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"William H. Whyte's curiosity compelled him to question the status quo--whether helping to make Fortune Magazine essential reading for business leaders, warning of "groupthink" in his bestseller The Organization Man, or standing up for Jane Jacobs as she advocated for the vitality of city life and public space. This compelling biography sheds light on Whyte's bold way of thinking, ripe for rediscovery at a time when we are reshaping our communities into places of opportunity and empowerment for all citizens" -- Backcover.
'This is a very impressive work of scholarship that will be invaluable to scholars, students and readers. I can't imagine anyone seriously interested in this country's literatures who will not want to own a copy.' - Sam Solecki, University of Toronto
On Being Blue is a book about everything blue—sex and sleaze and sadness, among other things—and about everything else. It brings us the world in a word as only William H. Gass, among contemporary American writers, can do. Gass writes: Of the colors, blue and green have the greatest emotional range. Sad reds and melancholy yellows are difficult to turn up. Among the ancient elements, blue occurs everywhere: in ice and water, in the flame as purely as in the flower, overhead and inside caves, covering fruit and oozing out of clay. Although green enlivens the earth and mixes in the ocean, and we find it, copperish, in fire; green air, green skies, are rare. Gray and brown and widely distributed, but there are no joyful swatches of either, or any of exuberant black, sullen pink, or acquiescent orange. Blue is therefore most suitable as the color of interior life. Whether slick light sharp high bright thin quick sour new and cool or low deep sweet dark soft slow smooth heavy old and warm: blue moves easily among them all, and all profoundly qualify our states of feeling.
The history of nations is a history of haves and have-nots, and as we approach the millennium, the gap between rich and poor countries is widening. In this engrossing and important new work, eminent historian David Landes explores the complex, fascinating and often startling causes of the wealth and poverty of nations. The answers are found not only in the large forces at work in economies: geography, religion, the broad swings of politics, but also in the small surprising details. In Europe, the invention of spectacles doubled the working life of skilled craftsmen, and played a prominent role in the creation of articulated machines, and in China, the failure to adopt the clock fundamentally hindered economic development. The relief of poverty is vital to the survival of us all. As David Landes brilliantly shows, the key to future success lies in understanding the lessons the past has to teach us - lessons uniquely imparted in this groundbreaking and vital book which exemplifies narrative history at its best.
A unique insight into the interaction between the state, financiers and entrepreneurs in the modern innovation economy.
Throughout his career, William Gass relentlessly pushed at the boundaries of language, celebrating the music of the sentence and the aesthetics of the written word. Now, the best and most important of his work is collected in one volume. There are essays on Plato, Hobbes, James, Joyce, Beckett, Stein, Gaddis, Sterne, Ford Madox Ford, Thomas Mann. There are pieces that examine the inner workings of writing. There is his masterful short fiction, from the perfectly crafted novella “In Camera” to the mythical “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country.” And there are excerpts from his novels, including his magnum opus, The Tunnel. Taken together, this collection is a peerless, essential celebration of literature—and an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to understand how great writing works.
From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Make Your Bed: ten lessons on overcoming barriers, building confidence and finding new inspiration and motivation. In the course of his distinguished career Admiral William H. McRaven has met some truly exceptional people, from the men and women he served alongside in the Navy SEALS, to inspiring doctors, scientists, politicians and philanthropists. Drawing on stories of their incredible strength, humility and courage, Admiral McRaven has distilled the Hero Code - the ten habits that make ordinary people capable of extraordinary things. This book will show how we can all persevere to rise above our failures, use humour as a source of strength and inspire trust through integrity, as well as offering practical advice on rising to the occasion, coping with setbacks and becoming our best selves. Above all, this book offers simple and practical wisdom that we can all use to find encouragement, inspiration and optimism for the new year.
In a recent sale catalog, one bookseller apologized for the condition of a sixteenth-century volume as "rather soiled by use." When the book was displayed the next year, the exhibition catalogue described it as "well and piously used [with] marginal notations in an Elizabethan hand [that] bring to life an early and earnest owner"; and the book's buyer, for his part, considered it to be "enlivened by the marginal notes and comments." For this collector, as for an increasing number of cultural historians and historians of the book, a marked-up copy was more interesting than one in pristine condition. William H. Sherman recovers a culture that took the phrase "mark my words" quite literally. Bo...
Published on the occasion of the exhibition organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and Morgan State University, opening September 2011.