This is not a book about one thing. It's not a 250-page dissertation on leadership, teams or motivation. Instead, it's an agenda for building organizations that can flourish in a world of diminished hopes, relentless change and ferocious competition. This is not a book about doing better. It's not a manual for people who want to tinker at the margins. Instead, it's an impassioned plea to reinvent management as we know it—to rethink the fundamental assumptions we have about capitalism, organizational life, and the meaning of work. Leaders today confront a world where the unprecedented is the norm. Wherever one looks, one sees the exceptional and the extraordinary: Business newspapers decrying the state of capitalism. Once-innovative companies struggling to save off senescence. Next gen employees shunning blue chips for social start-ups. Corporate miscreants getting pilloried in the blogosphere. Entry barriers tumbling in what were once oligopolistic strongholds. Hundred year-old business models being rendered irrelevant overnight. Newbie organizations crowdsourcing their most creative work. National governments lurching towards bankruptcy. Investors angrily confronting greedy CEOs and complacent boards. Newly omnipotent customers eagerly wielding their power. Social media dramatically transforming the way human beings connect, learn and collaborate. Obviously, there are lots of things that matter now. But in a world of fractured certainties and battered trust, some things matter more than others. While the challenges facing organizations are limitless; leadership bandwidth isn't. That's why you have to be clear about what really matters now. What are the fundamental, make-or-break issues that will determine whether your organization thrives or dives in the years ahead? Hamel identifies five issues are that are paramount: values, innovation, adaptability, passion and ideology. In doing so he presents an essential agenda for leaders everywhere who are eager to... move from defense to offense reverse the tide of commoditization defeat bureaucracy astonish their customers foster extraordinary contribution capture the moral high ground outrun change build a company that's truly fit for the future Concise and to the point, the book will inspire you to rethink your business, your company and how you lead.

Leading theorists and practitioners trace the evolution of key ideas in urban and regional planning over the last hundred years Over the past hundred years of urbanization and suburbanization, four key themes have shaped urban and regional planning in both theory and practice: livability, territoriality, governance, and reflective professional practice. Planning Ideas That Matter charts the trajectories of these powerful planning ideas in an increasingly interconnected world. The contributors, leading theorists and practitioners, discuss livability in terms of such issues as urban density, land use, and the relationship between the built environment and natural systems; examine levels of territorial organization, drawing on literature on regionalism, metropolitanism, and territorial competition; describe the ways planning connects to policy making and implementation in a variety of political contexts; and consider how planners conceive of their work and learn from practice. Throughout, the emphasis is on how individuals and institutions—including government, business, professional organizations, and universities—have framed planning problems and ideas. The focus is less on techniques and programs than on the underlying concepts that have animated professional discourse over the years. The book is recommended for classroom use, as a reference for scholars and practitioners, and as a history of planning for those interested in the development of the field.

The National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author delivers a collection of essays that serve as the perfect “antidote to mansplaining” (The Stranger). In her comic, scathing essay “Men Explain Things to Me,” Rebecca Solnit took on what often goes wrong in conversations between men and women. She wrote about men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don’t, about why this arises, and how this aspect of the gender wars works, airing some of her own hilariously awful encounters. She ends on a serious note— because the ultimate problem is the silencing of women who have something to say, including those saying things like, “He’s trying to kill me!” This book features that now-classic essay with six perfect complements, including an examination of the great feminist writer Virginia Woolf’s embrace of mystery, of not knowing, of doubt and ambiguity, a highly original inquiry into marriage equality, and a terrifying survey of the scope of contemporary violence against women. “In this series of personal but unsentimental essays, Solnit gives succinct shorthand to a familiar female experience that before had gone unarticulated, perhaps even unrecognized.” —The New York Times “Essential feminist reading.” —The New Republic “This slim book hums with power and wit.” —Boston Globe “Solnit tackles big themes of gender and power in these accessible essays. Honest and full of wit, this is an integral read that furthers the conversation on feminism and contemporary society.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Essential.” —Marketplace “Feminist, frequently funny, unflinchingly honest and often scathing in its conclusions.” —Salon

We are all familiar with the image of the immensely clever judge who discerns the best rule of common law for the case at hand. According to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a judge like this can maneuver through earlier cases to achieve the desired aim—"distinguishing one prior case on his left, straight-arming another one on his right, high-stepping away from another precedent about to tackle him from the rear, until (bravo!) he reaches the goal—good law." But is this common-law mindset, which is appropriate in its place, suitable also in statutory and constitutional interpretation? In a witty and trenchant essay, Justice Scalia answers this question with a resounding negative. In exploring the neglected art of statutory interpretation, Scalia urges that judges resist the temptation to use legislative intention and legislative history. In his view, it is incompatible with democratic government to allow the meaning of a statute to be determined by what the judges think the lawgivers meant rather than by what the legislature actually promulgated. Eschewing the judicial lawmaking that is the essence of common law, judges should interpret statutes and regulations by focusing on the text itself. Scalia then extends this principle to constitutional law. He proposes that we abandon the notion of an everchanging Constitution and pay attention to the Constitution's original meaning. Although not subscribing to the “strict constructionism” that would prevent applying the Constitution to modern circumstances, Scalia emphatically rejects the idea that judges can properly “smuggle” in new rights or deny old rights by using the Due Process Clause, for instance. In fact, such judicial discretion might lead to the destruction of the Bill of Rights if a majority of the judges ever wished to reach that most undesirable of goals. This essay is followed by four commentaries by Professors Gordon Wood, Laurence Tribe, Mary Ann Glendon, and Ronald Dworkin, who engage Justice Scalia’s ideas about judicial interpretation from varying standpoints. In the spirit of debate, Justice Scalia responds to these critics. Featuring a new foreword that discusses Scalia’s impact, jurisprudence, and legacy, this witty and trenchant exchange illuminates the brilliance of one of the most influential legal minds of our time.