherwise. The less we know about our own ugly motives, the better - and thus, we don't like to talk, or even think, about the extent of our selfishness. This is "the elephant in the brain".

The first volume of Will Durant's Pulitzer Prize-winning series, Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization, Volume I chronicles the early history of Egypt, the Middle East, and Asia.

Most of your attempts to persuade are doomed to fail because the brains of your audience automatically reject messages that disrupt their attention. This book makes the complex science of persuasion simple. Learn to develop better marketing and sales messages based on a scientific model; NeuroMap™. Regardless of your level of expertise in marketing, neuromarketing, neuroscience or psychology: The Persuasion Code: How Neuromarketing Can Help You Persuade Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime will make your personal and business lives more successful.

We live in a hierarchical world where experience has traditionally been the key to promotion. But that period is over! Straight, clear-cut career trajectories no longer exist. Industries disappear, job descriptions change, and people's interests and passions evolve. The key to riding this wave, entrepreneur James Altucher advises, is to constantly be curious about what's next, to be comfortable with uncertainty so you can keep navigating the rough waters ahead, and most importantly, to pursue the things that interest you.

The best financial advisors are well equipped to succeed regardless of market conditions. Based on interviews with 15 top advisors, each doing several million dollars worth of business every year, The Million-Dollar Financial Advisor distills their universal success principles into 13 distinct lessons. Each is explained step-by-step for immediate application by veteran and new financial professionals alike.

Millions turn to Marc and Angel Chernoff for fresh, intimate insights for a fulfilled life. In this pithy and empowering guide, they collect the very best advice they've discovered, on topics that include overcoming setbacks, letting go of what's holding us back, nurturing relationships, finding time for self-care, and cultivating passion in order to achieve our wildest dreams.

Filled with actionable strategies proven to improve focus, increase productivity, and promote well-being, Brain Hacks will help you transform the way you work, live, and feel by tapping into the power of your executive functioning skills. Modern life requires a lot of our brains. We need to stay organized, manage our time wisely, and make important decisions. These essential skills - known as executive functioning - affect every aspect of our lives, from how we function at work and home to how we manage stress.

Entrepreneurs have a problem: startups. Almost all startups either fail or never truly reach a sustainable size. Despite the popularity of entrepreneurship, we haven't engineered a better way to start...until now. What if you could skip the startup phase and generate profitable revenue on day one? In Buy Then Build, acquisition entrepreneur Walker Deibel shows you how to begin with a sustainable, profitable company and grow from there.

Where do our thoughts come from? How do we make choices and trust our judgments? What is the role of the unconscious? Can we manipulate our dreams? In this mind-bending international best seller, award-winning neuroscientist Mariano Sigman explores the complex answers to these and many other age-old questions. The cutting-edge research presented in The Secret Life of the Mind revolutionizes how we understand the role that neuroscience plays in our lives.