Bøger af Steven Poole

Do you hate going forward? Do you shudder when a colleague wants to reach out? Are you disgusted by low-hanging fruit, sick of being on the team, and reluctant to open the kimono?Does the phrase blue-sky thinking make you see red?Do you really want to drill down or take a helicopter view?Are you past caring whether the key drivers are going to move the needle? Should anyone really punch a puppy?And can you bear to hear about a big hairy audacious goal?If modern office jargon makes you want to throw up, this book is for you. Taking a hilarious and scathing deep dive into the most hated and absurd examples of corporate-speak it is a come to Jesus moment for verbally downtrodden workers everywhere.

What do the phrases "pro-life," "intelligent design," and "the war on terror" have in common? Each of them is a name for something that smuggles in a highly charged political opinion. Words and phrases that function in this special way go by many names. Some writers call them "evaluative-descriptive terms." Others talk of "terministic screens" or discuss the way debates are "framed." Author Steven Poole calls them Unspeak. Unspeak represents an attempt by politicians, interest groups, and business corporations to say something without saying it, without getting into an argument and so having to justify itself. At the same time, it tries to unspeak -- in the sense of erasing or silencing -- any possible opposing point of view by laying a claim right at the start to only one way of looking at a problem. Recalling the vocabulary of George Orwell's 1984, as an Unspeak phrase becomes a widely used term of public debate, it saturates the mind with one viewpoint while simultaneously makes an opposing view ever more difficult to enunciate. In this fascinating book, Poole traces modern Unspeak and reveals how the evolution of language changes the way we think.

"Innovation is not always as innovative as it may seem. Rethink is the story of how old ideas that were mocked or ignored for centuries are now storming back to the cutting edge of science and technology, informing the way we lead our lives. This is the story of Lamarck and the modern-day epigeneticist whose research vindicated his mocked two hundred-year-old theory of evolution; of the return of cavalry use in the war in Afghanistan; of Tesla's bringing back the electric car; and of the cognitive scientists who made breakthroughs by turning to ancient Greek philosophy."--Publisher's description.

A weird and wonderful word and its meaning for every day of the year.

Think you know a good idea when you see one? From within the rich anecdotes of bad ideas emerge good ones, helping us find new ways to think about ideas in our own time - from novel proposals in the boardroom to grand projects for social and political change.

* The language of everyday deception stripped bare