About this product: The recurring metaphor in The Inmates are Running the Asylum is that of the dancing bear--the circus bear that shuffles clumsily for the amusement of the audience. Such bears, says author Alan Cooper, don't dance well, as everyone at the circus can see. What amazes the crowd is that the bear dances at all. Cooper argues that technology (videocassette recorders, car alarms, most software applications for personal computers) consists largely of dancing bears--pieces that work, but not at all well. He goes on to say that this is more often than not the fault of poorly designed user interfaces, and he makes a good argument that way too many devices (perhaps as a result of the designers' subconscious wish to bully the people who tormented them as children) ask too much of their users. Too many systems (like the famous unprogrammable VCR) make their users feel stupid when they can't get the job done.
Cooper, who designed Visual Basic (the programming environment Microsoft promotes for the purpose of creating good user interfaces), indulges in too much name-dropping and self-congratulation (Cooper attributes the quote, "How did you do that?" to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, upon looking at one of Cooper's creations)--but this appears to be de rigueur in books about the software industry. But those asides are minor. More valuable is the discourse about software design and implementation ("[O]bject orientation divides the 1000-brick tower into 10 100-brick towers."). Read this book for an idea of what's wrong with UI design. --David Wall
Topics covered: User interfaces--good ones and bad ones--and where they come from. Also, how to improve the ones you create.
About this product: Dr. Romanov's Pose Method Of Running brings his revolutionary ideas that changed the world of running to the professional athlete and amateur alike. In a very succinct and enjoyable manner, it teaches one to perform to the very best of his ability, using the Pose running technique. In ballet, or martial arts, one requires practice of technique. The same is true of running. Unless you are one of the lucky ones, like Haile Gebrselassie, Steve Prefontaine, or Michael Johnson, who were born with the perfect technique, you have to learn it. Until Dr Romanov's discovery there was no coherent theory on the subject. Running was practiced, but not taught as a skill. The Pose Method proposes to teach running as a skill with its own theory, concepts, and exercises.
Like any brilliant idea, the idea behind the Pose Method is simple. Every movement is built on an infinite number of poses, or positions, through which the body goes in space and time. In running, Dr. Romanov focuses on only one pose, which he calls the Running Pose. It is a whole body position, with vertically aligned shoulders, hips and ankles that creates an S-like shape of the body. The runner then changes the pose from one leg to the other allowing gravity to draw him forward. This creates forward movement, with the least energy cost, and the least effort. The end result is faster race times, easier running and no more injuries!
Many have been asking for this book and are awaiting it eagerly. USA and British Triathlon teams have been working with Dr. Romanov with great success. Scientific research on the Pose Method effects on runners was conducted at the USA Olympic Training Center (Colorado Springs) in 1997, at Florida Atlantic University (Boca Raton, FL) in 1998-2001, at Sheffield Hallam University (Great Britain) in 2001, at Kubansky State University (Krasnodar, Russia) in 2002, and at Cape Town University (South Africa) in 2002 with Tim Noakes, author of the Lore Of Running, the runner,s bible. The results of the last research are very impressive. The load on knee joints is reduced 30%, the incidence of other injuries is drastically diminished. The method allows the athletes to run easier, faster, longer, and most significantly, injury free.
About this product: The Ultimate Guide to Weight Training for Running is the most comprehensive and up-to-date running-specific training guide in the world today. It contains descriptions and photographs of over 80 of the most effective weight training, flexibility, and abdominal exercises used by athletes worldwide. This book features year-round running-specific weight-training programs guaranteed to improve your performance and get you results.
No other running book to date has been so well designed, so easy to use, and so committed to weight training. This book has been designed specially for runners to increase endurance, stamina, speed and strength. By following the programs contained in this book, you will no longer run out of gas before the race is over, but instead you will be able to sprint at record paces until the finish line.
Both beginners and advanced athletes and weight trainers can follow this book and utilize its programs. From recreational to professional, thousands of athletes all over the world are already benefiting from this book and its techniques, and now you can too!
As an added bonus, this book also contains links to free record keeping charts which normally sell separately for $20.
About this product: More mushrooms, less pollution! Yes, you heard right: growing more mushrooms may be the best thing we can do to save the environment. Microscopic cells called "mycelium"—the fruit of which are mushrooms —recycle carbon, nitrogen, and other essential elements as they break down plant and animal debris in the creation of rich new soil. What fungi expert Paul Stamets has discovered is that mycelium also breaks down hydrocarbons —the base structure in many pollutants. So, for instance, when soil contaminated with diesel oil is inoculated with strains of oyster mushroom mycelia, the soil loses its toxicity in just eight weeks. In MYCELIUM RUNNING, Stamets discusses this revolutionary trend in mushroom cultivation and provides tips for choosing the appropriate species of fungi for various environmental purposes.
Jessie lives with her family in the frontier village of Clifton, Indiana, in 1840 -- or so she believes. When diphtheria strikes the village and the children of Clifton start dying, Jessie's mother reveals a shocking secret -- it's actually 1996, and they are living in a reconstructed village that serves as a tourist site. In the world outside, medicine exists that can cure the dread disease, and Jessie's mother is sending her on a dangerous mission to bring back help.
But beyond the walls of Clifton, Jessie discovers a world even more alien and threatening than she could have imagined, and soon she finds her own life in jeopardy. Can she get help before the children of Clifton, and Jessie herself, run out of time?
About this product: By age twelve, Luis Rodriguez was a veteran of East L.A. gang warfare. Lured by a seemingly invincible gang culture, he witnessed countless shootings, beatings, and arrests, then watched with increasing fear as drugs, murder, suicide, and senseless acts of street crime claimed friends and family members.
Before long, Rodriguez saw a way out of the barrio through education and the power of words and successfully broke free from years of violence and desperation. Achieving success as an award-winning Chicano poet, he was sure the streets would haunt him no more -- until his son joined a gang. Rodriguez fought for his child by telling his own story in Always Running, a vivid memoir that explores the motivations of gang life and cautions against the death and destruction that inevitably claim its participants. At times heartbreakingly sad and brutal, Always Running is ultimately an uplifting true story, filled with hope, insight, and a hard-learned lesson for the next generation.
Olympic athlete Jeff Galloway shows how amateur runners can use the same training principles followed by world-class runners. He tells beginners how to get started, explains his ideas on stress and rest, and reveals secrets for running better. In this completely revised and updated new edition of the classic text on running, Galloway includes training schedules for 5k, 10k, and the increasingly popular half-marathon races, as well as recent insights into motivation, nutrition, and fat burning. Runners at all levels will benefit from this seasoned athlete’s wisdom.
About this product: Want to compete with the best of the best? Then hit the ground running. Here’s how.
The toughest job in business is taking over as a new leader. You have to quickly assess the situation, pull together a strong team, decide on a strategy, and inspire everyone to execute it.
The stakes for new leaders are even higher. Whether you’ve been brought on to fix something that’s broken, launch a product, move the company in a new direction, or head up a division, every new leader is under the gun to get up to speed and begin producing strong numbers— ASAP.
In Hit the Ground Running, Jason Jennings introduces us to America’s best performing new CEOs who pulled off the most impressive transformations of the decade. They doubled revenues, more than tripled earnings per share, and doubled their company’s net profit margins.
After interviewing and analyzing the stories of these top leaders, Jennings delivers their hard- earned, battle-tested strategies, which will inspire any new leader to take the helm and start delivering.
When Richard and Tim Smucker were appointed co-CEOs of The J. M. Smucker Company, they shared their strategy with everyone and got them on board with their mission. Since then, Smucker’s went on to dominate the markets and bring in billions of dollars of new business.
Mike McCallister, the CEO of a twenty-billion-dollar health-services giant, decided to stop pretending and publicly admit that health insurance is broken. Humana began to replace a crippled, complex, and confusing system with one that works and has more than tripled revenues, earnings, and share price since McCallister took over.
By processing change in bite-size pieces, Jeffrey Lorberbaum led Mohawk Industries through twenty successful acquisitions and turned his family’s carpet-making business into the largest flooring company in the world.
Filled with engaging stories and lessons from the cream of the crop, Hit the Ground Running will help new leaders at every level balance short- and long-term goals as well as the needs of shareholders, employees, customers, and the community.
About this product: Ron McLarty has joined the ranks of writers of the quirky hero with The Memory of Running. His hero, Smithy Ide, is in the grand tradition of Ignatius J. Reilly of A Confederacy of Dunces and Quoyle of The Shipping News. What these gentlemen have in common is their lumpen-loser looks, their outsider status and their general befuddlement about the way the world works and their place in it. Smithy rises above them because of his self-effacing nature, his great capacity for love, his inability to show it and his endless willingness to forgive.
Smithy is a 279-pound, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, 43-year-old misfit who works in a G.I. Joe factory putting arms and legs on the action heroes. (How did McLarty come up with that?) He is also the most beguiling anti-hero to come into view in a long, long time. McLarty, an award-winning actor and playwright best known for his many appearances on TV in Law & Order, Sex and the City, The Practice, and Judging Amy, has added another star to his creative crown with this novel.
The first sentence of the book is: "My parents' Ford station wagon hit a concrete divider on U.S. 95 outside Biddeford, Maine, in August 1990." This tragic accident eventually claims both their lives. It is on the day of their funeral that Smithy finds a letter to his father about Bethany, his beloved and deeply troubled sister, stating that, "Bethany Ide, 51, died from complications of exposure... and she has since that time been in the Los Angeles Morgue West." Beautiful Bethany, given to taking off her clothes in public places, holding impossible poses for long periods of time, responding to voices that only she can hear, and disappearing for no known reason. This time, she has been gone for many years and now Smithy knows that she died destitute and alone. When he reads the letter, he is drunk, grief-stricken and, despite a house full of people, he is alone. He goes out to the garage to smoke and have another drink and spies his old Raleigh bicycle. He sits on it, flat tires and all, wheels it to the end of the driveway--and--Smithy doesn’t know it yet, but he is going to ride a bicycle from Maine to Los Angeles to claim his sister's remains.
On the road he meets the good, the bad, and the really bad. He frequently calls Norma, the Ides' across-the-street neighbor, confined to a wheelchair for years, and always in love with him. He has never acknowledged nor returned her ardor, but he starts to count on her friendship during his travels. Their conversations are sweet and revelatory. McLarty has done a superb job of showing us who Smithy is and who he is becoming. It's a wonderful story told with great poignancy and humor. --Valerie Ryan
About this product: "Competitive running gives your running life a focus. Competition measures progress. You set a goal and accomplish it." Bob Glover and Shelly-lynn Florence Glover, authors of The Competitive Runner's Handbook, know what they're talking about. Bob has run competitively for nearly 40 years, coached for 30 years, and completed more than 30 marathons, while Shelly-lynn has raced for more than 20 years and is an exercise physiologist with a master's degree from Columbia University. They've coauthored several books on running. Clocking in at over 600 pages, The Handbook covers basic training techniques, gives tips on speed training, and outlines regimens for specific races: short, 5K, 10K, half-marathon, and marathon. There are also sections on motivation and the mental aspects of competitive running, proper running form, nutrition, dealing with illness and injury, and more. In addition, the book includes many helpful charts. Straightforward and authoritative, this is a comprehensive reference guide that's suited to runners of all levels. --Andy Boynton