Search results for ""Author Bill"

*A Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller*'A deeply reported and business-savvy chronicle of Tesla's wild ride' --Walter Isaacson'A masterclass in narrative journalism' --Bradley Hope'Exemplary' --The Times'An exceptional work' --Washington Post Inside the outrageous, come-from-behind story of Elon Musk and Tesla's bid to build the world's greatest car and the race to drive the future.Elon Musk is among the most controversial titans of Silicon Valley. To some he's a genius and a visionary and to others he's a mercurial huckster. Billions of dollars have been gained and lost on his tweets and his personal exploits are the stuff of tabloids. But for all his outrageous talk of mind-uploading and space travel, his most audacious vision is the one closest to the ground: the electric car.When Tesla was founded in the 2000s, electric cars were novelties, trotted out and thrown on the scrap heap by carmakers for more than a century. But where most onlookers saw only failure, a small band of Silicon Valley engineers and entrepreneurs saw potential and they pitted themselves against the biggest, fiercest business rivals in the world, setting out to make a car that was quicker, sexier, smoother, cleaner than the competition.Tesla would undergo a truly hellish fifteen years, beset by rivals, pressured by investors, hobbled by whistleblowers, buoyed by its loyal supporters. Musk himself would often prove Tesla's worst enemy--his antics repeatedly taking the company he had funded himself to the brink of collapse. Was he an underdog, an antihero, a conman, or some combination of the three?Wall Street Journal tech and auto reporter Tim Higgins had a front-row seat for the drama: the pileups, wrestling for control, meltdowns, and the unlikeliest outcome of all, success. A story of power, recklessness, struggle, and triumph, Power Play is an exhilarating look at how a team of eccentrics and innovators beat the odds... and changed the future.

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**Winner of the American Book Award (2023)**?**Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award (2023)**The long-awaited first full biography of legendary jazz saxophonist and composer Sonny Rollins Sonny Rollins has long been considered an enigma. Known as the "Saxophone Colossus," he is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz improvisers of all time, winning Grammys, the Austrian Cross of Honor, Sweden's Polar Music Prize and a National Medal of Arts. A bridge from bebop to the avant-garde, he is a lasting link to the golden age of jazz, pictured in the iconic "Great Day in Harlem" portrait. His seven-decade career has been well documented, but the backstage life of the man once called "the only jazz recluse" has gone largely untold-until now. Based on more than 200 interviews with Rollins himself, family members, friends, and collaborators, as well as Rollins' extensive personal archive, Saxophone Colossus is the comprehensive portrait of this legendary saxophonist and composer, civil rights activist and environmentalist. A child of the Harlem Renaissance, Rollins' precocious talent landed him on the bandstand and in the recording studio with Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, or playing opposite Billie Holiday. An icon in his own right, he recorded Tenor Madness, featuring John Coltrane; Way Out West; Freedom Suite, the first civil rights-themed album of the hard bop era; A Night at the Village Vanguard; and the 1956 classic Saxophone Colossus. Yet his meteoric rise to fame was not without its challenges. He served two sentences on Rikers Island and won his battle with heroin addiction. In 1959, Rollins took a two-year sabbatical from recording and performing, practicing up to 16 hours a day on the Williamsburg Bridge. In 1968, he left again to study at an ashram in India. He returned to performing from 1971 until his retirement in 2012.? The story of Sonny Rollins-innovative, unpredictable, larger than life-is the story of jazz itself, and Sonny's own narrative is as timeless and timely as the art form he represents. Part jazz oral history told in the musicians' own words, part chronicle of one man's quest for social justice and spiritual enlightenment, this is the definitive biography of one of the most enduring and influential artists in jazz and American history.

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The Book of Sand: the first novel in an epic series created by one of the most gifted and invented storytellers of the twenty-first century.'Shocking and satisfying ...a compelling, absorbingly different quest fantasy' Guardian'An utterly original novel from an extraordinarily creative mind' Karin Slaughter'Unique and fearless' Mark Billingham'I inhaled it! It's beautifully written and utterly compelling' Harriet Tyce'Fearless and compelling, lyrical and devastating by turns, the story never slackens pace.' Jane Corry______________SAND. A hostile world of burning sun.Outlines of several once-busy cities shimmer on the horizon. Now empty of inhabitants, their buildings lie in ruins.In the distance a group of people - a family - walk towards us.Ahead lies shelter: a 'shuck' the family call home and which they know they must reach before the light fails, as to be out after dark is to invite danger and almost certain death.To survive in this alien world of shifting sand, they must find an object hidden in or near water. But other families want it too. And they are willing to fight to the death to make it theirs.It is beginning to rain in Fairfax County, Virginia when McKenzie Strathie wakes up. An ordinary teenage girl living an ordinary life - except that the previous night she found a sand-lizard in her bed, and now she's beginning to question everything around her, especially who she really is ...Two very different worlds featuring a group of extraordinary characters driven to the very limit of their endurance in a place where only the strongest will survive.______________More praise for The Book of Sand ...'Audacious, extraordinary and absolutely awesome' Alex North'A future classic that exists between darkness and light. I was completely entranced by it' Christopher Fowler'A huge and brilliant and engaging read. It feels like a place I have been to rather than words on a page' Alice Jolly'A remarkable achievement' Shots Magazine'What we have here is a fantasy about faith and the search for spiritual certainty... [an] ambitious religious parable.' FT______________Readers love The Book of Sand ...'This was the best reading experience of a lifetime. I fear the words haven't yet been invented to describe how good the book is. It deserves to be a huge bestseller.''I would absolutely die for a movie adaptation of this one in the future!' 'The Book of Sand is dazzling, lyrical, surreal and a beautiful legacy.''An absolute must read!''I did not want to put it down at any point.''A gripping read.''Couldn't put it down. 5*.''This was a page turner that was totally original in concept.'

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We live in an age of serial asset bubbles and spectacular busts. Economists, policymakers, central bankers and most people in the financial world have been blindsided by these busts, while investors have lost trillions. Economists argue that bubbles can only be spotted after they burst and that market moves are unpredictable. Yet Marathon Asset Management, a London-based investment firm managing over $50 billion of assets has developed a relatively simple method for identifying and potentially avoiding them: follow the money, or rather the trail of investment. Bubbles whether they affect a whole economy or merely a single industry, tend to attract a splurge of capital spending. Excessive investment drives down returns and leads inexorably to a bust. This was the case with both the technology bubble at the turn of the century and the US housing bubble which followed shortly after. More recently, vast sums have been invested in mining and energy. From an investor's perspective, the trick is to avoid investing in sectors, or markets, where investment spending is unduly elevated and competition is fierce, and to put one's money to work where capital expenditure is depressed, competitive conditions are more favourable and, as a result, prospective investment returns are higher. This capital cycle strategy encourages investors to eschew the simple 'growth' and 'value' dichotomy and identify firms that can deliver superior returns either because capital has been taken out of an industry, or because the business has strong barriers to entry (what Warren Buffett refers to as a 'moat'). Some of Marathon's most successful investments have come from obscure, sometimes niche operations whose businesses are protected from the destructive forces of the capital cycle. Capital Returns is a comprehensive introduction to the theory and practical implementation of the capital cycle approach to investment. Edited and with an introduction by Edward Chancellor, the book brings together 60 of the most insightful reports written between 2002 and 2014 by Marathon portfolio managers. Capital Returns provides key insights into the capital cycle strategy, all supported with real life examples from global brewers to the semiconductor industry - showing how this approach can be usefully applied to different industry conditions and how, prior to 2008, it helped protect assets from financial catastrophe. This book will be a welcome reference for serious investors who looking to maximise portfolio returns over the long run.

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From dial-up to wi-fi, an engaging cultural history of the commercial web industry In the 1990s, the World Wide Web helped transform the Internet from the domain of computer scientists to a playground for mass audiences. As URLs leapt off computer screens and onto cereal boxes, billboards, and film trailers, the web changed the way many Americans experienced media, socialized, and interacted with brands. Businesses rushed online to set up corporate “home pages” and as a result, a new cultural industry was born: web design. For today’s internet users who are more familiar sharing social media posts than collecting hotlists of cool sites, the early web may seem primitive, clunky, and graphically inferior. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, this pre-crash era was dubbed “Web 1.0,” a retronym meant to distinguish the early web from the social, user-centered, and participatory values that were embodied in the internet industry’s resurgence as “Web 2.0” in the 21st century. Tracking shifts in the rules of “good web design,” Ankerson reimagines speculation and design as a series of contests and collaborations to conceive the boundaries of a new digitally networked future. What was it like to go online and “surf the Web” in the 1990s? How and why did the look and feel of the web change over time? How do new design paradigms like user-experience design (UX) gain traction? Bringing together media studies, internet studies, and design theory, Dot-com Design traces the shifts in, and struggles over, the web’s production, aesthetics, and design to provide a comprehensive look at the evolution of the web industry and into the vast internet we browse today.

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From dial-up to wi-fi, an engaging cultural history of the commercial web industry In the 1990s, the World Wide Web helped transform the Internet from the domain of computer scientists to a playground for mass audiences. As URLs leapt off computer screens and onto cereal boxes, billboards, and film trailers, the web changed the way many Americans experienced media, socialized, and interacted with brands. Businesses rushed online to set up corporate “home pages” and as a result, a new cultural industry was born: web design. For today’s internet users who are more familiar sharing social media posts than collecting hotlists of cool sites, the early web may seem primitive, clunky, and graphically inferior. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, this pre-crash era was dubbed “Web 1.0,” a retronym meant to distinguish the early web from the social, user-centered, and participatory values that were embodied in the internet industry’s resurgence as “Web 2.0” in the 21st century. Tracking shifts in the rules of “good web design,” Ankerson reimagines speculation and design as a series of contests and collaborations to conceive the boundaries of a new digitally networked future. What was it like to go online and “surf the Web” in the 1990s? How and why did the look and feel of the web change over time? How do new design paradigms like user-experience design (UX) gain traction? Bringing together media studies, internet studies, and design theory, Dot-com Design traces the shifts in, and struggles over, the web’s production, aesthetics, and design to provide a comprehensive look at the evolution of the web industry and into the vast internet we browse today.

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Science, not politics, can take us beyond the hype and headlines to forge a realistic green new deal.Since it was first proposed in the US House of Representatives, the Green New Deal has been hotly debated, often using partisan characterizations that critique it as extreme or socialist. The intent was not simply to fight climate change or address a specific environmental concern, but rather to tackle how climate change and other environmental challenges affect the economy, the vulnerable, and social justice—and vice versa. In Science for a Green New Deal, Eric Davidson dissects this legislative resolution. He also shows how green new deal thinking offers a framework for a much-needed convergence of the natural sciences, social science, economics, and community engagement to develop holistic policy solutions to the most pressing issues of our day. Davidson weaves the case for linkages among multiple global crises, including a pandemic that has reversed progress on fighting poverty and hunger, an acceleration of climate change that has exacerbated storms, floods, droughts, and fires, and a renewed awareness of profound social injustices highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement.Illustrating these points with his personal life experiences as a child growing up in Montana and as a famed researcher leading a large scientific society, Davidson relates these complex challenges to our everyday lives and decision-making. How, he asks, can we extract from the Earth's resources what we need for the prosperity, well-being, and dignity of current and future generations of billions of people without exhausting or polluting those resources? Written in clear, jargon-free prose, Science for a Green New Deal is a realistic and optimistic look at how we can attain a more sustainable, prosperous, and just future.

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Addresses one of the most pressing issues of international political economy Conventional wisdom has it that government management of the economy is the means to transform a backward economy into a dynamic, modern one. Yet, after decades of international aid programs, development planning is today largely perceived as a failure paralyzed by its own bureaucracy and inefficiency. Despite billions of dollars of investment, development successes are few and far between and waste and mismanagement abounds. This book showcases a diverse range of development experiences in order to ascertain the reasons for this quagmire. Case studies of development planning in China, India, post-WWII Japan, South Korea, Africa, and Eastern Europe, and of foreign aid programs (including the Marshall Plan) illustrate the insights an Austrian approach provides toward an understanding of the failure of government development planning. While economists working within the Austrian tradition have previously addressed development issues, this volume represents the first full-length treatment of the subject from a modern market process perspective. Exploding the hegemony of the traditional development paradigm, The Collapse of Development Planning addresses one of the most pressing issues of international political economy. Contributing to the volume are: George Ayittey (American University), Wayne T. Brough (Citizens for a Sound Economy, Washington, DC), Young Back Choi (St. John's University), Steven Hanke (Johns Hopkins University), Steve Horwitz (St. Lawrence University), Shyam J. Kamath (California State University, Hayward), Shigeto Naka (Hiroshima City University), David Osterfeld (St. Joseph's College), Manisha Perera (University of Northern Colorado), Jan S. Prybyla (Pennsylvania State University), Ralph Raico (State University College, Buffalo), Parth Shah (University of Michigan, Dearborn), Kurt Schuller (Johns Hopkins University), Kiyokazu Tanaka (Sophia University, Tokyo), and Mark Thorton (Auburn University).

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According to the Global Burden of Disease 2019 study, air pollution from fine particulate matter caused 6.4 million premature deaths and 93 billion days lived with illness in 2019. Over the past decade, the toll of ambient air pollution has continued to rise. Air pollution’s significant health, social, and economic effects compel the World Bank to support client countries in addressing air pollution as a core development challenge. This publication estimates that the global cost of health damages associated with exposure to air pollution is $8.1 trillion, equivalent to 6.1 percent of global GDP. People in low- and middle-income countries are most affected by mortality and morbidity from air pollution. The death rate associated with air pollution is significantly higher in low-and lower-middle income countries than in high-income countries. This publication further develops the evidence base for air-quality management through up-to-date estimates of air pollution’s global economic costs. The analyses presented here build on previous cost estimates by the Bank and its partners, as well as on more comprehensive air-quality data from monitoring stations in many cities across the world. By providing monetary estimates of air pollution’s health damages, this publication aims to support policy makers and decision-makers in client countries in prioritizing air pollution amid competing development challenges. Its findings build a robust economic case to invest scarce budgetary resources in the design and implementation of policies and interventions for improving air quality. Such investments will deliver benefits for societies at large, and particularly for vulnerable groups. This publication builds a strong case for scaling up investments for air pollution control in low-and middle-income countries.

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Why violence in the Congo has continued despite decades of international intervention Well into its third decade, the military conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been dubbed a “forever war”—a perpetual cycle of war, civil unrest, and local feuds over power and identity. Millions have died in one of the worst humanitarian calamities of our time. The War That Doesn’t Say Its Name investigates the most recent phase of this conflict, asking why the peace deal of 2003—accompanied by the largest United Nations peacekeeping mission in the world and tens of billions in international aid—has failed to stop the violence. Jason Stearns argues that the fighting has become an end in itself, carried forward in substantial part through the apathy and complicity of local and international actors.Stearns shows that regardless of the suffering, there has emerged a narrow military bourgeoisie of commanders and politicians for whom the conflict is a source of survival, dignity, and profit. Foreign donors provide food and urgent health care for millions, preventing the Congolese state from collapsing, but this involvement has not yielded transformational change. Stearns gives a detailed historical account of this period, focusing on the main players—Congolese and Rwandan states and the main armed groups. He extrapolates from these dynamics to other conflicts across Africa and presents a theory of conflict that highlights the interests of the belligerents and the social structures from which they arise.Exploring how violence in the Congo has become preoccupied with its own reproduction, The War That Doesn't Say Its Name sheds light on why certain military feuds persist without resolution.

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'If you voted to Leave the European Union, the chances are you've been swindled...' In his urgent new book, T. J. Coles uncovers the forces seeking to uncouple Britain from the European Union. Allied to an expanding core of free market fanatics in the Conservative party is a powerful group of globalists and financial traders. Their political ideology is neoliberalism - a worldwide agenda that seeks to deregulate markets and maximize profits for global elites at the expense of working people. The effect is a growing gap internationally between rich and poor. Digging deep into the funding campaign, The Great Brexit Swindle documents the potent, self-serving interests behind Brexit. In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, mega-rich hedge fund managers and billionaire CEOs are keen to be rid of Brussels and its 'red tape' regulation. Their anti-European political allies, meanwhile, are preparing to corner markets in Asia and South America, whilst expanding Britain's military capacity as a back-up to economic penetration. Brexit was sold to the public as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to regain sovereignty, control immigration and increase the nation's wealth. But, despite the manifold promises of Brexiteers, Coles demonstrates that economic globalization will lead to growing job insecurity and greater immigration, once British workers are put in direct competition with the huge, poor populations of countries like Brazil, China, Mexico and India. Increasing 'free market' trade worldwide leaves Britain open to low-quality products, such as hormone-treated American beef and genetically-modified foods, whilst the new planned trade agreements would only accelerate the privatization of public services. Although Coles is not an advocate for the EU, he argues that the Brexit agenda is designed only to serve the interests of the wealthy and increasingly powerful 0.1% of the population.

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In the post-World War II era, Louisiana's coastal wetlands underwent an industrial transformation that placed the region at the center of America's energy-producing corridor. By the twenty-first century the Louisiana Gulf Coast supplied nearly one-third of America's oil and gas, accounted for half of the country's refining capacity, and contributed billions of dollars to the U.S. economy. Today, thousands of miles of pipelines and related infrastructure link the state's coast to oil and gas consumers nationwide. During the course of this historic development, however, the dredging of pipeline canals accelerated coastal erosion. Currently, 80 percent of the United States' wetland loss occurs on Louisiana's coast despite the fact that the state is home to only 40 percent of the nation's wetland acreage, making evident the enormous unin-tended environmental cost associated with producing energy from the Gulf Coast.In American Energy, Imperiled Coast Jason P. Theriot explores the tension between oil and gas development and the land-loss crisis in Louisiana. His book offers an engaging analysis of both the impressive, albeit ecologically destructive, engineering feats that characterized industrial growth in the region and the mounting environmental problems that threaten south Louisiana's communities, culture, and ""working"" coast. As a historian and coastal Louisiana native, Theriot explains how pipeline technology enabled the expansion of oil and gas delivery - examining previously unseen photographs and company records - and traces the industry's far-reaching environmental footprint in the wetlands. Through detailed research presented in a lively and accessible narrative, Theriot pieces together decades of political, economic, social, and cultural undertakings that clashed in the 1980s and 1990s, when local citizens, scientists, politicians, environmental groups, and oil and gas interests began fighting over the causes and consequences of coastal land loss. The mission to restore coastal Louisiana ultimately collided with the perceived economic necessity of expanding offshore oil and gas development at the turn of the twenty-first century. Theriot's book bridges the gap between these competing objectives.From the discovery of oil and gas below the marshes around coastal salt domes in the 1920s and 1930s to the emergence of environmental sciences and policy reforms in the 1970s to the vast repercussions of the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, American Energy, Imperiled Coast ultimately reveals that the natural and man-made forces responsible for rapid environmental change in Louisiana's wetlands over the past century can only be harnessed through collaboration between public and private entities.

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In The Case for Trump, acclaimed historian and political commentator Victor Davis Hanson explains how a celebrity businessman with no political or military experience triumphed over sixteen well-qualified Republican rivals, a Democrat with a quarter-billion-dollar war chest, and a hostile media and Washington establishment to become President of the United States--and an extremely successful president at that. Hanson sets Trump in his broad political and social context to explain Trump's and ongoing political appeal to a broad swath of American voters. Growing anger at globalization, a stalled economy, immigration, costly and unfruitful overseas interventions, perceived poor trade deals, and political correctness meant by 2016 that if there were not a loud Trump outsider, he would likely have had to be invented. Trump and Trump alone saw a political opening in defending the forgotten working classes of the interior, who were alienated not only by Democrats but by elite republican candidates. (In 2012, one Republican taxi driver explained his decision to sit out the election altogether: "Geez, Romney came to Michigan wearing his wing-tips with starched jeans!")And despite the apocalyptic imaginings of both the Left and the Never Trump Right, one year into his presidency Trump boasts an impressive record of achievement of a kind rarely attained by an incoming president. Trump has realized economic and foreign policy results not seen in a generation, cutting through stasis and dismantling a corrupt old order.Hanson is not naïve about Trump's self-destructive behavior (the relentless tweeting, the threats to fire Mueller and so on) but ultimately sees him as a kind of tragic political hero, something out a Sophocles play or an American Western. His accomplishments are a direct result of his personal excesses--the fact that he is not traditionally presidential has enabled him to bring long-overdue changes in foreign and domestic policy. We could not survive a series of presidencies as volatile as Trump's, Hanson acknowledges. But "given the direction of the country over the last 16 years, half the population, the proverbial townspeople of the western, wanted some outsider, even with a dubious past, to ride in and do things that most normal politicians not only would not but could not do -- before exiting stage left or riding off into the sunset."

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Rural fires were an even more persistent scourge than famine in late imperial Russia, as Cathy Frierson shows in this first comprehensive study. Destroying almost three billion rubles’ worth of property in European Russia between 1860 and 1904, accidental and arson fires acted as a brake on Russia’s economic development while subjecting peasants to perennial shocks to their physical and emotional condition. The fire question captured the attention of educated, progressive Russians, who came to perceived it as a key obstacle to Russia’s becoming a modern society in the European model. Using sources ranging from literary representations and newspaper articles to statistical tables and court records, Frierson demonstrates the many meanings fire held for both peasants and the educated elite. To peasants, it was an essential source of light and warmth as well as a destructive force that regularly ignited their cramped villages of wooden, thatch-roofed huts. Absent the rule of law, they often used arson to gain justice or revenge, or to exert social control over those who would violate village norms. Frierson shows that the vast majority of arson cases in European Russia were not peasant-against-gentry acts of protest but peasant-against-peasant acts of "self-help" law or plain spite. Both the state and individual progressives set out to resolve the fire question and to educate, cajole, or coerce the peasantry into the modern world. Fire insurance, building codes, "scientific" village layouts, and volunteer firefighting brigades reduced the average number of buildings consumed in each blaze, but none of these measures succeeded in curbing the number of fires each year. More than anything else, this history of fire and arson in rural European Russia is a history of their cultural meanings in the late imperial campaign for modernity. Frierson shows the special associations of women with fire in rural life and in elite understanding of fire in the Russian countryside. Her study of the fire question demonstrates both peasant agency in fighting fire and educated Russians' hardening conviction that peasants stood in the way of Russia's advent into the company of prosperous, rational, civilized nations.

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The use of herbal medicinal products and supplements has increased tremendously over the past three decades with not less than 80% of people worldwide relying on them for some part of primary healthcare. This past decade has obviously witnessed a tremendous surge in acceptance and public interest in natural therapies both in developing and developed countries, with these herbal remedies being available not only in drug stores, but now also in food stores and supermarkets. The use of herbal remedies has also been widely embraced in many developed countries with complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) now becoming mainstream in the UK and the rest of Europe, as well as in North America and Australia. In the developed countries, the most important among many other reasons for seeking herbal therapy is the belief that it will promote healthier living. Herbal medicines are, therefore, often viewed as a balanced and moderate approach to healing and individuals who use them as home remedies and over-the-counter drugs spend huge amount of money (in excess of billions of dollars) on herbal products. As the global use of herbal medicinal products continues to grow and many more new products are introduced into the market, public health issues, and concerns surrounding their safety are also increasingly recognized. Although some herbal medicines have promising potential and are widely used, many of them remain untested and their use also not monitored. This makes knowledge of their potential adverse effects very limited and identification of the safest and most effective therapies as well as the promotion of their rational use more difficult. It is also common knowledge that the safety of most herbal products is further compromised by lack of suitable quality controls, inadequate labeling, and the absence of appropriate patient information. It has become essential, therefore, to furnish the general public including healthcare professionals with adequate information to facilitate better understanding of the risks associated with the use of these products and to ensure that all medicines are safe and of suitable quality.

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Hunger and Markets is the third volume of the UN World Food Programme's World Hunger Series - created to help promote a better understanding of the choices confronting leaders as they work to fight hunger. It appears at a crucial time, with food prices at high levels, a severe global financial crisis and vulnerable households around the world endangering their future health, education and productivity by reducing both the quality and the quantity of their food intake. Hunger and Markets explores the complex and multifaceted interactions between the availability of and access to food and the operations of markets. The structure and dynamics of food markets and the threats and opportunities markets generate are crucial for the access to food for billions of people. Markets are also critical in averting or mitigating food shortages and hunger by adjusting to shocks, reducing vulnerability and coping with crises. Whether markets help or harm the hungry poor is a function of markets' institutions, infrastructure and policies. This volume analyzes the workings of markets in order to identify the sources of market failures in addressing hunger and malnutrition, and to highlight the ways in which they can be improved. The report sets out the ways in which programme design and policy formulation can build on the strengths of markets to prevent possible negative effects, and will be essential reading for all those involved in the fight against world hunger. Published with World Food Programme

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Years before Charles Lindbergh’s flight from New York to Paris electrified the nation, a group of daredevil pilots, most of them veterans of the World War I, brought aviation to the masses by competing in the sensational transcontinental air race of 1919. The contest awakened Americans to the practical possibilities of flight, yet despite its significance, it has until now been all but forgotten. In The Great Air Race, journalist and amateur pilot John Lancaster finally reclaims this landmark event and the unheralded aviators who competed to be the fastest man in America. His thrilling chronicle opens with the race’s impresario, Brigadier General Billy Mitchell, who believed the nation’s future was in the skies. Mitchell’s contest—critics called it a stunt—was a risky undertaking, given that the DH-4s and Fokkers the contestants flew were almost comically ill-suited for long-distance travel: engines caught fire in flight; crude flight instruments were of little help in clouds and fog; and the brakeless planes were prone to nosing over on landing. Yet the aviators possessed an almost inhuman disregard for their own safety, braving blizzards and mechanical failure as they landed in remote cornfields or at the edges of cliffs. Among the most talented were Belvin “The Flying Parson” Maynard, whose dog, Trixie, shared the rear cockpit with his mechanic, and John Donaldson, a war hero who twice escaped German imprisonment. Jockeying reporters made much of their rivalries, and the crowds along the race’s route exploded, with everyday Americans eager to catch their first glimpse of airplanes and the mythic “birdmen” who flew them. The race was a test of endurance that many pilots didn’t finish: some dropped out from sheer exhaustion, while others, betrayed by their engines or their instincts, perished. For all its tragedy, Lancaster argues, the race galvanized the nation to embrace the technology of flight. A thrilling tale of men and their machines, The Great Air Race offers a new origin point for commercial aviation in the United States, even as it greatly expands our pantheon of aviation heroes.

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The shocking history of the espionage and infiltration of American media during WWI and the man who exposed it. A man who was not who he claimed to be...Russia was not the first foreign power to subvert American popular opinion from inside. In the lead-up to America’s entry into the First World War, Germany spent the modern equivalent of one billion dollars to infiltrate American media, industry, and government to undermine the supply chain of the Allied forces. If not for the ceaseless activity of John Revelstoke Rathom, editor of the scrappy Providence Journal, America may have remained committed to its position of neutrality. But Rathom emerged to galvanize American will, contributing to the conditions necessary for President Wilson to request a Declaration of War from Congress—all the while exposing sensational spy plots and getting German diplomats expelled from the U.S. And yet John Rathom was not even his real name. His swashbuckling biography was outrageous fiction. And his many acts of journalistic heroism, which he recounted to rapt audiences on nationwide speaking tours, never happened. Who then was this great, beloved, and ultimately tragic imposter? In The Imposter’s War, Mark Arsenault unearths the truth about Rathom’s origins and revisits a surreal and too-little-known passage in American history that reverberates today. The story of John Rathom encompasses the propaganda battle that set America on a course for war. He rose within the editorial ranks, surviving romantic scandals and combative rivals, eventually transitioning from an editor to a de facto spy. He brought to light the Huerta plot (in which Germany tied to push the United States and Mexico into a war) and helped to upend labor strikes organized by German agents to shut down American industry. Rathom was eventually brought low by an up-and-coming political star by the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Arsenault tracks the rise and fall of this enigmatic figure, while providing the rich and fascinating context of Germany’s acts of subterfuge through the early years of World War I. The Imposter's War is a riveting and spellbinding narrative of a flawed newsman who nevertheless changed the course of history.

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With the United States' superpower status rivalled by a rising China and emerging powers like India and Brazil playing a growing role in international affairs, the global balance of power is shifting. But what does this mean for the future of the international order? Will China dominate the 21st Century? Will the so-called BRICS prove to be a disruptive force in global affairs? Are we headed towards a world marked by frequent strife, or will the end of Western dominance make the world more peaceful? In this provocative new book, Oliver Stuenkel argues that our understanding of global order and predictions about its future are limited because we seek to imagine the post-Western world from a parochial Western-centric perspective. Such a view is increasingly inadequate in a world where a billions of people regard Western rule as a temporary aberration, and the rise of Asia as a return to normalcy. In reality, China and other rising powers that elude the simplistic extremes of either confronting or joining existing order are quietly building a "parallel order" which complements today's international institutions and increases rising powers' autonomy. Combining accessibility with expert sensitivity to the complexities of the global shift of power, Stuenkel's vision of a post-Western world will be core reading for students and scholars of contemporary international affairs, as well as anyone interested in the future of global politics. "A fascinating interpretation of our understanding of politics and global affairs, which demonstrates the evolving nature of power today. Oliver Stuenkel presents a compelling argument - not just about the "Rise of the Rest", but also the overlooked power and influence of the non-Western world. Highly engaging and instructive." Dr Shashi Tharoor, India’s Minister of State for External Affairs (2009-10) "Oliver Stuenkel is one of the best new voices in the field of international politics. In Post-Western World, he explores the primary challenges of the global order and critiques the parochial, Eurocentric vision which conforms to international power structures. This book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand what a multipolar world order would look like and how it might be effectively realized." Celso Amorim, Brazil’s Minister of External Relations (1993-5, 2003-11) and Minister of Defence (2011-15)

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A deep dive into the emergence and success of independent filmmaking in America A Los Angeles Times Bestseller The most important development in American culture of the last two decades is the emergence of independent cinema as a viable alternative to Hollywood. Indeed, while Hollywood's studios devote much of their time and energy to churning out big-budget, star-studded event movies, a renegade independent cinema that challenges mainstream fare continues to flourish with strong critical support and loyal audiences. Cinema of Outsiders is the first and only comprehensive chronicle of contemporary independent movies from the late 1970s up to the present. From the hip, audacious early works of maverick David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, and Spike Lee, to the contemporary Oscar-winning success of indie dynamos, such as the Coen brothers (Fargo), Quentin Tarentino (Pulp Fiction), and Billy Bob Thornton (Sling Blade), Levy describes in a lucid and accessible manner the innovation and diversity of American indies in theme, sensibility, and style. Documenting the socio-economic, political and artistic forces that led to the rise of American independent film, Cinema of Outsiders depicts the pivotal role of indie guru Robert Redford and his Sundance Film Festival in creating a showcase for indies, the function of film schools in supplying talent, and the continuous tension between indies and Hollywood as two distinct industries with their own structure, finance, talent and audience. Levy describes the major cycles in the indie film movement: regional cinema, the New York school of film, African-American, Asian American, gay and lesbian, and movies made by women. Based on exhaustive research of over 1,000 movies made between 1977 and 1999, Levy evaluates some 200 quintessential indies, including Choose Me, Stranger Than Paradise, Blood Simple, Blue Velvet, Desperately Seeking Susan, Slacker, Poison, Reservoir Dogs, Gas Food Lodging, Menace II Society, Clerks, In the Company of Men, Chasing Amy, The Apostle, The Opposite of Sex, and Happiness. Cinema of Outsiders reveals the artistic and political impact of bold and provocative independent movies in displaying the cinema of "outsiders"-the cinema of the "other America."

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This book, Corruption and Racketeering In The New York City Construction Industry: The Final Report of the New York State Organized Task Force, lays out in close and compelling detail the intricate patterns of currupt activities and relationships that for the better part of a century have characterized business as usual in the construction industry in America's largest metropolis. The book is the end product of more than five years' worth of investigation, prosecutions, and research by the New York State Organized Crime Task Force, a unique agency that has set a national example for marrying law enforcement initiatives with comprehensive and exhausting analysis of the causes and dynamics of industrial racketeering. This is a sobering analysis of the construction industry , one of New York City's largest industries, and in effect, one of the city's most significant economic sectors. In any given year during the 1980s, billions of dollars of construction were being carried out at any one time. The industry regularly employs more than 100,000 people in the city, involving some one hundred union locals and many hundreds of general and specialty contractors as well as a large number of architects, engineers, and materials suppliers. The book shows—in great and provocative detail—how organized extortion, bribery illegal cartels, and bid rigging characterize construction in the city. The basis for much of this crim is labor racketeering, controlled or orchestrated by organized crime. It reveals how this world of corruption affects not only the private sector but the city's vast public works program, and it spells out the ways in which both organized crime and official corruption each sustain the dynamics of ongoing criminality. Wrong-doing on a massive scale is documented at length. But this book is more than a recitation of extensive and systematic criminality. The book recommends a number of plausible options for genuine reform. Necessarily these are profound and radical solutions, but everyone who reads this book will conclude that only profound and radical solutions could hope to solve such an entrenched and intractable crime problem.

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The definitive biography of country legend Merle Haggard by the New York Times bestselling biographer of Clint Eastwood, Cary Grant, The Eagles, and more.Merle Haggard was one of the most important country music musicians who ever lived. His astonishing musical career stretched across the second half of the 20th Century and into the first two decades of the next, during which he released an extraordinary 63 albums, 38 that made it on to Billboard's Country Top Ten, 13 that went to #1, and 37 #1 hit singles. With his ample songbook, unique singing voice and brilliant phrasing that illuminated his uncompromising commitment to individual freedom, cut with the monkey of personal despair on his back and a chip the size of Monument Valley on his shoulder, Merle's music and his extraordinary charisma helped change the look, the sound, and the fury of American music.The Hag tells, without compromise, the extraordinary life of Merle Haggard, augmented by deep secondary research, sharp detail and ample anecdotal material that biographer Marc Eliot is known for, and enriched and deepened by over 100 new and far-ranging interviews. It explores the uniquely American life of an angry rebellious boy from the wrong side of the tracks bound for a life of crime and a permanent home in a penitentiary, who found redemption through the music of "the common man."Merle Haggard's story is a great American saga of a man who lifted himself out of poverty, oppression, loss and wanderlust, to catapult himself into the pantheon of American artists admired around the world. Eliot has interviewed more than 100 people who knew Haggard, worked with him, were influenced by him, loved him or hated him. The book celebrates the accomplishments and explore the singer's infamous dark side: the self-created turmoil that expressed itself through drugs, women, booze, and betrayal. The Hag offers a richly anecdotal narrative that will elevate the life and work of Merle Haggard to where both properly belong, in the pantheon of American music and letters.The Hag is the definitive account of this unique American original, and will speak to readers of country music and rock biographies alike.

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In the war against Hitler every secret counts… ‘Shines a light on a part of the British war effort I’d previously not been aware of…a fascinating, informative and heartwarming novel, and I loved it’ The New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller Jill Mansell Society heiress Evelyn Brooke-Edwards is a skilled interrogator – her beauty making her a non-threat in the eyes of the prisoners. Farm girl Betty Connors may not be able to type as she claimed, but her crack analytical skills soon find her unearthing covert connections. German ex-pat Judith Stern never expected to find herself listening in to German POW’s whispered conversations, but the Nazis took her father from her so she will do whatever it takes to help the Allies end this war. Billeted together in the attic of Latimer House – a place where secrets abound – Evelyn, Betty and Judith soon form a bond of friendship that carries them through the war. Because nothing is stronger than women united. Tucked away in the Buckinghamshire countryside, Latimer House, a grand country estate, stands proudly – a witness to some of greatest secrets of WW2. Used by the SOE to hold Nazi prisoners of war, this stunning historical novel is inspired by the untold story of the secret listeners of ‘M Room’ who worked day and night to help the Allies win the war. A must-read for fans of Mandy Robotham, Fiona Valpy and Kate Quinn. Readers love The Secrets of Latimer House: ‘Freaking fabulous! Five perfect stars for this perfect book!…The writing was wowza. So beautifully done. It flowed amazingly and honestly I couldn't tear my eyes from my Kindle’ Rubie ‘A truly fabulous read, full of drama intrigue and three fabulous characters’ Jeanie ‘I really enjoy this type of book which brings strong women together in exceptional circumstances, and this one did not disappoint’ Angela ‘This five-star read is the first historical fiction novel for Jules Wake and I think you’ll agree with me it’s a real treat for lovers of this genre!!!’ Norma ‘An excellent WWII-era historical fiction novel that is gripping, suspenseful, and engaging. I really enjoyed it!’ Rachel

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Bea Arthur as the owner of the Mos Eisley Cantina. Long scenes entirely of Wookies bleating at each other, without subtitles. Harvey Korman, in drag, as a four-armed Space Julia Child. Six minutes of Jefferson Starship performing for Art Carney and a bored Imperial Guard. Mark Hamill, fresh from his near-fatal motorcycle accident, slathered in pancake makeup. A salacious holographic burlesque from Diahann Carroll.Even by the standards of the 1970s, even compared to Jar-Jar Binks, the legendary 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special is a peerlessly cringeworthy pop-culture artifact. George Lucas, who completely disowned the production, reportedly has said, “If I had the time and a sledgehammer, I would track down every copy of that show and smash it.” Just how on earth did this thing ever see the light of day?To answer that question, as Steven Kozak shows in this fascinating and often hilarious inside look into the making of the Special, you have to understand the cultural moment in which it appeared—a long, long time ago when cheesy variety shows were a staple of network television and Star Wars was not yet the billion-dollar multimedia behemoth that it is today. Kozak explains how the Special was one piece of a PR blitz undertaken by Lucas and his colleagues as they sought to protect the emerging franchise from hostile studio executives. He shows how, despite the involvement of some of the most talented people in the business, creative differences between movie and television writers led to a wildly uneven product. He gives entertaining accounts of the problems that plagued production, which included a ruinously expensive cantina set; the acrimonious departure of the director and Lucas himself; and a furious Grace Slick, just out of rehab, demanding to be included in the production.Packed with memorable anecdotes, drawing on extensive new interviews with countless people involved in the production, and told with mingled affection and bewilderment, this never-before-told story gives a fascinating look at a strange moment in pop-culture history that remains an object of fascination even today.

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Take a deep look at accessibility as it applies to mobile and wearables. This book covers topics within the accessibility domain that are rarely covered or understood, despite the fact that nearly half of the world’s population uses smartphones. Moreover, by 2025, 72% of smartphone users are expected to only use smartphones to access the internet. And yet, accessibility is often an afterthought instead of a core principle of product development. This book changes that.You will begin by exploring the current landscape and policy frameworks, looking at the software product lifecycle and how to embed inclusion from the start. You’ll learn the nuances of mobile accessibility as it applies to mobile devices, wearables, and IoT. From there you’ll move onto automated testing, accessibility and inclusion, and the next frontiers of emerging technology including AR and VR. There will be notes at the end of programming examples to help those in orthogonal roles, such as project management, understand the basics and the language to better communicate with their engineering counterparts. Over 1 billion people in the world live with some form of disability so it's imperative you devise a comprehensive game plan to make your digital products accessible for all. Beyond Accessibility Compliance is your guide to understanding the current landscape of assistive technology and how emerging techniques are changing the way we think about personalization and accessibility.What You'll Learn See how people with the most common forms of disabilities use digital products Review the basics of the product development lifecycle and how to embed accessibility Explore tangible answers as to how accessibility pertains to unique roles Understand the difference between compliance and usability Make data visualizations accessible for blind users Implement code-level changes to address gaps in accessibility Build a campus programs and course material inclusive for people with disabilities Who This Book Is For Current developers, designers, and others building technology products with basic knowledge of front-end development. This book is also suitable for students in computer science, engineering, HCI, and related fields. Sections that are not engineering-specific are applicable to design, user research, communication, and business students who are looking to pursue careers in technology.

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Some of the American West’s grandest legends are about people who in reality were remorseless killers, robbers, and bandits. These outlaws flourished during the 1800s and gained notoriety throughout the following century. How did their fame persist, and what has inspired the publishing, movie, and television industries to recreate their fictionalized careers over and over again? Mark Dugan brings reality to the forefront in The Making of Legends. Some of the characters in his accounts are practically unknown but deserve more recognition than the bandits whose names are mythic. Exhaustive archival research enables him to recreate such colorful lives as North Carolina’s Malina Blaylock, who, disguised as a man, joined her outlaw husband in the Confederate army; slippery escape artist David Lewis, the Robin Hood of the Cumberland, who finally stopped two bullets in a chaotic Pennsylvania shoot-out; Wyatt Earp, in his mysterious post-OK Corral year, amidst the Coeur d’Alene gold rush; and grim “Laughing Sam” Hartman, of South Dakota. Dugan sets the stage by explaining how newspapers and dime novels fanned the flames of public fascination with outlaws. He unmasks the real Billy the Kid, traces the paths of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to their historic shoot-out in South America, and masterfully summarizes the Civil War grudges, bloodshed, and wanton destruction along the Kansas-Missouri border that spawned Jesse and Frank James and the Younger brothers gang. In researching the lawless era of the American frontier, Dugan discovered much information that has never been published — material that will expand readers’ views of frontier history and people, both good and bad. The Making of Legends proves that the actual stories of notorious legends can be more exciting, moving, and intriguing than anything dreamed up in a dime novel or a Hollywood fantasy. With The Making of Legends Mark Dugan’s pursuit of outlaws takes him to Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas, California, South Dakota, Idaho, Oregon, Nebraska, Indiana, Wyoming, and Montana.

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Few books have had a more profound impact on human history than the Qur'an. It shapes the beliefs, lives and behaviour of over 1.5 billion Muslims, who regard it as the Word of God, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. Speaking directly to Muslims, it has been the basic source of law, morality and politics for over 1,400 years. Almost everything that happens in a Muslim society is a direct or indirect product of what the Qur'an says. But what does the Qur'an really say? How should it be read and interpreted? What is the significance of its teachings, if any, for the 21st century? In this enlightening and highly readable book, Ziauddin Sardar, one of the foremost Muslim intellectuals of our time, offers a refreshingly new interpretation of the Qur'an. Emphasising plurality and inclusiveness, Sardar demonstrates the importance of reading the verses of the Qur'an in the context in which they were revealed, and highlights the relevance of its teachings for today. Sardar reads the Qur'an from several perspectives.He begins with the traditional, verse-by-verse interpretations and subsequently shows how the multilayered verses and stories of the Sacred Text are open to a number of different and more enlightening interpretations. He also reads the Quran thematically, exploring its basic concepts and themes, painting a dynamic picture of the kind of society that the Qur'an aims to create. Also scrutinised is what the Qur'an says about such contemporary topics as power and politics, the rights of women, suicide, domestic violence, sex, homosexuality, the veil, freedom of expression and evolution. Throughout, Sardar uses several different methods, from traditional exegesis to hermeneutics, critical theory and cultural analysis to draw fresh and contemporary lessons from the Sacred Text. He shows what the Qur'an means to individuals like himself, why its interpretation has been so controversial throughout history, and how translations can be used to promote misunderstanding as well as enlightenment. Argumentative and lively, Reading the Qur'an is an insightful guide to understanding the Sacred Text of Muslims in these conflict-ridden and distressing times.Whatever one believes or does not believe, the central importance of the Qur'an in today's globalised world cannot be ignored.

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You may know Dude Perfect from their mind-blowing, world record-breaking, viral trick shot?videos and hilarious Overtime videos! Now, with the guys’, massive, step by step book Dude Perfect 101 Tricks, Tips, and Cool Stuff, you’ll experience a behind-the-scenes look at their stunts and their personal lives,?plus photographic instructions so you can attempt their tricks at home! At Dude Perfect, we do everything we can to bring families closer together, and that’s why we’re excited?to share this book with you. Follow our step-by-step instructions to have your own Dude Perfect–style fun! Whether it’s for Christmas, Father’s day, or a family reunion, Dude Perfect 101 Tricks, Tips, and Cool Stuff has all your trick shot needs.Tweens and teens, ages 8 to 12, will enjoy complete panda-monium with this in-depth look at Dude Perfect: five guys who are kickin' it, throwin' it, tossin' it, and shootin' it for more than 55 million YouTube?subscribers and more than twelve billion views. With an oversize format and fun, informative graphics, Dude Perfect 101 Tricks, Tips, and Cool Stuff?includes: Step-by-step instructions to perform your own real life trick shots using everyday objects. A behind-the-scenes view of those hilarious Overtime videos and extreme sports moments. Dude Perfect teaching about what a blast patience, perseverance, teamwork, friendship, and faith can be. Fun science facts behind the seemingly impossible tricks—because really, how did they do that?! Infographics with "No way!" truths from the inspirational to the absurd. A deeper look into each Dude's personal life, including stats, favorite stunts, and insights. Each trick in?Dude Perfect 101 Tricks, Tips, and Cool Stuff?is the perfect combination of challenging and doable to keep your young reader off-screen for hours. This interactive book is a great gift for birthdays, Easter baskets, holiday gift giving, or just because. Whether your own trickster wants to perform solo, challenge a friend, or host a family date night, this visually engaging book is a slam dunk for anyone who is young at heart.

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An innovative guide that identifies what distinguishes the best financial risk takers from the rest From 1987 to 1992, a small group of Wall Street quants invented an entirely new way of managing risk to maximize success: risk management for risk-takers. This is the secret that lets tiny quantitative edges create hedge fund billionaires, and defines the powerful modern global derivatives economy. The same practical techniques are still used today by risk-takers in finance as well as many other fields. Red-Blooded Risk examines this approach and offers valuable advice for the calculated risk-takers who need precise quantitative guidance that will help separate them from the rest of the pack. While most commentators say that the last financial crisis proved it's time to follow risk-minimizing techniques, they're wrong. The only way to succeed at anything is to manage true risk, which includes the chance of loss. Red-Blooded Risk presents specific, actionable strategies that will allow you to be a practical risk-taker in even the most dynamic markets. Contains a secret history of Wall Street, the parts all the other books leave out Includes an intellectually rigorous narrative addressing what it takes to really make it in any risky activity, on or off Wall Street Addresses essential issues ranging from the way you think about chance to economics, politics, finance, and life Written by Aaron Brown, one of the most calculated and successful risk takers in the world of finance, who was an active participant in the creation of modern risk management and had a front-row seat to the last meltdown Written in an engaging but rigorous style, with no equations Contains illustrations and graphic narrative by renowned manga artist Eric Kim There are people who disapprove of every risk before the fact, but never stop anyone from doing anything dangerous because they want to take credit for any success. The recent financial crisis has swelled their ranks, but in learning how to break free of these people, you'll discover how taking on the right risk can open the door to the most profitable opportunities.

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Through over 700 exquisite photographs and evocative text written by Danish gardening celebrity Claus Dalby, explore the history and development of the beloved cottage garden design style. In the pages of The Cottage Garden, you’ll first draw inspiration from the stories and landscapes of generations of famous cottage gardeners, including Gertrude Jekyll, Vita Sackville-West, William Robinson, Margery Fish, and Tasha Tudor. Then, meet modern cottage gardeners from around the globe who combine billowing masses of flowers such as poppies, delphinium, lupines, foxgloves, peonies, roses, lilies, and many more to create dreamy landscapes infused with the romance and wildness of cottage-style gardening. You’ll find no formal lines, rigid rules, or perfect spacing in the cottage garden. Instead, the form is organic and purposefully unstructured. Plants self-sow here and there, bulbs pop up and spread unrestricted, and everything appears casual; though as you’ll come to learn through Dalby’s words, it is all done with great intent. Overflowing with textures and colors, the cottage gardens featured throughout this book in hundreds of full-color photographs are found in places as diverse as Germany, Sweden, Denmark, England, and the United States. The accompanying text is derived from Dalby’s personal visits to these gardens, along with his intimate interviews with the resident gardeners. Dalby provides useful details about the design, development, and continued evolution of cottage gardens. He shares the stories of these breathtaking modern cottage gardens in a way that allows you to glean inspiration you can use to create a cottage garden of your own, whether large or small. The gardens profiled in these pages exhibit the essential foundational elements and principals of well-designed cottage gardens. Whether home is in the countryside or a suburban subdivision, the profiled gardens will serve as both muse and motivation for the creation of a classic backyard cottage garden in your own space. This gorgeous tome is sure to become the bible of this much-adored classic garden design style.Also by Claus Dalby:Containers in the Garden

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THE ONLY WAY TO GET YOUR CHILD BACK IS TO KIDNAP ANOTHER CHILD'A blazing, full-tilt thriller that entirely justifies the hype' GUARDIAN'A heart-stopping roller coaster' DAILY MAIL* * * * *YOUR PHONE RINGS.A STRANGER HAS KIDNAPPED YOUR CHILD.TO FREE THEM YOU MUST ABDUCT SOMEONE ELSE'S CHILD.YOUR CHILD WILL BE RELEASED WHEN YOUR VICTIM'S PARENTS KIDNAP ANOTHER CHILD.IF ANY OF THESE THINGS DON'T HAPPEN:YOUR CHILD WILL BE KILLED.VICTIM. SURVIVOR. ABDUCTOR. CRIMINAL.YOU WILL BECOME EACH ONE. YOU ARE NOW PART OF THE CHAIN * * * * *DON'T MISS THE LATEST NAIL-BITING THRILLER FROM ADRIAN MCKINTY: THE ISLAND IS AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOW.* * * * *THE MULTI-AWARD-WINNING THRILLERWinner: Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the YearWinner: Ned Kelly Award for Best International Crime Fiction Winner: International Thriller Writers Awards - Best Hardcover Winner: Macavity Awards - Best International Crime Fiction Winner: Barry Award - Thriller of the Year*****'A heart-stopping roller coaster'DAILY MAIL'The book everyone is talking about'MIRROR'Scary, plausible, gripping.'IAN RANKIN'You'll miss meals, sleep, and your stop on the bus - guaranteed.'VAL McDERMID'I writhed with the pain of withdrawal when I finished it. Deserves to be the popular hit of the year.'DAILY TELEGRAPH'Incredibly propulsive and original. You won't shake it for a long time.'STEPHEN KING'A masterpiece. You will never be able to forget it.'DON WINSLOW'A unique and unforgettable thriller. Breath-taking, breakneck, brilliant.'MARK BILLINGHAM'Striking, memorable, should be savoured.'TANA FRENCH'Explosively brilliant. Genuinely unputdownable. Terribly plausible'OBSERVER'I may not read a better thriller in my lifetime.'STEVE CAVANAGH 'An electrifying thriller - one of the very best of its kind'FIONA CUMMINS'What a fantastic idea and perfectly written. I'm quite jealous.'ANTHONY HOROWITZ'Terrifying. Terrific.'MICK HERRON'THE CHAIN does for parenting what Gone Girl did for marriage. A must-read thriller.'JAMES SWALLOW'Diabolical, unnerving, relentless.'DENNIS LEHANE'Utterly brilliant'ELLY GRIFFITHSA 'THRILLER OF THE YEAR' SELECTION FOR:GUARDIANDAILY TELEGRAPHAMAZONEXPRESSOBSERVERTIME MAGAZINE

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From the time of the Restoration of Charles II, when he returned to England from Breda and was presented with the yacht Mary by the burgomaster of Amsterdam, Royal yachts began to be defined as such in England and built with that special purpose in mind. They were built luxuriously and used for royal visits to the fleet, for diplomacy and for racing and cruising for pleasure. Charles II took more of an interest in the sea than any other English monarch. He built a fleet of royal yachts, fine examples of ship design and decorative art, and he can be said to have been the father of yachting and of royal yachts. His successors were less keen on the sea but travelled to Europe on missions of peace and war; and royal yachts took part in regime change several times. In 1689 Queen Mary was bought over to join her husband William of Orange and complete the Glorious Revolution'. In 1714 George I arrived from Hanover to establish a new dynasty. And in 1814, in a reverse process, King Louis XVIII was taken back to France to restore the monarchy after the defeat of Napoleon. This important new book is the first to describe the building and decoration of the yachts in such detail, using many newly discovered sources; and it is the first to describe their uses and exploits, often taking their royal passengers into controversy or danger. Besides the yachts themselves, it reveals much about the character of the kings, queens and princes involved - the impetuousness of the future William IV for example, or his brother George IV's surprising love of sailing. It describes the design, accommodation, and sailing of the yachts, as well as their captains and crews. Sailing yachts came to an end when Queen Victoria discovered that steam power was more efficient as well as more comfortable, but they revived in the form of her son Edward's cutter Britannia, and the Duke of Edinburgh's Bloodhound and Coweslip. Their legacy can be seen in the widespread sport of yachting today, and in the lavish superyachts of billionaires. This beautifully illustrated book, full of anecdote and containing detailed descriptions of dozens of royal yachts, will fascinate naval historians, ship modellers and, indeed, anyone who sets foot aboard the deck of a modern yacht.

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR WRITING ON GLOBAL CONSERVATION 'Pilcher is both very funny and very, very clever.' Gillian Burke 'Richly entertaining throughout.' Sunday Times For the last three billion years or so, life on Earth was shaped by natural forces. Evolution tended to happen slowly, with species crafted across millennia. Then, a few hundred thousand years ago, along came a bolshie, big-brained, bipedal primate we now call Homo sapiens, and with that, the Earth’s natural history came to an abrupt end. We are now living through the post-natural phase, where humans have become the leading force shaping evolution. This thought-provoking book considers the many ways that we’ve altered the DNA of living things and changed the fate of life on earth. We have carved chihuahuas from wolves and fancy chickens from jungle fowl. We’ve added spider genes to goats and coral genes to tropical fish. It’s possible to buy genetically-modified pets, eat genetically-modified fish and watch cloned ponies thunder up and down the polo field. Now, as our global dominance grows, our influence extends far beyond these species. As we warm our world and radically reshape the biosphere, we affect the evolution of all living things, near and far, from the emergence of novel hybrids such as the pizzly bear, to the entirely new strains of animals and plants that are evolving at breakneck speed to cope with their altered environment. In Life Changing, Helen introduces us to these post-natural creations and talks to the scientists who create, study and tend to them. At a time when the future of so many species is uncertain, we meet some of the conservationists seeking to steer evolution onto firmer footings with novel methods like the ‘spermcopter’, coral IVF and plans to release wild elephants into Denmark. Helen explores the changing relationship between humans and the natural world, and reveals how, with evidence-based thinking, humans can help life change for the better.

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E-PAPER DISPLAYS An in-depth introduction to a promising technology, curated by one of its pioneering inventors Electronic paper (e-paper) has one of the most promising futures in technology. E-paper’s potential is unlimited, as the displays require extremely low power and imitate the aesthetic of ink on the page. This allows e-paper devices to have a wider range of viewing angles than traditional LED products and are capable of being viewed in direct sunlight—and without any additional power. As a result, e-paper displays create less eye strain, have a greater flexibility in their use, and have the potential to be used in place of paper for billboard advertising, educational applications, and transport signage, and more. In E-Paper Displays, editor Bo-Ru Yang and his team of experts present a detailed view into the important technologies involved in e-paper displays, with a particlular emphasis on how this technology’s unique properties make possible a wide range of personal and professional electronic products. As climate change makes efficient energy use more important than ever, e-paper can become an essential tool for future products on a large scale. As we rely more and more on technology, having lightweight devices with long battery life will become critical. This book provides engineers and innovators with an introduction to this important technology and shows new pathways for development. E-Paper Displays readers will also find: The editor is one of the leading pioneers in this technology Contributions from an international team of experts in e-paper technology Descriptions of many advanced display types that rely on different principles than the widely used LCD and OLED types Another innovative title from Wiley-SID (Society for Information Displays) series As we enter a new stage in our industrial development, E-Paper Displays is an essential reference for computer engineers and developers, as well as innovators and scientists, and their students.

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Despite the prevalence of both pharmaceutical and behavioral approaches to encourage cessation, over a billion people still indulge in tobacco. Even in the U.S., where tobacco use is considered a clearly treatable and socially regrettable condition, a significant percentage of individuals remain resistant to treatment modalities. It is believed that the problem lies with the availability, the effectiveness, and the tolerance of the treatments. Thus, the development of new and more effective medications for treating nicotine dependence is an area of significant therapeutic importance, and one made increasingly more viable given our rapidly increasing knowledge about the actions of nicotine and tobacco components on the brain.“We are entering a Renaissance period … that promises to provide us with improved pharmacological tools to tackle this most serious of worldwide public health problems.” -- from the Preface Medication Treatments for Nicotine Dependence assembles contributions from leading researchers and clinicians to provide the most comprehensive volume on current and future possibilities for addressing nicotine and tobacco dependence with medication. Organized into six sections, this important work covers— Basic pharmacology and physiology of nicotine and nicotinic receptors First-line medications for nicotine addiction, including NRTs and sustained release bupropion Second-line medications including antidepressants, inhibitors, and antagonists Promising treatments currently in development Special topics such as the combination of medications with behavioral treatments and pharmacogenetic approaches to treatment The text concludes with the presentation of two unique perspectives on the development of medications for nicotine dependence and its implications for clinical practice. Medication Treatments for Nicotine Dependence serves as a useful primer and resource for established investigators, as well as those new to the research; for students from a range of disciplines, including pharmacology, psychology, public health, and medicine; and for those clinicians actively engaged in the treatment of nicotine dependence.

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Despite being America’s most produced bomber, the Consolidated B-24 Liberator has forever flown in the shadow of its more famous and glamorous B-17 rival. The workmanlike B-24 performed multiple unheralded roles in all theatres beyond its also multiple offensive missions, making it the war’s most versatile heavy bomber. Besides its offensive bombing, anti-submarine, and mining missions, the Liberator performed many little known “inoffensive” duties. Undoubtedly the most colourful of all Liberators were the so-called assembly ships of the Groups of the 2nd Air Division. Their unique paint schemes of stripes, polka dots, and checkerboard, were designed to make them ultra-conspicuous for their task of acting as leaders on which a Group formation could assemble their combat formations more quickly for a combat mission The Consolidated F-7 was a photographic reconnaissance version of the B-24 Liberator. The F-7 saw service in most theatres of the war. The long range of the Liberator also made it well suited to mapping missions during the war and post-war. Beginning in early 1944, to aid the Allied liberation of Europe, Carpetbagger B-24s were utilized to parachute spies, called “Joes” or “Janes”, or provide aerial supply of weapons and other matériel to resistance fighters in occupied Europe. Liberators also participated in the dropping of 2.75 billion propaganda leaflets using various techniques and delivery devices. Electronic Warfare played an important part in Allied global pre-invasion plans to discover the location of enemy radars, and, if possible, destroy them. This interception and analysis of an enemy electronic radiation was the origin of present day ELINT (ELectonicINTelligence). Modified RAF B-24D Airborne Electronic Reconnaissance Liberators, codenamed Ferret, were Radio Counter Measures and Electronic Intelligence aircraft that played a major role in European air opera¬tions. During 1942 the AAF became interested in aerial refueling as a means to bombing Japan. A shorter-range B-17E was selected as the receiver aircraft while the more spacious B-24D acted as the tanker. Although these tests were considered to be successful, the availability of longer-ranging B-29s and bases ever closer to Japan diminished the urgency of wartime aerial refueling. During the war, eighty-three B-24s crashed or made forced landings in Switzerland, sixty in Sweden, and several in Russia, Spain, Portugal, and Turkey. Many of these Liberators landed undamaged or were repaired to be flown by these nations. Of particular interest are the six Liberators that were captured and flown by the Luftwaffe. Packed with a unique collection of photographs. Special Operations Consolidated B-24 Liberators reveals the most unusual and little-known facets of the Second World War’s most versatile bomber.

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*** 'This powerful, speaking-truth-to-power book is an essential read for everybody who wants to stop feeling clueless and helpless about the impacts of cosumerism, and start doing their part to help create a more sustainable world' - Layla Saad 'A critique on what we buy, how it's made and the systems behind it that make an unfair and broken cycle' - New York Times 'The book is a blueprint for anyone who wants to do better' - VOGUE 'SUCH integrity. Aja is no bullsh*t.' - Florence Given 'Consumed takes us through the hideously complex topic of fashion and sustainability, from its knotty colonial roots to what everyday people can do to uproot those systems, today.' - Yassmin Abdel-Magied 'An absolute must-read' - Marie Clare Aja Barber wants change. In the 'learning' first half of the book, she will expose you to the endemic injustices in our consumer industries and the uncomfortable history of the textile industry; one which brokered slavery, racism and today's wealth inequality. And how these oppressive systems have bled into the fashion industry and its lack of diversity and equality. She will also reveal how we spend our money and whose pockets it goes into and whose it doesn't (clue: the people who do the actual work) and will tell her story of how she came to learn the truth.In the second 'unlearning' half of the book, she will help you to understand the uncomfortable truth behind why you consume the way you do. She asks you to confront the sense of lack you have, the feeling that you are never quite enough and the reasons why you fill the aching void with consumption rather than compassion. And she makes you challenge this power disparity, and take back ownership of it. The less you buy into the consumer culture the more power you have.CONSUMED will teach you how to be a citizen not a consumer. 'An absolute must-read' - Red Magazine 'An absolute must-read for any person who wears clothes.' - Orsola de Castro 'A hugely compelling exploration of a culture of exploitation and how, together, we can end it.' - Gina Martin 'Barber's isn't just a voice we should listen to - it is a voice we MUST listen to.' - Clementine Ford 'If you buy one book about sustainable fashion, make it this one. Consumed is an urgent call to action to demand a fashion system that is actually fair for both people and planet, not just Big Fashion billionaires. I adore Aja and I love this brilliant book.' - Venetia La Manna

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One of the greatest mysteries in reconstructing the history of life on Earth has been the apparent absence of fossils dating back more than 550 million years. We have long known that fossils of sophisticated marine life-forms existed at the dawn of the Cambrian Period, but until recently scientists had found no traces of Precambrian fossils. The quest to find such traces began in earnest in the mid-1960s and culminated in one dramatic moment in 1993 when William Schopf identified fossilized microorganisms three and a half billion years old. This startling find opened up a vast period of time--some eighty-five percent of Earth's history--to new research and new ideas about life's beginnings. In this book, William Schopf, a pioneer of modern paleobiology, tells for the first time the exciting and fascinating story of the origins and earliest evolution of life and how that story has been unearthed. Gracefully blending his personal story of discovery with the basics needed to understand the astonishing science he describes, Schopf has produced an introduction to paleobiology for the interested reader as well as a primer for beginning students in the field. He considers such questions as how did primitive bacteria, pond scum, evolve into the complex life-forms found at the beginning of the Cambrian Period? How do scientists identify ancient microbes and what do these tiny creatures tell us about the environment of the early Earth? (And, in a related chapter, Schopf discusses his role in the controversy that swirls around recent claims of fossils in the famed meteorite from Mars.) Like all great teachers, Schopf teaches the non-specialist enough about his subject along the way that we can easily follow his descriptions of the geology, biology, and chemistry behind these discoveries. Anyone interested in the intriguing questions of the origins of life on Earth and how those origins have been discovered will find this story the best place to start.

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'The world's most famous and outspoken gynaecologist' (The Guardian) fights myths and fearmongering with real science, inclusive facts, and shame-free advice on the topic that impacts more than 1.8 billion people worldwide: menstruation. Women can expect to have between 350 and 450 periods in a lifetime. So why is real information so hard to find? Despite its significance, most education about menstruation focuses either on increasing the chances of pregnancy or preventing it. And while both are crucial, women deserve to know more about their bodies than just what happens in service to reproduction. Not knowing how your body works makes it challenging to advocate for yourself. Consequently, many people suffer in silence thinking their bodies are uniquely broken or they turn to disreputable sources. Blood is a practical, empowering guide to what's typical, what's concerning and when to seek care - recounted with the no-nonsense expertise and frank, fearless wit that have made Dr Jen today's most trusted voice in women's health. Dr Jen answers all your period-related questions, including: What exactly happens during menstruation? How heavy is too heavy? How much should periods hurt? And provides essential information about topics such as: * The impact of stress and health on the menstrual cycle * Menstrual migraines, PMS and period diarrhea (yes, it's totally normal) * Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) and fibroids * Endometriosis and the latest treatments * The endometrium's (the uterine lining's) fascinating connection to the immune system * Different cultural perceptions of menstruation and how they affect girls and women * Menstruation and the trans and non-binary experience * Legitimate menstrual products and the facts behind toxic shock syndrome * The risks and benefits of hysterectomies Blood is about much more than biology. It's an all-in-one, revolutionary guide that will change the way we think about, talk about - and don't talk about - our bodies and our well-being.

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In the tradition of bestsellers such as Shoe Dog, Authentic is a surprisingly candid, compelling memoir by a high school dropout who went on to establish one of the world's most iconic brands. You may not have known their creator, but you certainly know the shoes: for more than four generations, Vans shoes have been synonymous with cool. Now in Authentic, a memoir written by Paul Van Doren and published just before his May 2021 death, the charismatic founder of Vans shares his story of heading West and capturing the American dream. Authentic is a celebration of Van Doren’s remarkable life and the iconic brand he built, beloved by skateboarders, creatives, and fans everywhere for its laid-back, colorful SoCal vibe, and famous for its people-oriented company culture. In Authentic, he shares his unlikely journey from high-school dropout to sneaker-industry legend. A blue-collar kid with no higher education and zero retail experience, Van Doren started out as a 16-year-old “service boy” at a local rubber factory. Over the next few decades, he leveraged a knack for numbers, a genius for efficiency, and the know-how to make a great canvas tennis shoe into an all-American success story. What began as a family shoe business has today evolved into a globally recognized brand with billions of dollars of annual revenue. Van Doren is not just an entrepreneur, he’s an innovator. In 1966, when the first House of Vans store opened, there were no stand-alone retail stores just for sneakers. Paul’s bold experiments in product design, distribution, and marketing (Why not sell custom shoes? Single shoes?), aided by legions of fans — skateboarders, surfers, even Sean Penn wearing Vans’ famous checkerboard slip-on shoe in the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High — made Vans a household name. But there was also back-breaking work, a shocking bankruptcy, family turmoil, and a profound shift in how customers think about athletic shoes. The book details Van Doren’s personal life, but also hard-won business lessons learned over six turbulent decades in the shoe trade: the importance of deep-rooted values, of improvisation, of vision (and revision), and above all, of valuing people over profits. Authentic is Paul Van Doren’s written legacy and his lessons for the innovators of tomorrow. Bracingly forthright and totally entertaining, Authentic is a business memoir by an American original.

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America's most acclaimed crime writer returns to Louisiana with one of the best-loved detectives in fiction, Dave Robicheaux.In the summer of 1958, Dave Robicheaux and his half-brother Jimmie are just out of high school. Jimmie and Dave get work with an oil company, laying out rubber cables in the bays and mosquito-infested swamps all along the Louisiana-Texas coastline. But on the Fourth of July, change approaches in the form of Ida Durbin, a sweet-faced young woman with a lovely voice and a mandolin. Jimmie falls instantly in love with her. But Ida's not free to love - she's a prostitute, in hock to a brutal man called Kale. Jimmie agrees to meet Ida at the bus depot, ready for the road to Mexico. But Ida never shows.That was many years ago. Now, an older, well-worn Dave walks into Baptist Hospital to visit a man called Troy Bordelon, who wants to free himself of a dark secret before he dies. A bully and a sadist, he has a lot to confess to - but he chooses to talk about a young girl, a prostitute who he glimpsed briefly as a kid, bloodied and beaten, tied to a chair in his uncle's house.Praise for one of the great American crime writers, James Lee Burke:'James Lee Burke is the heavyweight champ, a great American novelist whose work, taken individually or as a whole, is unsurpassed.' Michael Connelly'A gorgeous prose stylist.' Stephen King'Richly deserves to be described now as one of the finest crime writers America has ever produced.' Daily MailFans of Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly and Don Winslow will love James Lee Burke: Dave Robicheaux Series1. The Neon Rain 2. Heaven's Prisoners 3. Black Cherry Blues 4. A Morning for Flamingos 5. A Stained White Radiance 6. In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead 7. Dixie City Jam 8. Burning Angel 9. Cadillac Jukebox 10. Sunset Limited 11. Purple Cane Road 12. Jolie Blon's Bounce 13. Last Car to Elysian Fields 14. Crusader's Cross 15. Pegasus Descending 16. The Tin Roof Blowdown 17. Swan Peak 18. The Glass Rainbow 19. Creole Belle 20. Light of the World 21. Robicheaux Hackberry Holland Series1. Lay Down My Sword and Shield 2. Rain Gods 3. Feast Day of Fools 4. House of the Rising SunBilly Bob Holland Series1. Cimarron Rose 2. Heartwood 3. Bitterroot 4. In The Moon of Red Ponies * Each James Lee Burke novel can be read as a standalone or in series order *

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'When James Lee Burke writes, the little birdies sing, the sun comes out and old men learn to dance again. That's how good he is. And now he's back . . . Purple Cane Road may be the finest novel Burke has written' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY'At times Burke's writing and atmosphere remind one of William Faulkner; at other moments Raymond Carver. I cannot think of much higher praise that can be accorded a novel' THE TIMES'No crime writer in America can hold a pen to Burke's mastery of style and powers of evocation and empathy' GUARDIAN'PURPLE CANE ROAD is not only a brilliant mystery, with an astonishing denouement, but a moving evocation of nostalgia and pain set in a marvellously described location' SCOTSMANWhen Detective Dave Robicheaux discovers disturbing secrets from his mother's past, he embarks on a journey through a murky world of vice, politics and murder.Robicheaux has been told that his mother, Mae, was a hooker and ended her life drowned in a mud puddle by two cops working for the Mob. As Robichaeux and his partner hunt for the killers, they hook up with a door-to-door salesman turned state governor, a psychotic hit-man, and the owner of the mansion at Purple Cane Road - who knows rather too much about Robichaeux's wife . . .Praise for one of the great American crime writers, James Lee Burke:'James Lee Burke is the heavyweight champ, a great American novelist whose work, taken individually or as a whole, is unsurpassed.' Michael Connelly'A gorgeous prose stylist.' Stephen King'Richly deserves to be described now as one of the finest crime writers America has ever produced.' Daily MailFans of Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly and Don Winslow will love James Lee Burke: Dave Robicheaux Series1. The Neon Rain 2. Heaven's Prisoners 3. Black Cherry Blues 4. A Morning for Flamingos 5. A Stained White Radiance 6. In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead 7. Dixie City Jam 8. Burning Angel 9. Cadillac Jukebox 10. Sunset Limited 11. Purple Cane Road 12. Jolie Blon's Bounce 13. Last Car to Elysian Fields 14. Crusader's Cross 15. Pegasus Descending 16. The Tin Roof Blowdown 17. Swan Peak 18. The Glass Rainbow 19. Creole Belle 20. Light of the World 21. Robicheaux Hackberry Holland Series1. Lay Down My Sword and Shield 2. Rain Gods 3. Feast Day of Fools 4. House of the Rising SunBilly Bob Holland Series1. Cimarron Rose 2. Heartwood 3. Bitterroot 4. In The Moon of Red Ponies * Each James Lee Burke novel can be read as a standalone or in series order *

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Established by Martin Eakes and Bonnie Wright in North Carolina in 1980, the nonprofit Center for Community Self-Help has grown from an innovative financial institution dedicated to civil rights into the nation's largest home lender to low- and moderate-income borrowers. Self-Help's first capital campaign—a bake sale that raised a meager seventy-seven dollars for a credit union—may not have done much to fulfill the organization's early goals of promoting worker-owned businesses, but it was a crucial first step toward wielding inclusive lending as a weapon for economic justice. In Lending Power journalist and historian Howard E. Covington Jr. narrates the compelling story of Self-Help's founders and coworkers as they built a progressive and community-oriented financial institution. First established to assist workers displaced by closed furniture and textile mills, Self-Help created a credit union that expanded into providing home loans for those on the margins of the financial market, especially people of color and single mothers. Using its own lending record, Self-Help convinced commercial banks to follow suit, extending its influence well beyond North Carolina. In 1999 its efforts led to the first state law against predatory lending. A decade later, as the Great Recession ravaged the nation's economy, its legislative victories helped influence the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the formation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Self-Help also created a federally chartered credit union to expand to California and later to Illinois and Florida, where it assisted ailing community-based credit unions and financial institutions. Throughout its history, Self-Help has never wavered from its mission to use Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of justice to extend economic opportunity to the nation's unbanked and underserved citizens. With nearly two billion dollars in assets, Self-Help also shows that such a model for nonprofits can be financially successful while serving the greater good. At a time when calls for economic justice are growing ever louder, Lending Power shows how hard-working and dedicated people can help improve their communities.

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Wall Street Journal BestsellerCNN news anchor Brooke Baldwin explores the phenomenon of “huddling,” when women lean on one another—in politics, Hollywood, activism, the arts, sports, and everyday friendships—to provide each other support, empowerment, inspiration, and the strength to solve problems or enact meaningful change. Whether they are facing adversity (like workplace inequity or a global pandemic) or organizing to make the world a better place, women are a highly potent resource for one another. Through a mix of journalism and personal narrative, Baldwin takes readers beyond the big headline-making huddles from recent years (such as the Women’s March, #MeToo, Times Up, and the record number of women running for public office) and embeds herself in groups of women of all ages, races, religions and socio-economic backgrounds who are banding together in America. HUDDLE explores several stories including: The benefits of all-girls learning environments, such as Karlie Kloss’s Kode with Klossy and Reese Witherspoon’s Filmmaker Lab for Girls in which young women are given the freedom to make mistakes, and find their confidence. The tactics employed by huddles of women who work in male-dominated industries including a group of US veterans/Democratic Congresswomen, a huddle of African-American judges in Harris County, Texas, and an all-female writers room in Hollywood. The wisdom of huddling from trusted pioneers such as Gloria Steinem, Billie Jean King, and Madeleine Albright as well as contemporary trailblazers like Stacey Abrams and Ava DuVernay. How professionals such as Chef Dominique Crenn and sports agent Lindsay Colas use their success to amplify other women in their fields. The ways huddles of women are dedicated to making seismic change, including a look at Indigenous women saving the planet, the women who founded Black Lives Matter, the mothers fighting for sensible gun laws, America’s favorite female athletes (Megan Rapinoe, Hilary Knight, and Sue Bird to name a few) agitating for equal pay, and female teachers rallying to improve their working conditions. The bond between women who practice self-care and trauma healing together, including the women who courageously survived sexual abuse, and the women who heal together in The Class and GirlTrek. The ways women are becoming more intentional about the life-saving power of friendship, including the bonds between military wives, new moms, and nurses getting through the time of Covid. Throughout her examination of this fascinating huddle phenomenon, Baldwin learns about the periods of huddle ‘droughts” in America, as well as the ways that Black women have been huddling for centuries. She also uncovers how huddling can be the “secret sauce” that makes many things possible for women: success in the workplace, effective grassroots change, confidence in girlhood, and a better physical and mental health profile in adulthood. Along the way, Baldwin takes readers through her own personal journey of growing up in the South and climbing the ladder of a male-dominated industry. Like so many women in her field, she encountered many sharp elbows on her career path, but became an early believer in adding more seats to the table and huddling with other women for strength and solidarity. In the process of writing HUDDLE, Baldwin learns that this seemingly new phenomenon is actually something women have been doing for generations—a quiet, collective power she learns to unlock in her transformation from journalist to champion for women.

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Powerful lessons in forward-thinking leadership from the visionary business pioneer who turned IDG into a $3 billion technology media and venture capital empireLike Steve Jobs, Patrick McGovern built a worldwide multibillion-dollar industry by thinking differently, disrupting old business models, and embracing new technology trends. He drove the future forward and never looked back. With magazines such as Computerworld, PCWorld, and Macworld, his company, International Data Group (IDG), quickly became a global powerhouse with information technology publications in nearly 100 countries. The story of IDG’s astonishing success has been a source of inspiration for entrepreneurs all around the world. No matter what industry you work in—whether you’re heading up a small startup, expanding a mid-sized company, or running a major global corporation—McGovern’s people-first principles, insights, and integrity will help you lead the way. Learn how to:•Define a clear mission early in the game—for long-term success.•Identify new markets and stay ahead of the curve.•Expand your business globally but have it managed locally.•Listen to your customers and empower your people.•Hire the best and challenge them to do their best work.•Never stop learning and always remain curious.•Foster a let’s-try-it attitude throughout the company.•Lead with optimism and stay true to your values and vision. In addition to these timeless lessons, you’ll learn how this future-forward leader broke new ground in the 1980s by opening offices in China, the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and other markets deemed off-limits. You’ll discover how his company thrived in spite of major industry shifts—from mainframe computers to minicomputers to personal computers, from print to digital to smartphones—that upended many rivals. Living at the intersection of these classic disruptions, McGovern never missed a beat. He understood well before most that a revolution in information technology was underway and not only was there money to be made but that this would soon become the world’s largest industry. Most important, he never forgot the human element that is so crucial to any company’s success. His leadership in the creation of one of the world’s leading brain research institutes at MIT only served to cement his legacy. Future Forward shows you how to apply McGovern’s principles to your own organization. These are the lessons of a true visionary. This is how successful leaders take risks, take charge, and take the future by storm.

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Single-mother Florida bounty-hunter Lori Anderson returns in another nail-biting, high-voltage read. When Lori is kidnapped, and her family threatened, she has 48 hours to save them ... or lose everything... 'A real cracker' Mark Billingham 'My kind of book' Lee Child 'Like Midnight Run, but much darker ... really, really good' Ian Rankin _________________ A price on her head. A secret worth dying for. 48 hours to expose the truth... Single-mother bounty-hunter Lori Anderson finally has her family back together, but her new-found happiness is shattered when she's snatched by the Miami Mob - and they want her dead. Rather than a bullet, they offer her a job: find the Mob's 'numbers man' who's in protective custody after being forced to turn federal witness against them. If Lori succeeds, they'll wipe the slate clean and the price on her head - and those of her family - will be removed. If she fails, they die. With North due in court in 48 hours, Lori sets off across Florida, racing against the clock to find him and save her family. Only in this race the prize is more deadly - and the secret she shares with JT more dangerous - than she ever could have imagined. In this race only the winner gets out alive... _________________ 'Fresh, fast and zinging with energy' Sunday Mirror 'Romping entertainment that moves faster than a bullet' Sunday Express 'Lori thinks with viper-like speed, speaks with strength and acts from her gut. Steph Broadribb has constructed a thoroughly believable world full of substantial yet flawed characters. I quite simply love this series, I leap in with total faith and just let myself go. Deep Dirty Truth is a thrilling, assertive and energetic read' LoveReading 'Sharp, thrilling and one hell of a ride. This series just gets better and better!' Chris Whitaker 'Brilliant and pacey' Steve Cavanagh 'Perfect for fans of Lee Child and Janet Evanovich' Alex Caan 'Broadribb's writing is fresh and vivid, crackling with life ... an impressive thriller, the kind of book that comfortably sits alongside seasoned pros' Crime Watch 'Stylish with an original take on the lone wolf/bounty hunter theme. This is a novel alive with tension and intriguing twists. ... There's a good deal of wit at the expense of the complacent, anachronistic, loud mouthed quick-fisted mobsters. Just a whole hell of a lot of fun' New Books Magazine

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The trade in oil, gas, gems, metals and rare earth minerals wreaks havoc in Africa. During the years when Brazil, India, China and the other "emerging markets" have transformed their economies, Africa's resource states remained tethered to the bottom of the industrial supply chain. While Africa accounts for about 30 per cent of the world's reserves of hydrocarbons and minerals and 14 per cent of the world's population, its share of global manufacturing stood in 2011 exactly where it stood in 2000: at 1 percent. In his first book, The Looting Machine, Tom Burgis exposes the truth about the African development miracle: for the resource states, it's a mirage. The oil, copper, diamonds, gold and coltan deposits attract a global network of traders, bankers, corporate extractors and investors who combine with venal political cabals to loot the states' value. And the vagaries of resource-dependent economies could pitch Africa's new middle class back into destitution just as quickly as they climbed out of it. The ground beneath their feet is as precarious as a Congolese mine shaft; their prosperity could spill away like crude from a busted pipeline. This catastrophic social disintegration is not merely a continuation of Africa's past as a colonial victim. The looting now is accelerating as never before. As global demand for Africa's resources rises, a handful of Africans are becoming legitimately rich but the vast majority, like the continent as a whole, is being fleeced. Outsiders tend to think of Africa as a great drain of philanthropy. But look more closely at the resource industry and the relationship between Africa and the rest of the world looks rather different. In 2010, fuel and mineral exports from Africa were worth 333 billion, more than seven times the value of the aid that went in the opposite direction. But who received the money? For every Frenchwoman who dies in childbirth, 100 die in Niger alone, the former French colony whose uranium fuels France's nuclear reactors. In petro-states like Angola three-quarters of government revenue comes from oil. The government is not funded by the people, and as result it is not beholden to them. A score of African countries whose economies depend on resources are rentier states; their people are largely serfs. The resource curse is not merely some unfortunate economic phenomenon, the product of an intangible force. What is happening in Africa's resource states is systematic looting. Like its victims, its beneficiaries have names.

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Despite the all-pervading influence of television ninety per cent of people in Britain still listen to the radio, clocking up over a billion hours of listening between us every week. It’s a background to all our lives: we wake up to our clock radios, we have the radio on in the kitchen as we make the tea, it’s on at our workplaces and in our cars. From Listen With Mother to the illicit thrill of tuning into pirate stations like Radio Caroline; from receiving a musical education from John Peel or having our imagination unlocked by Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; from school-free summers played out against a soundtrack of Radio One and Test Match Special to more grown-up soundtracks of the Today programme on Radio 4 and the solemn, rhythmic intonation of the shipping forecast – in many ways, our lives can be measured in kilohertz. Yet radio is changing because the way we listen to the radio is changing. Last year the number of digital listeners at home exceeded the number of analogue listeners for the first time, meaning the pop and crackle and the age of stumbling upon something by chance is coming to an end. There will soon be no dial to turn, no in-between spaces on the waveband for washes of static, mysterious beeps and faint, distant voices. The mystery will be gone: we’ll always know exactly what it is we’re listening to, whether it’s via scrolling LCD on our digital radios, the box at the bottom of our TV screen or because we’ve gone in search of a particular streaming station. And so, as the world of analogue listening fades, Charlie Connelly takes stock of the history of radio and its place in our lives as one of the very few genuinely shared national experiences. He explores its geniuses, crackpots and charlatans who got us to where we are today, and remembers its voices, personalities and programmes that helped to form who we are as individuals and as a nation. He visits the key radio locations from history, and looks at its vital role over the past century on both national and local levels. Part nostalgic eulogy, part social history, part travelogue, Last Train To Hilversum is Connelly’s love letter to radio, exploring our relationship with the medium from its earliest days to the present in an attempt to recreate and revisit the world he entered on his childhood evenings on the dial as he set out on the radio journey of a lifetime.

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