Icon Books strana 6 z 9

'One of the funniest books of the year' - Paul Ross, talkRADIO WARNING: CONTAINS AN UNLIKELY IMMIGRANT, AN UNSUNG COUNTRY, A BUMPY ROMANCE, SEVERAL SHATTERED PRECONCEPTIONS, TRACES OF INSIGHT, A DOZEN NUNS AND A REFERENDUM. Not many Brits move to Poland to work in a fish and chip shop. Fewer still come back wanting to be a Member of the European Parliament. In 2016 Ben Aitken moved to Poland while he still could. It wasn't love that took him but curiosity: he wanted to know what the Poles in the UK had left behind. He flew to a place he'd never heard of and then accepted a job in a chip shop on the minimum wage. When he wasn't peeling potatoes he was on the road scratching the country's surface: he milked cows with a Eurosceptic farmer; missed the bus to Auschwitz; spent Christmas with complete strangers and went to Gdansk to learn how communism got the chop. By the year's end he had a better sense of what the Poles had turned their backs on - southern mountains, northern beaches, dumplings! - and an uncanny ability to bone cod. This is a candid, funny and offbeat tale of a year as an unlikely immigrant.

SHORTLISTED FOR 'BEST COMMUTER READ', CMI MANAGEMENT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 How do you ask for a promotion, deliver tough news to clients, or secure investment for your new business? The answer is negotiation. It is the most important skill you can develop to get what you want in business and life. No matter how much experience you've got, We Have a Deal can help you to improve your negotiation skill - developing an awareness of your habits and abilities, recognising what's really going on in a deal, and building a flexible approach that is confident and appropriate to each situation. Negotiation expert Natalie Reynolds moves beyond the old-fashioned rules of deal making to explore why people react the way they do in certain situations and how can we use that knowledge to get a good deal. Her five-step DEALS method has helped individuals and organisations to excel at all kinds of negotiation, from clinching a pay rise to resolving disputes, from developing partnerships to shaking hands on multi-million dollar deals. We Have a Deal will help you to overcome obstacles, work with different personalities and in varied cultures, and develop an intelligent and flexible approach will empower you to get the best deal, every time.

'A history that makes perfect sense when the sky is falling down.' - The Sunday Times The Sixties, for many, was a time of new ideas, freedom, and renewed hope - from the civil rights movement to Woodstock. But towards the end of 1969 and the start of the 1970s, everything seemed to implode. The Manson murders, the tragic events of the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont and the appearance of the Zodiac Killer all called a halt to the progress of a glorious decade. At the end of the Sixties, the hippie dream died - or so the story goes. In The Bad Trip, James Riley descends into the underworld of the Sixties to reveal the dark side of the counterculture. He explores the seam of apocalyptic thinking that had lain hidden beneath the decade's psychedelic utopianism all along. Moving between Britain and America, this is a magical mystery tour that shows just how different our concept of `the Sixties' is from the reality of the period. A brilliant and trenchant cultural history published 50 years after the action - drawing on interviews with key figures from the music, art, and film scenes of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the US and UK.

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, David Whitehouse brings you the inside story of the astronauts, NASA engineers and political rivals that brought an end to the Space Race. Fifty years ago in July 1969, Apollo 11 became the first manned mission to land on the moon, and Neil Armstrong the first man to step onto its surface. US President Nixon called it the greatest week since creation. In the most authoritative book ever written about Apollo, David Whitehouse reveals the true drama behind the mission, telling the story in the words of those who took part - based around exclusive interviews with the key players. This enthralling book takes us from the early rocket pioneers to the shock America received from the Soviets' launch of the first satellite, Sputnik; from the race to put the first person into space, through President Kennedy's enthusiasm and later doubts, to the astronauts' intense competition to leave the first footprint. In celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the moon landing, here is the story as told by the crew of Apollo 11 and the many other astronauts who paved the way or followed themselves after the first man to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong, alongside Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. Astronauts, engineers, politicians, NASA officials, Soviet rivals - all tell their own story of a great moment of human achievement.

A decade after the financial crisis, there is a growing consensus that economics has failed and needs to go back to the drawing board. David Orrell argues that it has been trying to solve the wrong problem all along. Economics sees itself as the science of scarcity. Instead, it should be the science of money (which plays a surprisingly small role in mainstream theory). And money is a substance that turns out to have a quantum nature of its own. Just as physicists learn about matter by studying the exchange of particles at the subatomic level, so economics should begin by analysing the nature of money-based transactions. Quantum Economics therefore starts with the meaning of the phrase ‘how much’ - or, to use the Latin word, quantum. From quantum physics to the dualistic properties of money, via the emerging areas of quantum finance and quantum cognition, this profoundly important book reveals that quantum economics is to neoclassical economics what quantum physics is to classical physics - a genuine turning point in our understanding.

World-leading productivity expert Graham Allcott's business bible is given a complete update for 2019. Do you waste too much time on your phone? Scroll through Twitter or Instagram when you should be getting down to your real tasks? Is your attention easily distracted? We've got the solution: The Way of the Productivity Ninja. In the age of information overload, traditional time management techniques simply don't cut it anymore. Using techniques including Ruthlessness, Mindfulness, Zen-like Calm and Stealth & Camouflage, this fully revised new edition of How to be a Productivity Ninja offers a fun and accessible guide to working smarter, getting more done and learning to love what you do again.

Is the Brexit vote successful big data politics or the end of democracy? Why do airlines overbook, and why do banks get it wrong so often? How does big data enable Netflix to forecast a hit, CERN to find the Higgs boson and medics to discover if red wine really is good for you? And how are companies using big data to benefit from smart meters, use advertising that spies on you and develop the gig economy, where workers are managed by the whim of an algorithm? The volumes of data we now access can give unparalleled abilities to make predictions, respond to customer demand and solve problems. But Big Brother's shadow hovers over it. Though big data can set us free and enhance our lives, it has the potential to create an underclass and a totalitarian state. With big data ever-present, you can't afford to ignore it. Acclaimed science writer Brian Clegg - a habitual early adopter of new technology (and the owner of the second-ever copy of Windows in the UK) - brings big data to life.

When Economyths was first published in 2010, David Orrell showed how mainstream economics is based on key myths such as fair competition, rational behaviour, stability and eternal growth - and how these myths lead paradoxically to their opposites: inequality, an irrational economy, financial instability and a collision with nature's limits. Since then, we've had Occupy, political upheaval, flash crashes in financial markets, the warmest few years in recorded history - and a growing chorus demanding fundamental reform. So how has economics responded? In this revised and expanded edition, Orrell shows how the ten myths still dominate economics. He reveals their roots in thought that goes back to the ancient Greeks, making them hard to dislodge. And he uncovers, demolishes and develops an alternative to the greatest economyth of all - the one that will lead to the collapse of orthodox economics.

One of the best music books ever written, because Michael Odell knows music isn't about the musicians - it's about what it does to the listener, even if what it does ends up being wholly disastrous. It's sad, funny, fascinating and wise.' Michael Hann, former Guardian music editor `Hilarious and disarmingly honest; a journey into the neurosis of rock fame, but through doors you don't expect.' Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry A tale of loving, living and surviving rock music Michael Odell is a rock music writer who takes his responsibility as cultural gatekeeper seriously; he asks rock stars the forbidden questions to discover whether they're worthy of readers' admiration. But after interviewing Mick Jagger and Keith Richards - two of the `Big Six' icons - Michael is depressed. He has a public meltdown while chaperoning Oasis at an awards ceremony; he's lost joy in his bathroom full of rock'n'roll memorabilia; and his young son is in trouble at school for emulating rock star behaviour. Reluctantly Michael consults Mrs Henckel, a no-nonsense therapist with zero experience of pop culture. As Michael addresses his feelings about the past, in particular his failed teenage band, Mental Elf, he's forced to confront the question: is it finally time to grow up and forget rock'n'roll?

Weaving together the great ideas of science, The Reality Frame takes us on a thrilling journey from empty space all the way to the human mind. Acclaimed science writer Brian Clegg builds up reality piece by piece, from space, to time, to matter, movement, the fundamental forces, life, and the massive transformation that life itself has wrought on the natural world. He reveals that underlying it all is not, as we might believe, a system of immovable absolutes, but the ever-shifting, amorphous world of relativity. From religion to philosophy, humanity has traditionally sought out absolutes to explain the world around us, but as science has developed, relativity has swept away many of these certainties, leaving only a handful of unchangeable essentials - such as absolute zero, nothingness, light - leading to better science and a new understanding of the essence of being human. This is an Ascent of Man for the 21st century, the gripping story of modern science that will fill you with wonder and give you a new insight into our place in the universe.

Love letters are potent. They breathe. They speak. They can arouse, comfort, captivate. They can also cut deep. The powerful, deeply personal letters collected here reveal the painful underside of love. Witness Winston Churchill 'growl with anger to be treated with benevolent indifference' and Edith Piaf reel in the throes of a 'terrible' passion. Through the letters of literary icons Charlotte Bronte, Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf, Hollywood stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and statesmen Henry VIII and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Yours Always offers an unusually intimate insight into the lives of such illustrious figures. Love is revealed here in its many shades of disharmony and confusion: unrequited, uncertain, imbalanced, unconventional, thwarted, failed and forbidden. Love is not always rose-tinted, and Yours Always illuminates the sorrows that can accompany falling in, falling out, and staying in love. Includes letter to and from: Charlotte Bronte, Richard Burton, Lord Byron, Winston Churchill, Marie Curie, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, Henry VIII, Ted Hughes, Graham Greene, Franz Kafka, Marilyn Monroe, Iris Murdoch, Edith Piaf, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Elizabeth Taylor, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, W.B. Yeats

Biomedical research is changing the both the format and the functions of human beings. Very soon the human race will be faced with a choice: do we join in with the enhancement or not? Make Way for the Superhumans looks at how far this technology has come and what aims and ambitions it has. From robotic implants that restore sight to the blind, to performance enhancing drugs that build muscles, improve concentration, and maintain erections, bio-enhancement has already made massive advances. Humans have already developed the technology to transmit thoughts and actions brain-to-brain using only a computer interface. By the time our grandchildren are born, they will be presented with the option to significantly alter and redesign their bodies. Make Way for the Superhumans is the only book that poses the questions that need answering now: suggesting real, practical ways of dealing with this technology before it reaches a point where it can no longer be controlled.

'A very good guide to the state we're in' Paul Krugman, New York Review of Books 'A well-written, thought-provoking book by one of America's leading economic thinkers and progressive champions.' Huffington Post Do you recall a time when the income of a single schoolteacher or baker or salesman or mechanic was enough to buy a home, have two cars, and raise a family? Robert Reich does - in the 1950s his father sold clothes to factory workers and the family earnt enough to live comfortably. Today, this middle class is rapidly shrinking: American income inequality and wealth disparity is the greatest it's been in eighty years. As Reich, who served in three US administrations, shows, the threat to capitalism is no longer communism or fascism but a steady undermining of the trust modern societies need for growth and stability. With an exclusive chapter for Icon's edition, Saving Capitalism is passionate yet practical, sweeping yet exactingly argued, a revelatory indictment of the economic status quo and an empowering call to action.

'Queer: A Graphic History Could Totally Change the Way You Think About Sex and Gender' Vice Activist-academic Meg-John Barker and cartoonist Julia Scheele illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTQ+ action in this groundbreaking non-fiction graphic novel. From identity politics and gender roles to privilege and exclusion, Queer explores how we came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do; how these ideas get tangled up with our culture and our understanding of biology, psychology and sexology; and how these views have been disputed and challenged. Along the way we look at key landmarks which shift our perspective of what's 'normal' - Alfred Kinsey's view of sexuality as a spectrum, Judith Butler's view of gendered behaviour as a performance, the play Wicked, or moments in Casino Royale when we're invited to view James Bond with the kind of desiring gaze usually directed at female bodies in mainstream media. Presented in a brilliantly engaging and witty style, this is a unique portrait of the universe of queer thinking.

The Etymologicon is an occasionally ribald, frequently witty and unerringly erudite guided tour of the secret labyrinth that lurks beneath the English language. What is the actual connection between disgruntled and gruntled? What links church organs to organised crime, California to the Caliphate, or brackets to codpieces? Mark Forsyth's riotous celebration of the idiosyncratic and sometimes absurd connections between words is a classic of its kind: a mine of fascinating information and a must-read for word-lovers everywhere.

Dear Coquette unleashes the brutal truth about life, love, dating, sex and everything in between. For nearly a decade, The Coquette has delivered wisdom with a harsh wit and devastating elegance to the hundreds of thousands of readers who know where to come for her practical, no-nonsense advice. Rising forth from the glitter and madness of the L.A. party scene, this mysterious online oracle has evolved into one of the most insightful and conscientious voices of her generation, and Dear Coquette is consistently rated amongst the funniest and most beloved blogs on the net by publications ranging from The Guardian to The Huffington Post. Here, for the first time between hard covers, is the very best of Dear Coquette.