 | Half Gone: Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis |
 | The Allure of Toxic Leaders |
A brilliant look at why we follow leaders from "charming rascals" to cynical despots - and how to avoid their toxic embrace
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 follow, seldom unseat, frequently prefer, and sometimes even create toxic leaders? Lipman-Blumen argues that these leaders appeal to our deepest needs, playing on our anxieties and fears, on our yearnings for security, high self-esteem, and significance, and on our desire for noble enterprises and immortality. The author explores how psychological needs - such as the desire to be at the heart of the action, to be an insider - can often make us susceptible to toxic leaders. She describes how followers inadvertently keep themselves in line by a set of insidious control myths that they internalize. In addition, outside forces - such as economic depressions, political upheavals, or a crisis in the company - can increase our anxiety and our longing for charismatic leaders.
Equally important, Lipman-Blumen shows how followers, mired in the swamp of toxic leadership, can learn critical lessons for the future and survive in the meantime. She discusses how to confront, reform, undermine, blow the whistle on, or oust a toxic leader. And she suggests how we can diminish our need for strong leaders, identify "reluctant leaders" among competent followers, and even nurture the leader within ourselves. Toxic leaders first charm, but then manipulate, mistreat, weaken, and ultimately devastate their followers.
The Allure of Toxic Leaders tells us how to recognize these leaders and identify the germ of toxicity within their "noble" visions before it's too late.
 | Options Made Easy, 2nd Edition |
Options trading offers unparalleled opportunity for rapid profit, but most options guides are difficult to understand and even harder to use successfully. Not this one. Options Made Easy has earned a worldwide reputation for simplicity, clarity, and practical value.
In this thoroughly revamped Second Edition, renowned options trader Guy Cohen delivers even more of what makes this book so valuable: better graphics for easy visual learning, updated hands-on examples that walk step by step through real trades, and the clearest plain-English explanations of trading techniques you'll find anywhere.
Unlike its competitors, Options Made Easy, Second Edition shows you how to design your own trading plan for high probability trades and consistent profits, offering proven strategies you can begin using right now. Best of all, Cohen teaches through easy-to-understand charts and graphs, not complicated math!
Coverage includes:
- filtering for moving stocks
- selecting the right strategy for each situation
- bull call and put spreads
- covered calls; straddle/strangle
- volatility and sideways strategies
- trading and investing psychology
and much more.
This edition also contains a completely revamped introduction to the Greeks - the standard sensitivities to options risk characteristics that every trader must know.
 | Accounting for Non-Accountants |
This fully revised and updated edition of a long-established practical handbook takes the reader through accounting and financial techniques in an easy-to-follow, progressive way.
In this new, easy-to-read format, recent and developed concepts are introduced in a non-specialist context, intended to aid non-financial students as well as managers who need to know about finance and accounting in any business organization.
Throughout the book, the author uses examples and self-check questions to test the reader's ongoing understanding. The three sections of the book explore:
- the annual accounts - profit and loss accounts, balance sheets, accounting ratios, cash flow, inflation accounting, value-added statements and the latest Financial Reporting Standards
- management accounting - costing, cost-based pricing, marginal costing, standard costing and budgetary control
- financial management - cost of capital, capital investment appraisal, control of working capital, share values, take-overs and management buy-outs, taxation and overseas transactions
Accounting for Non-Accountants is already widely used as an introductory text for business and management students on a variety of courses, including marketing and technical degrees, and particularly by those studying for a Diploma in Management Studies or the Certified Diploma in Accounting and Finance.
 | The Meaning of Tingo... |
Did you know that people in Indonesia have a word that means 'to take off your clothes in order to dance'? Or how many words the Albanians have for eyebrows and moustaches? Or the Dutch word for skimming stones is plimpplamppletteren?
Drawing on the collective wisdom of over 154 languages, this intriguing book is arranged by theme so you can compare attitudes all over the world to such subjects as food, the human body and the battle of the sexes. Here you can find not only those words for which there is no direct counterpart in English (such as the Japanese age-otori which means looking less attractive after a haircut), but also a frank discussion of exactly how many 'Eskimo' terms there are for snow, and a vast array of information exploring the wonderful and often downright strange world of words.
Oh, and tingo means 'to take all the objects one desires from the house of a friend, one at a time, by asking to borrow them'.
posted by Think at 3:58 pm
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