Profile Books strana 18 z 27

The Sunday Times Top 10 BestsellerShortlisted for a British Book Industry Book of the Year Award 2016Ancient Rome matters. Its history of empire, conquest, cruelty and excess is something against which we still judge ourselves. Its myths and stories - from Romulus and Remus to the Rape of Lucretia - still strike a chord with us. And its debates about citizenship, security and the rights of the individual still influence our own debates on civil liberty today. SPQR is a new look at Roman history from one of the world's foremost classicists. It explores not only how Rome grew from an insignificant village in central Italy to a power that controlled territory from Spain to Syria, but also how the Romans thought about themselves and their achievements, and why they are still important to us. Covering 1,000 years of history, and casting fresh light on the basics of Roman culture from slavery to running water, as well as exploring democracy, migration, religious controversy, social mobility and exploitation in the larger context of the empire, this is a definitive history of ancient Rome. SPQR is the Romans' own abbreviation for their state: Senatus Populusque Romanus, 'the Senate and People of Rome'.

n business - as in life - the right behaviours matter. But getting it right is tricky. Even when we acknowledge the need to change what we do and how we do it, life has a habit of getting in the way, upsetting even the best-laid plans. And just how do we manage those situations that can provoke even the most rational among us into behaving in ways we would rather forget? Triggers confronts head-on the challenges of behaviour and change, looking at the external factors (or 'triggers') - both negative and positive - that affect our behaviours, our awareness of when we need to change, our willingness (or otherwise) to do so and our ability to see the change through. Drawing on his unparalleled experience as an international executive educator and coach, Marshall Goldsmith invites us to understand how our own beliefs and the environments in which we operate can trigger negative behaviours, or a resistance to the need to change. But he also offers up some simple, practical advice to help us navigate the negative and make the most of the triggers that will help us to sustain positive change.

The Globe Guide to Shakespeare is the ultimate guide to the life and work of the world's greatest playwright: William Shakespeare. With full coverage of the 39 Shakespearian plays, including a synopsis, full character list, stage history and a critical essay for each, this comprehensive guide is both a quick reference and in-depth background guide for theatre goers, students, film buffs and lovers of literature alike. The Globe Guide to Shakespeare also explores Shakespeare's sonnets and the narrative poems, combined with fascinating accounts of Shakespeare's life and theatre, exploring in colourful detail each play's original performances. This comprehensive guide includes up-to-date reviews of the best films and audio recordings of each play, from Laurence Olivier to Baz Luhrmann, Kozintsev to Kurosawa. The Globe Guide to Shakespeare is a celebration of all things Shakespearian. Published to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.

When Chris McDougall stumbled across the story of Churchill's 'dirty tricksters', a motley crew of English poets and academics who helped resist the Nazi invasion of Crete, he knew he was on the track of something special. To beat the odds, the tricksters-starving, aging, outnumbered-tapped into an ancient style of fitness: the lost art of heroism. They listened to their instincts, replaced calories with stored bodily fat and used their fascia, the network of tissue which criss-crosses the body, to catapult themselves to superhuman strength and endurance. Soon McDougall was in the middle of a modern fitness revolution taking place everywhere from Parisian parkour routes to state-of-the-art laboratories, and based on the know-how of Shanghai street-fighters and Wild West gunslingers. Just as Born to Run got runners off the treadmill and into nature, Natural Born Heroes will inspire casual athletes to dump the gym membership for cross-training, mud runs and free-running.

Tilly Dunnage left her hometown of Dungatar in rural Australia under a black cloud of accusation. Years later Tilly, now a couturier for the Paris fashion houses, returns home to make amends with her mentally unstable mother. Mid-century Dungatar is a small town, and small towns have long memories. At first she wins over the suspicious locals with her extraordinary dressmaking skills. But when the eccentric townsfolk turn on Tilly for a second time, she decides to teach them a lesson and exact long-overdue revenge...Packed with memorable characters, acid humour and luscious clothes, The Dressmaker is an irresistible gothic tale of small-town revenge.

Ideas in Profile: Small Introductions to Big Topics In the first title of an exciting new series one of the world's leading political scientists asks the big questions about politics: what is it, why we do we need it and where, in these turbulent times, is it heading? From the gap between rich and poor to the impact of social media, via Machiavelli, Hobbes and Weber, Runciman's comprehensive short introduction is invaluable to those studying politics or those who want to know how life in Denmark became more comfortable than in Syria. The Ideas in Profile series is what introductions can and should be. Concise, clear, relevant, entertaining, original and global in scope, Politics makes essential reading for anyone, from students to the general reader.

In The Origins of Political Order, Francis Fukuyama took us from the dawn of mankind to the French and American Revolutions. Here, he picks up the thread again in the second instalment of his definitive account of mankind's emergence as a political animal. This is the story of how state, law and democracy developed after these cataclysmic events, how the modern landscape - with its uneasy tension between dictatorships and liberal democracies - evolved and how in the United States and in other developed democracies, unmistakable signs of decay have emerged. If we want to understand the political systems that dominate and order our lives, we must first address their origins - in our own recent past as well as in the earliest systems of human government. Fukuyama argues that the key to successful government can be reduced to three key elements: a strong state, the rule of law and institutions of democratic accountability. This magisterial account is required reading for anyone wishing to know more about mankind's greatest achievements.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 'GAWANDE'S MOST POWERFUL, AND MOVING, BOOK' MALCOLM GLADWELL 'BEING MORTAL IS NOT ONLY WISE AND DEEPLY MOVING; IT IS AN ESSENTIAL AND INSIGHTFUL BOOK FOR OUR TIMES' OLIVER SACKS For most of human history, death was a common, ever-present possibility. It didn't matter whether you were five or fifty - every day was a roll of the dice. But now, as medical advances push the boundaries of survival further each year, we have become increasingly detached from the reality of being mortal. So here is a book about the modern experience of mortality - about what it's like to get old and die, how medicine has changed this and how it hasn't, where our ideas about death have gone wrong. With his trademark mix of perceptiveness and sensitivity, Atul Gawande outlines a story that crosses the globe, as he examines his experiences as a surgeon and those of his patients and family, and learns to accept the limits of what he can do. Never before has aging been such an important topic. The systems that we have put in place to manage our mortality are manifestly failing; but, as Gawande reveals, it doesn't have to be this way. The ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death, but a good life - all the way to the very end.

Profile Books: We give up too easily. With a simple change of attitude, what seem like insurmountable obstacles become once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. Ryan Holiday, who dropped out of college at nineteen to serve as an apprentice to bestselling 'modern Machiavelli' Robert Greene and is now a media consultant for billion-dollar brands, draws on the philosophy of the Stoics to guide you in every situation, showing that what blocks our path actually opens one that is new and better. If the competition threatens you, it's time to be fearless, to display your courage. An impossible deadline becomes a chance to show how dedicated you are. And as Ryan discovered as Director of Marketing for American Apparel, if your brand is generating controversy - it's also potentially generating publicity. The Stoic philosophy - that what is in the way, is the way - can be applied to any problem: it's a formula invented more than 2,000 years ago, whose effectiveness has been proven in battles and board rooms ever since. From Barack Obama's ability to overcome obstacles in his election races, to the design of the iPhone, the stoic philosophy has helped its users become world-beaters.

In Search of Excellence has long been a must-have for the boardroom, business school and bedside table, and continues to influence the thinking of leaders and managers across the globe today. Based on a study of forty-three of America's best-run companies from a range of sectors - consumer goods, technology, services - the book identifies eight common 'attributes of excellence' that made these organisations successful. Though many of the profiled companies have since lost their edge (or disappeared completely), these eight management principles, each highlighted in a chapter in the book, have shown themselves to be timeless. These simple business truths, so eloquently encapsulated by Peters and Waterman, are proof that the fundamentals of management - a focus on people, customers and value, entrepreneurship and excellence - ring as true today as they ever did.

The perfect gift book for the power hungry (and who doesn't want power?) at an excellent price. The Concise Edition of an international bestseller. At work, in relationships, on the street or on the 6 o'clock news: the 48 Laws apply everywhere. For anyone with an interest in conquest, self-defence, wealth, power or simply being an educated spectator, The 48 Laws of Power is one of the most useful and entertaining books ever. This book 'teaches you how to cheat, dissemble, feign, fight and advance your cause in the modern world.' (Independent on Sunday) The distilled wisdom of the masters - illustrated through the tactics, triumphs and failures from Elizabeth I to Henry Kissinger on how to get to the top and stay there. Wry, ironic and clever this is an indispensable and witty guide to power. The laws are now famous:- Law 1: Never outshine the master Law 2: Never put too much trust in friends; learn how to use enemies Law 3: Conceal your intentions Law 4: Always say less than necessary.

The perfect pocketbook gift for the power-hungry - from 'the modern Machiavelli', Robert Greene, international bestselling sensation author of The 48 Laws of Power, Seduction and War. This concise version of the business classic Mastery provides a shortcut to Greene's powerful new tools for achieving greatness. Around the globe, people are facing the same problem - that we are born as individuals but are forced to conform to the rules of society if we want to succeed. To see our uniqueness expressed in our achievements, we must first learn the rules - and then change them completely. Charles Darwin began as an underachieving schoolboy, Leonardo da Vinci as an illegitimate outcast. The secret of their eventual greatness lies in a 'rigorous apprenticeship': they learnt to master the 'hidden codes' which determine ultimate success or failure. Then, they rewrote the rules as a reflection of their own individuality. Told through Robert Greene's signature blend of historical anecdote and psychological insight and drawing on interviews with world leaders, Concise Mastery builds on the strategies outlined in The 48 Laws of Power to provide a practical guide to greatness - and learn how to start living by your own rules.

From bestselling author Robert Greene comes a new guide to the strategies of war that can help us gain mastery in the modern world. Spanning world civilisations, and synthesising dozens of political, philosophical, and religious texts, "The Concise 33 Strategies of War" is a guide to the subtle social game of everyday life. Based on profound and timeless lessons, it is abundantly illustrated with examples of the genius and folly of everyone from Napoleon to Margaret Thatcher and Hannibal to Ulysses S. Grant, as well as diplomats, captains of industry and Samurai swordsmen.

The companion book to the bestselling Concise 48 Laws of Power, which has now sold over 125,000 copies in the UK. Amoral, ruthless, clever and cunning, this is the essential guide to the art of seduction.

Rosemary's young, just at college, and she's decided not to tell anyone a thing about her family. So we're not going to tell you too much either: you'll have to find out for yourselves, round about page 77, what it is that makes her unhappy family unlike any other. Rosemary is now an only child, but she used to have a sister the same age as her, and an older brother. Both are now gone - vanished from her life. There's something unique about Rosemary's sister, Fern. And it was this decision, made by her parents, to give Rosemary a sister like no other, that began all of Rosemary's trouble. So now she's telling her story: full of hilarious asides and brilliantly spiky lines, it's a looping narrative that begins towards the end, and then goes back to the beginning. Twice. It's funny, clever, intimate, honest, analytical and swirling with ideas that will come back to bite you. We hope you enjoy it, and if, when you're telling a friend about it, you do decide to spill the beans about Fern - it's pretty hard to resist - don't worry. One of the few studies Rosemary doesn't quote says that spoilers actually enhance reading.

WINNER of the International Affairs Book of the Year at the Political Book Awards 2014 Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2013 The First World War followed a period of sustained peace in Europe during which people talked with confidence of prosperity, progress and hope. But in 1914, Europe walked into a catastrophic conflict which killed millions of its men, bled its economies dry, shook empires and societies to pieces, and fatally undermined Europe's dominance of the world. It was a war which could have been avoided up to the last moment - so why did it happen? Beginning in the early nineteenth century, and ending with the assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand, award-winning historian Margaret MacMillan uncovers the huge political and technological changes, national decisions and - just as important - the small moments of human muddle and weakness that led Europe from peace to disaster. This masterful exploration of how Europe chose its path towards war will change and enrich how we see this defining moment in our history.