This witty, practical guide applies the latest scientific research to the workplace issues people really care about: status obsession, bosses, climbing the ladder, and the game of survival.

Tired of swimming with the sharks? Fed up with that big ape down the hall? Real animals can teach us better ways to thrive in the workplace jungle. You’re ambitious and want to get ahead, but what’s the best way to do it? Become the biggest, baddest predator? The proverbial 800-pound gorilla? Or does nature teach you to be more subtle and sophisticated? Richard Conniff, the acclaimed author of The Natural History of the Rich, has survived savage beasts in the workplace jungle, where he hooted and preened in the corner office as a publishing executive. He’s also spent time studying how animals operate in the real jungles of the Amazon and the African bush. What he shows in The Ape in the Corner Office is that nature built you to be nice. Doing favors, grooming coworkers with kind words, building coalitions—these tools for getting ahead come straight from the jungle. The stereotypical Darwinian hard-charger supposedly thinks only about accumulating resources. But highly effective apes know it’s often smarter to give them away. That doesn’t mean it’s a peaceable kingdom out there, however. Conniff shows that you can become more effective by understanding how other species negotiate the tricky balance between conflict and cooperation. Conniff quotes one biologist on a chimpanzee’s obsession with rank: “His attempts to maintain and achieve alpha status are cunning, persistent, energetic, and time-consuming. They affect whom he travels with, whom he grooms, where he glances, how often he scratches, where he goes, what times he gets up in the morning.” Sound familiar? It’s the same behavior you can find written up in any issue of BusinessWeek or The Wall Street Journal. The Ape in the Corner Office connects with the day-to-day of the workplace because it helps explain what people are really concerned about: How come he got the wing chair with the gold trim? How can I survive as that big ape’s subordinate without becoming a spineless yes-man? Why does being a lone wolf mean being a loser? And, yes, why is it that jerks seem to prosper—at least in the short run? Also available as a Random House AudioBook and an eBook

From corner office to 24/7, the world of work has permeated every facet of our culture. The Way We Work explores in over 150 A-Z entries, the origins and impact of the concepts, ideas, fads and themes have become part of the business vernacular, shedding linght on the dynamic ways in which business and society both influence and reflect each other. Assessing the evolving business environment in the context of technology development, globalization, and workplace diversity, The Way We Work covers the gamut of business-related topics, including Crisis Management, Outsourcing, and Whistleblowing, as well as popular subjects, such as Casual Friday, Feng Shui, and Napster.

Based on the largest worldwide study of employee engagement and more than a decade of research, Gallup explains the 12 elements essential to motivating employees and features the inspiring stories of 12 managers who succeeded in these dimensions. More than a decade ago, Gallup combed through its database of more than 1 million employee and manager interviews to identify the elements most important in sustaining workplace excellence. These elements were revealed in the international bestseller First, Break All the Rules. 12: The Elements of Great Managing is that book’s long-awaited sequel. It follows great managers as they harness employee engagement to turn around a failing call center, save a struggling hotel, improve patient care in a hospital, maintain production through power outages, and successfully face a host of other challenges in settings around the world. Gallup’s study now includes 10 million employee and manager interviews spanning 114 countries and conducted in 41 languages. In 12, Gallup weaves its latest insights with recent discoveries in the fields of neuroscience, game theory, psychology, sociology and economics. Written for managers and employees of companies large and small, 12 explains what every company needs to know about creating and sustaining employee engagement.

The power of collaboration, from Lennon and McCartney to Wozniak and Jobs: “An inspiring book that also happens to be a great read” (Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive). Throughout history, partners have buoyed each other to better work—though often one member is little known to the general public. (See Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, or Vincent and Theo van Gogh.) Powers of Two draws on neuroscience, social psychology, and cultural history to present the social foundations of creativity, with the pair as its primary embodiment. Revealing the six essential stages through which creative intimacy unfolds, this book shows how pairs begin to talk, think, and even look like each other; how the most successful ones thrive on conflict; and why some cease to work together while others carry on. At once intuitive and deeply surprising, Powers of Two will reshape the way you view individuals, relationships, and society itself. “A rare glimpse into the private realms of duos . . . A natural storyteller.” —The New York Times “A book about magic, about the Beatles, about the chemistry between people, about neuroscience, and about the buddy system; it examines love and hate, harmony and dissonance, and everything in between . . . Wise, funny, surprising, and completely engrossing.” —Susan Orlean “We sometimes think of creativity as coming from brilliant loners. In fact, it more often happens when bright people pair up and complement each other. Shenk’s fascinating book shows how to spark the power of this phenomenon.” —Walter Isaacson “Surprising, compelling . . . Shenk banishes the idea of solitary genius by demonstrating that our richest art and science come from collaboration: we need one another not only for love, but also for thinking and imagining and growing and being.” —Andrew Solomon

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect refers to the sensitive dependence on initial conditions, where minimal changes in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can lead to large differences in a later stage. Beyond the climate sciences, the concept of the domino effect is similarly used as a broader term for any situation in which a relatively minor change is expected to cause significant black swan events. In this context, the simple flap of a butterfly's wings can trigger tornados in far distant regions. But it was not long before the beginning of this millennium that almost simultaneously and everywhere such butterflies began to swarm. Under these circumstances, the Doomsday Clock appears to have lost its pendulum as its hands spin faster and faster. Any serious problem like this requires a devil's advocate to hold up the worst-case scenario to the public, so they simply cannot look away. As a former chief executive officer, the author is well aware of the importance of psycho-sociologically driven collective behaviors—no matter the state of affairs. That's why the novelist focused on the underlying group dynamics with regard to an imminent ecological apocalypse when he plotted the storyline on hand. His protagonist, a man, badly scarred by the suicide of his wife, who wanted to take him with her to the death, fulfils the most ardent wish of his youth and goes on a circumnavigation of the globe on the yacht La Vie—which he reconstructed from a mere wreck. Nevertheless, even in the remotest corners of the earth, he cannot escape himself. On his journey, he meets strong women who lead him back to life. Together they develop an ingenious gambit to save our planet Earth from an environmental doomsday after all—and provocatively hold up a mirror to society. A passionate novel about perseverance and an escape from one's own failures along winding paths, authentically told by an author who draws on a wealth of life experience. A story that illustrates that every failure carries the immanent obligation to change.

The evidence is clear: Inclusive cultures and businesses with gender diversity in leadership get better results. Yet women still aren't proportionally represented within the upper ranks of business. This problem has a big price tag, and solving it has a big payoff. Difference Works offers a unique solution by giving leaders and managers the ability to understand and appreciate different approaches to work-and so increase engagement and performance. Combining her own experience as a C-level executive with extensive research and insights on workplace behavior, Caroline Turner provides powerful and practical tools to change any business environment for the better. Readers will gain the profound understanding that difference works.

A journey of whim, humor, and self-discovery along the Connecticut River When retired CEO Ramsay Peard, 61, called his old friend David Morine, 59, and asked the longtime conservationist if he wanted to canoe the Connecticut River, Morine said he’d do it under one condition: no camping. “We’ll rely on the kindness of strangers.” And that’s what they did. Mooching their way down the river and staying with strangers every night, Morine and Peard got an inside look at such issues as the demise of farming, the loss of manufacturing, gay rights, and Wal-Mart versus Main Street, and they were able to delve deep into the lives of complete strangers. But Morine soon realized the one life he never dug into was Peard’s. After spending a month with him in a canoe, he had no idea that his friend’s innermost thoughts had taken a fateful course. Written in the tradition of Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods,this book will be treasured by conservationists, canoeists, and old friends still seeking a thrill. Everyone else will be delightfully entertained.

This volume is a unique collection of inspiring reflections designed to enhance the reader’s understanding of both the importance and the relativity of business ethics. It invites experts and specialists of business ethics to explore threads from history, religion, philosophy and biology, but will also appeal to the thoughtful citizen, academic, businessman, banker and lawyer who has chosen to critically reflect upon the value of ethical conduct in today’s world. The book draws from a rich mine of academic sources to consider how business ethics relate to today’s key concerns, including wealth inequality, the need for effective financial regulations and sustainability—how best to engage with our duties to planet earth. Nourished by the author’s life-long practice of international law and his exploration of academic thinking on ethics, this book is neither an analysis nor a sermon. It is an invitation to make the world a better place by engaging in ethical thought.

According to the law of the jungle, the behavior of wild animals can be equated with natural human instincts not only for competition and reproduction, but also for violence and exploitation. Drawing on numerous novels and cultural events at the turn of the twentieth century, The Birth of a Jungle examines how the characteristics and imagery of wild animals were evoked to explore a wide range of human behaviors, including homosexuality, labor exploitation, and the lynching of African Americans. Throughout the study, Michael Lundblad emphasizes what he terms "the discourse of the jungle": Darwinist-Freudian constructions of "the human" and "the animal" that redefined various behaviors in relation to animal instincts. With nuanced, attentive readings, Lundblad reveals how these formulations of the human animal, despite reigning critical interpretations, were often contested rather than reinforced in Progressive-Era texts. Henry James's "The Beast in the Jungle" and fiction by Jack London serve as opportunities to examine changing attitudes toward sexuality and queer desire. Works like Andrew Carnegie's The Gospel of Wealth and Frank Norris's The Octopus offer insights into another type of jungle: the capitalist marketplace. The real-life electrocution of a circus elephant at Coney Island and Upton Sinclair's muckraking classic, The Jungle, inform the subsequent discussion of animalized class warfare. Understandings of race and evolution are explored through the work of William James, Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan of the Apes, and the role of William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925. Engagingly written and cogently argued, The Birth of a Jungle reveals the significance of animality in relation to the history of sexuality, literary naturalism, and critical race studies, while highlighting how the discourse of the jungle remains a disturbing yet powerful presence in today's culture.