The political economy of sustainable development: Policy instruments and market mechanisms / Timothy Cadman
Cheltenham: Elgar, 2015. 254 p.

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way.
In DEEP WORK, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.

A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, DEEP WORK takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories -- from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air -- and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored.

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Writer's rights: Freelance journalism in a digital age / Nicole S. Cohen
Montreal, CA: McGill-Queen's Univ. Press, 2016. 323 p.

As media industries undergo rapid change, the conditions of media work are shifting just as quickly, with an explosion in the number of journalists working as freelancers. Although commentary frequently lauds freelancers as ideal workers for the information age – adaptable, multi-skilled, and entrepreneurial – Nicole Cohen argues that freelance media work is increasingly precarious, marked by declining incomes, loss of control over one’s work, intense workloads, long hours, and limited access to labour and social protections. Writers’ Rights provides context for freelancers’ struggles and identifies the points of contention between journalists and big business. Through interviews and a survey of freelancers, Cohen highlights the paradoxes of freelancing, which can be simultaneously precarious and satisfying, risky and rewarding. She documents the transformation of freelancing from a way for journalists to resist salaried labour in pursuit of autonomy into a strategy for media firms to intensify exploitation of freelance writers’ labour power, and presents case studies of freelancers’ efforts to collectively transform their conditions. A groundbreaking and timely intervention into debates about the future of journalism, organizing precariously employed workers, and the transformation of media work in a digital age, Writers’ Rights makes clear what is at stake for journalism’s democratic role when the costs and risks of its production are offloaded onto individuals.

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Disconnected: Youth, new media, and ethics gap / Carrie James.
Cambridge, GB: MIT Press, 2014. 167 p.

“Disconnected: Youth, New Media, and the Ethics Gap is an enlightening read, not only for its analysis of online decision making but also for its revelation of what youth have (and haven’t) learned from the adults in their lives prior to making those decisions. James’s work is relevant for any parent, teacher, graduate student, and professor who has ever wondered, in response to a young person’s ethically questionable decision online, What were they thinking? Upon reading Disconnected, however, well-meaning adults will realize that the question they should ask: What are we teaching? After all, the so-called digital natives were born into a participatory culture. Their predecessors should be willing to inform them of and guide them with principles of ethical participation.”
— Nancy Clare Morgan, Journal of Digital and Media Literacy

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The purpose economy: How your desire for impact, personal growth and community is changing the world / Aaron Hurst
Boise: Elevate, 2014. 271 p.

A series of shifts are happening in our economy: Millennials are trading in conventional career paths to launch tech start-ups, start small businesses that are rooted in local communities, or freelance their expertise. We are sharing everything, from bikes and cars, to extra rooms in our homes. We now create, buy and sell handcrafted products in our local communities with ease.

Globally recognized entrepreneur, founder of Taproot Foundation and CEO of Imperative, Aaron Hurst, argues in his latest book that while these developments seem unrelated at first, taken together they reveal a powerful pattern that points topurposeas the new driver of the American economy. Like the Information Economy, which has driven innovation and economic growth until now, Hurst argues that our new economic era is driven by connecting people to their purpose. It's an economy where value lies in establishing purpose for employees and customers through serving needs greater than their own, enabling personal growth and building community. 

This book is at once a personal memoir of Aaron Hurst’s own awakening as a purpose driven entrepreneur, when he left a well-paying tech job in 2001 to launch Taproot, creating a pathway for millions of professionals and Fortune 500 companies to volunteer for nonprofits. It's also a blueprint for a new economic era that is transformingcompanies, markets and our careers to better serve people and the world. (https://elevatepub.com)

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