Documents Random House 7 results

"We spend most of our waking lives at work--in occupations most often chosen by our inexperienced younger selves. And yet we rarely ask ourselves how we got there or what our jobs mean to us. "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work" is an exploration of the joys and perils of the modern workplace, beautifully exploring what other people wake up to do each day--and night--to make our frenzied world function. With a philosophical eye and his signature combination of wit and wisdom, Alain de Botton leads us on a journey around an eclectic range of occupations, from rocket scientist to biscuit manufacturer, from accountant to artist--in search of what makes jobs either soul-destroying or fulfilling."

"From the visionary bestselling author of The Second World and How to Run the World comes a bracing and authoritative guide to a future shaped less by national borders than by global supply chains, a world in which the most connected powers—and people—will win.

Connectivity is the most revolutionary force of the twenty-first century. Mankind is reengineering the planet, investing up to ten trillion dollars per year in transportation, energy, and communications infrastructure linking the world's burgeoning megacities together. This has profound consequences for geopolitics, economics, demographics, the environment, and social identity. Connectivity, not geography, is our destiny.

In Connectography, visionary strategist Parag Khanna travels from Ukraine to Iran, Mongolia to North Korea, Pakistan to Nigeria, and across the Arctic Circle and the South China Sea to explain the rapid and unprecedented changes affecting every part of the planet. He shows how militaries are deployed to protect supply chains as much as borders, and how nations are less at war over territory than engaged in tugs-of-war over pipelines, railways, shipping lanes, and Internet cables. The new arms race is to connect to the most markets—a race China is now winning, having launched a wave of infrastructure investments to unite Eurasia around its new Silk Roads. The United States can only regain ground by fusing with its neighbors into a super-continental North American Union of shared resources and prosperity.

Connectography offers a unique and hopeful vision for the future. Khanna argues that new energy discoveries and technologies have eliminated the need for resource wars; ambitious transport corridors and power grids are unscrambling Africa's fraught colonial borders; even the Arab world is evolving a more peaceful map as it builds resource and trade routes across its war-torn landscape. At the same time, thriving hubs such as Singapore and Dubai are injecting dynamism into young and heavily populated regions, cyber-communities empower commerce across vast distances, and the world's ballooning financial assets are being wisely invested into building an inclusive global society. Beneath the chaos of a world that appears to be falling apart is a new foundation of connectivity pulling it together."

""I died in Vietnam, but I didn't even know it," said a young Vietnam vet on the Today Show one morning in 1978, shocking viewers across the country. Waiting for an Army to Die: The Tragedy of Agent Orange—the first book ever written on the effects of Agent Orange—tells this young vet's story and that of hundreds of thousands of other former American servicemen. During the war, the US sprayed an estimated 12 million gallons of Agent Orange on Vietnam, in order to defoliate close to 5 million acres of its land. "Had anyone predicted that millions of human beings exposed to Agent Orange/dioxin would get sick and die," scholar Fred A. Wilcox writes in the new introduction to his seminal book, "their warnings would have been dismissed as sci-fi fantasy or apocalyptic nonsense. Told in a gripping and compassionate narrative style that travels from the war in Vietnam to the war at home, and through portraits of many of the affected survivors, their families, and the doctors and scientists whose clinical experience and research gave the lie to the government whitewash, Waiting for an Army to Die tells a story that, thirty years later, continues to create new twists and turns for Americans still waiting for justice and an honest account of what happened to them.
Vietnam has chosen August 10—the day that the US began spraying Agent Orange on Vietnam—as Agent Orange Day, to commemorate all its citizens who were affected by the deadly chemical. The new second edition of Waiting for an Army to Die will be released upon the third anniversary of this day, in honor of all those whose families have suffered, and continue to suffer, from this tragedy."

"In his fourteen years as CEO of Tesco, Sir Terry Leahy not only turned the company into the largest supermarket chain in the UK but also transformed it into a global enterprise. As a result, Sir Terry is now one of the world's most admired business leaders, widely acclaimed for his drive, flair and no-nonsense approach.

In Management in 10 Words he draws on his experience and expertise to pinpoint the ten vital attributes that make successful managers and underlie great organisations. He tackles the challenges that every manager faces, in a series of insights that are personal, provocative, and down to earth. And he explains:

- Why initial failure often leads to ultimate success.

- Why profits stem from a company's values, not its day-to-day business.

- Why competition should always be welcomed.

- Why simplicity leads to innovation.

- Why trust is the bedrock of effective leadership.

The result is an inspiring, thoughtful and supremely practical guide that will prove invaluable to all managers in all types of organisation."