Bøker utgitt av FREP - FREE PR

Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe....They forget that in time of danger, in the face of the enemy, they must trust and confide in each other, or perish....They forget, in short, that there has ever been a category of human experience called the enemy. "That, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary. An enemy was just a friend we hadn't done enough for yet. Or perhaps there had been a misunderstanding, or an oversight on our part -- something that we could correct.... "Our first task is therefore to try to grasp what the concept of the enemy really means. The enemy is someone who is willing to die in order to kill you. And while it is true that the enemy always hates us for a reason, it is his reason, and not ours." So begins Civilization and Its Enemies, an extraordinary tour de force by America's "reigning philosopher of 9/11," Lee Harris. What Francis Fukuyama did for the end of the Cold War, Lee Harris has now done for the next great conflict: the war between the civilized world and the international terrorists who wish to destroy it. Each major turning point in our history has produced one great thinker who has been able to step back from petty disagreements and see the bigger picture -- and Lee Harris has emerged as that man for our time. He is the one who has helped make sense of the terrorists' fantasies and who forces us most strongly to confront the fact that our enemy -- for the first time in centuries -- refuses to play by any of our rules, or to think in any of our categories. We are all naturally reluctant to face a true enemy. Most of us cannot give up the myth that tolerance is the greatest of virtues and that we can somehow convert the enemy to our beliefs. Yet, as Harris's brilliant tour through the stages of civilization demonstrates, from Sparta to the French Revolution to the present, civilization depends upon brute force, properly wielded by a sovereign. Today, only America can play the role of sovereign on the world stage, by the use of force when necessary. Lee Harris's articles have been hailed by thinkers from across the spectrum. His message is an enduring one that will change the way readers think -- about the war with Iraq, about terrorism, and about our future.

From the authors of the smash bestseller The Carrot Principle comes an inspiring and lively page-a-day guide to harnessing the remarkable power of the carrot—taking yourself and your team to new heights of success in work and life.Based on their twenty years of experience teaching leaders at Fortune 100 companies, as well as one of the largest research studies ever conducted on workplace satisfaction, Gostick and Elton share a wealth of wisdom about simple but amazingly effective ways to boost your productivity and work satisfaction by setting clear goals, communicating effectively, building trust, and offering recognition in ways that make others feel appreciated and motivated.Each engaging page of The Daily Carrot Principle features a core kernel of wisdom, enlivened by thoughtful and witty quotes from the likes of Thomas Edison, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Jim Collins, and Oprah Winfrey, plus a bonanza of insights from standout managers and employees the authors have studied. An easy-to-implement "carrot action" ends each page, providing the simple steps to begin applying this wealth of wisdom immediately.Whether you are a business leader, team member, student, mom or dad, or anyone hoping to achieve more in your life, this book will be an inspiring and practical guide to unleashing your hidden potential and leading a richer life.

Plague is a terrifying mystery. In the Middle Ages, it wiped out 40 million people -- 40 percent of the total population in Europe. Seven hundred years earlier, the Justinian Plague destroyed the Byzantine Empire and ushered in the Middle Ages. The plague of London in the seventeenth century killed more than 1,000 people a day. In the early twentieth century, plague again swept Asia, taking the lives of 12 million in India alone. Even more frightening is what it could do to us in the near future. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian scientists created genetically altered, antibiotic-resistant and vaccine-resistant strains of plague that can bypass the human immune system and spread directly from person to person. These weaponized strains still exist, and they could be replicated in almost any laboratory. Wendy Orent's Plague pieces together a fascinating and terrifying historical whodunit. Drawing on the latest research in labs around the world, along with extensive interviews with American and Soviet plague experts, Orent offers nothing less than a biography of a disease. Plague helped bring down the Roman Empire and close the Middle Ages; it has had a dramatic impact on our history, yet we still do not fully understand its own evolution. Orent's retelling of the four great pandemics makes for gripping reading and solves many puzzles. Why did some pandemics jump from person to person, while others relied on insects as carriers? Why are some strains more virulent than others? Orent reveals the key differences among rat-based, prairie dog-based, and marmot-based plague. The marmots of Central Asia, in particular, have long been hosts to the most virulent and frightening form of the disease, a form that can travel around the world in the blink of an eye. From its ability to hide out in the wild, only to spring back into humanity with a terrifying vengeance, to its elusive capacity to develop suddenly greater virulence and transmissibility, plague is a protean nightmare. To make matters worse, Orent's disturbing revelations about the former Soviet bioweapon programs suggest that the nightmare may not be over. Plague is chilling reading at the dawn of a new age of bioterrorism.

Selling is 85% emotional and 15% logical. Forget everything you've been taught about selling -- forget the hardsell, forget negotiation strategies, forget those closing techniques. In The Inner Game of Selling, Ron Willingham debunks the familiar myths about "sales skills," showing that those tired methods are too shallow and manipulative to do anything but alienate potential customers and drain you of energy and dignity. Today's consumers are wise to the old-fashioned gimmicks, extremely informed about their options, and very particular about what they want. The old tricks simply do not work anymore. Willingham, author of Integrity Service and CEO of Integrity Systems, opens your eyes to a whole new truth about selling: Your ability to sell is more a question of who you are than of what you know. Accordingly, why you sell is far more important than how you sell. Salespeople perform according to their inner beliefs about themselves, about what it is possible for them to sell and earn, and about what they deserve to achieve. These beliefs set the boundaries of their self-image and ultimately determine their success or failure. Willingham has synthesized his decades of experience, field-tested research, and a career-long dedication to ethical and passionate salesmanship to arrive at the groundbreaking insight that you will sell at your highest level only when you achieve emotional and spiritual alignment. Your sense of your own self-worth combined with a belief in your product will inspire that crucial ingredient in potential customers: trust. The Inner Game of Selling shows you how to overcome self-limiting beliefs and move on to a new relationship with your customers and, more important, a new relationship with yourself. Your new inner strengths will truly benefit you and your customers in any sales situation. Willingham is at the leading edge of a values shift in sales culture, from product-focus to personal empowerment. The Inner Game of Selling establishes a groundbreaking new paradigm that will utterly transform the philosophy and practice of selling.

In the stirring signature number from the 1944 Broadway musical On the Town, three sailors on a 24-hour search for love in wartime Manhattan sing, "New York, New York, a helluva town." The Navy boys’ race against time mirrored the very real frenzy in the city that played host to 3 million servicemen, then shipped them out from its magnificent port to an uncertain destiny. This was a time when soldiers and sailors on their final flings jammed the Times Square movie houses featuring lavish stage shows as well as the nightclubs like the Latin Quarter and the Copacabana; a time when bobby-soxers swooned at the Paramount over Frank Sinatra, a sexy, skinny substitute for the boys who had gone to war. Richard Goldstein’s Helluva Town is a kaleidoscopic and compelling social history that captures the youthful electricity of wartime and recounts the important role New York played in the national war effort. This is a book that will prove irresistible to anyone who loves New York and its relentlessly fascinating saga. Wartime Broadway lives again in these pages through the plays of Lillian Hellman, Robert Sherwood, Maxwell Anderson, and John Steinbeck championing the democratic cause; Irving Berlin’s This Is the Army and Moss Hart’s Winged Victory with their all-servicemen casts; Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! hailing American optimism; the Leonard Bernstein–Jerome Robbins production of On the Town; and the Stage Door Canteen. And these were the days when the Brooklyn Navy Yard turned out battleships and aircraft carriers, when troopships bound for Europe departed from the great Manhattan piers where glamorous ocean liners once docked, where the most beautiful liner of them all, the Normandie, caught fire and capsized during its conversion to a troopship. Here, too, is an unseen New York: physicists who fled Hitler’s Europe spawning the atomic bomb, the FBI chasing after Nazi spies, the Navy enlisting the Mafia to safeguard the port against sabotage, British agents mounting a vast intelligence operation. This is the city that served as a magnet for European artists and intellectuals, whose creative presence contributed mightily to New York’s boisterous cosmopolitanism. Long before 9/11, New York felt vulnerable to a foreign foe. Helluva Town recalls how 400,000 New Yorkers served as air-raid wardens while antiaircraft guns ringed the city in anticipation of a German bombing raid. Finally, this is the story of New York’s emergence as the power and glory of the world stage in the wake of V-J Day, underlined when the newly created United Nations arose beside the East River, climaxing a storied chapter in the history of the world’s greatest city.

A chilling account of Hugo Chávez's shadow war on the United States The American government has shrugged off South American politics for nearly forty years. In the meantime, our neighbor to the south has grown into an unprecedented threat. Hugo Chávez, the current president of Venezuela and a self-proclaimed enemy of the United States, commands what even Osama bin Laden only dreams of -- but few Americans see him as a true danger to this country. This book argues that we should. Chávez has the means and the motivation to harm the United States in a way that few other countries can, and he has declared an "asymmetric war" against America. He runs a sovereign nation that is the fourth largest supplier of oil to the United States. He enjoys annual windfall oil profits that equal the net worth of Bill Gates. He has more modern weapons than anyone in Latin America. He has strategic alliances with Iran, North Korea, and other enemies of America, yet he has duped many Americans -- from influential political and cultural leaders to ordinary citizens who benefit from his oil largess through his state-owned oil company -- into believing that he is a friend. Drawing on two decades of experience working at the highest level of Venezuelan and American politics, Schoen and Rowan go behind the scenes to examine Chávez's efforts to subvert both the American economy and his own country's stability. Not only did he help drive the price of oil from ten dollars a barrel to more than a hundred dollars a barrel, he's sponsored and become increasingly involved in civilian massacres, drug running, money laundering, nuclear weapons proliferation, and terrorist training. Schoen and Rowan have both the insight and the access to make a case not yet made in the American media. Over the course of the past decade while living and working in Venezuela as writers and political consultants, they've investigated Ch‡vez's past, explored his family connections, and gone up against him in a series of elections. Their startling revelations about Ch‡vez's rise to power and his reach into American politics make this the kind of urgent, newsbreaking narrative that will spark vital debate in the corridors of power.