Wouldn't you like to sit in a room and ask the following people for their investment advice? -John C. Bogle (Founder, Vanguard Group) -Warren Buffett (CEO of Berkshire Hathaway) -Bill Gross (Founder and CIO, PIMCO) -Susan Ivey (CEO, ReynoldsAmerican Inc.) -A.G. Lafley (Chairman, Procter & Gamble) -Georgette Mosbacher (CEO, Borghese Cosmetics) -John Myers (CEO, GE Asset Management) -Suze Orman (bestselling author) -Steve Forbes (President, Forbes magazine) These and dozens of other investment professionals offer their personal secrets of success when it comes to making money. And along the way, they provide their own insights on whether you should diversify your portfolio (or put your cash somewhere else), whether you should pick your own stocks (or let a pro do it for you), if investing in real estate is really the answer to great wealth, if saving a few pennies here and there really do add up, and much, much more. The book is edited by Claman to be extremely accessible to all investors, regardless of their financial background.

"We've all been involved in group decisions--and they're hard. And they often turn out badly. Why? Many blame bad decisions on 'groupthink' without a clear idea of what that term really means. Now, Nudge coauthor Cass Sunstein and leading decision-making scholar Reid Hastie shed light on the specifics of why and how group decisions go wrong--and offer tactics and lessons to help leaders avoid the pitfalls and reach better outcomes"--Dust jacket flap.

Miss Lonelyhearts is Nathanael West's second novel. He began writing it early in 1930 and completed the manuscript in November of 1932. Published in 1933, it is an Expressionist black comedy set in New York City during the Great Depression. In the story, Miss Lonelyhearts is an unnamed male newspaper columnist writing an advice column for the lovelorn and lonesome, a duty that the other newspaper staff considers a joke. As Miss Lonelyhearts reads letters from desperate New Yorkers, he feels terribly burdened and falls into a cycle of deep depression, accompanied by heavy drinking and occasional bar fights. He is also the victim of the pranks and cynical advice of Shrike, his feature editor at the newspaper. Miss Lonelyhearts tries several approaches to escape the terribly painful letters he has to read: religion, trips to the countryside with his fiancée Betty, and affairs with Shrike's wife and Mrs. Doyle, a reader of his column. However, Miss Lonelyheart's efforts do not seem to ameliorate his situation. After his sexual encounter with Mrs. Doyle, he meets her husband, a poor crippled man. The Doyles invite Miss Lonelyhearts to have dinner with them. When he arrives, Mrs. Doyle tries to seduce him again, but he responds by beating her. Mrs. Doyle tells her husband that Miss Lonelyhearts tried to rape her. In the last scene, Mr. Doyle hides a gun inside a rolled newspaper and decides to take revenge on Miss Lonelyhearts. Lonelyhearts, who has just experienced a religious enlightenment after three days of sickness, runs toward Mr. Doyle to embrace him. The gun "explodes", and the two men roll down a flight of stairs together. The general tone of the novel is one of extreme disillusionment with Depression-era American society, a consistent theme throughout West's novels. However, the novel is a black comedy, characterized by a dark sense of humor and irony. Justus Neiland, among others, has pointed out the use of Bergsonian laughter, in which "the attitudes, gestures, and movements of the human body are laughable in exact proportion as that body reminds us of a machine." The novel can be read through a Marxist lens as a condemnation of alienation and the colonization of social life by commodification, foreshadowing the stance of the Situationists and Guy Debord in particular. Miss Lonelyhearts is unable to fulfill his role as advice giver in a world in which both people and advice (in the form of newspaper ads, for example) are mass-produced. People are machines for the sole purpose of laboring as far as the rest of society is concerned (thus Miss Lonelyhearts' name), and any advice for them is as mass-produced as a manual for a machine. Lonelyhearts is unable to find a personal solution to his problems because they have systemic causes. West, who worked in the newspaper business before writing Miss Lonelyhearts, is also an advice giver of a sort as a novelist. Miss Lonelyhearts is similar to a détournement because it uses a form to critique the same form. The novel also condemns itself by condemning art, which is repeatedly derided by Shrike and compared to religion as an opiate of the masses. Many of the problems described in Miss Lonelyhearts describe actual economic conditions in New York City during the Great Depression, although the novel carefully avoids questions of national politics. Moreover, the novel is particularly important due to its existential import. The characters seem to be living in an amoral world. Hence, they resort to heavy drinking, sex, and parties. Miss Lonelyhearts has a "Christ complex", which stands for his belief in religion as a solution to a world devoid of values. (wikipedia.org)

Interested in Pursuing a Career in VO? Curious what goes on behind the scenes in a business where people talk funny for money? This updated edition of the award-winning first book offers a fun and comprehensive look at what it takes, what goes on, and what it's like behind the mic from two (still) working pros who started from scratch. In this book you will discover: - The ins and outs of auditioning - Vocal warm-ups and exercises - Tips for reading copy to maximum effect - Hints to help you stand out - Advice for setting up your own home studio - Keys to marketing yourself: demo > agent > job - What to expect when you book the job - A bonus workbook to hone your skills - Performance capture, podcasting, & more!

A revised edition of this celebrated cultural history features a new afterword and three new chapters focusing on the global K-pop phenomenon BTS, as well as the Academy Award–winning film Parasite and the hit Netflix series Squid Game. In this fresh, funny, and insightful cultural history, Euny Hong recounts how South Korea vaulted itself into the twenty-first century, becoming a global leader in business, technology, education, and pop culture. Along the way we meet teachers, cultural critics, Michelin-starred chefs, pop music superstars, and government ministers in charge of creating boy bands with highly synchronized dance moves. The strict rigors of the Korean education system now lead to a society that works and plays hard—with a Ministry of Culture that churns out movies, television dramas, pop bands, and video games exported throughout the world. The Birth of Korean Cool reveals how a really uncool country became cool, and how a nation that once banned miniskirts, long hair on men, and rock and roll could come to be known for its pop music and the smartphone in everyone’s pocket. This revised edition features a new afterword and three new chapters focusing on the global K-pop phenomenon BTS, as well as the Academy Award-winning film Parasite and the hit Netflix series Squid Game.

Through his years of intensive work consulting to companies including Procter & Gamble, Sony, Toyota, Microsoft, Ford and Ernst & Young, with his firm The Energy Project, Schwartz has developed a powerful program for changing the way we are working that greatly boosts our engagement and our satisfication with our work and increases our performance. In this book he marshalls a wide range of powerful evidence from business research and psychology that shows that the current model of work is not only not optimal, it is specfically counter-productive because it saps us of our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy. In order for us to perform at our best, we must make a set of key changes in our work lives -- and in order to develop the full potential of their work force, our managers and companies must institute changes that will provide us with the regular physical renewal, emotional reward, mental focus and stimulation; and sense of purpose and significance that we need.

A new era begins for Iron Man, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Spencer Ackerman! With his company restored, Tony Stark's first order of business is getting Stark Unlimited back out of the weapons game. But a multinational company doesn't just stop selling weapons overnight, and the board is more concerned with profit margins than super-hero ethics. Now they've made a deal with the devil: Stark Unlimited is for sale, and the highest bidder represents the combined might of Tony's two biggest competitors: Roxxon and A.I.M.! But they're ready for the old Tony Stark. This one? He's a lot angrier than he used to be. New armour, old enemies and unbelievable twists abound in this fresh take on a fury-powered Iron Man! Collecting: Iron Man (2024) 1-6

Robert Evans's The Kid Stays in the Picture is universally recognized as the greatest, most outrageous, most unforgettable show business memoir ever written. The basis of a groundbreaking, award-winning documentary film, it remains the gold standard of Hollywood storytelling. The only actor ever to run a Hollywood studio, Evans emerged from near-obscurity in the mid-1960s to rescue Paramount, one of the great studios of the Golden Age, from near-bankruptcy. A self-confessed "half-assed actor," Evans proved a genius producer and studio chief, drawing on his irresistible combination of instinct, smarts, showmanship, and bravado to take Paramount from the basement to the penthouse with such films as The Odd Couple, Rosemary's Baby, Love Story, The Godfather, and Chinatown. He lived a swashbuckling life, partying with lifetime friends like Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, and Dustin Hoffman, consulting with power players like Henry Kissinger, and squiring a host of dazzling women including his wives Ali McGraw, Catherine Oxenberg, and Phyllis George. After a decade of triumph, he lost everything in a spectacular flameout of cocaine and bad business decisions, yet survived it all--and lived to tell the tale. An extraordinary raconteur, Evans spares no one, least of all himself. Filled with starring roles for everyone from Ava Gardner to Marlon Brando to Sharon Stone, The Kid Stays in the Picture is sharp, witty, and self-aggrandizing and self-lacerating in equal measure-- Provided by publisher.

"For as long as he has served at the highest levels of business and government, Vice President Dick Cheney has also been one of the world's most prominent heart patients. Now, for the first time ever, Cheney, together with his longtime cardiologist Jonathan Reiner, MD, shares the very personal story of his courageous thirty-five-year battle with heart disease, from his first heart attack in 1978 to the heart transplant he received in 2012. In 1978, when Cheney suffered his first heart attack, he receivedessentially the same treatment as President Eisenhower had in 1955. Since then, cardiac medicine has evolved in extraordinary ways, and Cheney has benefited from nearly every medical and technological breakthrough along the way. At each juncture, when Cheney faced a new health challenge, the technology was one step ahead of his disease. In many ways, Cheney's story is the story of the evolution of modern cardiac care. Heart is the riveting, singular memoir of both doctor and patient, tracking their relationship as it unfolds over many years and crises. Like no US politician has before him, Cheney opens up about his health struggles, sharing harrowing, never-before-told stories about the challenges he faced during a perilous time in our nation's history. Dr. Reiner provides his perspective on Cheney's case and also gives readers a fascinating glimpse into his own education as a doctor. He masterfully chronicles the important discoveries, radical innovations, and cutting-edge science that have changed the face of medicine and saved countless lives. Powerfully braiding science with story and the personal with the political, Heart is a sweeping, inspiring, and ultimately optimistic book that will give hope to the millions of Americans affected by heart disease"--

A pocket guide to the best of contemporary architecture around the world. Perfect for the holiday or business traveler, the book contains over 1052 color photographs, maps and addresses to assist in the identification and location of buildings.

The latest race-against-time instalment of the award-winning Grace series by Peter James, now a major BRITBOX show. Hunting him would be murder . . . When James Taylor arrives late for a funeral, he has to stand at the back of the small church. But as the service progresses, Taylor notices a man six rows in front of him. At first he thinks he must be mistaken, but the more he looks at him, the more convinced Taylor becomes that this is his old schoolfriend, Rufus Rorke. Except it couldn’t be him, could it? Because two years ago, Taylor attended Rufus Rorke’s funeral. He even delivered Rufus’s eulogy. . . On the other side of Brighton at Police HQ, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace has been alerted to a number of suspicious deaths that he can’t get out of his mind. But how are they linked? And how could they possibly be connected to Rufus Rorke? Roy Grace is about to find out just how dangerous a dead man can be . . . 'Peter James is one of the best British crime writers, and therefore one of the best in the world' - Lee Child 'Peter James is one of the best crime writers in the business' - Karin Slaughter 'One of the world’s most popular detective series' - The Guardian

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Ben Kingsley and Theo James, the gripping true story of a young program coordinator at the United Nations who stumbles upon a conspiracy involving Iraq's oil reserves. "What made this episode in our collective history possible was not so much the lies we told one another, but the lies we told ourselves." A recent Brown University graduate, Michael Soussan was elated when he landed a position as a program coordinator for the United Nations' Iraq Program. Little did he know that he would end up a whistleblower in what PBS NewsHour described as the "largest financial scandal in UN history." Breaking a conspiracy of silence that had prevailed for years, Soussan sparked an unprecedented corruption probe into the Oil-for-Food program that exposed a worldwide system of bribes, kickbacks, and blackmail involving ruthless power-players from around the globe. At the crossroads of pressing humanitarian concerns, crisis diplomacy, and multibillion-dollar business interests, Soussan's story highlights core flaws of our international system and exposes the frightening, corrupting power of the black elixir that fuels our world's economy.

Why does our popular culture seem so consistently hostile to the values that most Americans hold dear? Why does the entertainment industry attack religion, glorify brutality, undermine the family, and deride patriotism? In this explosive book, one of the nation's best known film critics examines how Hollywood has broken faith with its public, creating movies, television, and popular music that exacerbate every serious social problem we face, from teenage pregnancies to violence in the streets. Michael Medved powerfully argues that the entertainment business follows its own dark obsessions, rather than giving the public what it wants: In fact, the audience for feature films and network television has demonstrated its profound disillusionment in recent years, with disastrous consequences for many entertainment companies.^

"Chertoff [posits] that our laws and policies surrounding the protection of personal information, written for an earlier time, need to be ... overhauled in the Internet era. On the one hand, the collection of data--more widespread by business than by government, and impossible to stop--should be facilitated as an ultimate protection for society. On the other, standards under which information can be inspected, analyzed, or used must be significantly tightened"--Amazon.com

A multicultural story full of heart and hilarity about what it means to be all-American. Lauren and her best friend, Tara, have always done absolutely everything together. So when they don't have any classes together in sixth grade, it's disastrous. The solution? Trying out for the school play. Lauren, who loves to sing, wonders if maybe, just maybe, she will be the star instead of Tara this time.But when the show is cast, Lauren lands in the ensemble, while Tara scores the lead role. Their teacher explains: Lauren just doesn't look the part of the all-American girl. What audience would believe that she, half-Jewish, half-Chinese Lauren, was the everygirl star from Pleasant Valley, USA?From amidst the ensemble, Lauren tries to support her best friend. But when she can't bring herself to sing anymore, her spot in the play and her friendship are in jeopardy. With the help of a button-making business, the music of Patsy Cline, and her two bickering grandmothers, can Lauren find her voice again?Acclaimed coauthors Madelyn Rosenberg and Wendy Wan-Long Shang return to the 1980s world of Sydney Taylor Honor Book This Is Just a Test with this laugh-out-loud coming-of-age story.

Pollster Mark Penn argues that the biggest trends in America are microtrends, the smaller trends that go unnoticed or ignored. One million people can create new market for a business, spark a social movement, or effect political change. In 1996, a microtrend identified by Penn ("soccer moms") helped re-elect Clinton. Now, Penn identifies the new microtrends sweeping the world, from Extreme Commuters and Working Retired to Old New Dads, from Bourgeois And Bankrupt to Uptown Tattooed. Highlighting everything from religion to politics, from leisure pursuits to relationships, this book will take the reader deep into the worlds of polling, targeting, and psychographic analysis.--From publisher description.

"The never-before-told inside story of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center - an epic tale of business, politics, and engineering by the man who spent two decades working to make it happen. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11 destroyed the World Trade Center, New Yorkers and Americans faced a critical set of questions: What should be done with the site? Could the towers be replaced? And how best to memorialize those lost on that day? For Larry Silverstein, a lifelong New Yorker who had signed a lease for the properties just a few months before the attacks, the answer was clear: America had to rebuild as quickly as possible. In The Rising, Silverstein recounts in vivid detail his long battle to construct a new World Trade Center complex and to revitalize the surrounding neighborhood while also memorializing the victims of the attacks. Silverstein made history in 2001 when he signed a 99-year lease on the 10.6 million square foot World Trade Center for $3.25 billion. For the next twenty years, he navigated warring political interests, byzantine city bureaucracies, and resistant insurance companies, as well as the many challenges of designing, engineering, and constructing several new towers in the heart of downtown Manhattan. More than once the entire project almost folded, but today the buildings are nearly complete and the neighborhood is once again a thriving hub that draws hundreds of thousands of people a day. The Rising is a vibrant portrait of the inner workings of New York City in the wake of its most profound tragedy, but it is also a master class in how to succeed in business despite all odds. Full of outsize characters and relentless adversity, this is a riveting book about a remarkable feat of vision and determination"--

"A shocking account of how Harvey Weinstein rose to become one of the most iconic figures in the world of movies, how he used that position to feed his monstrous sexual appetites, and how it all came crashing down, from the author who has covered the Hollywood power game for the New Yorker for three decades. Twenty years ago, Ken Auletta wrote one of the iconic New Yorker profiles for which he is famous, of the Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, then at the height of his powers. The profile created waves for exposing how volatile, even violent, Weinstein was to his employees and collaborators. But there was a much darker story that was just out of reach: rumors had long swirled that Weinstein was a sexual predator, but no one was willing to go on the record, and in the end he and the magazine concluded they couldn't close the case. But the story always nagged at him, and many years later, he was able to share his reporting notes and all that he knew with Ronan Farrow, and to cheer him along with Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey as they broke their pioneering stories and wrote their bestselling books. But the story continued to nag at him. Farrow, Twohey, and Kantor did a brilliant job exposing the trail of assaults and their cover-up, but the larger questions remained: what explained Weinstein's monstrousness? Even more importantly, how and why was it never checked? How does a man run the day to day operations of a company with hundreds of employees and revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars and at the same time live a shadow life of sexual predation without ever being caught, for years and years? How much is this a story about Harvey Weinstein, and how much is this a story about Hollywood and power? To answer that question fully, Ken Auletta has spent the past three years constructing a full reckoning with a career in film that has no parallel in Hollywood's history in its combination of extraordinary business and creative success and a personal brutality and viciousness that left a trail of ruined lives in its wake. How did one thing relate to the other? Hollywood Ending is an unflinching examination of Weinstein's life and career in full. Not simply a prosecutor's litany of crimes, it embeds them in the context of his overall business, his failures but also his outsized successes. To understand how he could behave as he did, we have to understand the power he wielded. Iconic film stars, Miramax employees and board members, old friends and family, even the person who knew him best, Harvey's brother Bob, all talked to Auletta at length. The result is not simply the portrait of a predator, it is a portrait of the power that allowed Weinstein to operate with such impunity for so many years, the spider web in which his victims found themselves trapped. To understand Weinstein's web is to understand how many other spider webs no doubt still remain."--

"There's an entirely new way to think about what you do later in life. The third act profiles sixty people who are doing it differently. From names you'll know to those you'll discover for the first time, these life stories and beautiful photographic portraits encourage you to bring your passion and capabilities to redefine and reframe the conventional idea of retirement. Read how well-known celebrities like Alan Alda, Rita Moreno, Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda, James E. Clyburn, Robert Redford, and Norman Lear took on new challenges at an age when some people choose to slow down. Be inspired by the stories of lesser-known figures like Donzella Washington, who became the oldest graduate of Alabama A&M University at eighty; Andrea Peterson, who fulfilled a lifelong dream of becoming a firefighter at fifty; Paul Dillon, who started an incubator for marine veterans after his business career; Hope Harley, who founded the Bronx Children's Museum after a career at telecommunications company; and many more"--Back cover.