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Design Thinking

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World War Z &#8220;The end was near.&#8221; &#8212;Voices from the Zombie War The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years. Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War. Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, &#8220;By excluding the human factor, aren&#8217;t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn&#8217;t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as &#8216;the living dead&#8217;?&#8221; Note: Some of the numerical and factual material contained in this edition was previously published under the auspices of the United Nations Postwar Commission. Eyewitness reports from the first truly global war &#8220;I found &#8216;Patient Zero&#8217; behind the locked door of an abandoned apartment across town. . . . His wrists and feet were bound with plastic packing twine. Although he&#8217;d rubbed off the skin around his bonds, there was no blood. There was also no blood on his other wounds. . . . He was writhing like an animal; a gag muffled his growls. At first the villagers tried to hold me back. They warned me not to touch him, that he was &#8216;cursed.&#8217; I shrugged them off and reached for my mask and gloves. The boy&#8217;s skin was . . . cold and gray . . . I could find neither his heartbeat nor his pulse.&#8221; &#8212;Dr. Kwang Jingshu, Greater Chongqing, United Federation of China &#8220;&#8216;Shock and Awe&#8217;? Perfect name. . . . But what if the enemy can&#8217;t be shocked and awed? Not just won&#8217;t, but biologically can&#8217;t! That&#8217;s what happened that day outside New York City, that&#8217;s the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn&#8217;t shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They&#8217;re not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid!&#8221; &#8212;Todd Wainio, former U.S. Army infantryman and veteran of the Battle of Yonkers &#8220;Two hundred million zombies. Who can even visualize that type of number, let alone combat it? . . . For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth.&#8221; &#8212;General Travis D&#8217;Ambrosia, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe The Zombie Survival Guide The Zombie Survival Guide is your key to survival against the hordes of undead who may be stalking you right now. Fully illustrated and exhaustively comprehensive, this book covers everything you need to know, including how to understand zombie physiology and behavior, the most effective defense tactics and weaponry, ways to outfit your home for a long siege, and how to survive and adapt in any territory or terrain. Top 10 Lessons for Surviving a Zombie Attack 1. Organize before they rise! 2. They feel no fear, why should you? 3. Use your head: cut off theirs. 4. Blades don&#8217;t need reloading. 5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair. 6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it. 7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike. 8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert! 9. No place is safe, only safer. 10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on. Don&#8217;t be carefree and foolish with your most precious asset&#8212;life. This book is your key to survival against the hordes of undead who may be stalking you right now without your even knowing it. The Zombie Survival Guide offers complete protection through trusted, proven tips for safeguarding yourself and your loved ones against the living dead. It is a book that can save your life. Available for purchase at: <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearch?term=World+War+Z+and+The+Zombie+Survival+Guide&entity=audiobook&at=11l3IH&ct=World+War+Z+and+The+Zombie+Survival+Guide-DN-1-9780739343081">Apple - Audiobook (Downloadable format)</a><a href="http://www.qksrv.net/click-2665379-10273919?url=http://www.audible.com/search?advsearchKeywords=World+War+Z+and+The+Zombie+Survival+Guide+Max+Brooks&source_code=COMA0213WS031709&SID=World+War+Z+and+The+Zombie+Survival+Guide-DN-1-9780739343081">Audible - Audiobook (Downloadable format)</a><a href="http://www.tkqlhce.com/click-2665379-11117375?SID=World+War+Z+and+The+Zombie+Survival+Guide-DN-1-9780739343081&url=http://www.audiobooks.com/search/book/World+War+Z+and+The+Zombie+Survival+Guide">audiobooks.com - Audiobook (Downloadable format)</a><a href="http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=World+War+Z+and+The+Zombie+Survival+Guide">downpour - Audiobook (Downloadable format)</a><a href="http://www.qksrv.net/click-2665379-10273919?SID=World+War+Z+and+The+Zombie+Survival+Guide-DN-1-9780739343081&url=http://www.emusic.com/listen/#/search/book/World+War+Z+and+The+Zombie+Survival+Guide">eMusic - Audiobook (Downloadable format)</a>

World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, read by Various

On a frosty morning sometime in the fourteenth century, in a village somewhere in England, a gift known only as Brat was sleeping in a dung heap. &quot;You, girl. Are you alive or dead?&quot; When she opened her eyes, she saw an important-looking woman with a sharp glance and a sharp nose and a wimple starched into sharp pleats. This woman was Jane the Midwife, and she needed a helper... The Midwife's Apprentice by the author of Catherine, Called Birdy Thus begins the funny, wise, compassionate story of the homeless waif who became the midwife's apprentice -- a person with a name and a place in the world. This Newbery Honor-winning story, complete with an epilogue read by the author, and an extensive author interview, conducted by a young &quot;fan,&quot; will usher young listeners into the middle of the fourteenth century. From the Cassette edition. Available for purchase at: <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearch?term=The+Midwife%27s+Apprentice&entity=audiobook&at=11l3IH&ct=The+Midwife%27s+Apprentice-DN-1-9780553750591">Apple - Audiobook (Downloadable format)</a><a href="http://www.qksrv.net/click-2665379-10273919?url=http://www.audible.com/search?advsearchKeywords=The+Midwife%27s+Apprentice+Karen+Cushman&source_code=COMA0213WS031709&SID=The+Midwife%27s+Apprentice-DN-1-9780553750591">Audible - Audiobook (Downloadable format)</a><a href="http://www.tkqlhce.com/click-2665379-11117375?SID=The+Midwife%27s+Apprentice-DN-1-9780553750591&url=http://www.audiobooks.com/search/book/The+Midwife%27s+Apprentice">audiobooks.com - Audiobook (Downloadable format)</a><a href="http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=The+Midwife%27s+Apprentice">downpour - Audiobook (Downloadable format)</a><a href="http://www.qksrv.net/click-2665379-10273919?SID=The+Midwife%27s+Apprentice-DN-1-9780553750591&url=http://www.emusic.com/listen/#/search/book/The+Midwife%27s+Apprentice">eMusic - Audiobook (Downloadable format)</a>

The Midwife's Apprentice by Karen Cushman, read by Charlotte Coleman

Listen to an excerpt from A CURIOUS MIND by Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman, read by Norbert Leo Butz with an introduction from the author. 

A CURIOUS MIND Audiobook Excerpt

Things are going well for Alex Verus. He's on moderately good terms with the Council, his apprentice is settling in and his shop in Camden is gaining quite a reputation.

But when a mysterious woman bursts into the Arcana Emporium one night with an assassin on her tail, Alex is thrown into a plot to revive a long-forbidden ritual. His old enemies are after the secret, as well as a Council mage named Belthas and a mercenary named Garrick, and at least one of them is trying to get Alex killed - if he only knew which.

He can see the future, but knowing who to trust is something else.

Cursed by Benedict Jacka (Audiobook extract)

Listen to chapter one of Erika Swyler's The Book of Speculation audiobook, read by Ari Fliakos.

Simon Watson, a young librarian, lives alone in a house that is slowly crumbling toward the Long Island Sound. His parents are long dead. His mother, a circus mermaid who made her living by holding her breath, drowned in the very water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, ran off six years ago and now reads tarot cards for a traveling carnival.
One June day, an old book arrives on Simon's doorstep, sent by an antiquarian bookseller who purchased it on speculation. Fragile and water damaged, the book is a log from the owner of a traveling carnival in the 1700s, who reports strange and magical things, including the drowning death of a circus mermaid. Since then, generations of "mermaids" in Simon's family have drowned--always on July 24, which is only weeks away.
As his friend Alice looks on with alarm, Simon becomes increasingly worried about his sister. Could there be a curse on Simon's family? What does it have to do with the book, and can he get to the heart of the mystery in time to save Enola?
In the tradition of Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants, Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, and Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, The Book of Speculation is Erika Swyler's moving debut novel about the power of books, family, and magic.

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The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler -  Chapter 1

Socrates hangs out in the country flirting with his buddy Phaedrus. And what is this "Platonic" love you've all heard about? Well, you use the enticement of desire not to rush toward fulfillment, but to get all excited about talking philosophy.

Phaedrus starts off reading a speech by renowned orator Lysias (actually Plato's invention parodying the style of this real guy) about love: Love is a form of madness, where people do things they then regret after love fades. Therefore, it's better to hang out with someone who does NOT love you, i.e., some friend who's concerned with your interests instead of fulfilling his addled desires.

Socrates critiques both this position and the speech itself. We get to learn about what makes for a good persuasive speech (one point: don't put the sentences in random order!) and see both how Socrates would make the same point Lysias does but better, and then what Socrates's true view and preferred presentation is: This takes the form of a long myth that involves a chariot, and the structure of the soul, and how beauty causes us to remember a heavenly world. And after all this, we get to hear more about rhetoric and how back-and-forth, in-person philosophical exchange is way better than reading books.

Mark, Wes, and Dylan are joined by Great Discourses founder Adam Rose, who provides us with a lot of nice literary context, as you should know if you listened to our spiel for signing up for the greatdiscourses.com July or September seminars with a 15% discount using the code PELIFE. (PEL Citizens get 20% off.)

The Partially Examined Life

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Plato's Phaedrus on Love and Speechmaking (Part One)

Solving Problems with Design Thinking by Jeanne Liedtka, Andrew King, and Kevin Bennett on Audible:
http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B01GU2YHAU&source_code=AUDORWS0615169HCY

Get this audiobook for free when you try Audible:
http://www.audible.com/offers/30free?asin=B01GU2YHAU&source_code=AUDORWS0615169HCY

Summary:

Design-oriented firms such as Apple and IDEO have demonstrated how design thinking can directly affect business results. Yet most managers lack a real sense of how to put this new approach to use for issues other than product development and sales growth. Solving Problems with Design Thinking details 10 real-world examples of managers who successfully applied design methods at 3M, Toyota, IBM, Intuit, and SAP; entrepreneurial start-ups such as MeYou Health; and government and social sector organizations including the City of Dublin and Denmark's The Good Kitchen.

Using design skills such as ethnography, visualization, storytelling, and experimentation, these managers produced innovative solutions to problems concerning strategy implementation, sales force support, internal process redesign, feeding the elderly, engaging citizens, and the trade show experience. Here they elaborate on the challenges they faced and the processes and tools they used, offering their personal perspectives and providing a clear path to implementation based on the principles and practices laid out in Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilvie's Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Tool Kit for Managers. 

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Solving Problems with Design Thinking by Jeanne Liedtka et.al, Narrated by Dina Pearlman

Listen to an excerpt of Caroline Angell's ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD audiobook, read by Barrie Kreinik.

An unforgettable debut about a young woman's choice between the future she's always imagined and the people she's come to love.

Charlotte, a gifted and superbly trained young musician, has been blindsided by a shocking betrayal in her promising career when she takes a babysitting job with the McLeans, a glamorous Upper East Side Manhattan family. At first the nanny gig is just a way of tiding herself over until she has licked her wounds and figured out her next move as a composer in New York. But as it turns out, Charlotte is naturally good with children and becomes as deeply fond of the two little boys as they are of her.

When an unthinkable tragedy leaves the McLeans bereft, Charlotte is not the only one who realizes that she's the key to holding little George and Matty's world together. Suddenly, in addition to life's usual puzzles, such as sorting out which suitor is her best match, she finds herself with an impossible choice between her lifelong dreams and the torn-apart family she's come to love.

Caroline Angell's remarkable and generous debut is the story of a young woman's discovery of the things that matter most.

All the Time in the World by Caroline Angell, audiobook excerpt

Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters on Audible:
http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B01246H762&source_code=AUDORWS0711169HLF

Get this audiobook for free when you try Audible:
http://www.audible.com/offers/30free?asin=B01246H762&source_code=AUDORWS0711169HLF

Summary:

Discover the vital relationship that will take your company from "what's next?" to "we have liftoff!" Visionaries have groundbreaking ideas. Integrators make those ideas realities. This explosive combination is the key to getting everything you want out of your business. It worked for Disney. It worked for McDonald's. It worked for Ford. It can work for you. From the author of the best-selling Traction, Rocket Fuel details the integral roles of the visionary and integrator and explains how an effective relationship between the two can help your business thrive. Offering advice to help visionary-minded and integrator-minded individuals find one another, Rocket Fuel also features assessments, so you're able to determine whether you're a visionary or an integrator. Without an integrator, a visionary is far less likely to succeed long term and realize the company's ultimate goals; likewise, with no visionary, an integrator can't rise to his or her full potential. When these two people come together to share their natural talents and innate skill sets, it's like rocket fuel - they have the power to reach new heights for virtually any company or organization. 

Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters, Narrated by Mark C. Winters

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Dead to Me by Lesley Pearse, read by Eve Webster.

When Ruby and Verity met as girls they came from different worlds. Verity was privately educated, living in a beautiful Hampstead home, while Ruby was being raised in extreme poverty. Nevertheless, they became firm friends. 

However, fortunes are not set in stone and soon the girls find their situations reversed. As Ruby goes up in the world, Verity encounters more and more tragedy, but still the girls remain a large part of each other's lives. That is, until one day in 1938 when Ruby says the terrible words 'You're dead to me' and it looks like their friendship might be over for good . . .

Dead To Me by Lesley Pearse (audiobook extract) read by Eve Webster

Listen to an excerpt of Beth Harbison's ONE LESS PROBLEM WITHOUT YOU audiobook, read by Orlagh Cassidy.

Meet Prinny, Chelsea, and Diana. Prinny is the owner of Cosmos, a shop that sells crystals, potions, candles, and hope. It's also a place where no one turns down a little extra-special cocktail that can work as a romance potion or heal a broken heart. But Prinny is in love with her married lawyer, and she'll need nothing short of magic to forget about him.

Chelsea works as a living statue at tourist sites around Washington, DC. It's a thankless job, but it helps pay the rent. That and her part-time job at Cosmos. As her dream of becoming a successful actress starts to seem more remote and the possibility of being a permanently struggling one seems more realistic, Chelsea begins to wonder: At what point do you give up on your dreams? And will love ever be in the cards for her?

Diana Tiesman is married to Leif, a charismatic man who isn't faithful. But no matter how many times he lets her down, Diana just can't let him go. She knows the only way she can truly break away is if she leaves and goes where he will never think to follow. So she ends up at Cosmos with Leif's stepsister, where she makes her homemade teas and tinctures as she figures out whether she'd rather be lonely alone than lonely in love.

In Beth Harbison's One Less Problem Without You, three women suddenly find themselves together at their own very different crossroads. It will take hope, love, strength, and a little bit of magic for them to find their way together.

One Less Problem Without You by Beth Harbison, audiobook excerpt

Stand-up comedian Luisa Omielan's story of how she turned her life around with one simple mantra: What Would Beyoncé Do?!

You know when you find yourself approaching thirty and your dreams are broken? You've got a temping career going nowhere, a student debt that’s mounting and you've just had to move back into your mum’s house.

Then to top it all off, you get absolutely annihilated with heartbreak because of an ex, who is just ‘not ready’ but then manages to be ready, a week later, with someone else. 

And it is here, at your lowest point, that one of your best friends decides to remind you that you are the same age as Beyoncé.

FML.

Luisa Omielan is a stand-up comedian who turned her life around after she answered the mantra every person needs in their life: What Would Beyoncé Do?!

Hilariously funny, wonderfully uplifting and brutally honest, Luisa's memoir shows us all that there is no situation in which Bey can’t save the day. 
You know when you find yourself approaching thirty and your dreams are broken? You've got a temping career going nowhere, a student debt that’s mounting and you've just had to move back into your mum’s house.

Then to top it all off, you get absolutely annihilated with heartbreak because of an ex, who is just ‘not ready’ but then manages to be ready, a week later, with someone else. 

And it is here, at your lowest point, that one of your best friends decides to remind you that you are the same age as Beyoncé.

FML.

Luisa Omielan is a stand-up comedian who turned her life around after she answered the mantra every person needs in their life: What Would Beyoncé Do?!

Hilariously funny, wonderfully uplifting and brutally honest, Luisa's memoir shows us all that there is no situation in which Bey can’t save the day. 

What Would Beyonce Do?! written and read by Luisa Omielan (audiobook extract)

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