Author: Allen Cheng

The election of Donald Trump has sparked a great deal of discussion about the fate of American democracy. _How Democracies Die_ explores some key questions that have become paramount in the Trump era. Does the election of a figure like Trump—an inexperienced outsider with obvious authoritarian instincts—suggest that democracy in the US is backsliding? Are we doomed to suffer the fate of other 21st-century democracies, like Hungary, Venezuela, and Turkey, where true democracy ceased to exist? By what processes was democracy killed in those and other countries—and how might we prevent it here?

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is your ability to recognize your emotions, recognize the emotions of others, and use this awareness to develop your behavior and relationships. **It’s also one of the defining characteristics of success in the workplace.**

_Emotional Intelligence 2.0_ helps you build your EQ skills through the development of four key pillars: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. These pillars will help you process your emotions, manage your triggers, develop healthy habits, and succeed in your career path.

Although people spend their entire lives learning, most of them are doing it wrong. Strategies like rereading and drilling a skill over and over to commit it to memory take a lot of time and ultimately don’t work.

_Make It Stick_ teaches you the strategies that help you achieve **the two primary goals of learning: To _understand_ and _remember_ what you learn so you can use your knowledge in future situations.** In this summary, learn how a little forgetting helps you remember, and why you’re not a good judge of how much you know.

_Traction_ offers a helping hand for beginning entrepreneurs and others whose businesses are stuck at a point where hard work and determination are no longer enough for them to survive and grow. Business owner and consultant Gino Wickman explains how to structure your business using his Entrepreneurial Operating System to remove typical frustrations, so it regains momentum, it runs seamlessly, and you don’t get mired in details. The system is based on practical experience, not theory. Numerous tools and templates lead business owners step by step through processes to create a structure and core focus that strengthen and reenergize their organizations.

Do you want to make a difference in the lives of others? Do you want to change the world? **To do anything meaningful, you’re going to have to work with people.** And if you’re working with people, **you need to know how to lead them.**

_The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership _is a guide to the major principles of leadership. Learn how to connect with and influence people. Learn how to empower others and build an all-star leadership team. And learn how to create a succession plan and leave a legacy.

Mental health disorders affect millions of people and often lead to the tragic loss of life through suicide. The pain and suffering that accompany mental illness are difficult for those unafflicted to understand. Kay Redfield Jamison, a clinical psychologist living with manic-depressive disorder, has attempted to bring awareness to those experiences in her memoir. By divulging the violent, frenzied, and dangerous aspects of her disease, Jamison hopes to create more understanding about mental illness and more empathy for those who struggle to exist in the normal world.

Defining moments are the small, meaningful moments that make our lives richer and give us fond memories to look back on. But how do you recognize when these moments are happening, and give them the time and attention they deserve?An d how can you engineer more of them?

_The Power of Moments _ teaches you how to elevate moments with delightful and strategic surprise, guide others to transformative truths, multiply your moments of celebration on your journey to a goal, and deepen your connections with the people around you.

Do you feel a calling inside to create or inspire the world? Do you struggle to follow that calling because of doubt, fear, or lack of motivation? _The War of Art _spells out the reason you struggle to reach your dreams and provides strategies to help you overcome the obstacles. Each creative person experiences resistance in the form of fear when they approach their true work. When you understand where that fear comes from, how it manifests in your life, and how a commitment to your work can give you the strength to push forward, you will be successful in living your dreams.

Being a team player who can work effectively with others to achieve a group goal is more important than ever in our interdependent and changing world. However, true team players are surprisingly uncommon, in part because many organizations are unclear on what being a team player means, and as a result, often end up hiring people who undermine teamwork. In _The Ideal Team Player_, Patrick Lencioni defines the model team player as a person who embodies the virtues of humility, hunger or drive, and people skills. He explains how to transform your organization by developing your current employees into team players and making sure you hire team players in the future.