New Releases by Arthur C. Brooks

You can get happier. And getting there will be the adventure of your lifetime. INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In Build the Life You Want, Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey invite you to begin a journey toward greater happiness no matter how challenging your circumstances. Drawing on cutting-edge science and their years of helping people translate ideas into action, they show you how to improve your life right now instead of waiting for the outside world to change. With insight, compassion, and hope, Brooks and Winfrey reveal how the tools of emotional self-management can change your life―immediately. They recommend practical, research-based practices to build the four pillars of happiness: family, friendship, work, and faith. And along the way, they share hard-earned wisdom from their own lives and careers as well as the witness of regular people whose lives are joyful despite setbacks and hardship. Equipped with the tools of emotional self-management and ready to build your four pillars, you can take control of your present and future rather than hoping and waiting for your circumstances to improve. Build the Life You Want is your blueprint for a better life.

The roadmap for finding purpose, meaning, and success as we age, from bestselling author, Harvard professor, and the Atlantic''s happiness columnist Arthur Brooks. Many of us assume that the more successful we are, the less susceptible we become to the sense of professional and social irrelevance that often accompanies aging. But the truth is, the greater our achievements and our attachment to them, the more we notice our decline, and the more painful it is when it occurs. What can we do, starting now, to make our older years a time of happiness, purpose, and yes, success? At the height of his career at the age of 50, Arthur Brooks embarked on a seven-year journey to discover how to transform his future from one of disappointment over waning abilities into an opportunity for progress. From Strength to Strength is the result, a practical roadmap for the rest of your life. Drawing on social science, philosophy, biography, theology, and eastern wisdom, as well as dozens of interviews with everyday men and women, Brooks shows us that true life success is well within our reach. By refocusing on certain priorities and habits that anyone can learn, such as deep wisdom, detachment from empty rewards, connection and service to others, and spiritual progress, we can set ourselves up for increased happiness. Read this book and you, too, can go from strength to strength.

Nonprofits and the social sectors are taking on an increasing share of the world''s most vital work. Make sure your organization is ready for the challenge. If you read nothing else on nonprofits and the social sectors, read these 10 articles. We''ve combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you align your organization''s mission and strategy, deliver immediate impact, and create lasting change. This book will inspire you to: Choose the right problem to solve Understand when the best practices of for-profits don''t apply Assemble an engaged and goal-driven board of directors Make the most of for-profit initiatives and corporate partnerships Drive demand, scale up, and be ready to change course Learn from the success stories of the world''s most respected nonprofit leaders This collection of articles includes "Lofty Missions, Down-to-Earth Plans," by V. Kasturi Rangan; "What Business Can Learn from Nonprofits," by Peter F. Drucker; "Life''s Work: An Interview with Desmond Tutu"; "Are You Solving the Right Problem?" by Dwayne Spradlin; "Life''s Work: An Interview with George Mitchell"; "Enterprising Nonprofits," by J. Gregory Dees; "Life''s Work: An Interview with Wynton Marsalis"; "State Street''s CEO on Creating Employment for At-Risk Youths," by Joseph Hooley; "Life''s Work: An Interview with Salman Khan"; "Do Better at Doing Good," by V. Kasturi Rangan, Sohel Karim, and Sheryl K. Sandberg; "AEI''s President on Measuring the Impact of Ideas," by Arthur C. Brooks; "Life''s Work: An Interview with Michelle Bachelet"; "The New Work of the Nonprofit Board," by Barbara E. Taylor, Richard P. Chait, and Thomas P. Holland; "Life''s Work: An Interview with Bill T. Jones"; "Reaching the World''s Poorest Consumers," by Muhammad Yunus, Frederic Dalsace, David Menasce, and Benedicte Faivre-Tavignot; "Life''s Work: An Interview with Muhammad Yunus"; and "Audacious Philanthropy: Lessons from 15 World-Changing Initiatives," by Susan Wolf Ditkoff and Abe Grindle.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER To get ahead today, you have to be a jerk, right? Divisive politicians. Screaming heads on television. Angry campus activists. Twitter trolls. Today in America, there is an “outrage industrial complex” that prospers by setting American against American, creating a “culture of contempt”—the habit of seeing people who disagree with us not as merely incorrect, but as worthless and defective. Maybe, like more than nine out of ten Americans, you dislike it. But hey, either you play along, or you’ll be left behind, right? Wrong. In Love Your Enemies, social scientist and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller From Strength to Strength Arthur C. Brooks shows that abuse and outrage are not the right formula for lasting success. Brooks blends cutting-edge behavioral research, ancient wisdom, and a decade of experience leading one of America’s top policy think tanks in a work that offers a better way to lead based on bridging divides and mending relationships. Brooks’ prescriptions are unconventional. To bring America together, we shouldn’t try to agree more. There is no need for mushy moderation, because disagreement is the secret to excellence. Civility and tolerance shouldn’t be our goals, because they are hopelessly low standards. And our feelings toward our foes are irrelevant; what matters is how we choose to act. Love Your Enemies offers a clear strategy for victory for a new generation of leaders. It is a rallying cry for people hoping for a new era of American progress. Most of all, it is a roadmap to arrive at the happiness that comes when we choose to love one another, despite our differences.

Arthur C. Brooks, one of the country’s leading policy experts and the president of the American Enterprise Institute, offers a bold new vision for conservatism as a movement for happiness, unity, and social justice—a movement of the head and heart that boldly challenges the liberal monopoly on “fairness” and “compassion.” Drawing on years of research, Brooks presents a social justice agenda for a New Right—an inclusive, optimistic movement with a positive agenda to fight poverty, promote equal opportunity, extol spiritual enlightenment, and help everyone lead happier and more fulfilling lives. Firmly grounded in the four “institutions of meaning”—family, faith, community, and meaningful work—it is a call for a government safety net that actually lifts people up and offers a vision of true hope through earned success. Clear, well-reasoned, accessible, and free of vituperative politics, The Conservative Heart is a welcome strategy for conservatives looking for fresh, actionable ideas—and for politically independent citizens who believe that neither side is adequately addressing their needs or concerns.

Entrepreneurship, personal responsibility, and upward mobility: These traditions are at the heart of the free enterprise system, and have long been central to America''s exceptional culture. In recent years, however, policymakers have dramatically weakened these traditions -- by exploding the size of government, propping up their corporate cronies, and trying to reorient our system from rewarding merit to redistributing wealth. In The Road to Freedom, American Enterprise Institute President Arthur C. Brooks shows that this trend cannot be reversed through materialistic appeals about the economic efficiency of capitalism. Rather, free enterprise requires a moral defense rooted in the ideals of earned success, equality of opportunity, charity, and basic fairness. Brooks builds this defense and demonstrates how it is central to understanding the major policy issues facing America today. The future of the free enterprise system has become a central issue in our national debate, and Brooks offers a practical manual for defending it over the coming years. Both a moral manifesto and a prescription for concrete policy changes, The Road to Freedom will help Americans in all walks of life translate the philosophy of free enterprise into action, to restore both our nation''s greatness and our own well-being in the process.

America faces a new culture war. It is not a war about guns, abortions, or gays -- rather it is a war against the creeping changes to our entrepreneurial culture, the true bedrock of who we are as a people. The new culture war is a battle between free enterprise and social democracy. Many Americans have forgotten the evils of socialism and the predations of the American Great Society''s welfare state programs. But, as American Enterprise Institute''s president Arthur C. Brooks reveals in The Battle, the forces for social democracy have returned with a vengeance, expanding the power of the state to a breathtaking degree. The Battle offers a plan of action for the defense of free enterprise; it is at once a call to arms and a crucial redefinition of the political and moral gulf that divides Right and Left in America today. The battle is on, and nothing less than the soul of America is at stake.

Popular opinion would have us believe that America''s free market system is driven by greed and materialism, resulting in gross inequalities of wealth, destruction of the environment, and other social ills. Even proponents of capitalism often refer to the free market as simply a ''lesser evil'' whose faults are preferable to those of social democracy or communism. But what if the conventional understanding of capitalism as corrupt and unprincipled is wrong? What if the free market economy actually reinforces Christian values? In Wealth and Justice: The Morality of Democratic Capitalism, Arthur C. Brooks and Peter Wehner explore how America''s system of democratic capitalism both depends upon and cultivates an intricate social web of families, churches, and communities. Far from oppressing and depriving individuals, the free market system uniquely enables Americans to exercise vocation and experience the dignity of self-sufficiency, all while contributing to the common good. The fruits of this system include the alleviation of poverty, better health, and greater access to education than at any other time in human history-but also a more significant prosperity: the flourishing of the human soul.

For undergraduate and graduate courses in social entrepreneurship and nonprofit management. This text brings together the established pedagogy of entrepreneurship with cutting edge nonprofit and public management tools.

The author analyzes evidence and empirical research to determine which groups are the happiest in America; and offers suggestions on how the government can help individuals maximize their happiness.

"This study serves to reveal what winners need most from associations, how associations can most effectively communicate the significance of their services that provide benefits to potential members and their employers, and how associations can continue to attract successful people through the services they offer"--P. 5.

We all know we should give to charity, but who really does? In his controversial study of America''s giving habits, Arthur C. Brooks shatters stereotypes about charity in America-including the myth that the political Left is more compassionate than the Right. Brooks, a preeminent public policy expert, spent years researching giving trends in America, and even he was surprised by what he found. In Who Really Cares, he identifies the forces behind American charity: strong families, church attendance, earning one''s own income (as opposed to receiving welfare), and the belief that individuals-not government-offer the best solution to social ills. But beyond just showing us who the givers and non-givers in America really are today, Brooks shows that giving is crucial to our economic prosperity, as well as to our happiness, health, and our ability to govern ourselves as a free people.

The economics of philantrhropic behavior in the United States has received considerable attention in the literature over the past 25 years. Until now, however, no major studies on developing or transition economies has appeared. This paper begins to fill this gap, estimating the determinants of charitable giving in Russia in the post-Soviet era using World Bank household-level data. It provides evidence of both similarities and differences with Western countries regarding the effects of income, taxes, and demographics on charitable giving.

Many arts firms are experiencing increasing costs relative to their revenues. This dissertation argues that demand management, if properly defined and pursued, represents at least a partial solution to this problem. First, an approach to demand expansion that depends on the luxury image of arts firms'' products is compared both theoretically and empirically to one that emphasizes exposing new audience members to the arts. Data on symphony orchestras suggest that the first approach is more effective for lower-budget orchestras, while the second is better for larger orchestras. Second, the relationship between public subsidies to the arts and private philanthropy is examined. Whereas arguments could be made that public funds either leverage or crowd out donations, symphony orchestra data indicate that the two funding sources are in fact independent. Third, on the cost side, it is shown that the ability to lower costs by substituting part-time or noncontracted artists for some that are currently full-time may be an effective strategy to fight the cost-revenue gap, for some firms. Based on these results, it is argued that public arts policy that treats all firms homogeneously and restricts the use of funds is almost certainly suboptimal.