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A Strangeness in My Mind
Brief Summary
A Strangeness In My Mind is a novel Orhan Pamuk has worked on for six years. It is the story of boza seller Mevlut, the woman to whom he wrote three years' worth of love letters, and their life in Istanbul.
In the four decades between 1969 and 2012, Mevlut works a number of different jobs on the streets of Istanbul, from selling yoghurt and cooked rice, to guarding a car park. He observes many different kinds of people thronging the streets, he watches most of the city get demolished and re-built, and he sees migrants from Anatolia making a fortune; at the same time, he witnesses all of the transformative moments, political clashes, and military coups that shape the country. He always wonders what it is that separates him from everyone else - the source of that strangeness in his mind. But he never stops selling boza during winter evenings and trying to understand who his beloved really is.
What matters more in love: what we wish for, or what our fate has in store? Do our choices dictate whether we will be happy or not, or are these things determined by forces beyond our control?
A Strangeness In My Mind tries to answer these questions while portraying the tensions between urban life and family life, and the fury and helplessness of women inside their homes.
ISBN:9780571275977
Author:Orhan Pamuk
A Prison Diary Volume III: Heaven
Brief Summary
Day 115
Saturday 10th November 2001
6.38am
It's all an act. I am hopelessly unhappy, dejected and broken. I smile when I am at my lowest, I laugh when I see no humour, I help others when I need help myself. I am alone. If I were to show any sign, even for a moment, of what I'm going through, I would have to read the details in some tabloid the following day. Everything I do is only a phone call away from a friendly journalist with an open cheque book. I don't know where I have found the strength to maintain this facade and never break down in anyone's presence.
The final volume of Jeffrey Archer's prison diaries, A Prison Diary Volume III: Heaven, covers the period of his transfer from Wayland to his eventual release on parole in July 2003. It includes a shocking account of the traumatic time he spent in the notorious Lincoln jail and the events that led to his incarceration there - it also throws light on a system that is close to breaking point.
Told with humour, compassion and honesty, it closes with a thought-provoking manifesto that should be applauded by the Establishment and prison population alike.
ISBN:9780330418850
Author:Jeffrey Archer
Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna
A powerful, sensuously written novel that, through the lives of women, beautifully captures Africa’s past and present, and the legacy that her daughters take with them wherever they live.
From the author of The Devil That Danced on the Water - a timeless portrait of the lives of a family of independent, spirited African women over the last century of dramatic cultural change.
Aminatta Forna’s The Devil That Danced on the Water was rapturously acclaimed, a moving and gorgeously written memoir that garnered international attention. Now she has seamlessly turned her hand to fiction and delivers a novel that is lush and beautiful, a touching and intimate portrait of several generations of African women.
In Ancestor Stones, a young woman from West Africa, who has lived in England for many years and is married to a British man, returns to visit her family after years of civil war. Her four aunts have decided to leave her the family coffee plantation, as she is the last person in the family with the means to revive its fortunes. And on this trip home she is given an unprecedented look into the lives of the women in her family as her Aunts Mary, Hawa, Asana, and Serah— women who were mysterious and a bit intimidating to her younger self—begin to tell her their stories.
They are timeless tales of rivalrous co-wives, patriarchal society, and old religions challenged by Islamic and Christian incursions; they are modern stories of European-owned mining companies, the repressive influence of mission schools, corrupt elections, and the postcolonial African elite. Through their voices a family history interwoven with the history of a country emerges—one of a society both ancient and modern, of a family of strong women refusing to live as second-class citizens.
In her debut foray into fiction, Forna has created a powerful, sensuously written novel that, through the lives of women, beautifully captures Africa’s past and present, and the legacy that her daughters take with them wherever they live. It is a wonderful achievement that recalls The God of Small Things and The Joy Luck Club, and establishes Forna as a gifted novelist.
The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins
Brief Summary
When Lucy Brennan, a Miami Beach personal-fitness trainer, disarms a gunman chasing two frightened homeless men, the police and the breaking-news cameras are not far behind and, within hours, Lucy is a media hero.
The solitary eye-witness is the depressed and overweight Lena Sorensen, who becomes obsessed with Lucy and signs up as her client – though she seems more interested in the trainer’s body than her own. When the two women find themselves more closely aligned, and can’t stop thinking about the sex lives of Siamese twins, the real problems start...
In the aggressive, foul-mouthed trainer, Lucy Brennan, and the needy, manipulative Lena Sorensen, Irvine Welsh has created two of his most memorable female protagonists, and one of the most bizarre, sado-masochistic folies à deux in contemporary fiction. Featuring murder, depravity and revenge – and enormous amounts of food and sex – The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins taps into two great obsessions of our time – how we look and where we live – and tells a story so subversive and dark it blacks out the Florida sun.
ISBN:9780224087889
Author:Irvine Welsh
Burma Boy
Brief Summary
A few months ago fourteen-year-old Ali Banana was apprenticed to a whip-wielding blacksmith in his rural hometown. Now its winter 1944, the war is entering its most crucial stage and Ali is a private in Thunder Brigade. His unit has been given orders to go behind enemy lines and wreak havoc. But the Burmese jungle is a mud-riven, treacherous place, riddled with Japanese snipers, insanity and disease.
Burma Boy is a horrific, vividly realized account of the madness, the sacrifice and the dark humor of the Second World War's most vicious battleground. It's also the moving story of a boy trying to live long enough to become a man.
ISBN:9780099488989
Author:Biyi Bandele
Boy Snow Bird
Brief Summary
BOY Novak turns twenty and decides to try for a brand-new life. Flax Hill, Massachusetts, isn’t exactly a welcoming town, but it does have the virtue of being the last stop on the bus route she took from New York. Flax Hill is also the hometown of Arturo Whitman –- craftsman, widower, and father of Snow.
SNOW is mild-mannered, radiant and deeply cherished –- exactly the sort of little girl Boy never was, and Boy is utterly beguiled by her. If Snow displays a certain inscrutability at times, that’s simply a characteristic she shares with her father, harmless until Boy gives birth to Snow’s sister, Bird.
When BIRD is born Boy is forced to re-evaluate the image Arturo’s family have presented to her, and Boy, Snow and Bird are broken apart. Sparkling with wit and vibrancy, Boy, Snow, Bird is a deeply moving novel about three women and the strange connection between them. It confirms Helen Oyeyemi’s place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of her generation.
"
ISBN:9781594631399
Author:Helen Oyeyemi
Make or Break How Manufacturers Can Leap
Brief Summary
Make or Break: How Manufacturers Can Leap from Decline to Revitalization.
Break the manufacturing mold--and make new paths to phenomenal growth
In a world of emerging markets, changing work forces, and accelerating innovation, manufacturing is once again a key corporate issue. Manufacturing expertise is a strategic competitive advantage, distinguishing winning companies (like Procter & Gamble, Lego, Toyota, Zara, and Tata) from those that have let their capabilities languish. It may not be easy to take back control of production, target sources for scarce (and environmentally sustainable) materials, and cultivate a motivated, talented labor force. But there are ways to do it; and successful companies will need to learn how.
The thought leaders at Booz & Company and strategy business magazine have collaborated to create an up-to-the-minute exploration of a new era in manufacturing and the requisite strategies for success. Chock full of profiles of the best manufacturing innovations in every business sector from pharmaceuticals to autos to consumer products, and revealing the most effective manufacturing innovations and strategies, Make or Break introduces you to the forces reshaping the industry. The secrets are in this book, including how to meet such interrelated challenges as:
• Labor relationships and modernization
• Material shortages
• Career development of your workforce
• Expansion of variety
• Competition on a global scale
• Complexity solution
• Environmental issues
• Integration of resilience into your strategy
Based on leading-edge research, Make or Break is a book for leaders of the manufacturing function, but it is also for any corporate executive who wants to lead his or her industry-and for students and researchers seeking to understand why making products will, once again, be seen as the most vital skill set for a vibrant economy.
"
ISBN:9780071508308
Author:Kaj Grichnik,?Conrad Winkler and Jeffrey Rothfeder
The Designful Company
Brief Summary
The Designful Company: How to Build a Culture of Nonstop Innovation
Part manifesto, part handbook, THE DESIGNFUL COMPANY provides a lively overview of a growing trend in management--design thinking as a business competence. According to the author, traditional managers have relied on a two-step process to make decisions, which he calls "knowing" and "doing." Yet in today's innovation-driven marketplace, managers need to insert a middle step, called "making."
Making is a phase in which assumptions are questioned, futures are imagined, and prototypes are tested, producing a wide range of options that didn't exist before. The reader is challenged to consider the author's bold assertion: There can be no real innovation without design. Those who are new to Marty Neumeier's "whiteboard" series may want to ramp up with the first two books, THE BRAND GAP and ZAG. Both are easy reads.
Covered in THE DESIGNFUL COMPANY:
1. the top 10 "wicked problems" that only design can solve
2. a new, broader definition of design
3. why designing trumps deciding in an era of change
4. how to harness the "organic drivetrain" of value creation
5. how aesthetics add nuance to managing
6. 16 levers to transform your company
7. why you should bring design management inside
8. how to assemble an innovation metateam
9. how to recognize and reward talent
ISBN:9780321580061
Author:Marty Neumeier
People Planet Profit
Brief Summary
People, Planet, Profit: How to Embrace Sustainability for Innovation and Business Growth
In today's changing, untrusting markets, companies need to do something more to stand out -- something special to succeed. If that extra something is also more sustainable, in that it's long-lasting and that it's supportive of the wider world, then it has the best chance of creating larger and longer impact.
People, Planet, Profit focuses on three ways that companies can grow their business while transforming their values: by defining a purpose to their business beyond profit -- what it does for people's lives and society in general; by translating that into a compelling proposition for customers; and by aligning the whole business to deliver this proposition practically and more profitably. Author Peter Fisk writes in the engaging voice that made his book Marketing Genius so popular.
ISBN:9780749454111
Author:Peter Fisk
Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Clas...
Brief Summary
Innovation and Entrepreneurship deals with 'what, when and why'; with policies and decisions; opportunities and risks, structures and strategies; staffing, compensation and rewards.
In addition to managers in all types of business, lecturers and students of management and business studies will this a revealing and exciting work. Highly critical in approach, it is nevertheless a practical and illuminating study of an area crucial for today's world.
ISBN:9780750685085
Author:Peter Drucker
A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowds...
Brief Summary
A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing: Advice from Leading Experts
Open innovation and crowdsourcing are among the hottest topics in strategy and management today. The concept of capturing ideas in a hub of collaboration, together with the outsourcing of tasks to a large group of people or community is a revolution that is rapidly changing business culture.
A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing explains how to use the power of ideas and people outside your organization to turbocharge your innovation. Failure to embrace these approaches could mean getting left behind
Written by an international team of the most eminent thinkers, writers and practitioners in the field, it explains:
1. what open innovation and crowdsourcing are
2. how to manage virtual teams and co-create with outsiders
3. how to handle legal and IP issues
4. how to get started with open innovation in your business
5. common mistakes and pitfalls to avoid
With corporate case studies and best-practice advice, A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing is a vital read for anyone who wants to find innovative products and services from outside their organizations and overcome the practical difficulties that lie in the way.
ISBN:9780749463076
Author:Paul Sloane
Change of Heart
Brief Summary
The acclaimed #1 "New York Times" bestselling author presents a spellbinding tale of a mother's tragic loss and one man's last chance at gaining salvation. Can we save ourselves, or do we rely on others to do it? Is what we believe always the truth?
One moment June Nealon was happily looking forward to years full of laughter and adventure with her family, and the next, she was staring into a future that was as empty as her heart. Now her life is a waiting game. Waiting for time to heal her wounds, waiting for justice. In short, waiting for a miracle to happen.
For Shay Bourne, life holds no more surprises. The world has given him nothing, and he has nothing to offer the world. In a heartbeat, though, something happens that changes everything for him. Now, he has one last chance for salvation, and it lies with June's eleven-year-old daughter, Claire. But between Shay and Claire stretches an ocean of bitter regrets, past crimes, and the rage of a mother who has lost her child.
Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love? Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy's dying wish?
Once again, Jodi Picoult mesmerizes and enthralls readers with this story of redemption, justice, and love.
ISBN:9780743496742
Author:Jodi Picoult
Cat O’Nine Tales
Brief Summary
Cat o'Nine Tales is the fifth collection of irresistible short stories from the master storyteller. Ingeniously plotted, with richly drawn characters and Jeffrey Archer's trademark of deliciously unexpected conclusions, this new collection has the added bonus of thirteen charming illustrations by the internationally acclaimed artist Ronald Searle.
Some of these twelve stories were inspired by the two years Jeffrey Archer spent in prison, including the story of a company chairman who tries to poison his wife while on a trip to St. Petersburg---with unexpected consequences. "The Red King" is a tale about a con man who discovers that an English lord requires one more chess piece to complete a set that would be worth a fortune.
In another tale of deception, "The Commissioner," a Bombay con artist ends up in the morgue after he uses the police chief as bait in his latest scam. "The Perfect Murder" reveals how a convict manages to remove an old enemy while he's locked up in jail, and then set up two prison officers as his alibi. In "Charity Begins at Home," an accountant realizes he has achieved nothing in his life, and sets out to make a fortune before he retires. And then there is Archer's favorite, "In the Eye of the Beholder," in which a handsome star athlete falls in love with a three-hundred-pound woman . . . who happens to be the ninth-richest woman in Italy.
Jeffrey Archer is the only author to have topped international bestseller lists with his fiction, nonfiction, and short stories. Cat o'Nine Tales is Archer at his best: witty, poignant, sad, surprising, and unforgettable.
ISBN:9780312362645
Author:Jeffrey Archer
Calico Joe by John Grisham Hardcover
Brief Summary
A surprising and moving novel of fathers and sons, forgiveness and redemption, set in the world of Major League Baseball…
Whatever happened to Calico Joe?
It began quietly enough with a pulled hamstring. The first baseman for the Cubs AAA affiliate in Wichita went down as he rounded third and headed for home. The next day, Jim Hickman, the first baseman for the Cubs, injured his back. The team suddenly needed someone to play first, so they reached down to their AA club in Midland, Texas, and called up a twenty-one-year-old named Joe Castle. He was the hottest player in AA and creating a buzz.
In the summer of 1973 Joe Castle was the boy wonder of baseball, the greatest rookie anyone had ever seen. The kid from Calico Rock, Arkansas dazzled Cub fans as he hit home run after home run, politely tipping his hat to the crowd as he shattered all rookie records.
Calico Joe quickly became the idol of every baseball fan in America, including Paul Tracey, the young son of a hard-partying and hard-throwing Mets pitcher. On the day that Warren Tracey finally faced Calico Joe, Paul was in the stands, rooting for his idol but also for his Dad. Then Warren threw a fastball that would change their lives forever…
In John Grisham’s new novel the baseball is thrilling, but it’s what happens off the field that makes CALICO JOE a classic.
"
ISBN:9780385536073
Author:John Grisham
The Coming Collapse of China
Brief Summary
China is hot. The world sees a glorious future for this sleeping giant, three times larger than the United States, predicting it will blossom into the world's biggest economy by 2010. According to Chang, however, a Chinese-American lawyer and China specialist, the People's Republic is a paper dragon. Peer beneath the veneer of modernization since Mao's death, and the symptoms of decay are everywhere:
Deflation grips the economy, state-owned enterprises are failing, banks are hopelessly insolvent, foreign investment continues to decline, and Communist party corruption eats away at the fabric of society.
Beijing's cautious reforms have left the country stuck midway between communism and capitalism, Chang writes. With its impending World Trade Organization membership, for the first time China will be forced to open itself to foreign competition, which will shake the country to its foundations. Economic failure will be followed by government collapse. Covering subjects from party politics to the Falun Gong to the government's insupportable position on Taiwan, Chang presents a thorough and very chilling overview of China's present and not-so-distant future.
ISBN:9780375504778
Author:Gordon G. Chang
Exit Strategies and State Building
Brief Summary
In the past two decades, states and multilateral organizations have devoted considerable resources toward efforts to stabilize peace and rebuild war-torn societies in places such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, and Sierra Leone. Despite these prodigious efforts, there has been relatively little consideration of the critical questions arising from the "end game" of state-building operations.
In Exit Strategies and State Building, sixteen leading scholars and practitioners focus on relevant historical and contemporary cases of exit to provide a comprehensive overview of this crucial issue.
By examining the major challenges associated with the conclusion of international state-building operations and the requirements for the maintenance of peace in the period following exit, this book provides unique perspective on a critical aspect of military and political intervention. Deftly researched, Exit Strategies and State Building sheds new light on what is not merely an academic issue, but also a pressing global policy concern.
ISBN:9780199760121
Author:Richard Caplan
In a Free State
Brief Summary
No writer has rendered our boundariless, post-colonial world more acutely or prophetically than V. S. Naipaul, or given its upheavals such a hauntingly human face. A perfect case in point is this riveting novel, a masterful and stylishly rendered narrative of emigration, dislocation, and dread, accompanied by four supporting narratives.
In the beginning it is just a car trip through Africa. Two English people--Bobby, a civil servant with a guilty appetite for African boys, and Linda, a supercilious compound wife -- are driving back to their enclave after a stay in the capital. But in between lies the landscape of an unnamed country whose squalor and ethnic bloodletting suggest Idi Amin's Uganda.
And the farther Naipaul's protagonists travel into it, the more they find themselves crossing the line that separates privileged outsiders from horrified victims. Alongside this Conradian tour de force are four incisive portraits of men seeking liberation far from home. By turns funny and terrifying, sorrowful and unsparing, In A Free State is Naipaul at his best.
ISBN:9781400030552
Author:V.S. Naipaul
Imperial Ambitions
Brief Summary
In this first collection of interviews since the bestselling 9-11, our foremost intellectual activist examines crucial new questions of U.S. foreign policy.
Timely, urgent, and powerfully elucidating, this important volume of previously unpublished interviews conducted by award-winning radio journalist David Barsamian features Noam Chomsky discussing America’s policies in an increasingly unstable world. With his famous insight, lucidity, and redoubtable grasp of history, Chomsky offers his views on the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the doctrine of "preemptive” strikes against so-called rogue states, and the prospects of the second Bush administration, warning of the growing threat to international peace posed by the U.S. drive for domination. In his inimitable style, Chomsky also dissects the propaganda system that fabricates a mythic past and airbrushes inconvenient facts out of history.
Barsamian, recipient of the ACLU’s Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism, has conducted more interviews and radio broadcasts with Chomsky than has any other journalist. Enriched by their unique rapport, Imperial Ambitions explores topics Chomsky has never before discussed, among them the 2004 presidential campaign and election, the future of Social Security, and the increasing threat, including devastating weather patterns, of global warming. The result is an illuminating dialogue with one of the leading thinkers of our time—and a startling picture of the turbulent times in which we live.
ISBN:9780805079678
Author:Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
Brief Summary
His first two novels established Mohsin Hamid as a radically inventive storyteller with his finger on the world’s pulse. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia meets that reputation—and exceeds it. The astonishing and riveting tale of a man’s journey from impoverished rural boy to corporate tycoon, it steals its shape from the business self-help books devoured by ambitious youths all over "rising Asia.”
It follows its nameless hero to the sprawling metropolis where he begins to amass an empire built on that most fluid, and increasingly scarce, of goods: water. Yet his heart remains set on something else, on the pretty girl whose star rises along with his, their paths crossing and re-crossing, a lifelong affair sparked and snuffed and sparked again by the forces that careen their fates along.
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is a striking slice of contemporary life at a time of crushing upheaval. Romantic without being sentimental, political without being didactic, and spiritual without being religious, it brings an unflinching gaze to the violence and hope it depicts. And it creates two unforgettable characters who find moments of transcendent intimacy in the midst of shattering change.
ISBN:9781594632334
Author:Mohsin Hamid
Mistaking Africa
Brief Summary
Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind
For many Americans the mention of Africa immediately conjures up images of safaris, ferocious animals, strangely dressed "tribesmen,” and impenetrable jungles. Although the occasional newspaper headline mentions genocide, AIDS, malaria, or civil war in Africa, the collective American consciousness still carries strong mental images of Africa that are reflected in advertising, movies, amusement parks, cartoons, and many other corners of society.
Few think to question these perceptions or how they came to be so deeply lodged in American minds. Curtis Keim's Mistaking Africa looks at the historical evolution of this mind-set and examines the role that popular media plays in its creation. Keim addresses the most prevalent myths and preconceptions and demonstrates how these prevent a true understanding of the enormously diverse peoples and cultures of Africa.
Updated throughout, the third edition includes a new chapter, "Where Is the Real Africa," discussing the multifaceted nature of the question and the importance of not grasping onto stereotypes of Africa's mythical past. Keim also includes new examples and new images to expand the visual narrative of western views about Africa. Mistaking Africa is an important book for African studies courses and for anyone interested in unraveling American misperceptions about the continent.
ISBN:9780813348940
Author:Curtis A Keim