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How the world's oldest asset secretly shapes our modern economy. In The Land Trap, Mike Bird-Wall Street editor at The Economist-reveals how this ancient asset still exerts outsize influence over the modern world. From the speculative land grabs of colonial America to China's real estate crisis today, Bird shows how fortunes are built-and destroyed-on the bedrock of land. Tracing three centuries of history, Bird explores how land quietly became the linchpin of the global banking system, driving everything from soaring housing prices to rising geopolitical tensisons. As governments wrestle with inequality and land grows ever scarcer, The Land Trap offers a powerful new framework for understanding the hidden force behind today's most urgent challenges. This is the book for anyone who wants to see beyond markets and money to the real game being played on a foundation as old as civilization itself. Timely, provocative, and essential, The Land Trap will change how you see the ground beneath your feet.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, a groundbreaking philosophy for pursuing meaningful accomplishment while avoiding overload. Our current definition of “productivity” is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices? Long before the arrival of pinging inboxes and clogged schedules, history’s most creative and impactful philosophers, scientists, artists, and writers mastered the art of producing valuable work with staying power. In this timely and provocative book, Cal Newport harnesses the wisdom of these traditional knowledge workers to radically transform our modern jobs. Drawing from deep research on the habits and mindsets of a varied cast of storied thinkers – from Galileo and Isaac Newton, to Jane Austen and Georgia O’Keefe – Newport lays out the key principles of “slow productivity,” a more sustainable alternative to the aimless overwhelm that defines our current moment. Combining cultural criticism with systematic pragmatism, Newport deconstructs the absurdities inherent in standard notions of productivity, and then provides step-by-step advice for cultivating a slower, more humane alternative. From the aggressive rethinking of workload management, to introducing seasonal variation, to shifting your performance toward long-term quality, Slow Productivity provides a roadmap for escaping overload and arriving instead at a more timeless approach to pursuing meaningful accomplishment. The world of work is due for a new revolution. Slow productivity is exactly what we need.

Creative work doesn't come with a guarantee. But there is a pattern to who succeeds and who doesn't. And engaging in the consistent practice of its pursuit is the best way forward. Based on the breakthrough Akimbo workshop pioneered by legendary author Seth Godin, The Practice will help you get unstuck and find the courage to make and share creative work. Godin insists that writer's block is a myth, that consistency is far more important than authenticity, and that experiencing the imposter syndrome is a sign that you're a well-adjusted human. Most of all, he shows you what it takes to turn your passion from a private distraction to a productive contribution, the one you've been seeking to share all along. With this book as your guide, you'll learn to dance with your fear. To take the risks worth taking. And to embrace the empathy required to make work that contributes with authenticity and joy.

The definitive book on the rise of "toxic achievement culture" overtaking our kids' and parents' lives, and a new framework for fighting back. In the ever more competitive race to secure the best possible future, today's students face unprecedented pressure to succeed. They jam-pack their schedules with AP classes, fill every waking hour with resume-padding activities, and even sabotage relationships with friends to "get ahead." Family incomes and schedules are stretched to the breaking point by tutoring fees and athletic schedules. Yet this drive to optimize performance has only resulted in skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, and even self-harm in America's highest achieving schools. Parents, educators, and community leaders are facing the same quandary: how can we teach our kids to strive towards excellence without crushing them? In Never Enough, award-winning reporter Jennifer Breheny Wallace investigates the deep roots of toxic achievement culture, and finds out what we must do to fight back. Drawing on interviews with families, educators, and an original survey of nearly 6,000 parents, she exposes how the pressure to perform is not a matter of parental choice but baked in to our larger society and spurred by increasing income inequality and dwindling opportunities. As a result, children are increasingly absorbing the message that they have no value outside of their accomplishments, a message that is reinforced by the media and greater culture at large. Through deep research and interviews with today's leading child psychologists, Wallace shows what kids need from the adults in the room is not more pressure, but to feel like they matter, and have intrinsic self-worth not contingent upon external achievements. Parents and educators who adopt the language and values of mattering help children see themselves as a valuable contributor to a larger community. And in an ironic twist, kids who receive consistent feedback that they matter no matter what are more likely to have the resilience, self-confidence, and psychological security to thrive. Packed with memorable stories and offering a powerful toolkit for positive change, Never Enough offers an urgent, humane view of the crisis plaguing today's teens and a practical framework for how to help.

A soulful re-envisioning of what work and leadership can be, from the visionary mind of renowned author and thought leader, Seth Godin The Song of Significance is a rousing contemplation on work: why it is the way it is, why it’s gotten so bad, what all of us–especially leaders–can do to make it better. Economic instability and the rise of remote work have left us disconnected and disengaged. Alarmed managers are responding with harsh top-down edicts, layoffs, surveillance and mandatory meetings. Workers are responding by quiet quitting and working their wage. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Through 144 provocative stanzas, legendary business author Seth Godin gets to the heart of what ails us; he shows what’s really at the root of these trends, and challenges us to do better in ways that matter. The choice is simple. We can endure the hangover of industrial capitalism, keep treating people as disposable, and join in the AI-fueled race to the bottom. Or we come together to build a significant organization that enrolls, empowers, and trusts everyone to deliver their best work, no matter where they are. This is a book to share with bosses and co-workers, to discuss and put to action. No matter what our role, it’s within our power to change. Because, as Godin writes, “Humans aren’t a resource. They are the point.”

A challenge to the tyranny of work and a call to reclaim our lives from its clutches. From the moment we ask children what they want to “be” when they grow up, we exalt the dream job as if it were life’s ultimate objective. Many entangle their identities with their jobs, with predictable damage to happiness, wellbeing, and even professional success. In The Good Enough Job, journalist Simone Stolzoff traces how work has come to dominate Americans’ lives—and why we find it so difficult to let go. Based on groundbreaking reporting and interviews with Michelin star chefs, Wall Street bankers, overwhelmed teachers and other workers across the American economy, Stolzoff exposes what we lose when we expect work to be more than a job. Rather than treat work as a calling or a dream, he asks what it would take to reframe work as a part of life rather than the entirety of our lives. What does it mean for a job to be good enough? Through provocative critique and deep reporting, Stolzoff punctures the myths that keep us chained to our jobs. By exposing the lies we—and our employers—tell about the value of our labor, The Good Enough Job makes the urgent case for reclaiming our lives in a world centered around work.

From bestselling author and NYU business school professor Scott Galloway comes an urgent examination of the future of our nation - and how we got here. We are only just beginning to reckon with our post-pandemic future. As political extremism intensifies, the great resignation affects businesses everywhere, and supply chain issues crush bottom lines, we're faced with daunting questions - is our democracy under threat? How will Big Tech change our lives? What does job security look like for me? America is on the brink of massive change - change that will disrupt the workings of our economy and drastically impact the financial backbone of our nation: the middle class. In Adrift, Galloway looks to the past - from 1945 to present day - to explain just how America arrived at this precipice. Telling the story of our nation through 100 charts, Galloway demonstrates how crises such as Jim Crow, World War II, and the Stock Market Crash of 2008, as well as the escalating power of technology, an entrenched white patriarchy, and the socio-economic effects of the pandemic, created today's perfect storm. Adrift attempts to make sense of it all, and offers Galloway's unique take on where we're headed and who we'll become, touching on topics as wide-ranging as online dating to minimum wage to the American dream. Just as in 1945 and 1980, America is once again a nation at a crossroads. This time, what will it take for our nation to keep up with the fast and violent changes to our new world?

In his sophomore year of college, Mark Zuckerberg created a simple website to serve as a campus social network. The site caught on like wildfire, and soon students nationwide were on Facebook. Today, Facebook is nearly unrecognizable from Zuckerberg's first, modest iteration. It has grown into a tech giant, the largest social media platform and one of the most gargantuan companies in the world, with a valuation of more than $576 billion and almost 3 billion users. There is no denying the power and omnipresence of Facebook in American daily life. And in light of recent controversies surrounding election-influencing "fake news" accounts, the handling of its users' personal data, and growing discontent with the actions of its founder and CEO, never has the company been more central to the national conversation. Based on years of exclusive reporting and interviews with Facebook's key executives and employees, including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, Steven Levy's sweeping narrative digs deep into the whole story of the company that has changed the world and reaped the consequences.

John Maeda is one of the world's preeminent thinkers on technology and design, and in How to Speak Machine, he offers a set of simple laws that govern not only the computers of today, but the unimaginable machines of the future. Machines are already more powerful than we can comprehend, and getting more powerful at an exponential pace. Once set in motion, algorithms never tire. And when a program's size, speed and endlessness combine with its ability to learn and transform itself, the outcome can be unpredictable and dangerous. Take the seemingly instant transformation of Microsoft's chatbot into a hate-spewing racist, or how crime-predicting algorithms reinforce racial bias. How To Speak Machine provides a coherent framework for today's product designers, business leaders and policymakers to grasp this brave new world. Drawing on his wide-ranging experience from engineering to computer science to design, Maeda shows how businesses and individuals can identify opportunities afforded by technology to make world-changing and inclusive products while avoiding the pitfalls inherent to the medium.

Lunch with the Financial Times has been a permanent fixture in the Financial Times for almost 25 years, featuring presidents, film stars, musical icons and business leaders from around the world. The column is now as well-established institution which has reinvigorated the art of conversation in the convivial, intimate environment of a long boozy lunch. On its 25th anniversary, Lunch with the Financial Times 2 will showcase the most entertaining, incisive and fascinating interviews from the past five years including those with Edward Snowden, Bernie Ecclestone, Hilary Mantel, Sheryl Sandberg, Richard Branson, Rebecca Solnit, Emmerson Mnangagwa, Jordan Peterson, Nigel Farage, Woody Harrelson, Sepp Blatter, (pre-election) Donald Trump and Zoella, illustrated in full colour with James Ferguson's famous portraits.

In the space of three years, I went from a thirty-something full-time corporate cog, wife and mother who didn't know a thing about business, to the owner of a $100 million company. I didn't have an MBA or well-connected friends, I had an idea that I believed in and I worked my arse off. I succeeded, despite all the odds and curveballs thrown my way, and you can too. I'm here to tell you, that you do have what it takes to start a business, change careers and be successful, and I'm going to show you how.' In What It Takes, Raegan Moya-Jones shares inspiration, advice and a healthy dose of real talk about what it's like to be an entrepreneur. As the founder and former CEO of aden + anais, a boutique baby swaddle company, Raegan learnt that success isn't about an Ivy League education and an influential network, success is about trusting your instincts, following your gut and knowing which rules to follow and which to break. Raegan's extraordinary story proves that it's never too late to follow your dreams. Empowering and energising, What It Takes will give you the kick up the arse you need to reach your full potential. So get ready to check your doubts at the door and jump in.

Do you want to achieve startup speed at enterprise scale? Growth. It's what every company strives for. But it's become more and more elusive as companies struggle to hit their projected growth rates in an increasingly competitive market. While zero-based budgeting (ZBB) has been wielded for decades to cut costs, it falls short when it comes to spurring growth. But a zero-based mindset (ZBx) does that and more. ZBx facilitates forensic oversight into resource allocation that funnels savings back into growth initiatives and encourages new sources of innovation. The Big Zero shows how a ZBx approach focuses on agility over austerity, visibility over guesswork and the future over the past to fuel growth and competitiveness.

Learn an entire MBA course without spending thousands and waving goodbye to two years of your lifeIf you want to succeed in business then an MBA programme is the best way to build expertise, knowledge and experience. But an MBA programme at any top school is an enormous investment in time, effort and money. In The Visual MBA, Jason Barron offers a radical solution, explaining all key business school concepts through illustrations. When Barron started his MBA course, he decided to draw all his notes so that other people could benefit from them. And it's a good thing he did, because research shows that more than 65% of us are visual learners and that our brains process illustrations 60,000 times faster than text. From Marketing, Ethics and Accounting to Organisational Behaviour, Finance, Operations and Strategy, The Visual MBA distils the most important principles of an MBA into an accessible, informative and easily-digestible guide. Jason Barron is a product manager and illustrator who helps people realise their creative ideas through visual learning. He spent 516 hours in class and countless hours studying at home completing his MBA. Along the way, rather than taking notes that he would never read again, Jason created sketchnotes for each class and has turned them into an interesting and engaging resource so that you don't have to sit through another class again!

Silicon Valley icon and bestselling author Guy Kawasaki shares the unlikely stories of his life and the lessons we can draw from them. Guy Kawasaki has been a fixture in the tech world since he was part of Apple's original Macintosh team in the 1980s. He's widely respected as a source of wisdom about entrepreneurship, venture capital, marketing, and business evangelism, which he's shared in bestselling books such as The Art of the Start and Enchantment. But before all that, he was just a middle-class kid in Hawaii, a grandson of Japanese immigrants, who loved football and got a C+ in 9th grade English. Wise Guy, his most personal book, is about his surprising journey. It's not a traditional memoir but a series of vignettes. He toyed with calling it Miso Soup for the Soul, because these stories (like those in the Chicken Soup series) reflect a wide range of experiences that have enlightened and inspired him. For instance, you'll follow Guy as he . . . * Gets his first real job in the jewelry business--which turned out to be surprisingly useful training for the tech world. * Disparages one of Apple's potential partners in front of that company's CEO, at the sneaky instigation of Steve Jobs. * Blows up his Apple career with a single sentence, after Jobs withholds a pre-release copy of the Think Different ad campaign: "That's okay, Steve, I don't trust you either." * Reevaluates his self-importance after being mistaken for Jackie Chan by four young women. * Takes up surfing at age 62--which teaches him that you can discover a new passion at any age, but younger is easier! Guy covers everything from moral values to business skills to parenting. As he writes, "I hope my stories help you live a more joyous, productive, and meaningful life. If Wise Guy succeeds at this, then that's the best story of all."

Over the past quarter century, Seth Godin has taught and inspired millions of entrepreneurs, marketers, leaders, and fans from all walks of life, via his blog, online courses, lectures, and bestselling books. He is the inventor of countless ideas and phrases that have made their way into mainstream business language, from Permission Marketing to Purple Cow to Tribes to The Dip. Now, for the first time, Godin offers the core of his marketing wisdom in one accessible, timeless package. At the heart of his approach is a big idea: Great marketers don't use consumers to solve their company's problem; they use marketing to solve other people's problems. They don't just make noise; they make the world better. Truly powerful marketing is grounded in empathy, generosity, and emotional labour. This book teaches you how to identify your smallest viable audience; draw on the right signals and signs to position your offering; build trust and permission with your target market; speak to the narratives your audience tells themselves about status, affiliation, and dominance; spot opportunities to create and release tension; and give people the tools to achieve their goals. It's time for marketers to stop lying, spamming, and feeling guilty about their work. It's time to stop confusing social media metrics with true connections. It's time to stop wasting money on stolen attention that won't pay off in the long run. This is Marketing offers a better approach that will still apply for decades to come, no matter how the tactics of marketing continue to evolve.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing everything - from the way we relate to each other, to the work we do, the way our economies work, and what it means to be human. We cannot let the brave new world that technology is currently creating simply emerge. All of us need to help shape the future we want to live in. But what do we need to know and do to achieve this? In Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Klaus Schwab explores how people from all backgrounds and sectors can influence the way that technology transforms our world. Drawing on contributions by more than 200 of the world's leading technology, economic and sociological experts to present a practical guide for citizens, business leaders, social influencers and policy-makers this book outlines the most important dynamics of the technology revolution, highlights important stakeholders that are often overlooked in our discussion of the latest scientific breakthroughs, and explores 12 different technology areas central to the future of humanity. Emerging technologies are not predetermined forces out of our control, nor are they simple tools with known impacts and consequences. The exciting capabilities provided by artificial intelligence, distributed ledger systems and cryptocurrencies, advanced materials and biotechnologies are already transforming society. The actions we take today - and those we don't - will quickly become embedded in ever-more powerful technologies that surround us and will, very soon, become an integral part of us. By connecting the dots across a range of often-misunderstood technologies, and by exploring the practical steps that individuals, businesses and governments can take, Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution helps equip readers to shape a truly desirable future at a time of great uncertainty and change.