Books about Improve from Amazon.com

-- How would you spend an extra $4,000 a year for the next twenty-five years?

-- How much more secure would your retirement be with an extra $100,000 or more?

-- How much more time could you spend at your family dinner table if you could work an hour less each day?

-- What would you do in retirement if you could retire three years earlier?

Your 401(k) plan is probably one of your most important future sources of financial security. This book makes it easy for you to take the five steps needed to add more than $100,000 to your retirement nest egg without taking more risk or saving more money. This can allow you to improve your lifestyle, increase your benefits, identify the hidden costs and also improve your standing within your company by proactively helping your employer to take needed action..
Price: $6.77 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Here's another management parable that draws its lesson from an unlikely source--this time it's the fun-loving fishmongers at Seattle's Pike Place Market. In Fish! the heroine, Mary Jane Ramirez, recently widowed and mother of two, is asked to engineer a turnaround of her company's troubled operations department, a group that authors Stephen Lundin, Harry Paul, and John Christensen describe as a "toxic energy dump." Most reasonable heads would cut their losses and move on. Why bother with this bunch of losers? But the authors don't make it so easy for Mary Jane. Instead, she's left to sort out this mess with the help of head fishmonger Lonnie. Based on a bestselling corporate education video, Fish! aims to help employees find their way to a fun and happy workplace. While some may find the story line and prescriptions--such as "Choose Your Attitude," "Make Their Day," and "Be Present"--downright corny, others will find a good dose of worthwhile motivational management techniques. If you loved Who Moved My Cheese? then you'll find much to like here. And don't worry about Mary Jane and kids. Fish! has a happy ending for everyone. --Harry C. Edwards.
Price: $4.39 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Guaranteed to help parents reclaim sweet dreams for their entire family

New from the bestselling author of the classic baby sleep guide!

Getting babies to sleep through the night is one thing; getting willful toddlers and energetic preschoolers to sleep is another problem altogether. Written to help sleep-deprived parents of children ages one to five, The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers offers loving solutions to help this active age-group get the rest they--and their parents--so desperately need.

A follow-up to Elizabeth Pantley's megahit The No-Cry Sleep Solution, this breakthrough guide is written in Pantley's trademark gentle, child-centered style. Parents will discover a wellspring of positive approaches to help their children get to bed, stay in bed, and sleep all night, without having to resort to punishments or other negative and ineffective measures. The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers tackles many common nighttime obstacles, including:

• Refusals to go to bed
• Night waking and early rising
• Reluctance to move out of the crib and into a big-kid bed
• Nighttime visits to the parents' bed
• Naptime problems
• Nightmares, "night terrors," and fears
• Special sleep issues of twins, special needs children, and adopted children
• Sleepwalking, sleep talking, snoring, and tooth grinding

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Price: $7.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Men are right. The “relationship talk” does not help. Dr. Patricia Love’s and
Dr. Steven Stosny’s How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It
reveals the stunning truth about marital happiness:

Love is not about better communication.
It's about connection.

You'll never get a closer relationship
with your man by talking to him like you
talk to one of your girlfriends.

Male emotions are like women's sexuality:
you can't be too direct too quickly.

There are four ways to connect with a man:touch, activity, sex, routines.

Men want closer marriages just as much as women do,but not if they has to act like a woman.

Talking makes women move closer;
it makes men move away.

The secret of the silent male is this:
his wife supplies the meaning in his life.

The stunning truth about love is that talking doesn’t help.

Have you ever had this conversation with your spouse?

Wife: “Honey, we need to talk about us.”
Husband: “Do we have to?”

Drs. Patricia Love and Steven Stosny have studied this all-too-familiar dynamic between men and women and have reached a truly shocking conclusion. Even with the best of intentions, talking about your relationship doesn’t bring you together, and it will eventually drive you apart.

The reason for this is that underneath most couples’ fights, there is a biological difference at work. A woman’s vulnerability to fear and anxiety makes her draw closer, while a man’s subtle sensitivity to shame makes him pull away in response. This is why so many married couples fall into the archetypal roles of nagging wife/stonewalling husband, and why improving a marriage can’t happen through words.

How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It teaches couples how to get closer in ways that don’t require “trying to turn a man into a woman.” Rich in stories of couples who have turned their marriages around, and full of practical advice about the behaviors that make and break marriages, this essential guide will help couples find love beyond words.

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Price: $7.91 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Bring the miracle of Lean Six Sigma improvement out of manufacturing and into services

Much of the U.S. economy is now based on services rather than manufacturing Yet the majority of books on Six Sigma and Lean--today's major quality improvement initiatives--explain only how to implement these techniques in a manufacturing environment.

Lean Six Sigma for Services fills the need for a service-based approach, explaining how companies of all types can cost-effectively translate manufacturing-oriented Lean Six Sigma tools into the service delivery process.

Filled with case studies detailing dramatic service improvements in organizations from Lockheed Martin to Stanford University Hospital, this bottom-line book provides executives and managers with the knowledge they need to:

• Reduce service costs by 30 to 60 percent
• Improve service delivery time by 50 percent
• Expand capacity by 20 percent without adding staff

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Price: $17.49 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $8.35 [Notify me when price goes down.]

James C. Scott's research for this book began with an examination of the tensions between state authorities and various "unstable" individuals throughout history, from hunter-gatherer tribes to Gypsies to the homeless. He soon became fascinated, however, by the recurring patterns of failure and authoritarianism in certain social engineering programs aimed at bringing such people fully into the state's fold. Soviet collectivization, the Maoist Great Leap Forward, the precisely planned city of Brasilia--these and other projects around the world, while deeply ambitious, extracted immeasurable tolls on the people they were designed to help.

One of the most important common factors that Scott found in these schemes is what he refers to as a high modernist ideology. In simplest terms, it is an extremely firm belief that progress can and will make the world a better place. But "scientific" theories about the betterment of life often fail to take into account "the indispensable role of practical knowledge, informal processes, and improvisation in the face of unpredictability" that Scott views as essential to an effective society. What high modernism lacks is metis, a Greek word which Scott translates as "the knowledge that can only come from practical experience." Although metis is closely related to the concept of "mutuality" found in the anarchist writings of, among others, Kropotkin and Bakunin, Scott is careful to emphasize that he is not advocating the abolition of the state or championing a complete reliance on natural "truth." He merely recognizes that some types of states can initiate programs which jeopardize the well-being of all their subjects.

Although the collapse of most socialist governments might lead one to believe that Seeing Like a State is old news, Scott's analysis should prove extremely useful to those considering the effects of global capitalism on local communities..
Price: $13.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This exceptionally useful text offers Scott Myers's expertise in C++ class design and programming tips. The second edition incorporates recent advances to C++ included in the ISO standard, including namespaces and built-in template classes, and is required reading for any working C++ developer.

The book opens with some hints for porting code from C to C++ and then moves on to the proper use of the new and delete operators in C++ for more robust memory management. The text then proceeds to class design, including the proper use of constructors, destructors, and overloaded operator functions for assignment within classes. (These guidelines ensure that you will create custom C++ classes that are fully functional data types, which can be copied and assigned just like built-in C++ classes.)

The author also provides a handful of suggestions for general class design, including strategies for using different types of inheritance and encapsulation. Never doctrinaire and always intelligent, these guidelines can make your C++ classes more robust and easier to maintain. --Richard Dragan.
Price: $33.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]