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INVESTING IN RETAIL PROPERTIES, 3RD EDITION

THIRD EDITION

A consummately authoritative and valuable examination of retail investing.

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A comprehensive guide focuses on investing in commercial real estate.

This third edition of Rappaport’s manual notes that income-producing real estate comes in many forms: residential, office, storage facilities, industrial, and retail. He mentions an insight from Investing 101: Diversifying makes for a portfolio that can withstand the shocks of the financial markets. But his own long experience has been in just one of these real estate types: retail properties. His company has been investing in and representing commercial properties for decades, including brands like Arby’s, Chipotle, Panera Bread, Sephora, Shake Shack, and many others. In these pages, he takes interested readers and prospective financiers through every aspect of investing and cash-flow management, going into granular detail on things like depreciation, net absorption, and the intricacies of loans in both a bull and bear market. There are plenty of charts and a great blast of numbers and statistics—this is a consult-your-calculator, graduate-level, nuts-and-bolts seminar on the specifics of investing in and managing commercial properties like shopping centers. Rappaport’s decision to open his book with an autobiographical sketch may at first seem discordant with this fact-heavy approach, and it can sometimes be self-serving (although also touching, as when during a glowing tribute to his father, he writes simply: “He showed me the way but never told me where to go”). Yet it turns out to be a wise choice, a very effective introduction to a guide that ends up being remarkably readable for both investors and nonspecialists. Rappaport is a terrific storyteller, even when he’s crunching numbers. He smoothly brings this latest edition of his book up to date with references to Covid-19 and recent changes in the Federal Reserve’s finance rates. But ultimately, the wonkish, ethical author at the heart of it all will strike readers the most.

A consummately authoritative and valuable examination of retail investing.

Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023

ISBN: 979-8887503073

Page Count: 664

Publisher: ForbesBooks

Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2023

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THINKING, FAST AND SLOW

Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...

A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.

The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.

Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011

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THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY PLAYBOOK FOR CHANGEMAKERS

A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.

Helbig and Norman present a game plan for making leadership more responsively human.

In this expanded update to The Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human (2023), the authors provide “practical strategies for responding to resistance, sparking change, embodying the change we want to see, and moving forward deliberately,” specifically in a business setting. They suggest ways to encourage what they call “changemakers” through the use of five key “plays” from their playbook: Communicate Courageously, Master the Art of Listening, Manage Your Reactions (“shift from automatic reaction to conscious response to stay better connected to yourself and others”), Embrace Risk and Failure, and Design Inclusive Rituals. The goal is to ensure that organizational cultures promote psychological safety, guided by leaders who “walk the talk” by emphasizing their own humanity at every turn. (“We must be the first to share our own failures with our teams, which will start to make it possible for others to do the same.”) This call for example-setting is sounded throughout the book as Helbig and Norman urge their target audience (leaders and would-be leaders) to go beyond mere instruction and instead embody the qualities they want to see in their subordinates, such as continuous learning, active curiosity, and self-reflection. Each chapter includes a detailed “Recommended Reading” section and text with extensive numbered and bulleted points formatted to make the core concepts more immediately digestible. The authors effectively employ clear and empathetic prose to assure readers that psychological safety is slow to build and quick to break, observing that such safety requires steady attention and delivers outsize payoffs as a result. They refreshingly ground a great deal of the material in psychology and neuroscience, pointing out, for instance, that research has demonstrated that the parasympathetic nervous system responds to honest appreciation, which improves creative thinking. Some wistful readers might consider some of the authors’ suggestions beyond the reach of their own organizations, as when group facilitators are advised to “gently intervene when someone dominates the conversation,” but hope springs eternal.

A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.

Pub Date: May 19, 2026

ISBN: 9798993550503

Page Count: 170

Publisher: Crazy Idea Press

Review Posted Online: April 23, 2026

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