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Days of Awe by A.M. Homes
Brief Summary
With her signature humor and compassion, A.M. Homes exposes the heart of an uneasy America in her new collection - exploring our attachments to each other through characters who aren't quite who they hoped to become, though there is no one else they can be.
In A Prize for Every Player, a man is nominated to run for president by the customers of a big box store, while he and his family do their weekly shopping. At a conference on genocide(s) in the title story, old friends rediscover themselves and one another - finding spiritual and physical comfort in ancient traditions. And in Hello Everybody and She Got Away, Homes revisits a Los Angeles family obsessed with the surfaces and frightened of what lives below.
In the nearly three decades since her seminal debut collection The Safety of Objects, Homes has been celebrated by readers and critics alike as one of our boldest and most original writers, acclaimed for her psychological accuracy and "satire so close to the truth it's terrifying" (Ali Smith). Her first book since the Women's Prize-winning May We Be Forgiven, Days of Awe is a major new addition to her body of visionary, fearless, outrageously funny work.
ISBN:9780670025497
Author:A M Homes
Everything Happens for a Reason And O...
Brief Summary
A divinity professor and young mother with a Stage IV cancer diagnosis explores the pain and joy of living without certainty.
Thirty-five-year-old Kate Bowler was a professor at the school of divinity at Duke, and had finally had a baby with her childhood sweetheart after years of trying, when she began to feel jabbing pains in her stomach. She lost thirty pounds, chugged antacid, and visited doctors for three months before she was finally diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.
As she navigates the aftermath of her diagnosis, Kate pulls the reader deeply into her life, which is populated with a colorful, often hilarious collection of friends, pastors, parents, and doctors, and shares her laser-sharp reflections on faith, friendship, love, and death. She wonders why suffering makes her feel like a loser and explores the burden of positivity.
Trying to relish the time she still has with her son and husband, she realizes she must change her habit of skipping to the end and planning the next move. A historian of the "American prosperity gospel"--the creed of the mega-churches that promises believers a cure for tragedy, if they just want it badly enough--Bowler finds that, in the wake of her diagnosis, she craves these same "outrageous certainties." She wants to know why it's so hard to surrender control over that which you have no control. She contends with the terrifying fact that, even for her husband and child, she is not the lynchpin of existence, and that even without her, life will go on.
On the page, Kate Bowler is warm, witty, and ruthless, and, like Paul Kalanithi, one of the talented, courageous few who can articulate the grief she feels as she contemplates her own mortality.
Author: Kate Bowler
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lam...
Brief Summary
The Leopard is a story of a decadent and dying aristocracy threatened by the forces of revolution and democracy. Set against the political upheavals of Italy in the 1860s, it focuses on Don Fabrizio, a Sicilian prince of immense sensual appetites, wealth, and great personal magnetism.
Around this powerful figure swirls a glittering array of characters: a Bourbon king, liberals and pseudo liberals, peasants and millionaires.
ISBN:9780679731214
Author:Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Brazen Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World
Brief Summary
Throughout history and across the globe, one characteristic connects the daring women of Brazen: their indomitable spirit. Against overwhelming adversity, these remarkable women raised their voices and changed history.
With her one-of-a-kind wit and dazzling drawings, celebrated graphic novelist Pénélope Bagieu profiles the lives of these feisty female role models, some world-famous, some little known.
From Nellie Bly to Mae Jemison or Josephine Baker to Naziq al-Abid, the stories in this comic biography are sure to inspire the next generation of rebel ladies.
ISBN:9781626728691
Author:Penelope Bagieu
Lean Six Sigma For Leaders A practica...
Brief Summary
Lean Six Sigma For Leaders: A practical guide for leaders to transform the way they run their organization.
A refreshingly practical guide to real–world continuous improvement
Lean Six Sigma for Leaders presents a no–frills approach to adopting a continuous improvement framework. Practical, down–to–earth and jargon–free, this book outlines the basic principles and key points of the Lean Six Sigma approach to help you quickly determine the best course for your company.
Real–world case studies illustrate implementation at various organizations to show you what went right, what went wrong, what they learned and what they would have done differently, giving you the distilled wisdom of hundreds of implementations with which to steer your own organization. Written from a leader′s perspective, this quick and easy read presents the real information you need to make informed strategic decisions.
While many organizations have implemented either Lean or Six Sigma, there is a growing interest in a combined approach; by implementing the most effective aspects of each, you end up with a more potent, adaptable system that benefits a wider range of organizations. This book shows you how it works, and how to tailor it to your organisation′s needs.
• Understand the basic principles and key aspects of Lean Six Sigma
• Examine case studies of organizations that have implemented the framework
• Build on the lessons learned by other leaders to shape your own path
• Achieve continuous improvement by creating the right environment for success
In theory, every organization would like to attain continuous improvement but what does that look like in day–to–day practice? How is it structured? What practices are in place? How can you implement this new approach with minimal disruption to daily operations? Lean Six Sigma for Leaders answers these questions and more, for a clear, actionable guide to real–world implementation.
ISBN:9781119374749
Author:Martin Brenig-Jones and Jo Dowdall
Empire State of Mind How Jay Z Went F...
Brief Summary
Some people think Jay-Z is just another rapper. Others see him as just another celebrity/mega-star. The reality is, no matter what you think Jay-Z is, he first and foremost a business. And as much as Martha Stewart or Oprah, he has turned himself into a lifestyle. You can wake up to the local radio station playing Jay-Z's latest hit, spritz yourself with his 9IX cologne, slip on a pair of his Rocawear jeans, lace up your Reebok S. Carter sneakers, catch a Nets basketball game in the afternoon, and grab dinner at The Spotted Pig before heading to an evening performance of the Jay-Z-backed Broadway musical Fela! and a nightcap at his 40/40 Club. He'll profit at every turn of your day.
But despite Jay-Z's success, there are still many Americans whose impressions of him are foggy, outdated, or downright incorrect. Surprisingly to many, he honed his business philosophy not at a fancy B school, but on the streets of Brooklyn, New York and beyond as a drug dealer in the 1980s. Empire State of Mind tells the story behind Jay-Z's rise to the top as told by the people who lived it with him- from classmates at Brooklyn's George Westinghouse High School; to the childhood friend who got him into the drug trade; to the DJ who convinced him to stop dealing and focus on music. This book explains just how Jay-Z propelled himself from the bleak streets of Brooklyn to the heights of the business world.
Zack O'Malley Greenburg draws on his one-on-one interviews with hip-hop luminaries such as DJ Clark Kent, Questlove of The Roots, Damon Dash, Fred "Fab 5 Freddy" Brathwaite, MC Serch; NBA stars Jamal Crawford and Sebastian Telfair; and recording industry executives including Craig Kallman, CEO of Atlantic Records. He also includes new information on Jay-Z's various business dealings, such as:
* The feature movie about Jay-Z and his first basketball team that was filmed by Fab 5 Freddy in 2003 but never released.
* The Jay-Z branded Jeep that was scrapped just before going into production.
* The real story behind his association with Armand de Brignac champagne.
* The financial ramifications of his marriage to Beyonce. Jay-Z's tale is compelling not just because of his celebrity, but because it embodies the rags-to-riches American dream and is a model for any entrepreneur looking to build a commercial empire.
ISBN:9781591843818
Author:Zack O'Malley Greenburg
Everything I Never Told You by Celest...
Brief Summary
Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.
So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos.
A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.
ISBN:9781594205712
Author:Celeste Ng
Entrepreneur How to Start an Online B...
Brief Summary
The secrets of the UK′s biggest online entrepreneurs revealed
Thinking of starting a business? Already have a business online and looking to take it to the next level? The wonderful world wide web has made creating a start–up that much easier. Thousands of people are out there reaping the rewards the web can bring. If you want to join them, you′ve come to the right place.
Profiling today′s foremost web entrepreneurs, Lucy Tobin – who meets successful business founders every week writing an enterprise column for The Evening Standard takes us through their start–up stories and maps out exactly what′s made them so successful. You will hear first-hand from the bright sparks behind some of the UK′s top online businesses. With interviews, practical advice and insights, you′ll learn how they did it, what they recommend, and how you can do it too.
ISBN:9780857082886
Author:Lucy Tobin
Entanglement The Secret Lives of Hair...
Brief Summary
When it’s not attached to your head, your very own hair takes on a disconcerting quality. Suddenly, it is strange. And yet hair finds its way into all manner of unexpected places, far from our heads, including cosmetics, clothes, ropes, personal and public collections, and even food. Whether treated as waste or as gift, relic, sacred offering or commodity in a billion-dollar industry for wigs and hair extensions, hair has many stories to tell.
Collected from Hindu temples and Buddhist nunneries and salvaged by the strand from waste heaps and the combs of long-haired women, hair flows into the industry from many sources. Entering this strange world, Emma Tarlo travels the globe, tracking its movement across India, Myanmar, China, Africa, the United States, Britain and Europe, where she meets people whose livelihoods depend on hair.
Viewed from inside Chinese wig factories, Hindu temples and the villages of Myanmar, or from Afro hair fairs, Jewish wig parlours, fashion salons and hair loss clinics in Britain and the United States, hair is oddly revealing of the lives of all it touches.
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Incidents at the Shrine by Ben Okri
Brief Summary
Incidents at the Shrine is the first collection of stories by the author of 1991 Booker Prize-winning novel, The Famished Road.
Whether the subject is a child's eye view of the Nigerian Civil War, Lagos and the spirit world or dispossession in a decaying British inner city, Okri's lyrical, poetic and humorous prose recreates the known and the unknown world with startling power.
ISBN:9780099983002
Author:Ben Okri
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck b...
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people.
For decades, we’ve been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. "F**k positivity," Mark Manson says. "Let’s be honest, shit is f**ked and we have to live with it." In his wildly popular Internet blog, Mason doesn’t sugarcoat or equivocate. He tells it like it is—a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is his antidote to the coddling, let’s-all-feel-good mindset that has infected American society and spoiled a generation, rewarding them with gold medals just for showing up.
Manson makes the argument, backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to stomach lemons better. Human beings are flawed and limited—"not everybody can be extraordinary, there are winners and losers in society, and some of it is not fair or your fault." Manson advises us to get to know our limitations and accept them.
Once we embrace our fears, faults, and uncertainties, once we stop running and avoiding and start confronting painful truths, we can begin to find the courage, perseverance, honesty, responsibility, curiosity, and forgiveness we seek.
There are only so many things we can give a f**k about so we need to figure out which ones really matter, Manson makes clear. While money is nice, caring about what you do with your life is better, because true wealth is about experience. A much-needed grab-you-by-the-shoulders-and-look-you-in-the-eye moment of real-talk, filled with entertaining stories and profane, ruthless humor, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is a refreshing slap for a generation to help them lead contented, grounded lives.
Die Trying by Lee Child
Brief Summary
In a Chicago suburb, a dentist is met in his office parking lot by three men and ordered into the trunk of his Lexus. On a downtown sidewalk, Jack Reacher and an unknown woman are abducted in broad daylight by two men - practiced and confident - who stop them at gunpoint and hustle them into the same sedan.
Then Reacher and the woman are switched into a second vehicle and hauled away, leaving the dentist bound and gagged inside his car with the woman's abandoned possessions, two gallons of gasoline . . . and a burning match.
The FBI is desperate to rescue the woman, a Special Agent from the Chicago office, because the FBI always - always - takes care of its own, and because this woman is not just another agent. Reacher and the woman join forces, against seemingly hopeless odds, to outwit their captors and escape. But the FBI thinks Jack is one of the kidnappers - and when they close in, the Bureau snipers will be shooting to kill.
ISBN:9780515142242
Author:Lee Child
The Black Hermit by Ngugi wa Thiongo
When Bad Things Happen to Good People
Brief Summary
When Harold Kushner’s three-year-old son was diagnosed with a degenerative disease that meant the boy would only live until his early teens, he was faced with one of life’s most difficult questions: Why, God? Years later, Rabbi Kushner wrote this straightforward, elegant contemplation of the doubts and fears that arise when tragedy strikes.
In these pages, Kushner shares his wisdom as a rabbi, a parent, a reader, and a human being. Often imitated but never superseded, When Bad Things Happen to Good People is a classic that offers clear thinking and consolation in times of sorrow.
"
ISBN:9781400034727
Author:Harold S. Kushner
An Hour to Live an Hour to Love
Brief Summary
An Hour to Live, an Hour to Love: The True Story of the Best Gift Ever Given
If you had one hour to live and could make just one phone call, who would you call? What would you say? Why are you waiting? Richard Carlson's sudden, tragic death in December 2006 left his millions of fans reeling, but even their many letters, calls, and emails couldn't erase the loss felt by his wife, Kristine.
To try and come to terms with her loss, she pored over 25 years of love letters, reliving the memories and cherishing her late husband's memory. But one letter stood out. Richard had written to his wife on their 18th wedding anniversary and attempted to answer the question: if you had one hour to live, what would you do, who would you call, and what would you say? An Hour to Live, An Hour to Love is a profoundly moving book that shows the importance of treasuring each day as the incredible gift it is.
ISBN:9781401322571
Author:Richard Carlson and Kristine Carlson
The Tell Tale Brain by V.S Ramachandran
"A profoundly intriguing and compelling guide to the intricacies of the human brain." ?Oliver Sacks
In this landmark work, V. S. Ramachandran investigates strange, unforgettable cases? from patients who believe they are dead to sufferers of phantom limb syndrome.
With a storyteller’s eye for compelling case studies and a researcher’s flair for new approaches to age-old questions, Ramachandran tackles the most exciting and controversial topics in brain science, including language, creativity, and consciousness. 45 illustrations
The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through...
Dr. Bruce Wilkinson, president of Walk Thru the Bible Ministries, takes readers to 1 Chronicles 4:10 to discover how they can release God's miraculous power and experience the blessings God longs to give each of us.
The life of Jabez, one of the Bible's most overlooked heroes of the faith, bursts from unbroken pages of genealogies in an audacious, four-part prayer that brings him an extraordinary measure of divine favor, anointing, and protection.
Readers who commit to offering the same prayer on a regular basis will find themselves extravagantly blessed by God, and agents of His miraculous power, in everyday life.
The Curse of Berlin Africa After the ...
Brief Summary
At the 1884-1885 Conference of Berlin a cartel of largely European states effectively set the rules for the partition of Africa, an event whose historical and structural importance continues to affect and shape Africa's contemporary international relations.
This 'Curse' is a recurring theme in Adebajo's trenchant historical analysis, even though its main focus is on contemporary African issues after the Cold War. The first part of the book examines Africa's quest for security with three essays on Africa's security institutions such as the African Union and sub-regional bodies; another on the political, peacekeeping, and socio-economic roles of the United Nations (UN) in Africa; and a third on Africa's two UN Secretaries-General between 1992 and 2006:
Egypt's Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Ghana's Kofi Annan. The second section of the book focuses on Africa's quest for leadership, and five chapters examine the hegemonic roles of South Africa, Nigeria, the United States, China and France on the continent. The five chapters in the final section of the study analyse Africa's quest for unity, and examine the roles and significance for Africa of six historical figures: Mandela, Mbeki, Kwame Cecil Rhodes, Obama, and Gandhi; as well as assessing the African Union and the EU in comparative perspective.
ISBN:9780199333417
Author:Adekeye Adebajo
Rules of Civility A Novel by Amor Towles
Brief Summary
On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table.
This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society—where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve.
With its sparkling depiction of New York’s social strata, its intricate imagery and themes, and its immensely appealing characters, Rules of Civility won the hearts of readers and critics alike.
ISBN:9780143121169
Author:Amor Towles
The Real Politics of the Horn of Afri...
Brief Summary
The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa delves into the business of politics in the turbulent, war-torn countries of north-east Africa. It is a contemporary history of how politicians, generals and insurgents bargain over money and power, and use of war to achieve their goals.
Drawing on a thirty-year career in Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, including experience as a participant in high-level peace talks, Alex de Waal provides a unique and compelling account of how these countries’ leaders run their governments, conduct their business, fight their wars and, occasionally, make peace.
De Waal shows how leaders operate on a business model, securing funds for their ‘political budgets’ which they use to rent the provisional allegiances of army officers, militia commanders, tribal chiefs and party officials at the going rate. This political marketplace is eroding the institutions of government and reversing state buildingÑ and it is fuelled in large part by oil exports, aid funds and western military assistance for counter-terrorism and peacekeeping.
The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa is a sharp and disturbing book with profound implications for international relations, development and peacemaking in the Horn of Africa and beyond.
ISBN:9780745695587
Author:Alex de Waal
