The Battle of Stalingrad was not only the psychological turning point of World War II: it also changed the face of modern warfare. From Antony Beevor, the internationally bestselling author of D-Day and The Battle of Arnhem.In August 1942, Hitler's huge Sixth Army reached the city that bore Stalin's name. In the five-month siege that followed, the Russians fought to hold Stalingrad at any cost; then, in an astonishing reversal, encircled and trapped their Nazi enemy. This battle for the ruins of a city cost more than a million lives. Stalingrad conveys the experience of soldiers on both sides, fighting in inhuman conditions, and of civilians trapped on an urban battlefield. Antony Beevor has itnerviewed survivors and discovered completely new material in a wide range of German and Soviet archives, including prisoner interrogations and reports of desertions and executions. As a story of cruelty, courage, and human suffering, Stalingrad is unprecedented and unforgettable.Historians and reviewers worldwide have hailed Antony Beevor's magisterial Stalingrad as the definitive account of World War II's most harrowing battle.

In October 1942, a panzer officer wrote 'Stalingrad is no longer a town...Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure'. The battle for Stalingrad became the focus of Hitler and Stalin's determination to win the gruesome, vicious war on the eastern front. The citizens of Stalingrad endured unimaginable hardship; the battle, with fierce hand-to-hand fighting in each room of each building, was brutally destructive to both armies. But the eventual victory of the Red Army, and the failure of Hitler's Operation Barbarossa, was the first defeat of Hitler's territorial ambitions in Europe, and the start of his decline. An extraordinary story of tactical genius, civilian bravery, obsession, carnage and the nature of war itself, Stalingrad will act as a testament to the vital role of the soviet war effort.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING MICHAEL B. JORDAN AND JAMIE FOXX • A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time.“[Bryan Stevenson’s] dedication to fighting for justice and equality has inspired me and many others and made a lasting impact on our country.”—John LegendNAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times • The Washington Post • The Boston Globe • The Seattle Times • Esquire • TimeBryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship—and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.Just Mercy is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer’s coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice.Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction • Winner of a Books for a Better Life Award • Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Finalist for the Kirkus Reviews Prize • An American Library Association Notable Book“Every bit as moving as To Kill a Mockingbird, and in some ways more so . . . a searing indictment of American criminal justice and a stirring testament to the salvation that fighting for the vulnerable sometimes yields.”—David Cole, The New York Review of Books“Searing, moving . . . Bryan Stevenson may, indeed, be America’s Mandela.”—Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times“You don’t have to read too long to start cheering for this man. . . . The message of this book . . . is that evil can be overcome, a difference can be made. Just Mercy will make you upset and it will make you hopeful.”—Ted Conover, The New York Times Book Review“Inspiring . . . a work of style, substance and clarity . . . Stevenson is not only a great lawyer, he’s also a gifted writer and storyteller.”—The Washington Post“As deeply moving, poignant and powerful a book as has been, and maybe ever can be, written about the death penalty.”—The Financial Times“Brilliant.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

Alert: This product may be shipped with or without the inclusion of the Oprah Book Club sticker. Please note that regardless of the cover, the books are identical. Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man's capacity for inhumanity to man.Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERA powerful and persuasive discussion about economics, freedom, and the relationship between the two, from today's brightest economist.In this classic discussion, Milton and Rose Friedman explain how our freedom has been eroded and our affluence undermined through the explosion of laws, regulations, agencies, and spending in Washington. This important analysis reveals what has gone wrong in America in the past and what is necessary for our economic health to flourish.

The manager of a top investment fund discusses how individuals can make a killing in the market through research and investment techniques that confound conventional market wisdom

The Bed of Procrustes is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Antifragile, and Skin in the Game.By the author of the modern classic The Black Swan, this collection of aphorisms and meditations expresses his major ideas in ways you least expect.The Bed of Procrustes takes its title from Greek mythology: the story of a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection by either stretching them or cutting their limbs. It represents Taleb’s view of modern civilization’s hubristic side effects—modifying humans to satisfy technology, blaming reality for not fitting economic models, inventing diseases to sell drugs, defining intelligence as what can be tested in a classroom, and convincing people that employment is not slavery. Playful and irreverent, these aphorisms will surprise you by exposing self-delusions you have been living with but never recognized.With a rare combination of pointed wit and potent wisdom, Taleb plows through human illusions, contrasting the classical values of courage, elegance, and erudition against the modern diseases of nerdiness, philistinism, and phoniness.“Taleb’s crystalline nuggets of thought stand alone like esoteric poems.”—Financial Times

Achieve "Massive Action" results and accomplish your business dreams!While most people operate with only three degrees of action-no action, retreat, or normal action-if you're after big goals, you don't want to settle for the ordinary. To reach the next level, you must understand the coveted 4th degree of action. This 4th degree, also known as the 10 X Rule, is that level of action that guarantees companies and individuals realize their goals and dreams.The 10 X Rule unveils the principle of "Massive Action," allowing you to blast through business clichŽs and risk-aversion while taking concrete steps to reach your dreams. It also demonstrates why people get stuck in the first three actions and how to move into making the 10X Rule a discipline. Find out exactly where to start, what to do, and how to follow up each action you take with more action to achieve Massive Action results. Learn the "Estimation of Effort" calculation to ensure you exceed your targets Make the Fourth Degree a way of life and defy mediocrity Discover the time management myth Get the exact reasons why people fail and others succeed Know the exact formula to solve problemsExtreme success is by definition outside the realm of normal action. Instead of behaving like everybody else and settling for average results, take Massive Action with The 10 X Rule, remove luck and chance from your business equation, and lock in massive success.

"So it is: we are not given a short life but we are wasteful of it... Life is long if you know how to use it.""But life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future.""We must indulge the mind and from time to time allow it the leisure which is its food and strength.""Often a very old man has no other proof of his long life than his age."On the Shortness of Life is Seneca's best-known work. It offers piercing and profound insights into human nature, and a vision of the good life, summarised in his aphorism, "Life is long, if you know how to use it." Seneca elucidates many of the principles of modern productivity manuals, including the wise valuing of time:"People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy,"living in the present:"The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today,"intentionality:"There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living,"and rest and recreation:"We must go for walks out of doors, so that the mind can be strengthened and invigorated by a clear sky and plenty of fresh air. At times it will acquire fresh energy from a journey by carriage and a change of scene, or from socializing and drinking freely."Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC - AD 65), also known as Seneca the Younger, was a Roman philosopher, statesman and dramatist. He was the leading intellectual in the mid-first century and was a trusted advisor to the Emperor Nero. Seneca's books are among the most important primary texts of Stoic philosophy. His literary style and ideas were renowned and influential in his time, and ever since. The reformer Calvin published a commentary on one of Seneca's works, while the Catholic philosopher, Erasmus, edited a volume of Seneca. In today's uncertain world, there is a resurgence of interest in Stoic philosophy and Seneca's body of work.The Shortness of Life, a brief, accessible and carefully argued guide to a wise and full life is an essential classic.Stoic philosophy is, above all, practical. It uses reason and the careful observation of human life to address the problems of daily life. It is also universal-the emperor Marcus Aurelius and the freed slave Epictetus were both prominent Stoic philosophers. In recent years, Stoic philosophy has provided invaluable life lessons to people in all spheres of life including prisoners of war and Holocaust survivors, psychiatrists, and those in the business world. Indeed, modern Stoic thought "hold[s] fascinating promise for business and government leaders tackling global problems in a turbulent, post-recession slump," (Forbes).

Surprising rules for successful monetization Innovation is the most important driver of growth. Today, more than ever, companies need to innovate to survive. But successful innovation--measured in dollars and cents--is a very hard target to hit. Companies obsess over being creative and innovative and spend significant time and expense in designing and building products, yet struggle to monetize them: 72% of innovations fail to meet their financial targets--or fail entirely. Many companies have come to accept that a high failure rate, and the billions of dollars lost annually, is just the cost of doing business.Monetizing Innovations argues that this is tragic, wasteful, and wrong. Radically improving the odds that your innovation will succeed is just a matter of removing the guesswork. That happens when you put customer demand and willingness to pay in the driver seat--when you design the product around the price. It's a new paradigm, and that opens the door to true game change: You can stop hoping to monetize, and start knowing that you will. The authors at Simon Kucher know what they're talking about. As the world's premier pricing and monetization consulting services company, with 800 professionals in 30 cities around the globe, they have helped clients ranging from massive pharmaceuticals to fast-growing startups find success. In Monetizing Innovation, they distil the lessons of thirty years and over 10,000 projects into a practical, nine-step approach. Whether you are a CEO, executive leadership, or part of the team responsible for innovation and new product development, this book is for you, with special sections and checklist-driven summaries to make monetizing innovation part of your company's DNA. Illustrative case studies show how some of the world's best innovative companies like LinkedIn, Uber, Porsche, Optimizely, Draeger, Swarovski and big pharmaceutical companies have used principles outlined in this book. A direct challenge to the status quo "spray and pray" style of innovation, Monetizing Innovation presents a practical approach that can be adopted by any organization, in any industry. Most monetizing innovation failure point home. Now more than ever, companies must rethink the practices that have lost countless billions of dollars. Monetizing Innovation presents a new way forward, and a clear promise: Go from hope to certainty.

Written with full cooperation from top management, including cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, this is the inside story behind Google, the most successful and most admired technology company of our time, told by one of our best technology writers.Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes readers inside Google headquarters—the Googleplex—to show how Google works. While they were still students at Stanford, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized Internet search. They followed this brilliant innovation with another, as two of Google’s earliest employees found a way to do what no one else had: make billions of dollars from Internet advertising. With this cash cow, Google was able to expand dramatically and take on other transformative projects: more efficient data centers, open-source cell phones, free Internet video (YouTube), cloud computing, digitizing books, and much more. The key to Google’s success in all these businesses, Levy reveals, is its engineering mind-set and adoption of such Internet values as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk taking. After its unapologetically elitist approach to hiring, Google pampers its engineers—free food and dry cleaning, on-site doctors and masseuses—and gives them all the resources they need to succeed. Even today, with a workforce of more than 23,000, Larry Page signs off on every hire. But has Google lost its innovative edge? With its newest initiative, social networking, Google is chasing a successful competitor for the first time. Some employees are leaving the company for smaller, nimbler start-ups. Can the company that famously decided not to be evil still compete? No other book has ever turned Google inside out as Levy does with In the Plex.

From the visionary head of Google's innovative People Operations comes a groundbreaking inquiry into the philosophy of work -- and a blueprint for attracting the most spectacular talent to your business and ensuring that they succeed."We spend more time working than doing anything else in life. It's not right that the experience of work should be so demotivating and dehumanizing." So says Laszlo Bock, former head of People Operations at the company that transformed how the world interacts with knowledge.This insight is the heart of Work Rules!, a compelling and surprisingly playful manifesto that offers lessons including:Take away managers' power over employees Learn from your best employees-and your worst Hire only people who are smarter than you are, no matter how long it takes to find them Pay unfairly (it's more fair!) Don't trust your gut: Use data to predict and shape the future Default to open-be transparent and welcome feedback If you're comfortable with the amount of freedom you've given your employees, you haven't gone far enough.Drawing on the latest research in behavioral economics and a profound grasp of human psychology, Work Rules! also provides teaching examples from a range of industries-including lauded companies that happen to be hideous places to work and little-known companies that achieve spectacular results by valuing and listening to their employees. Bock takes us inside one of history's most explosively successful businesses to reveal why Google is consistently rated one of the best places to work in the world, distilling 15 years of intensive worker R&D into principles that are easy to put into action, whether you're a team of one or a team of thousands.Work Rules! shows how to strike a balance between creativity and structure, leading to success you can measure in quality of life as well as market share. Read it to build a better company from within rather than from above; read it to reawaken your joy in what you do.