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Blindsided: How Business and Society is Shaped by Our Irrational and Unpredictable Behaviour
Author(s): Jonathan Gifford (Author)
- Publisher: Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd
- Publication Date: 15 Feb. 2012
- Language: English
- Print length: 256 pages
- ISBN-10: 9814351296
- ISBN-13: 9789814351294
Book Description
Human beings, it seems safe to say, are irredeemably selfish, greedy, short-sighted and prone to mass delusion. Time and again throughout history, business and society have been blindsided by people’s irrational and unpredictable behaviour. More often than we would care to admit, we look back on a disastrous set of events and think: How could that happen? How could we have been so stupid? Why, for goodness sake, didn’t we see that coming? Blindsided takes a compelling look at the outbreak of some of the most dramatic crises of recent times: from the Dot-Com Bubble to the Credit Crunch, from the Spanish Flu epidemic to the Dust Bowl, from the collapse of Enron to countless rushes, riots and revolutions. In every case, what we believed to be rational decisions made by us enlightened investors, consumers, planners and citizens turned out to be flawed and gravely mistaken. How do we avoid being blindsided by the Next Big One? Provocative, insightful and entertaining, this book shines a new light on our societies and economies, and into the inescapably irrational workings of our minds.
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
JONATHAN GIFFORD is a business man, historian and author, whose writing focuses particularly on the human aspects of leadership and management. After reading philosophy at the University of Kent at Canterbury, Jonathan worked for a number of major media organizations, beginning his career at the Guardian newspaper in the 1970s. He went on to work for the Sunday Express, the Mail on Sunday, and later for BBC Worldwide, where he launched the award-winning BBC History Magazine in 2000. Jonathan is a director of the digital design agency, Bluequest Media, and is the author of History Lessons (Marshall Cavendish, 2010) and Blindsided (Marshall Cavendish, 2012). He lives in Oxfordshire with his wife and children.
