"In 2009, at the peak of the financial crisis, AIG - the American insurance behemoth - was sinking fast. It was the peg upon which the nation hung its ire and resentment during the financial crisis: the pinnacle of Wall Street arrogance and greed. When Bob Benmosche climbed aboard as CEO, it was widely assumed that he would go down with his ship. In mere months, he turned things around, pulling AIG from the brink of financial collapse and restoring its profitability. Before three years were up, AIG had fully repaid its staggering debt to the U.S. government - with interest.Good for the Money is an unyielding leader's memoir of a career spent fixing companies through thoughtful, unconventional strategy. With his brash, no-holds-barred approach to the job, Benmosche restored AIG's employee morale and good name. His is a story of perseverance, told with refreshing irreverence in unpretentious terms.Called "an American hero" by Andrew Ross Sorkin, author of Too Big to Fail, Benmosche was a self-made man who never forgot what life is like for the nation's 99-percent; again and again, he pushed back against obstinate colleagues to salvage American jobs and industry. Good for the Money affords you a front-row seat for Benmosche's heated battles with major players from Geithner to Obama to Cuomo, and offers incomparable lessons in leadership from the legendary CEO who changed the way Wall Street does business"--

PRAISE FOR NOAM CHOMSKY'S OCCUPY AND ZUCCOTTI PARK PRESS: "Having spent so much time thinking about and engaging with social movements, Chomsky is both optimistic about the energy of Occupy and realistic about the challenges it faces. He appreciates the "just do it" ethos and embraces its radical approach to participatory democracy...What makes Chomsky's perspective so interesting, aside from the wealth of his political experience, is the range of his interests. He draws from examples around the world to demonstrate his points. ...It's a big agenda that Occupy has identified, nothing less than a complete renewal of U.S. society and the U.S. role in the world. Chomsky sees not only the radical agenda but also the radical practice of the Occupiers. "Part of what functioning, free communities like the Occupy communities can be working for and spreading to others is just a different way of living, which is not based on maximizing consumer goods, but on maximizing values that are important for life," he concludes in this valuable set of remarks and interviews." --John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus, Pick Review "For decades, Chomsky has been marginalized for his insightful, levelheaded, and accurate observations about how our society functions. In Occupy , Chomsky... sets the record straight. And he's got an answer for everything. "It's necessary," Chomsky warns, "to get out into the country and get people to understand what this is about, and what they can do about it, and what the consequences are of not doing anything about it." Occupy begins with a powerful editor's note from Greg Ruggiero, who comments on 'the heartlessness and inhumanity of the system, ' where 'people's stolen homes are sold off to the highest bidder.' And if it isn't obvious to those who are still asking what the demands of Occupy Wall Street are, Ruggiero puts it plainly: 'Occupy embodies a vision of democracy that is fundamentally antagonistic to the management of society as a corporate-controlled space that funds a political system to serve the wealthy, ignore the poor.' One can only cringe at the thought of what will happen if we continue to ignore the wisdom of Noam Chomsky. He gives a clue in Occupy ...." --The Coffin Factory, The Magazine for People who Love Books Occupy is another vital contribution from Chomsky to the literature of defiance and protest, and a red-hot rallying call to forge a better, more egalitarian future. --Alternet Chomsky advocates intelligent activism by those who see the divorce between public policy and public opinion. He is both optimistic and realistic towards this "first major public response to 30 years of class war." --IRISH TIMES, PICK REVIEW " Occupy , is at once a vivid portrait of the now-global movement and a practical guide to intelligent activism, infused with Chomsky's signature meditations on everything from how the wealthiest 1% came to steer society to what a healthy democracy would look like to how we can separate money from politics. Alongside Chomsky's words are some of the most moving and provocative photographs from the Occupy movement. ... [One of] 10 essential books on protest." --Maria Popova, Brain Pickings In Occupy , Chomsky discusses the cornerstone issues, questions and demands that have been driving ordinary Americans to critique the influence of the 1%. The book begins and ends with Chomsky celebrating the life and work of his longtime friend and colleague, Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States. As a call to action, Chomsky encourages people to continue organizing, to continue struggling, and to continue defending citizenship and community-driven democracy from predation from the relentless encroachments of wealth and corporate power.

"Management has been one of the driving forces of the last century, indeed an idea and a language that colonized most other institutions, areas of human activity and walks of life, even those that had until recently been regarded as completely unmanageable, such as art, academia and creativity. Some it supported and others it destroyed, but there are few areas in modern societies that have been untouched by it. What is the meaning of management - now almost omnipresent and all powerful - in our current bleak times, in our current state of 'interregnum' that is characterized by an increasing sense of insecurity and hopelessness, a time when, paradoxically, the apparently omnipotent force of management no longer seems to work. Does it have a role to play today and in the future? What can it become and whom should it serve when the interregnum is over and a new, hopefully more humane, system begins to dawn? These are some of the questions explored in this timely new book by Zygmunt Bauman, one of the greatest thinkers of our times, architect and Urban Studies professor Irena Bauman, and two organization and management scholars, Jerzy Kociatkiewicz and Monika Kostera"--Page four of cover.

A firsthand account of how the Bush administration mismanaged its Afghan campaign, A Vulcan's Tale shines new and important light on the events and people behind the headlines in the immediate years following the September 11 attacks. The "Vulcans," so named by Condoleezza Rice, were eight foreign policy experts who advised George W. Bush during his 2000 presidential campaign. After Bush assumed the presidency, the Vulcans helped shape the administration’s foreign policy following 9/11, including the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. All were veterans of past administrations, having served under either Ronald Reagan or George H. W. Bush, and they included among their ranks Dov Zakheim. Made comptroller and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense in 2001, Zakheim was also named the DoD’s coordinator for Afghan civilian reconstruction in 2002. In A Vulcan's Tale , Zakheim draws on his own participation and intimate knowledge to analyze how the United States missed critical opportunities while it struggled to manage two wars, particularly the seemingly endless endeavor in Afghanistan. In his view, the Bush administration's disappointing results in Afghanistan were partly attributable to the enormity of the challenges, certainly. But flawed leadership and deficiencies of management, understanding, and forethought all played their parts as well. The power of the purse proved to be especially damaging. The Office of Management and Budget was slow to fund Defense's efforts at the outset of the Afghan conflict and then inadequately funded the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, casting the die for several additional years of conflict. The invasion of Iraq siphoned off critical resources for Afghanistan, thereby further complicating that country's reconstruction. Even with public policy of the highest order, the devil still lurked in the details, as the DoD's "money man" was soon to discover while he struggled to fund and manage the reconstruction of civilian Afghanistan. A Vulcan's Tale is an authoritative, candid but fair account of how a wise and admirable goal can be waylaid by insufficient funding and ineffective coordination, with the result of faulty—or, at best, incomplete—implementation.