Search results for ""author john brooks""

“A moving and riveting memoir about one family’s love and tragedy…beautifully researched, and expressed” (Anne Lamott).Early one Tuesday morning John Brooks went to his teenage daughter’s room. Casey was gone, but she had left a note: The car is parked at the Golden Gate Bridge. I’m sorry. Within hours a security video showed Casey stepping off the bridge. Brooks spent several years after Casey’s suicide trying to understand what led his seventeen-year-old daughter to take her life. He examines Casey’s journey from her abandonment at birth in Poland, to the orphanage where she lived for her first fourteen months, to her adoption and life with John and his wife, Erika, in Northern California. He reads. He talks to Casey’s friends, teachers, doctors, therapists, and other parents. He consults adoption experts, researchers, clinicians, attachment therapists, and social workers. In The Girl Behind the Door, Brooks’s “desperate search for answers and guilt for not doing the right thing without knowing what it was reveals the utter helplessness of suicide survivors” (Kirkus Reviews). Ultimately, Brooks comes to realize that Casey probably suffered an attachment disorder from her infancy—an affliction common among children who’ve been orphaned, neglected, and abused. She might have been helped if someone had recognized this. The Girl Behind the Door is an important book for parents, mental health professionals, and teens: “Rarely have the subjects of suicide, adoption, adolescence, and parenting been explored so openly and honestly” (John Bateson, Former Executive Director, Contra Costa County Crisis Center, and author of The Final Leap: Suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge).

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The works of African American authors and artists are too often interpreted through the lens of authenticity. They are scrutinized for “positive” or “negative” representations of Black people and Black culture or are assumed to communicate some truth about Black identity or the “Black experience.” However, many contemporary Black artists are creating works that cannot be slotted into such categories. Their art resists interpretation in terms of conventional racial discourse; instead, they embrace opacity, uncertainty, and illegibility.John Brooks examines a range of abstractionist, experimental, and genre-defying works by Black writers and artists that challenge how audiences perceive and imagine race. He argues that literature and visual art that exceed the confines of familiar conceptions of Black identity can upend received ideas about race and difference. Considering photography by Roy DeCarava, installation art by Kara Walker, novels by Percival Everett and Paul Beatty, drama by Suzan-Lori Parks, and poetry by Robin Coste Lewis, Brooks pinpoints a shared aesthetic sensibility. In their works, the devices that typically make race feel familiar are instead used to estrange cultural assumptions about race. Brooks contends that when artists confound expectations about racial representation, the resulting disorientation reveals the incoherence of racial ideologies. By showing how contemporary literature and art ask audiences to question what they think they know about race, The Racial Unfamiliar offers a new way to understand African American cultural production.

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Once in Golconda "In this book, John Brooks-who was one of the most elegant of all business writers-perfectly catches the flavor of one of history's best-known financial dramas: the 1929 crash and its aftershocks. It's packed with parallels and parables for the modern reader." -From the Foreword by Richard Lambert Editor-in-Chief, The Financial Times Once in Golconda is a dramatic chronicle of the breathtaking rise, devastating fall, and painstaking rebirth of Wall Street in the years between the wars. Focusing on the lives and fortunes of some of the era's most memorable traders, bankers, boosters, and frauds, John Brooks brings to vivid life all the ruthlessness, greed, and reckless euphoria of the '20s bull market, the desperation of the days leading up to the crash of '29, and the bitterness of the years that followed. Praise for Once in Golconda "A fast-moving, sophisticated account.embracing the stock-market boom of the twenties, the crash of 1929, the Depression, and the coming of the New Deal. Its leitmotif is the truly tragic personal history of Richard Whitney, the aristocrat Morgan broker and head of the Stock Exchange, who ended up in Sing Sing." -Edmund Wilson, writing in the New Yorker "As Mr. Brooks tells this tale of dishonor, desperation, and the fall of the mighty, it takes on overtones of Greek tragedy, a king brought down by pride. Whitney's sordid history has been told before..But in Mr. Brooks's hands, the drama becomes freshly shocking." -Wall Street Journal "It's all there in Once in Golconda-the avarice of an era that favored the rich; and the later anguish of myriads of speculators doomed by a bloated market, easy credit, and their own cupidity and stupidity." -Saturday Review

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The works of African American authors and artists are too often interpreted through the lens of authenticity. They are scrutinized for “positive” or “negative” representations of Black people and Black culture or are assumed to communicate some truth about Black identity or the “Black experience.” However, many contemporary Black artists are creating works that cannot be slotted into such categories. Their art resists interpretation in terms of conventional racial discourse; instead, they embrace opacity, uncertainty, and illegibility.John Brooks examines a range of abstractionist, experimental, and genre-defying works by Black writers and artists that challenge how audiences perceive and imagine race. He argues that literature and visual art that exceed the confines of familiar conceptions of Black identity can upend received ideas about race and difference. Considering photography by Roy DeCarava, installation art by Kara Walker, novels by Percival Everett and Paul Beatty, drama by Suzan-Lori Parks, and poetry by Robin Coste Lewis, Brooks pinpoints a shared aesthetic sensibility. In their works, the devices that typically make race feel familiar are instead used to estrange cultural assumptions about race. Brooks contends that when artists confound expectations about racial representation, the resulting disorientation reveals the incoherence of racial ideologies. By showing how contemporary literature and art ask audiences to question what they think they know about race, The Racial Unfamiliar offers a new way to understand African American cultural production.

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If you want to attract and retain users in the booming mobile services market, you need a quick-loading app that won't churn through their data plans. The key is to compress multimedia and other data into smaller files, but finding the right method is tricky. This witty book helps you understand how data compression algorithms work-in theory and practice-so you can choose the best solution among all the available compression tools. With tables, diagrams, games, and as little math as possible, authors Colt McAnlis and Aleks Haecky neatly explain the fundamentals. Learn how compressed files are better, cheaper, and faster to distribute and consume, and how they'll give you a competitive edge. Learn why compression has become crucial as data production continues to skyrocket Know your data, circumstances, and algorithm options when choosing compression tools Explore variable-length codes, statistical compression, arithmetic numerical coding, dictionary encodings, and context modeling Examine tradeoffs between file size and quality when choosing image compressors Learn ways to compress client- and server-generated data objects Meet the inventors and visionaries who created data compression algorithms

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'The best business book I've ever read.' Bill Gates, Wall Street Journal'The Michael Lewis of his day.' New York TimesWhat do the $350 million Ford Motor Company disaster known as the Edsel, the fast and incredible rise of Xerox, and the unbelievable scandals at General Electric and Texas Gulf Sulphur have in common? Each is an example of how an iconic company was defined by a particular moment of fame or notoriety. These notable and fascinating accounts are as relevant today to understanding the intricacies of corporate life as they were when the events happened.Stories about Wall Street are infused with drama and adventure and reveal the machinations and volatile nature of the world of finance. John Brooks's insightful reportage is so full of personality and critical detail that whether he is looking at the astounding market crash of 1962, the collapse of a well-known brokerage firm, or the bold attempt by American bankers to save the British pound, one gets the sense that history really does repeat itself.This business classic written by longtime New Yorker contributor John Brooks is an insightful and engaging look into corporate and financial life in America.

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The Go-Go Years "The Go-Go Years is not to be read in the usual manner ofWall Street classics. You do not read this book to see our presentsituation reenacted in the past, with only the names changed. Youread it because it is a wonderful description of the way thingswere in a different time and place." --From the Foreword by Michael Lewis The Go-Go Years is the harrowing and humorous story ofthe growth stocks of the 1960s and how their meteoric rise caused amultitude of small investors to thrive until the devastating marketcrashes in the 1970s. It was a time when greed drove the market andfast money was being made and lost as the "go-go" stocks surged andplunged. Included are the stories of such high-profilepersonalities as H. Ross Perot who lost $450 million in one day,Saul Steinberg's attempt to take over Chemical Bank, and the fallof America's "Last Gatsby," Eddie Gilbert. Praise for The Go-Go Years "Those for whom the stock market is mostly a spectator sportwill relish the book's verve, color, and memorableone-liners." --New York Review of Books "Please don't take The Go-Go Years too much for granted:as effortlessly as it seems to fly, it is nonetheless an unusuallycomplex and thoughtful work of social history." --New York Times "Brooks's great contribution is his synthesis of all theelements that made the 1960s the most volatile in Wall Streethistory . and making so much material easily digestible for theuninitiated." --Publishers Weekly "Brooks ... is about the only writer around who combines athorough knowledge of finance with the ability to perceive behindthe dance of numbers 'high, pure, moral melodrama on the themes ofpossession, domination, and belonging.'" --Time

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Much of central Dartmoor is an uninhabited wilderness almost free of villages, farms, trees and roads making it outstanding environmental value. From this mass rise Dartmoor's rivers, including the Lyd, Tavy, East and West Dart, Bovey, Teign, Taw and Okement, nearly all of which flow southwards to the English Channel. The large numbers of tors that dominate Dartmoor are the remnants of hard masses of granite, drastically reduced in size and moulded into their present shapes by millions of years of weatherings. Bowerman's Nose, Hound Tor and Haytor Rocks are famous examples included on these walks.

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In recent years, the formation and impacts of biofilms on dairy manufacturing have been studied extensively, from the effects of microbial enzymes produced during transportation of raw milk to the mechanisms of biofilm formation by thermophilic spore-forming bacteria. The dairy industry now has a better understanding of biofilms and of approaches that may be adopted to reduce the impacts that biofilms have on manufacturing efficiencies and the quality of dairy products. Biofilms in the Dairy Industry provides a comprehensive overview of biofilm-related issues facing the dairy sector. The book is a cornerstone for a better understanding of the current science and of ways to reduce the occurrence of biofilms associated with dairy manufacturing. The introductory section covers the definition and basic concepts of biofilm formation and development, and provides an overview of problems caused by the occurrence of biofilms along the dairy manufacturing chain. The second section of the book focuses on specific biofilm-related issues, including the quality of raw milk influenced by biofilms, biofilm formation by thermoduric streptococci and thermophilic spore-forming bacteria in dairy manufacturing plants, the presence of pathogens in biofilms, and biofilms associated with dairy waste effluent. The final section of the book looks at the application of modelling approaches to control biofilms. Potential solutions for reducing contamination throughout the dairy manufacturing chain are also presented. Essential to professionals in the global dairy sector, Biofilms in the Dairy Industry will be of great interest to anyone in the food and beverage, academic and government sectors. This text is specifically targeted at dairy professionals who aim to improve the quality and consistency of dairy products and improve the efficiency of dairy product manufacture through optimizing the use of dairy manufacturing plant and reducing operating costs.

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For much of America's history, African Americans were discouraged or aggressively prevented from becoming scientists and engineers. Those who did enter STEM fields found that their inventions and discoveries were often neither recognized nor valued. Even today, particularly in the field of engineering, the participation of African American men and women is shockingly low, and some evidence indicates that the situation might be getting worse. In Changing the Face of Engineering, twenty-four eminent scholars address the under representation of African Americans in engineering from a wide variety of disciplinary and professional perspectives while proposing workable classroom solutions and public policy initiatives. They combine robust statistical analyses with personal narratives of African American engineers and STEM instructors who, by taking evidenced-based approaches, have found success in graduating African American engineers. Changing the Face of Engineering argues that the continued under representation of African Americans in engineering impairs the ability of the United States to compete successfully in the global marketplace. This volume will be of interest to STEM scholars and students, as well as policy makers, corporations, and higher education institutions.

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Pathfinder(R) Cotswolds covering parts of the Snowshill, Buckholt Wood and Burford. This selection offers interest, regional variety and balance of routes in the Cotswolds providing the best walks in the area. From an easy stroll through Castle Combe to the much more challenging walks on Bredon Hill this volume contains something for everyone. Covering walks through the whole of the Cotswolds both popular and little know scenic routes including Stanway, Bourton-on-the-Water and Blenheim Park. -See walk locations by Looking Inside Inside: -28 great Cotswold walks from 2 to 10 miles -Clear, large scale Ordnance Survey route maps -GPS reference for all Cotswold waypoints -Where to park, good pubs and places of interest en route -All routes have been fully researched and written by expert outdoor writers -Beautiful photography of scenes from the walks Pathfinder(R) Guides are Britain's best loved walking guides. Made with durable covers, they are the perfect companion for countryside walks throughout Britain. Each title features circular walks with easy-to-follow route descriptions, large-scale Ordnance Survey route maps and GPS waypoints.With over 70 titles in the series, they offer essential information for walkers throughout the country.

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The Cairngorms cover 300 sq miles, making it the most mountainous area in Britain, with an equally wide range of wildlife. The native pine forest, one of the final retreats of the red squirrel, supports small, uncommon birds like crested tits, redwings and crossbills. Loch Garten is the RSPB osprey breeding site where in summer the birds fly over a considerable tract of country in search of food. In scenic contrast, there is also an ascent to the summit of Carn Daimh, part of the Speyside Way, with its splendid panorama of the countryside surrounding Glenlivet.

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