Passion and Purpose - Stories from the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders

New Rule #1: Conventional career paths through large corporations no longer lead to success as they once did;

New Rule #4: The greatest opportunities have shifted away from professional management in manufacturing to consulting and other service industries;

New Rule #7: Success requires high personal standards and a strong desire to win.

• Twenty sure-fire negotiating gambits.
• How to negotiate over the telephone, by e-mail, and via instant messaging.
• How to read body language.
• Listening to hidden meanings in conversation.
• Dealing with people from other cultures.
• How to become an expert mediator.

In this stunning new novel, Ian McEwan’s first female protagonist since Atonement is about to learn that espionage is the ultimate seduction.

Cambridge student Serena Frome’s beauty and intelligence make her the ideal recruit for MI5. The year is 1972. The Cold War is far from over. England’s legendary intelligence agency is determined to manipulate the cultural conversation by funding writers whose politics align with those of the government. The operation is code named “Sweet Tooth.”
 
Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is the perfect candidate to infiltrate the literary circle of a promising young writer named Tom Haley. At first, she loves his stories. Then she begins to love the man. How long can she conceal her undercover life? To answer that question, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage: trust no one.
 
Once again, Ian McEwan’s mastery dazzles us in this superbly deft and witty story of betrayal and intrigue, love and the invented self.

Since Darwin's day, we've been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. Mainstream science—as well as religious and cultural institutions—has maintained that men and women evolved in families in which a man's possessions and protection were exchanged for a woman's fertility and fidelity. But this narrative is collapsing. Fewer and fewer couples are getting married, and divorce rates keep climbing as adultery and flagging libido drag down even seemingly solid marriages.

How can reality be reconciled with the accepted narrative? It can't be, according to renegade thinkers Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethå. While debunking almost everything we "know" about sex, they offer a bold alternative explanation in this provocative and brilliant book.

Ryan and Jethå's central contention is that human beings evolved in egalitarian groups that shared food, child care, and, often, sexual partners. Weaving together convergent, frequently overlooked evidence from anthropology, archaeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality, the authors show how far from human nature monogamy really is. Human beings everywhere and in every era have confronted the same familiar, intimate situations in surprisingly different ways. The authors expose the ancient roots of human sexuality while pointing toward a more optimistic future illuminated by our innate capacities for love, cooperation, and generosity.

With intelligence, humor, and wonder, Ryan and Jethå show how our promiscuous past haunts our struggles over monogamy, sexual orientation, and family dynamics. They explore why long-term fidelity can be so difficult for so many; why sexual passion tends to fade even as love deepens; why many middle-aged men risk everything for transient affairs with younger women; why homosexuality persists in the face of standard evolutionary logic; and what the human body reveals about the prehistoric origins of modern sexuality.

In the tradition of the best historical and scientific writing, Sex at Dawn unapologetically upends unwarranted assumptions and unfounded conclusions while offering a revolutionary understanding of why we live and love as we do.

Senior executives, professionals, politicians, entrepreneurs, and educators are increasingly being evaluated by how well they speak - how credibly, how naturally, and how enthusiastically. They're being judged on their presentation skills. In today's communication-saturated age, the ability to address others effectively has become the essential mark of a leader.

How Leaders Speak covers the seven keys to speaking like a leader: preparation, certainty, passion, engagement, and commitment. It's a personal handbook for planning and conveying presentations that will engage and inspire others, from overcoming nervousness to handling difficult questions from listeners.

How Leaders Speak: Getting Ready to Present:

• Know Your Audience
• Find and Create The Nugget (something your audience doesnt know)
• Make a Video Rehearsing your Presentation
• Be Prepared for Anything
• Dont Rely on PowerPoint (have a print out as well )
• Test your Technology
• Have a Checklist of Materials Before You Leave the Office
• Pre-Presentation Jitters are a Good Thing!
• Know Your Environment Beforehand (schedule a run through the day before)
• Eat and Drink Lightly Just Before Your Presentation

How Leaders Speak: During Your Speech

• Have Water Handy
• Keep Language Short and Simple
• Have Your Speech Printed at the Top of Your Page To Keep Eye Contact Connected
• Most Nervousness Doesnt Show
• Draw in Your Audience Via Names and Anecdotal Info
• Ask Questions to Involve Your Audience (and to Relieve Pressure)
• Speak with Passion!

Meet Emily and Paul, the parents of two young children. Emily is a newly promoted executive in a large corporation, while Paul has his own business as a consultant. Their lives, like all of ours, are filled with a bewildering blizzard of emails, phone calls, yet more emails, meetings, projects, proposals, and plans. For them, just staying ahead of the storm has become a seemingly insurmountable task.

In this book, we travel inside the brains of Emily and Paul as they attempt to sort the vast quantities of information they're presented with and figure out how to prioritize, organize, and act on it. Fortunately for Emily and Paul—and for readers of Your Brain at Work—they're in good hands: David Rock knows how the brain works—and more specifically, how it works in a work setting.

Your Brain at Work explores:

• Why your brains feels so taxed, and how to take full advantage of your mental resources
• Why it's so hard to focus, and how to better manage distractions
• How to maximize your chance of finding insights that can solve seemingly insurmountable problems
• How to keep your cool in any situation, so that you can make the best decisions possible
• How to collaborate with others more effectively
• Why providing feedback is so difficult, and how to make it easier
• How to effectively change other people's behavior

Rock shows how it's possible not only to survive in today's overwhelming work environment but to succeed in it—and still feel energized at the end of the day, with a sense of accomplishment.