"Do Americans really spend that much time surfing porn sites? Which demographic visited Anna Nicole Smith's Web site most frequently? Who reads Perez Hilton? More than mere trivia nuggets, the answers to these questions define online behaviors among a varied mix of Internet users. Tancer, who leads global research at Hitwise, an online market research company, guides the reader through the search patterns among 10 million Internet users, challenging myths and making new discoveries about the psychology of consumers, illustrating that clicks speak louder than words and can reveal unspoken truths about individual drives that are not expressed via other forms of media. Everyone from marketing managers who want to know how much power social networking sites wield in the online market to political pollsters trying to decipher the disconnect between exit polls and election results would be advised to heed his research. Witty and invaluable in its insights, this book is destined to become a primer for online marketers and usability experts while shedding new light on the mindset and curiosities of the average Web surfer, i.e., your friends and neighbors."

due for publication in September, now available online for preordering at Powell's and Amazon.

People enter a flow state when they are fully absorbed in activity during which they lose their sense of time and have feelings of great satisfaction. The author, a pioneer in this astonishing field of study, clearly explains the principles of "flow", and shows how it can be introduced into every level of life.

It rethinks what motivates people.
--Newsweek

The way to happiness lies not in mindless hedonism, but in mindful change.
--New York Times Book Review

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is professor and former chairman of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago.

His previous books include Flow and The Evolving Self. Flow was shown on the 1993 NBC Super Bowl broadcast as the book that inspired Jimmy Johnson, then coach of the Dallas Cowboys. It was also a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Quality Paperback Book Club.

Blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 accoutrements are revolutionizing the social order, a development that's cause for more excitement than alarm, argues interactive telecommunications professor Shirky. He contextualizes the digital networking age with philosophical, sociological, economic and statistical theories and points to its major successes and failures. Grassroots activism stands among the winners—Belarus's flash mobs, for example, blog their way to unprecedented antiauthoritarian demonstrations. Likewise, user/contributor-managed Wikipedia raises the bar for production efficiency by throwing traditional corporate hierarchy out the window. Print journalism falters as publishing methods are transformed through the Web. Shirky is at his best deconstructing Web failures like Wikitorial, the Los Angeles Times's attempt to facilitate group op-ed writing. Readers will appreciate the Gladwellesque lucidity of his assessments on what makes or breaks group efforts online: Every story in this book relies on the successful fusion of a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the users. The sum of Shirky's incisive exploration, like the Web itself, is greater than its parts. (Publishers Weekly Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Difference reveals that progress and innovation may depend less on lone thinkers with enormous IQs than on diverse people working together and capitalizing on their individuality. Page shows how groups that display a range of perspectives outperform groups of like-minded experts. Diversity yields superior outcomes, and Page proves it using his own cutting-edge research. Moving beyond the politics that cloud standard debates about diversity, he explains why difference beats out homogeneity, whether you're talking about citizens in a democracy or scientists in the laboratory. He examines practical ways to apply diversity's logic to a host of problems, and along the way offers fascinating and surprising examples, from the redesign of the Chicago El to the truth about where we store our ketchup.

A radically new world is taking shape from the ashes of yesterday' s nation-based economic world. To succeed, you must act on the global stage, leveraging radically new drivers of economic power and growth. Legendary business strategist Kenichi Ohmae--who in "The Borderless World," published in 1990, predicted the rise and success of globalization, coining the very word--synthesizes today' s emerging trends into the first coherent view of tomorrow' s global economy--and its implications for politics, business, and personal success.

Using anecdotes and statistics from such diverse sources as pre-election polls, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, traffic patterns, and jelly bean jars, The Wisdom of Crowds persuasively demonstrates that groups of people are usually smarter than their most intelligent individuals. Surowiecki, who writes the Financial Page for the New Yorker, brings concision, accessibility, and wit to this counterintuitive but pertinent idea. Jill, Powells.com

In just the last few years, traditional collaboration — in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention center — has been superseded by collaborations on an astronomical scale. Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics proves this fear is folly. Smart firms can harness collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success. A brilliant guide to one of the most profound changes of our time, Wikinomics challenges our most deeply-rooted assumptions about business and will prove indispensable to anyone who wants to understand competitiveness in the twenty-first century.