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In the Castle of My Skin
Brief Summary
In a sleepy fishing village in 1930s Barbados, nine-year-old G. leads a life of quiet mischief. While the village lies tranquil in the shadow of its English landlord, Mr Creighton, and his towering house on the hill, G. makes his own fun, crab catching, teasing preachers, and playing among the pumpkin vines.
Yet from this world of boyish pursuits, the precocious G. finds himself slowly awakening to strange goings-on in adult society. All around him, sudden bursts of violence - a devastating flood on the morning of his birthday; the headmaster unduly flogging his schoolmates on Empire day - hint at a brutality and destruction lurking beneath the apparently peaceful order of things.
As the mounting wrongs of the present drive the villagers to rise up against Mr Creighton, the fissures in the facade of his Barbadian 'little England' begin to crack open, laying bare the central, bruising secret at the heart of their shared past. And as the world he knows crumbles before his eyes, G. is spurred ever closer to a life-changing decision. Poetic, unsettling, this classic coming-of-age novel is a story of tragic innocence, as a poor village boy comes to consciousness amid the collapse of colonial rule in mid-century Barbados.
ISBN:9780472064687
Author:George Lamming
The Confidence Code by Katty Kay and ...
Brief Summary
The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance – What Women Should Know
Following the success of Lean In and Why Women Should Rule the World, the authors of the bestselling Womenomics provide an informative and practical guide to understanding the importance of confidence—and learning how to achieve it—for women of all ages and at all stages of their career.
Working women today are better educated and better qualified than ever before. Yet men still predominate in the corporate world. In The Confidence Code, Claire Shipman and Katty Kay argue that the key reason is confidence.
Combining cutting-edge research in genetics, gender, behavior, and cognition—with examples from their own lives and those of other successful women in politics, media, and business—Kay and Shipman go beyond admonishing women to "lean in." Instead, they offer the inspiration and practical advice women need to close the gap and achieve the careers they want and deserve.
Beyond Khartoum A History of Sub nati...
Brief Summary
Useful to both scholars and policymakers, Beyond Khartoum is a history of subnational government in Sudan from early times through to 2010.
With more than 2.5 million Sudanese killed in conflicts over the past half century, such an enquiry has become increasingly relevant and urgent.
Given Sudan's pivotal position in regional conflicts, its cultural diversity, its past instability and more recent oil wealth, an understanding of subnational politics is essential to fully appreciate the dynamics behind the news emanating from Khartoum, Darfur, Southern Sudan and beyond.
ISBN:9781569023365
Author:Randall Fegley
The Four Legendary Kingdoms
Brief Summary
A Ruthless Kidnapping
Jack West Jr and his family are living happily on their remote farm... when Jack is brutally kidnapped and he awakes in an underground cell to find a masked attacker with a knife charging at him.
The Great Games
Jack, it seems, has been chosen – along with a dozen other elite soldiers – to compete in a series of deadly challenges designed to fulfill an ancient ritual.
With the fate of the Earth at stake, he will have to traverse diabolical mazes, fight cruel assassins and face unimaginable horrors that will test him like he has never been tested before.
To Hell and back
In the process, he will discover the mysterious and powerful group of individuals behind it all: The Four Legendary Kingdoms.
He might also discover that he is not the only hero in this place.
ISBN:9781409167136
Author:Matthew Reilly
Getting Somalia Wrong Faith War and H...
Brief Summary
Somalia is a comprehensively failed state, representing a threat to itself, its neighbors, and the wider world. In recent years, it has become notorious for the piracy off its coast and the rise of Islamic extremism, opening it up as a new "southern front" in the war on terror. At least that is how it is inevitably presented by politicians and in the media.
In Getting Somalia Wrong? Mary Harper presents the first comprehensive account of the chaos into which the country has descended and the United States' renewed involvement there. In doing so, Harper argues that viewing Somalia through the prism of al-Qaeda risks further destabilizing the country and the entire Horn of Africa, while also showing that though the country may be a failed state, it is far from being a failed society.
In reality, alternative forms of business, justice, education, and local politics have survived and even flourished. Provocative and eye-opening, Getting Somalia Wrong? Shows that until the international community starts to "get it right," the consequences will be devastating, not just for Somalia, but for the world.
ISBN:9781842779330
Author:Mary Jane Harper
Britain in Africa
Brief Summary
Why has Africa become such an important priority for Britain's foreign policy? What interests and values is the UK seeking to uphold? Why has aid to Africa more than tripled over the past decade? How has the UK's involvement in the War on Terror affected its efforts there?
In Britain in Africa, Tom Porteous seeks to answer these and other questions about Britain's role in Africa since 1997.
He provides an account of the key players, the policies they constructed in the shadow of the war in Iraq and the future of Britain's engagement with the continent.
ISBN:9781842779767
Author:Tom Porteous
In the Name of the Mother Reflections...
Renowned worldwide, as novelist and dramatist, Ngugi wa Thiongo's contributions to the body of critical writing on African literature, politics and society have been highly significant. His best known critical work is Decolonizing the Mind, which since publication in 1986 has profoundly influenced other writers, critics, scholars and students.
These latest essays reflect Ngugi's continuing interests and enthusiasms. His choice of writers is original. He makes us look again at their novels to address his lifelong concerns with the ways to independence, the meanings of colonialism and the takeover by neo-colonialism, and the functions of literature in political as well as literary terms.
They will appeal not only to his international band of supporters. They will also introduce his views to young people discovering African and Caribbean literature. Ngugi wa Thiong'o is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine.
Ngugi is renowned for his essays, including the seminal Decolonizing the Mind (James Currey 1986); his plays, which led to his detention in Kenya; his novels - the most recent works being The Wizard of the Crow (2007, translated into English from Gikuyu) and his memoirs Dreams in a Time of War and In the House of the Interpreter.
Why Women Should Rule the World
Brief Summary
What would happen if women ruled the world?
Everything could change, according to former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers. Politics would be more collegial. Businesses would be more productive. And communities would be healthier. Empowering women would make the world a better place—not because women are the same as men, but precisely because they are different.
Blending memoir, social history, and a call to action, Dee Dee Myers challenges us to imagine a not-too-distant future in which increasing numbers of women reach the top ranks of politics, business, science, and academia.
Reflecting on her own tenure in the Clinton administration and her work as a political analyst, media commentator, and former consultant to NBC's The West Wing, Myers assesses the crucial but long-ignored strengths that female leaders bring to the table. "Women tend to be better communicators, better listeners, better at forming consensus," Myers argues.
In a highly competitive and increasingly fractious world, women possess the kind of critical problem-solving skills that are urgently needed to break down barriers, build understanding, and create the best conditions for peace.
Myers knows firsthand the responsibilities and rewards of taking on leadership roles traditionally occupied by men. At thirty-one, she was appointed White House press secretary to President Bill Clinton—the first woman ever to hold the job. In a candid look at her years in Washington's political spotlight, she recalls the day-to-day challenge of confronting a press corps obsessed with more than just the president's policies. "Virtually every story written about me included observations about my earrings, my makeup, my clothes, my shoes. And then there was my hair."
Recalling the pressures—both invited and imposed—of her West Wing years, Myers offers a hard-hitting look at the challenges women must overcome and the traps they must avoid as they travel the path toward success. From pioneering research in the laboratory, to innovations in business, entertainment, and media, to friendships that transcend partisanship in the U.S. Senate, she describes how female participation in public life has already transformed the world in which we live
ISBN:9780061140402
Author:Dee Dee Myers
Roosevelt And Churchill
Brief Summary
But above all, it was cemented by shared enemies: Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. On these foundations Roosevelt and Churchill constructed a fighting alliance unlike any other in history.
The two men also developed an extraordinary personal relationship‹-communicating almost daily by telegram, telephone, personal meetings, or through intermediaries ‘that lasted until FDR1s death on April 12, 1945, just hours before American and British troops liberated Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen.
Stafford dispels much of the sentimental mythology surrounding the almost legendary relationship and reveals how, despite mutual trust, each man guarded knowledge from the other in pursuit of separate national interests, while at the same time building a joint intelligence structure.
ISBN:9781585672493
Author:David A. T. Stafford
The Arabian Nights Tales of 1001 Nights
Brief Summary
The most significant translation in one hundred years of one of the greatest works of world literature
From Ali Baba and the forty thieves to the voyages of Sinbad, the stories of The Arabian Nights are timeless and unforgettable. Published here in three volumes, this magnificent new edition brings these tales to life for modern readers in the first complete English translation since Richard Burton’s of the 1880s.
Every night for three years the vengeful King Shahriyar sleeps with a different virgin, and the next morning puts her to death. To end this brutal pattern, the vizier's daughter, Shahrazad, begins to tell the king enchanting tales of mystical lands peopled with princes and hunchbacks, of the Angel of Death and magical spirits, and of jinnis trapped in rings and in lamps—a sequence of stories that will last 1,001 nights, and that will save her own life.
ISBN:9780140449402
Author:Robert Irwin, Malcolm C. Lyons and Ursula Lyons
The Rule of Four
Brief Summary
An Ivy League murder, a mysterious coded manuscript and the secrets of a Renaissance prince collide memorably in this debut novel that weaves together suspense and scholarship, high art and unimaginable treachery.
An Ivy League murder, a mysterious coded manuscript, and the secrets of a Renaissance prince collide memorably in The Rule of Four -- a brilliant work of fiction that weaves together suspense and scholarship, high art and unimaginable treachery.
It's Easter at Princeton. Seniors are scrambling to finish their theses. And two students, Tom Sullivan and Paul Harris, are a hair's breadth from solving the mysteries of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili--a renowned text attributed to an Italian nobleman, a work that has baffled scholars since its publication in 1499. For Tom, their research has been a link to his family's past -- and an obstacle to the woman he loves.
For Paul, it has become an obsession, the very reason for living. But as their deadline looms, research has stalled -- until a long-lost diary surfaces with a vital clue. And when a fellow researcher is murdered just hours later, Tom and Paul realize that they are not the first to glimpse the Hypnerotomachia 's secrets.
Suddenly the stakes are raised, and as the two friends sift through the codes and riddles at the heart of the text, they are beginning to see the manuscript in a new light--not simply as a story of faith, eroticism and pedantry, but as a bizarre, coded mathematical maze.
And as they come closer and closer to deciphering the final puzzle of a book that has shattered careers, friendships and families, they know that their own lives are in mortal danger. Because at least one person has been killed for knowing too much. And they know even more.
From the streets of fifteenth-century Rome to the rarified realm of the Ivy League, from a shocking 500 year-old murder scene to the drama of a young man's coming of age, The Rule of Four takes us on an entertaining, illuminating tour of history--as it builds to a pinnacle of nearly unbearable suspense.
ISBN:9780440241355
Author:Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason
The Goldfinch
Brief Summary
It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a thirteen-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.
As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love-and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.
The Goldfinch combines vivid characters, mesmerizing language, and suspense, while plumbing with a philosopher's calm the deepest mysteries of love, identity, and art. It is an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.
ISBN:9780316055437
Author:Donna Tartt
The Last Slave Market
Brief Summary
The African slave trade did not end when Britain passed its landmark law in 1807: on the continent's east coast, Arab slavers were still shipping tens of thousands of Africans to the Middle East. Slavery was ingrained in Arab culture, considered indispensable to their societies and condoned by religious texts.
The hub of this industry was the island of Zanzibar, part of Oman's empire, and the British consul there faced a hard task. John Kirk was a Scottish doctor who wound up as Zanzibar's acting consul at a time when British political pressures were mounting to end the Arab slave trade - although the East India Company found it advantageous to ignore it.
John Kirk was the only companion of David Livingstone to emerge untainted from the disastrous, often fatal expedition up the Zambezi River between 1859 and 1863. Three years later, Kirk returned to Africa, to the notorious island of Zanzibar, ancient source of slave trafficking from Africa to the Middle East.
Half a century after the abolition of slave trading had been passed into British law, this commerce continued to exist on Africa's east coast, tolerated and even connived at by Britain's empire on the Indian Ocean. But Kirk, appointed as medical officer to the British Consulate in Zanzibar, could do nothing.
This extraordinary - and controversial - book brings Kirk's years in Zanzibar to life. The horrors of the overland passage from the interior, and the Zanzibar slave market itself are vividly described. The final bitter conflict with Livingstone, who blamed Kirk for his own disasters, is retold.
But it was Kirk's own success in closing down the slave trade on the island which made him internationally famous. Using private diaries and papers, a long forgotten Victorian hero and an extraordinary chapter in British history are revived in detail.
ISBN:9781845296728
Author:Alastair Hazell
Teach Your Team to Fish
Brief Summary
Teach Your Team to Fish: Using Ancient Wisdom for Inspired Teamwork.
Jesus Built an Inspired Team. You Can, Too.
Laurie Beth Jones has given hundreds of thousands of business reader’s insight into how the ideas of Jesus can be used to enhance performance. In Teach Your Team to Fish, Jones focuses on one of the most critical areas for anyone in business: teamwork.
Leaders today face their greatest challenges not only in defining strategies and getting updated information but also in getting diverse human beings to pull together without falling apart.
Jesus is a role model for team leaders everywhere. Teach Your Team to Fish offers dozens of stories from the Bible, showing how Jesus managed his team of disciples and other followers, with suggestions for how to apply these lessons to real-world teambuilding and management problems. It offers guidance and inspiration on:
• How to excite your team members in order to motivate them
• How to ground them so they’ll be realistic about what can be achieved
• How to transform them into a truly well-functioning team
• How to release them into the world to improve teams elsewhere
Laurie Beth Jones provides many examples of companies in which teams work well together and offers lessons that can help team leaders everywhere sustain themselves and achieve their common goals.
ISBN:9781400053117
Author:Laurie Beth Jones
Magna Carta of Exponentiality by Vusi...
Management and leadership are facing serious headwinds. These headwinds are driven by the sea of change that is facing organizations today. This change, driven predominantly but not exclusively, by the rapid rate of technological advancement has resulted in major shifts in how organizations configure themselves.
The world has also become increasingly polarized. Whilst the nouveau-rich and the upper-middle classes of Tasha’s meetings continue blissfully to enjoy their lot, just fifteen minutes away, two of the fastest growing townships, Alexandra and Diepsloot have weekly service delivery protests, alarming crime rates and unsustainable social infrastructure backlogs. The social problems of South Africa are manifesting at an exponential rate, yet leaders continue to think, plan, manage, coordinate and deliver at a linear rate.
These leaders, and many others like them, don’t have the skills or framework to work differently.
For business leaders in pursuit of generating results better than their competitors and their market average, working through the quagmire of strategy, culture, context, leadership and many other latter-day management concepts seems to be their default. All this in the hope that they can discover the scripture that teaches them how they can generate better returns than their competition. How they can generate exponential results in linear markets.
In the book, we look at teams, leaders and organizations that have managed to deliver phenomenal market-beating results in the face of extreme uncertainty, severe resource constraints and socio-political instability. We study the foresight of managers who turned entrepreneurs who seized opportunities and built businesses to rival their old employers, seasoned managers who looked through the fog of marketplace war to see opportunity. We answer the questions: how did they do it, what they did and what you can learn from their ingenuity, luck and guts.
Over the past decade, my team and I have spent copious periods of time, effort and resources seeking to answer the ultimate management question of the new age, "how do we drive exponential results in linear markets?”
The old way is dead. Linear is the past. Leaders, managers and entrepreneurs today need to learn how to work differently. They need a new bible, - The Magna Carta of Exponentiality.
Harvard Business Review on Managing S...
Brief Summary
Find and fix your weakest links.
If you need the best practices and ideas for making your supply chain strong and agile--but don't have time to find them--this book is for you. Here are 10 inspiring and useful perspectives, all in one place.
This collection of HBR articles will help you:
• Use your supply chain as a competitive weapon
• Gain customers' trust by revealing where your products come from
• Collaborate with other companies--even rivals--to achieve scale
• Make smart decisions about where to manufacture
• Pick the most profitable supply chain for your products
• Align partners' interests with your own
• Revamp your supply chain to meet green goals
ISBN:9781422102794
Author:Harvard Business Review
Hoovers Vision Original Thinking for ...
Brief Summary
This books is an eye-opening, hands-on, look at how entrepreneurs and innovative leaders come up with new ideas. Hoover offers practical how-to techniques and advice on how to focus on each step required for building a great enterprise.
Starting with observing the world around us and seeing patterns where others see only fragments, Hoover shows how to weave together a passionate vision that is clear, consistent, unique, and worthwhile.
ISBN:9781587990595
Author:Gary Hoover
Currency Wars The Making of the Next ...
Brief Summary
In 1971, President Nixon imposed national price controls and took the United States off the gold standard, an extreme measure intended to end an ongoing currency war that had destroyed faith in the U.S. dollar. Today we are engaged in a new currency war, and this time the consequences will be far worse than those that confronted Nixon.
Currency wars are one of the most destructive and feared outcomes in international economics. At best, they offer the sorry spectacle of countries' stealing growth from their trading partners. At worst, they degenerate into sequential bouts of inflation, recession, retaliation, and sometimes actual violence. Left unchecked, the next currency war could lead to a crisis worse than the panic of 2008.
Currency wars have happened before-twice in the last century alone-and they always end badly. Time and again, paper currencies have collapsed, assets have been frozen, gold has been confiscated, and capital controls have been imposed. And the next crash is overdue. Recent headlines about the debasement of the dollar, bailouts in Greece and Ireland, and Chinese currency manipulation are all indicators of the growing conflict.
As James Rickards argues in Currency Wars, this is more than just a concern for economists and investors. The United States is facing serious threats to its national security, from clandestine gold purchases by China to the hidden agendas of sovereign wealth funds. Greater than any single threat is the very real danger of the collapse of the dollar itself.
Baffling to many observers is the rank failure of economists to foresee or prevent the economic catastrophes of recent years. Not only have their theories failed to prevent calamity, they are making the currency wars worse. The U. S. Federal Reserve has engaged in the greatest gamble in the history of finance, a sustained effort to stimulate the economy by printing money on a trillion-dollar scale. Its solutions present hidden new dangers while resolving none of the current dilemmas.
While the outcome of the new currency war is not yet certain, some version of the worst-case scenario is almost inevitable if U.S. and world economic leaders fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors. Rickards untangles the web of failed paradigms, wishful thinking, and arrogance driving current public policy and points the way toward a more informed and effective course of action.
ISBN:9781591845560
Author:James Rickards
The Secret of Happiness
Brief Summary
Happiness. It's what we all long for, what all human beings seek in our jobs, our relationships, our activities. We try so hard to be happy, and all too often we end up empty and unsatisfied. Why? Because, says Billy Graham in this classic work, we are looking for happiness in all the wrong places.
We haven't learned the secret Jesus taught in the Beatitudes – that true, lasting happiness simply isn't to be found by seeking it directly. Happiness is a by-product, a bonus that comes when we seek what is really important. And the things that will bring us the satisfaction we long for are not necessarily what the world considers meaningful.
Jesus did not have to have an outward stimulus to make Him happy, Billy Graham points out. "He had learned a secret that allowed Him to live above the circumstances of life and fear of the future. He moved with calmness, certainty, and serenity through the most trying circumstances – even death! What was His secret? He gave it to us in the Beatitudes."
Presented with Billy Graham's characteristic vigor and simplicity in this landmark book, it is a secret that can transform your life.
ISBN:9781593280673
Author:Billy Graham
