Books about Reshaping from Amazon.com

Called well worth reading by The Economist and earnest and entertaining by the Financial Times, Tarun Khanna s Billions of Entrepreneurs is an elegantly written book that mixes on-the-ground stories with thorough research to show how Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs are creating change through new business models and bringing hope to countless people across the globe. Khanna juxtaposes, on a variety of levels, China and India; explores how the future depends on understanding the yin and yang of these two nations; and emphasizes the increasingly important links between China, India, and the West. Khanna embraces what he calls a big tent view of entrepreneurship going beyond typical stories of high profile, young executives taking companies public and focusing on social and political entrepreneurs who are redefining the norms of daily activity.

In the book, Khanna sets out to demystify many of the questions that confound foreigners (BusinessWeek), exploring subjects that include each nation s treatment of multinationals, Chinese and Indian managerial talent, and state vs. grassroots approaches to business and entrepreneurship. Khanna s insightful analysis draws on history, economics, and political science, and is humanized by vivid portraits of the lives of individual entrepreneurs, politicians, and activists whom the author has met during his regular visits to each country. He argues that hope for prosperity in both countries lies in the hands of the billions of entrepreneurs who are alleviating social problems and historic tensions, benefiting both countries and the world at large.

According to the Financial Times: What Khanna does do, and does well, is cover vast sociopolitical and economic ground, and provide meaty information derived from conversations with people who have done business in India and China..
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As soon as you hear the conceit of this book--that there are two great opposing forces at work in the world today, border-crossing capitalism and splintering factionalism, and that they are the two biggest threats to democracy--you know it rings true enough to be worth reading. Although capitalism could have only grown to current levels in the soil of democracies, Benjamin Barber argues that global capitalism now tends to work against the very concept of citizenship, of people thinking for themselves and with their neighbors. Too often now, how we think is the product of a transnational corporation (increasingly, a media corporation) with headquarters elsewhere. And although self-determination is one of the most fundamental of democratic principles, unchecked it has lead to a tribalism (think Bosnia, think Rwanda) in which virtually no one besides the local power elite gets a fair shake. The antidote, Barber concludes, is to work everywhere to resuscitate the non-governmental, non-business spaces in life--he calls them "civic spaces" (such as the village green, voluntary associations of every sort, churches, community schools)--where true citizenship thrives..
Price: $3.24 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Since its inception, R has become one of the preeminent programs for statistical computing and data analysis The ready availability of the program, along with a wide variety of packages and the supportive R community make R an excellent choice for almost any kind of computing task related to statistics. However, many users, especially those with experience in other languages, do not take advantage of the full power of R. Because of the nature of R, solutions that make sense in other languages may not be very efficient in R. This book presents a wide array of methods applicable for reading data into R, and efficiently manipulating that data.

In addition to the built-in functions, a number of readily available packages from CRAN (the Comprehensive R Archive Network) are also covered. All of the methods presented take advantage of the core features of R: vectorization, efficient use of subscripting, and the proper use of the varied functions in R that are provided for common data management tasks.

Most experienced R users discover that, especially when working with large data sets, it may be helpful to use other programs, notably databases, in conjunction with R. Accordingly, the use of databases in R is covered in detail, along with methods for extracting data from spreadsheets and datasets created by other programs. Character manipulation, while sometimes overlooked within R, is also covered in detail, allowing problems that are traditionally solved by scripting languages to be carried out entirely within R. For users with experience in other languages, guidelines for the effective use of programming constructs like loops are provided. Since many statistical modeling and graphics functions need their data presented in a data frame, techniques for converting the output of commonly used functions to data frames are provided throughout the book.

Using a variety of examples based on data sets included with R, along with easily simulated data sets, the book is recommended to anyone using R who wishes to advance from simple examples to practical real-life data manipulation solutions.

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Price: $45.20 [Notify me when price goes down.]

There has been a growing chorus of political analysts with doomsday predictions of an American public that is uncivil, disengaged, and alienated And it's only getting worse with a younger generation of Americans who do not see the value in voting.

The good news is that the bad news is wrong.

Russell Dalton uses a new set of national public opinion surveys to show how Americans are changing their views on what good citizenship means. It's not about recreating the halcyon politics of a generation ago, but recognition that new patterns of citizenship call for new processes and new institutions that reflect the values of the contemporary American public. Trends in participation, tolerance, and policy priorities reflect a younger generation that is more engaged, more tolerant, and more supportive of social justice. The Good Citizen shows how a younger generation is creating new norms of citizenship that are leading to a renaissance of democratic participation. An important comparative chapter in the book showcases cross-national comparisons that further demonstrate the vitality of American democracy.

This book will reshape how we think about the American public, American youth, and the prospects for contemporary democracy.

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Price: $17.11 [Notify me when price goes down.]

As the internet continues to reshape almost all corners of our world, no institution has been more profoundly altered than the practice of journalism and distribution of information. In this provocative new book, Scott Gant, a distinguished Washington attorney and constitutional law scholar, argues that we as a society need to rethink our notions of what journalism is, who is a journalist and exactly what the founding fathers intended when they referred to "the freedom of the press."

Are bloggers journalists, even if they receive no income? Even if they are unedited and sometimes irresponsible? Many traditional news organizations would say no. But Gant contends otherwise and suggests we think of these sometimes unruly online purveyors of information and opinion as heirs to those early pamphleteers who helped shape our fledgling democracy. He gives us a persuasive and engaging argument for affording bloggers and everyone else who disseminates information and opinion in the U.S. the same rights and privileges that traditional journalists enjoy.

The rise of the Internet and blogosphere has blurred the once distinct role of the media in our society. It wasn't long ago that the line between journalists and the rest of us seemed relatively clear: Those who worked for news organizations were journalists and everyone else was not. Those days are gone. On the Internet, the line has totally disappeared. It's harder than ever to answer the question, "Who is a journalist?" Yet it is a question asked routinely in American courtrooms and legislatures because there are many circumstances where those deemed "journalists" are afforded rights and privileges not available to the rest of us. The question will become increasingly important as the transformation of journalism continues, and bloggers and other "citizen journalists" battle for equal standing with professional journalists. Advancing arguments that are sure to stir controversy, Scott Gant leads the debate with a serious yet accessible discussion about whether, where, and how the government can decide who is a journalist. Challenging the mainstream media, Gant puts forth specific arguments about how to change existing laws and makes elegant suggestions for new laws that will properly account for the undeniable reality that We're All Journalists Now. For all of us who care about the ways in which the digital revolution is sweeping through our culture, this is a work of opinion that will be seen as required reading..
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As director of the London School of Economics, Anthony Giddens is one of the world's foremost academics. He has served as an advisor to both President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair, and is closely tied to the center-left idea of "third-way" politics. In this brief book on globalization (drawn from a series of lectures delivered in 1999), Giddens writes, "We are living through a major period of historical transition." Globalization is reordering societies all over the planet, and although the results are sometimes unpredictable, they are heading in a generally positive direction. But not everybody agrees, as the author freely admits:

The battleground of the twenty-first century will pit fundamentalism against cosmopolitan tolerance. In a globalising world, where information and images are routinely transmitted across the globe, we are all regularly in contact with others who think differently, and live differently, from ourselves. Cosmopolitans welcome and embrace this cultural complexity. Fundamentalists find it disturbing and dangerous. Whether in the areas of religion, ethnic identity, or nationalism, they take refuge in a renewed and purified tradition--and, quite often, violence.

Giddens is not coy about where he stands: "We can legitimately hope that a cosmopolitan outlook will win out." In what is sure to be a controversial chapter, he examines sex and family life through the prism of this fundamentalist-cosmopolitan divide. He is severely critical of what he calls the "traditional family," which he considers an aspect of fundamentalism the world over and an enemy of sexual equality: "I remember what my great aunt once said to me. She must have had one of the longest marriages of anyone, having been with her husband for over 60 years. She once confided that she had been deeply unhappy with him the whole of that time. In her day there was no escape." Runaway World is certain to provoke a lively debate--Giddens would surely have it no other way. --John J. Miller.
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