Showing results by narrator "Walter Dixon" in All Categories

Interesting anecdotes and engaging tales make science fun, meaningful, and accessible. Separating sense from nonsense and fact from myth, these essays cover everything from the ups of helium to the downs of drain cleaners and provide answers to numerous mysteries, such as why bug juice is used to color ice cream and how spies used secret inks. Mercury in teeth, arsenic in water, lead in the environment, and aspartame in food are discussed.

Warren Buffett has repeatedly acknowledged Benjamin Graham, a man he personally studied and worked under, as the primary influence on his investment approach. Indeed, there is a direct line between the record-shattering investing performance of Buffett (and other value investors) and Graham's life. In six books and dozens of papers, Graham—widely known as the "Dean of Wall Street"—left an extensive account of an investing system that, as Buffett can attest to, actually works!

Sydney Finkelstein, Jo Whitehead, and Andrew Campbell show how the usually beneficial processes of the human mind can become traps when we face big decisions. The authors show how the shortcuts our brains have learned to take over millennia of evolution can derail our decision making. Think Again offers a powerful model for making better decisions, describing the key red flags to watch for and detailing the decision-making safeguards we need.

Power Phone Scripts provides word-for-word scripts, phrases, questions, and comebacks that you can use on your very next call. Learn to overcome resistance, get through to the decision maker, and then, once you have him or her on the phone, make an instant connection and earn the right to have a meaningful conversation. You'll be equipped with proven questions, conversation starters, and techniques to learn whether or not they are even right for your product or service, and, if they aren't, who else in their company or another department might be.

Shortly after the emergence of genetic engineering in the 1970s, academic biologists were courted by venture capitalists and multinational companies. Researchers who understood the new biology of the time went from being merely curious about how the natural world functioned to realizing that they could profit from their newfound recognition. As they were inventing all sorts of newfangled organisms, biologists became acquainted with intellectual property. 

Teaching by Heart summarizes the author's key insights gained from more than 40 years of teaching and managing. It illustrates how teachers can both lift people up and let them down. It proposes that the best teachers are also leaders, and the best leaders are also teachers. In examining how to lead and teach, renowned Harvard Business School professor Thomas J. DeLong takes the listener inside his own head and heart. He notes that, as teachers, we often focus more on our inadequacies and missteps than on our strengths and unique talents.

Robots are entering the mainstream. Technologies have advanced to the point of mass commercialization - Roomba, for example - and adoption by governments - most notably, their use of drones. Meanwhile, these devices are being received by a public whose main sources of information about robots are the fantasies of popular culture. We know a lot about C-3PO and Robocop, but not much about Atlas, Motoman, Kiva, or Beam - real-life robots that are reinventing warfare, the industrial workplace, and collaboration.

This entertaining examination of everyday science from the fanciful to the factual covers topics ranging from pesticides and environmental estrogens to lipsticks and garlic. Readers are alerted to the shenanigans of quacks and are offered glimpses into the fascinating history of science. The science of aphrodisiacs, DDT, bottled waters, vitamins, barbiturates, plastic wraps, and smoked meat is investigated. Worries about acrylamide, preservatives, and waxed fruits are put into perspective, and the mysteries of bulletproof vests, weight-loss diets, green-haired Swedes, laughing gas, and "mad honey" are unraveled.

Too many investment advisors have taken the path of least resistance, not aware of the risk in systematically withdrawing from what, at times, will be a declining portfolio. Investors seeking to accumulate money for their future needs and investors needing to withdraw money now for a present need both have one thing in common: dividend growth investing represents a powerful weapon in the achievement of their objectives.  

In their book, Phillip Longman and Ray Boshara show how today's progressives have much to learn from their counterparts of a hundred years ago. The original progressives built super-majorities in both parties and achieved stunning reforms by combining scientific expertise with deep deference to all-American values, particularly those of freedom-loving, small-scale entrepreneurs and producers.

New York Times best-selling author William J. Bennett uses stories, essays, historical vignettes, and contemporary profiles to explore and explain what it means to be a man. Fashioning men has never been easy, but today it seems particularly tough. Boys need heroes to embody the everlasting qualities of manhood: honor, duty, valor, and integrity. Without such role models, boys will naturally choose perpetual childhood over the rigors of becoming a man-as many women, teachers, coaches, employers, and adults in authority can quickly attest.

These days more and more employers are using “competency-based” job interview questions to try to ensure that new hires’ experience and abilities match the demands of the positions they’re filling. Designed to elicit real-life career events demonstrating your knowledge, judgment, and skills, this new breed of interview question can trip up even the savviest job seekers. And in this extremely tough job market, there are no second chances.

The reputation of the financial industry could hardly be worse than it is today in the painful aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. New York Times best-selling economist Robert Shiller is no apologist for the sins of finance - he is probably the only person to have predicted both the stock market bubble of 2000 and the real estate bubble that led up to the subprime mortgage meltdown. But in this important and timely book, Shiller argues that, rather than condemning finance, we need to reclaim it for the common good.

Marc Freedman, hailed by the New York Times as “the voice of aging baby boomers [seeking] meaningful and sustaining work later in life”, makes an impassioned call to accept the decades opening up between midlife and anything approximating old age for what they really are: an entirely new stage of life, which he dubs the encore years. The whole 60- to 80-year-old period is simply new territory, he writes, and the people in this period constitute a whole new phenomenon in the 21st century.

In The Lawyer Bubble, Steven J. Harper reveals how a culture of short-term thinking has blinded some of the nation’s finest minds to the long-run implications of their actions. Law school deans have ceded independent judgment in the quest to maximize immediate results. Senior partners in the nation’s large law firms have focused on current profits and individual wealth at great cost to their institutions. Yet, wiser decisions can take the profession to a better place.

With twenty years of experience in frontier markets, including a decade working in Africa, author Jonathan Berman engages with top business leaders on the vast opportunities and challenges of the continent. Success in Africa pushes past the headlines on Africa's growth to answer the questions often asked by companies and investors: Who do I work with there and what drives them? How do I deal with government? What about war, disease, and poverty? What about China? How do I win?

America began, we are often told, with the Founding Fathers, the men who waged a revolution and created a unique place called the United States. We may acknowledge the early Jamestown and Puritan colonists and mourn the dispossession of Native Americans, but we rarely grapple with the complexity of the nation’s pre-revolutionary past. In this pathbreaking revision, Daniel Richter shows that the United States has a much deeper history than is apparent - that far from beginning with a clean slate, it is a nation with multiple pasts.

More than 20 years ago, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton introduced the balanced scorecard, a revolutionary performance measurement system that allowed organizations to quantify intangible assets such as people, information, and customer relationships. Then, in The Strategy-Focused Organization, Kaplan and Norton showed how organizations achieved breakthrough performance with a management system that put the balanced scorecard into action.

 Cyber Intelligence-Driven Risk provides a solution to one of the most pressing issues that executives and risk managers face: How can we weave information security into our business decisions to minimize overall business risk? 

Everyone strives for success, but the path isn't always clear. Debra Eckerling, award-winning author of Your Goal Guide and creator of the DEB METHOD® for goal-setting simplified, brings together insights from top executives, entrepreneurs, authors, actors, chefs, and other thought leaders. This book provides practical strategies for anyone looking to enhance their focus and productivity, develop management in leadership skills, and set professional and personal goals that align with the goal of life fulfillment.