Showing results by author "Swift Reads" in All Categories

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World (2019) shows how social media sites, smartphones, and other modern innovations became major contributors to the rise of depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Author Cal Newport argues that many users have become dependent on smartphones and the applications those phones can access to fill spare moments in their days....

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (2001) explains how humans routinely underestimate the role luck plays in determining outcomes. This failure to account for uncertainty can lead someone to attribute meaning to a result where none exists, or to overlook the probability of a rare but cataclysmic event....

This is a summary of Sigmund Freud's Dream Psychology: Psychoanalysis for Beginners (1921), which describes the curious and complex mental processes that unfold in dreams. Each night, the slumbering mind crafts dramatic and elaborate productions, or dreams, that sleepers watch like a movie....

This is a summary of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World (2018), which explores how animals developed on earth before the Paleogene period, when mammals emerged as the dominant life form. The narrative begins by describing the dinosaur’s ancestor: a small, unimportant creature struggling for survival in the Permian period, more than 250 million years ago....

In Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level (2019), technology journalist Leander Kahney explains how a mild-mannered man from a small town in Alabama became the CEO of one of America’s most influential and successful companies. Cook, who once served as Apple’s chief operating officer, was considered a strange choice to replace Steve Jobs when he was announced as the company’s new leader in 2011...

This is an in-depth summary of Michal Hyatt's Free to Focus. Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less (2019) by Michael Hyatt explains how to streamline business operations and become more productive. By paring down inessential tasks through elimination or delegation, managers and business leaders can create more time for the work they’re most passionate about.

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (2008) by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein explores how "nudges", or subtle prompts, can help people make better decisions about spending and saving. Applying significant findings from the fields of business, psychology, law, and economics to some of the most controversial issues and problems in the United States, they propose strategies that can help anyone make a good choice, whether it’s on a personal or governmental level....

This is a summary of Business Adventures (1969), a collection of 12 nonfiction stories about American business and high finance by journalist John Brooks. Each story explores a different subject, including eccentric leaders and their successes, failures, and legal quandaries.

The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great (2019) explains how Western nations used philosophical and religious values to create governments that protect individual liberty while encouraging collective action. Author Ben Shapiro argues that countries like the United States became prosperous because they adhered to two primary sources of moral and intellectual thought: Judeo-Christian values and ancient Greek reason...

This is a summary of Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company - and Revolutionized an Industry (2009), which explores how salesforce.com used cloud-based computing to create new business standards in the early 2000s.

The Law of Success (1928) by Napoleon Hill outlines the principles and values that informed his best-known work, Think and Grow Rich! (1937), which was published almost a decade later. By embracing the boundless power of the human mind, anyone can accomplish their wildest dreams....

Educated (2018) by Tara Westover is a memoir about how an uneducated young woman raised in the remote mountains of Idaho came to earn a doctorate from Cambridge University. Raised outside of society, in a violent household run by Mormon fundamentalists, Tara never saw herself as a person with choices or prospects...

One Up on Wall Street: How to Use What You Already Know to Make Money in the Market (1989) guides fledgling investors through the process of how to pick stocks and build a winning investment portfolio. Author and investor Peter Lynch, with the help of author John Rothchild, explains that investors do not have to work at high-profile finance firms to be successful....

Girl, Stop Apologizing: A Shame-free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals (2019) by entrepreneur, influencer, and bestselling author Rachel Hollis is a self-help guide for women who want to pursue their dreams. Hollis’s advice comes from her own firsthand experiences as an enterprising woman, building her own business from scratch....

Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (2014) by neuroscientist and atheist Sam Harris explores how to develop a spiritual practice that is not based on outmoded religious beliefs about how the world works. Harris draws upon personal experience, neuroscience, psychology, and Buddhist conceptions of the mind to explore the nature of consciousness and how it is possible to embrace spirituality and remain secular....

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1994) by Barack Obama chronicles his quest to understand how the varied threads of his upbringing, including his father’s absence and his multiracial and multinational roots, shaped him and his understanding of his place in the world. Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961 to Stanley Ann Dunham, a white woman, and Barack Obama Sr., a black economist from Kenya. Obama Sr. and Dunham met while studying at the University of Hawaii....

Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time (1997) details how a small coffee roastery in Seattle became a monolithic corporation with a worldwide reputation for providing affordable luxury beverages. Author Howard Schultz, now retired CEO and chairman of Starbucks, recounts how he grew the company into an internationally recognized chain after joining Starbucks in the early 1980s and buying it later that same decade...

Undo It! How Simple Lifestyle Changes Can Reverse Most Chronic Diseases (2019), outlines a wellness system that can help listeners prevent, manage, or even recover from common chronic health conditions. Preventative medicine specialist Dean Ornish and his wife, Anne, a yoga and meditation expert, have used the Ornish program to treat thousands of patients suffering from diseases that usually require lifelong medication or surgery.

The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation (2011) shows companies how assertive sales representatives can increase profits and create repeat customers. Authors and entrepreneurs Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson use the results of interviews with more than 5,000 sales representatives to outline five different profiles most employees fit into. Purchase this in-depth summary to learn more.

Emotional Intelligence (published in 1995, last updated in 2005) by Daniel Goleman is a seminal work about how people recognize, navigate, and manage emotions in themselves and others. Those who can successfully read human moods, including their own, have a high degree of emotional intelligence…Purchase this in-depth summary to learn more.