NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Discover the game-changing theory of the cycles of history and what past generations can teach us about living through times of upheaval—with deep insights into the roles that Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials have to play—now with a new preface by Neil Howe. First comes a High, a period of confident expansion. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion. Then comes an Unraveling, in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions. Last comes a Crisis—the Fourth Turning—when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history. William Strauss and Neil Howe will change the way you see the world—and your place in it. With blazing originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about how America’s past will predict what comes next. Strauss and Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history. The authors look back five hundred years and uncover a distinct pattern: Modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting about the length of a long human life, each composed of four twenty-year eras—or “turnings”—that comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth. Illustrating this cycle through a brilliant analysis of the post–World War II period, The Fourth Turning offers bold predictions about how all of us can prepare, individually and collectively, for this rendezvous with destiny.
The definitive inside account of Toyota's greatest crisis—and lessons you can apply to your own company "Those who write off Toyota in the current climate of second guessing and speculation are making a profound mistake and need to read this book to get the facts. Toyota is a company that will channel the current challenges to push themselves to even more relentless continuous improvement." —Charles Baker, former Chief Engineer and Vice President for R&D, Honda of America "Toyota Under Fire is a superb book and should prove very helpful to American industry's understanding of the problems faced and how any company can prevent similar occurrences in the future." —Norman Bodek, author, founder of Productivity Press, and inductee in 2010 Industry Week Manufacturing Hall of Fame "As a former automotive supplier executive and student of Toyota, I was concerned to see the many negative reports and investigations into the quality and safety of its vehicles. Toyota Under Fire tells the story of how this great company is growing wiser and stronger by living its culture and values." —Michael Fisher, CEO, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center "Just as Toyota has put itself through excruciating soul-searching in order to understand what went wrong, so should we all take advantage of the opportunity for learning presented to us by Toyota's misfortune. In these pages, you will find that the actual circumstances were far more complex, nuanced, and uncertain than you saw reported in the news." —John Y. Shook, Chairman and CEO, Lean Enterprise Institute "The most comprehensive and detailed review to date of the circumstances that led to the crisis, and the events and contexts that caused it to escalate.” —Strategy & Business About the Book For decades, Toyota has been setting standards that are the envy—and goal—of organizations worldwide. Its legendary management principles and business philosophy, first documented by Jeffrey K. Liker in his influential book The Toyota Way, changed the business world's approach to operational excellence. Granted unprecedented access to Toyota's facilities worldwide, Liker, along with Timothy N. Ogden, investigated the inside story of how Toyota faced the challenges of the recession and the recall crisis of 2009–2010. In both cases, the company was caught off guard—and found that a root cause of the challenges it faced was its failure to live up to its own principles. But the fundamentals were still there, and the company has ultimately come out of the most challenging years of its postwar existence even stronger than before. Toyota Under Fire chronicles all the events of the recession and the recall crisis in detail, providing valuable lessons any business leader can use to survive and thrive in a crisis, no matter how large: Crisis response must start by building a strong culture long before the crisis hits. Culture matters far more than decisions made by top executives. Investing in people, even in the depths of a recession, is the surest path to long-term profitability. Because it had founded its culture on such principles, Toyota didn’t need to amass an army of public relations, marketing, and legal experts to "put out the fire"; instead, it redoubled efforts to live up to its founding tenet, going "back to basics." Toyota began solving this crisis more than 70 years ago, when its organizational culture was first established. Apply the lessons of Toyota Under Fire to your company, and you'll meet any future management challenge calmly, responsibly, and effectively—the Toyota Way.
A "riveting and illuminating" Bill Gates Summer Reading pick about how and why some nations recover from trauma and others don't (Yuval Noah Harari), by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the landmark bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel. In his international bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in his third book in this monumental trilogy, he reveals how successful nations recover from crises while adopting selective changes -- a coping mechanism more commonly associated with individuals recovering from personal crises. Diamond compares how six countries have survived recent upheavals -- ranging from the forced opening of Japan by U.S. Commodore Perry's fleet, to the Soviet Union's attack on Finland, to a murderous coup or countercoup in Chile and Indonesia, to the transformations of Germany and Austria after World War Two. Because Diamond has lived and spoken the language in five of these six countries, he can present gut-wrenching histories experienced firsthand. These nations coped, to varying degrees, through mechanisms such as acknowledgment of responsibility, painfully honest self-appraisal, and learning from models of other nations. Looking to the future, Diamond examines whether the United States, Japan, and the whole world are successfully coping with the grave crises they currently face. Can we learn from lessons of the past? Adding a psychological dimension to the in-depth history, geography, biology, and anthropology that mark all of Diamond's books, Upheaval reveals factors influencing how both whole nations and individual people can respond to big challenges. The result is a book epic in scope, but also his most personal yet.
"Often we FIGHT the PRESENT, RUN from the PAST, and WORRY about the FUTURE" -Dr. Patrice BerryWhen we find ourselves in a crisis, there are two options: give in to the chaos or find clarity. This book contains practical ways to survive and/or thrive. Past and present events can trigger survival mode because we are wired (biologically) to survive. A crisis also can trigger feelings of anxiety, helplessness, and hopelessness. It is also very easy to get lost in these feelings and forget many of the positive strategies that helped us overcome difficulties in the past. Also, sometimes the tools that worked in the past do not work in our current situation. So we have to develop new strategies to increase our ability to manage and tolerate uncertainty and be more flexible.Two people can go through the same situation and be impacted in completely different ways. We can identify clear differences that help people have more positive outcomes after negative life events. In psychology, we call this resilience and it is not a personality trait that you either have or you don't. Research has shown that resilience can be developed within anyone.You are NOT too far gone and NOT too broken. With the right knowledge, you can be on a path to find clarity in the midst of crisis. Also knowing that no one book can solve all of your problems or replace treatment, additional resources are listed throughout this book to help support you along your healing journey!
With a new afterword on the 2016 election Trent Lott and Tom Daschle, two of the most prominent senators of recent time, served as leaders of their respective parties from the 1990s to the current century. Their congressional tenure saw the Reagan tax cuts, the Clinton impeachment, 9/11, and the Iraq War. Despite stark ideological differences, the two have always maintained a positive working relationship--even a warm friendship--the kind that in today's hyper-partisan climate has become unthinkable. In Crisis Point, Lott and Daschle come together to sound an alarm on the current polarization that has made governing all but impossible; never before has faith in government been so dismally low. The senators itemize damaging forces--the permanent campaign, unprecedented money, the 24/7 news cycle--and offer practical recommendations, pointing the way forward. Most crucially, they recall the American people, especially our leaders, to the principles enshrined in the Constitution, and to the necessity of debate but also the imperative of compromise--which will take vision and courage to bring back. Illustrated with personal stories from their eminent careers and events cited from deeper in American history, Crisis Point is an invaluable work--one of conscience as well as duty, written with passion and eloquence by two men who have dedicated their lives to public service and share the conviction that all is far from lost.
From the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, how to manage your business in the face of challenge, change, and potential disaster For James Lee Witt, the man who rebuilt America's emergency response system, the most inspiring and effective lessons--about responsibility, team building, planning, and taking action--have guided real-life heroes through extraordinary situations. These lessons can be applied to business to guide you through the pressures you face each week--or once in a career or a lifetime. Whether describing earthquake preparation in California, moving a Missouri town out of a floodplain, or shoring up walls and spirits after the Oklahoma City bombing, Witt captures the moments when leaders step forward, how they motivate others, and what they need to triumph over adversity. Witt's home-spun wisdom teaches us to "Tear Down the Stovepipes" to build effective teamwork by thinking horizontally, not vertically; to find energizing people who improve morale, whether a V.P.'s secretary or a key client, since "A Lightning Rod Works Both Ways"; and to establish systems for capturing what happens--what goes right and what goes wrong--to ensure that every challenge leaves you "Stronger in the Broken Places." To bring home the ten lessons in this inspiring and useful book, Witt shares examples and strategies from corporations--from Malden Mills and Intel to Swissair and Kmart--who have overcome crisis by applying the same principles to their business every day.
The coronavirus pandemic is the kind of unpredictable, global catastrophe of staggering proportions that comes along not just every few years but perhaps once in a hundred years. What started out as health crisis, has quickly developed into an economic crisis spurring social unrest across the world. And yet, despite the widespread distress, the picture is more complex than it may seem. For some companies, the crisis has and continues to, provide opportunities for new growth. This urgent and timely book by a visionary business practitioner, Nitin Rakesh, CEO, Mphasis and an award-winning academician, Jerry Wind, Lauder Professor Emeritus, Wharton bridges the worlds of industry and academia to bring you the knowledge that can help your business thrive in the new world. The book defines 8 key principles that form a highly adaptive framework, that gives businesses the tools to adapt and succeed in a new reality. When Nitin Rakesh and Jerry Wind started collaborating on the book prior to the 2020 pandemic, these 8 principles were concepts on the best ways to navigate disruption that needed further exploration. However, today, having incubated the ideas for a period and encountering the unprecedented crisis, this book is a game changer for the business community. Any business, large or small, can customize and implement a winning strategy by using the eight principles and tools clearly outlined here to seek out opportunities for long-term value creation in a post-pandemic world.
Why democracies believe they can survive any crisis—and why that belief is so dangerous Why do democracies keep lurching from success to failure? The current financial crisis is just the latest example of how things continue to go wrong, just when it looked like they were going right. In this wide-ranging, original, and compelling book, David Runciman tells the story of modern democracy through the history of moments of crisis, from the First World War to the economic crash of 2008. A global history with a special focus on the United States, The Confidence Trap examines how democracy survived threats ranging from the Great Depression to the Cuban missile crisis, and from Watergate to the collapse of Lehman Brothers. It also looks at the confusion and uncertainty created by unexpected victories, from the defeat of German autocracy in 1918 to the defeat of communism in 1989. Throughout, the book pays close attention to the politicians and thinkers who grappled with these crises: from Woodrow Wilson, Nehru, and Adenauer to Fukuyama and Obama. In The Confidence Trap, David Runciman shows that democracies are good at recovering from emergencies but bad at avoiding them. The lesson democracies tend to learn from their mistakes is that they can survive them—and that no crisis is as bad as it seems. Breeding complacency rather than wisdom, crises lead to the dangerous belief that democracies can muddle through anything—a confidence trap that may lead to a crisis that is just too big to escape, if it hasn't already. The most serious challenges confronting democracy today are debt, the war on terror, the rise of China, and climate change. If democracy is to survive them, it must figure out a way to break the confidence trap.
Few of us go through life without experiencing some sort of crisis, whether health, financial, relationship, career, or personal safety. Crises happen and they are often out of our control. But the one thing we can control is how we respond to them. Yet, our natural instincts often hinder us as we confront today’s crises that are complex, amorphous, and not readily solvable. Changing our reaction to a crisis is an immense challenge, yet with powerful lessons provided in these pages, anyone can turn crises into opportunities for reflection, positive action, and growth. . A crisis mentality can overwhelm you when bad things happen. Turning crises into opportunitiesempowers you to overcome the darkness that can engulf you in troubled times and allow you to seek the light that can guide you through hard times. Exploring the essential psychological, emotional, and interpersonal factors that most impact your reaction to a crisis, Jim Taylor provides you with deep insights and practical tools that help you move from a crisis mentality of fear, pessimism, and panic that controls you to an opportunity mindset of calm, confidence, and courage that you control in a crisis. He offers compelling examples, both recent and historical, well-known and unfamiliar, to bring these issues to life. Illustrations from government, large and small business, and ordinary people will highlight who responded well and who did not. Break free from the crisis mentality and embrace an opportunity mindset with nine strategies that will not only help you to survive, but actually thrive, when bad things happen.
WINNER OF THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK "An intelligent explanation of the mechanisms that produced the crisis and the response to it...One of the great strengths of Tooze's book is to demonstrate the deeply intertwined nature of the European and American financial systems."--The New York Times Book Review From the prizewinning economic historian and author of Shutdown and The Deluge, an eye-opening reinterpretation of the 2008 economic crisis (and its ten-year aftermath) as a global event that directly led to the shockwaves being felt around the world today. We live in a world where dramatic shifts in the domestic and global economy command the headlines, from rollbacks in US banking regulations to tariffs that may ignite international trade wars. But current events have deep roots, and the key to navigating today’s roiling policies lies in the events that started it all—the 2008 economic crisis and its aftermath. Despite initial attempts to downplay the crisis as a local incident, what happened on Wall Street beginning in 2008 was, in fact, a dramatic caesura of global significance that spiraled around the world, from the financial markets of the UK and Europe to the factories and dockyards of Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, forcing a rearrangement of global governance. With a historian’s eye for detail, connection, and consequence, Adam Tooze brings the story right up to today’s negotiations, actions, and threats—a much-needed perspective on a global catastrophe and its long-term consequences.
