en-US Thu, 27 Jul 2023 00:07:30 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 38474
Stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, this book depicts men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime.]]> 448 James Baldwin 0141186372 Omar 0 currently-reading 4.32 1962
author: James Baldwin
name: Omar
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/27
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 20887203 8 Fareed Zakaria 0743576861 Omar 5 3.90 2008
author: Fareed Zakaria
name: Omar
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2008
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/08/19
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]]> 13587513
The solution in each case was a focus on customer experience, the most powerful—and misunderstood—element of corporate strategy today.

Customer experience is, quite simply, how your customers perceive their every interaction with your company. It’s a fundamental business driver. Here’s proof: over a recent five-year period during which the S&P 500 was flat, a stock portfolio of customer experience leaders grew twenty-two percent.

In an age when customers have access to vast amounts of data about your company and its competitors, customer experience is the only sustainable source of competitive advantage. But how to excel at it?

Based on fourteen years of research by the customer experience leaders at Forrester Research, Outside In offers a complete roadmap to attaining the experience advantage. It starts with the concept of the Customer Experience Ecosystem—proof that the roots of customer experience problems lie not just with customer-facing employees like your sales staff, but with behind-the-scenes employees like accountants, lawyers, and programmers, as well as the policies, processes, and technologies that all your employees use every day. Identifying and solving these problems has the potential to dramatically increase sales and decrease costs.]]> 272 Harley Manning 0547913982 Omar 0 to-read 3.89 2012
author: Harley Manning
name: Omar
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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]]> 19106 31 Catherine Cowan 0688104649 Omar 4 3.95 1836
author: Catherine Cowan
name: Omar
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1836
rating: 4
read at: 2014/08/05
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]]> 908 320 James J. Cramer 0743224892 Omar 4 3.68 2005
author: James J. Cramer
name: Omar
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2008/03/03
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]]> 6085191 Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude returns with a roar with this gorgeous, searing portrayal of Manhattanites wrapped in their own delusions, desires, and lies.

Chase Insteadman, a handsome, inoffensive fixture on Manhattan's social scene, lives off residuals earned as a child star on a beloved sitcom called Martyr & Pesty. Chase owes his current social cachet to an ongoing tragedy much covered in the tabloids: His teenage sweetheart and fiancée, Janice Trumbull, is trapped by a layer of low-orbit mines on the International Space Station, from which she sends him rapturous and heartbreaking love letters. Like Janice, Chase is adrift, she in Earth's stratosphere, he in a vague routine punctuated by Upper East Side dinner parties.

Into Chase's cloistered city enters Perkus Tooth, a wall-eyed free-range pop critic whose soaring conspiratorial riffs are fueled by high-grade marijuana, mammoth cheeseburgers, and a desperate ache for meaning. Perkus's countercultural savvy and voracious paranoia draw Chase into another Manhattan, where questions of what is real, what is fake, and who is complicit take on a life-shattering urgency. Along with Oona Laszlo, a self-loathing ghostwriter, and Richard Abneg, a hero of the Tompkins Square Park riot now working as a fixer for the billionaire mayor, Chase and Perkus attempt to unearth the answers to several mysteries that seem to offer that rarest of artifacts on an island where everything can be bought: Truth.

Like Manhattan itself, Jonathan Lethem's masterpiece is beautiful and tawdry, tragic and forgiving, devastating and antic, a stand-in for the whole world and a place utterly unique.]]> 467 Jonathan Lethem 0385518633 Omar 0 to-read 3.54 2009
author: Jonathan Lethem
name: Omar
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2009
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]]> 20484716
In What We Won, CIA and National Security Council veteran Bruce Riedel tells the story of America's secret war in Afghanistan and the defeat of the Soviet 40th Red Army in the war that proved to be the final battle of the cold war. He seeks to answer one simple question—why did this intelligence operation succeed so brilliantly?

Riedel has the vantage point few others can offer: He was ensconced in the CIA's Operations Center when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979. The invasion took the intelligence community by surprise. But the response, initiated by Jimmy Carter and accelerated by Ronald Reagan, was a masterful intelligence enterprise.

Many books have been written about intelligence failures—from Pearl Harbor to 9/11. Much less has been written about how and why intelligence operations succeed. The answer is complex. It involves both the weaknesses and mistakes of America's enemies, as well as good judgment and strengths of the United States.

Riedel introduces and explores the complex personalities pitted in the war—the Afghan communists, the Russians, the Afghan mujahedin, the Saudis, and the Pakistanis. And then there are the Americans—in this war, no Americans fought on the battlefield. The CIA did not send officers into Afghanistan to fight or even to train.

In 1989, victory for the American side of the cold war seemed complete. Now we can see that a new era was also beginning in the Afghan war in the 1980s, the era of the global jihad. This book examines the lessons we can learn from this intelligence operation for the future and makes some observations on what came next in Afghanistan—and what is likely yet to come.]]> 189 Bruce Riedel 0815725841 Omar 0 to-read 4.06 2014
author: Bruce Riedel
name: Omar
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2014
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]]> 8323648 One of the most important functions performed by the American Constitution and the more than two centuries' worth of cases interpreting it is the allocation of decision-making. Professor Dorf and Professor Morrison frame many of these constitutional debates with this question of authority. When should courts rule that the Constitution takes some issue outside of the domain of ordinary politics? Should courts referee disputes between the branches of the federal government? Should they referee disputes between the states and the national government? Using what standards?
This introduction to American constitutional law critically examines the work of the Supreme Court of the United States, which has resolved thousands of constitutional controversies based on the shortest national constitution on the planet. The authors also look beyond the Supreme Court, exploring the arguments for and against judicial review and various versions of popular constitutionalism.]]> 268 Michael C. Dorf 0195370031 Omar 4 4.30 2010
author: Michael C. Dorf
name: Omar
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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]]> 9717 The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. This magnificent novel juxtaposes geographically distant places, brilliant and playful reflections, and a variety of styles, to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world’s truly great writers.]]> 314 Milan Kundera 0571224385 Omar 0 to-read 4.12 1984
author: Milan Kundera
name: Omar
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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]]> 6493208
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored� ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia � a land of wooden quarters for enslaved people, faith healings, and voodoo � to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality� until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family � past and present � is inextricably connected to the history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.]]> 370 Rebecca Skloot 1400052173 Omar 0 to-read 4.12 2010
author: Rebecca Skloot
name: Omar
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2010
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]]> 7331435
We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist’s couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city’s demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life—divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house—and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco’s punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang—who thrived and who faltered—and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie’s catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou’s far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both—and escape the merciless progress of time—in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.]]> 274 Jennifer Egan 0307592839 Omar 0 to-read 3.70 2010
author: Jennifer Egan
name: Omar
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
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]]> 16271 Librarian note: Click here for alternate cover edition
Two warring factions in the Department of Elevator Inspectors in a bustling metropolis vie for dominance: the Empiricists, who go by the book and rigorously check every structural and mechanical detail, and the Intuitionists, whose observational methods involve meditation and instinct.

Lila Mae Watson, the city’s first black female inspector and a devout Intuitionist with the highest accuracy rate in the department, is at the center of the turmoil. An elevator in a new municipal building has crashed on Lila Mae’s watch, fanning the flames of the Empiticist-Intuitionist feud and compelling Lila Mae to go underground to investigate. As she endeavors to clear her name, she becomes entangled in a web of intrigue that leads her to a secret that will change her life forever.

A dead-serious and seriously funny feat of the imagination, The Intuitionist conjures a parallel universe in which latent ironies in matters of morality, politics, and race come to light, and stands as the celebrated debut of an important American writer.]]> 255 Colson Whitehead Omar 0 to-read 3.64 1999
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Omar
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1999
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]]> 6900
Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you?

Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying of ALS - or motor neurone disease - Mitch visited Morrie in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final 'class': lessons in how to live.]]> 210 Mitch Albom Omar 5 4.19 1997
author: Mitch Albom
name: Omar
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at: 2002/03/03
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]]> 145565 256 Warren Buffett 0966446119 Omar 4 4.29 1998
author: Warren Buffett
name: Omar
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1998
rating: 4
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]]> 1854
This much-needed guide is more than just a how-to manual. It covers interaction design fundamentals, approaches to designing, design research, and more, and spans all mediums—Internet, software, and devices. Even robots! Filled with tips, real-world projects, and interviews, you’ll get a solid grounding in everything you need to successfully tackle interaction design.

Designing for Interaction is an AIGA Design Press book, published under Peachpit's New Riders imprint in partnership with AIGA.]]> 231 Dan Saffer 0321432061 Omar 3 3.94 2006
author: Dan Saffer
name: Omar
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2006
rating: 3
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Covers a lot of essential interaction design works, computer and other real world designs. Sometimes gets a bit too simple..
]]> 344728 368 James Giangola 0321185765 Omar 0 to-read 4.04 2004
author: James Giangola
name: Omar
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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]]> 17269003 378 Everett N. McKay 0123969808 Omar 4 4.16 2013
author: Everett N. McKay
name: Omar
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2013
rating: 4
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]]> 53639
The classic novel Zorba the Greek is the story of two men, their incredible friendship, and the importance of living life to the fullest. Zorba, a Greek working man, is a larger-than-life character, energetic and unpredictable. He accompanies the unnamed narrator to Crete to work in the narrator’s lignite mine, and the pair develops a singular relationship. The two men couldn’t be further apart: The narrator is cerebral, modest, and reserved; Zorba is unfettered, spirited, and beyond the reins of civility. Over the course of their journey, he becomes the narrator’s greatest friend and inspiration and helps him to appreciate the joy of living.

Zorba has been acclaimed as one of the most remarkable figures in literature; he is a character in the great tradition of Sinbad the Sailor, Falstaff, and Sancho Panza. He responds to all that life offers him with passion, whether he’s supervising laborers at a mine, confronting mad monks in a mountain monastery, embellishing the tales of his past adventures, or making love. Zorba the Greek explores the beauty and pain of existence, inviting readers to reevaluate the most important aspects of their lives and live to the fullest.]]> 335 Nikos Kazantzakis 0571203132 Omar 0 to-read 4.08 1946
author: Nikos Kazantzakis
name: Omar
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1946
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]]> 18465581
From Citizens United to its momentous rulings regarding Obamacare and gay marriage, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has profoundly affected American life. Yet the court remains a mysterious institution, and the motivations of the nine men and women who serve for life are often obscure. Now, in Uncertain Justice , Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz show the surprising extent to which the Roberts Court is revising the meaning of our Constitution.

Political gridlock, cultural change, and technological progress mean that the court’s decisions on key topics―including free speech, privacy, voting rights, and presidential power―could be uniquely durable. Acutely aware of their opportunity, the justices are rewriting critical aspects of constitutional law and redrawing the ground rules of American government. Tribe―one of the country’s leading constitutional lawyers―and Matz dig deeply into the court’s rulings, stepping beyond tired debates over judicial “activism� to draw out hidden meanings and silent battles. The undercurrents they reveal suggest a strikingly different vision for the future of our country, one that is sure to be hotly debated.

Filled with original insights and compelling human stories, Uncertain Justice illuminates the most colorful story of all―how the Supreme Court and the Constitution frame the way we live.

“Marvelous…Tribe and Matz’s insights are illuminating�. [They] offer well-crafted overviews of key cases decided by the Roberts Court � [and] chart the Supreme Court’s conservative path, clarifying complex cases in accessible terms.”� The Chicago Tribune

“Well-written and highly readable…The strength of the book is its painstaking explanation of all sides of the critical cases, giving full voice and weight to conservative and liberal views alike.”� The Washington Post]]> 416 Laurence H. Tribe 0805099093 Omar 0 to-read 4.04 2014
author: Laurence H. Tribe
name: Omar
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2014
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]]> 168668
Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy—it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.

This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller’s masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley; a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller’s personal archive; and much more. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature.]]> 453 Joseph Heller 0684833395 Omar 3 3.99 1961
author: Joseph Heller
name: Omar
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1961
rating: 3
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]]> 12067161
11/9/2001: Christian fundamentalists hijack four jetliners. They fly two into the Tigris & Euphrates World Trade Towers in Baghdad, and a third into the Arab Defense Ministry in Riyadh. The fourth plane, believed to be bound for Mecca, is brought down by its passengers.

The United Arab States declares a War on Terror. Arabian and Persian troops invade the Eastern Seaboard and establish a Green Zone in Washington, D.C. . . .

Summer, 2009: Arab Homeland Security agent Mustafa al Baghdadi interrogates a captured suicide bomber. The prisoner claims that the world they are living in is a mirage--in the real world, America is a superpower, and the Arab states are just a collection of "backward third-world countries." A search of the bomber's apartment turns up a copy of "The New York Times," dated September 12, 2001, that appears to support his claim. Other captured terrorists have been telling the same story. The president wants answers, but Mustafa soon discovers he's not the only interested party.

The gangster Saddam Hussein is conducting his own investigation. And the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee--a war hero named Osama bin Laden--will stop at nothing to hide the truth. As Mustafa and his colleagues venture deeper into the unsettling world of terrorism, politics, and espionage, they are confronted with questions without any rational answers, and the terrifying possibility that their world is not what it seems.

Acclaimed novelist Matt Ruff has created a shadow world that is eerily recognizable but, at the same time, almost unimaginable. Gripping, subversive, and unexpectedly moving, "The Mirage" probes our deepest convictions and most arresting fears.]]> 432 Matt Ruff 0061976229 Omar 0 to-read 3.59 2012
author: Matt Ruff
name: Omar
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2012
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]]> 2487825 616 Fyodor Dostoevsky 1604240954 Omar 4 3.71 1869
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Omar
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1869
rating: 4
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]]> 77203 371 Khaled Hosseini 159463193X Omar 5 4.34 2003
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Omar
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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]]> 18114295 In Bending Adversity, Financial Times Asia editor David Pilling presents a fresh vision of Japan, drawing on his own deep experience, as well as observations from a cross section of Japanese citizenry, including novelist Haruki Murakami, former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, industrialists and bankers, activists and artists, teenagers and octogenarians. Through their voices, Pilling captures the dynamism and diversity of contemporary Japan.

Pilling's exploration begins with the 2011 triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. His deep reporting reveals both Japan's vulnerabilities and its resilience and pushes him to understand the country's past through cycles of crisis and reconstruction. Japan's survivalist mentality has carried it through tremendous hardship, but is also the source of great destruction: It was the nineteenth-century struggle to ward off colonial intent that resulted in Japan's own imperial endeavor, culminating in the devastation of World War II. Even the postwar economic miracle-the manufacturing and commerce explosion that brought unprecedented economic growth and earned Japan international clout might have been a less pure victory than it seemed.

In Bending Adversity, Pilling questions what was lost in the country's blind, aborted climb to #1. With the same rigor, he revisits 1990-the year the economic bubble burst, and the beginning of Japan's "lost decades"-to ask if the turning point might be viewed differently. While financial struggle and national debt are a reality, post-growth Japan has also successfully maintained a stable standard of living and social cohesion. And while life has become less certain, opportunities-in particular for the young and for women-have diversified.

Still, Japan is in many ways a country in recovery, working to find a way forward after the events of 2011 and decades of slow growth. Bending Adversity closes with a reflection on what the 2012 reelection of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and his radical antideflation policy, might mean for Japan and its future. Informed throughout by the insights shared by Pilling's many interview subjects, Bending Adversity rigorously engages with the social, spiritual, financial, and political life of Japan to create a more nuanced representation of the oft-misunderstood island nation and its people.]]> 416 David Pilling 1594205841 Omar 5 Depth. 4.08 2013
author: David Pilling
name: Omar
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2014/06/25
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Depth.
]]> 7170627 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here and here.

The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography� of cancer - from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.

Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with - and perished from - for more than five thousand years.

The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.�

The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive—and to increase our understanding of this iconic disease.

Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.]]> 571 Siddhartha Mukherjee Omar 0 to-read 4.32 2010
author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
name: Omar
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2010
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]]> 8683812
Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill prepared for the hard-drinking and fast-living life of Jazz Age Paris, which hardly values traditional notions of family and monogamy. Surrounded by beautiful women and competing egos, Ernest struggles to find the voice that will earn him a place in history, pouring all the richness and intensity of his life with Hadley and their circle of friends into the novel that will become The Sun Also Rises. Hadley, meanwhile, strives to hold on to her sense of self as the demands of life with Ernest grow costly and her roles as wife, friend, and muse become more challenging. Despite their extraordinary bond, they eventually find themselves facing the ultimate crisis of their marriage—a deception that will lead to the unraveling of everything they’ve fought so hard for.

A heartbreaking portrayal of love and torn loyalty, The Paris Wife is all the more poignant because we know that, in the end, Hemingway wrote that he would rather have died than fallen in love with anyone but Hadley.]]> 314 Paula McLain 0345521307 Omar 0 to-read 3.81 2011
author: Paula McLain
name: Omar
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/06/17
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]]> 17824064 620 Wayne Deeker 1626520011 Omar 0 to-read 4.40 2013
author: Wayne Deeker
name: Omar
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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]]> 50178 The Age of Innocence.]]> 124 Edith Wharton 1843911434 Omar 0 to-read 3.41 1922
author: Edith Wharton
name: Omar
average rating: 3.41
book published: 1922
rating: 0
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]]> 13184310
When fourteen-year-old Micah Darling travels to Los Angeles to reunite with the mother who deserted him seven years ago, he finds himself out of his league in a land of magical freedom. He does new drugs with new people, falls in love with an enchanting but troubled equestrienne named Charlotte, and gets thrown out of school over the activities of a club called the New Luddites.

Back in the Midwest, an ethereal young woman comes to Stone City on a mission that will unsettle the lives of everyone she meets—including Micah’s half-sister, Lyris, who still fights fears of abandonment after a childhood in foster care, and Micah’s father, Tiny, a petty thief. An investigation into the stranger’s identity uncovers a darkly disturbed life, as parallel narratives of the comic and tragic, the mysterious and everyday, unfold in both the country and the city.

A portrait of two disparate communities united by the restlessness and desperate hope of their residents, Drury’s haunted souls, adrift between promise and circumstance, reveal our infinite capacity to “get in and out of trouble in unexpected ways� and still find a semblance of peace at the end.]]> 208 Tom Drury 0802119999 Omar 0 to-read 3.69 2013
author: Tom Drury
name: Omar
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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]]> 18473970 275 Cameron Banga 0321961579 Omar 4 3.87 2014
author: Cameron Banga
name: Omar
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2014/06/17
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]]> 12505 667 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0679642420 Omar 4 4.22 1869
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Omar
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1869
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/06/11
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]]> 18143786
The gift of failure is a riddle. Like the number zero, it will always be both a void and the start of infinite possibility. The Rise a soulful celebration of the determination and courage of the human spirit makes the case that many of our greatest triumphs come from understanding the importance of this mystery.

This exquisite biography of an idea is about the improbable foundations of creative human endeavor. The Rise begins with narratives about figures past and present who range from writers to entrepreneurs; Frederick Douglass, Samuel F. B. Morse, and J. K. Rowling, for example, feature alongside choreographer Paul Taylor, Nobel Prize winning physicists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, Arctic explorer Ben Saunders, and psychology professor Angela Duckworth.

The Rise explores the inestimable value of often ignored ideas the power of surrender for fortitude, the criticality of play for innovation, the propulsion of the near win on the road to mastery, and the importance of grit and creative practice. From an uncommonly insightful writer, The Rise is a true masterwork.]]> 272 Sarah Lewis 1451629230 Omar 0 to-read 3.61 2014
author: Sarah Lewis
name: Omar
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/06/11
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]]> 22055379 163 Derek Coburn 1940858097 Omar 5 3.55 2014
author: Derek Coburn
name: Omar
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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]]> 13383957
Simplicity isn’t just a design principle at Apple—it’s a value that permeates every level of the organization. The obsession with Simplicity is what separates Apple from other technology companies. It’s what helped Apple recover from near death in 1997 to become the most valuable company on Earth in 2011.

Thanks to Steve Jobs’s uncompromising ways, you can see Simplicity in everything Apple the way it’s structured, the way it innovates, and the way it speaks to its customers.

It’s by crushing the forces of Complexity that the company remains on its stellar trajectory.

As ad agency creative director, Ken Segall played a key role in Apple’s resurrection, helping to create such critical marketing campaigns as Think different. By naming the iMac, he also laid the foundation for naming waves of i-products to come.

Segall has a unique perspective, given his years of experience creating campaigns for other iconic tech companies, including IBM, Intel, and Dell. It was the stark contrast of Apple’s ways that made Segall appreciate the power of Simplicity—and inspired him to help others benefit from it.

In Insanely Simple , you’ll be a fly on the wall inside a conference room with Steve Jobs, and on the receiving end of his midnight phone calls. You’ll understand how his obsession with Simplicity helped Apple perform better and faster, sometimes saving millions in the process. You’ll also learn, for example, how

� Think Distilling choices to a minimum brings clarity to a company and its customers—as Jobs proved when he replaced over twenty product models with a lineup of four.
� Think Swearing allegiance to the concept of “small groups of smart people� raises both morale and productivity.
� Think Keeping project teams in constant motion focuses creative thinking on well-defined goals and minimizes distractions.
� Think Using a simple, powerful image to symbolize the benefit of a product or idea creates a deeper impression in the minds of customers.
� Think Giving yourself an unfair advantage—using every weapon at your disposal—is the best way to ensure that your ideas survive unscathed.

Segall brings Apple’s quest for Simplicity to life using fascinating (and previously untold) stories from behind the scenes. Through his insight and wit, you’ll discover how companies that leverage this power can stand out from competitors—and individuals who master it can become critical assets to their organizations.]]> 240 Ken Segall 1591844835 Omar 5 3.89 2012
author: Ken Segall
name: Omar
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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]]> 19018255 Nicholas Lovell is an author and consultant who helps companies embrace the transformative power of the internet. His blog, GAMESbrief, is read by those seeking to learn how digital is transforming gaming - and how to apply that knowledge to other industries. His clients have included Firefly, nDreams and Square Enix (creators of Tomb Raider), as well as Channel 4 and IPC Media. His articles have appeared in TechCrunch, Wired, and the Wall Street Journal. He lives in London.]]> 242 Nicholas Lovell 0670923222 Omar 5 4.02 2013
author: Nicholas Lovell
name: Omar
average rating: 4.02
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rating: 5
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]]> 7936425
Wealthy, powerful, and potentially dangerous, hedge fund moguls have become the It Boys of twenty-first ­century capitalism. Ken Griffin of Citadel started out trading convertible bonds from his dorm room at Harvard. Julian Robertson staffed his hedge fund with college athletes half his age, then he flew them to various retreats in the Rockies and raced them up the mountains. Paul Tudor Jones posed for a magazine photograph next to a killer shark and happily declared that a 1929-style crash would be "total rock-and-roll" for him. Michael Steinhardt was capable of reducing underlings to sobs. "All I want to do is kill myself," one said. "Can I watch?" Steinhardt responded.

Finance professors have long argued that beating the market is impossible, and yet drawing on insights from physics, economics, and psychology, these titans have cracked the market's mysteries and gone on to earn fortunes. Their innovation has transformed the world, spawning new markets in exotic financial instruments and rewriting the rules of capitalism.

More than just a history, More Money Than God is a window on tomorrow's financial system. Hedge funds have been left for dead after past financial panics: After the stock market rout of the early 1970s, after the bond market bloodbath of 1994, after the collapse of Long Term Capital Management in 1998, and yet again after the dot-com crash in 2000. Each time, hedge funds have proved to be survivors, and it would be wrong to bet against them now. Banks such as CitiGroup, brokers such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, home lenders such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, insurers such as AIG, and money market funds run by giants such as Fidelity-all have failed or been bailed out. But the hedge fund industry has survived the test of 2008 far better than its rivals. The future of finance lies in the history of hedge funds.]]> 496 Sebastian Mallaby 1594202559 Omar 4 4.09 2010
author: Sebastian Mallaby
name: Omar
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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]]> 514964
Perkins writes that his economic projections cooked the books Enron-style to convince foreign governments to accept billions of dollars of loans from the World Bank and other institutions to build dams, airports, electric grids, and other infrastructure he knew they couldn't afford. The loans were given on condition that construction and engineering contracts went to U.S. companies. Often, the money would simply be transferred from one bank account in Washington, D.C., to another one in New York or San Francisco. The deals were smoothed over with bribes for foreign officials, but it was the taxpayers in the foreign countries who had to pay back the loans. When their governments couldn't do so, as was often the case, the U.S. or its henchmen at the World Bank or International Monetary Fund would step in and essentially place the country in trusteeship, dictating everything from its spending budget to security agreements and even its United Nations votes. It was, Perkins writes, a clever way for the U.S. to expand its "empire" at the expense of Third World citizens.]]> 303 John Perkins Omar 3 3.89 2004
author: John Perkins
name: Omar
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2004
rating: 3
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]]> 43945 Portnoy’s Complaint was an immediate bestseller upon its publication in 1969, and is perhaps Roth’s best-known book.

Portnoy's Complaint n. [after Alexander Portnoy (1933-)] A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Spielvogel says: 'Acts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism and oral coitus are plentiful; as a consequence of the patient's "morality," however, neither fantasy nor act issues in genuine sexual gratification, but rather in overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution, particularly in the form of castration.' (Spielvogel, O. 'The Puzzled Penis', Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse, Vol. XXIV, p. 909.) it is believed by Spielvogel that many of the symptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship.]]> 274 Philip Roth Omar 5 3.71 1969
author: Philip Roth
name: Omar
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1969
rating: 5
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]]> 15893654 A new and radical reexamination of today's neoliberalist “new economy� through the political lens of the debtor/creditor relation.

"The debtor-creditor relation, which is at the heart of this book, sharpens mechanisms of exploitation and domination indiscriminately, since, in it, there is no distinction between workers and the unemployed, consumers and producers, working and non-working populations, between retirees and welfare recipients. They are all 'debtors,' guilty and responsible in the eyes of capital, which has become the Great, the Universal, Creditor."—from The Making of the Indebted Man

Debt—both public debt and private debt—has become a major concern of economic and political leaders. In The Making of the Indebted Man, Maurizio Lazzarato shows that, far from being a threat to the capitalist economy, debt lies at the very core of the neoliberal project. Through a reading of Karl Marx's lesser-known youthful writings on John Mill, and a rereading of writings by Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Michel Foucault, Lazzarato demonstrates that debt is above all a political construction, and that the creditor/debtor relation is the fundamental social relation of Western societies.

Debt cannot be reduced to a simple economic mechanism, for it is also a technique of “public safety� through which individual and collective subjectivities are governed and controlled. Its aim is to minimize the uncertainty of the time and behavior of the governed. We are forever sinking further into debt to the State, to private insurance, and, on a more general level, to corporations. To insure that we honor our debts, we are at once encouraged and compelled to become the “entrepreneurs� of our lives, of our “human capital.� In this way, our entire material, psychological, and affective horizon is upended and reconfigured.

How do we extricate ourselves from this impossible situation? How do we escape the neoliberal condition of the indebted man? Lazzarato argues that we will have to recognize that there is no simple technical, economic, or financial solution. We must instead radically challenge the fundamental social relation structuring capitalism: the system of debt.]]> 199 Maurizio Lazzarato 1584351152 Omar 4 4.06 2011
author: Maurizio Lazzarato
name: Omar
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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]]> 8701960 Chaos and Genius, now brings us a work just as astonishing and masterly: a revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era's defining quality—the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world.

The story of information begins in a time profoundly unlike our own, when every thought and utterance vanishes as soon as it is born. From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long-misunderstood talking drums of Africa, Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed the very nature of human consciousness. He provides portraits of the key figures contributing to the inexorable development of our modern understanding of information: Charles Babbage, the idiosyncratic inventor of the first great mechanical computer; Ada Byron, the brilliant and doomed daughter of the poet, who became the first true programmer; pivotal figures like Samuel Morse and Alan Turing; and Claude Shannon, the creator of information theory itself.

And then the information age arrives. Citizens of this world become experts willy-nilly: aficionados of bits and bytes. And we sometimes feel we are drowning, swept by a deluge of signs and signals, news and images, blogs and tweets. The Information is the story of how we got here and where we are heading.]]> 527 James Gleick 0375423729 Omar 4 currently-reading 4.02 2011
author: James Gleick
name: Omar
average rating: 4.02
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rating: 4
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]]> 1448142 410 Lex Hixon 1879708051 Omar 5 4.52 1993
author: Lex Hixon
name: Omar
average rating: 4.52
book published: 1993
rating: 5
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]]> 13642936
Jim Rogers, whose entertaining accounts of his travels around the world--studying the markets from Russia to Singapore from the ground up--has enthralled readers, investors and Wall Street aficionados for decades. In his engaging memoir Street Smarts , Rogers offers pithy commentary from a lifetime of adventure, from his early years growing up a naĂŻve kid in Demopolis, Alabama, to his fledgling career on Wall Street, to his cofounding of the wildly successful Quantum Fund.

In Street Smarts , Rogers takes us through the highlights of his life in the financial markets, from his school days at Yale and Oxford--where despite the fact that he didn’t have enough money to afford the appropriate pair of shoes, he coxed the crew and helped to win the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race as well as the Thames Cup, the first of his three Guiness World Records--to his first heady taste of Wall Street in the mid-1960s, and his years helping to run the most successful hedge fund on Wall Street. In the course of his new book, Rogers offers often surprising observations on how the world works�-and what trends he sees in the future. The age of Wall Street, Rogers claims, when the finance industry drove 25% of America’s growth, is over. Tomorrow’s economy will be driven by those who make things--food, energy, goods and consumables. He explains why Asia will be the dominant economic force in the twenty-first century, and discusses why America and the European Union are in decline, and what we need to do to right our economy and society.]]> 258 Jim Rogers 0307986071 Omar 5 3.94 2013
author: Jim Rogers
name: Omar
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 5
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]]> 559464 256 Lex Hixon 0943914752 Omar 5 4.29 1995
author: Lex Hixon
name: Omar
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1995
rating: 5
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]]> 401203 270 Lex Hixon 0835608220 Omar 5 4.28 1988
author: Lex Hixon
name: Omar
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1988
rating: 5
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]]> 325655 320 Lex Hixon 0943914809 Omar 5 4.51 1992
author: Lex Hixon
name: Omar
average rating: 4.51
book published: 1992
rating: 5
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]]> 1515186 376 Edward Grant 0521689570 Omar 0 to-read 3.52 2002
author: Edward Grant
name: Omar
average rating: 3.52
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rating: 0
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]]> 25698 The Wealth of Nations articulates the concepts indispensable to an understanding of contemporary society; and Robert Reich's Introduction both clarifies Smith's analyses and illuminates his overall relevance to the world in which we live. As Reich writes, "Smith's mind ranged over issues as fresh and topical today as they were in the late eighteenth century--jobs, wages, politics, government, trade, education, business, and ethics."



Introduction by Robert Reich - Commentary by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner - Includes a Modern Library Reading Group Guide]]> 1076 Adam Smith 0226763749 Omar 4 3.87 1776
author: Adam Smith
name: Omar
average rating: 3.87
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Interesting read about fundamentals of economics
]]> 162120 Between the three of them, these historic episodes confirm that greed and fear have always been the driving forces of financial markets, and, furthermore, that being sensible and clever is no defence against the mesmeric allure of a popular craze with the wind behind it.

In writing the history of the great financial manias, Charles Mackay proved himself a master chronicler of social as well as financial history. Blessed with a cast of characters that covered all the vices, gifted a passage of events which was inevitably heading for disaster, and with the benefit of hindsight, he produced a record that is at once a riveting thriller and absorbing historical document. A century and a half later, it is as vibrant and lurid as the day it was written.

For modern-day investors, still reeling from the dotcom crash, the moral of the popular manias scarcely needs spelling out. When the next stock market bubble comes along, as it surely will, you are advised to recall the plight of some of the unfortunates on these pages, and avoid getting dragged under the wheels of the careering bandwagon yourself.]]> 96 Charles Mackay 1897597320 Omar 4 interesting book.. 3.87 1841
author: Charles Mackay
name: Omar
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1841
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interesting book..
]]> 4657432
In the spirit of Joyce's Dubliners and Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches, Daniyal Mueenuddin's collection of linked stories illuminates a place and a people through an examination of the entwined lives of landowners and their retainers on the Gurmani family farm in the countryside outside of Lahore, Pakistan. An aging feudal landlord's household staff, the villagers who depend on his favor, and a network of relations near and far who have sought their fortune in the cities confront the advantages and constraints of station, the dissolution of old ways, and the shock of change.

Mueenuddin bares—at times humorously, at times tragically—the complexities of Pakistani class and culture and presents a vivid picture of a time and a place, of the old powers and the new, as the Pakistani feudal order is undermined and transformed.

Nawabdin Electrician
Saleema
Provide, Provide
About a Burning Girl
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
Our Lady of Paris
Lily
A Spoiled Man]]> 247 Daniyal Mueenuddin 0393068005 Omar 3 currently-reading 3.76 2009
author: Daniyal Mueenuddin
name: Omar
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2009
rating: 3
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]]> 11275
In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon.]]> 607 Haruki Murakami 0965341984 Omar 4 4.16 1994
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Omar
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1994
rating: 4
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Book that stretches your mind..
]]> 1202
These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He is a much heralded scholar who studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life -- from cheating and crime to sports and child rearing -- and whose conclusions regularly turn the conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality. Thus the new field of study contained in this book: freakonomics.

Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives -- how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they set out to explore the hidden side of ... well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan.

What unites all these stories is a belief that the modern world, despite a surfeit of obfuscation, complication, and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and -- if the right questions are asked -- is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking. Steven Levitt, through devilishly clever and clear-eyed thinking, shows how to see through all the clutter.

Freakonomics establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But Freakonomics can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.
(front flap)]]> 268 Steven D. Levitt 0061234001 Omar 3 4.01 2005
author: Steven D. Levitt
name: Omar
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2005
rating: 3
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]]> 16713 149 Jonathan Lethem 1400076811 Omar 5 3.66 2005
author: Jonathan Lethem
name: Omar
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2006/10/01
date added: 2009/11/11
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Set in Brooklyn, exploration of family relationships and commune settings in Park Slope and the feelings of the author growing up in that environment.
]]> 4299199 227 Ernst Fischer 0713900822 Omar 5 4.33 1969
author: Ernst Fischer
name: Omar
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1969
rating: 5
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]]> 247204 296 Muhammad Yunus 1586484931 Omar 5 Inspiring.. 3.96 1997
author: Muhammad Yunus
name: Omar
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1997
rating: 5
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Inspiring..
]]> 117833 The first complete, annotated English Translation of Mikhail Bulgakov's comic masterpiece.

An audacious revision of the stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate, The Master and Margarita is recognized as one of the essential classics of modern Russian literature. The novel's vision of Soviet life in the 1930s is so ferociously accurate that it could not be published during its author's lifetime and appeared only in a censored edition in the 1960s. Its truths are so enduring that its language has become part of the common Russian speech.

One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two unhappy Muscovites: one is the Master, a writer pilloried for daring to write a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves the Master so deeply that she is willing literally to go to hell for him. What ensues is a novel of inexhaustible energy, humor, and philosophical depth, a work whose nuances emerge for the first time in Diana Burgin's and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor's splendid English version.]]> 372 Mikhail Bulgakov 0679760806 Omar 0 to-read 4.31 1967
author: Mikhail Bulgakov
name: Omar
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1967
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]]> 690186
Chuck Klosterman IV consists of three parts:

Things That Are True—Profiles and trend stories: Britney Spears, Radiohead, Billy Joel, Metallica, Val Kilmer, Bono, Wilco, the White Stripes, Steve Nash, Morrissey, Robert Plant—all with new introductions and footnotes.

Things That Might Be True—Opinions and theories on everything from monogamy to pirates to robots to super people to guilt, and (of course) Advancement—all with new hypothetical questions and footnotes.

Something That Isn’t True At All—This is old fiction. There’s a new introduction, but no footnotes. Well, there’s a footnote in the introduction, but none in the story.]]> 416 Chuck Klosterman 0743284895 Omar 4 3.81 2006
author: Chuck Klosterman
name: Omar
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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]]> 5755 448 Steven Pinker 0060958332 Omar 0 to-read 4.01 1994
author: Steven Pinker
name: Omar
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1994
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]]> 1674940
The book illuminates the inner world of Bolívar, the dynamics of his leadership, his power to command, and his modes of ruling the diverse peoples of Spanish America. The key to his greatness, Lynch concludes, was supreme will power and an ability to inspire people to follow him beyond their immediate interests, in some cases through years of unremitting struggle. Encompassing Bolívar’s entire life and his many accomplishments, this is the definitive account of a towering figure in the history of the Western hemisphere.  

]]> 384 John Lynch 0300126042 Omar 3 3.81 2006
author: John Lynch
name: Omar
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2006
rating: 3
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Very historical and perhaps tells the real story of his journey..
]]> 586578
Selected works from ancient prophets and sages to contemporary Sufi poets and teachers � including Ibn, Arabi, al-Ghazzali, Hafiz, Attar, Koranic writers, and, of course, the enduringly popular Rumi � make up a delectable feast of writings that will be treasured by devoted Sufi lovers as it will stir the souls of newcomers to this mystical, passionate faith.

"A treasure of jewels in the tradition of Sufi soul-work. I really love and value this book."
COLEMAN BARKS, author of 'The Essential Rumi']]> 288 James Fadiman 006251475X Omar 5 lovely book, bits of quotes.. 4.07 1997
author: James Fadiman
name: Omar
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1997
rating: 5
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lovely book, bits of quotes..
]]> 3398625 The Lost City of Z is a blockbuster adventure narrative about what lies beneath the impenetrable jungle canopy of the Amazon.

After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, New Yorker writer David Grann set out to solve "the greatest exploration mystery of the 20th century": What happened to the British explorer Percy Fawcett & his quest for the Lost City of Z?

In 1925, Fawcett ventured into the Amazon to find an ancient civilization, hoping to make one of the most important discoveries in history. For centuries Europeans believed the world's largest jungle concealed the glittering kingdom of El Dorado. Thousands had died looking for it, leaving many scientists convinced that the Amazon was truly inimical to humans. But Fawcett, whose daring expeditions inspired Conan Doyle's The Lost World, had spent years building his scientific case. Captivating the imagination of millions round the globe, Fawcett embarked with his 21-year-old son, determined to prove that this ancient civilisation--which he dubbed Z--existed. Then his expedition vanished. Fawcett's fate, & the tantalizing clues he left behind about Z, became an obsession for hundreds who followed him into the uncharted wilderness.

For decades scientists & adventurers have searched for evidence of Fawcett's party & the lost City of Z. Countless have perished, been captured by tribes or gone mad. As Grann delved ever deeper into the mystery surrounding Fawcett's quest, & the greater mystery of what lies within the Amazon, he found himself, like the generations who preceded him, being irresistibly drawn into the jungle's green hell. His quest for the truth & discoveries about Fawcett's fate & Z form the heart of this complexly enthralling narrative.]]> 339 David Grann 0385513534 Omar 0 to-read 3.87 2009
author: David Grann
name: Omar
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2009
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]]> 27533
Banker to the Poor is Muhammad Yunus's memoir of how he decided to change his life in order to help the world's poor. In it he traces the intellectual and spiritual journey that led him to fundamentally rethink the economic relationship between rich and poor, and the challenges he and his colleagues faced in founding Grameen. He also provides wise, hopeful guidance for anyone who would like to join him in "putting homelessness and destitution in a museum so that one day our children will visit it and ask how we could have allowed such a terrible thing to go on for so long." The definitive history of micro-credit direct from the man that conceived of it, Banker to the Poor is necessary and inspirational reading for anyone interested in economics, public policy, philanthropy, social history, and business.

Muhammad Yunus was born in Bangladesh and earned his Ph.D. in economics in the United States at Vanderbilt University, where he was deeply influenced by the civil rights movement. He still lives in Bangladesh, and travels widely around the world on behalf of Grameen Bank and the concept of micro-credit.]]> 289 Muhammad Yunus 1586481983 Omar 5 4.12 1991
author: Muhammad Yunus
name: Omar
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1991
rating: 5
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Detailed book based on his life story and micro lending..
]]>