CivilSociety Resource / Reference Library
Entrepreneurship, personal development, life coaching, return migration, research on inter-communal stress, and the Middle East

Listed by author, with links to Amazon.com for more information (when possible)
See also: The WWW Virtual Library on Migration and Ethnic Relations

10 Quick Steps Guides 10 Quick Steps to do almost anything
These are short e-books, and you can even submit your own tips for them to publish for you

Bach, David Smart Women Finish Rich: 9 Steps to Achieving Financial Security and Funding Your Dreams

Bolles, Richard Nelson What Color Is Your Parachute? 2005: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers
The best book I know to give assuredness in what I am best at doing and how to find a job that fits me best.

Covey, Stephen The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness
This expands on his _7 Habits of Highly Successful People_, adding many more practical examples of how to nurture cooperative, win-win relationships, and higher levels of organizational peformance. The dvd included with the hardback version of the book has many video segments to illustrate points in the book. This book will take me several times through to understand and then apply the principles, even though I have read a lot of Mr. Covey's books. This book appears to me as a textbook on personal and organizational success. And the most practical I've read.

Covey, Stephen First Things First: To Live, To Love, To Learn, To Leave a Legacy

Covey, Stephen Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People

Didsbury, Howard, Editor. (World Future Society, 2004) Thinking Creatively in Turbulent Times

Edelman, Ric New Rules of Money: 88 Strategies for Financial Success Today

Edelman, Ric The Truth About Money
This is a rather traditional, but extensive, approach to managing money to minimize risk of loss. Easy enough to read, it is thorough in explaining differences between investment classes. The author clearly shows that if your investments are earning less than the inflation rate, you are losing money. For most of us that means at least 4-5% per year. Therefore, bonds (often), CDs, and savings accounts cost you money!
He is also not in favor of real estate as an investment focus, at least with low percentage of the cost put as a down payment, and dependent on rental income to cover mortgages without an adequate backup plan for when tenants do not pay. I understand his opinion, but still favor owning real property over speculating in paper assets that I have no control over.

Edelman, Ric What You Need to Do Now : An 8-Point Action Plan to Secure Your Financial Independence

Gresham, Jon  Instant Wealth Systems: The Overview
My comparison of the main "Get Rich Quick"  Internet Marketing Systems, with hints on how to find the best training in small business development and avoid the scams that take your money and waste your time.

Hastings, Wayne and Ron Potter.  Trust Me; Developing a Leadership Style People Will Follow
I found this book fascinating as the authors focus on the internal world of leaders who are trustworthy, and the nurture of a character that others will want to follow.  My favorite quotes:
—To be teachable, one must devote a significant amount of time to learning.
—Leaders are defined buy those who follow them.
--A successful mentoring experience does require a significant prerequisite: a quality person to mentor.
--The mentoring or coaching role is mainly about creating a safe environment to discuss any topic.
—Trustworthiness means being reliable, faithful, and unfailing. Trustworthy leaders are honest and transparent, committed, dedicated, and keep promises and confidences. They also have the moral courage to do the right thing and to stand up for what they believe even when it is difficult to do so.     
--In practical, day-to-day leadership, only what is accomplished matters.
—Compared to high-profile leaders with big personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, the good-to-great leaders leaders who have taken companies to unprecedented long-term growth? seem to have come from Mars. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy—these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar.
For aspiring leaders, this book will help you clarify the character traits needed inside before the power accumulates outside.

Lee, Blaine.  Power Principle: Influence with Honor.
—Up until around World War I, organizations as well as people were strongly concerned with what I like to gall the character ethic.”  In other words, character traits such as integrity, industry, civility, cooperation, service, modesty, and honor were highly valued. Yet, particularly after the Second World War, this emphasis on character became less and less significant as cosmetic strategies began to emerge. Personality values took center stage and organizations shifted toward exterior rather than interior concerns. Appearance, public images, and attitudes became pivotal and prosperity was primarily seen through quarterly reports.
—“Uncertainty is the opportunity to make the world a better place.”
“If we observe the world around us, Americans as individuals seek out risk.”


Maxwell, John. Becoming a Person of Influence
This book addresses impact, how to measure your potential contribution and how to plan your efforts to achieve those things that you are uniquely created to do. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from this book:
--In most cases, those who want power probably shouldn't have it, those who enjoy it probably do so for the wrong reasons, and those who want most to hold on to it don't understand that it's only temporary.
--Each day do what you should do before what you want to do.
--And like animals, people need to be cared for, not just physically, but emotionally. If you look around, you'll discover that there are people in your life who want to be fed--with encouragement, recognition, security, and hope. That process is called nurturing, and it's a need of every human being. If you desire to become an influencer in others' lives. Start by nurturing them.

Nomura, Catherine Unique Ability
The main point is that each of us are equipped with a set of skills, and when we work within our highest performing combination of skills, we can be more productive and enjoy work and life more. The answers were very helpful to help me make another step towards getting more significant work done, and enjoying the work and the people in my life more. As I processed in this direction, I let go some of my projects that were not essential, and which caused more stress than they were worth. This approach is also useful in helping each of my children to work out their own learning and working style to optimize their own schoolwork and career development. Such introspection, for me, is really tedious, but is worth the time. This is an outstanding approach to making the most of the limited work and volunteering years available to most of us.

Phillips, Bill. Body for Life: 12 Weeks to Mental and Physical Strength
This revolutionized our family's approach to nutrition, exercise, and a healthy outlook on goals. The 12-week discipline challenge marked a major turning point in how we care for our bodies and minds. The main points: 1. alternate days of light weight training for body tone with days of light aerobic activity; 2. always seek to balance volume of carbohydrates eaten with volume of protein eaten; 3. take one day a week to NOT exercise much and to ENJOY eating other fun foods!
In his second book, Eating for Life, he goes deeper into how to maximize weight loss and health gains through fun and tasty eating, by balancing intake of carbohydrates and protein.

Sager, Arthur W.  Speak Your Way To Success
Accurate and motivating communication is essential as a skill for any leader.  This book addresses how to communicate to groups.  My favorite quotes:
 Pg17—First, you wish to provide a spark. Second, your introductory remarks should suggest the purpose of your speech. Shy is what you have to say important? What special significance has it to the audience you are addressing? Is its significance obvious, or must it be developed? Whatever device you have used to kindle the interest of your audience will probably help to suggest answers to these questions.
…establish the validity and pertinence of your subject….importance should emerge from the structure of your introduction……suggest both the scope and the limits of your presentation.
Schon, Donald.  The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action
Dr. Schon addresses how professionals can better join in a process of learning and decision-making.  By seeing life as a process involving both the service provider and the client/customer, the interaction itself provides additional tools and information.  Coming out of an industrial engineering perspective, processes of decision-making can be structured to require step-by-step participation in problem definition and solution clarification.  Best quote:  "A skillful teacher draws out critical facts, and by a sequence of astutely chosen questions leads students through a process of inquiry which serves both to structure the "solution space" of the situation at hand and to demonstrate a mode of thinking about business problems."

Silverman, Linda Kreger. Upside-Down Brilliance: The Visual Spatial Learner
Liberation for those of use who prefer spatial instead of linear logic, and visual to auditory learning. This is for the 1/3 of humanity who may have trouble in school and on standardized tests because most school and exam developers are not right-brained, but are left-brained. It is written by a left-brainer, but she seems to understand me anyway.

Sprinkle, Patricia. Women Who Do Too Much: How to Stop Doing it All and Start Enjoying Life

Tieger, Paul. Do What You Are : Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type--Revised and Updated Edition Featuring E-careers for the 21st Century
Helps me understand how to match my own unique personality with specific job and career activities and choices.

Thaxton, Carol.  Learn to Write the Novel Way
This is the best book I have found to get me writing and enjoying it!  Her basic steps to getting a book written are:
—Imitate comic book writers. They call it the Master Plot Outline (MPO).
1.  Hook reader
2. Establish setting
3.Introduce protagonist (main character)
4. Establish protagonist’s goals
5. Establish current situation
6. Introduce conflict (the villain)
7. Villain characterization
Establish plot gimmick (add subtle detail that later becomes clear)
Transitions to provide motivations for protagonists
Protagonist and antagonist move toward eachother
Reinforce protagonist goals
Establish plot plant (tease reader with foreshadowing)
Introduce supporting cast and sub-plot
Sub-plot development in relation to protagonists
Develop conflict
Protagonist’s big entrance
Big fight scene
Villain gets upper hand
Pickup sub-plot
Transition
Back to protagonist
Things look bad
Protagonist is up against the wall
Reaction and dilemma
Decision
Pay-off plot plants
Character growth to over come the antagonist
Payoff plot gimmick
Protagonist overcomes
Protagonist achieves goal
Resolve plot

It's as simple as that.  Here is your outline, now write your book!
Tobias, Cynthia. The Way They Learn: How to Discover and Teach to Your Child's Strengths

Willis, Mariaemma and Hodson, Victoria. Discover Your Child's Learning Style : Children Learn in Unique Ways - Here's the Key to Every Child's Learning Success



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