Books and Beans PH

📚 The Art of War
🖋 Sun Tzu
📌 Available at

📖 'Opportunities multiply as they are seized.'

Written in the 6th century BC, Sun Tzu's The Art of War is a Chinese military treatise that is still revered today as the ultimate commentary on war and military strategy. The Art of War focuses on the principle that one can outsmart your foe mentally by thinking very carefully about strategy before resorting to physical battle, this philosophy continues to be applied to the corporate and business world.

Sun Tzu's timeless appraisal of the different aspects of warfare is laid out in 13 chapters, including sections on `Laying Plans', `Waging War' and `Terrain'. Words that are as resonant today in every aspect of our lives as they were when he wrote them.

The Art of War Collins Classics by Sun Tzu is a very influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy that also teaches how one can effectively deal with difficult situations. It is more than just war but helps people prepare for other types of conflict.

📚 The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
🖋 Arthur Conan Doyle
📌 Available at

📖 Featuring the last 12 stories ever written about the infamous detective, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes contains some of Conan Doyle's most villainous and unusual characters.

The 1920s was a disenchanting era, and the darker mood of many of these stories reflects the environment at the time. Some even felt that the stories showed Conan Doyle exploring Spiritualism, as it was an area he was interested in at the time and the mental derangement and physical disfigurements that crop up in many of the stories allude to the horrors of the First World War.

The collection includes The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire, The Adventure of the Creeping Man and The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane.

📚 The Picture of Dorian Gray
🖋 Oscar Wilde
📌 Available at

📖 'How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young... If it was only the other way!'

Wilde's first and only published novel recounts the story of handsome Dorian Gray who upon having his portrait painted desires that it will age and grow ugly while he may remain eternally beautiful. The painting, which reflects each of Gray's sins and transgressions in its hideousness, haunts him until it finally becomes unbearable. In this dark tale of duplicity and mortality, Wilde creates a world where art and reality collide.

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📚 War: Tales of Conflict and Strife
🖋 Roald Dahl
📌 Available

📖 In war, are we at our heroic best or our cowardly worst?

Featuring the autobiographical stories from Roald Dahl’s time as a fighter pilot in the Second World War as well as seven other tales of conflict and strife, Dahl reveals the human side of our most inhumane activity.

Among other stories, you’ll read about the pilot shot down in the Libyan desert, the fighter plane that vanishes inside a mysterious thick white cloud and the soldier who returns from war but has been shockingly changed by his experiences.

Featuring extraordinary cover art by Charming Baker, whose paintings echo the dark and twisted world of Dahl’s short stories.

📚 Lust: Tales of Craving and Desire
🖋 Roald Dahl
📌 Available at

📖 From Roald Dahl, the master of the sting in the tail, a newly collected book of his darkest stories.

We fall not in love but in lust...

Lust, in all its myriad forms, consumes us. What won't we do to achieve our heart's desire? In these ten tales of twisted love master storyteller Roald Dahl explores how our darkest impulses reveal who we really are. Here you'll read a story concerning wife swapping with a sting in its tail, hear of the aphrodisiac that drives men into a frenzy, discover the last act in a tale of jilted first love and discover the naked truth of art, among others. In Lust, understand our deepest secrets, desires and fears.

📚 Allegiant
🖋 Veronica Roth
📌 Available at

📖 “The plot is believably complex, and Roth makes the wise decision in this last installment to reveal the secrets early on and let the focus fall on her characters as they grapple with this new reality, the choices that face them, and the repercussions of their actions.” — Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

The faction-based society that Tris Prior once believed in is shattered—fractured by violence and power struggles and scarred by loss and betrayal. So when offered a chance to explore the world past the limits she’s known, Tris is ready. Perhaps beyond the fence, she and Tobias will find a simple new life together, free from complicated lies, tangled loyalties, and painful memories.

But Tris’s new reality is even more alarming than the one she left behind. Old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless. Explosive new truths change the hearts of those she loves. And once again, Tris must battle to comprehend the complexities of human nature—and of herself—while facing impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice, and love.

📚 Silver Linings Playbook
🖋 Matthew Quick
📌 Available at

📖 The Silver Linings Playbook is the riotous and poignant story of how one man regains his memory and comes to terms with the magnitude of his wife’s betrayal.

During the years he spends in a neural health facility, Pat Peoples formulates a theory about silver linings: he believes his life is a movie produced by God, his mission is to become physically fit and emotionally supportive, and his happy ending will be the return of his estranged wife Nikki. When Pat goes to live with his parents everything seems changed; no one will talk to him about Nikki; his old friends are saddled with families; the Philadelphia Eagles keep losing, making his father moody; and his new therapist seems to be recommending adultery as a form of therapy.

When Pat meets the tragically widowed, physically fit, and clinically depressed Tiffany, she offers to act as a liaison between him and his wife, if only he will give up watching football, agree to perform in this year’s Dance Away Depression competition, and promise not to tell anyone about their ‘contract.’ All the while, Pat keeps searching for his silver lining.

In this brilliantly written debut novel, Matthew Quick takes us inside Pat’s mind, deftly showing us the world from his distorted yet endearing perspective. The result is a touching and funny story that helps us look at both depression and love in a wonderfully refreshing way.

📚 The Maze Runner Series
🖋 James Dashner
📌 Available at

📖 Written by James Dashner, the bestselling Maze Runner series is a set of young adult sci-fi books that follow a group of teens who attempt to find their way out of a mysterious place they call The Glade by way of a maze. 

The Maze Runner series follows Thomas, Teresa, and the Gladers as they fight to survive in a devastated world governed by the mysterious Wicked. The popular dystopian teen fiction book series includes the books The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials, The Death Cure, The Kill Order, and The Fever Code. The first three Maze Runner books have been adapted into feature films, with further installments planned.

Includes: The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials, The Death Cure, The Kill Order, and The Fever Code

When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He's welcomed to his new home, the Glade, by strangers—boys whose memories are also gone. 

Outside the towering stone walls that surround the Glade is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It's the only way out—and no one's ever made it through alive.

Join Thomas and the Gladers in all five books in the Maze Runner series as they uncover the secrets of the maze; discover WICKED, the shadowy organization who put them there; and fight to survive in a new and dangerous world. 

Enter the World of the Maze Runner series and never stop running.

📚 Reclaim Your Heart | Personal Insights on Breaking Free from Life's Shackles
🖋 Yasmin Mogahed
📌 Available at

📖 Reclaim Your Heart is not just a self-help book. It is a manual about the journey of the heart in and out of the ocean of this life. It is a book about how to keep your heart from sinking to the depths of that ocean, and what to do when it does. It is a book about redemption, about hope, about renewal. Every heart can heal, and each moment is created to bring us closer to that transformative return. Reclaim Your Heart is about finding that moment when everything stops and suddenly looks different. It is about finding your own awakening. And then returning to the better, truer, and freer version of yourself. Many of us live our lives, entrapped by the same repeated patterns of heartbreak and disappointment. Many of us have no idea why this happens. Reclaim Your Heart is about freeing the heart from this slavery. It is about the journey in an out of life's most deceptive traps. This book was written to awaken the heart and provide a new perspective on love, loss, happiness, and pain. Providing a manual of sorts, Reclaim Your Heart will teach readers how to live in this life without allowing life to own you. It is a manual of how to protect your most prized possession: the heart.

📚 Spirituality in Patient Care: Why, How, When and What
🖋 Harold G. Koenig MD
📌 Available at

📖 “I highly recommend this book as reading for all physicians and would certainly recommend it for any course on medical ethics and/or required reading for any medical student.”—Journal of the National Medical Association

Spirituality in Patient Care addresses the whys, hows, whens, and whats of patient-centered integration of spirituality into patient care so that health professionals, including physicians in primary care and the medical and surgical specialties, can utilize this information in clinical practice. Whole chapters are also included offering profession-specific information for nurses, clergy, mental health professionals, social workers, and occupational and physical therapists. Other chapters address topics like culturally and spiritually sensitive care for each major religious group, potential limitations or barriers to application, and even what may happen when research on spirituality and health is misapplied. Throughout these chapters, readers will find new case histories and clinical examples on how to integrate spirituality into patient care depending on their particular circumstances. A ten-session model course curriculum on spirituality and health care for medical students and residents is also provided, with suggestions on how to adapt it for nursing, social work, physical and occupational therapy, and mental health training programs.

📚 Conversations with Ban Ki-Moon: What the United Nations is Really Like: The View From the Top
🖋 Tom Plate
📌 Available at

📖 Only eight people have been privileged to hold the job of Secretary General since the United Nations’ founding in 1945. And only one of them has ever told the inside story of the UN while still holding that special office. That man is Ban Ki-moon, the veteran diplomat and former star foreign minister of South Korea now in his second term as SG. Because he understands that the UN is in crisis and because he fears the reasons for this are not widely understood he believes it is time to unveil the truth about the organization and explain why its failure would be a catastrophe. The result, via unprecedented conversations with American journalist Tom Plate, is a deeply revealing book about the kinds of issues and challenges whose resolutions (or lack thereof) will in fact determine the future of the world.

📚 Who Moved My Cheese?
🖋 Spencer Johnson MD
📌 Available at

📖 Who Moved My Cheese? is a simple parable that reveals profound truths. It is an amusing and enlightening story of four characters who live in a "Maze" and look for "Cheese" to nourish them and make them happy.

Two are mice named Sniff and Scurry. And two are "Littlepeople" -- beings the size of mice who look and act a lot like people. Their names are Hem and Haw.

"Cheese" is a metaphor for what you want to have in life -- whether it is a good job, a loving relationship, money, a possession, health, or spiritual peace of mind. And the "Maze" is where you look for what you want -- the organization you work in, or the family or community you live in. In the story, the characters are faced with unexpected change. Eventually, one of them deals with it successfully, and writes what he has learned from his experience on the Maze walls.

When you come to see "The Handwriting on the Wall," you can discover for yourself how to deal with change, so that you can enjoy less stress and more success (however you define it) in your work and in your life.

📚 The Ruler's Guide | China's Greatest Emperor and His Timeless Secrets
🖋 Chinghua Tang
📌 Available at

📖 In the classic tradition of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, here for the first time in English is the timeless wisdom of China’s greatest emperor Tang Taizong (598-649 AD), which is still being studied more than 1300 years later as an invaluable guide to leading and managing.

Tang Taizong is arguably the greatest Emperor in Chinese history. In Asia, many historians rank him with such rulers as Augustus, Genghis Khan, and Napoleon. When he founded the Tang dynasty, Taizong was only twenty-eight years old, and his chief accomplishments were on the battlefield, where he personally slew 1,000 of the enemy. Ultimately, he would defeat the descendants of Attila the Hun, open up the Silk Road trading route, create a golden age of prosperity and cosmopolitan culture, preside over a society in which women enjoyed higher status, and allow Christianity and Islam into China for the first time as well as introduce Buddhism into Tibet. His dynasty would last 300 years.

Here, author Chinghua Tang presents conversations between Taizong and his gifted advisers that reveal core aspects of leadership, among them: how to appraise oneself and assess others, how to enhance organizational effectiveness, how to compete with rivals, how to grow power and influence without losing the respect of others, how to learn from the rise and fall of predecessors, and how to craft one’s legacy.

An indispensable guide that is as relevant for a middle-manager, military commander, or athletic coach as for a school principal, political leader, or over-stressed parent, The Ruler’s Guide doesn’t just reveal the insights that have kept Taizong’s legacy alive, it spells out how that wisdom is a match for today’s fast-paced, ever changing world.

📚 Profit from the Positive
🖋 Margaret Greenberg and Senia Maymin
📌 Available at

📖 Margaret Greenberg and Senia Maymin are both executive coaches who specialize in teaching their clients positive psychology tools.  In "Profit from the Positive," they share cutting-edge research as well as their clients' experience implementing these tools.

Profit from the Positive is a thought-provoking and practical guide to applying insights from positive psychology to the workplace. It's an invaluable resource for anyone seeking better satisfaction and performance at work.
--Gretchen Rubin, New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project and Better Than Before

"Executive coaches Greenberg and Maymin offer over two dozen practical tools for running a more profitable business. All of their advice is backed up by science, tested in businesses large and small, and doesn't cost a dime to implement. The suggestions in Profit from the Positive are what business schools will be teaching in ten years."
--Shawn Achor, New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage

"Greenberg and Maymin have built an exciting and important bridge between compelling evidence and actionable practice. Profit from the Positive is a valuable resource for anyone seeking to boost organizational productivity and the quality of work life."
--Adam Grant, professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take and Originals

"Profit from the Positive gives the busy executive ways to improve performance immediately--in some cases by up to 50 percent!--without restructuring the organization or bringing in any consultants. Finally, a leadership book that bridges the chasm between what science knows and what business needs!"
--Chip Conley, founder of Joie de Vivre Hotels and author of PEAK and Emotional Equations

📚 Smarter, Faster, Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business
🖋 Charles Duhigg
📌 Available at

📖 From the author of the New York Times bestselling phenomenon The Power of Habit comes a fascinating new book that explores the science of productivity, and why, in today’s world, managing how you think—rather than what you think—can transform your life.

A young woman drops out of a PhD program and starts playing poker. By training herself to envision contradictory futures, she learns to anticipate her opponents’ missteps—and becomes one of the most successful players in the world.

A group of data scientists at Google embark on a four-year study of how the best teams function, and find that how a group interacts is more important than who is in the group—a principle, it turns out, that also helps explain why Saturday Night Live became a hit.

A Marine Corps general, faced with low morale among recruits, reimagines boot camp—and discovers that instilling a “bias toward action” can turn even the most directionless teenagers into self-motivating achievers.

The filmmakers behind Disney’s Frozen are nearly out of time and on the brink of catastrophe—until they shake up their team in just the right way, spurring a creative breakthrough that leads to one of the highest-grossing movies of all time.

What do these people have in common?

They know that productivity relies on making certain choices. The way we frame our daily decisions; the big ambitions we embrace and the easy goals we ignore; the cultures we establish as leaders to drive innovation; the way we interact with data: These are the things that separate the merely busy from the genuinely productive.

📚 Speaker, Leader, Champion: Succeed at Work Through the Power of Public Speaking, Featuring the Prize-winning Speeches of Toastmasters World Champions
🖋 Jeremey Donovan and Ryan Avery
📌 Available at

📖 From the author of the #1 Amazon bestseller in public speaking How to Deliver a TED Talk and the youngest World Champion in Public Speaking comes Speaker, Leader, Champion.

Donovan and Avery dissect winning speeches to provide tips and techniques that will help business professionals improve their speaking, presentation, and communication skills. Readers learn the same skills used by Toastmasters champions, including David Brooks, Darren LaCroix, and Craig Valentine. The book also includes a section of highly specialized tips and advice for those who aspire to become serious public speaking competitors.

📚 The 20% Doctrine | How Tinkering, Goofing Off, and Breaking the Rules at Work Drive Success in Business
🖋 Ryan Tate
📌 Available at

📖 An inspiring exploration of how unorthodox business practices and the freedom to experiment can fuel innovation

We're at a crossroads. Many iconic American companies have been bailed out or gone bankrupt; others are struggling to survive as digitization and globalization remake their industries. At the same time, the tectonic forces disrupting U.S. corporations—ubiquitous bandwidth and computing power, cheap manufacturing and distribution—have enabled large organizations to foster new innovations and products through experiments that are at once more aggressive and less risky than they would have been twenty years ago. At companies such as Google, employees are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on projects they're personally interested in. Almost half of Google's new product launches have originated from this policy, including Gmail and AdSense. Now other companies have adopted the concept, providing them a path to innovation and profits at a time of peril and uncertainty and offering employees creative freedom when many are feeling restless.

The 20% Doctrine is about goofing off at work, and how that goofing off can drive innovation and profit. Here Ryan Tate examines the origins and implementation of 20% time at Google, then looks at how other organizations such as Flickr, the Huffington Post, and even a school in the Bronx have adapted or reinvented the same overall concept, intentionally and serendipitously. Along the way, he distills a series of common themes and lessons that can help workers initiate successful 20% style projects within their own organizations. Only through a new devotion to the unhinged and the ad hoc can American businesses resume a steady pace of development and profitability.

📚 The Talent Equation
🖋 Matt Ferguson, Lorin Hitt and Prasanna Tambe
📌 Available at

📖 The Talent Equation examines the relationship between personnel and big data. In particular utilising data to recruit, train and retain employees.

Companies using big data to analysis consumers has been occurring for years, and large companies particularly are good at collecting and analysising this data. This book looks at how to apply this same concept to human resources.

The Talent Equation encourages companies to focus data analysis to enable them to find, train and retain the right people, in spite of potential skills shortages, resources limitations, and other recruitment challenges.

There will be two readers of this book. Firstly the Human Resources Managers of companies, wanting to improve their recruitment and personnel departments, as well as reducing costs from frequent hiring processes. They will learn how to analysis the data provided from job seekers, and the available data in the marketplace, as well as develop big data records with analysis for existing employees.

The second to benefit of this book will be job seekers, who will gain insight in how organisations are recruiting and using data.

The book is full of data, reports and examples, and will take a HR department a while to break down into manageable action plans. Once done though it will place them ahead of their competitors.

📚 New Thinking on Leadership | A Global Perspective
🖋 Edited by Hilarie Owen
📌 available at

📖 In Hilarie Owen’s introduction we find reflections on how, instead of effective leadership, politics has been filled more with corruption and misbehaviors. Our institutions for developing leaders have failed. Yet, “Reverence and respect of others is fundamental to the practice of leadership and should be part of leadership learning and development.” Otherwise, we end up with the hubris effect that misleads individuals who are in leader roles. She references a study of why leadership initiatives fail:

• Reluctance by top management to participate.

• A lack of appropriate role models among top executives.

• No executive support for proposals by those who attended such programs.

Today, states Owen.

The cry now is for leadership not leaders. What does this mean? In my research… it became clear that from the age of six or seven boys and girls differentiated between leader and leadership. A leader was older, bigger, bossy and cleverer. Leadership was ab out being honest, including people, being fair and courageous.

Interesting perspective on what some may call good leading and bad leading.

📚 Lead Inside the Box: How Smart Leaders Guide Their Teams to Exceptional Results
🖋 Victor Prince and Mike Figliuolo
📌 available at

📖 Lead Inside The Box gives leaders a way to get the best out of their teams by focusing their energy where it will make the biggest difference. A leader’s time and energy is precious. It’s a finite resource and must be invested wisely. The better you’re able to determine where you’re investing that time and energy, the more effectively you can lead your team.

This book teaches leaders how to:

– Figure out where they are currently investing their time and energy across their teams
– Identify the unique leadership needs of each team member
– Make smarter decisions about how and where to invest their time and energy to get the best results