About this product: "When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.... When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out."Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.Like the slow-moving occupants of her fictional town, Lee takes her time getting to the heart of her tale; we first meet the Finches the summer before Scout's first year at school. She, her brother, and Dill Harris, a boy who spends the summers with his aunt in Maycomb, while away the hours reenacting scenes from Dracula and plotting ways to get a peek at the town bogeyman, Boo Radley. At first the circumstances surrounding the alleged rape of Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a drunk and violent white farmer, barely penetrate the children's consciousness. Then Atticus is called on to defend the accused, Tom Robinson, and soon Scout and Jem find themselves caught up in events beyond their understanding. During the trial, the town exhibits its ugly side, but Lee offers plenty of counterbalance as well--in the struggle of an elderly woman to overcome her morphine habit before she dies; in the heroism of Atticus Finch, standing up for what he knows is right; and finally in Scout's hard-won understanding that most people are essentially kind "when you really see them." By turns funny, wise, and heartbreaking, To Kill a Mockingbird is one classic that continues to speak to new generations, and deserves to be reread often. --Alix Wilber
About this product: Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi’s living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature.
About this product: Want your web site to display more quickly? This book presents 14 specific rules that will cut 25% to 50% off response time when users request a page. Author Steve Souders, in his job as Chief Performance Yahoo!, collected these best practices while optimizing some of the most-visited pages on the Web. Even sites that had already been highly optimized, such as Yahoo! Search and the Yahoo! Front Page, were able to benefit from these surprisingly simple performance guidelines.
The rules in High Performance Web Sites explain how you can optimize the performance of the Ajax, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and images that you've already built into your site -- adjustments that are critical for any rich web application. Other sources of information pay a lot of attention to tuning web servers, databases, and hardware, but the bulk of display time is taken up on the browser side and by the communication between server and browser. High Performance Web Sites covers every aspect of that process.
Each performance rule is supported by specific examples, and code snippets are available on the book's companion web site. The rules include how to:
Make Fewer HTTP Requests
Use a Content Delivery Network
Add an Expires Header
Gzip Components
Put Stylesheets at the Top
Put Scripts at the Bottom
Avoid CSS Expressions
Make JavaScript and CSS External
Reduce DNS Lookups
Minify JavaScript
Avoid Redirects
Remove Duplicates Scripts
Configure ETags
Make Ajax Cacheable
If you're building pages for high traffic destinations and want to optimize the experience of users visiting your site, this book is indispensable.
"If everyone would implement just 20% of Steve's guidelines, the Web would be a dramatically better place. Between this book and Steve's YSlow extension, there's really no excuse for having a sluggish web site anymore." -Joe Hewitt, Developer of Firebug debugger and Mozilla's DOM Inspector "Steve Souders has done a fantastic job of distilling a massive, semi-arcane art down to a set of concise, actionable, pragmatic engineering steps that will change the world of web performance." -Eric Lawrence, Developer of the Fiddler Web Debugger, Microsoft Corporation
About this product: B> This is the essentials version of The World of Psychology, Third Edition. The Essential World of Psychology contains many of the same features as The World of Psychology, Third Edition, including careful, thorough explanations, research based on primary sources, thoroughly integrated coverage of diversity, and interactive pedagogical features, such as Try It!s, Review and Reflect tables, and Apply It!s. The Essential World of Psychology contains fewer chapters, yet it retains the basic content of the longer text. In addition to maintaining the interactive features, The Essential World of Psychology also includes a built-in study guide at the end of each chapter. Test your knowledge after reading and reviewing the chapters! For anyone interested in the introduction to Psychology.
About this product: Authors James D. Gwartney, Richard L. Stroup, Russell S. Sobel, and David Macpherson, believe that a course on principles of economics should focus on the power and relevance of the economic way of thinking. It is this belief and corresponding writing approach that has made ECONOMICS: PRIVATE AND PUBLIC CHOICE one of South-Western's most solid and enduring texts. Throughout this text, the authors integrate applications and real-world data in an effort to make the basic concepts of economics come alive for the reader.
About this product: This book shows you how to increase your web popularity, page rank, website visitor retention and internet sales through building backlinks, using link exchanges, search engine submissions, directory manual submissions, social media (i.e. RSS, forums, groups, blogging, vlogging, photoblogging, social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace etc), paid inclusion, pay-per-click, paid submissions, banner advertising, banner exchanges, news and PR article submissions, podcasting, doorway pages, referrals, affiliate networks and affiliation, eCourses, eBooks, foreign language search engines, free and low cost advertising websites, conventional marketing methods (such as, billboards, building wrapping, inflatables, vehicle wrapping, aerial banners, posters, radio and television), campaign monitoring, SEO campaign fine-tuning and more.
About this product: "A riveting new Temperance Brennan forensic thriller from Kathy Reichs, the internationally acclaimed forensic anthropologist and New York Times bestselling author... Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist for both North Carolina and Quebec, has come from Charlotte to Montreal during the bleak days of December to testify as an expert witness at a murder trial. She should be going over her notes, but instead she's digging in the basement of a pizza parlor. Not fun. Freezing cold. Crawling rats. And now, the skeletonized remains of three young women. How did they get there? When did they die? Homicide detective Luc Claudel, never Tempe's greatest fan, believes the bones are historic. Not his case, not his concern. The pizza parlor owner found nineteenth-century buttons in the cellar with the skeletons. Claudel takes them as an indicator of the bones' antiquity. But something doesn't make sense. Tempe examines the bones in her lab and establishes approximate age with Carbon 14. Further study of tooth enamel tells her where the women were born. If she's right, Claudel has three recent murders on his hands. Definitely his case. Detective Andrew Ryan, meanwhile, is acting mysteriously. What are those private phone calls he takes in the other room, and why does he suddenly disappear just when Tempe is beginning to hope he might be a permanent part of her life? Looks like more lonely nights for Tempe and Birdie, her cat. As Tempe searches for answers in both her personal and professional lives, she finds herself drawn deep into a web of evil from which there may be no escape. Women have disappeared, never to return....Tempe may be next. With its powerful mix of nail-biting suspense and cutting-edge forensic science, Monday Mourning is the best yet from this superbly gifted, megastar author who, as New York Newsday says, is ""the real thing "
When Joshua moves to a small cabin on the edge of town, the local people are mystified by his presence. A quiet and simple man, Joshua appears to seek nothing for himself. He supports himself by working as a carpenter. He charges very little for his services, yet his craftsmanship is exquisite. The statue of Moses that he carves for the local synagogue prompts amazement as well as consternation.
What are the townsfolk to make of this enigmatic stranger? Some people report having seen him carry a huge cherry log on his shoulders effortlessly. Still others talk about the child in a poor part of town who was dreadfully ill but, after Joshua's visit, recovered completely.
Despite his benevolence and selfless work in the community, some remain suspicious. Finally, in an effort to address the community's doubts, the local religious leaders confront Joshua.
About this product: What does itreally mean to be a good father? What did your father tell you, that has stayed with you throughout your life? Was there a lesson from him, a story, or a moment that helped to make you who you are? Is there a special memory that makes you smile when you least expect it?
After the publication of Tim Russert’s number one New York Times bestseller about his father, Big Russ & Me, he received an avalanche of letters from daughters and sons who wanted to tell him about theirown fathers, most of whom were not superdads or heroes but ordinary men who were remembered and cherished for some of their best moments–of advice, tenderness, strength, honor, discipline, and occasional eccentricity.
Most of these daughters and sons were eager to express the gratitude they had carried with them through the years. Others wanted to share lessons and memories and, most important, pass them down to their own children.
This book is forall fathers, young or old, who can learn from the men in these pages how to get it right, and to understand that sometimes it is thelittle gestures that can makethe big difference for your child. For some in this book, the appreciation came later than they would have liked. But as Wisdom of Our Fathers reminds us, it isnever too late to embrace it.
From the father who coached his daughter in sports (and life), attending every meet, game, performance, and tournament, to the daughter who, after a fifteen-year estrangement, learned to make peace with her difficult father just before he died, to the son who came, at last, to appreciate the silent way his father could show affection, Wisdom of Our Fathers shares rewarding lessons, immeasurable gifts, and lasting values.
Heartfelt, humorous, engaging, irresistibly readable,and bound to bring back memories of unforgettable moments with our own fathers, Tim Russert’s new book is not only a fitting companion to his own marvelous memoir, but also a celebration of the positive qualities passed down from generation to generation.
About this product: Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling is a fascinating journey into the world of information, how to easily find it, and how to apply it to make sure you are offering solutions you know your clients want and need. By practicing the techniques taught in the book, you will make a great first impression during sales calls, you will be sure to sell relevant solutions, and you will provide value and build meaningful and mutually beneficial client relationships. Once you master Warm Call techniques, you win more business, establish deep relationships with clients, and have more fun.
In Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling you'll discover practical online research tips, tricks, and tools you can use to find information and make a big-time impression with any prospect, and improve your chances of keeping your margins with existing clients. You'll get step-by-step instructions along with real examples. You'll learn... - Inside secrets on using the Internet to locate critical business information. - Tips and tricks for popular search engines get it right the first time. - How to use Google like a pro -- it's scary what this amazing search engine can help you find. - The ''Invisible Web'' Web sites most people and search engines don't know about and can't find. - How to access premium information resources at no or very low cost. - The theory of the ''Fourth R'' and value-based ''warm call selling.'' - How to massively increase your credibility with prospects and existing clients. - How to use the ''Customer Data Aggregator'' and expert ''Warm Call Scripts'' to organize information and make a great first impression.
If you are involved in business development, sales, or account management in any way, you've ''cold called.'' Any time you meet with a prospect or existing client without knowing about them, their issues, and how your company is relevant to something they care about, you run the risk of losing credibility and worse, losing the deal. The top 1% of business development pros and sales people understand the value of information, how to access it, and how to apply it and win. With Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling, you'll get the tools and training you need to join the club.