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<title><![CDATA[The Indie Business & Economics Bestseller Lis]]></title>

<description><![CDATA[For the eight-week period ending July 14, 2010, and based on sales at independent bookstores nationwide.]]></description>

<link><![CDATA[http://www.indiebound.org/indie-bestsellers]]></link>

<language><![CDATA[en-us]]></language>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[The Big Short]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780393072235</link>
<description><![CDATA[When the crash of the U. S. stock market became public knowledge in the fall of 2008, it was already old news. The real crash, the silent crash, had taken place over the previous year, in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn't shine, and the SEC doesn't dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can't pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren't talking. The crucial question is this: Who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based on piles of doubtful mortgages? Michael Lewis turns the inquiry on its head to create a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 best-selling Liar's Poker. Who got it right? he asks. Who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become, and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception? And what qualities of character made those few persist when their peers and colleagues dismissed them as Chicken Littles? Out of this handful of unlikely-really unlikely-heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our times.]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Big Short]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[1]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Lewis]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Norton]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780393072235]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[When the crash of the U. S. stock market became public knowledge in the fall of 2008, it was already old news. The real crash, the silent crash, had taken place over the previous year, in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn't shine, and the SEC doesn't dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can't pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren't talking. The crucial question is this: Who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based on piles of doubtful mortgages? Michael Lewis turns the inquiry on its head to create a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 best-selling Liar's Poker. Who got it right? he asks. Who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become, and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception? And what qualities of character made those few persist when their peers and colleagues dismissed them as Chicken Littles? Out of this handful of unlikely-really unlikely-heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our times.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2010-03-01T00:00:00-05:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Shop Class as Soulcraft]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780143117469</link>
<description><![CDATA[ A philosopher/mechanic's wise (and sometimes funny) look at the challenges and pleasures of working with one's hands   Called "the sleeper hit of the publishing season" (The Boston Globe), Shop Class as Soulcraft became an instant bestseller, attracting readers with its radical (and timely) reappraisal of the merits of skilled manual labor. On both economic and psychological grounds, author Matthew B. Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning everyone into a "knowledge worker," based on a misguided separation of thinking from doing. Using his own experience as an electrician and mechanic, Crawford presents a wonderfully articulated call for self-reliance and a moving reflection on how we can live concretely in an ever more abstract world.]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Shop Class as Soulcraft]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[2]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew B. Crawford]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Penguin]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780143117469]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[ A philosopher/mechanic's wise (and sometimes funny) look at the challenges and pleasures of working with one's hands   Called "the sleeper hit of the publishing season" (The Boston Globe), Shop Class as Soulcraft became an instant bestseller, attracting readers with its radical (and timely) reappraisal of the merits of skilled manual labor. On both economic and psychological grounds, author Matthew B. Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning everyone into a "knowledge worker," based on a misguided separation of thinking from doing. Using his own experience as an electrician and mechanic, Crawford presents a wonderfully articulated call for self-reliance and a moving reflection on how we can live concretely in an ever more abstract world.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2010-04-27T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Blink]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780316010665</link>
<description><![CDATA[In his landmark bestseller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant-in the blink of an eye-that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work-in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of "blink": the election of Warren Harding; "New Coke"; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing"-filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Blink]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[3]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Gladwell]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Back Bay]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780316010665]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[In his landmark bestseller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant-in the blink of an eye-that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work-in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others?In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of "blink": the election of Warren Harding; "New Coke"; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing"-filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2007-04-03T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[The Black Swan]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780812973815</link>
<description><![CDATA[ A black swan is an event, positive or negative, that is deemed improbable yet causes massive consequences. In this groundbreaking and prophetic book, Taleb shows in a playful way that Black Swan events explain almost everything about our world, and yet we—especially the experts—are blind to them. In this second edition, Taleb has added a new essay, On Robustness and Fragility, which offers tools to navigate and exploit a Black Swan world.*2nd Edition, With a new essay: "On Robustness and Fragility"]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Black Swan]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[4]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Nassim Nicholas Taleb]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Random House]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780812973815]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[ A black swan is an event, positive or negative, that is deemed improbable yet causes massive consequences. In this groundbreaking and prophetic book, Taleb shows in a playful way that Black Swan events explain almost everything about our world, and yet we—especially the experts—are blind to them. In this second edition, Taleb has added a new essay, On Robustness and Fragility, which offers tools to navigate and exploit a Black Swan world.*2nd Edition, With a new essay: "On Robustness and Fragility"]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2010-05-11T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[The Tipping Point]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780316346627</link>
<description><![CDATA[The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Tipping Point]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[5]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Gladwell]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Back Bay]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780316346627]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2002-01-01T00:00:00-05:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Freakonomics]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780060731335</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool?   What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?   How much do parents really matter?    These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He studies the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to parenting and sports—and reaches conclusions that turn conventional wisdom on its head. Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They set out to explore the inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real estate agents, the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan, and much more. Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, they 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. ]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Freakonomics]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[6]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Harper Perennial]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780060731335]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[ Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool?   What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?   How much do parents really matter?    These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But Steven D. Levitt is not a typical economist. He studies the riddles of everyday life—from cheating and crime to parenting and sports—and reaches conclusions that turn conventional wisdom on its head. Freakonomics is a groundbreaking collaboration between Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist. They set out to explore the inner workings of a crack gang, the truth about real estate agents, the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan, and much more. Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, they 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. ]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2009-08-25T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[The Road to Serfdom]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780226320557</link>
<description><![CDATA[An unimpeachable classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for half a century. Originally published in 1944—when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed lock, stock, and barrel to the socialist program—The Road to Serfdom was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production. For F. A. Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.First published by the University of Chicago Press on September 18, 1944, The Road to Serfdom garnered immediate, widespread attention. The first printing of 2,000 copies was exhausted instantly, and within six months more than 30,000 books were sold. In April 1945, Reader’s Digest published a condensed version of the book, and soon thereafter the Book-of-the-Month Club distributed this edition to more than 600,000 readers. A perennial best seller, the book has sold 400,000 copies in the United States alone and has been translated into more than twenty languages, along the way becoming one of the most important and influential books of the century.With this new edition, The Road to Serfdom takes its place in the series The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek.  The volume includes a foreword by series editor and leading Hayek scholar Bruce Caldwell explaining the book's origins and publishing history and assessing common misinterpretations of Hayek's thought.  Caldwell has also standardized and corrected Hayek's references and added helpful new explanatory notes.  Supplemented with an appendix of related materials ranging from prepublication reports on the initial manuscript to forewords to earlier editions by John Chamberlain, Milton Friedman, and Hayek himself, this new edition of The Road to Serfdom will be the definitive version of Friedrich Hayek's enduring masterwork.]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Road to Serfdom]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[7]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Friedrich A.Von Hayek]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[University of Chicago Press]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780226320557]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[An unimpeachable classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for half a century. Originally published in 1944—when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed lock, stock, and barrel to the socialist program—The Road to Serfdom was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production. For F. A. Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.First published by the University of Chicago Press on September 18, 1944, The Road to Serfdom garnered immediate, widespread attention. The first printing of 2,000 copies was exhausted instantly, and within six months more than 30,000 books were sold. In April 1945, Reader’s Digest published a condensed version of the book, and soon thereafter the Book-of-the-Month Club distributed this edition to more than 600,000 readers. A perennial best seller, the book has sold 400,000 copies in the United States alone and has been translated into more than twenty languages, along the way becoming one of the most important and influential books of the century.With this new edition, The Road to Serfdom takes its place in the series The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek.  The volume includes a foreword by series editor and leading Hayek scholar Bruce Caldwell explaining the book's origins and publishing history and assessing common misinterpretations of Hayek's thought.  Caldwell has also standardized and corrected Hayek's references and added helpful new explanatory notes.  Supplemented with an appendix of related materials ranging from prepublication reports on the initial manuscript to forewords to earlier editions by John Chamberlain, Milton Friedman, and Hayek himself, this new edition of The Road to Serfdom will be the definitive version of Friedrich Hayek's enduring masterwork.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2007-03-01T00:00:00-05:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Lords of Finance]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780143116806</link>
<description><![CDATA[ "A magisterial work...You can't help thinking about the economic crisis we're living through now." --The New York Times Book Review  It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person's or government's control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions made by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of that economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades. As yet another period of economic turmoil makes headlines today, Lords of Finance is a potent reminder of the enormous impact that the decisions of central bankers can have, their fallibility, and the terrible human consequences that can result when they are wrong.]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Lords of Finance]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[8]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Liaquat Ahamed]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Penguin]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780143116806]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[ "A magisterial work...You can't help thinking about the economic crisis we're living through now." --The New York Times Book Review  It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person's or government's control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions made by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of that economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades. As yet another period of economic turmoil makes headlines today, Lords of Finance is a potent reminder of the enormous impact that the decisions of central bankers can have, their fallibility, and the terrible human consequences that can result when they are wrong.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2009-12-29T00:00:00-05:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[How We Decide]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780547247991</link>
<description><![CDATA[Since Plato, philosophers have described the decision making process as either rational or emotional: we carefully deliberate or we "blink" and go with our gut. But as scientists break open the mind’s black box with the latest tools of neuroscience, they’re discovering that this is not how the mind works.Our best decisions are a finely tuned blend of both feeling and reasonand the precise mix depends on the situation. The trick is to determine when to lean on which part of the brain, and to do this, we need to think harder (and smarter) about how we think. Jonah Lehrer arms us with the tools we need, drawing on cutting-edge research as well as the real-world experiences of a wide range of "deciders"from airplane pilots and hedge fund investors to serial killers and poker players. Lehrer shows how people are taking advantage of the new science to make better television shows, win more football games, and improve military intelligence. His goal is to answer two questions: How does the human mind make decisions? And how can we make those decisions better?]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[How We Decide]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[9]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jonah Lehrer]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Mariner]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780547247991]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[Since Plato, philosophers have described the decision making process as either rational or emotional: we carefully deliberate or we "blink" and go with our gut. But as scientists break open the mind’s black box with the latest tools of neuroscience, they’re discovering that this is not how the mind works.Our best decisions are a finely tuned blend of both feeling and reasonand the precise mix depends on the situation. The trick is to determine when to lean on which part of the brain, and to do this, we need to think harder (and smarter) about how we think. Jonah Lehrer arms us with the tools we need, drawing on cutting-edge research as well as the real-world experiences of a wide range of "deciders"from airplane pilots and hedge fund investors to serial killers and poker players. Lehrer shows how people are taking advantage of the new science to make better television shows, win more football games, and improve military intelligence. His goal is to answer two questions: How does the human mind make decisions? And how can we make those decisions better?]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2010-01-01T00:00:00-05:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Fordlandia]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780312429621</link>
<description><![CDATA[Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle AwardA New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the YearA Chicago Tribune Best Book of the YearA Boston Globe Best Book of the YearIn 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon. His intention was to grow rubber, but the project rapidly evolved into a more ambitious bid to export America itself. Fordlandia, as the settlement was called, soon became the site of an epic clash. On one side was the lean, austere car magnate; on the other, the Amazon, the most complex ecological system on the planet. Indigenous workers rejected Ford's midwestern Puritanism, turning the place into a ribald tropical boomtown. And his efforts to apply a system of regimented mass production to the Amazon's diversity resulted in a rash environmental assault that foreshadowed many of the threats laying waste to the rain forest today. More than a parable of one man’s arrogant attempt to force his will on the natural world, Greg Grandin's Fordlandia is "a quintessentially American fable" (Time).                                                                     Greg Grandin is the author of Empire’s Workshop, The Last Colonial Massacre, and the award-winning The Blood of Guatemala. An associate professor of Latin American history at New York University, and a Guggenheim fellow, Grandin has served on the United Nations Truth Commission investigating the Guatemalan Civil War and has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The New Statesman, and The New York Times.                                   A Pulitzer Prize FinalistA National Book Award FinalistA National Book Critics Circle Award FinalistIn 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon. His intention was to grow rubber, but the project rapidly evolved into a more ambitious bid to export America itself, along with its golf courses, ice-cream shops, bandstands, indoor plumbing, and Model Ts rolling down broad streets. Fordlandia, as the settlement was called, quickly became the site of an epic clash. On one side was the car magnate, lean, austere, the man who reduced industrial production to its simplest motions; on the other, the Amazon, lush, extravagant, the most complex ecological system on the planet. Ford’s early success in imposing time clocks and square dances on the jungle soon collapsed, as indigenous workers, rejecting his midwestern Puritanism, turned the place into a ribald tropical boomtown. Fordlandia’s eventual demise as a rubber plantation foreshadowed the practices that today are laying waste to the rain forest. More than a parable of one man’s arrogant attempt to force his will on the natural world, Fordlandia depicts a quixotic mission to recreate the small-town America that the Ford factory system did much to dispatch. As Greg Grandin shows in this mordantly observed history, Ford’s great delusion was not that the Amazon could be tamed but that the forces of capitalism, once released, might yet be contained.                                                                     Magic happens when a gifted historian and master storyteller finds a treasure trove of untapped materials to exploit. And Greg Grandin’s book on Fordlandia is simply magical. Here is the truly epic tale of American adventurers dispatched by Henry Ford in 1928 to conquer and civilize the Amazon by constructing an industrial/agricultural utopia the size of Tennessee. Among the dozens of reasons I will be recommending Fordlandia to friends, family, colleagues, and students is the scale and pace of the narrative, the remarkable cast of characters, the brilliantly detailed descriptions of the Brazilian jungle, and what may be the best portrait we have of Henry Ford in his final years as he struggles to recapture control of the mighty forces he has unleashed.”David Nasaw, the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Professor of History at the CUNY Graduate Center and author of Andrew Carnegie                                                                         Historian Greg Grandin has taken what heretofore seemed just such a marginal eventHenry Ford’s failed attempt to establish a gigantic agricultural industrial complex in the heart of Brazil’s Amazon Basinand turned it into a fascinating historical narrative that illuminates the auto industry's contemporary crisis, the problems of globalization and the contradictions of contemporary consumerism. For all of that, this is not, however, history freighted with political pedantry. Grandin is one of a blessedly expanding group of gifted American historians who assume that whatever moral the story of the past may yield, it must be a story well told. Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City is precisely thata genuinely readable history recounted with a novelist's sense of pace and an eye for character. It's a significant contribution to our understanding of ourselves and engrossingly enjoyable.”Tim Rutten, Los Angeles TimesThe Amazon has always proved fertile soil for extravagant utopian fantasy. Victorian explorers, American industrialists, ideologues and missionaries all projected their dreams and ideas onto this terra incognita, this untamed wilderness of exotic possibility . . . With Fordlandia, Greg Grandin, a professor of history at New York University, tells a haunting story that falls squarely into this tradition: Henry Ford’s failed endeavor to export Main Street America to the jungles of Brazil. Fordlandia was a commercial enterprise, intended to extract raw material for the production of motor cars, but it was framed as a civilizing mission, an attempt to build the ideal American society within the Amazon. As described in this fascinating account, it was also the reflection of one man’s personalityarrogant, brilliant and very odd . . . Indeed, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness resonates through every page of this book, as the white men struggle and succumb to the jungle. In 1929, two Ford employees, Johansen, a Scot, and Tolksdorf, a German, headed upriver with orders to collect rubber seeds. Instead, they went on an alcoholic bender, marooned their cook on a deserted island and ended up in the tiny town of Barra. There Johansen, the self-proclaimed 'rubber seed king of the upper rivers,' bought some perfume from a trading post and was seen chasing goats, cows and chickens, attempting to anoint the animals with perfume and shouting: 'Mr. Ford has lots of money; you might as well smell good too.' A drunken man spraying perfume into the jungle is an oddly fitting image for the entire enterprise. The great carmaker himself witnessed none of this. He never set foot in the town that bore his name, yet his powerful, contradictory personality influenced every aspect of the project. The story of Fordlandia is a biography of Ford in relief, the man who championed small-town America but did more to destroy it than any other, the pioneer who aimed to lift workers from drudgery but pioneered a method of soul-destroying mass production that rendered them mere cogs.”Ben Macintyre, The New York Times Book Review"Had Henry Ford stumbled into El Dorado, the Amazon's legendary golden city, he probably wouldn't have had much use for it. He was already rich, and his idea of a jungle city was a tad more austere. Or at least that's the argument that Grandin puts forth in his thoroughly researched account of Ford's ill-fated Amazonian rubber plantation. In 1928 Ford purchased a large tract of Brazilian jungle, hoping to establish a rubber plantation to supply his car company with latex. Things quickly went awry, however, as his dreams of industrial efficiency were pummeled to death by woes ecological (disease, drought, deadly snakes) and social (local laborers bristled at a Ford-imposed lifestyle that was heavy on soy and temperance). When the plantation was shuttered in 1945, it had failed to produce a single drop of latex for a Ford vehicle. But Grandin posits that Ford clung to his jungle kingdom mainly as a social experiment, hoping to construct a utopia complete with New England-style cottages and a golf course. As jungle adventures go, it's not exactly Aguirre, the Wrath of God, but Fordlandia implies similar lessons: Looking for a shining city in the middle of the jungle is probably a bad idea."Aaron Leitko, The Washington Post"Bungalows with modern plumbing and screened windows; hospitals, schools, sidewalks, recreation halls, tennis courts, swimming pools, even a golf course: On the face of it, Henry Ford’s vast 1930s rubber plantation deep in the Amazon junglecalled Fordlandiaprovided all the modern amenities for both its American managers and its Brazilian laborers. What it couldn’t provide was rubber. Greg Grandin’s riveting account of this 'forgotten jungle city' demonstrates that in business, as well as in affairs of state, the means may be abundant but the ends still unachievable."Stuart Ferguson, The Wall Street Journal"In 1927, Henry Ford was the world’s richest man, with a company so strong it tried to do something only countries usually manage: It became a colonial power. Seeking a source for tires and gaskets, Ford exacted a concession from the Brazilian government for a piece of Amazon jungle the size of Connecticut and set out to build a rubber plantation. Moreover, he decreed the town of Fordlandia would be an all-American place, never mind the habits of the locals (bandstands and ice-cream shops were built; Prohibition was enforced). From page one, it’s clear Fordlandia was doomed. Two things keep you reading: curiosity over how long this harebrained scheme could go on, and Ford himself, who, in his later years, was less a visionary than a wack job, full of crackpot ideas about diet, sociology, and (as everyone knows by now) Jews."Christopher Bonanos, New York magazine"In 1927, Henry Ford decided that instead of paying for the rubber he needed for his cars, he'd grow it. He acquired a tract of Amazon rain forest about the size of Connecticut, and Fordlandia was born. Ford poured $20 million into the doomed project to grow rubber trees, battling disease, insects and rebellious workers. Defeated, the Ford company sold it to the Brazilian government in 1945. NYU professor Greg Grandin presents a nuanced explanation for Ford's dreams. Having forever changed small-town America with his Model T, Ford yearned to start fresh in a new world. He gave his workers good wages, dance lessons and health care. He demanded they give up booze. Brilliant, original, contrarian, an anti-Semite and cruel to his son, Ford remains an enigma."Deirdre Donahue, USA Today"Henry Ford dreamed big as a matter of course, and in 1928 he decided to find and develop the ideal location to revive commercial-level rubber production in the depths of the Amazon rain forest. Greg Grandin tells the fascinating tale of Ford's campaign to transplant modern industrial methods that had succeeded for him in Detroit to the site he had selected along the Tapajós River, a branch of the Amazon. Brazil, of course, welcomed its illustrious benefactor with open arms (and, in many cases, open palms). But financial largesse and benevolent attitudes can mask less selfless motives in a donor's agenda. After all, latex was the sole component for his industry that Ford didn't control, and he had plans for changing that with his Brazilian venture. As part of his jungle dream, Ford also planned to build a town, Fordlandia, that would showcase all the virtues of the American 19th century small-town life of his youth. Imagining Brazilian plantation workers thriving under his personal ideal of high wages and healthy, moral living, he 'built Cape Cod-style shingled houses for his Brazilian workers and urged them to tend flower and vegetable gardens, and eat whole wheat bread and unpolished rice.' Ballroom dancing and golf were leisure activities that he promoted. Nobody had the temerity to ask, 'In the middle of the Amazon rain forest? Are you deranged?' Even if people had challenged him, Ford was so fixated on his idea that he probably would have ignored them. The Amazon (or, rather, his idea of the Amazon) represented a fresh start in an environment he considered uncorrupted by all that he saw blighting the American commercial landscape (like unions). Ford believed his will, capital and expertise could mold the world and was either ignorant of, or dismissed, 'the emotions of nationalism and deaf to the grievances of history.' For starters, humidity, rainfall, dense forest and bugs proved to be severe challenges for managers used to less extreme conditions in the American Upper Midwest. Fretting endlessly over finding a factory whistle that would not rust in the jungle, they remained dangerously clueless about the culture they had invaded. As one local priest astutely observed, the Ford men 'never really figured out what country they were in.' The inevitable came in December 1930, when a manager changed the way food was served to workers: he may have considered the change trivial, but the workers rioted and reduced Fordlandia to rubble. Today the site of Ford's dream town is a ghost city, decayed and overgrown, along the still-wild Tapajós."John McFarland, Shelf Awareness  "Henry Ford once bestrode the Western world like a colossus, a wizard mechanic whose major invention was not only the car that bore his name but the industrial system that made it all work. It was his genius to see everything whole: that workers, if you paid them enough, were also consumers; and that a factory could be a planet unto itselfraw materials in here, Model T's out there. There was a catch, of course. If River Rouge, the gigantic Ford plant, was best seen as a single machine, then it was possible to see the men inside it as mere cogs, which could be speeded up at whim. Fordism, as Greg Grandin points out, was closely related to Taylorism, the so-called science of time management . . . In the context of everything he had, was and did, Ford's decision to create a vast rubber plantation in the Amazon jungle was a blip so small that one recent biographer, Steven Watts in The People's Tycoon, devoted more than 600 pages to the man and his works without ever mentioning Fordlandia, the 'Forgotten Jungle City.' Grandin, however, sees the Fordlandia project as a sort of Michigan in miniature . . . Grandin astutely suggests that Ford, having been stalled on a grandiose (and brilliant) plan to tame the Tennessee River, ridiculed for his beliefs (which included an unchanging line of cars) and excoriated for his anti-Semitism, saw the Amazon as a refuge, someplace he could do things his way, untrammeled by politicians and Wall Street. Well, it was his money, wasn't it? . . . Grandin suggests that the tale he has told is the story of capitalism run amok. It is, and that's interesting. But as I read it, his tale is also one of stupidity and blundering by powerful men who valued loyalty above competence. And that, it seems to me, is a story with peculiar relevance to America in the 21st century."David L. Beck, St. Petersburg Times"Those who talk of American cultural imperialism in the contemporary world should consider Fordlandia, the subject of the book of the same name by historian Greg Grandin. It tells the story of Henry Ford’s 1927 purchasefor the purpose of growing rubber for tiresof a piece of Brazilian jungle twice the size of Delaware. He nonetheless tried to run it like it was Michigan, complete with Prohibition, golf courses, ice-cream shops, bandstands and time clocks. The settlement, which was finally turned over to the Brazilian government in 1945, naturally refused to become a floating fragment of Midwestern Puritanism, and flourished for a while as a wild tropical boomtown not at all congenial to its creator-god. The story, in a gifted writer’s hands, is an epic cultural clash, now almost entirely forgotten."Brian Bethune, MacleansMagic happens when a gifted historian and master storyteller finds a treasure trove of untapped materials to exploit. And Greg Grandin’s book on Fordlandia is simply magical. Here is the truly epic tale of American adventurers dispatched by Henry Ford in 1928 to conquer and civilize the Amazon by constructing an industrial/agricultural utopia the size of Tennessee. Among the dozens of reasons I will be recommending Fordlandia to friends, family, colleagues, and students is the scale and pace of the narrative, the remarkable cast of characters, the brilliantly detailed descriptions of the Brazilian jungle, and what may be the best portrait we have of Henry Ford in his final years as he struggles to recapture control of the mighty forces he has unleashed.”David Nasaw, the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Professor of History at the CUNY Graduate Center and author of Andrew CarnegieStranger than fiction but with power of a first-rate novel to probe for the deepest truths, Fordlandia is an extraordinary story of American hubris.  Out of the Amazon jungle, Greg Grandin brings us an unforgettable tale about the tragic limitations of a capitalist utopia.”Steve Fraser, author of Wall Street: America's Dream Palace Greg Grandin’s Fordlandia brings to light a fascinating but little known episode in the long history of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company. The auto magnate’s experiment with a vast rubber plantation in the Brazilian jungle involved not only economic and ecological issues of the greatest importance, but a cultural crusade to export the American Way of Life. Grandin’s penetrating, provocative analysis raises important questions about the complex impulses driving the global expansion of modern capitalism.”Steven Watts, author of The Peoples Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century"In 1927, Henry Ford was the richest man in the worldso when he needed cheap rubber, he simply bought a Brazilian rainforest and set about turning his little corner of the Amazon into a model American town. In this lively history, Greg Grandin enlists a cast of union-busting thugs, a Norwegian sea captain, and a cranky botanist to tell the story of the short-lived Fordlandia plantation. More than just a company town, Fordlandia was an ambitious feat of sociological engineering. Indigenous workers lived in cozy cottages straight out of the Midwest and Swiss-style bungalows. Alcohol was forbidden; instead the company provided wholesome fun in the form of square dances, swimming pools, a golf course, movies, and recreational driving in company cars. Though Ford paid his workers more than they would have earned harvesting rubber elsewhere and provided free health care and education, he wasn't motivated by altruism alone: Happy laborers, he reasoned, would be more efficient. In the end, caterpillars and blight took hold, the rubber trees refused to thrive, and by 1945, the experiment had completely collapsed. And so died Ford's utopian vision of profit-driven paternalisma sentimental notion unrecognizable in an era of multinationals, slums, and sweatshops."Lauren R. Rice, Mother Jones "This story took me completely by surprise, and it defines the old cliché that the truth is stranger than fiction. Grandin has unearthed the tale of Henry Ford's ill-fated attempt to convert a stretch of the Brazilian Amazon into idyllic small-town America. Originally intended to save money on rubber, Ford's development turned into a grander and more twisted ambition, fueled by his position (and ego) as the richest man in the world. It is a masterful portrayal of capitalism and social paternalism unleashed to disastrous effect."Nancy Bass Wyden, The Daily BeastIn the 1920s, the idea that the most modern form of industrial production might easily transform an industry using the stone age technologies of a knife, a man and fire seemed like a foregone conclusion. Henry Ford aspired to make rubber plantations organized along the lines of his Rouge River plant as a way to shake the Amazon from its torpor and to directly supply the ever growing demand for rubber in the car business. But Ford found that his Midwestern dreams of rural industry, a diet based on whole grains and soybeans, and Midwestern virtue were elusive in his tropical utopia where human and plant diseases, endless screw-ups, a lack of labor discipline and even local rebellion soon unraveled his well laid plans. Millions of dollars later, like so many adventurers, his enterprise had failed spectacularly. Grandin places the Ford story within in a much broader social history of Amazonia, and rather than a saga of some novelty or the vanity of the rich, makes the resistance and the failure part of a larger Amazonian history rather than just the exotic ambitions of a man with too much money.”Susanna Hecht, Professor, School of Public Affairs and Institute of the Environment and co-author of Defenders of the ForestAs a reader, I was fascinated by this account of Henry Ford’s short-lived rainforest Utopia, complete with golf course and square dances. As a writer, I envy Greg Grandin for finding such an intriguing subjectwhose decline and fall has an eerie resonance at our own historical moment today.”Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s GhostFor all his grand accomplishments, Henry Ford had equally spectacular boondoggles. Historian Greg Grandin brilliantly recounts Ford's failed experiments in building a utopian community deep in the Amazon Basin. Highly recommended!”Douglas Brinkley, author of Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress"Henry Ford's doomed attempt to establish a rubber industry and an attendant 'work of civilization' in the rain forests of Brazil. The rising price of rubber and a threatened British-led cartel inspired the famously independent Henry Ford in 1927 to purchase a Connecticut-sized plot of land for the purpose of growing his own. The South American leaf blight and the advent of synthetic rubbers forced the company to abandon Fordlandia in 1945, long after Ford had poured millions of dollars and years of strenuous effort into the project. So why did he persist? Grandin convincingly argues that, for Ford, the enterprise was more than a purely economic venture. It was a missionary application of Ford-style capitalismhigh wages, humane benefits, moral improvementto a backward land. Ford's belief that he could harmonize industry and agriculture was always at war with the forces he had unleashed in the United Statesmass-produced, affordable cars that encouraged mobility and fear induced in workers by hired thugs like Harry Bennett, who assured that the company would remain nonunion. With his vision of an industrial arcadia slipping away at homedue to what Grandin acutely terms 'a blithe indifference to difference'Ford attempted to construct in the Amazon a world he had helped obliterate in America. The author follows a succession of Ford representatives and managers overwhelmed by the challenges of doing business where the implacable terrain, jungle diseases, mounting costs, floundering construction, government bumbling and worker resistance all conspired to sink the project. The plantation's original motive, to grow rubber, gave way to an unsustainable sociological experiment, which despite its amenitiesweekly dances, movies, tennis courts, garden clubs, schools and hospitals-made no economic sense and became a mockery of the Ford Motor Company's reputation for orderliness, efficiency and synchronization. Works both as a nice bit of recovered history and a parable."Kirkus Reviews]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Fordlandia]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[10]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Greg Grandin]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Picador]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780312429621]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle AwardA New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the YearA Chicago Tribune Best Book of the YearA Boston Globe Best Book of the YearIn 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon. His intention was to grow rubber, but the project rapidly evolved into a more ambitious bid to export America itself. Fordlandia, as the settlement was called, soon became the site of an epic clash. On one side was the lean, austere car magnate; on the other, the Amazon, the most complex ecological system on the planet. Indigenous workers rejected Ford's midwestern Puritanism, turning the place into a ribald tropical boomtown. And his efforts to apply a system of regimented mass production to the Amazon's diversity resulted in a rash environmental assault that foreshadowed many of the threats laying waste to the rain forest today. More than a parable of one man’s arrogant attempt to force his will on the natural world, Greg Grandin's Fordlandia is "a quintessentially American fable" (Time).                                                                     Greg Grandin is the author of Empire’s Workshop, The Last Colonial Massacre, and the award-winning The Blood of Guatemala. An associate professor of Latin American history at New York University, and a Guggenheim fellow, Grandin has served on the United Nations Truth Commission investigating the Guatemalan Civil War and has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The New Statesman, and The New York Times.                                   A Pulitzer Prize FinalistA National Book Award FinalistA National Book Critics Circle Award FinalistIn 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon. His intention was to grow rubber, but the project rapidly evolved into a more ambitious bid to export America itself, along with its golf courses, ice-cream shops, bandstands, indoor plumbing, and Model Ts rolling down broad streets. Fordlandia, as the settlement was called, quickly became the site of an epic clash. On one side was the car magnate, lean, austere, the man who reduced industrial production to its simplest motions; on the other, the Amazon, lush, extravagant, the most complex ecological system on the planet. Ford’s early success in imposing time clocks and square dances on the jungle soon collapsed, as indigenous workers, rejecting his midwestern Puritanism, turned the place into a ribald tropical boomtown. Fordlandia’s eventual demise as a rubber plantation foreshadowed the practices that today are laying waste to the rain forest. More than a parable of one man’s arrogant attempt to force his will on the natural world, Fordlandia depicts a quixotic mission to recreate the small-town America that the Ford factory system did much to dispatch. As Greg Grandin shows in this mordantly observed history, Ford’s great delusion was not that the Amazon could be tamed but that the forces of capitalism, once released, might yet be contained.                                                                     Magic happens when a gifted historian and master storyteller finds a treasure trove of untapped materials to exploit. And Greg Grandin’s book on Fordlandia is simply magical. Here is the truly epic tale of American adventurers dispatched by Henry Ford in 1928 to conquer and civilize the Amazon by constructing an industrial/agricultural utopia the size of Tennessee. Among the dozens of reasons I will be recommending Fordlandia to friends, family, colleagues, and students is the scale and pace of the narrative, the remarkable cast of characters, the brilliantly detailed descriptions of the Brazilian jungle, and what may be the best portrait we have of Henry Ford in his final years as he struggles to recapture control of the mighty forces he has unleashed.”David Nasaw, the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Professor of History at the CUNY Graduate Center and author of Andrew Carnegie                                                                         Historian Greg Grandin has taken what heretofore seemed just such a marginal eventHenry Ford’s failed attempt to establish a gigantic agricultural industrial complex in the heart of Brazil’s Amazon Basinand turned it into a fascinating historical narrative that illuminates the auto industry's contemporary crisis, the problems of globalization and the contradictions of contemporary consumerism. For all of that, this is not, however, history freighted with political pedantry. Grandin is one of a blessedly expanding group of gifted American historians who assume that whatever moral the story of the past may yield, it must be a story well told. Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City is precisely thata genuinely readable history recounted with a novelist's sense of pace and an eye for character. It's a significant contribution to our understanding of ourselves and engrossingly enjoyable.”Tim Rutten, Los Angeles TimesThe Amazon has always proved fertile soil for extravagant utopian fantasy. Victorian explorers, American industrialists, ideologues and missionaries all projected their dreams and ideas onto this terra incognita, this untamed wilderness of exotic possibility . . . With Fordlandia, Greg Grandin, a professor of history at New York University, tells a haunting story that falls squarely into this tradition: Henry Ford’s failed endeavor to export Main Street America to the jungles of Brazil. Fordlandia was a commercial enterprise, intended to extract raw material for the production of motor cars, but it was framed as a civilizing mission, an attempt to build the ideal American society within the Amazon. As described in this fascinating account, it was also the reflection of one man’s personalityarrogant, brilliant and very odd . . . Indeed, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness resonates through every page of this book, as the white men struggle and succumb to the jungle. In 1929, two Ford employees, Johansen, a Scot, and Tolksdorf, a German, headed upriver with orders to collect rubber seeds. Instead, they went on an alcoholic bender, marooned their cook on a deserted island and ended up in the tiny town of Barra. There Johansen, the self-proclaimed 'rubber seed king of the upper rivers,' bought some perfume from a trading post and was seen chasing goats, cows and chickens, attempting to anoint the animals with perfume and shouting: 'Mr. Ford has lots of money; you might as well smell good too.' A drunken man spraying perfume into the jungle is an oddly fitting image for the entire enterprise. The great carmaker himself witnessed none of this. He never set foot in the town that bore his name, yet his powerful, contradictory personality influenced every aspect of the project. The story of Fordlandia is a biography of Ford in relief, the man who championed small-town America but did more to destroy it than any other, the pioneer who aimed to lift workers from drudgery but pioneered a method of soul-destroying mass production that rendered them mere cogs.”Ben Macintyre, The New York Times Book Review"Had Henry Ford stumbled into El Dorado, the Amazon's legendary golden city, he probably wouldn't have had much use for it. He was already rich, and his idea of a jungle city was a tad more austere. Or at least that's the argument that Grandin puts forth in his thoroughly researched account of Ford's ill-fated Amazonian rubber plantation. In 1928 Ford purchased a large tract of Brazilian jungle, hoping to establish a rubber plantation to supply his car company with latex. Things quickly went awry, however, as his dreams of industrial efficiency were pummeled to death by woes ecological (disease, drought, deadly snakes) and social (local laborers bristled at a Ford-imposed lifestyle that was heavy on soy and temperance). When the plantation was shuttered in 1945, it had failed to produce a single drop of latex for a Ford vehicle. But Grandin posits that Ford clung to his jungle kingdom mainly as a social experiment, hoping to construct a utopia complete with New England-style cottages and a golf course. As jungle adventures go, it's not exactly Aguirre, the Wrath of God, but Fordlandia implies similar lessons: Looking for a shining city in the middle of the jungle is probably a bad idea."Aaron Leitko, The Washington Post"Bungalows with modern plumbing and screened windows; hospitals, schools, sidewalks, recreation halls, tennis courts, swimming pools, even a golf course: On the face of it, Henry Ford’s vast 1930s rubber plantation deep in the Amazon junglecalled Fordlandiaprovided all the modern amenities for both its American managers and its Brazilian laborers. What it couldn’t provide was rubber. Greg Grandin’s riveting account of this 'forgotten jungle city' demonstrates that in business, as well as in affairs of state, the means may be abundant but the ends still unachievable."Stuart Ferguson, The Wall Street Journal"In 1927, Henry Ford was the world’s richest man, with a company so strong it tried to do something only countries usually manage: It became a colonial power. Seeking a source for tires and gaskets, Ford exacted a concession from the Brazilian government for a piece of Amazon jungle the size of Connecticut and set out to build a rubber plantation. Moreover, he decreed the town of Fordlandia would be an all-American place, never mind the habits of the locals (bandstands and ice-cream shops were built; Prohibition was enforced). From page one, it’s clear Fordlandia was doomed. Two things keep you reading: curiosity over how long this harebrained scheme could go on, and Ford himself, who, in his later years, was less a visionary than a wack job, full of crackpot ideas about diet, sociology, and (as everyone knows by now) Jews."Christopher Bonanos, New York magazine"In 1927, Henry Ford decided that instead of paying for the rubber he needed for his cars, he'd grow it. He acquired a tract of Amazon rain forest about the size of Connecticut, and Fordlandia was born. Ford poured $20 million into the doomed project to grow rubber trees, battling disease, insects and rebellious workers. Defeated, the Ford company sold it to the Brazilian government in 1945. NYU professor Greg Grandin presents a nuanced explanation for Ford's dreams. Having forever changed small-town America with his Model T, Ford yearned to start fresh in a new world. He gave his workers good wages, dance lessons and health care. He demanded they give up booze. Brilliant, original, contrarian, an anti-Semite and cruel to his son, Ford remains an enigma."Deirdre Donahue, USA Today"Henry Ford dreamed big as a matter of course, and in 1928 he decided to find and develop the ideal location to revive commercial-level rubber production in the depths of the Amazon rain forest. Greg Grandin tells the fascinating tale of Ford's campaign to transplant modern industrial methods that had succeeded for him in Detroit to the site he had selected along the Tapajós River, a branch of the Amazon. Brazil, of course, welcomed its illustrious benefactor with open arms (and, in many cases, open palms). But financial largesse and benevolent attitudes can mask less selfless motives in a donor's agenda. After all, latex was the sole component for his industry that Ford didn't control, and he had plans for changing that with his Brazilian venture. As part of his jungle dream, Ford also planned to build a town, Fordlandia, that would showcase all the virtues of the American 19th century small-town life of his youth. Imagining Brazilian plantation workers thriving under his personal ideal of high wages and healthy, moral living, he 'built Cape Cod-style shingled houses for his Brazilian workers and urged them to tend flower and vegetable gardens, and eat whole wheat bread and unpolished rice.' Ballroom dancing and golf were leisure activities that he promoted. Nobody had the temerity to ask, 'In the middle of the Amazon rain forest? Are you deranged?' Even if people had challenged him, Ford was so fixated on his idea that he probably would have ignored them. The Amazon (or, rather, his idea of the Amazon) represented a fresh start in an environment he considered uncorrupted by all that he saw blighting the American commercial landscape (like unions). Ford believed his will, capital and expertise could mold the world and was either ignorant of, or dismissed, 'the emotions of nationalism and deaf to the grievances of history.' For starters, humidity, rainfall, dense forest and bugs proved to be severe challenges for managers used to less extreme conditions in the American Upper Midwest. Fretting endlessly over finding a factory whistle that would not rust in the jungle, they remained dangerously clueless about the culture they had invaded. As one local priest astutely observed, the Ford men 'never really figured out what country they were in.' The inevitable came in December 1930, when a manager changed the way food was served to workers: he may have considered the change trivial, but the workers rioted and reduced Fordlandia to rubble. Today the site of Ford's dream town is a ghost city, decayed and overgrown, along the still-wild Tapajós."John McFarland, Shelf Awareness  "Henry Ford once bestrode the Western world like a colossus, a wizard mechanic whose major invention was not only the car that bore his name but the industrial system that made it all work. It was his genius to see everything whole: that workers, if you paid them enough, were also consumers; and that a factory could be a planet unto itselfraw materials in here, Model T's out there. There was a catch, of course. If River Rouge, the gigantic Ford plant, was best seen as a single machine, then it was possible to see the men inside it as mere cogs, which could be speeded up at whim. Fordism, as Greg Grandin points out, was closely related to Taylorism, the so-called science of time management . . . In the context of everything he had, was and did, Ford's decision to create a vast rubber plantation in the Amazon jungle was a blip so small that one recent biographer, Steven Watts in The People's Tycoon, devoted more than 600 pages to the man and his works without ever mentioning Fordlandia, the 'Forgotten Jungle City.' Grandin, however, sees the Fordlandia project as a sort of Michigan in miniature . . . Grandin astutely suggests that Ford, having been stalled on a grandiose (and brilliant) plan to tame the Tennessee River, ridiculed for his beliefs (which included an unchanging line of cars) and excoriated for his anti-Semitism, saw the Amazon as a refuge, someplace he could do things his way, untrammeled by politicians and Wall Street. Well, it was his money, wasn't it? . . . Grandin suggests that the tale he has told is the story of capitalism run amok. It is, and that's interesting. But as I read it, his tale is also one of stupidity and blundering by powerful men who valued loyalty above competence. And that, it seems to me, is a story with peculiar relevance to America in the 21st century."David L. Beck, St. Petersburg Times"Those who talk of American cultural imperialism in the contemporary world should consider Fordlandia, the subject of the book of the same name by historian Greg Grandin. It tells the story of Henry Ford’s 1927 purchasefor the purpose of growing rubber for tiresof a piece of Brazilian jungle twice the size of Delaware. He nonetheless tried to run it like it was Michigan, complete with Prohibition, golf courses, ice-cream shops, bandstands and time clocks. The settlement, which was finally turned over to the Brazilian government in 1945, naturally refused to become a floating fragment of Midwestern Puritanism, and flourished for a while as a wild tropical boomtown not at all congenial to its creator-god. The story, in a gifted writer’s hands, is an epic cultural clash, now almost entirely forgotten."Brian Bethune, MacleansMagic happens when a gifted historian and master storyteller finds a treasure trove of untapped materials to exploit. And Greg Grandin’s book on Fordlandia is simply magical. Here is the truly epic tale of American adventurers dispatched by Henry Ford in 1928 to conquer and civilize the Amazon by constructing an industrial/agricultural utopia the size of Tennessee. Among the dozens of reasons I will be recommending Fordlandia to friends, family, colleagues, and students is the scale and pace of the narrative, the remarkable cast of characters, the brilliantly detailed descriptions of the Brazilian jungle, and what may be the best portrait we have of Henry Ford in his final years as he struggles to recapture control of the mighty forces he has unleashed.”David Nasaw, the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Professor of History at the CUNY Graduate Center and author of Andrew CarnegieStranger than fiction but with power of a first-rate novel to probe for the deepest truths, Fordlandia is an extraordinary story of American hubris.  Out of the Amazon jungle, Greg Grandin brings us an unforgettable tale about the tragic limitations of a capitalist utopia.”Steve Fraser, author of Wall Street: America's Dream Palace Greg Grandin’s Fordlandia brings to light a fascinating but little known episode in the long history of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company. The auto magnate’s experiment with a vast rubber plantation in the Brazilian jungle involved not only economic and ecological issues of the greatest importance, but a cultural crusade to export the American Way of Life. Grandin’s penetrating, provocative analysis raises important questions about the complex impulses driving the global expansion of modern capitalism.”Steven Watts, author of The Peoples Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century"In 1927, Henry Ford was the richest man in the worldso when he needed cheap rubber, he simply bought a Brazilian rainforest and set about turning his little corner of the Amazon into a model American town. In this lively history, Greg Grandin enlists a cast of union-busting thugs, a Norwegian sea captain, and a cranky botanist to tell the story of the short-lived Fordlandia plantation. More than just a company town, Fordlandia was an ambitious feat of sociological engineering. Indigenous workers lived in cozy cottages straight out of the Midwest and Swiss-style bungalows. Alcohol was forbidden; instead the company provided wholesome fun in the form of square dances, swimming pools, a golf course, movies, and recreational driving in company cars. Though Ford paid his workers more than they would have earned harvesting rubber elsewhere and provided free health care and education, he wasn't motivated by altruism alone: Happy laborers, he reasoned, would be more efficient. In the end, caterpillars and blight took hold, the rubber trees refused to thrive, and by 1945, the experiment had completely collapsed. And so died Ford's utopian vision of profit-driven paternalisma sentimental notion unrecognizable in an era of multinationals, slums, and sweatshops."Lauren R. Rice, Mother Jones "This story took me completely by surprise, and it defines the old cliché that the truth is stranger than fiction. Grandin has unearthed the tale of Henry Ford's ill-fated attempt to convert a stretch of the Brazilian Amazon into idyllic small-town America. Originally intended to save money on rubber, Ford's development turned into a grander and more twisted ambition, fueled by his position (and ego) as the richest man in the world. It is a masterful portrayal of capitalism and social paternalism unleashed to disastrous effect."Nancy Bass Wyden, The Daily BeastIn the 1920s, the idea that the most modern form of industrial production might easily transform an industry using the stone age technologies of a knife, a man and fire seemed like a foregone conclusion. Henry Ford aspired to make rubber plantations organized along the lines of his Rouge River plant as a way to shake the Amazon from its torpor and to directly supply the ever growing demand for rubber in the car business. But Ford found that his Midwestern dreams of rural industry, a diet based on whole grains and soybeans, and Midwestern virtue were elusive in his tropical utopia where human and plant diseases, endless screw-ups, a lack of labor discipline and even local rebellion soon unraveled his well laid plans. Millions of dollars later, like so many adventurers, his enterprise had failed spectacularly. Grandin places the Ford story within in a much broader social history of Amazonia, and rather than a saga of some novelty or the vanity of the rich, makes the resistance and the failure part of a larger Amazonian history rather than just the exotic ambitions of a man with too much money.”Susanna Hecht, Professor, School of Public Affairs and Institute of the Environment and co-author of Defenders of the ForestAs a reader, I was fascinated by this account of Henry Ford’s short-lived rainforest Utopia, complete with golf course and square dances. As a writer, I envy Greg Grandin for finding such an intriguing subjectwhose decline and fall has an eerie resonance at our own historical moment today.”Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s GhostFor all his grand accomplishments, Henry Ford had equally spectacular boondoggles. Historian Greg Grandin brilliantly recounts Ford's failed experiments in building a utopian community deep in the Amazon Basin. Highly recommended!”Douglas Brinkley, author of Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress"Henry Ford's doomed attempt to establish a rubber industry and an attendant 'work of civilization' in the rain forests of Brazil. The rising price of rubber and a threatened British-led cartel inspired the famously independent Henry Ford in 1927 to purchase a Connecticut-sized plot of land for the purpose of growing his own. The South American leaf blight and the advent of synthetic rubbers forced the company to abandon Fordlandia in 1945, long after Ford had poured millions of dollars and years of strenuous effort into the project. So why did he persist? Grandin convincingly argues that, for Ford, the enterprise was more than a purely economic venture. It was a missionary application of Ford-style capitalismhigh wages, humane benefits, moral improvementto a backward land. Ford's belief that he could harmonize industry and agriculture was always at war with the forces he had unleashed in the United Statesmass-produced, affordable cars that encouraged mobility and fear induced in workers by hired thugs like Harry Bennett, who assured that the company would remain nonunion. With his vision of an industrial arcadia slipping away at homedue to what Grandin acutely terms 'a blithe indifference to difference'Ford attempted to construct in the Amazon a world he had helped obliterate in America. The author follows a succession of Ford representatives and managers overwhelmed by the challenges of doing business where the implacable terrain, jungle diseases, mounting costs, floundering construction, government bumbling and worker resistance all conspired to sink the project. The plantation's original motive, to grow rubber, gave way to an unsustainable sociological experiment, which despite its amenitiesweekly dances, movies, tennis courts, garden clubs, schools and hospitals-made no economic sense and became a mockery of the Ford Motor Company's reputation for orderliness, efficiency and synchronization. Works both as a nice bit of recovered history and a parable."Kirkus Reviews]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2010-04-27T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[13 Bankers]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780307379054</link>
<description><![CDATA[Even after the ruinous financial crisis of 2008, America is still beset by the depredations of an oligarchy that is now bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever. Anchored by six megabanks—Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley—which together control assets amounting, astonishingly, to more than 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, these financial institutions (now more emphatically “too big to fail”) continue to hold the global economy hostage, threatening yet another financial meltdown with their excessive risk-taking and toxic “business as usual” practices. How did this come to be—and what is to be done? These are the central concerns of 13 Bankers, a brilliant, historically informed account of our troubled political economy. In 13 Bankers, Simon Johnson—one of the most prominent and frequently cited economists in America (former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT, and author of the controversial “The Quiet Coup” in The Atlantic)—and James Kwak give a wide-ranging, meticulous, and bracing account of recent U.S. financial history within the context of previous showdowns between American democracy and Big Finance: from Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson, from Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They convincingly show why our future is imperiled by the ideology of finance (finance is good, unregulated finance is better, unfettered finance run amok is best) and by Wall Street’s political control of government policy pertaining to it. As the authors insist, the choice that America faces is stark: whether Washington will accede to the vested interests of an unbridled financial sector that runs up profits in good years and dumps its losses on taxpayers in lean years, or reform through stringent regulation the banking system as first and foremost an engine of economic growth. To restore health and balance to our economy, Johnson and Kwak make a radical yet feasible and focused proposal: reconfigure the megabanks to be “small enough to fail.” Lucid, authoritative, crucial for its timeliness, 13 Bankers is certain to be one of the most discussed and debated books of 2010.]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[13 Bankers]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[11]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Simon Johnson, James Kwak]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Pantheon]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780307379054]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[Even after the ruinous financial crisis of 2008, America is still beset by the depredations of an oligarchy that is now bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever. Anchored by six megabanks—Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley—which together control assets amounting, astonishingly, to more than 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, these financial institutions (now more emphatically “too big to fail”) continue to hold the global economy hostage, threatening yet another financial meltdown with their excessive risk-taking and toxic “business as usual” practices. How did this come to be—and what is to be done? These are the central concerns of 13 Bankers, a brilliant, historically informed account of our troubled political economy. In 13 Bankers, Simon Johnson—one of the most prominent and frequently cited economists in America (former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT, and author of the controversial “The Quiet Coup” in The Atlantic)—and James Kwak give a wide-ranging, meticulous, and bracing account of recent U.S. financial history within the context of previous showdowns between American democracy and Big Finance: from Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson, from Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They convincingly show why our future is imperiled by the ideology of finance (finance is good, unregulated finance is better, unfettered finance run amok is best) and by Wall Street’s political control of government policy pertaining to it. As the authors insist, the choice that America faces is stark: whether Washington will accede to the vested interests of an unbridled financial sector that runs up profits in good years and dumps its losses on taxpayers in lean years, or reform through stringent regulation the banking system as first and foremost an engine of economic growth. To restore health and balance to our economy, Johnson and Kwak make a radical yet feasible and focused proposal: reconfigure the megabanks to be “small enough to fail.” Lucid, authoritative, crucial for its timeliness, 13 Bankers is certain to be one of the most discussed and debated books of 2010.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2010-03-30T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Crisis Economics]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781594202506</link>
<description><![CDATA[This myth shattering book reveals the methods Nouriel Roubini used to foretell the current crisis before other economists saw it coming and shows how those methods can help us make sense of the present and prepare for the future.   Renowned economist Nouriel Roubini electrified his profession and the larger financial community by predicting the current crisis well in advance of anyone else. Unlike most in his profession who treat economic disasters as freakish once-in]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Crisis Economics]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[12]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Nouriel Roubini, Stephen Mihm]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Penguin Press]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9781594202506]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[This myth shattering book reveals the methods Nouriel Roubini used to foretell the current crisis before other economists saw it coming and shows how those methods can help us make sense of the present and prepare for the future.   Renowned economist Nouriel Roubini electrified his profession and the larger financial community by predicting the current crisis well in advance of anyone else. Unlike most in his profession who treat economic disasters as freakish once-in]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2010-05-11T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Liar's Poker]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780393338690</link>
<description><![CDATA[The time was the 1980s. The place was Wall Street. The game was called Liar's Poker.]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Liar's Poker]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[13]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Lewis]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Norton]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780393338690]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[The time was the 1980s. The place was Wall Street. The game was called Liar's Poker.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2010-03-01T00:00:00-05:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Predictably Irrational]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780061353246</link>
<description><![CDATA[ Why do our headaches persist after we take a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a fifty-cent aspirin?   Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup?   When it comes to making decisions in our lives, we think we're making smart, rational choices. But are we?   In this newly revised and expanded edition of the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller, Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, we consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They're systematic and predictablemaking us predictably irrational. ]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Predictably Irrational]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[14]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dan Ariely]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Harper Perennial]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780061353246]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[ Why do our headaches persist after we take a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a fifty-cent aspirin?   Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup?   When it comes to making decisions in our lives, we think we're making smart, rational choices. But are we?   In this newly revised and expanded edition of the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller, Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, we consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They're systematic and predictablemaking us predictably irrational. ]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2010-05-01T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[SuperFreakonomics]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780060889579</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling over four million copies in thirty-five languages and changing the way we look at the world. Now, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with SuperFreakonomics, and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first.   Four years in the making, SuperFreakonomics asks not only the tough questions, but the unexpected ones: What's more dangerous, driving drunk or walking drunk? Why is chemotherapy prescribed so often if it's so ineffective? Can a sex change boost your salary?   SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as:     How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa?  Why are doctors so bad at washing their hands?  How much good do car seats do?  What's the best way to catch a terrorist?  Did TV cause a rise in crime?  What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common?  Are people hard-wired for altruism or selfishness?  Can eating kangaroo save the planet?  Which adds more value: a pimp or a Realtor?    Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling like no one else, whether investigating a solution to global warming or explaining why the price of oral sex has fallen so drastically. By examining how people respond to incentives, they show the world for what it really is  good, bad, ugly, and, in the final analysis, super freaky.   Freakonomics has been imitated many times over  but only now, with SuperFreakonomics, has it met its match. ]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[SuperFreakonomics]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[15]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Morrow]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780060889579]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[ The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling over four million copies in thirty-five languages and changing the way we look at the world. Now, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with SuperFreakonomics, and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first.   Four years in the making, SuperFreakonomics asks not only the tough questions, but the unexpected ones: What's more dangerous, driving drunk or walking drunk? Why is chemotherapy prescribed so often if it's so ineffective? Can a sex change boost your salary?   SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as:     How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa?  Why are doctors so bad at washing their hands?  How much good do car seats do?  What's the best way to catch a terrorist?  Did TV cause a rise in crime?  What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common?  Are people hard-wired for altruism or selfishness?  Can eating kangaroo save the planet?  Which adds more value: a pimp or a Realtor?    Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling like no one else, whether investigating a solution to global warming or explaining why the price of oral sex has fallen so drastically. By examining how people respond to incentives, they show the world for what it really is  good, bad, ugly, and, in the final analysis, super freaky.   Freakonomics has been imitated many times over  but only now, with SuperFreakonomics, has it met its match. ]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2009-10-20T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780385528757</link>
<description><![CDATA[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.]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[16]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Chip Heath, Dan Heath]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Broadway Business]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780385528757]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[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.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2010-02-16T00:00:00-05:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781594488849</link>
<description><![CDATA[Forget everything you thought you knew about how to motivate people--at work, at school, at home. It's wrong. As Daniel H. Pink explains in his new and paradigm- shattering book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.  Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does--and how that affects every aspect of our lives. He demonstrates that while the old-fashioned carrot-and-stick approach worked successfully in the 20th century, it's precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today's challenges. In Drive, he reveals the three elements of true motivation:  *Autonomy- the desire to direct our own lives  *Mastery- the urge to get better and better at something that matters  *Purpose- the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves  Along the way, he takes us to companies that are enlisting new approaches to motivation and introduces us to the scientists and entrepreneurs who are pointing a bold way forward.  Drive is bursting with big ideas-- the rare book that will change how you think and transform how you live.]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[17]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel H. Pink]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Riverhead]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9781594488849]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[Forget everything you thought you knew about how to motivate people--at work, at school, at home. It's wrong. As Daniel H. Pink explains in his new and paradigm- shattering book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.  Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does--and how that affects every aspect of our lives. He demonstrates that while the old-fashioned carrot-and-stick approach worked successfully in the 20th century, it's precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today's challenges. In Drive, he reveals the three elements of true motivation:  *Autonomy- the desire to direct our own lives  *Mastery- the urge to get better and better at something that matters  *Purpose- the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves  Along the way, he takes us to companies that are enlisting new approaches to motivation and introduces us to the scientists and entrepreneurs who are pointing a bold way forward.  Drive is bursting with big ideas-- the rare book that will change how you think and transform how you live.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2009-12-29T00:00:00-05:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Soccernomics]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781568584256</link>
<description><![CDATA[Why do England lose? Why does Scotland suck? Why doesn’t America dominate the sport internationally...and why do the Germans play with such an efficient but robotic style?These are questions every soccer aficionado has asked. Soccernomics answers them.Using insights and analogies from economics, statistics, psychology, and business to cast a new and entertaining light on how the game works, Soccernomics reveals the often surprisingly counterintuitive truths about soccer. An essential guide for the 2010 World Cup, Soccernomics is a new way of looking at the world’s most popular game.]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Soccernomics]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[18]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Simon Kuper, Stefan Szymanski]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Nation]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9781568584256]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[Why do England lose? Why does Scotland suck? Why doesn’t America dominate the sport internationally...and why do the Germans play with such an efficient but robotic style?These are questions every soccer aficionado has asked. Soccernomics answers them.Using insights and analogies from economics, statistics, psychology, and business to cast a new and entertaining light on how the game works, Soccernomics reveals the often surprisingly counterintuitive truths about soccer. An essential guide for the 2010 World Cup, Soccernomics is a new way of looking at the world’s most popular game.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2009-10-01T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Too Big to Fail]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780670021253</link>
<description><![CDATA[A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America's financial history by an acclaimed New York Times Reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami. From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South Korea, and the corridors of Washington, Too Big to Fail is the definitive story of the most powerful men and women in finance and politics grappling with success and failure, ego and greed, and, ultimately, the fate of the world's economy. "We've got to get some foam down on the runway!" a sleepless Timothy Geithner, the then-president of the Federal Reserve of New York, would tell Henry M. Paulson, the Treasury secretary, about the catastrophic crash the world's financial system would experience. Through unprecedented access to the players involved, Too Big to Fail re-creates all the drama and turmoil, revealing neverdisclosed details and elucidating how decisions made on Wall Street over the past decade sowed the seeds of the debacle. This true story is not just a look at banks that were "too big to fail," it is a real-life thriller with a cast of bold-faced names who themselves thought they were too big to fail.]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Too Big to Fail]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[19]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Ross Sorkin]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Viking]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780670021253]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America's financial history by an acclaimed New York Times Reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami. From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South Korea, and the corridors of Washington, Too Big to Fail is the definitive story of the most powerful men and women in finance and politics grappling with success and failure, ego and greed, and, ultimately, the fate of the world's economy. "We've got to get some foam down on the runway!" a sleepless Timothy Geithner, the then-president of the Federal Reserve of New York, would tell Henry M. Paulson, the Treasury secretary, about the catastrophic crash the world's financial system would experience. Through unprecedented access to the players involved, Too Big to Fail re-creates all the drama and turmoil, revealing neverdisclosed details and elucidating how decisions made on Wall Street over the past decade sowed the seeds of the debacle. This true story is not just a look at banks that were "too big to fail," it is a real-life thriller with a cast of bold-faced names who themselves thought they were too big to fail.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2009-10-20T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Be Thrifty]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780761156093</link>
<description><![CDATA["Be Thrifty" is not about being cheap; it's about being smart and self-sufficient. Drawing on the work of experts in every field, it shows how to cut food bills, credit card debt, and even cut hair to save money.]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Be Thrifty]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[20]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Pia Catton, Califia Suntree  (Eds.)]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Workman]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780761156093]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA["Be Thrifty" is not about being cheap; it's about being smart and self-sufficient. Drawing on the work of experts in every field, it shows how to cut food bills, credit card debt, and even cut hair to save money.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2010-05-01T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[The Ascent of Money]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780143116172</link>
<description><![CDATA["How did we get into the current economic mess? Niall Ferguson explains all -- from ancient Mesopotamia to the collapse of Lehman Brothers -- and in The Ascent of Money he makes financial history read like a thriller." -- Sue Barnett, Hamish & Henry Booksellers Inc., Livingston Manor, NY]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Ascent of Money]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[21]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Niall Ferguson]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Penguin]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780143116172]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[How did we get into the current economic mess? Niall Ferguson explains all -- from ancient Mesopotamia to the collapse of Lehman Brothers -- and in The Ascent of Money he makes financial history read like a thriller.]]></dc:description>
<dc:contributor><![CDATA[Sue Barnett, Hamish & Henry Booksellers Inc., Livingston Manor, NY]]></dc:contributor>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2009-10-01T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[The Upside of Irrationality]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780061995033</link>
<description><![CDATA[ The provocative follow-up to the New York Times bestseller Predictably Irrational   Why can large bonuses make CEOs less productive? How can confusing directions actually help us? Why is revenge so important to us? Why is there such a big difference between what we think will make us happy and what really makes us happy?    In his groundbreaking book Predictably Irrational, social scientist Dan Ariely revealed the multiple biases that lead us into making unwise decisions. Now, in The Upside of Irrationality, he exposes the surprising negative and positive effects irrationality can have on our lives. Focusing on our behaviors at work and in relationships, he offers new insights and eye-opening truths about what really motivates us on the job, how one unwise action can become a long-term habit, how we learn to love the ones we're with, and more.   Drawing on the same experimental methods that made Predictably Irrational one of the most talked-about bestsellers of the past few years, Ariely uses data from his own original and entertaining experiments to draw arresting conclusions about howand whywe behave the way we do. From our office attitudes, to our romantic relationships, to our search for purpose in life, Ariely explains how to break through our negative patterns of thought and behavior to make better decisions. The Upside of Irrationality will change the way we see ourselves at work and at homeand cast our irrational behaviors in a more nuanced light. ]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Upside of Irrationality]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[22]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dan Ariely]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Harper]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780061995033]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[ The provocative follow-up to the New York Times bestseller Predictably Irrational   Why can large bonuses make CEOs less productive? How can confusing directions actually help us? Why is revenge so important to us? Why is there such a big difference between what we think will make us happy and what really makes us happy?    In his groundbreaking book Predictably Irrational, social scientist Dan Ariely revealed the multiple biases that lead us into making unwise decisions. Now, in The Upside of Irrationality, he exposes the surprising negative and positive effects irrationality can have on our lives. Focusing on our behaviors at work and in relationships, he offers new insights and eye-opening truths about what really motivates us on the job, how one unwise action can become a long-term habit, how we learn to love the ones we're with, and more.   Drawing on the same experimental methods that made Predictably Irrational one of the most talked-about bestsellers of the past few years, Ariely uses data from his own original and entertaining experiments to draw arresting conclusions about howand whywe behave the way we do. From our office attitudes, to our romantic relationships, to our search for purpose in life, Ariely explains how to break through our negative patterns of thought and behavior to make better decisions. The Upside of Irrationality will change the way we see ourselves at work and at homeand cast our irrational behaviors in a more nuanced light. ]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2010-06-01T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[The 4-Hour Workweek]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780307465351</link>
<description><![CDATA[More than 100 pages of new, cutting-edge content. Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan–there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint. This step-by-step guide to luxury lifestyle design teaches: •How Tim went from $40,000 per year and 80 hours per week to $40,000 per month and 4 hours per week•How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want•How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs•How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist•How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent “mini-retirements”The new expanded edition of Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek includes:•More than 50 practical tips and case studies from readers (including families) who have doubled income, overcome common sticking points, and reinvented themselves using the original book as a starting point•Real-world templates you can copy for eliminating e-mail, negotiating with bosses and clients, or getting a private chef for less than $8 a meal•How Lifestyle Design principles can be suited to unpredictable economic times•The latest tools and tricks, as well as high-tech shortcuts, for living like a diplomat or millionaire without being either]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The 4-Hour Workweek]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[23]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Timothy Ferriss]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Crown]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780307465351]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[More than 100 pages of new, cutting-edge content. Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan–there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint. This step-by-step guide to luxury lifestyle design teaches: •How Tim went from $40,000 per year and 80 hours per week to $40,000 per month and 4 hours per week•How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want•How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs•How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist•How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent “mini-retirements”The new expanded edition of Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek includes:•More than 50 practical tips and case studies from readers (including families) who have doubled income, overcome common sticking points, and reinvented themselves using the original book as a starting point•Real-world templates you can copy for eliminating e-mail, negotiating with bosses and clients, or getting a private chef for less than $8 a meal•How Lifestyle Design principles can be suited to unpredictable economic times•The latest tools and tricks, as well as high-tech shortcuts, for living like a diplomat or millionaire without being either]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2009-12-15T00:00:00-05:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780061452055</link>
<description><![CDATA[Life is getting betterand at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down  all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching peoples lives as never before. The pessimists who dominate public discourse insist that we will soon reach a turning point and things will start to get worse. But they have been saying this for two hundred years.  Yet Matt Ridley does more than describe how things are getting better. He explains why. Prosperity comes from everybody working for everybody else. The habit of exchange and specializationwhich started more than 100,000 years agohas created a collective brain that sets human living standards on a rising trend. The mutual dependence, trust, and sharing that result are causes for hope, not despair.  This bold book covers the entire sweep of human history, from the Stone Age to the Internet, from the stagnation of the Ming empire to the invention of the steam engine, from the population explosion to the likely consequences of climate change. It ends with a confident assertion that thanks to the ceaseless capacity of the human race for innovative change, and despite inevitable disasters along the way, the twenty-first century will see both human prosperity and natural biodiversity enhanced. Acute, refreshing, and revelatory, The Rational Optimist will change your way of thinking about the world for the better. ]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[24]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Ridley]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Harper]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780061452055]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[Life is getting betterand at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down  all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching peoples lives as never before. The pessimists who dominate public discourse insist that we will soon reach a turning point and things will start to get worse. But they have been saying this for two hundred years.  Yet Matt Ridley does more than describe how things are getting better. He explains why. Prosperity comes from everybody working for everybody else. The habit of exchange and specializationwhich started more than 100,000 years agohas created a collective brain that sets human living standards on a rising trend. The mutual dependence, trust, and sharing that result are causes for hope, not despair.  This bold book covers the entire sweep of human history, from the Stone Age to the Internet, from the stagnation of the Ming empire to the invention of the steam engine, from the population explosion to the likely consequences of climate change. It ends with a confident assertion that thanks to the ceaseless capacity of the human race for innovative change, and despite inevitable disasters along the way, the twenty-first century will see both human prosperity and natural biodiversity enhanced. Acute, refreshing, and revelatory, The Rational Optimist will change your way of thinking about the world for the better. ]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2010-06-01T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780446563048</link>
<description><![CDATA[Pay brand-new employees $2,000 to quit  Make customer service the responsibility of the entire company-not just a department  Focus on company culture as the #1 priority  Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business  Help employees grow-both personally and professionally  Seek to change the world  Oh, and make money too . . . Sound crazy? It's all standard operating procedure at Zappos, the online retailer that's doing over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually. After debuting as the highest-ranking newcomer in Fortune magazine's annual "Best Companies to Work For" list in 2009, Zappos was acquired by Amazon in a deal valued at over $1.2 billion on the day of closing.In DELIVERING HAPPINESS, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh shares the different lessons he has learned in business and life, from starting a worm farm to running a pizza business, through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. Fast-paced and down-to-earth, DELIVERING HAPPINESS shows how a very different kind of corporate culture is a powerful model for achieving success-and how by concentrating on the happiness of those around you, you can dramatically increase your own.To learn more about the book, go to www.deliveringhappinessbook.com.]]></description>
<ttl>360</ttl>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose]]></dc:title>
<bsbl:rank><![CDATA[25]]></bsbl:rank>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tony Hsieh]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Business Plus]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780446563048]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[Pay brand-new employees $2,000 to quit  Make customer service the responsibility of the entire company-not just a department  Focus on company culture as the #1 priority  Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business  Help employees grow-both personally and professionally  Seek to change the world  Oh, and make money too . . . Sound crazy? It's all standard operating procedure at Zappos, the online retailer that's doing over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually. After debuting as the highest-ranking newcomer in Fortune magazine's annual "Best Companies to Work For" list in 2009, Zappos was acquired by Amazon in a deal valued at over $1.2 billion on the day of closing.In DELIVERING HAPPINESS, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh shares the different lessons he has learned in business and life, from starting a worm farm to running a pizza business, through LinkExchange, Zappos, and more. Fast-paced and down-to-earth, DELIVERING HAPPINESS shows how a very different kind of corporate culture is a powerful model for achieving success-and how by concentrating on the happiness of those around you, you can dramatically increase your own.To learn more about the book, go to www.deliveringhappinessbook.com.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2010-06-01T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

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