Half Truths

Join Adam Hamilton in Exploring Popular Sayings that Miss the Point.

'If I'm going to tell the story of a life, my life, then I need to tell it warts and all. If the tale is too saccharine sweet then what can the reader take away from it? What do they learn about you? I've written everything down. The shit, the death, fun, naughtiness, addiction, laughter, laughter, laughter, some tears and lots of love and happiness. That to me is a better reflection of a human's life.' Nick's family life was difficult, blighted by alcoholism, illness and sudden misfortune meaning they lost everything overnight. He left school early and drifted from job to job dogged by his own personal demons. It's something of a miracle that Nick survived and even more that he would achieve such success with his writing, acting and comedy. In Truths, Half Truths and Little White Lies Nick paints a brilliantly funny, moving and brutally candid portrait of childhood, adolescence and eventual success.

The best organizations have the best talent. . . Financial incentives drive company performance. . . Firms must change or die. Popular axioms like these drive business decisions every day. Yet too much common management “wisdom” isn’t wise at all—but, instead, flawed knowledge based on “best practices” that are actually poor, incomplete, or outright obsolete. Worse, legions of managers use this dubious knowledge to make decisions that are hazardous to organizational health. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton show how companies can bolster performance and trump the competition through evidence-based management, an approach to decision-making and action that is driven by hard facts rather than half-truths or hype. This book guides managers in using this approach to dismantle six widely held—but ultimately flawed—management beliefs in core areas including leadership, strategy, change, talent, financial incentives, and work-life balance. The authors show managers how to find and apply the best practices for their companies, rather than blindly copy what seems to have worked elsewhere. This practical and candid book challenges leaders to commit to evidence-based management as a way of organizational life—and shows how to finally turn this common sense into common practice.

Truths and Half Truths is aimed at economic and social science academics and students who are interested in the dynamics of China’s institutional development and societal transformation. Covering the complexity of the social, economic, and governance reforms behind the economic miracles achieved by China since its reform in 1978, and particularly in the past twenty years, this book provides much needed insight and critical thinking on major aspects of China’s reform. Topics include employment, environment, anti-poverty; urbanization and rural development; education, corruption, political regime and media. Readers will be able to re-evaluate the costs and benefits of China’s modernization from a point-of-view of sustainability. Written by highly knowledgeable and well respected academics in law and economics with decades of experience in China studies Provides an insight from academic points of view written in a reader-friendly journalistic style An integrated monograph; each chapter addresses a particular area of reform and can be read independently

A new short story from Sally Green, set in the world of Half Bad. Gabriel Boutin is back in Europe, stuck in the body of a fain. He's looking for Mercury, the powerful and volatile Black Witch who might be his only hope of regaining his true form. But Mercury's help won't come cheap, and as Gabriel is put to punishing work to earn her trust, he begins to realise that life as a fain could be a way to escape the violence of his past. Torn between two paths, can Gabriel find the true Witch within, before he's trapped as a fain forever?

Who was Andreas Reign? He may have been different things to different people. To my old friends, he was just a name that sounded cool. To my parents, he was a nuisance who took credit for all my work. Back in college, I was an engineering student, and that’s it- that’s all I can say about what I was; but he was always so much more - a writer, a poet, a painter, an artist, a dancer, a sculptor, but forevermore, a friend…he was all of those things, and somehow, none of those things. Nobody really knew who, or what, he was, perhaps not even me. I can tell you one thing about him though…he was everything that I dreamt of being, and the only thing I could never become…he was free. He was a breath of inspiration that whispered between my sighs and my words. He was a piece of me that didn’t understand purpose, and thus sculpted himself into whatever he needed to be. He was born of love, and he walked away lovelorn, to hide behind the words he wrote by my hand, in case someone came looking for him. Who was Andreas Reign? I was, or at least I always wanted to be. Saransh Kejriwal

IF WITI'GENSTEIN COULD TALK, COULD WE UNDERSTAND HIM? Perusing the secondary literature on Wittgenstein, I have frequently experienced a perfect Brechtean Entfremdungseffekt. This is interesting, I have felt like saying when reading books and papers on Wittgenstein, but who is the writer talking about? Certainly not Ludwig Wittgenstein the actual person who wrote his books and notebooks and whom I happened to meet. Why is there this strange gap between the ideas of the actual philosopher and the musings of his interpreters? Wittgenstein is talking to us through the posthumous publication of his writings. Why don't philosophers understand what he is saying? A partial reason is outlined in the first essay of this volume. Wittgenstein was far too impatient to explain in his books and book drafts what his problems were, what it was that he was trying to get clear about. He was even too impatient to explain in full his earlier solutions, often merely referring to them casually as it were in a shorthand notation. For one important instance, in The Brown Book, Wittgenstein had explained in some detail what name-object relationships amount to in his view. There he offers both an explanation of what his problem is and an account of his own view illustrated by means of specific examples of language-games. But when he raises the same question again in Philosophical Investigations I, sec.