Our Inherently Controversial Human Nature - and How We Should Hack It

Human induced climate change, overuse of natural resources, overwhelming amount of waste and pollution, gender inequality, elevated stress levels, flood of fake news. All these have a lot to do with our controversial human nature and how our race has formed, besides making our life more difficult and less sustainable.

You are to see the controversial process of how we began to become the only highly intelligent species, how widespread is our impact on our environment and why we are inching ahead to the point where extinction will be an issue to deal with. This book provides an original context of the links to our roots and hints at what we should do. It offers a solution to the seven decade-old Fermi paradox and answers the eternal question of meaning and importance of happiness.

It is easy to get the idea. Accepting the conclusions might be a harder task. The real challenge is making a change. Are you ready to start seeing the whole picture?

Neuroscience and Teaching Very Difficult Kids

Teaching students whose behaviour is so ‘out of control’ is a challenge faced by all teachers in modern schools. Contemporary approaches have focused on dealing with the presenting behaviours and attempting to control those. This approach may deal with the problem in the short term but creates no long-term solution.

This work accepts that the majority of extremely dysfunctional behaviour is carried out by children who have suffered early, persistent trauma and/or neglect. Disruptive conduct can be explained by the effect their early childhood environment has had on the neural construction of their brain. These children are not ‘born bad’ but behave this way because of the ‘parenting’ they received in their early life. These are the children who have graduated out of these dysfunctional environments.

Recognising this provides the key to understanding how to deal with these kids. Because the social conditions created these problems, if we change those conditions, over time these children will develop different behaviours to get their fundamental needs met. The solution lies in the fact that everyone acts to get their needs met in the environment in which they live, so it makes sense to present an environment that demands different behaviours to satisfy these needs.

The book provides a description about how the early childhood environment creates the neural scaffold that drives dysfunctional behaviour and how developing a well-defined classroom environment will make a positive contribution to changing that behaviour.

N Z Small Business Owners Handbook

The N Z Small Business Owners Handbook is an essential guide for the over 500,000 small business owners in New Zealand. This practical and comprehensive book offers clear and actionable insights that every owner and stakeholder needs to understand in order to succeed.

While many small business owners are skilled at working in their business, they often neglect the crucial task of working on their business due to their busy schedules. This can lead to exponentially increased risks and missed opportunities. Simply working harder is not the answer - knowing how to work on your business is critical.

This book offers an easy-to-understand solution, using the analogy of the popular game ‘snakes and ladders.’ Just like in the game, business life can be full of ups and downs. This handbook provides a clear roadmap to help navigate the challenges and capitalize on the opportunities that arise.

Whether you are an established business owner or just starting out, this handbook is an indispensable resource for anyone seeking to thrive in the dynamic and ever-changing world of small business. With practical advice, real-world examples, and clear action steps, the N Z Small Business Owners Handbook is the ultimate guide to achieving success and realizing your business dreams.

My Value or My Values Restoring Their Peoples' Pride

If you want to read business books that tell you what to do, how to create a better business, how to avoid the pitfalls, don't read any of the 'Strategies to Go…' Strategies to go…like coffee to go…are stories you can take away, read on the go and draw your own conclusions based on what will work best for you and your business. They are based on true stories and tell it like it is--what really happens in business--allowing you to learn the lessons that fit your needs and the strategic needs of your business. These books are deceptively easy to read and therein lies their genius. You could choose to read the stories of the companies of Paul and Tom as just that--stories. The industrial espionage, fraud and betrayal that challenges their values and the telling drawn characters make for a good read. However, there are intelligently researched and imaginatively presented strategies that can, and ought to, be applied to any commercial organisation, or a not-for-profit (NFP) entity generating funds for societal need. I recommend this book equally to those who are in the commercial or NFP sector, where values and profit align to create balanced and sustainable entity. Diane Robinson CA specialises in the NFP sector. Chair of the Auckland Auckland's NFP Group.

My Value or My Values - Redeeming Customers' Trust

If you want to read business books that tell you what to do, how to create a better business and how to avoid the pitfalls, don't read any of the Strategies to Go.

Strategies to Go, like coffee to go, are stories you can take away, read on the go and draw your own conclusions based on what will work best for you and your business.

They are based on true stories and tell it like it is, what really happens in business, allowing you to learn the lessons that fit your needs and the strategic needs of your business.

Most of us spend 1/3rd of our lives sleeping, 1/3rd of our lives at work (at least) and cram everything else into the final 1/3rd. Given the investments that we make in time, shouldn't we be very clear about what makes us get up in the morning, go to work each day to do what we do?
This book tells a story in a unique way and asks these questions. Without launching into the answers, it takes you on a journey that inspires you to go and find the answers for yourself. After all, your career is all about your choices and your life. What you choose to do can define who you are. If you choose to spend your time with others who have shared values, together you can make a difference and achieve great things. At the same time, you might even have some fun and do something truly worthwhile!
If you choose otherwise, you may miss out…it's up to you…

Brian Watson – Group Manager

Laboratories AsureQuality Limited 

My Value or My Values - Rebirth of a Fallen Company

If you want to read business books that tell you what to do - how to create a better business - how to avoid the pitfalls – don’t read any of the “Strategies to Go…”

Strategies to go … like coffee to go… are designed as stories you can take-away, read on the go, and draw your own conclusions based on what will work best for you and your business.

They tell it like it is – what really happens in business – allowing you to learn the lessons that fit your needs and the strategic needs of your business.

Based on the lives and businesses of real people the characters are based on a composite of heroes and villains I have worked with.  You will share their frustrations and anger, the exuberance of their success and their pain of losing, and most of all you will learn from their experiences.

My Mother was a Woman

Gender equality should be top of the agenda of discourse on human affairs. There is no rhyme nor reason for the status of women to be languishing below the male ranking. The ‘weaker sex’ label must cease forthwith. Women are strong, resilient and always unbowed. Moreover, women conceive and populate our world with all the talents the human race celebrates from time to time. Women deserve to be ululated and rewarded. The current status demeans women and denies the human race the chance to scale the heights it has the potential to scale!

Musculoskeletal Imaging

The book includes 100 cases (common and rare) with highly organised radiological description of the diseases.The cases are grouped into three chapters: Upper Limbs, Neck/Trunk/Spine and Lower Limbs.High quality images (X-ray, US, CT and MRI).It covers all imaging modalities including conventional radiology, ultrasound/Doppler, CT scan and MRI.The topics covered in the book represent the common and important diseases encountered in musculoskeletal imaging.The material presented for each case provides a thorough and comprehensive description of the disease entity, enabling the radiologist or the clinician to develop a clear concept of the entity through the different imaging modalities that are present.What is interesting in this book is one case per page. The book can be used as a mean of rapid revision of a large number of cases in a short time or as a test of knowledge by masking the radiological description and diagnosis and trying by using the clinical data and radiological images to describe first the pathology then propose a diagnosis.

Mundane Insurance

Manufacturing industries are a common knowledge as are the likes of the motor car, television, foodstuffs and electrical goods that exist around us every day and are forcefully advertised. Banking too but it is only true to a lesser degree regarding insurance because if canvasing the average person in the street about insurance they would think only about their life insurance, health insurance, motor cover, house and contents, pet plan insurance and so on. Put like that, it is all very wearisome and therefore hardly a subject worth writing about, or is it? That was certainly the author’s impression of insurance even up to the point of moving into the financial sector from manufacturing industry.

Pursuing the subject a step further, hazarding a guess, if those very same people were quizzed regarding the types of people they imagined are employed in insurance they would probably describe their insurance broker or simply a voice at an insurance call centre. This account therefore will, in all probability, dispel the notion that all insurance dealings are routine and in the main, predictable as did an international group of young insurance delegates at a Middle East seminar, many of whom were totally unaware that the insurance industry’s activities were so diverse.

Mother’s Love

Mother’s Love is a series of essays about social issues. I say that my readers know my essays are good for them like broccoli, but the jokes throughout are sort of the cream cheese that makes the essays tasty. I started writing them in 2014 and then picked up where I left off in 2021. Some of the best essays were written while travelling to Brooklyn in New York in 2021. The other more notable essays were written after long beach walks where I would empty my mind out so when I started writing I would only have a heading in mind and then let the rest flow directly out of my subconscious. I often say that my life is sort of a circus that my essays are based on but the Dalai Lama says circuses are fun. 

Mother is Dying

It’s hard enough to get your head around the fact that Granny is dying and that we may have to sort out her personal affairs. So, it’s no wonder that we struggle to get our heads around the fact that Mother Earth is dying too. Heavens above, we might have a lot more sorting out to do. Thinking and talking about death is hard. Are you ready to face the fact that our Mother is dying?

Wendy’s previous book, Surviving a ‘New Norm’, created by Loss and Bereavement: moving from Trauma to Insight, told how Wendy moved forward from the traumas and bereavements in her own life. The two central messages in Mother is Dying adapt her understanding and experience of the effects of trauma and bereavement to those that will occur during the slow demise of humanity on our planet, as she sees the future, which is a highly plausible vision.  

Mother is Dying has both pessimistic and optimistic tones and the change in climate change throughout the world is now critical.  

The distinctive contribution of Mother is Dying is asking us to consider now the emotional trauma of climate change and the losses it will bring. It is understanding the way that people will react to the major changes in our lives brought about by climate change – the outcome of global warming – that is so important to finding ways to reduce the impact of those consequences.  

If trauma and bereavement are our reactions to future climatic changes, how should we respond? What can we, as individuals do? Wendy is an idealist at heart, describing how both individuals and society need to adapt to the dangers of global warming that lie ahead.  

One of the delights of Wendy’s book are the ideas for what we can do both individually and in our local communities and these permeate her writing.

I am less sanguine than she is; her actions are necessary, but will they be sufficient? The responses to climate change require holistic whole-world concerted actions in a rapid timescale. Mother Earth will survive, but will humanity survive with it? What will you do to make a difference?

Dr David White
MBE, Biologist, The Cavernoma Alliance.

Monologues and Duologues for Young Actors

This collection of scenes offers drama teachers a wide range of topics to explore through characterisation of the moment. There are scenes based on the historical past, these could be linked to cross-curricular activities. Those set in the present seek to draw young actors into a setting with which they can identify and emotionally explore. The author believes that young actors often wish to explore comedy. With this in mind, many of the scenes reflect comedic values. Some of these fun situations hold deeper resonances which the drama teacher would be able to explore with the actor. Each scene contains many different levels for the actor to identify with and emotionally develop. As the words are brought to life, the actor should imagine that they relate to a given set of circumstances; each scene is directly linked to the human situation. A young actor's motto should be: "I will live the words I learn."