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The Lovely Bones
Brief Summary
The Lovely Bones is the story of a family devastated by a gruesome murder -- a murder recounted by the teenage victim. Upsetting, you say? Remarkably, first-time novelist Alice Sebold takes this difficult material and delivers a compelling and accomplished exploration of a fractured family's need for peace and closure.
The details of the crime are laid out in the first few pages: from her vantage point in heaven, Susie Salmon describes how she was confronted by the murderer one December afternoon on her way home from school. Lured into an underground hiding place, she was raped and killed. But what the reader knows, her family does not. Anxiously, we keep vigil with Susie, aching for her grieving family, desperate for the killer to be found and punished.
Sebold creates a heaven that's calm and comforting, a place whose residents can have whatever they enjoyed when they were alive -- and then some. But Susie isn't ready to release her hold on life just yet, and she intensely watches her family and friends as they struggle to cope with a reality in which she is no longer a part. To her great credit, Sebold has shaped one of the most loving and sympathetic fathers in contemporary literature.
ISBN:9780316166683
Author:Alice Sebold
Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris
Everyone knows a couple like Jack and Grace: he has looks and wealth, she has charm and elegance. You'd like to get to know Grace better. But it's difficult, because you realize Jack and Grace are never apart. Some might call this true love.
Picture this: a dinner party at their perfect home, the conversation and wine flowing. They appear to be in their element while entertaining. And Grace's friends are eager to reciprocate with lunch the following week. Grace wants to go, but knows she never will. Her friends call—so why doesn't Grace ever answer the phone? And how can she cook such elaborate meals but remain so slim?
And why are there bars on one of the bedroom windows?
The perfect marriage? Or the perfect lie?
Alienation and Freedom
Brief Summary
Since the publication of The Wretched of the Earth in 1961, Fanon's work has been deeply significant for successive generations of intellectuals-for anti-colonial and civil rights activists in the 60s and 70s, for those working in postcolonial studies from the 80s to the present day, and currently for specialists of French and North African history, of colonial psychiatry, and for all those who work with conflicts of identity in postcolonial societies.
Frantz Fanon is regarded as a foundational thinker of Postcolonial Studies, bringing together the analysis of colonialism from an objective, historical perspective and an interrogation of its subjective effects on colonizer and colonized alike. This book furthers his powerful intervention into how we think about identity, race and activism and provides a unique insight into Fanon's literary, psychiatric and journalistic theories.
Never before published in English, Alienation and Freedom represents a rare opportunity to read the last writings of a major 20th-century philosopher who's disruptive and moving work continue to shape how we look at the world.
ISBN:9781474250214
Author:Frantz Fanon
Another World is Possible
Brief Summary
Another World Is Possible: World Social Forum Proposals for an Alternative Globalization.
In 2001 the first World Social Forum was held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The meeting was viewed by many at the time as a new manifestation of the global Left, a people's opposition to the World Economic Forum that stood as the first real front to global capitalism since the collapse of the Soviet Union. While many activists and intellectuals on the left have since become deeply critical of the Forum, newer movements, such as Occupy, the Arab Spring and the indignados, have built upon its successes and innovations.
Another World is Possible is the original collection of essays and demands from the heart of the ‘movement of movements’. Based on the work of the first two annual meetings of the WSF, this classic collection not only set out the initial aims of the movements that came together, it also paved the way for the theoretical study of new social movements, their multiple and participatory character. Today, as many crises affect all our lives, it is time to revisit the original demands of a global solidarity movement, united in its determination to fight against the concentration of wealth, the proliferation of poverty and inequalities, and the destruction of our earth, and to reconstitute a global left.
ISBN:9781783605170
Author:William F. Fisher and Thomas Ponniah
A Certain Amount of Madness The Life ...
Brief Summary
Thomas Sankara was one of Africa's most important anti-imperialist leaders of the late 20th Century. His declaration that fundamental socio-political change would require a 'certain amount of madness' drove the Burkinabe Revolution and resurfaced in the country's popular uprising in 2014. This book looks at Sankara's political philosophies and legacies and their relevance today.
Analyses of his synthesis of Pan-Africanism and humanist Marxist politics, as well as his approach to gender, development, ecology and decolonization offer new insights to Sankarist political philosophies. Critical evaluations of the limitations of the revolution examine his relationship with labour unions and other aspects of his leadership style.
His legacy is revealed by looking at contemporary activists, artists and politicians who draw inspiration from Sankarist thought in social movement struggles today, from South Africa to Burkina Faso. In the 30th anniversary of his assassination, this book illustrates how Sankara's political praxis continues to provide lessons and hope for decolonisation struggles today.
ISBN:9780745337579
Author:Amber Murrey
Binti Home
Brief Summary
It’s been a year since Binti and Okwu enrolled at Oomza University. A year since Binti was declared a hero for uniting two warring planets. A year since she abandoned her family in the dawn of a new day.
And now she must return home to her people, with her friend Okwu by her side, to face her family and face her elders.
But Okwu will be the first of his race to set foot on Earth in over a hundred years, and the first ever to come in peace.
After generations of conflict can human and Meduse ever learn to truly live in harmony?
ISBN:9780765393104
Author:Nnedi Okorafor
Around the Way Girl A Memoir by Taraj...
Brief Summary
From Academy Award nominee, Golden Globe winner, and star of the new motion picture Hidden Figures, Taraji P. Henson, comes an inspiring and funny book about family, friends, the hustle required to make it from DC to Hollywood, and the joy of living in your own truth.
With a sensibility that recalls her beloved screen characters, including NASA physicist mathematician Katherine G. Johnson, Yvette, Queenie, Shug, and the iconic Cookie from Empire, yet is all Taraji, the screen actress writes of her family, the one she was born into and the one she created. She shares stories of her father, a Vietnam vet who was bowed but never broken by life's challenges, and of her mother who survived violence both in the home and on DC's volatile streets. Here too she opens up about her experiences as a single mother, a journey some saw as a burden but which she saw as a gift.
Around the Way Girl is also a classic actor’s memoir in which Taraji reflects on the world-class instruction she received at Howard University and the pitfalls that come with being a black actress. With laugh-out-loud humor and candor, she shares the challenges and disappointments of the actor’s journey and shows us that behind the red carpet moments, she is ever authentic. She is at heart just a girl in pursuit of her dreams.
ISBN:9781501125997
Author:Taraji P. Henson
Brave Rose McGowan
Brief Summary
My life, as you will read, has taken me from one cult to another. Braveis the story of how I fought my way out of these cults and reclaimed my life. I want to help you do the same.-Rose McGowan
A revealing memoir and empowering manifesto – A voice for generations.
Rose McGowan was born in one cult and came of age in another, more visible cult: Hollywood.
In a strange world where she was continually on display, stardom soon became a personal nightmare of constant exposure and sexualization. Rose escaped into the world of her mind, something she had done as a child, and into high-profile relationships. Every detail of her personal life became public, and the realities of an inherently sexist industry emerged with every script, role, public appearance, and magazine cover. The Hollywood machine packaged her as a sexualized bombshell, hijacking her image and identity and marketing them for profit.
Hollywood expected Rose to be silent and cooperative and to stay the path. Instead, she rebelled and asserted her true identity and voice. She reemerged unscripted, courageous, victorious, angry, smart, fierce, unapologetic, controversial, and real as f*ck.
Brave is her raw, honest, and poignant memoir/manifesto—a no-holds-barred, pull-no-punches account of the rise of a millennial icon, fearless activist, and unstoppable force for change who is determined to expose the truth about the entertainment industry, dismantle the concept of fame, shine a light on a multibillion-dollar business built on systemic misogyny, and empower people everywhere to wake up and be Brave.
ISBN:9780062655998
Author:Rose McGowan
Salt Houses
Brief Summary
On the eve of her daughter Alia’s wedding, Salma reads the girl’s future in a cup of coffee dregs. She sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children; she also sees travel, and luck. While she chooses to keep her predictions to herself that day, they will all soon come to pass when the family is uprooted in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967.
Salma is forced to leave her home in Nablus; Alia’s brother gets pulled into a politically militarized world he can’t escape; and Alia and her gentle-spirited husband move to Kuwait City, where they reluctantly build a life with their three children. When Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait in 1990, Alia and her family once again lose their home, their land, and their story as they know it, scattering to Beirut, Paris, Boston, and beyond. Soon Alia’s children begin families of their own, once again navigating the burdens (and blessings) of assimilation in foreign cities.
Lyrical and heartbreaking, Salt Houses is a remarkable debut novel that challenges and humanizes an age-old conflict we might think we understand—one that asks us to confront that most devastating of all truths: you can’t go home again.
ISBN:9780544912588
Author:Hala Alyan
Karl Marx Early Writings
Brief Summary
Written in 1833-4, when Marx was barely twenty-five, this astonishingly rich body of works formed the cornerstone for his later political philosophy. In the Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of the State, he dissects Hegel's thought and develops his own views on civil society, while his Letters reveal a furious intellect struggling to develop the egalitarian theory of state.
Equally challenging are his controversial essay On the Jewish Question and the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, where Marx first made clear his views on alienation, the state, democracy and human nature. Brilliantly insightful, Marx's Early Writings reveal a mind on the brink of one of the most revolutionary ideas in human history - the theory of Communism.
This translation fully conveys the vigor of the original works. The introduction, by Lucio Colletti, considers the beliefs of the young Marx and explores these writings in the light of the later development of Marxism.
ISBN:9780140445749
Author:Karl Marx
Mine Boy
Brief Summary
Mine Boy: The First Modern Novel of Black South Africa
First published in 1946, this novel exposed the condition of black South Africans under a white regime.
It presents a portrait of labor discrimination, appalling housing conditions and one man's humanitarian act of defiance.
ISBN:9780435905620
Author:Peter Abrahams
Perennial Seller The Art of Making an...
Brief Summary
Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work That Lasts
Bestselling author and marketing strategist Ryan Holiday reveals to creative of all stripes--authors, entrepreneurs, musicians, filmmakers, fine artists--how a classic work is made and marketed.
In Hollywood, a movie is given a single weekend to succeed before being written off. In Silicon Valley, a startup is a failure if it doesn't go viral or rake in venture capital from the start. In publishing, a book that took years to write is given less than three months to sink or swim. These brutally shortsighted attitudes have choked the world with instructions for engineering a flash-in-the-pan and littered the media landscape with fads and flops.
Meanwhile, the greats, the stalwarts, the household names, are those who focus on a singularly different, possibly heretical, idea: that their work can and should last. For instance, Zildjian has been one of the premier makers of cymbals since its founding in 1623--and shows no signs of quitting. Iron Maiden has filled stadiums for forty years, moving some 85 million albums without the help of radio or television. Robert Greene's first book, The 48 Laws of Power, didn't hit the bestseller lists until over a decade after it was first released, and since then has sold more than 1 million copies worldwide.
These works Ryan Holiday calls Perennial Sellers. They exist in every creative industry--timeless, dependable resources and unsung moneymakers, paying like blue chip annuities. Like gold or land, they increase in value over time, outlasting and outreaching any competition. And they're not flukes or lucky breaks--they were built to last from the outset.
Holiday shows readers how to make and market their own classic work. Featuring interviews with some of the world's greatest creative, and grounded in a deep study of the classics in every genre, this exciting new book empowers readers with a foundational set of innovative principles. Whether you have a book or a business, a song or the next great screenplay, this book reveals the recipe for perennial success.
ISBN:9780143109013
Author:Ryan Holiday
This Is Just My Face Try Not to Stare
Brief Summary
The Oscar-nominated Precious star and Empire actress delivers a much-awaited memoir—wise, complex, smart, funny—that is different from anything we’ve read
Gabourey Sidibe—"Gabby” to her legion of fans—skyrocketed to international fame in 2009 when she played the leading role in Lee Daniels’s acclaimed movie Precious. In This is Just My Face, she shares a one-of-a-kind life story in a voice as fresh and challenging as many of the unique characters she’s played onscreen.
With full-throttle honesty, Sidibe paints her Bed-Stuy/Harlem family life with a polygamous father and a gifted mother who supports her two children by singing in the subway. Sidibe tells the engrossing, inspiring story of her first job as a phone sex "talker.” And she shares her unconventional (of course!) rise to fame as a movie star, alongside "a superstar cast of rich people who lived in mansions and had their own private islands and amazing careers while I lived in my mom's apartment.”
Sidibe’s memoir hits hard with self-knowing dispatches on friendship, depression, celebrity, haters, fashion, race, and weight ("If I could just get the world to see me the way I see myself,” she writes, "would my body still be a thing you walked away thinking about?”). Irreverent, hilarious, and untraditional, This Is Just My Face takes its place and fills a void on the shelf of writers from Mindy Kaling to David Sedaris to Lena Dunham.
ISBN:9780544786769
Author:Gabourey Sidibe
Lovers and Players
Brief Summary
Dangerous sex, family secrets, irresistible power, mega money, and two murders equal one reckless week in New York...
In Lovers & Players, the Diamond family rules. Red Diamond is an abusive and much-loathed billionaire. His three sons, Max, Chris, and Jett, are summoned to New York for a family meeting which rocks their world.
Diahann, a beautiful black ex-singer, works as Red's housekeeper-a job her daughter, Liberty, does not approve of. A waitress and would-be singer herself, Liberty has dreams of her own and while she pursues them, Damon P. Donnell, married hip-hop mogul supreme, pursues her.
Young New York heiress Amy Scott-Simon is engaged to marry Max. At her bachelorette party she runs into Jett. Jett has no idea who Amy is. She also doesn't realize who he is. A one-night fling leads to major complications.
Now the lives of these characters will intertwine, forever changing their destinies, in this highly charged love story about family relationships and deadly choices.
ISBN:9780312937089
Author:Jackie Collins
Amerika Novel
Brief Summary
Kafka’s first and funniest novel, Amerika tells the story of the young immigrant Karl Rossmann who, after an embarrassing sexual misadventure, finds himself "packed off to America” by his parents.
Expected to redeem himself in this magical land of opportunity, young Karl is swept up instead in a whirlwind of dizzying reversals, strange escapades, and picaresque adventures.
Although Kafka never visited America, images of its vast landscape, dangers, and opportunities inspired this saga of the "golden land.” Here is a startlingly modern, fantastic and visionary tale of America "as a place no one has yet seen, in a historical period that can’t be identified,” writes E. L. Doctorow in his new foreword. "Kafka made his novel from his own mind’s mythic elements,” Doctorow explains, "and the research data that caught his eye were bent like rays in a field of gravity.
ISBN:9780805210644
Author:Franz Kafka
Business Icons Who Changed the World
Brief Summary
Business icons, moguls, tycoons - the people who create and master industries, bringing them to their fullest fruition - are usually many different things to different people. To some they are exemplars and saints who show us that democratic capitalism creates innovation and economic well-being.
To others, they are villains and demonstrate all that is wrong in a system that tolerates and even seemingly encourages economic disparity between the top and bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder.
Business Leaders Who Changed the World presents 11 entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and mavericks whose influence extends beyond business into society at large. From Michael Dell to Ben and Jerry, Bill Gates to Lee Iacocca, Business Leaders Who Changed the World offers in-depth profiles of the business leaders whose names and products have become household words. Each profile includes discussion of the subject's background, career, accomplishments, supporters and detractors, and lasting influence.
ISBN:9788184950977
Author:Kateri Drexler
The Truth About Employee Engagement
Brief Summary
The Truth about Employee Engagement: A Fable about Addressing the Three Root Causes of Job Misery.
In his sixth fable, bestselling author Patrick Lencioni takes on a topic that almost everyone can relate to: job misery. Millions of workers, even those who have carefully chosen careers based on true passions and interests, dread going to work, suffering each day as they trudge to jobs that make them cynical, weary, and frustrated. It is a simple fact of business life that any job, from investment banker to dishwasher, can become miserable.
Through the story of a CEO turned pizzeria manager, Lencioni reveals the three elements that make work miserable -- irrelevance, immeasurability, and anonymity -- and gives managers and their employees the keys to make any job more engaging.
As with all of Lencioni’s books, this one is filled with actionable advice you can put into effect immediately. In addition to the fable, the book includes a detailed model examining the three root causes of job misery and how they can be remedied. It covers the benefits of managing for job engagement within organizations -- increased productivity, greater retention, and competitive advantage -- and offers examples of how managers can use the applications in the book to deal with specific jobs and situations.
Patrick Lencioni is President of The Table Group, a management consulting firm specializing in executive team development and organizational health. As a consultant and keynote speaker, he has worked with thousands of senior executives and executive teams in organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to high-tech startups to universities and nonprofits.
His clients include. AT&T, Direct TV, JCPenney, Microsoft, Nestle, Northwestern Mutual, Southwest Airlines and St. Jude Chilren’s Research Hospital. Lencioni is the author of ten bestselling books, including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Advantage. He previously worked for Oracle, Sybase, and the management consulting firm Bain & Company.
ISBN:9781119237983
Author:Patrick Lencioni
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team A Lea...
In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni once again offers a leadership fable that is as enthralling and instructive as his first two best-selling books, The Five Temptations of a CEO and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. This time, he turns his keen intellect and storytelling power to the fascinating, complex world of teams.
Kathryn Petersen, Decision Tech's CEO, faces the ultimate leadership crisis: Uniting a team in such disarray that it threatens to bring down the entire company. Will she succeed? Will she be fired? Will the company fail? Lencioni's utterly gripping tale serves as a timeless reminder that leadership requires as much courage as it does insight.
Throughout the story, Lencioni reveals the five dysfunctions which go to the very heart of why teams even the best ones-often struggle. He outlines a powerful model and actionable steps that can be used to overcome these common hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team. Just as with his other books, Lencioni has written a compelling fable with a powerful yet deceptively simple message for all those who strive to be exceptional team leaders.
The Four Obsessions of an Extraordina...
Brief Summary
The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive: The Four Disciplines at the Heart of Making Any Organization World Class.
In this stunning follow-up to his best-selling book, The Five Temptations of a CEO, Patrick Lencioni offers up another leadership fable that's every bit as compelling and illuminating as its predecessor. This time, Lencioni's focus is on a leader's crucial role in building a healthy organization--an often overlooked but essential element of business life that is the linchpin of sustained success.
Readers are treated to a story of corporate intrigue as the frustrated head of one consulting firm faces a leadership challenge so great that it threatens to topple his company, his career, and everything he holds true about leadership itself. In the story's telling, Lencioni helps his readers understand the disarming simplicity and power of creating organizational health, and reveals four key disciplines that they can follow to achieve it.
ISBN:9780787954031
Author:Patrick Lencioni
The Five Temptations of a CEO A Leade...
Brief Summary
A commemorative edition of the landmark book from Patrick Lencioni when it was published ten years ago, The Five Temptations of a CEO was like no other business book that came before. Highly sought-after management consultant Patrick Lencioni deftly told the tale of a young CEO who, facing his first annual board review, knows he is failing, but doesn't know why.
Refreshingly original and utterly compelling, this razor-sharp novelette plus self-assessment (written to be read in one sitting) serves as a timeless and potent reminder that success as a leader can come down to practicing a few simple behaviors? Behaviors that are painfully difficult for each of us to master. Any executive can learn how to recognize the mistakes that leaders can make and how to avoid them.
The lessons of The Five Temptations of a CEO, are as relevant today as ever, and this special anniversary edition celebrates ten years of inspiration and enlightenment with a brand new introduction and reflections from Lencioni on the new challenges in business and leadership that have occurred in the past ten years.
ISBN:9780470267585
Author:Patrick Lencioni
