Recommended Books

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
Authors:
Dan Heath
,
Chip Heath
ISBN 13:
978-0385528757
Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives? The primary obstacle is a conflict that’s built into our brains, say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the critically acclaimed bestseller Made to Stick . Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems—the rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort—but if it is overcome, change can come quickly. In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday people—employees and managers, parents and nurses—have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results: ● The lowly medical interns who managed to defeat an entrenched, decades-old medical practice that was endangering patients. ● The home-organizing guru who developed a simple technique for overcoming the dread of housekeeping. ● The manager who transformed a lackadaisical customer-support team into service zealots by removing a standard tool of customer service In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your waistline.

The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945
Author:
David S. Wyman
ISBN 13:
978-1595581747
The Abandonment of the Jews received enormous critical and commercial attention when it was first released in 1984, appearing on the New York Times bestseller list for five weeks as well as on its Best Books of the Year list. A selection of the History Book Club and the Jewish Book Club, it has sold over 100,000 copies in its various editions. In this landmark work, David S. Wyman argues that a substantial commitment to rescue European Jews on the part of the United States almost certainly could have saved several hundred thousand of the Nazis' victims. Widely considered to be the definitive book on the subject, The Abandonment of the Jews won the National Jewish Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Award, the Present Tense Literary Award, the Stuart Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and the Theodore Saloutos Award of the Immigration History Society, and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. This edition includes a new preface by the author discussing the ongoing controversy aroused by the book since its original publication.

A Room of One's Own (The Virginia Woolf Library)
Author:
Virginia Woolf
ISBN 13:
978-0156787338
“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” In A Room of One’s Own , Virginia Woolf imagines that Shakespeare had a sister—a sister equal to Shakespeare in talent, and equal in genius, but whose legacy is radically different. This imaginary woman never writes a word and dies by her own hand, her genius unexpressed. If only she had found the means to create, argues Woolf, she would have reached the same heights as her immortal sibling. In this classic essay, Woolf takes on the establishment, using her gift of language to dissect the world around her and give voice to those who are without. Her message is a simple one: women must have a steady income and a room of their own in order to have the freedom to create. With a Foreword by Mary Gordon