Performance Culture

Prove you are the most cultured person in the room with 500 true trivia facts about pop culture. These facts are so absurd some might even say that they sound like bull$#*t! Explore the scandalous and the secretive in this all access addition to the True Facts series that spills all the gossip of your favorite celebrities, movies, music, and more. Give the gift that keeps giving to friends, family, fathers, or grads and test your knowledge

The Art of Being British is your hilariously insightful guide to mastering the quirks, customs, and glorious contradictions of British life. Whether you’re moving to England, visiting the UK, or marrying a Brit, this laugh-out-loud book is the perfect crash course in understanding what makes Britain so wonderfully peculiar.

Alternating between personal anecdote, hilarious insight, and smart analysis, Luke Skywalker Can't Read contends that Barbarella is good for you, that monster movies are just romantic comedies with commitment issues, and that Dracula and Sherlock Holmes are total hipsters and, most shockingly, shows how virtually everyone in the Star Wars universe is functionally illiterate.

Want to know more about the life of Jennifer Lawrence? Listen to this audiobook to learn all about Jen's childhood, family, rise to stardom, likes and dislikes, romantic life, and more!

Technology thought leader and organizational architect Matt K. Parker breaks down the counterintuitive principles and practices that radically collaborative organizations thrive on. By combining the latest insights from organizational science, sociology, and psychology, he illuminates four imperatives that all radically collaborative organizations must embrace in order to succeed: team autonomy, managerial devolution, deficiency gratification, and candid vulnerability.

Tumbling from one love entanglement to another, 30-something teacher Izzy Comyn has a predilection for inappropriate men. Over the three hilarious series of Up the Garden Path, Izzy, played by Imelda Staunton, deals with the complicated ups and downs of her attempts to find true love.

As a child, Amalia always thought she would grow up to be a teacher - that was until she saw dancers perform in her town square. She was fascinated by the way they twirled and swayed, and she knew that someday she would be a dancer, too.

In the past decade, there has never been such a pop culture titan as Game of Thrones. We all now live in the seven Kingdoms of Westeros, yearn for the Iron Throne, believe in dragons and know the magic word that makes them breathe fire. What is it in the HBO show, spawned by George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels, that has propelled it into the cultural Hall of Fame and made it such a global phenomenon, with loyal fans from all nationalities, cultures, ages, genders, and even tastes?

This book will change how you think about what drives you to succeed. Groundbreaking new research reveals how your state of mind holds the key to your motivation, success and happiness. Compelling evidence combined with inspiring stories and insights will unlock a powerful new mind-set that will instantly boost your performance and open your eyes to what it really takes to excel.

This is no stuffy music appreciation lesson. Author Kathleen Krull makes these great artists come alive. From Bach to Mozart, George Gershwin to Woody Guthrie, Beethoven to Gilbert and Sullivan, you'll learn all about their lives and music, what they were really like and what inspired these geniuses of musical expression. Filled with interesting trivia and gossip, Lives of the Musicians is the ultimate guide to the great composers.

Cinema emerged alongside the rules that ushered in boxing’s modern age and the “squared circle” proved the ideal stage for cinematic display. The public had its first taste of the new medium in 1894 through a heavyweight bout, recognized today as the world’s first feature film. Smash Hit: Race, Crime, and Culture in Boxing Films uses twenty films as the basis of a hard-nosed exploration as to how the genre held a bloody mirror to twentieth century America’s most prominent social anxieties, elucidating two conjoined mediums that serve as bellwether to an ever-shifting cultural zeitgeist.

The study of classic and contemporary films can provide a powerful avenue to understand the experience of mental illness. In Madness at the Movies, James Charney, MD, a practicing psychiatrist and long-time cinephile, examines films that delve deeply into characters’ inner worlds, and he analyzes moments that help define their particular mental illness.

In this fascinating and deeply researched book, Sharon Marcus challenges everything you thought you knew about our obsession with fame. Icons are not merely famous for being famous; the media alone cannot make or break stars; fans are not simply passive dupes. Instead, journalists, the public, and celebrities themselves all compete, passionately and expertly, to shape the stories we tell about celebrities and fans. The result: a high-stakes drama as endless as it is unpredictable.

Most companies strive to attract talented people, retain them for years, watch them engage in their work and have them consistently perform at a high level. In order to achieve this, they spend significant time, money and resources providing their team with “learning and development” opportunities. Unfortunately, these initiatives rarely produce an ROI because they are not customized and personalized for each employee.

In Whatever Works, Thalma Lobel explores groundbreaking psychological research on job performance, satisfaction, and creativity. Did you know that just doodling in a certain way can increase your creativity? That looking at something green for forty seconds will improve your attention? That crossing your legs similarly to an interviewer could get you the job? That the mere presence of a smartphone on your desk can lessen your performance, even if it's turned off? These are the invisible factors that nudge our behavior on a daily basis.

Armstrong on Reinventing Performance Management presents a holistic approach to performance management, drawing on Michael Armstrong's vast research and experience. Most organizations have performance management processes in one form or another, but these are often based on formal annual reviews, forced rankings and directly linked to pay decisions. These traditional approaches are often at the expense of ongoing, continuous feedback and focus on looking back at what has or has not been achieved rather than looking forward.

Exception to the Rule links ancient wisdom with contemporary science on high performance, teamwork, and engagement. Building an organizational culture based on classical virtues - of trust, compassion, courage, justice, wisdom, temperance and hope - is both strategically smart and a better way to live. Exception to the Rule walks you through the steps of helping everyone in your organization focus on character defined by virtue.

In a long line of beloved books, Loud Pictures stands as Marc Spitz’s final project. This big, broad, noisy, and expansive exploration of art marries the two things Marc loved most—movies and rock and roll. In many ways, films can become imprinted on our brains because of their soundtracks.

Splatter Capital shows how a subgenre of cinematic horror has developed a unique perspective on the cycles of capitalism. It argues that the messy brand of horror mobilized in gore or "splatter" films is extremely responsive to the internal contradictions that threaten the future sustainability of capitalist accumulation. And, while responding to the prospect of that end, splatter promotes an extant truth: capitalist accumulation is and always has been a nightmare of systematized bloodshed.

Best movie quotes for all occasions: That’s where I come in. I’ve scoured the movie world to track down the most appropriate, best movie quotes for every occasion. From weddings to pre-game pep talks, I’ve found the quotes that are moving, inspirational, or just plain hilarious that do more than just remind of the movies they came from. These quotes transcend their stories and enrich your life.