Ultimate success in living happily with an idiot-whether spouse, child, other relative or roommate-depends upon your willingness to search out and embrace your own inner idiot. We all have one. By learning the art of setting realistic expectations, resentments will diminish and relationships can be rekindled based on strengths rather than continuing to whither on weaknesses. This book offers practical, useful advice for all of us who have to deal with the many true idiots in our lives, but helps us laugh at them, too.
Do you ever think you’re the only one making any sense? Or tried to reason with your partner with disastrous results? Do long, rambling answers drive you crazy? Or does your colleague’s abrasive manner rub you the wrong way? You are not alone. After a disastrous meeting with a highly successful entrepreneur, who was genuinely convinced he was ‘surrounded by idiots’, communication expert and bestselling author, Thomas Erikson dedicated himself to understanding how people function and why we often struggle to connect with certain types of people. Surrounded by Idiots is an international phenomenon, selling over 1.5 million copies worldwide. It offers a simple, yet ground-breaking method for assessing the personalities of people we communicate with – in and out of the office – based on four personality types (Red, Blue, Green and Yellow), and provides insights into how we can adjust the way we speak and share information. Erikson will help you understand yourself better, hone communication and social skills, handle conflict with confidence, improve dynamics with your boss and team, and get the best out of the people you deal with and manage. He also shares simple tricks on body language, improving written communication, advice on when to back away or when to push on, and when to speak up or shut up. Packed with ‘aha!’ and ‘oh no!’ moments, Surrounded by Idiots will help you understand and communicate with those around you, even people you currently think are beyond all comprehension. And with a bit of luck you can also be confident that the idiot out there isn’t you!
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction • Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction “Easily the funniest book I’ve read this year.” —GQ “Masterly funny debut novel . . . Erudite but never pretentious, The Idiot will make you crave more books by Batuman.” —Sloane Crosley, Vanity Fair A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself. The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings. At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer. With superlative emotional and intellectual sensitivity, mordant wit, and pitch-perfect style, Batuman dramatizes the uncertainty of life on the cusp of adulthood. Her prose is a rare and inimitable combination of tenderness and wisdom; its logic as natural and inscrutable as that of memory itself. The Idiot is a heroic yet self-effacing reckoning with the terror and joy of becoming a person in a world that is as intoxicating as it is disquieting. Batuman's fiction is unguarded against both life's affronts and its beauty--and has at its command the complete range of thinking and feeling which they entail. Named one the best books of the year by Refinery29 • Mashable One • Elle Magazine • The New York Times • Bookpage • Vogue • NPR • Buzzfeed •The Millions
Idiocy is all around us, whether it's the uncle spouting conspiracy theories, the colleagues who repeat your point but louder, or the commuters who still don't know how to use an escalator. But what is the answer to this perpetual scourge? Here, philosopher Maxime Rovere turns his attention to the murkiest of intellectual corners. With warmth, wit and wisdom, he illuminates a new understanding of idiots, one which examines our relations to others and our own ego, offers tools and strategies to dismantle the most desperate of idiotic situations, and even reveals how to stop being the idiots ourselves (because we're always someone else's idiot). Expertly translated by David Bellos, this is an erudite, enjoyable and much-needed solution to a most familiar vexation.
John Hoover, an organizational leadership consultant, discusses how to deal with an "Idiot Boss" - or I-Boss - who does stupid things. Hoover distinguishes idiots from other tricky bosses, including those who think they are God, or who are paranoid, sadistic or Machiavellian. He leaves the reader with a couple of issues. First, you'll think no good, caring bosses still exist. Second, he doesn't tell you clearly where to set boundaries or when enough is finally enough. He often advocates appeasing bad bosses, although his other counsel on how to deal with them has some effective pointers. To his credit, Hoover is very candid about how he has learned from experience, including his mistakes. He offers personal examples from his experiences at Disney and elsewhere, and tries to write in a light-hearted or whimsical vein. getAbstract.com finds the book strongest when it is strategic and weakest when it tries to be funny, given that with bad bosses you only laugh to keep from crying.
"It shouldn't happen, but it does. It shouldn't be a secret, but all too often it is, and life with my idiot family is evidence that childhood sexual abuse can happen anywhere, to any child. Kathy's story is so much more than a carthartic release though. She is living proof that we don't have to be defined by what others have done to us."--Back cover.
From nationally bestselling author, YouTube star, and Facebook Video sensation Laura Clery comes a collection of comedic essays that paint “an honest, complicated portrait of how your life can change” (SheKnows). Laura Clery makes a living by sharing inappropriate comedy sketches with millions of strangers on the internet. She writes songs about her anatomy, talks trash about her one-eyed rescue pug, and sexually harasses her husband, Stephen. And it pays the bills! Now, in her first-ever book, Laura recounts how she went from being a dangerously impulsive, broke, unemployable, suicidal, cocaine-addicted narcissist, crippled by fear and hopping from one toxic romance to the next…to a more-happy-than-not, somewhat rational, meditating, vegan yogi with good credit, a great marriage, a fantastic career, and four unfortunate-looking rescue animals. Still, above all, Laura remains an amazingly talented, adorable, and vulnerable, self-described…Idiot. With her signature brand of offbeat, no-holds-barred humor, Idiot introduces you to a wildly original—and undeniably relatable—new voice.
A fresh, hilarious, and relatable collection of essays about everything from motherhood and marriage to sobriety and work-life balance (or imbalance) from the nationally bestselling author of the “honest, complicated” (SheKnows) Idiot. TRIGGER WARNING: TORN EVERYTHING! In her first book, Idiot, bestselling author Laura Clery gave us mind-blowingly personal life stories about addiction, toxic relationships, and recovery—establishing herself as the preeminent voice of infinite conviction meets zero impulse control. Here she is two kids later asking, “How did we get here?” Sex. Sex is how we got here. Laura’s life has changed a great deal since she wrote Idiot, but her hilarious candor has only increased with motherhood—plus she tells some of the stories she was too scared to tell in her first book (which is really saying something). “Full of wit” (Publishers Weekly) and charm, Laura shares more than anyone wanted about: -Placenta pills, mom brain, and vibrator manifestation -Nipple-twisting orgies and flinging a butt burrito in your doctor’s face -ADHD, autism, postpartum depression, and the wisdom of a ninety-eight-year-old sage named Anne -Unsolicited dick, sexual assault, and sister-drugging -Cheating, fights, and forgiveness -Choosing love over fear and healing the world Laura does not hold back when it comes to sharing stories of screw-ups, triumphs, and learning from her mistakes. Whether she’s crying into a diaper in a Whole Foods parking lot or desperately soliciting advice from a random elderly stranger (who has most certainly considered a restraining order), Laura is able to laugh at herself even during her worst moments—more importantly, she makes us laugh, cry, and feel less alone in the world.
Idiot Genius: Willa Snap and the Clockwerk Boy is the first book in a new sci-fi polypunk series by Richard Due, author of the award-winning Moon Realm series. What¿s it about? Here¿s Willa (she's eleven):Ever wonder why some crazy scientist hasn¿t blown up the world? I used to wonder about it all the time. Actually, I was pretty sure my mom would be the one to do it.But now I know better. It turns out there¿s a force working hard to keep the world from going KABLOOEY.Who are these people? Wait for it:Idiots. Yep, you heard me right.How do I know? Well, apparently, I¿m an Idiot. At least, according to the Geniuses I am. Confused? I¿m not surprised. You¿re probably an Idiot too. It all began on a Thursday at precisely 8 a.m. I was standing in the family room of our lovely two-story house, directly across the street from Squirrel Brand Park in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The same family room that, in a few minutes, I would never ever, ever see again¿ever.
