While visiting Japan, animation writer Chris Robinson gets lost. Drifting through Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Kyoto, he stumbles into a string of encounters―with mysterious figures like Bob Dylan, Haruki Murakami, sumo wrestlers, and Big Bird, and with Japanese animators both living and dead. Each meeting draws him into a deep, dark, uncanny current of Japanese animation―one that has nothing to do with Godzilla, Akira, anime, manga, or Hayao Miyazaki.The original book, Time Out of Mi...

A sweeping history of America during the tumultuous decades between the ends of World War I and World War II, when a mainly rural, isolationist republic was transformed into a nuclear superpower and the leader of the free world.Through the prosperous 1920s and its culture wars to the Great Crash and Depression of the Thirties, the fits and starts of the New Deal, and then the all-consuming fight to defeat fascism in World War II, the twenty-five years from 1920 thr...

Test more. Assume less. How a scientific mindset drives smarter decisions in an uncertain world.Every day, leaders face high-stakes decisions about products, customers, strategy, and resource allocation. Yet many of these decisions rely on untested assumptions. Overconfidence, gut instinct, and "what worked before" often stand in for evidence, leaving companies exposed to costly missteps. And the problem goes beyond the workplace: we all make countless choices abou...

For more than two decades, The Warren Buffett Portfolio has guided investors toward mastering the art of focus investing―a strategy that concentrates on a select group of superior businesses rather than spreading resources thin across countless holdings. With the release of the 25th Anniversary Edition, Robert G. Hagstrom, one of the most respected interpreters of Warren Buffett's investment philosophy, offers fresh insights into why concentrated portfolios remain the key to long-...

In the chaotic months after Pearl Harbor, the Pacific War was anything but certain. The US Navy, reeling from sudden loss, scrambled to slow Japanese momentum, while the Imperial Japanese Navy pressed outward, convinced that seizing Southeast Asia's resources was essential to survival. This book captures that dangerous, uncertain moment—from December 1941 through April 1942—when the outcome of the Pacific War remained very much in doubt.Moving across a vast maritime battlefield,

In 1656, after being excommunicated from Amsterdam's Portuguese-Jewish community for "abominable heresies" and "monstrous deeds," the young Baruch Spinoza abandoned his family's import business to dedicate his life to philosophy. He quickly became notorious across Europe for his views on God, the Bible, and miracles, as well as for his uncompromising defense of free thought. Yet the radicalism of Spinoza's views has long obscured that his primary reason for turning to philosophy was to ans...

Crime and gentrification are hot button issues that easily polarize racially diverse neighborhoods. How do residents, activists, and politicians navigate the thorny politics of race as they fight crime or resist gentrification? And do conflicts over competing visions of neighborhood change necessarily divide activists into racially homogeneous camps, or can they produce more complex alliances and divisions? In Us versus Them, Jan Doering answers these questions through an in-depth...

Your business problems are community problems. Solve them and scale with help from the leader in the field.The world's most successful businesses leaders understand that creating a shared social identity around their products and services is the most efficient path to scaling revenue, differentiating products, promoting customer success and retention, and seizing category ownership. The Business of Belonging: How to Make Community Your Competitive Advantage

The Civil War ended more than 150 years ago, yet our nation remains fiercely divided over its enduring legacies. In A Thousand May Fall, Pulitzer Prize finalist Brian Matthew Jordan returns us to the war itself. Creating an intimate, absorbing chronicle from the ordinary soldier's perspective, he allows us to see the Civil War anew—and through unexpected eyes.At the heart of Jordan's vital account is the 107th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, which was at once representative and e...

In Institution Building in Weak States, Andrew Radin argues that the international community's approach to building state institutions needs its own reform. This innovative book proposes a new strategy, rooted in a rigorous analysis of recent missions.In contrast to the common strategy of foreign interveners—imposing models drawn from Western countries—Radin shows how pursuing incremental change that accommodates local political interests is more likely to produce effectiv...

A stirring true story of the journalists who dared to oppose Hitler—and the campaign waged against them.After serving in the First World War, Adolf Hitler encountered a serious obstacle to his plotting for power when the Munich Post, drawing on sources within the Nazi Party, began tracking the corruption and dark dreams of his inner circle. With leaked documents from Hitler's political rivals, who were shocked by his violent rhetoric and fearing the worst,...

George Washington—hero of the French and Indian War, commander in chief of the Continental Army, and first president of the United States—died on December 14, 1799. But what do we really know about Washington as an upper-class man?Washington is frequently portrayed by his biographers as America at its unflinching best: tall, shrewd, determined, resilient, stalwart, and tremendously effective in action. But this aggressive and muscular version of Washington is largely a creation of ...