Awesome Committing Album and Music Offers

A compelling vision. Bold leadership Decisive action. Unfortunately, these prerequisites of success are almost always the ingredients of failure, too. In fact, most managers seeking to maximize their chances for glory are often unwittingly setting themselves up for ruin. The sad truth is that most companies have left their futures almost entirely to chance, and don’t even realize it. The reason? Managers feel they must make choices with far-reaching consequences today, but must base those choices on assumptions about a future they cannot predict. It is this collision between commitment and uncertainty that creates THE STRATEGY PARADOX.

This paradox sets up a ubiquitous but little-understood tradeoff. Because managers feel they must base their strategies on assumptions about an unknown future, the more ambitious of them hope their guesses will be right – or that they can somehow adapt to the turbulence that will arise. In fact, only a small number of lucky daredevils prosper, while many more unfortunate, but no less capable managers find themselves at the helms of sinking ships. Realizing this, even if only intuitively, most managers shy away from the bold commitments that success seems to demand, choosing instead timid, unremarkable strategies, sacrificing any chance at greatness for a better chance at mere survival.

Michael E. Raynor, coauthor of the bestselling The Innovator's Solution, explains how leaders can break this tradeoff and achieve results historically reserved for the fortunate few even as they reduce the risks they must accept in the pursuit of success. In the cutthroat world of competitive strategy, this is as close as you can come to getting something for nothing.

Drawing on leading-edge scholarship and extensive original research, Raynor’s revolutionary principle of Requisite Uncertainty yields a clutch of critical, counter-intuitive findings. Among them:

-- The Board should not evaluate the CEO based on the company’s performance, but instead on the firm’s strategic risk profile
-- The CEO should not drive results, but manage uncertainty
-- Business unit leaders should not focus on execution, but on making strategic choices
-- Line managers should not worry about strategic risk, but devote themselves to delivering on commitments

With detailed case studies of success and failure at Sony, Microsoft, Vivendi Universal, Johnson & Johnson, AT&T and other major companies in industries from financial services to energy, Raynor presents a concrete framework for strategic action that allows companies to seize today’s opportunities while simultaneously preparing for tomorrow’s promise..
Price: $8.25 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Former Miss Universe Dayanara Torres shares her secrets for a happy, fulfilling life after divorce

After her divorce from music superstar Marc Anthony, Dayanara Torres had to learn firsthand how to handle the challenges of starting over and creating the healthiest environment possible for her two sons and herself. The most important lesson she learned is that the commitment a woman makes to herself is just as important as the commitment she made to her spouse on their wedding day. Dayanara resiliently vowed to honor and respect herself, and in Married to Me she helps other women do the same.

As a single mom, Dayanara could not find a handbook that said: “This happened to me. Now, let’s move forward.” So, in Married to Me, she walks women through the critical stages of redefining their life after a divorce: accepting and preparing, rebuilding, and rediscovering happiness and self. Dayanara offers honest advice, personal mantras, and effective tips on family, lifestyle, beauty, and health, so that women can learn to move beyond the pain and tears, establish a new family dynamic, discover new passions, and build new relationships. Like Dayanara, readers will discover a life within themselves that is beyond their wildest dreams..
Price: $6.45 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Why do some civil wars end in successfully implemented peace settlements while others are fought to the finish? Numerous competing theories address this question Yet not until now has a study combined the historical sweep, empirical richness, and conceptual rigor necessary to put them thoroughly to the test and draw lessons invaluable to students, scholars, and policymakers. Using data on every civil war fought between 1940 and 1992, Barbara Walter details the conditions that lead combatants to partake in what she defines as a three-step process--the decision on whether to initiate negotiations, to compromise, and, finally, to implement any resulting terms. Her key finding: rarely are such conflicts resolved without active third-party intervention.

Walter argues that for negotiations to succeed it is not enough for the opposing sides to resolve the underlying issues behind a civil war. Instead the combatants must clear the much higher hurdle of designing credible guarantees on the terms of agreement--something that is difficult without outside assistance. Examining conflicts from Greece to Laos, China to Columbia, Bosnia to Rwanda, Walter confirms just how crucial the prospect of third-party security guarantees and effective power-sharing pacts can be--and that adversaries do, in fact, consider such factors in deciding whether to negotiate or fight. While taking many other variables into account and acknowledging that third parties must also weigh the costs and benefits of involvement in civil war resolution, this study reveals not only how peace is possible, but probable..
Price: $25.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Collects more than fifty essays written from behind bars on prison life, prison overcrowding, and AIDS in prison, along with an account of the collaboration between Martin, a prison inmate, and Sussman, his editor on the outside .
Price: $5.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This evaluation assesses the development effectiveness of the World Bank's country-level HIV/AIDS assistance defined as policy dialogue, analytic work, and lending with the explicit objective of reducing the scope or impact of the AIDS epidemic. The evaluation identifies findings from this experience and makes recommendations to improve the relevance, efficiency and efficacy of ongoing and future activities. This is the first comprehensive evaluation of the World Bank's HIV/AIDS support to countries, from the beginning of the epidemic through mid-2004. Because the Bank's assistance is for implementation of government programs by government, it provides important insights on how national AIDS programs can be made more effective..
Price: $33.32 [Notify me when price goes down.]

We all have to die. Most would prefer to die in their sleep, quickly and without pain. Many of us will not. In Fixin' to Die, author David Lester submits that a decision to commit suicide is highly personal and not to be enforced by others, whether psychiatrist, psychologist, law-maker, clergy, friend, or relative. He further contends that the choice of suicide can be both rational and morally sound. This book is a guide for those evaluating suicide as an option, for making the final decision and carrying it out, or resolving to continue living.

Fixin' to Die discusses the concept of death in an ideal world and what makes death "appropriate." Several definitions of an appropriate death are presented, and readers are encouraged to consider the matter for themselves. David Lester uses Harold Greenwald's Direct Decision Therapy to guide the reader through the decision-making process. Lester includes a case study of a family-involved decision and recommends that loved ones and significant others be included in the process. Further suggestions include how to plan the death ceremony and other tasks to be performed prior to death.

Fixin' to Die provides optional resources and Web sites for those choosing suicide and for those choosing to continue with life..
Price: $34.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Having previously set out her "surrendering" principles for wives (and ruffling the feathers of feminists), Laura Doyle now tackles the single girl and shows how to get used to surrendering while preparing yourself for your man to propose. Doyle encourages you to re-evaluate your attitudes towards dating and marriage as the first step, confronting your desire for a mate and acknowledging your own fear of commitment. Once this is established, she takes you through the actual date with some good old-fashioned tips on flirting and on your code of conduct. So once you have your man, how do you hold him? Well, Laura advises that you start relinquishing control to avoid having to change later. Unless of course you have chosen an "incomplete" man - one who watches "Oprah" and isn't hugely interested in sports, cars and guitars. If this is the case, you should probably say "goodbye". "The Surrendered Girl" is wholly outrageous and politically incorrect; nevertheless, the principles are honest and insightful, in the process of seeking a happy relationship of mutual trust, love and adoration..
Price: $48.35 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The phenomenon of suicide by cop has increased in frequency in recent years, creating great concern in the law enforcement community. In suicide by cop, an individual behaves so as to provoke police officers into attempting to disarm him, sometimes killing him in the process. For example, an individual may hold a gun and advance toward police officers, refusing to stop or drop the weapon. It has proven difficult but important to distinguish these acts from those in which there is no justification for police officers’ killing an individual, and from those in which a person is killed during a confrontation with police, but had no suicidal motivation. Criminal penalties for the police officers involved and civil lawsuits by the relatives of the deceased person depend critically on these distinctions.

This book examines what we know about the phenomenon of suicide by cop and places this behavior in a broader context. For example, some murder victims (perhaps as many as a quarter) provoke the murderer, to some extent, into killing them—so-called victim-precipitated homicide. In some cases, it has been suspected that murderers kill and act thereafter in such a way as to provoke the state into executing them. The authors then examine some of the issues specific to suicide by cop, such as whether there is a racial bias in these acts and what the legal implications are. Finally, they discuss the process of hostage negotiation (since those involved in suicide by cop often take hostages during the confrontation with police), the need to provide counseling for police officers involved in suicide-by-cop incidents, and how we might reduce the incidence of this behavior..
Price: $30.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]