David H. Freedman

Our investments are devastated, obesity is epidemic, test scores are in decline, blue-chip companies circle the drain, and popular medications turn out to be ineffective and even dangerous. What happened? Didn't we listen to the scientists, economists and other experts who promised us that if we followed their advice all would be well? Actually, those experts are a big reason we're in this mess. And, according to acclaimed business and science writer David H. Freedman, such expert counsel usually turns out to be wrong -- often wildly so. Wrong reveals the dangerously distorted ways experts come up with their advice, and why the most heavily flawed conclusions end up getting the most attention-all the more so in the online era. But there's hope: Wrong spells out the means by which every individual and organization can do a better job of unearthing the crucial bits of right within a vast avalanche of misleading pronouncements.

Touting the benefits of disorder, chaos, and mess, a groundbreaking study explains how and why a little disorder actually makes systems more effective, citing examples from business, cooking, parenting, politics, and other fields to demonstrate that the right amount of disorder yields better solutions, uses resources more efficiently, and is more durable. Reprint. 75,000 first printing.

Fast. Motivated. Hard-hitting.That's what every business wants to be. And that's why the U.S. Marines excel in every mission American throws at them, no matter how tough the odds. In Corps Business, journalist David H. Freeman identifies the Marine's simple but devastatingly effective principles for managing people and resources -- and ultimately winning. Freedman discusses such techniques as "the rule of three," "managing by end state," and the "70% solution," to show how they can be applied to business solutions.

For two years a computer break-in artist known only as "Phantom Dialer" seized control of hundreds - perhaps thousands - of computer networks around the world. Frightened network administrators watched helplessly as the intruder methodically slipped into universities, corporations, banks, and military facilities, including top-secret weapons-research sites. Working up to twenty hours a day, Phantom Dialer obsessively broke into one network after another - and no-one knew who he was or what he was after. Was he a spy? Was he laying the groundwork for a single massive theft? As the number of victims mounted, Phantom Dialer became the subject of the first major investigation of the FBI's new computer-crime squad and one of the biggest manhunts in the history of electronic crime. Though it reads like a thriller, AT LARGE is more than just a spellbinding account of one of the stranger episodes of the electronic 1990s. It is also a sharply observed group portrait of the new wired world and an expose of the technical flaws at its very core.