Showing results by author "Instaread" in All Categories

The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing by Benjamin Graham, with commentary by Jason Zweig, is a thorough guide to the principles of portfolio creation, cost management, stock and bond picking, and stock ownership for the defensive, long-term investor....

Patrick Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is about the reasons teams fail to work together for the collective good of an organization and ways to overcome these problems....

Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin is a guide to applying leadership principles of the United States Navy's Sea, Air, and Land Teams (SEALs) to business. At the center of the strategies that Willink and Babin illustrate is taking complete responsibility for everything in which all leaders are involved....

Most companies rely on manipulations to attract customers and employees; they use short-term motivators that do not inspire or encourage loyalty. Customers who are not inspired will stop buying the product as soon as the company cannot keep up the manipulative strategies, and employees are less motivated and less productive when they are not inspired.

How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success is a book of parenting advice. The author, Julie Lythcott-Haims, is a former freshman dean at Stanford University and the mother of two teenagers....

With Instaread Summaries, you can get the summary of a book in 30 minutes or less. We read every chapter, summarize and analyze it for your convenience. This is an Instaread Summary of Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis.

Beginning in the 17th century, institutions emerged in colonial America that contributed to the creation of a racial caste system. America's current racial caste system builds upon the legacy of both chattel slavery that existed in the United States prior to the Civil War and on the system of Jim Crow laws that designated African Americans to second-class citizenship in many parts of the American South prior to the civil rights movement.

Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor by Clinton Romesha is a memoir of the October 2009 Battle of Kamdesh, in which hundreds of Taliban insurgents attacked Keating, the most remote American combat outpost in Afghanistan. For 14 hours, the Black Knight Troop fought to defend their post. The memoir provides a detailed account of the battle, and how Romesha, the staff sergeant of Red Platoon, executed a counterattack that helped save Keating along with many of his men, and earned him a Medal of Honor.

This is a summary and analysis of the book in which Bessel van der Kolk, MD, explores the ways in which trauma rewires the brain and changes the way people experience the world. Trauma affects the mind and body immensely and prevents those affected from living in the present. Van der Kolk, who has researched trauma since the 1970s, first became interested in trauma after meeting with Vietnam veterans who had a very hard time living their lives after returning from the war.

Blue Ocean Strategy is the 2015 update to the classic business strategy text of the same name originally published in 2005. The text offers a practical handbook to business students and entrepreneurs who wish to rise above the fray of the competition, become pioneers in previously uncharted market territory, and gain access to impressive growth opportunities and an untapped customer base.

A summary of Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. Predictably Irrational provides a data-driven window into the ways in which the human mind fails to make rational choices time and time again. While some of these irrational decisions are humorous or trivial, in many cases these behaviors can have far-ranging implications for governments and health care systems.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (2011) is a book about human motivations. Many of the prevailing ideas about why humans make decisions and operate the way they do aren't true or, at least, they are incomplete. Businesses, schools, and organizations are stuck in outdated, unexamined beliefs about human motivation. These beliefs are rooted in the idea of extrinsic motivation - that people make decisions based on external rewards and punishments.

In The God Delusion, philosopher Richard Dawkins evaluates popular arguments for the existence of God. The idea that God is not an object that can be accessed and reviewed using human reason is rejected. Instead, evidence that proves with at least 51 percent certainty is presented to prove that God does, in fact, not exist, casting reasonable doubt on the efficacy and usefulness of belief in God.

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox describes a process by which an unprofitable manufacturing operation can be made profitable. It conveys proven factory turnaround principles through a fictional story....

Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton is a guide to using principled negotiation techniques, rather than positional bargaining that makes for less successful negotiations. Positional bargaining occurs when two people argue over a particular concession, usually reaching an arbitrary compromise. In those instances the agreement usually does not address the interests of both negotiators. Principled negotiations find more creative, wise outcomes to conflicts....

With Instaread Summaries, you can get the summary of a book in 30 minutes or less. We read every chapter, summarize, and analyze it for your convenience. This is an Instaread Summary of Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

Patrick Lencioni's The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues posits that in order to succeed - especially in a work environment - one must be a team player. Business leaders must be able to identify and hire team players to secure the best possible advantage over their competitors and leverage all the benefits of teamwork. Ideal team players share three core virtues: They are hungry, humble, and smart.

Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government offers a critique of conventional wisdom surrounding popular theories of democracy. Authors Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels argue that the public, journalists, and political scientists rely on a group of common-sense understandings of democracy. The authors collectively refer to these beliefs as the "folk theory" of democracy.

This is an Instaread Summary of The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are by Brene Brown. Below is a preview of the earlier sections of the summary. Chapter 1 - It is necessary to practice courage, compassion, and connection on a daily basis in order to develop worthiness. It is a mistake to try and win someone over, because it means trading in the sense of self in search of approval from another.

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less is a self-help book by Greg McKeown. The book outlines a minimalist approach to tasks and obligations by focusing on truly important goals and learning to turn down opportunities that do not directly contribute to meeting those goals. The modern fixation on multitasking and having it all has paradoxically resulted in accomplished, motivated people doing many relatively unimportant things poorly while neglecting their true goals....