Showing results by author "Swift Reads" in All Categories

This is a summary of The 33 Strategies of War (2006), which teaches different approaches to conflict. Robert Greene examines ways to defeat an enemy in contexts ranging from violent battlefields to the sets of famous Hollywood films....

Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers is an expansive account of the days, months, and years leading up to World War I. Clark’s central contention is that scholars’ continuous preoccupation with the question of who was responsible for starting the war stems from an erroneous understanding of the events....

Accessory to War by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Avis Lang is a meditation on the history of space research and its interdependence on military research and warfare. The narrative contextualizes discoveries such as the compass and adaptive optics in order to evaluate the present global state of space diplomacy. Purchase this in-depth summary to learn more.

Five Days at Memorial (2013) is a two-part investigation of the controversial events and decisions that took place at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans in the chaotic days following Hurricane Katrina’s landfall. (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)

This is the audio summary of The Little Book of Common Sense Investing which demonstrates why index funds should make up the majority of the average investment portfolio.

On Liberty (1859) by John Stuart Mill is an influential philosophical treatise that argues societies can be free only when they celebrate diversity and promote individual freedom. Mill believed that conformity is a blight on human happiness, creativity, and social progress....

This is a summary of The Fifth Agreement: A Practical Guide to Self-Mastery (2010) by Miguel Ruiz and Jose Ruiz with Janet Mills. The Fifth Agreement explores how people can harness their innate personal power to create a life that is rich in peace, happiness, and love - or, the equivalent of heaven on earth. The Fifth Agreement is the follow-up to Miguel Ruiz’s best seller The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (1997).

In Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth (2005), author and entrepreneur T. Harv Eker argues that readers can substantially increase their net worth by studying the financial habits and attitudes that rich people commonly have. Although their personalities and temperaments vary greatly, the wealthy generally have similar fiscal ideas and practices.... (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)

No-Drama Discipline by psychotherapists Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson explains how parents can diminish disorder while strengthening their child’s brain. The authors’ approach to discipline, based on the latest in neuroscience at the time of publication, enables parents to turn meltdowns, temper tantrums, and everyday frustrations into teachable moments that strengthen the parent-child relationship. Purchase this in-depth summary to learn more.

The Hidden Brain (2009) by Shankar Vedantam explores the unconscious inclinations and pre-formed judgments that shape human behaviors. In public policy and in other disciplines that attempt to explain and predict how and why people act, the common assumption is that people make decisions consciously, referring to the facts they know and privileging reason over their emotions. Purchase this in-depth summary to learn more. (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (1999) by clinical psychologist Marshall B. Rosenberg offers a life-affirming, empathy-based approach to conflict resolution. The goal of practicing nonviolent communication, or NVC, is not to win an argument.... Purchase this in-depth summary to learn more. (Disclaimer: This is NOT the original book. If you’re looking for the original book, it is available from Amazon and Audible.)

This is a summary of Tim S. Grover's Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable (2013), which teaches how to cultivate the mindset of an elite achiever. Grover’s ideas about high performance are based on his decades as a trainer for elite athletes including NBA stars Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, and Dwyane Wade. Bryant, Jordan, and Wade followed Grover’s no-nonsense training program.

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....

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.