Showing results by narrator "John Chancer" in All Categories

Steven Pinker looks at how the relationship between words and thoughts can help us understand who we are. Why do so many swear words involve topics like sex, bodily functions, or the divine? Why do some children's names thrive while others fall out of favour? Why do we threaten and bribe and seduce in such elaborate, often comical ways? How can a choice of metaphor damn a politician or start a war? And why do we rarely say what we actually mean?

Spark is an unconventional business book. It has been built on the idea that coming from a perspective of 'getting' something is a severely self-limiting position. Instead, a career should be seen as an opportunity to give - to your funders, your team, your customers and the world at large. Doing so, the authors argue, can lead to expansive possibilities. At the same time, however, people should be averse to bloat, bureaucracy, and everything that comes with achieving a certain level of inert mass.

On a daily basis, leaders, managers, and professionals alike have to deal with tensions caused by differing and even opposite approaches. We often feel the need to make a fundamental choice between either one or the other for the sake of clarity. Using practical methodology and an extensive toolkit, Paradoxical Leadership reveals how to transform divisive dilemmas into creative solutions and paralyzing polarization into a constructive dialogue.

Traditional performance management processes are often ineffective in increasing workforce engagement and fostering a positive employer-employee relationship. Unlocking High Performance shows you how to transform this process to get the best out of your workforce. It presents a new model for performance management based on the three components of planning, cultivation and accountability, and situates this process within the wider aims of promoting work as a healthy relationship between employer and employee rather than a restrictive contract to be complied with.

After losing his wife and young daughter in a plane crash, US journalist Fletcher Carson joins the flagging war effort in Vietnam, where he plans to die. But when he rescues a critically wounded Labrador, whom he names Jack, and helps nurse him back to life, Fletcher slowly regains the will to live. But the ceasefire brings with it news that no dogs serving with the US will be transported home. But Fletcher knows that if he abandons Jack, he will be lost too.

All organizations face crises from time to time, and at a time when news, information (or misinformation), and rumors can spread quickly, a timely and thoughtful response to a crisis, is critical. In this book, two industry insiders offer a primer on how organizational leadership should prepare for and handle crises. The steps, plans, and cautions they offer show how organizations can deal openly and honestly with challenges while continuing to survive and prosper.

In 1986, 20-year-old Christopher Knight left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine, and disappeared into the woods. He would not speak to another human being until three decades later when he was arrested for stealing food. Christopher survived by his wits and courage, developing ingenious ways to store food and water in order to avoid freezing to death in his tent during the harsh Maine winters. He broke into nearby cottages for food, clothes, reading material and other provisions, taking only what he needed. In the process, he unwittingly terrified a community.

Leadersights: Creating Great Leaders Who Create Great Workplaces focuses on how organizations of all types can create a leader-development system that defines critical leader behaviors, provides simple techniques for building and improving the skills that drive those behaviors, and establishes a mechanism for monitoring and enforcing those behaviors.

50 Business Classics presents the key ideas from classic texts such as My Years with General Motors and Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited to contemporary business lessons from the rise of tech giants like Google, Apple and Amazon. It contains revealing biographies of luminaries like Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett as well as lesser-known stories including creation of publishing giant Penguin and Chinese behemoth Alibaba.

With the natural world exhausted and in tatters, Ben has dedicated himself to protecting this single fragment of the wild. One night, he hears voices in the valley—poachers, come to hunt his bear. A heart-pounding chase begins, crossing forests and mountainsides, passing centuries of human ruins. Sometimes hunter, sometimes prey—Ben must choose the bear’s fate and his own.

Though best known for his primary authorship of the Federalist Papers, his death in a duel at the hands of Vice President Aaron Burr on the banks of the Hudson River and his star role in a 21st-century musical, it is often overlooked that Alexander Hamilton was instrumental in creating the key financial building blocks of the young United States of America. The first incumbent of the office of secretary of the Treasury on September 11, 1789, Hamilton submitted a series of financial reports many of which became the economic foundations on which the US was built.

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Idris Elba and Kate Winslet. When the last outgoing flight is cancelled due to a broken de-icer and a forthcoming storm, Ben finds a charter plane that can take him around the weather front. And when the pilot says the single engine plane can fit one more, Ben offers the seat to Ashley. Then the unthinkable happens. The pilot has a heart attack mid-flight and the plane crashes into the High Uintas Wilderness - one of the largest stretches of harsh and remote land in the US.

Civilisation is collapsing. Frustrated and angry after years of denial and inaction, a government of youth has taken power in North America, and a policy of institutionalised ageism introduced. All those older than the prescribed age are deemed responsible for the current state of the world, and are to be 'relocated', their property and assets confiscated. David Ashworth and his wife May find themselves among the thousands being moved to the southern deserts.

Released to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the author’s birth in January 1809, this selection of well-loved, chilling tales from the master of the supernatural is a perfect Christmas gift. The short stories include "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Masque of the Red Death", and "The Fall of the House of Usher". This release also features additional poetry by Poe and a new biography especially written for Naxos AudioBooks by Roy McMillan.

‘It didn’t matter that they were now three miles beyond their target site, that communications were dropping out and that they were running low on fuel. All that mattered to Neil as he searched for a safe spot to land was that boulders littered the surface below. “Thirty seconds,” called mission control. In truth, the flight controllers were now no more than spectators, just like everybody else. No more needed to be said. It was down to Armstrong

Why would a man escape from prison the day before he's due to be released? Audie Palmer has spent a decade in prison for an armed robbery in which four people died, including two of the gang. Seven million dollars has never been recovered and everybody believes that Audie knows where the money is. For 10 years he has been beaten, stabbed, throttled and threatened almost daily by prison guards, inmates and criminal gangs, who all want to answer this same question, but suddenly Audie vanishes, the day before he's due to be released.

Deep in a Wyoming mine, hell awaits. Nat Blackburn is given an offer he can't refuse by President Teddy Roosevelt. Tales of gold in the abandoned mining town of Hecla abound. The only problem - those who go seeking their fortune never return. Along with his constant companion, Teta, a hired gun with a thirst for adventure, Nat travels to a barren land where even animals dare not tread. Black-eyed children, strange lights, and ferocious wild men venture from the deep, dark ghost mine...as well as a sinister force hungry for fresh souls.

When the body of N’Gana Frimbo, the African conjure-man, is discovered in his consultation room, Perry Dart, one of Harlem’s 10 Black police detectives, is called in to investigate. Together with Dr Archer, a physician from across the street, Dart is determined to solve the baffling mystery, helped and hindered by Bubber Brown and Jinx Jenkins, local boys keen to clear themselves of suspicion of murder and undertake their own investigations.

In 1975 art historian Leo Hertzberg discovers an extraordinary painting by an unknown artist in a New York gallery. He buys the work and tracks down its creator, Bill Weschler, and the two men embark on a lifelong friendship. This is the story of their intense and troubled relationship, of the women in their lives and their work, of art and hysteria, love and seduction and their sons - born the same year but whose lives take very different paths.

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of the strange legal case of film star Peter Lorre, written and produced by Michael Butt and starring Stephen Greif. Originally broadcast as the ‘Afternoon Play’ on 10 May 2010.Towards the end of his unique career, movie star Peter Lorre found himself at the centre of an unusual legal case. Incorporating verbatim extracts from the court transcripts, Michael Butt's play wonders what was going through Lorre's troubled mind as he fought to protect his name and identity.