How America’s biggest company began taking better care of its workers--and why such efforts will never be enough.Fifteen years ago, Walmart was the most controversial company in America. By offering incredibly low prices, it had come to dominate the retail landscape. But with this dominance came a suite of ethical concerns. Walmart was accused of wiping out of mom-and-pop businesses across the country; ruthlessly pressuring suppliers to cut costs, even if it meant closing up U.S. factories and moving production overseas; and, above all, not taking adequate care of its own employees, who were paid so little that many wound up on public assistance. Today, while Walmart remains America's largest employer, the picture is very different. It has become an environmental leader among businesses, and has taken many other steps to use its immense scale to have a positive social impact. Most notably, its starting wage has risen from $7.25 to $12, and employee benefits have improved. With
From a long-time Alibaba executive and former special assistant to Jack Ma, this is the first book to articulate how Alibaba's unique culture and “tai chi” management principles are providing a business and economic development model for the rest of the world.If you took the economic might of Amazon, and added the penetration of Facebook, the ubiquity of Google, and the cultural significance of YouTube, you might have something starting to resemble Alibaba. Commonly mischaracterized as a kind of Chinese eBay for businesses, Alibaba and its interlinked network of products and services have exploded into global markets, disrupting conventional businesses and creating previously unimaginable opportunities for millions of small businesses worldwide. This book reveals the Tao of Alibaba―the company’s “secret sauce”―a consciously cultivated ethos and spirit that has enabled Alibaba to weather tough times (including its recent setbacks with the Chinese government) and persist toward a common
An NPR education reporter shows how the last true social safety net-- the public school system--was decimated by the pandemic, and how years of short-sighted political decisions have failed to put our children first.School has long meant much more than an education in America. 30 million children depend on free school meals. Schools are, statistically, the safest physical places for children to be. They are the best chance many children have at finding basics like eye exams, safe housing, mental health counseling, or simply a caring adult. Flawed, inequitable, underfunded, and segregated, they remain the most important engine of social mobility and the crucible of our democracy.The cost of closing our schools for so long during COVID, made with good intentions, has not yet been fully reckoned with. In The Stolen Year, NPR education reporter Anya Kamenetz shows that the roots of our crisis run far deeper than COVID. She follows families across the country as they lived through the
In June 1944, Freda Wineman and her family arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the infamous Nazi concentration and death camp. After a cursory look from an SS doctor, Freda's life was spared and her mother
The Great Crash of 1929 profoundly disrupted the United States' confident march toward becoming the world's superpower. The breakneck growth of 1920s America--with its boom in automobiles, electricity
Having a good, stable job used to be the bedrock of the American Dream. Not anymore. In this richly detailed and eye-opening book, Rick Wartzman chronicles the erosion of the relationship between Ame
How can America's healthcare system be transformed to provide consistently higher-quality and lower-cost care? Nothing else in healthcare matters more. Prescription for the Future identifies some sta
A vivid character-driven narrative, fused with important new economic and political reporting and research, that busts the myths about middle class decline and points the way to its revival.For over a
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE starring Liam Neeson.The covert Watergate whistleblower tells the story of the dramatic showdown between the FBI and the Nixon White HouseIn the 1970s, Mark Felt was given t
Mende Nazer lost her childhood at age twelve, when she was sold into slavery. It all began one horrific night in 1993, when Arab raiders swept through her Nuba village, murdering the adults and round
In The Dust of Empire, Karl E. Meyer examines the historical impact of the Western encounter with Central Asia's fragile and volatile nations. Blending scholarship with reportage, Meyer provides deta
The bestselling author, political analyst, and civil rights expert delivers a forceful critique of the Trump administration's ignorant and unprecedented rollback of the civil rights movement. Unsympat
American diplomacy is in shambles under Trump, but beneath the daily chaos is an erosion of the postwar order that is even more dangerous.American foreign policy is adrift. For seventy years, the worl
The complete rankings of our best -- and worst -- presidents, based on C-SPAN's much-cited Historians Surveys of Presidential Leadership. Over a period of decades, C-SPAN has surveyed leading historia
A dazzling new history of the past 200 years, recast as a story of population: how irrepressible demographic changes and mass migrations have made and unmade nations, continents, and empires The adva
The remarkable, improbable story of a small, makeshift library in the Syrian town of Darayya, and the people who found hope and humanity in its books during the four-year siege they endured.At the hei
The dramatic insider account of why we invaded Iraq, the motivations that drove it, and the frustrations of those who tried and failed to stop it, leading to the most costly misadventure in US history
In this candid, refreshing guide for young women to take with us as we run the world, Emilie Aries shows you how to own your power, know your worth, and design your career and life accordingly. Youn
A practical, inspirational guide to philanthropy, at all levels of giving.Charitable giving in the U.S. reached a new high in 2017 of more than $400 billion, with the majority of American households g
A Wall Street Journal columnist delivers a brilliant narrative of the mugging of the millennial generation-- how the Baby Boomers have stolen the millennials' future in order to ensure themselves a co
