https://amzn.to/4bZGEDH

Every day we experience the uncertainty, risks, and emotional exposure that define what it means to be vulnerable or to dare greatly.

Based on twelve years of pioneering research, Brené Brown PhD, MSW, dispels the cultural myth that vulnerability is weakness and argues that it is, in truth, our most accurate measure of courage.

Brown explains how vulnerability is both the core of difficult emotions like fear, grief, and disappointment, and the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, empathy, innovation, and creativity.

She writes: “When we shut ourselves off from vulnerability, we distance ourselves from the experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives.”

“Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.”

https://amzn.to/3KCuvJj

Incentives send powerful signals that aim to influence behavior. But often there is a conflict between what we say and what we do in response to these incentives. The result: mixed signals.

Consider the CEO who urges teamwork but designs incentives for individual success, who invites innovation but punishes failure, who emphasizes quality but pays for quantity.

Employing real-world scenarios just like this to illustrate this everyday phenomenon, behavioral economist Uri Gneezy explains why incentives often fail and demonstrates how the right incentives can change behavior by aligning with signals for better results.

Drawing on behavioral economics, game theory, psychology, and fieldwork, Gneezy outlines how to be incentive smart, designing rewards that are simple and effective.

“Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.”

https://amzn.to/3ytB11W

As endowments and fundraising campaigns have skyrocketed in recent decades, critics have attacked higher education for steeply increasing its production cost and price and the snowballing debt of students. In Wealth, Cost, and Price in American Higher Education, Bruce A. Kimball and Sarah M. Iler reveal how these trends began 150 years ago and why they have intensified in recent decades.

In the late nineteenth century, American colleges and universities began fiercely competing to expand their revenue, wealth, and production cost in order to increase their quality and prestige and serve the soaring number of students.

From that era through today, the rising wealth and cost of higher education have continued to reinforce each other and spiral upward, increasing the heavily subsidized price paid by students.

Kimball and Iler explain the strategy and reasoning that drove this wealth-cost double helix, the new tactics in fundraising and endowment investing that fueled it, and economists' efforts to understand it.

Using extensive archival, documentary, and quantitative research, Kimball and Iler trace the shifting public perception of higher education and its correlation with rising costs, stagnating wages, and explosive student debt.

They show how stratification of wealth in higher education became tightly interwoven with wealth inequality in American society. This relationship raises fundamental questions about equity in US higher education and its contribution to social mobility and democracy.

“If over the past three decades car prices had gone up as fast as tuition, the average new car would cost more than $80,000.”

https://amzn.to/3R0H9p4

In a highlight reel, microwave world — we’re led to believe success is right around the corner.

It’s not working.

Not only is it not working with our ability to achieve our goals, we’ve never been more frustrated, stuck and unfulfilled.

But what if there was a way to shut out the noise, fall in love with the process and take one step forward every single day — leading to an undeniable confidence as we paint our life’s masterpiece.

Enter The 1% Rule — a daily system designed to help you close the gap without the crushing pressure that leads most people less inspired, and more stuck.

“When you truly love who you’re becoming, you become unstoppable.”

https://amzn.to/3R2i5xE

Fear and greed are among the strongest motivators. They influence all our decisions.

Every day, we see the lives of the fabulous and famous in the press, on TV, and on social media, and we envy them for their luxurious lifestyle. We want it all too!

Games of Greed reveals how some of these people let greed get the better of them.

This book connects the dots between the Panama Papers, Bernie Madoff, famous rough traders, and con artists like Nick Leeson, Jérôme Kerviel, Billy McFarland, and Jordan Belfort, the real Wolf of Wall Street.

It reveals the excesses of Main Street and Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and even loafing Las Vegas—art heists, stock markets, bitcoins, and festival fraud.

In this insightful book, Torsten Dennin demonstrates the pitfalls of greed through many examples of people who, like Icarus, flew too high and fell with catastrophic consequences.

In the current day and age of increasing financial tensions and fewer planetary resources, his analysis of greed is both relevant and timely.

“Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed.”

https://amzn.to/4by3dPR

Ginni Rometty led one of the world's most iconic companies, and in Good Power she recounts her groundbreaking path from a challenging childhood to becoming the CEO of IBM and one of the world's most influential business leaders.

With candor and depth, Rometty shares milestones from her life and career while redefining power as a way to drive meaningful change in positive ways for ourselves, our organizations, and for the many, not just the few—a concept she calls "good power."

Rometty's "memoir with purpose" combines the experiences that defined her life—personal hurdles, high-stakes decisions, passionate advocacy—with the actionable advice of a coaching session to highlight lessons that shape authentic leadership.

Behind-the-scenes stories and practical guidance offer us a blueprint for how we can all use good power to advance our careers, inspire our teams, improve our companies, and create healthier societies.

The book begins with raw, vivid memories from Rometty's youth and early professional years as she recalls the trauma and the role models that formed her belief that how we lead is as important as what we achieve.

She learns early on that good power is a choice available to everyone, even to those without money, status, or impressive titles.

“Ginni Rometty delivers a powerful combination of memoir, leadership lessons, and big ideas on how we can all drive meaningful change.”

https://amzn.to/450CPvO

Many of us spend our lives on autopilot: work, bills, chores, sleep, repeat, in a never-ending cycle. We live the life that others expect us to, and not the life we desire.

In Best Version Ever: Discover the MAGIC of Becoming Extraordinary, Josh Painter provides an action-oriented and inspirational roadmap to escape the cycle of experiencing random motivational moments and then falling back into the same old routines.

By following the M.A.G.I.C. formula (Mindset, Aim, Gameplan, Immersion, and Consistency), you’ll learn how to shift your thinking from negative to positive, identify and narrow down goals, and develop lifelong habits that will make your changes sustainable.

While other personal development programs offer short-term progress, the M.A.G.I.C. formula focuses on meaningful, lasting change. Best Version Ever is a lifelong roadmap to help you become extraordinary.

“What would you do if you had nothing holding you back?”

https://amzn.to/3VkNL44

For twenty-five years Dan Lyons was a magazine writer at the top of his profession--until one Friday morning when he received a phone call: Poof. His job no longer existed. "I think they just want to hire younger people," his boss at Newsweek told him.

Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was, in a word, screwed. Then an idea hit. Dan had long reported on Silicon Valley and the tech explosion. Why not join it? HubSpot, a Boston start-up, was flush with $100 million in venture capital. They offered Dan a pile of stock options for the vague role of "marketing fellow." What could go wrong?

HubSpotters were true believers: They were making the world a better place ... by selling email spam. The office vibe was frat house meets cult compound: The party began at four thirty on Friday and lasted well into the night; "shower pods" became hook-up dens; a push-up club met at noon in the lobby, while nearby, in the "content factory," Nerf gun fights raged.

Groups went on "walking meetings," and Dan's absentee boss sent cryptic emails about employees who had "graduated" (read: been fired). In the middle of all this was Dan, exactly twice the age of the average HubSpot employee, and literally old enough to be the father of most of his co-workers, sitting at his desk on his bouncy-ball "chair."

“Maybe the best way to do something really innovative is to hire a bunch of young people who have no experience and therefore no preconceived notions about how to run a company.”