Central Skagit Library District

Whether investigating a solution to global warming or explaining why the price of oral sex has fallen so drastically, Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and great storytelling to show how people respond to incentives.

Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? What kind of impact did Roe v. Wade have on violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask--but Levitt is not a typical economist. He studies the stuff and riddles of everyday life--from cheating and crime to sports and child...

An evaluation of the sources of illogical decisions explores the reasons why irrational thought often overcomes level-headed practices, offering insight into the structural patterns that cause people to make the same mistakes repeatedly.

We've all had experience with two dramatically different types of leaders. The first type drains intelligence, energy, and capability from the people around them and always needs to be the smartest person in the room. These are the idea killers, the energy sappers, the diminishers of talent and commitment. On the other side of the spectrum are leaders who use their intelligence to amplify the smarts and capabilities of the people around them. When...

Business leaders say they want creativity and need real innovation in order to thrive in a competitive world, yet chronically reject creative solutions and often embrace the familiar. Could it be that people love but also hate creative ideas? Could the "best practices" that organizations employ to manage innovation inadvertently kill innovation? Mueller provides a four-step process to help you disrupt your current mindset and recognize creative opportunity,...

A Harvard Business School professor and leading expert in virtual and global work provides remote workers and leaders with the best practices necessary to perform at the highest levels in their organizations. The rapid and unprecedented changes brought on by Covid-19 have accelerated the transition to remote working, requiring the wholesale migration of nearly entire companies to virtual work in just weeks, leaving managers and employees scrambling...

A behavioral scientist explores why "rebels" with unconventional outlooks who break the rules find the greatest success, discussing how they drive innovation and reinvention by defying the status quo.

Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, journalist Beth Macy endeavors to answer a grieving mother's question -- why her only son died -- and comes away with a harrowing story of greed and need. From the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, Macy parses how America embraced a medical culture where overtreatment with painkillers became the norm....

"A searing exposé by an award-winning journalist of the most scandalous bank in the world, including its shadowy ties to Donald Trump's business empire"-- "A searing exposé of the most scandalous bank in the world, including its shadowy ties to Donald Trump’s business empire. On a rainy Sunday in 2014, a senior executive at Deutsche Bank was found hanging in his London apartment. Bill Broeksmit had helped build the 150-year-old financial...

Worldwide online retail sales totaled $1.9 trillion in 2016 and it's estimated that revenues will hit $4 trillion by 2020. Even a microscopic share of this market can make anyone rich, yet most everyone who tries to make money online fails. The Digital Marketing Handbook was written to help marketers of all skill levels -- from Fortune 1000 and SMBs to small business owners and solopreneurs -- take their websites from cost centers to profit centers....