Tough Choices

By accepting the CEO job at Hewlett-Packard, an iconic company that had lost its way, Carly Fiorina confirmed her status as the most powerful businesswoman in America. But she also made herself a target for everyone who disliked her bold leadership style and resented her rapid rise. For six years, as she led HP through drastic changes and a controversial merger, Fiorina was the subject of endless analysis, debate, and speculation. She appeared on the cover of every major magazine and her every word was scrutinized. Yet in all that time, the public never got to know the person behind the persona. "Tough Choices" finally reveals the real Carly Fiorina, who writes with brutal honesty about her triumphs and failures, her deepest fears and most painful confrontations - including her sudden and very public firing by HP's board of directors. It's an amazing life story: Fiorina was a liberal arts major and law school dropout who didn't even consider a business career until her midtwenties. But soon she was blazing through big jobs at AT&T and then Lucent Technologies, with a growing reputation as a creative, hard-working, visionary leader. Her career path would have been remarkable for anyone, but in an industry dominated by men, it was unprecedented. "Tough Choices" shows what it's really like to lead a major corporation in a time of great change while trying to stay true to your values. It's one woman's inspiring story, along with her unique perspective on leadership, technology, globalization, sexism, and many other issues.

This insightful and brilliant analysis of ethics teaches readers valuable skills in evaluating tough choices and arriving at sound conclusions. “A thought-provoking guide to enlightened and progressive personal behavior.” —Jimmy Carter An essential guide to ethical action updated for our challenging times, How Good People Make Tough Choices by Rushworth M. Kidder offers practical tools for dealing with the difficult moral dilemmas we face in our everyday lives. The founder and president of the Institute for Global Ethics, Dr. Kidder provides guidelines for making the important decisions in situations that may not be that clear cut—from most private and personal to the most public and global. Former U.S. senator and NBA legend Bill Bradley calls How Good People Make Tough Choices “a valuable guide to more informed and self-conscious moral judgments.”

To what extent should government be permitted to intervene in personal choices? In grappling with this question, liberal theory seeks to balance individual liberty with the advancement of collective goals such as equality. Too often, however, society's obligation to provide meaningful opportunities is overshadowed by its commitment to personal freedom. Tough Choices charts a middle course between freedom-oriented anti-interventionism and equality-oriented social welfare, presenting a way to structure choices that equalize opportunities while protecting the freedom of individuals to choose among them. Drawing on insights from behavioral economics, psychology, and educational theory, Sigal Ben-Porath makes the case for structured paternalism, which is based on the understanding that state intervention is often inevitable, and that therefore theorists and policymakers must focus on the extent to which it can productively be applied, as well as on the forms it should take in different social domains. Ben-Porath explores how structured paternalism can play a role in providing equal opportunities for individual choice in an array of personal and social contexts, including the intimate lives of adults, parent-child relationships, school choice, and intercultural relations. Tough Choices demonstrates how structured paternalism can inform more egalitarian social policies, ones that acknowledge personal, social, and cultural differences as well as the challenges all individuals may face when they make a choice.

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s inside account of the crises, choices, and challenges she faced during her four years as America’s 67th Secretary of State, and how those experiences drive her view of the future. “All of us face hard choices in our lives,” Hillary Rodham Clinton writes at the start of this personal chronicle of years at the center of world events. “Life is about making such choices. Our choices and how we handle them shape the people we become.” In the aftermath of her 2008 presidential run, she expected to return to representing New York in the United States Senate. To her surprise, her former rival for the Democratic Party nomination, newly elected President Barack Obama, asked her to serve in his administration as Secretary of State. This memoir is the story of the four extraordinary and historic years that followed, and the hard choices that she and her colleagues confronted. Secretary Clinton and President Obama had to decide how to repair fractured alliances, wind down two wars, and address a global financial crisis. They faced a rising competitor in China, growing threats from Iran and North Korea, and revolutions across the Middle East. Along the way, they grappled with some of the toughest dilemmas of US foreign policy, especially the decision to send Americans into harm’s way, from Afghanistan to Libya to the hunt for Osama bin Laden. By the end of her tenure, Secretary Clinton had visited 112 countries, traveled nearly one million miles, and gained a truly global perspective on many of the major trends reshaping the landscape of the twenty-first century, from economic inequality to climate change to revolutions in energy, communications, and health. Drawing on conversations with numerous leaders and experts, Secretary Clinton offers her views on what it will take for the United States to compete and thrive in an interdependent world. She makes a passionate case for human rights and the full participation in society of women, youth, and LGBT people. An astute eyewitness to decades of social change, she distinguishes the trendlines from the headlines and describes the progress occurring throughout the world, day after day. Secretary Clinton’s descriptions of diplomatic conversations at the highest levels offer readers a master class in international relations, as does her analysis of how we can best use “smart power” to deliver security and prosperity in a rapidly changing world—one in which America remains the indispensable nation.

As is the case in Western industrialized countries, Japan is seeing a rise in the number of unmarried couples, later marriages, and divorces. What sets Japan apart, however, is that the percentage of children born out of wedlock has hardly changed in the past fifty years. This book provides the first systematic study of single motherhood in contemporary Japan. Seeking to answer why illegitimate births in Japan remain such a rarity, Hertog spent over three years interviewing single mothers, academics, social workers, activists, and policymakers about the beliefs, values, and choices that unmarried Japanese mothers have. Pairing her findings with extensive research, she considers the economic and legal disadvantages these women face, as well as the cultural context that underscores family change and social inequality in Japan. This is the only scholarly account that offers sufficient detail to allow for extensive comparisons with unmarried mothers in the West.

A practical analysis and inspiring guide for teaching kids "ethical fitness" Parents are beginning to realize that deficiencies in ethics and character are becoming a big problem among our nation's children. According to the latest data, lying, cheating, and rampant insensitivity to other people are increasingly common. What can parents do? In this book, ethics expert Rushworth Kidder shows how to customize interventions to a child's age and temperament. He encourages parents not to give up, since what they do can always make a difference, regardless of how long or deep the bad habits of dishonesty may be. Encourages parents to intervene early and re-establish children on the right course Explores the keys to ethical behavior: honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness, and compassion All of Kidder's practical advice is based on the latest psychological and neuroscientific research about how kids develop character and learn what's right and wrong.

This anthology features stories about individuals who find themselves in situations that test their strength of character. They are called upon to make moral choices, face the consequences of their actions, and consider what it means to "do the right thing. " From computer blackmail, peer pressure, and gang violence to drug use, unwanted pregnancy, guilt and atonement, these characters face decisions that may affect the rest of their lives. There are many tough choices; there are no easy answers.

Presents the thoughts and hard-won experiences of men and women who have had to face thorny ethical issues in their roles as managers. Shows how to be ethical and still be a success, how managers can recognize ethical situations, and how to resolve problems that involve ethical considerations. Toffler's book is not what others think ethics ``ought'' to be for managers. It is what practicing managers say it is. Its unique format ``let[s] the managers talk'' about the actual situations in which they were responsibile for decisions which had ethical consequences. All managers will be able to identify with the situations. The author has added her own introductory and concluding commentary to the interviews to help readers get the most out of it.