In a field dominated by books that focus exclusively on the perspective of business in large corporations or that assume that business has a moral deficiency in need of reform, Al Gini and Alexei Marcoux offers students and business people alike a concise guide to what everyone ought to do when doing business. Where other books are organized topically, Gini and Marcoux look at the moral features of business that recur across topical areas, stressing the considerations that bear on business...

Political humor and satire are, perhaps, as old as comedy itself, and they are crucial to our society and our collective sense of self. Satire is confrontational. It’s about pushback, dissent, discord, disappointment, and demonstrating the absurdity of the status quo. This book is an attempt to explore how these aspects of satire help secure our sanity.Aristotle famously said that humans are naturally political animals. We need political community to flourish and live good lives. B...

Far too many people think philosophy is an intellectual exercise that is beyond them, over their heads, or an intellectual waste of time. In Seeking the Truth of Things, Gini attempts to reestablish philosophy at the center and not the periphery of the public square by relating bits of wisdom that are both manageable yet imaginative and flavorful enough to entice and satisfy readers without ever overwhelming them.Known for his books on practical philosophy, such as The Importance of Being ...

Drawing upon in-depth case studies of vacation habits and the observations of philosophers, writers, and sociologists such as Aristotle, Mark Twain and Thorstein Veblen, Al Gini argues why vacations are so venerated and why 'doing nothing' is a fundamental human necessity.From shopping sprees and extreme sports to the ultimate vacation - retirement - The Importance of Being lazy demonstrates that without true leisure, we are diminished as individuals and as a society.

In My Job My Self, Gini plumbs a wide range of statistics, interviews with workers, surveys from employers and employees, and his own experiences and memories, to explore why we work, how our work affects us, and what we will become as a nation of workers. My Job, My Self speaks to every employed person who has yet to understand the costs and challenges of a lifetime of labor.

It is a platitude that most people, as they say, 'work to live' rather than 'live to work.' And in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, work weeks have expanded and the divide between work time and personal time has significantly blurred due to innovations in such things as electronic communications. Concerns over the value of work in our lives, as well as with the balance or use of time between work and leisure, confront most people in contemporary society. Discussions ove...

What makes a good leader? Ten leaders, ten key virtuesThis readable distillation of the core common features of successful leaders shows how an individual's character, and especially their virtue, is the defining factor. Without these ten vital virtues, leadership becomes "misleadership." The authors, both renowned business ethicists, combine theory with fascinating biographical detail on exemplary leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and Oprah Winfr...

Expose the hidden mechanisms that turn curious children into compliant workers. John Taylor Gatto's explosive follow-up to Dumbing Us Down reveals the specific techniques schools use to destroy imagination, discourage critical thinking, and create a false view of learning as rote memorization rather than creative discovery.The Weaponization of Education:This isn't conspiracy theory - it's documented history. Gatto traces how compul...

From leadership expert Warren Bennis, a workbook to help anyone reach their full potential as a leader.Warren Bennis and Joan Goldsmith maintain that leaders are not born, they are made-in fact, anyone can develop the skills to transform their lives and their organizations. In Learning to Lead, these leadership experts have created a program that enables students, staff, managers, executives, public servants, and professionals to discover their own leaders...

Toxic leaders--such as Ken Lay at Enron or Al Dunlap ("Chainsaw Al") at Sunbeam, or Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia--have always been with us, and many books explain what makes them tick. But in The Allure of Toxic Leaders, Jean Lipman-Blumen explains what makes the followers tick, exploring why we tolerate--and remain steadfastly loyal to--leaders who are destructive to their organizations, their employees, their nations, and their constituents. Why do we knowingly foll...

A timeless classic from a pioneer in the field of leadership studies-the only book you need to read on becoming an effective leader.Warren Bennis (1925-2014) was a pioneer in leadership studies, a scholar who advised presidents and business executives alike on how to become successful leaders. On Becoming a Leader is his seminal work, exemplifying Bennis's core belief that leaders are not born-they are made. In a world increasingly defined by turbulence an...

A groundbreaking manifesto about what our nation’s top schools should be—but aren’t—providing: “The ex-Yale professor effectively skewers elite colleges, their brainy but soulless students (those ‘sheep’), pushy parents, and admissions mayhem” (People).As a professor at Yale, William Deresiewicz saw something that troubled him deeply. His students, some of the nation’s brightest minds, were adrift when it came to the big questions: how to think critically ...