What is it that made Starbucks an overnight sensation and separated it from other coffee house companies? Why do many products with great product innovation, perfect locations, terrific customer experiences, even breakthrough advertising fail to get the same visceral traction in the marketplace as brands like Apple and Nike? Patrick Hanlon, senior advertising executive and founder of Thinktopia, decided to find the answers. His search revealed seven definable assets that together construct...

At midday on May 4, 1970, after three days of protests, several thousand students and the Ohio National Guard faced off at opposite ends of the grassy campus commons at Kent State University. At noon, the Guard moved out. Twenty-four minutes later, Guardsmen launched a thirteen-second, sixty-seven-shot barrage that left four students dead and nine wounded, one paralyzed for life. The story doesn’t end there, though. A horror of far greater proportions was narrowly averted minutes later whe...

A quiet summer night...a neat suburban house...and another innocent, happy family is shattered -- the latest victims of a grisly series of hideous sacrificial killings that no one understands, and no one can stop. Nobody lives to tell of the unimaginable carnage. Only the blood-stained walls bear witness.All hope rests on Special Agent Will Graham, who must peer inside the killer's tortured soul to understand his rage, to anticipate and prevent his next vicious crime. Desperate for...

Called by New York Times columnist David Brooks the "smartest and most devastating" critic of President George W. Bush's Iraq policies, Peter W. Galbraith was the earliest expert to describe Iraq's breakup into religious and ethnic entities, a reality that is now commonly accepted.The Iraq war was intended to make the United States more secure, bring democracy to the Middle East, intimidate Iran and Syria, help win the war on terror, consolidate American world leadership, ...

Drawing on new interviews and previously unavailable documents, James Mann offers a fresh and compelling narrative—a new history assessing what Ronald Reagan did and did not do to help bring America's four-decade conflict with the Soviet Union to a close.As he did so masterfully in Rise of the Vulcans, Mann sheds new light on the hidden aspects of American foreign policy. He reveals previously undisclosed secret messages between Reagan and Moscow; internal White House intr...

This compelling assessment of U. S.—China relations is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of the globalized world.Many see China's rise as a threat to the U. S. leadership in Asia and beyond. Thomas J. Christensen argues instead that the real challenge lies in dissuading China from regional aggression while eliciting its global cooperation. Drawing on decades of scholarship and experience as a senior diplomat, Christensen offers a deep perspective on China's mili...

Jerry Broadfield thinks he's a good cop. But now he's been charged with extortion—and his former buddies in the NYPD would like to see him laid out on a morgue slab for squealing to a committee on police corruption. Suddenly, he's got a lot of enemies, and when a dead call girl turns up in his apartment, his troubles get even bigger. Broadfield screams "setup," but nobody believes him—except ex-policeman, now unlicensed PI Matthew Scudder. Because Broadfield turned traitor, no cop is going...

The hooker was young, pretty … and dead, butchered in a Greenwich Village apartment. The prime suspect, a minister's son, was also dead, the victim of a jailhouse suicide. The case is closed, as far as the NYPD is concerned. Now the murdered prostitute's father wants it opened again—that's where Matthew Scudder comes in. But this assignment carries the unmistakable stench of sleaze and perversion, luring Scudder into a sordid world of phony religion and murderous lust where children must d...

"It's hard to imagine any American reading this book and not seeing his country in a new, and deeply troubling, light."—The New York Times Book ReviewThe world's foremost critic of U.S. foreign policy exposes the hollow promises of democracy in American actions abroad—and at home.The United States has repeatedly asserted its right to intervene militarily against "failed states" around the globe. In...

The United States invaded Iraq with grand ambitions to bring it democracy and thereby transform the Middle East. Instead, Iraq has disintegrated into three constituent components: a pro-western Kurdistan in the north, an Iran-dominated Shiite entity in the south, and a chaotic Sunni Arab region in the center. The country is plagued by insurgency and is in the opening phases of a potentially catastrophic civil war.George W. Bush broke up Iraq when he ordered its invasion in 2003. Th...

"It's the animal in us," we often hear when we've been bad. But why not when we're good? Primates and Philosophers tackles this question by exploring the biological foundations of one of humanity's most valued traits: morality.In this provocative audiobook, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that modern-day evolutionary biology takes far too dim a view of the natural world, emphasizing our "selfish" genes. Science has thus exacerbated our reciprocal habits of blaming natur...

The Upcycle is the eagerly awaited follow-up to Cradle to Cradle, the most consequential ecological manifesto of our time. Now, drawing on the lessons gained from ten years of putting the cradle-to-cradle concept into practice with businesses, governments, and ordinary people, William McDonough and Michael Braungart envision the next step in the solution to our ecological crisis: We don't just reuse resources with greater effectiveness, we actually improve them as we use ...