Recommended Reading
Common Sense Wisdom is a little book with a big message about life and the important transitions, challenges and changes planned or unplanned that we all must face from time to time. It s at moments like these that some common sense wisdom can help us understand what is happening or should happen, why it s happening or why it should, how we should respond to it or initiate it, and how...
Drawing upon more than 30 years of experience advising senior executives around the world and almost a decade living and working in Central and Eastern Europe, Pepper de Callier, Founder of The Prague Leadership Institute, shares what he has found to be the most powerful force behind career success. It’s not intelligence or experience, as most people believe; it’s what he calls The Unwritten...
A philosophy that saw self-possession as the key to an existence lived 'in accordance with nature', Stoicism called for the restraint of animal instincts and the severing of emotional ties. These beliefs were formulated by the Athenian followers of Zeno in the fourth century BC, but it was in Seneca (c. 4 BC - AD 65) that the Stoics found their most eloquent advocate. Stoicism, as expressed in...
With visionary flare, Pink argues that business and everyday life will soon be dominated by right-brain thinkers. He identifies the roots and implications of transitioning from a society dominated by left-brain thinkers into something entirely different—although at times, he seems to be exhorting rather than observing the trend. As a narrator, Pink delivers in a well executed manner, with...
An amusing account of an English couple's first year as residents of rural Provence, from the unpleasantness of the winter mistral to the transgressions of summer tourists. Since the old farmhouse they purchased needed repairs, they were immediately beset with problems in dealing with the foibles of local craftspeople and officialdom, not to mention the neighbors--human and animal. Nowhere in...
Anna Karenina is a brilliantly conceived and poignantly written novel. Using many dynamic and well developed characters, Tolstoy unravels a marvelous tale of love and adultery set against the backdrop of late nineteenth century fashionable russian society. Tolstoy fairly represents each character presenting even those who have done wrong merely as fallible human beings who are doing their best...
Atlas Shrugged is the astounding story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world and did. Tremendous in scope, breathtaking in its suspense, Atlas Shrugged stretches the boundaries further than any book you have ever read. It is a mystery, not about the murder of a man's body, but about the murder and rebirth of man's spirit.
Written in the early fourth century BCE by a gentleman and soldier from Athens, "Cyropaedia" is an account of Cyrus the Great that escapes a simple genre placement. It is a sort of historical, political, biographical, fictional romance, encapsulating the sweeping type of narrative characteristic of Xenophon's works. The overall portrait of Cyrus is artistic, offering glimpses of this huge...
Daniel Pink's new book follows well in the tradition of "A Whole New Mind," as he picks up on a new trend and explains it well. This time it's the apparent paradox of motivation - why do some people like Google pay their staff to regularly work on projects of their own choosing when they could be working hard on what they were hired to do? Pink shows that there has always been monetary...
New York Times science writer Goleman argues that our emotions play a much greater role in thought, decision making and individual success than is commonly acknowledged. He defines "emotional intelligence" a trait not measured by IQ tests as a set of skills, including control of one's impulses, self-motivation, empathy and social competence in interpersonal relationships. Although his highly...
