Recommendations based on "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto)"

The author of the world’s best-selling book on negotiation draws on his nearly fifty years of experience and knowledge grappling with the world’s toughest conflicts to offer a way out of the seemingly impossible problems of our time. Conflict is increasing everywhere, threatening everything we hold dear—from our families to our democracy, from our workplaces to our world. In nearly every area of society, we are fighting more and collaborating less, especially over crucial problems that demand solutions. With this groundbreaking book, bestselling author and international negotiator William Ury shares a new “path to possible”—time-tested practices that will help readers unlock their power to constructively engage and transform conflict. Part memoir, part manual, part manifesto, Possible offers stories and sage advice from Ury’s nearly 50 years of experience on the front lines of some of the world’s toughest conflicts. One of the world’s top experts in the field, Ury has worked on conflicts ranging from boardroom battles to labor strikes, from the US partisan divide to family feuds, from wars in the Middle East, Colombia and Ukraine to helping the US and USSR avoid nuclear disaster. Now, in Possible, he helps us tackle the seemingly intransigent problems facing us. In Possible, Ury argues conflict is natural. In fact, we need more conflict, not less—if we are to grow, change, evolve and solve our problems creatively. While we may not be able to end conflict, we can transform it—unleashing new, unexpected possibilities. Successfully tested at Harvard University with almost a thousand participants from business, government, academia, and the nonprofit sector, Ury’s “Path to Possible” proved so valuable that Harvard’s Program on Negotiation selected it as its inaugural online daylong in April 2022. Possible introduces Ury’s methods and makes them available for everyone. Combining accessible frameworks and powerful storytelling and offering dozens of examples, it is an essential guide for anyone looking to break through the toughest conflicts—in their workplace, family, community or the world.

This revolutionary book goes beyond any recent book on language to dissect how language operates in our minds and how to harness its virtually limitless power.As Dr. Marian explains, while you may well think you speak only one language, in fact your mind accommodates multiple codes of communication. Some people speak Spanish, some Mandarin. Some speak poetry, some are fluent in math. The human brain is built to use multiple languages, and using more languages opens doors to creativity, brain health, and cognitive control.Every new language we speak shapes how we extract and interpret information. It alters what we remember, how we perceive ourselves and the world around us, how we feel, the insights we have, the decisions we make, and the actions we take. Language is an invaluable tool for organizing, processing, and structuring information, and thereby unleashing radical advancement.Learning a new language has broad lifetime consequences, and Dr. Marian reviews research showing that it:- Improves executive function--our ability to focus on the things that matter and ignore the things that don't.- Results in higher scores on creative-thinking tasks.- Develops critical reasoning skills.- Delays Alzheimer's and other types of dementia by four to six years.- Improves decisions made under emotional duress.- Changes what we see, pay attention to, and recall.

The legendary bestseller that made millions look at the world in a radically different way returns in a new edition, now including an exclusive discussion between the authors and bestselling professor of psychology Angela Duckworth.Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? Which should be feared more: snakes or french fries? Why do sumo wrestlers cheat? In this groundbreaking book, leading economist Steven Levitt—Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and winner of the American Economic Association’s John Bates Clark medal for the economist under 40 who has made the greatest contribution to the discipline—reveals that the answers. Joined by acclaimed author and podcast host Stephen J. Dubner, Levitt presents a brilliant—and brilliantly entertaining—account of how incentives of the most hidden sort drive behavior in ways that turn conventional wisdom on its head.

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. Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They set out to explore the inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real estate agents, the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan, and much more. Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, they show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives-how people get what they want or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone is the most influential and talked-about book on society in the last decade - now updated with a new chapter on the controversy the book has ignited. Why do we mistrust people more in the UK than in Japan? Why do Americans have higher rates of teenage pregnancy than the French? What makes the Swedish thinner than the Australians? The answer: inequality. This groundbreaking book, based on years of research, provides hard evidence to show: How almost everything - from life expectancy to mental illness, violence to illiteracy - is affected not by how wealthy a society is, but how equal it is That societies with a bigger gap between rich and poor are bad for everyone in them - including the well-off How we can find positive solutions and move towards a happier, fairer future U rgent, provocative and genuinely uplifting, The Spirit Level has been heralded as providing a new way of thinking about ourselves and our communities, and could change the way you see the world. 'A big idea, big enough to change political thinking'Guardian 'A remarkable new book ... the implications are profound'Will Hutton, Observer 'The evidence is hard to dispute'Economist Richard Wilkinson studied economic history at the London School of Economics before training in epidemiology and is Professor Emeritus at the University of Nottingham Medical School and Honorary Professor at University College London. Kate Pickett is a Professor of Epidemiology at the University of York and a National Institute for Health Research Career Scientist. Her work with Richard Wilkinson on The Spirit Level was shortlisted for Research Project of the Year 2009 by the Times Higher Education Supplement, and their book was chosen as one of the Top Ten Books of the Decade by the New Statesman.

This title is shortlisted for the samuel johnson prize 2012. This acclaimed steven pinker, author of "the language instinct" and "the blank slate", argues that, contrary to popular belief, humankind has become progressively less violent, over millenia and decades. Can violence really have declined? the images of conflict we see daily on our screens from around the world suggest this is an almost obscene claim to be making. Extraordinarily, however, steven pinker shows violence within and between societies - both murder and warfare - really has declined from prehistory to today.we are much less likely to die at someone else's hands than ever before. Even the horrific carnage of the last century, when compared to the dangers of pre - state societies, is part of this trend. Debunking both the idea of the 'noble savage' and an over - simplistic hobbesian notion of a 'nasty, brutish and short' life, steven pinker argues that modernity and its cultural institutions are actually makin

Statistics has played a leading role in our scientific understanding of the world for centuries, yet we are all familiar with the way statistical claims can be sensationalised, particularly in the media. In the age of big data, as data science becomes established as a discipline, a basic grasp of statistical literacy is more important than ever.In The Art of Statistics, David Spiegelhalter guides the reader through the essential principles we need in order to derive knowledge from data. Drawing on real world problems to introduce conceptual issues, he shows us how statistics can help us determine the luckiest passenger on the Titanic, whether serial killer Harold Shipman could have been caught earlier, and if screening for ovarian cancer is beneficial.How many trees are there on the planet? Do busier hospitals have higher survival rates? Why do old men have big ears? Spiegelhalter reveals the answers to these and many other questions - questions that can only be addressed using statistical science.

It is widely agreed that because animals feel pain we should not make them suffer gratuitously. Some ethical theories go even further: because of the capacities that they possess, animals have the right not to be harmed or killed. These views concern what not to do to animals, but we also face questions about when we should, and should not, assist animals that are hungry or distressed. Should we feed a starving stray kitten? And if so, does this commit us, if we are to be consistent, to feeding wild animals during a hard winter?In this controversial book, Clare Palmer advances a theory that claims, with respect to assisting animals, that what is owed to one is not necessarily owed to all, even if animals share similar psychological capacities. Context, history, and relation can be critical ethical factors. If animals live independently in the wild, their fate is not any of our moral business. Yet if humans create dependent animals, or destroy their habitats, we may have a responsibility to assist them. Such arguments are familiar in human cases-we think that parents have special obligations to their children, for example, or that some groups owe reparations to others. Palmer develops such relational concerns in the context of wild animals, domesticated animals, and urban scavengers, arguing that different contexts can create different moral relationships.

A New York Times Bestseller, with an updated explanation of the 2010 Health Reform Bill"Important and powerful . . . a rich tour of health care around the world." —Nicholas Kristof, The New York TimesBringing to bear his talent for explaining complex issues in a clear, engaging way, New York Times bestselling author T. R. Reid visits industrialized democracies around the world--France, Britain, Germany, Japan, and beyond--to provide a revelatory tour of successful, affordable universal health care systems. Now updated with new statistics and a plain-English explanation of the 2010 health care reform bill, The Healing of America is required reading for all those hoping to understand the state of health care in our country, and around the world.T. R. Reid's latest book, A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System, is also available from Penguin Press.

A radical exploration of how rituals have influenced history over thousands of years.From infancy, we copy those around us in order to be like others, to be one with the tribe. Other primates will copy behaviour that leads to transparent benefits, such as access to food, but only humans promiscuously copy actions that have no obvious instrumental purpose. The copying of causally opaque behaviour (rituals) has allowed cultural groups to proliferate over time and space. The frequency and emotional intensity of ritual performances constrains the scale and structure of cultural groups. Rare, traumatic rituals (e.g. painful initiations) produce very strong social cohesion in small, relational groups such as military battalions or local cults whereas daily and weekly rituals (e.g. collective praying in mosques, churches, and synagogues) produce diffuse cohesion in indefinitely expandable communities. This pioneering study presents a theory of how these two 'ritual modes' have influenced the course of human history over many thousands of years and continue to shape the groups we live in today.The resulting programme of research offers a radically new paradigm for the social sciences, one that bridges across disciplinary silos, samples the full diversity of the world's populations, and plumbs our richest sources of information about cultural systems, past and present. In doing so, leading anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse shows how we can modify the way we tackle some of the most pressing challenges of our day, from violent extremism to global heating. All the problems humanity creates are ultimately problems of cooperation. Solving these problems will require social glue. Whitehouse suggests various practical ways in which our growing knowledge about the role of ritual in group bonding can help us achieve a more peaceful and prosperous future, not only for ourselves but for all species who share the planet with us.