Factfulness

by Hans Rosling

When asked simple questions about global trends―what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school―we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.

Hans Rosling died recently, but his amazing work lives on in TED Talks and this book. Melinda Gates said: “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.”

Former US President Barak Obama said: "Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases."

i think you will be captivated by Rosling’s ability to draw new and insightful conclusions about the world from a deep-dive into data. His passion for turning data into revelations and his optimism about the future are addictive.

Recommended Books

The books listed here are among the best on their respective subjects. At the right you will find an index where you can click on an individual title to read about that book or you can click on a category to see the descriptions of all the books in that category. For further information about a book, click on the image of its cover and you will be taken to the appropriate page at amazon.com.

At the bottom of each page is a search box where you can enter any word or phrase and see which books meet your criteria.

Your suggestions are welcome in the comments section at the bottom of this page or at the bottom of any book listing. If you don't see the comments block, please click on the book title, then scroll down. You can also add your quick recommendation for a book by clicking the "like" (heart) symbol below the cover image on any book page.

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Talk Like TED

by Carmen Gallo

Readers of my blog will know what a big fan I am of TED Talks, the famous presentations which are videoed and made available on the Internet.

Author Carmen Gallo is a popular keynote speaker, Harvard instructor, and communication advisor for the world's most admired brands. In this book, he has broken down hundreds of TED talks and interviewed the most popular TED presenters, as well as the top researchers in the fields of psychology, communications, and neuroscience to reveal the nine secrets of all successful TED presentations. Gallo's step-by-step method helps people to deliver a presentation that is engaging, persuasive, and memorable — all within the famous TED 18-minute maximum.

TED Talks have redefined the elements of a successful presentation and become the gold standard for public speaking. TED — which stands for technology, entertainment, and design — brings together the world's leading thinkers. These are the presentations that set the world on fire, and the techniques that top TED speakers use will make any presentation more dynamic, fire up any team, and give anyone the confidence to overcome their fear of public speaking.

Those who are new to presenting will find important concepts to help them make successful presentations and experienced speakers will find this book to be a great review of the things we need to always keep in mind.

Xenophobe's Guide to the Germans

by Stefan Zeidenitz and Ben Barko

Teutonic torment

In every German there is a touch of the wild-haired Beethoven striding through forests and weeping over a mountain sunset, grappling against impossible odds to express the inexpressible. This is the Great German Soul, prominent display of which is essential whenever Art, Feeling, and Truth are under discussion.

Angst breeds angst

For a German, doubt and anxiety expand and ramify the more you ponder them. They are astonished that things haven't gone to pot already, and are pretty certain that they soon will.

Longer must be better

Most Germans apply the rule that more equals better. If a passing quip makes you smile, then surely by making it longer the pleasure will be drawn out and increased. As a rule, if you are cornered by someone keen to give you a laugh, you must expect to miss lunch and most of that afternoon's appointments.

Angst breeds angst

Because life is ernsthaft, the Germans go by the rules. Schiller wrote, “obedience is the first duty,” and no German has ever doubted it. This fits with their sense of order and duty. Germans hate breaking rules, which can make life difficult because, as a rule, everything not expressly permitted is prohibited.

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Xenophobe's Guide to the Americans

by Stephanie Faul

This tiny book is packed with funny AND insightful comments about Americans from the perspective of the English.

The Xenophobe's motto is "Forewarned is forearmed," and this guide series gives travelers to foreign lands as much ammunition as possible. In The Xenophobe's Guide to the Americans, Stephanie Faul (herself an American) takes readers on a perceptive, ironic, frequently hilarious tour of the American psyche, from its basic traits to its attitudes about sex, drugs, and gun control. Discussing the American character, for example, Faul states "Americans believe themselves to be the only nation that is truly capable of winning.... Having God on your side in a fight is good. Having the United States on your side is better. To an American, they're the same thing." On obsessions she writes: "There are a few, a very few things that Americans condemn as being beyond the pale. They include: Growing Old ... Being Fat ... Dying."

Perhaps Americans themselves are in the best position to appreciate Faul's barbed commentary, but foreign visitors will surely find plenty to inform as well as amuse in this slim volume. American readers, take heart: there are 18 other Xenophobe titles taking equally irreverent potshots at everyone else, from the Australians to the Icelanders. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Working with Emotional Intelligence

by Daniel Goleman

Outstanding study on the underrated effects of "soft" skills -- people skills in the workplace.

Do you have what it takes to succeed in your career?

The secret of success is not what they taught you in school. What matters most is not IQ, not a business school degree, not even technical know-how or years of expertise. The single most important factor in job performance and advancement is emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is actually a set of skills that anyone can acquire, and in this practical guide, Daniel Goleman identifies them, explains their importance, and shows how they can be fostered.

For leaders, emotional intelligence is almost 90 percent of what sets stars apart from the mediocre. As Goleman documents, it's the essential ingredient for reaching and staying at the top in any field, even in high-tech careers. And organizations that learn to operate in emotionally intelligent ways are the companies that will remain vital and dynamic in the competitive marketplace of today—and the future.

Comprehensively researched, crisply written, and packed with fascinating case histories of triumphs, disasters, and dramatic turnarounds, Working with Emotional Intelligence may be the most important business book you'll ever read.

Drawing on unparalleled access to business leaders around the world and studies in more than 500 organizations, Goleman documents an astonishing fact: in determining star performance in every field, emotional intelligence matters twice as much as IQ or technical expertise.

Readers also discover how emotional competence can be learned. Goleman analyzes five key sets of skills and vividly shows how they determine who is hired and who is fired in the top corporations in the world. He also provides guidelines for training in the "emotionally intelligent organization," in chapters that no one, from manager to CEO, should miss. 

Working with Emotional Intelligence could prove to be the most important reference for bottom-line businesspeople in the first decades of the 21st century.

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The Worlds Within

by Jo Parfitt, Eva László-Herbert and Rebecca Grappo

An anthology of TCK (third-culture kid) art and writing: young, global and between cultures.

Your mother is Swiss, your father is from the Philippines and you have so far lived in five countries, none of them your passport country. Who are you? Where are you from? Where is home? And what did you eat for breakfast? If you are a friend, this book will guide you. If you are a teacher, it will enlighten you. If you are a parent, it will spell it out for you and if you are an employer, it will convince you. Here they are, the cultural chameleons, the young global nomads, the TCKs - Third Culture Kids - from around the world, telling you their story. They gave us their words and art, so that finally there is a book BY them and not ABOUT them. "A wonderful and timely update to the TCK story as it continues to be lived out by a new generation. It answers the question of 'what is the same' and 'what is different' from the past generations of TCKs." Ruth Van Reken, author of Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds and Letters Never Sent. "A much needed book! This book gives children/adolescents a voice regarding their TCK experience, very touching, very poignant." Ryan Haynes, High School Counselor, International School Bangkok, www.isb.ac.th "To read this anthology is to reverberate our stories as a growing tribe. We echo one another. These youths' stories are mine, yours, ours." Myra Dumapias, MSW, CEO of TCKid, Building Cross Cultural Bridges, http://tckid.com "This poignant collection may make you laugh, may make you cry and, if you pay close enough attention, will provide you with deep insight into what it feels like to be a third culture kid." Ellen Mahoney, Founder & CEO, Sea Change Mentoring, www.seachangementoring.com "Just as Lennart Nilsson's spectacular photographs of developing embryos revolutionized our view of human life, so too will The Worlds Within shed light on the development of the TCK personality, from toddler to adult, and all from within the fluid of the TCK's own experience. A fascinating read." Douglas W. Ota, author of Safe Passage: What Mobility Does to People and What International Schools Should Do About It

Who Moved My Cheese

by Spencer Johnson

A parable about change in business and private life by one of the authors of "One Minute Manager".

A timeless business classic, Who Moved My Cheese? uses a simple parabel to reveal profound truths about dealing with change so that you can enjoy less stress and more success in your work and in your life.

It would be all so easy if you had a map to the Maze.
If the same old routines worked.
If they'd just stop moving "The Cheese."
But things keep changing...

Most people are fearful of change, both personal and professional, because they don't have any control over how or when it happens to them. Since change happens either to the individual or by the individual, Dr. Spencer Johnson, the coauthor of the multimillion bestseller The One Minute Manager, uses a deceptively simple story to show that when it comes to living in a rapidly changing world, what matters most is your attitude.

Exploring a simple way to take the fear and anxiety out of managing the future, Who Moved My Cheese?can help you discover how to anticipate, acknowledge, and accept change in order to have a positive impact on your job, your relationships, and every aspect of your life.

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When Cultures Collide

by Richard D. Lewis

A practical guide to better understanding cultural diversity and how to react to other cultures.

The successful managers for the next century will be the culturally sensitive ones. You can gain competitive advantage from having strategies to deal with the cultural differences you will encounter in any international business setting. 

Richard Lewis provides a guide to working and communicating across cultures, and explains how your culture and language affect the ways in which you think and respond. This revised and expanded edition in paperback of Richard Lewis's book provides an ever more global and practical guide not just to understanding but also managing in different business cultures. New chapters on more than a dozen countries - from Iraq, Israel and Pakistan to Serbia, Columbia and Venezuela - vastly broaden the range.

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An Unused Intelligence

Physical Thinking for 21st Century Leadership
by Andy Bryner and Dawna Markova

An illustrated seminar on paper, An Unused Intelligence offers simple physical exercises -- learning in action -- that business-people can do individually or with partners and teams to enhance their ability to work creatively and collaboratively.

Reengineering is out! The hottest topic in business today is learning--with learning organization leader Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, leading the way. This revolutionary approach to the mind-body connection in business combines the classic wisdom of the martial art aikido, the no-holds-barred exploration of Outward Bound, and the management of personal and collective energy in the workplace--with remarkable results at every level.

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Understanding Cultural Differences: Germans, French and Americans

by Edward T. and Mildred R. Hall

Insights and practical advice on day-to-day interactions in international business between these three cultures.

Human resource management, at home and abroad, means assisting the corporation's most valuable asset-its people-to function effectively. Edward T. and Mildred Reed Hall contribute to this effort by explaining the cultural context in which corporations in Germany, France, and the United States operate and how this contributes to misunderstandings between business personnel from each country. 

Then they offer new insights and practical advice on how to manage day-to-day transactions in the international business arena. Understanding Cultural Differences echoes and elaborates on Edward T. Hall's classic studies in intercultural relations, The Silent Language and The Hidden Dimension. It is a valuable guide for business executives from the three countries and a model of cross-cultural analysis.

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Understanding American and German Business Culture

by Patrick L. Schmidt

Specific and detailed cultural exploration of the two cultures -- USA and Germany.

This useful guidebook focuses on the different organizational behaviors between Germany and the United States. The comparative method is used so that the reader is able to immediately grasp where the differences are and become conscious of his or her own national uniqueness, an ideal tool for overcoming intercultural misunderstandings. Whether German or American, this book will stimulate your understanding of both sides to an increasingly important partnership-equation. Examples are drawn from both the United States and Germany. Interactive case studies and checklists confirm the main points. A reading list guides you to further learning.

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The Tao of Coaching

Boost your effectiveness at work by inspiring and developing those around you
by Max Landsberg

How to unlock the potential of people by applying the techniques of coaching. This is an excellent second choice on coaching after "Coaching for Performance"

The essence and success of The Tao of Coaching has always been its focus on the practical tips and techniques for making work more rewarding through the habit of coaching - and this philosophy continues to underpin this brand new reissue.

The book's premise is simple: that to become an effective coach, managers and leaders need master only a few techniques, even though mastery obviously requires practice. Each chapter focuses on a specific technique - or Golden Rule - of coaching to help practice make perfect.
Tried and tested by generations within and beyond the workplace, this succinct and engaging book gives readers the tools to:

- create more time for themselves, by delegating well
- build, and enjoy working with, effective teams
- achieve better results
- enhance their interpersonal skills.

It demonstrates that coaching is not simply a matter of helping others and improving performance, but is also a powerful force for self-development and personal fulfilment.

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Synchronicity

The Inner Path of Leadership
Joseph Jaworski.

An inspiring story of how one man’s personal vision became a reality. A guide to developing the most essential leadership capacity for our time: the ability to collectively shape our future.

Synchronicity is an inspirational guide to developing the most essential leadership capacity for our time: the ability to collectively shape our future. By telling the story of his remarkable journey toward an understanding of the deep issues of leadership, Joseph Jaworski explains the fundamental shifts of mind that will enable leaders to “listen” to realities that want to emerge in this world and acquire the courage to manifest them.

This long-awaited second edition includes two new chapters. The first features excerpts from the hundreds of letters Jaworski has received testifying to the profound impact of the book’s message. The second describes the latest steps in Jaworski’s journey, which led to his discovery of four principles that, when embraced, allow us to access the ultimate source of wisdom and creativity.

Strengthsfinder 2.0

by Tom Rath

This book addresses the 34 unique strengths that reside in different people and the need to understand which are our greatest strengths so we can maximize them in our work and lives. The book also provides a code which allows the reader to do an online survey to discover his/her top five strengths.

Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day? 

Chances are, you don't. All too often, our natural talents go untapped. From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to fixing our shortcomings than to developing our strengths. 

To help people uncover their talents, Gallup introduced the first version of its online assessment, StrengthsFinder, in 2001 which ignited a global conversation and helped millions to discover their top five talents. 

In its latest national bestseller, StrengthsFinder 2.0, Gallup unveils the new and improved version of its popular assessment, language of 34 themes, and much more (see below for details). While you can read this book in one sitting, you'll use it as a reference for decades. 

Loaded with hundreds of strategies for applying your strengths, this new book and accompanying website will change the way you look at yourself--and the world around you--forever. 

Available exclusively in StrengthsFinder 2.0:
(using the unique access code included with each book) 

• A new and upgraded edition of the StrengthsFinder assessment 
• A personalized Strengths Discovery and Action-Planning Guide for applying your strengths in the next week, month, and year 
• A more customized version of your top five theme report 
• 50 Ideas for Action (10 strategies for building on each of your top five themes) 

SPIN Selling

by Neil Rackham

Written by the former president and founder of Huthwaite corporation, SPIN Selling is essential reading for anyone involved in selling or managing a sales force. Unquestionably the best-documented account of sales success ever collected and the result of the Huthwaite corporation's massive 12-year, $1-million dollar research into effective sales performance, this groundbreaking resource details the revolutionary SPIN (Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff) strategy.

In SPIN Selling, Rackham, who has advised leading companies such as IBM and Honeywell delivers the first book to specifically examine selling high-value product and services. By following the simple, practical, and easy-to-apply techniques of SPIN, readers will be able to dramatically increase their sales volume from major accounts. Rackham answers key questions such as “What makes success in major sales” and “Why do techniques like closing work in small sales but fail in larger ones?”

You will learn why traditional sales methods which were developed for small consumer sales, just won't work for large sales and why conventional selling methods are doomed to fail in major sales. Packed with real-world examples, illuminating graphics, and informative case studies - and backed by hard research data - SPIN Selling is the million-dollar key to understanding and producing record-breaking high-end sales performance.

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Six Thinking Hats

by Edward De Bono

A wonderful tool for group decision-making. Helps teams to be more effective by showing how we can break out of our automatic reaction patterns when facing something new.

sed successfully by thousands of business managers, educators, and government leaders around the world, Six Thinking Hats offers a practical and uniquely positive approach to making decisions and exploring new ideas.
Your success in business depends on how you think. "The main difficulty of thinking is confusion," writes Edward de Bono, long recognized as the foremost international authority on conceptual thinking and on the teaching of thinking as a skill. "We try to do too much at once. Emotions, information, logic, hope, and creativity all crowd in on us. It is like juggling with too many balls." The solution? De Bono unscrambles the thinking process with his "six thinking hats":

• WHITE HAT: neutral and objective, concerned with facts and figures
• RED HAT: the emotional view
• BLACK HAT: careful and cautious, the "devil's advocate" hat
• YELLOW HAT: sunny and positive
• GREEN HAT: associated with fertile growth, creativity, and new ideas
• BLUE HAT: cool, the color of the sky, above everything else-the organizing hat

Through case studies and real-life examples, Dr. de Bono reveals the often surprising ways in which deliberate role playing can make you a better thinker. He offers a powerfully simple tool that you--and your business, whether it's a start-up or a major corporation--can use to create a climate of clearer thinking, improved communication, and greater creativity. His book is an instructive and inspiring text for anyone who makes decisions, in business or in life.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Powerful lessons in personal change
by Stephen R. Covey

This is Amazon's 10th most-read book. It has changed the lives of many people.

This book was a groundbreaker when it was first published in 1990, and it continues to be a business bestseller with more than 10 million copies sold. Stephen Covey, an internationally respected leadership authority, realizes that true success encompasses a balance of personal and professional effectiveness, so this book is a manual for performing better in both arenas. His anecdotes are as frequently from family situations as from business challenges.

Before you can adopt the seven habits, you'll need to accomplish what Covey calls a "paradigm shift"--a change in perception and interpretation of how the world works. Covey takes you through this change, which affects how you perceive and act regarding productivity, time management, positive thinking, developing your "proactive muscles" (acting with initiative rather than reacting), and much more.

This isn't a quick-tips-start-tomorrow kind of book. The concepts are sometimes intricate, and you'll want to study this book, not skim it. When you finish, you'll probably have Post-it notes or hand-written annotations in every chapter.

Servant Leadership in Action: How You Can Achieve Great Relationships and Results

by Kenneth Blanchard and Renee Broadwell

This book fuses together essays by forty-four renowned servant leadership experts and practitioners who offer advice and tools for implementing the servant leadership model.  Servant leaders lead by serving their people, not by exalting themselves.

The only way to create great relationships and results is through
servant leadership. It's all about putting other people first.
- from the foreword by John Maxwell

Marshall Goldsmith, Simon Sinek, Stephen M.R. Covey, Brené Brown, Patrick Lencioni, James Kouzes and Barry Posner are just a few of the thought leaders with essays in this compendium which was published on 6 March 2018 and immediately became the number one best seller among business books.

Rules of Baseball

An anecdotal look at the rules of baseball and how they came to be
by David Nemec.

Would you like to know not only about the current rules but how they came about? This is the book for you.

Baseball's rules, in their "official" version, read like a tax regulation manual--and are nearly as unintelligible. Nemec, a noted baseball historian, provides an annotated version of the official rules in which he not only explains them in plain English, but also provides an example of each and an explanation of its origins. For example, most fans are familiar with the rule requiring a runner to "tag up" on a fly ball before advancing. Today the rule says a runner can advance after the ball touches a fielder; at one time, the ball had to be secured by the fielder, which led outfielders to develop their juggling skills. This is an official publication of major-league baseball and is being released in conjunction with the game's one-hundred-twenty-fifth anniversary.

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