Books about Reinventing from Amazon.com

In the waning days of the American empire, we find ourselves mired in political crisis, with our foreign policy coming under sharp criticism and our economy in steep decline. These trends mirror the experience of the Soviet Union in the early 1980s. Reinventing Collapse examines the circumstances of the demise of the Soviet superpower and offers clear insights into how we might prepare for coming events.

Rather than focusing on doom and gloom, Reinventing Collapse suggests that there is room for optimism if we focus our efforts on personal and cultural transformation. With characteristic dry humor, Dmitry Orlov identifies three progressive stages of response to the looming crisis:

• Mitigation-alleviating the impact of the coming upheaval
• Adaptation-adjusting to the reality of changed conditions
• Opportunity-flourishing after the collapse

He argues that by examining maladaptive parts of our common cultural baggage, we can survive, thrive, and discover more meaningful and fulfilling lives, in spite of steadily deteriorating circumstances.

This challenging yet inspiring work is a must-read for anyone concerned about energy, geopolitics, international relations, and life in a post-Peak Oil world.

Dmitry Orlov was born in Leningrad and immigrated to the United States at the age of twelve. He was an eyewitness to the Soviet collapse over several extended visits to his Russian homeland between the late eighties and mid-nineties. He is an engineer and a leading Peak Oil theorist whose writing is featured on such sites as www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net and www.powerswitch.org.uk.

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"I don't know how she does it!" is an oft-heard refrain about mothers today. Funnily enough, most moms agree they have no idea how they get it done, or whether they even want the job. Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile spoke to mothers of every stripe working, stay-at-home, part-time and found a surprisingly similar trend in their interviews. After enthusing about her lucky life for twenty minutes, a mother would then break down and admit that her child's first word was "Shrek." As one mom put it, "Am I happy? The word that describes me best is challenged." Fresh from the front lines of modern motherhood comes a book that uncovers the guilty secrets of moms today . . . in their own words. I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids diagnoses the craziness and offers real solutions, so that mothers can step out of the madness and learn to love motherhood as much as they love their kids..
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Pierre Gagnaire is considered one of the best chefs in the world, and two of his restaurants have received three Michelin stars
Chefs worldwide have been influenced by his innovative culinary approach
Includes recipes spanning the entire course of his groundbreaking career

Pierre Gagnaire is considered one of the most innovative and artistic chefs working today, renowned for his dazzling combinations of flavors, textures, and ingredients. The owner of restaurants in Paris, London, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, Gagnaire has become synonymous with adventurous and iconoclastic cooking.

Now, in Pierre Gagnaire: Reinventing French Cuisine, the legendary chef tells the story of his 40-year journey to culinary superstardom. Featuring reflections on Gagnaire’s life and work, along with 40 of his favorite recipes, this is less a cookbook than an inside look at the making of a great chef.

Organized chronologically, the book begins with Gagnaire’s training and follows him to his restaurants in St.-Etienne and Paris, which were both awarded three Michelin stars, and beyond. The accompanying recipes—whether a simple potatoes au gratin; an elegant combination of white cabbage, buffalo mozzarella, and caviar; or a savory potato gnocchi with saffron, artichoke, and roasted hazelnuts—are drawn from each period in Gagnaire’s life, showing his early influences, the development of his vibrant signature style, and his ongoing experiments in modern French cuisine..
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Marketing has undergone a cataclysmic shift. Blogs, comment sites, and social networks have given your audience unprecedented power in their relationship with you and your products. How can you deploy today's new marketing tools to break through, build momentum, and gain recognition?

Contrary to popular belief, adding a blog, podcast, wiki, or widget to your Web site won't automatically draw crowds. Fundamental change is required. Real-world examples from companies such as Volcom, Ryanair, IBM, Viking, Adidas, Proctor & Gamble, and many others show you how to open meaningful interactions with your customers, develop authenticity, share recognition, and engage.

Whether you're a marketer, communications expert, CEO, or business owner, you face the daunting challenge of marketing with your customers, not to them. In The Age of Engage, widely respected marketing strategist Denise Shiffman lays out a provocative blueprint for how you can

• Create persuasive value so that your products stand out in this new era
• Build trust by reshaping audience interactions
• Expand social currency and extend your sphere of influence
• Deploy new marketing vehicles to capture the hearts, minds, and wallets of your customers

The Age of Engage will transform the way you think about marketing. It will inspire you to engage audiences by interacting with them in new and inventive ways. And, it will help you reshape or reinvent your company culture, products, and marketing to entice audiences and catalyze markets.

Praise for The Age of Engage:

'The Age of Engage is an amazing and essential guide for business, defining the strategic path companies must take for product success. To master the profound changes in marketing forged by the evolution of the Web, every marketer must read this book!' --Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google

'The Age of Engage is revealing and straightforward and envisions a way for all of us to move easily into the open, interactive business and marketing practices Web 3.0 and beyond will require.' --Pat Sueltz, CEO, SurfControl PLC

'An illuminating text that assembles in one place the vast changes the Web is driving across marketing and explains today's requisite paradigm for reinventing your brand. It's Google Maps for marketers in this era.' --Tracey Stout, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, Fair Isaac Corporation

'The Age of Engage is astute and inspiring. It has given me a host of creative approaches for marshalling the Live Web as a fundamental part of my brick and mortar business.' --Amanda West, CEO, Amanda's Restaurants

'The Age of Engage offers a blueprint for infiltrating the ongoing conversations of the Live Web that move a product from a mere commodity to a powerful brand.' --Ben Elowitz, CEO, Wetpaint

'Shiffman's conversational style embodies the authentic dialogue she believes companies must have in order to engage their audiences and succeed in the interactive age.' --Sam Yagan, CEO, OkCupid.com.
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Michael Goldhaber, writing in Wired, said, "If there is nothing very special about your work, no matter how hard you apply yourself you won't get noticed and that increasingly means you won't get paid much either. In times past you could be obscure yet secure -- now that's much harder."

Again: the white collar job as now configured is doomed. Soon. ("Downsizing" in the nineties will look like small change.) So what's the trick? There's only one: distinction. Or as we call it, turning yourself into a brand . . . Brand You.

A brand is nothing more than a sign of distinction. Right? Nike. Starbucks. Martha Stewart. The point (again): that's not the way we've thought about white collar workers--ourselves--over the past century. The "bureaucrat" on the finance staff is de facto faceless, plugging away, passing papers.

But now, in our view, she is born again, transformed from bureaucrat to the new star. She works in a professional service firm and works on projects that she'll be able to brag about years from now.

I call her/him the New American Professional, CEO of Me Inc. (even if Me Inc. is currently on someone's payroll) and, of course, of Brand You.

Step #1 in the model was the organization . . .a department turned into PSF 1.0.  Step #2 is the individual . . .reborn as Brand You.

In 50 essential points, Tom Peters shows how to be committed to your craft, choose the right projects, how to improve networking, why you need to think fun is cool, and why it's important to piss some people off. He will enable you to turn yourself into an important and distinctive commodity. In short, he will show you how to turn yourself into . . . Brand You.


See also the other 50List titles in the Reinventing Work series by Tom Peters -- The Project50 and The Professional Service Firm50 -- for additional information on how to make an impact in the professional world. .
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Projects are the engines that drive innovation from idea to commercialization. In fact, the number of projects in most organizations today is expanding while operations is shrinking.. Yet, since many companies still focus on operational excellence and efficiency, most projects fail—largely because conventional project management concepts cannot adapt to a dynamic business environment. Moreover, top managers neglect their company’s project activity, and line managers treat all their projects alike—as part of operations.

Based on an unprecedented study of more than 600 projects in a variety of businesses and organizations across the globe, Reinventing Project Management provides a new and highly adaptive model for planning and managing projects to achieve superior business results..
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Clear, insightful, and nondogmatic, this book gives us a new appreciation for one of our most ubiquitous institutions.

From the wild swings of the stock market to the online auctions of eBay to the unexpected twists of the world's post-Communist economies, markets have suddenly become quite visible. We now have occasion to ask, "What makes these institutions work? How important are they? How can we improve them?"

Taking us on a lively tour of a world we once took for granted, John McMillan offers examples ranging from a camel trading fair in India to the $20 million per day Aalsmeer flower market in the Netherlands to the global trade in AIDS drugs. Eschewing ideology, he shows us that markets are neither magical nor immoral. Rather, they are powerful if imperfect tools, the best we've found for improving our living standards. A New York Times Notable Book..
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