Cows, after you've seen one, or two, or ten, are boring. A Purple Cow, though...now that would be something. Purple Cow describes something phenomenal, something counterintuitive and exciting and flat out unbelievable. Every day, consumers come face to face with a lot of boring stuff-a lot of brown cows-but you can bet they won't forget a Purple Cow. And it's not a marketing function that you can slap on to your product or service. Purple Cow is inherent. It's built right in, or it's not there. Period.
This is the bold, unique volume that first put the finger on one of the major causes of depression and inefficiency in modern life; junk and clutter! With good reason CLUTTER S LAST STAND, has been called the book that convinces you to declutter. With a nonstop sense of humor and hundreds of hilarious illustrations, it lays out the case for dejunking, dramatically demonstrating how clutter invades and affects every area of our homes and lives.
Thrilled to Death: How the Endless Pursuit of Pleasure Is Leaving Us Numb
In this insightful book, Dr. Hart explores the stark rise in a phenomenon known as anhedonia, an inability to experience pleasure or happiness. Previously linked only to serious emotional disorders, anhedonia is now seen as a contributing factor in depression (specifically nonsadness depression) and in the growing number of people who complain of profound boredom. This emotional numbness and loss of joy are results of the overuse of our brain's pleasure circuits. In Thrilled to Death, Dr. Hart explains the processes of the brain's pleasure center, the damaging trends of overindulgence and overstimulation, the signs and problems of anhedonia, and the seven important steps we must take to recover our wonderful joy in living.
"Millions of Americans work full-time, year-round, for poverty-level wages. Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. But how can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on six to seven dollars an hour? To find out Ehrenreich moved from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodgings available and accepting work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing home aid, and Wal-Mart salesperson."
"The Working Poor examines the "forgotten America" where "millions live in the shadow of prosperity, in the twilight between poverty and well-being." These are citizens for whom the American Dream is out of reach despite their willingness to work hard. Struggling to simply survive, they live so close to the edge of poverty that a minor obstacle, such as a car breakdown or a temporary illness, can lead to a downward financial spiral that can prove impossible to reverse. David Shipler interviewed many such working people for this book and his profiles offer an intimate look at what it is like to be trapped in a cycle of dead-end jobs without benefits or opportunities for advancement. He shows how some negotiate a broken welfare system that is designed to help yet often does not, while others proudly refuse any sort of government assistance, even to their detriment. Still others have no idea that help is available at all."
Bait and Switch:The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
Barbara Ehrenreich´s Nickel and Dimed explored the lives of low-wage workers. Now, in Bait and Switch, she enters another hidden realm of the economy: the shadowy world of the white-collar unemployed. Armed with a plausible résumé of a professional "in transition," she attempts to land a middle-class job -- undergoing career coaching and personality testing, then trawling a series of EST-like boot camps, job fairs, networking events, and evangelical job-search ministries. She gets an image makeover, works to project a winning attitude, yet is proselytized, scammed, lectured, and -- again and again -- rejected.
Bait and Switch highlights the people who´ve done everything right -- gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills, and built up impressive résumés -- yet have become repeatedly vulnerable to financial disaster, and not simply due to the vagaries of the business cycle. Today´s ultra-lean corporations take pride in shedding their "surplus" employees -- plunging them, for months or years at a stretch, into the twilight zone of white-collar unemployment, where job searching becomes a full-time job in itself. As Ehrenreich discovers, there are few social supports for these newly disposable workers -- and little security even for those who have jobs.
Like the now classic Nickel and Dimed, Bait and Switch is alternately hilarious and tragic, a searing exposé of economic cruelty where we least expect it.
"On any given day, one out of four Americans opts for a quick and cheap meal at a fast-food restaurant, without giving either its speed or its thriftiness a second thought. Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems as American, and harmless, as apple pie. But the industry\'s drive for consolidation, homogenization, and speed has radically transformed America\'s diet, landscape, economy, and workforce, often in insidiously destructive way
Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence
by: Joe Dominguez, Vicki Robin
Find financial freedom in the new millennium with a new edition of the life-changing national bestseller More than three-quarters of a million people everywhere, from all walks of life, have found the keys to gaining control of their money--and their lives--in this comprehensive and revolutionary book on money management. Considered the bible of the voluntary simplicity movement, Your Money or Your Life is now updated with a new Preface, Index, and Resource list to help you put the program into practice. This simple, nine-step program shows you how to: * get out of debt and develop savings * slow down the work-and-spend treadmill * make values-based decisions about your spending * save the planet while saving money *
Who Moved My Cheese: An Amazing Way To Deal With Change In Your Work And In Your Life
by: Spencer Johnson
Change can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your perspective. The message of Who Moved My Cheese? is that all can come to see it as a blessing, if they understand the nature of cheese and the role it plays in their lives. Who Moved My Cheese? is a parable that takes place in a maze. Four beings live in that maze: Sniff and Scurry are mice--nonanalytical and nonjudgmental, they just want cheese and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it. Hem and Haw are "littlepeople," mouse-size humans who have an entirely different relationship with cheese. It\'s not just sustenance to them; it\'s their self-image. Their lives and belief systems are built around the cheese they\'ve found. Most of us reading the story will see the cheese as something related to our livelihoods--our jobs, our career paths, the industries we work in--although it can stand for anything, from health to relationships. The point of the story is that we have to be alert to changes in the cheese, and be prepared to go running off in search of new sources of cheese when the cheese we have runs out.
Getting?a Life? Revolutionary and life changing, the "voluntary simplicity" movement is about achieving financial freedom and living well for less. Now Getting a Life shows how real people have left the rat race for a more meaningful--and financially manageable--life that reflects their own true values and individual goals. Written by a couple who used the nine steps in the bestselling Your Money or Your Life to transform their own relationship with money, Getting a Life offers proven, practical ideas on how to use each step of the program. With honesty and humor, the authors and more than two dozen families and individuals share their personal experiences on such issues as paying for health care, raising children in a materialistic world, and breaking the link between what you do for a living and who you are. Getting a Life shows you how to adopt voluntary simplicity in your own life and what to expect once you do.
The work world is full of toxic people-whine and cheesers, backstabbers, steamrollers, zipper lips, needy weenies, and know-it-alls. Life is just too short to let difficult people drive you nuts in the office. If you want to decontaminate the toxic people in your workplace, this practical guide to office survival will show you how to do it before they suck the life out of you.
Has bad behavior gone from annoying to over the line? Should you call HR or an attorney--or just suck it up? Inside this book you'll find out the underlying reasons for difficult people and learn how to manage those difficulties effectively, work productively with a diverse workforce, and transform misery into productivity. It's time to turn down the drama meter, get cooperation from people you otherwise can't stand, and, most importantly, stay cool when work gets too hot to handle!
Do you work in a "toxic energy dump"? Do you or your employees seem stuck in the doldrums all the time? Well then, FISH! is for you. Mallory Kasdan enthusiastically and energetically reads this tale of a manager of a department in which everyone has lost ambition, energy, and helpfulness.
"The Tipping Point is that magical moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshhold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisley targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. The widely acclaimed best-seller, in which Malcolm Galdwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.
"Americans spend $36 million every hour at Wal-Mart, twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year. That makes it not just America's, and the world's, biggest retailer, but a shaping force even in the lives of people who never set foot inside its stores. In a book The Economist says its filled with "unexpected insights," an acclaimed business journalist penetrates Wal-Mart's once impenetrable wall of secrecy to chart its real impact on workers, suppliers, communities, the environment, and even the way we see the world every day.
