How to Win Friends & Influence People

Originally published during the depths of the Great Depression—and equally valuable during booming economies or hard times—Dale Carnegie's rock-solid, time-tested advice has carried countless people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives. It introduces simple and life-changing concepts such as:

A simple Way to Make a Good First Impression
How to Criticize Other People—and Not Be Hated for It
An Easy Way to Become a Good Conversationalist
What to Do When Nothing Else Works
Making People Glad to Do What You Want
And So Much More!

Emotional Intelligence 2.0

In today's fast-paced world of competitive workplaces and turbulent economic conditions, each of us is searching for effective tools that can help us to manage, adapt, and strike out ahead of the pack. 

By now, emotional intelligence (EQ) needs little introduction—it’s no secret that EQ is critical to your success. But knowing what EQ is and knowing how to use it to improve your life are two very different things.

Emotional Intelligence 2.0 delivers a step-by-step program for increasing your EQ via four, core EQ skills that enable you to achieve your fullest potential:

1) Self-Awareness
2) Self-Management
3) Social Awareness
4) Relationship Management

Emotional Intelligence 2.0 is a book with a single purpose—increasing your EQ. Here’s what people are saying about it:

48 Laws of Power-Robert Greene

Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this piercing work distills 3,000 years of the history of power into 48 well-explicated laws. This bold volume outlines the laws of power in their unvarnished essence, synthesizing the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, and other infamous strategists. The 48 Laws of Power will fascinate any listener interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control.

Thinking, Fast and Slow-Daniel Kahneman

Major New York Times bestseller
Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award in 2012
Selected by the New York Times Book Review as one of the best books of 2011
A Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year 2011 Title
One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year
One of The Wall Street Journal's Best Nonfiction Books of the Year 2011
2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient

In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation―each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions.
Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives―and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

This twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Stephen Covey’s cherished classic commemorates the timeless wisdom of the 7 Habits.

One of the most inspiring and impactful books ever written, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has captivated readers for 25 years. It has transformed the lives of Presidents and CEOs, educators and parents— in short, millions of people of all ages and occupations.

The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan

Sebastian Mallaby's magisterial biography of Alan Greenspan, the product of over five years of research based on untrammeled access to his subject and his closest professional and personal intimates, brings into vivid focus the mysterious point where the government and the economy meet. To understand Greenspan's story is to see the economic and political landscape of the last 30 years--and the presidency from Reagan to George W. Bush--in a whole new light. As the most influential economic statesman of his age, Greenspan spent a lifetime grappling with a momentous shift: the transformation of finance from the fixed and regulated system of the post-war era to the free-for-all of the past quarter.
 

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool?

What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?

How much do parents really matter?

These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He studies the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to parenting and sports—and reaches conclusions that turn conventional wisdom on its head. 

by Steven D. Levitt   (Author), Stephen J. Dubner  (Author)

Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

Bad Samaritans was an introduction to open-minded economists and political free-thinkers to Ha-Joon Chang's theories of the dangers of free-trade. With irreverent wit, an engagingly personal style, and a keen grasp of history, Chang blasts holes in the "World Is Flat" orthodoxy of Thomas Friedman and others who argue that only unfettered capitalism and wide-open international trade can lift struggling nations out of poverty. On the contrary, Chang shows, today's economic superpowers-from the U.S. to Britain to his native Korea-all attained prosperity by shameless protectionism and government intervention in industry, a fact conveniently forgotten now that they want to compete in foreign markets. Chang's cage-rattling, contrarian history of global capital appeals to readers new to economic theory as well as members of the old school looking for a fresh take.

Mark Blaug

Mark Blaug  (3 April 1927 – 18 November 2011) was a Dutch-born British economist (naturalised in 1982), who covered a broad range of topics during his long career.

In 1955 Blaug received his PhD from Columbia University in New York under the supervision of George Stigler. Besides shorter periods in public service and in international organisations he has held academic appointments in – among others – Yale University, the University of London, the London School of Economics and the University of Buckingham. He was visiting Professor in the Netherlands, University of Amsterdam and Erasmus University in Rotterdam, where he was also co-director of CHIMES (Center for History in Management and Economics).

Mark Blaug made far reaching contributions to a range of topics in economic thought throughout his career. Apart from valuable contributions to the economics of art and the economics of education, he is best known for his work in history of economic thought and the methodology of economics. Concerning methodological issues and the application of economic theory to a wide range of subjects from education to human capital, the "philosophy of science and the sweep of intellectual progress are fitting subjects to accommodate the breadth of Mark Blaug's interest.

     

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Blaug

Mark Skousen

Mark Skousen was born in 1947 in San Diego, California, and grew up in Portland, Oregon. He earned his B.A. and Master's degree in economics from Brigham Young University and his Ph.D. in economics from George Washington University in 1977.

Skousen was an economic analyst for the CIA from 1972 to 1975. He later worked as a consultant for IBM and Hutchinson Technology, and other companies. He was a columnist for Forbes magazine from 1997 to 2001, and has contributed articles to The Wall Street Journal as well as to various libertarian periodicals. He has been a speaker at investment conferences and  has lectured for think tanks, From 2008-2010 he was a weekly contributor on CNBC's Kudlow & Company and has also appeared on C-SPAN Book TV and Fox News.

Academic Books:

• The Structure of Production (New York University Press, 1990) ISBN 0-8147-7895-X
• Economics on Trial (Irwin McGraw Hill, 1991; 2nd edition, 1993) ISBN 1-55623-372-8 Translated into Japanese.
• Dissent on Keynes, editor (Praeger Publishing, 1992) ISBN 027593778X
• Puzzles and Paradoxes in Economics, co-authored with Kenna C. Taylor (Edward Elgar, 1997) ISBN 1840640499 Translated into Korean and Chinese
• Economic Logic (Capital Press, 2000, 2008, 2011, 2014). ISBN 1621572226 Fourth Edition includes chapters on macroeconomics and government policy, as well as microeconomics with Carl Menger’s “theory of the good” and the profit-and-loss income statement to explain the dynamics of the market process, entrepreneurship, and the advantages of saving. Translated into Chinese by Shanghai University of Finance and Economics Press
• The Making of Modern Economics (M. E. Sharpe Publishers, 2001, 2009) ISBN 0765622270 Winner 2009 Choice Outstanding Academic Title. Now in its second printing; translated into Chinese, Turkish, Mongolian, Spanish and Polish
• The Power of Economic Thinking (Foundation for Economic Education, 2002)ISBN 1572462019 Translated into Chinese by Shanghai University of Finance and Economics Press
• Vienna and Chicago: Friends or Foes? A Tale of Two Schools of Free-Market Economics (Capital Press, 2005) ISBN 0895260298 Translated into Chinese
• The Completed Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin, compiled and edited by Mark Skousen (Regnery Books, 2006) ISBN 0895260336 Regnery Publishing has also published in paperback the original Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin, edited with a new introduction by Mark Skousen, as Vol. I (1706–1757) and The Completed Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin as Vol. II (1757–1790)
• The Big Three in Economics: Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes (M. E. Sharpe, 2007) ISBN 0765616947
• EconoPower: How a New Generation of Economists Is Transforming the World (Wiley & Sons, 2008) ISBN 0470138076 Translated into Korean & Portuguese

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Skousen

Nouriel Roubini, economist who predicted 2008 crisis

Roubini is one of few economists who predicted the housing bubble crash of 2007-2008. He warned about the crisis in an IMF position paper in 2006  Roubini's predictions have earned him the nicknames "Dr. Doom" and "permabear" in the media. In 2008, Fortune magazine wrote, "In 2005 Roubini said home prices were riding a speculative wave that would soon sink the economy. Back then the professor was called a Cassandra. Now he's a sage". The New York Times notes that he foresaw "homeowners defaulting on mortgages, trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities unraveling worldwide and the global financial system shuddering to a halt". In September 2006, he warned a skeptical IMF that "the United States was likely to face a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust, an oil shock, sharply declining consumer confidence, and, ultimately, a deep recession". Nobel laureate Paul Krugman adds that his once "seemingly outlandish" predictions have been matched "or even exceeded by reality." By highlighting some of his many past predictions as being accurate, Roubini has promoted himself as a major figure in the U.S. and international debate about the economy, and spends much of his time shuttling between meetings with central bank governors and finance ministers in Europe and Asia. Although he is ranked only 512th in terms of lifetime academic citations, he was #4 on Foreign Policy magazine's list of the "top 100 global thinkers." In 2011 and 2012, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers. In December 2013 Roubini was awarded by Global Thinkers Forum the honorary GTF 2013 Award for Excellence in Global Thinking. He has appeared before Congress, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the World Economic Forum at Davos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouriel_Roubini

The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good Robert H. Frank

Who was the greater economist--Adam Smith or Charles Darwin? The question seems absurd. Darwin, after all, was a naturalist, not an economist. But Robert Frank, New York Times economics columnist and best-selling author of The Economic Naturalist, predicts that within the next century Darwin will unseat Smith as the intellectual founder of economics. The reason, Frank argues, is that Darwin's understanding of competition describes economic reality far more accurately than Smith's. And the consequences of this fact are profound. Indeed, the failure to recognize that we live in Darwin's world rather than Smith's is putting us all at risk by preventing us from seeing that competition alone will not solve our problems.

Smith's theory of the invisible hand, which says that competition channels self-interest for the common good, is probably the most widely cited argument today in favor of unbridled competition--and against regulation, taxation, and even government itself. But what if Smith's idea was almost an exception to the general rule of competition? That's what Frank argues, resting his case on Darwin's insight that individual and group interests often diverge sharply. Far from creating a perfect world, economic competition often leads to "arms races," encouraging behaviors that not only cause enormous harm to the group but also provide no lasting advantages for individuals, since any gains tend to be relative and mutually offsetting.

The good news is that we have the ability to tame the Darwin economy. The best solution is not to prohibit harmful behaviors but to tax them. By doing so, we could make the economic pie larger, eliminate government debt, and provide better public services, all without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone. That's a bold claim, Frank concedes, but it follows directly from logic and evidence that most people already accept.

In a new afterword, Frank further explores how the themes of inequality and competition are driving today's public debate on how much government we need

.http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9852.html

How to Save Money?

Deposit a portion of your income in a savings or retirement account. Don't accumulate new debt, and pay off any debt you currently have. Establish a realistic timeframe for your savings goals. Create a budget and keep track of all your expenses. Invest in the stock market only if you understand the ins and outs of the gambles you make. Spend money only on the essentials, and look for cheaper options where available, from housing to food, transportation, or energy usage. Save for an emergency fund. Spend money on luxuries only occasionally.
For instance, on an income of $3,000 per month, we might budget as follows:

• Housing/utilities: $1,000

  Student loans: $300

  Food: $500

  Internet: $70

  Gasoline: $150

  Savings: $500

  Misc.: $200

  Luxuries: $280

  http://www.wikihow.com/Save-Money

Effective Decision Making

In psychology, decision-making is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several alternative possibilities. Every decision-making process produces a final choice; it may or may not prompt action. Decision-making is the process of identifying and choosing alternatives based on the values and preferences of the decision-maker.

Human performance with regard to decisions has been the subject of active research from several perspectives:

• Psychological: examining individual decisions in the context of a set of needs, preferences and values the individual has or seeks.
• Cognitive: the decision-making process regarded as a continuous process integrated in the interaction with the environment.
• Normative: the analysis of individual decisions concerned with the logic of decision-making, or communicative rationality, and the invariant choice it leads to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision-making

Fast Fashion Giant Zara Faces $40 Million Anti-Semitism, Anti-Gay Discrimination Suit

Last August, Spanish clothing chain Zara went into damage control mode after selling a children’s shirt with a yellow star embellishment that drew comparisons to a Holocaust concentration camp uniform.

Parent company Inditex , one of the world’s largest fashion retailers, pulled the top from its shelves and issued an apology — but not before a public outcry. After all, it wasn’t Zara’s first time coming under scrutiny for insensitive imagery on its clothing. In 2007, the company withdrew a handbag that contained swastikas as a design element.

Now, a former in-house counsel for Zara claims the cheap-chic giant’s corporate culture is as anti-Semitic as these incidents would suggest.

On Wednesday, lawyers for Ian Jack Miller, the first and only corporate attorney for Zara’s U.S. and Canada business, filed a $40 million discrimination suit in New York’s Supreme Court alleging he was fired because he’s Jewish, American and gay.

Clare O'Connor ,  

FORBES STAFF 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2015/06/03

5 Simple Steps to Improve Your Decision Making

1. Don’t delay
2. Shelve ego and emotion
3. Ask an expert
4. Question your data
5. Plan for doomsday

Alex McClafferty ,  

 CONTRIBUTOR

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexmcclafferty/2015/02/05/decision-making