In sleepy Sweet Water, Alabama, one family has had its fair share of conflict but still Christian George does his duty, like his father and uncle before him. The Vietnam War was different to other wars though, a war that couldn't be won, one that kept service personnel imprisoned for the longest time in US history and their families suffering from uncertainty for years. Many of those incarcerated didn’t live to see home again and those that did discovered their ‘war’ was far from over; their story had only just begun.
It’s 1945 and the story of one family’s war is about to begin. From the calm fields of Sweet Water, Alabama and the hell of Okinawa to the dawn of a nuclear age and its awful potential, Solly, Silace and Sky George bear witness to the brutality of war and the unleashing of a new and terrible weapon. The family upbringing of love and friendship bonds them tightly together but will it be enough on the long and uncertain road ahead.
The sleepy little town of Sweet Water, Alabama, provides the backdrop to this tale of adventure. Lincoln Beck’s avid enthusiasm for his childhood comics of space exploration fuels and guides his dream of becoming an astronaut. Supported by his best friend, Rose, he embarks upon a path to try and fulfil his vision. From the idyllic summers of their youth, together, they commence a journey that will lead them into lifelong bonds with a dopey looking wandering Bassett hound, encountered one summer, and a squad of young hopefuls from the United States Air Force basic military training ‘class of 58’. The journey is not without some rocky roads but true friendship and love light their path as Lincoln strives to accomplish the requirements needed to be considered for the Apollo space programme.
The wartime files retrieved from the loft of a former camp guard at Belsen provide a name and a cropped photo of a meeting with Martin Bormann, Hitler's personal secretary and the second most influential man in the Nazi Party. The problem is that even the world renowned Nazi hunters, the Wiesenthal Centre, haven’t heard the name before and no one knows what its owner looked like. Trying to find the answer will take the investigators down a dark path of human experimentation, gene manipulation and the possibilities of the rise of a Fourth Reich.
Retired US Detective Emil Janowitz lied to his wife for nearly forty years. Having lost his entire family whilst an inmate of Auschwitz-Birkenau it was simply easier on his soul to invent a past than face up to the demons buried deep inside. Life was good, but then the mail arrived bringing a letter which would result in a voyage of discovery, denunciation and confrontation with the past. Life is a journey, history should not be forgotten, the evil still exists.
Age of Betrayal is a brilliant reconsideration of America's first Gilded Age, when war-born dreams of freedom and democracy died of their impossibility. Focusing on the alliance between government and railroads forged by bribes and campaign contributions, Jack Beatty details the corruption of American political culture that, in the words of Rutherford B. Hayes, transformed “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people” into “a government by the corporations, of the corporations, and for the corporations.” A passionate, gripping, scandalous and sorrowing history of the triumph of wealth over commonwealth.
This is a provocative, behind-the-scenes introduction to the vital and complex role science plays in United States politics. It includes the first formal statement from former President Clinton's former Science Advisor, John H. Gibbons; a fresh retrospective from D. Allan Bromley on science advice in the George H. W. Bush Administration; and a unique viewpoint from John McTague about his brief tenure under President Reagan. Among the twenty-four contributors are former members of the President's Science Advisory Committee, distinguished scholars, and industrialists.
Citizens of the Broken Compass is a collection of articles dealing with a range of topics from the theory of evolution to human rights. Intelligent yet accessible, it aims at promoting dialogue about the growing discrepancy between our technological achievements and our ethical sensitivities; proposing the ethical disorientation in society cannot be separated from the religious confusions stemming from a radical, fundamentalist view of Christianity.
Higher education is becoming destabilized in the face of extraordinarily rapid change. The composition of the academy's most valuable asset—the faculty—and the essential nature of faculty work are being transformed. Jack H. Schuster and Martin J. Finkelstein describe the transformation of the American faculty in the most extensive and ambitious analysis of the American academic profession undertaken in a generation. A century ago the American research university emerged as a new organizational form animated by the professionalized, discipline-based scholar. The research university model persisted through two world wars and greatly varying economic conditions. In recent years, however, a new order has surfaced, organized around a globalized, knowledge-based economy, powerful privatization and market forces, and stunning new information technologies. These developments have transformed the higher education enterprise in ways barely imaginable in generations past. At the heart of that transformation, but largely invisible, has been a restructuring of academic appointments, academic work, and academic careers—a reconfiguring widely decried but heretofore inadequately described. This volume depicts the scope and depth of the transformation, combing empirical data drawn from three decades of national higher education surveys. The authors' portrait, at once startling and disturbing, provides the context for interpreting these developments as part of a larger structural evolution of the national higher education system. They outline the stakes for the nation and the challenging work to be done.
Engineering Design, Planning and Management, Second Edition represents a compilation of essential resources, methods, materials and knowledge developed by the author and used over two decades. The book covers engineering design methodology through an interdisciplinary approach, with concise discussions and a visual format. It explores project management and creative design in the context of both established companies and entrepreneurial start-ups. Readers will discover the usefulness of the design process model through practical examples and applications from across engineering disciplines. Sections explain useful design techniques, including concept mapping and weighted decision matrices that are supported with extensive graphics, flowcharts and accompanying interactive templates. Discussions are organized around 12 chapters dealing with topics such design concepts and embodiments, decision-making, finance, budgets, purchasing, bidding, communication, meetings and presentations, reliability and system design, manufacturing design and mechanical design. Covers all steps in the design process Includes several chapters on project management, budgeting and teamwork, providing sufficient background to help readers effectively work with time and budget constraints Provides flowcharts, checklists and other templates that are useful for implementing successful design methods Presents examples and applications from several different engineering fields to show the general usefulness of the design process model
Thousands of business books are published every year— Here are the best of the best After years of reading, evaluating, and selling business books, Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten are among the most respected experts on the category. Now they have chosen and reviewed the one hundred best business titles of all time—the ones that deliver the biggest payoff for today’s busy readers. The 100 Best Business Books of All Time puts each book in context so that readers can quickly find solutions to the problems they face, such as how best to spend The First 90 Days in a new job or how to take their company from Good to Great. Many of the choices are surprising—you’ll find reviews of Moneyball and Orbiting the Giant Hairball, but not Jack Welch’s memoir. At the end of each review, Jack and Todd direct readers to other books both inside and outside The 100 Best. And sprinkled throughout are sidebars taking the reader beyond business books, suggesting movies, novels, and even children’s books that offer equally relevant insights. This guide will appeal to anyone, from entry-level to CEO, who wants to cut through the clutter and discover the brilliant books that are truly worth their investment of time and money.
Matisse and Picasso achieved extraordinary prominence during their lifetimes. They have become cultural icons, standing not only for different kinds of art but also for different ways of living. Matisse, known for his restraint and intense sense of privacy, for his decorum and discretion, created an art that transcended daily life and conveyed a sensuality that inhabited an abstract and ethereal realm of being. In contrast, Picasso became the exemplar of intense emotionality, of theatricality, of art as a kind of autobiographical confession that was often charged with violence and explosive eroticism. In Matisse and Picasso , Jack Flam explores the compelling, competitive, parallel lives of these two artists and their very different attitudes toward the idea of artistic greatness, toward the women they loved, and ultimately toward their confrontations with death.
More than five hundred short line railroads existed in the United States at the industry's height, and Pennsylvania had more than any other state. The history of the Bellefonte Central, which operated in central Pennsylvania from the 1880s until 1982, is a classic story of the rise and decline of short line railroads nationwide. Connecting with the Pennsylvania Railroad--a company that proved to be both friend and foe--the Bellefonte Central played an important role in developing the region's renowned limestone and hot-blast ironmaking industries and was Penn State University's economic lifeline for generations.
Since concert pianist Duncan Latimer and his wife, Ellen, a famous soap opera star, lead impeccable lives, their PR lady has no qualms over having a reporter from a scandal magazine interview them. But just before he arrives, so does Duncan's old Navy buddy and Ellen's former lover from her literally messy past, as well as an extra wife Duncan forgot to tell anyone about. It's crazy and comical confusion all the way.
First published in 2007, this book examines the designs of seventeen architecture and design schools and answers questions such as: How has architectural education evolved and what is its future? Are architectural schools discernible types of designs and what are their effects on those who experience them? What lessons can be learned from evaluations of recently completed school buildings and what guidance do they provide for the design of future ones? Included in the multiple approaches to evaluation are examinations of the history of architectural education and building form; typologies of school for architecture; and the systematic user evaluations of the aesthetics, function, and technology which reveal the strengths to encourage and weaknesses to avoid in future designs. While offering specific guidelines for schools of design, it also includes findings that extend beyond the walls of design schools and can be applied to everything from the interiors of educational and campus buildings to planning offices and gathering places to build communities. This book will make readers more aware of problems in architectural interiors and suggest ways to make interiors work better for the building occupants.
Management as we know it has been the driver of business growth in U.S. economies for a couple of centuries. Yet the practice of management is no longer focused on creating real value. Instead, it is now all about using sophisticated financial techniques-and practices like outsourcing and downsizing, among others—to improve profitability. Such addition through subtraction results in higher profits in the short term but puts the corporation and its employees at risk in the long term—not to mention the entire U.S. economy. Innovation and productivity improvement, corporate manager Jack Buffington argues, are lost arts in American business. So is getting back to basics the answer? Buffington's provocative thesis: Management as we know it probably can't be repaired. It must be replaced. Asian economies, meanwhile, are growing by leaps and bounds thanks in part to short-term, ill-advised decisions made by U.S. managers. Local companies and divisions of multinational organizations in emerging countries are on track to eventually overtake those of the West, putting our job base and prosperity at peril. If we want to bring manufacturing jobs back here to the U.S., corporate managers must seek productivity and innovation improvements in U.S. operations. Jack Buffington knows all too well how quickly things can go downhill for U.S. businesses. Turned into a relentless cost-cutter by the forces of globalization and Wall Street's expectations for short-term gains, he—like thousands of other U.S. executives—has watched some of the companies he's worked for disappear for want of real value. Whereas America once prized managers who displayed skill in optimizing the interplay of capital, labor, and technology to grow a company, today's professional manager is rewarded more often for being a cost cutter than an innovator. Fortunately, this book not only outlines the problem, it outlines the solution as well by establishing a 21st-century definition of management that will succeed in today's global economy. Rather than angling to produce a penny more of earnings per share to please the financiers, corporate managers will see once again how to use their ingenuity to produce products, services, and business processes that not only provide generous profits but sustain a business—and its jobs—for years to come. By heeding Buffington's call, the U.S. can rekindle its zeal for innovation, leading to an era in which consumers, workers, investors, and managers all prosper.
In Discovering My Artichoke, Jack Shea a fifty-something, sports-loving, beer-drinking, Irish Catholic Jersey boy shares a humorous and poignant glimpse at how he's lived, learned, loved, and lost, all while revealing his privileged yet uneven path through adolescence and adulthood. As Shea describes his conflict between the safe, traditional business career favored by his parents and a secret desire for alternative expression, he divulges the triumphs and setbacks that have marked his journey as well as his personal shortcomings. As he meets and marries the love of his life, grieves for his parents and in-laws, laments over losing his job on the same day Barack Obama gains his, battles alcohol abuse, and struggles to regain his dignity and reinvent himself, Shea bares the soul of an imperfect man whose frequent departures from the script of life ultimately led him to identify his one true calling. The charming essays in Discovering My Artichoke will inspire others to lead their lives with fortitude, courage, and faith, but most importantly, to follow their dreams, for that is how we all find happiness.
Today's regimes of testing and grading satisfy only the politicians who forced them on America's schools. Yet discarding assessment also serves students poorly. Off the Mark proposes an alternative, replacing motivation-killing tests and grading systems with well-designed assessment that accurately captures learning and fosters students' potential"--
INQUISITION Set in the time of paranoia in American politics, Inquisition, examines the power game in which innocent lives face ruin when they become entangled in a politician's cynical ambition. It explores the corrosion of human relationships arising from egotism and the relentless pursuit of power. The protagonist, Zachary Taylor Harris, a powerful politician, plays a deadly game of Russian Roulette with the lives of anyone entering his orbit. To keep the lid on his secret he must appear to possess all of the knowledge and certitude, which comes with being a senior member of Congress and chairman of its most powerful investigative committee. Manipulation and chicanery are his tools for dominating anyone in his way. The cast of characters includes: - His wife, a woman of intelligence and passion, whose fortune has supported his career, but who now stands as an obstacle to his ambition, - A senior State Department officer with unorthodox political views and his avant-garde wife, a gifted abstract expressionist, who stumble into his path and become perfect targets in his cover-up scheme, - A cunning and powerful bureaucrat, who sees opportunity and personal advantage in a new investigative scenario, - His beautiful and sultry mistress, who loves him, but naively becomes a pawn in his power game, - A crusading young antagonist who closes in on the well-kept secret, - A canny, veteran newspaperman who understands power and its limitations, and puts the machinery of justice in motion, - A disgruntled detective whose career swings 180-degrees when he turns a humiliating defeat into victory, - The incorruptible Speaker of the House, the one man he cannot afford to alienate, who upholds the Constitution and the rule of law against his scheming ambition. The author employs his understanding of Congress, Capitol Hill and the many dimensions and nuances of the American political process to weave a story of power, ambition, courage, love and other virtues and vices imparted by the game of politics.
Public radio stands as a valued national institution, one whose fans and listeners actively support it with their time and their money. In this new history of this important aspect of American culture, author Jack W. Mitchell looks at the dreams that inspired those who created it, the all-too- human realities that grew out of those dreams, and the criticism they incurred from both sides of the political spectrum. As National Public Radio's very first employee, and the first producer of its legendary All Things Considered, Mitchell tells the story of public radio from the point of view of an insider, a participant, and a thoughtful observer. He traces its origins in the progressive movement of the 20th century, and analyzes the people, institutions, ideas, political forces, and economic realities that helped it evolve into what we know as public radio today. NPR and its local affiliates have earned their reputation for thoughtful commentary and excellent journalism, and their work is especially notable in light of the unique struggles they have faced over the decades. This comprehensive overview of their mission will fascinate listeners whose enjoyment and support of public radio has made it possible, and made it great.
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