About this product: Amazon Best of the Month, September 2008: Once you start The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, there's no turning back. This debut thriller--the first in a trilogy from the late Stieg Larsson--is a serious page-turner rivaling the best of Charlie Huston and Michael Connelly. Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch--and there's always a catch--is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. Little is as it seems in Larsson's novel, but there is at least one constant: you really don't want to mess with the girl with the dragon tattoo. --Dave Callanan
DO YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO DO WHAT YOU DO BEST EVERY DAY?
Chances are, you don't. All too often, our natural talents go untapped. From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to fixing our shortcomings than to developing our strengths.
To help people uncover their talents, Gallup introduced the first version of its online assessment, StrengthsFinder, in the 2001 management book Now, Discover Your Strengths. The book spent more than five years on the bestseller lists and ignited a global conversation, while StrengthsFinder helped millions to discover their top five talents.
In its latest national bestseller, StrengthsFinder 2.0, Gallup unveils the new and improved version of its popular assessment, language of 34 themes, and much more (see below for details). While you can read this book in one sitting, you'll use it as a reference for decades.
Loaded with hundreds of strategies for applying your strengths, this new book and accompanying website will change the way you look at yourself -- and the world around you -- forever.
AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY IN THE NEW & UPGRADED EDITION OF STRENGTHSFINDER 2.0 (using the unique access code included with each book)
* A new and upgraded edition of the StrengthsFinder assessment
* A personalized Strengths Discovery and Action-Planning Guide for applying your strengths in the next week, month, and year
* A more customized version of your top five theme report
* 50 Ideas for Action (10 strategies for building on each of your top five themes)
* The more user-friendly StrengthsFinder 2.0 companion website, with a strengths community area, library of downloadable discussion guides and activities, a strengths screensaver, and a program for creating display cards of your top five themes
About this product: Publish your own book with the Illustory Make Your Own Book Kit! This award-winning activity kit allows future authors to write and illustrate their very own story on special book pages provided. Once the story is complete, it is sent to be published, and in a few short weeks the budding writer receives a color-copied, professionally type set hardbound book. Ideal for ages five and up, this innovative kit nurtures enthusiasm for reading, writing, and illustrating.
Let the Fun Begin Illustory Make Your Own Book Kit is not only fun, it also helps your child build self-esteem. You'll never forget the look in your budding writer's eyes as you proudly display his or her first book on your coffee table or bookshelf. This kit even includes an "About the Author" biography page, title, and dedication, just like a real published book. Your child will also enjoy creating the cover and will be able to select from seven cover colors. Families can have fun too as they create their own story together. Extra books with alternate dedication pages can be ordered to make the child's story a gift or keepsake for family, friends, or teachers.
Once your child is finished with the writing, sending the manuscript to publishing is easy, with the included paid postage envelope. Production time is about three to four weeks, plus delivery time. The finished hardcover book measures 7 by 9 inches with 12 pages, and features a permanent hardback binding, a laminated cover drawing, and book title. For techno-savy young authors, the book can be created entirely online by using the Creations By You bookmaking Web site. The entire Illustory kit includes 18 special book pages, 2 cover pages, 10 washable markers, story web planner, instructions, order form, and a prepaid envelope. The correct spelling option allows a choice between leaving spelling errors in or having the words printed correctly.
Award-Winning Features This kit was a winner of the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Seal Award, as well as multiple awards from other organizations. It helps builds self-esteem and sparks an interest in reading and writing. Youngsters learn to see a project through to completion, and their final printed story rewards their effort. There are many optional upgrades available (for a charge) to enhance the book. Extra books can be printed and separately dedicated as gifts for family and friends. In addition, the author's photo can appear on the bio page, and rush delivery is also available. The Make Your Own Book kit beautifully captures a child's creativity and turns it into a keepsake that will be treasured for years to come.
What's in the Box 18 book pages, 2 cover pages, 10 washable markers, story web planner, instructions, order form, and prepaid envelope.
Publish your very own book with the Illustory Make Your Own Book Kit.
The Illustory Kit comes complete with markers, special book pages, story planners, and more.
What Moves at the Margin collects three decades of Toni Morrison's writings about her work, her life, literature, and American society. The works included in this volume range from 1971, when Morrison (b. 1931) was a new editor at Random House and a beginning novelist, to 2002 when she was a professor at Princeton University and Nobel Laureate. Even in the early days of her career, in between editing other writers, writing her own novels, and raising two children, she found time to speak out on subjects that mattered to her. From the reviews and essays written for major publications to her moving tributes to other writers to the commanding acceptance speeches for major literary awards, Morrison has consistently engaged as a writer outside the margins of her fiction. These works provide a unique glimpse into Morrison's viewpoint as an observer of the world, the arts, and the changing landscape of American culture.
The first section of the book, "Family and History," includes Morrison's writings about her family, Black women, Black history, and her own works. The second section, "Writers and Writing," offers her assessments of writers she admires and books she reviewed, edited at Random House, or gave a special affirmation to with a foreword or an introduction. The final section, "Politics and Society," includes essays and speeches where Morrison addresses issues in American society and the role of language and literature in the national culture.
Among other pieces, this collection includes a reflection on 9/11, reviews of such seminal books by Black writers as Albert Murray's South to a Very Old Place and Gayl Jones's Corregidora, an essay on teaching moral values in the university, a eulogy for James Baldwin, and Morrison's Nobel lecture. Taken together, What Moves at the Margin documents the response to our time by one of American literature's most thoughtful and eloquent writers.
Toni Morrison is the Robert F. Goheen Professor Emerita at the Center for Creative and Performing Arts at Princeton University and is the author of Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Paradise, and other novels. She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature. Carolyn C. Denard is the author of scholarly essays on Toni Morrison and the forthcoming Cambridge Introduction to Toni Morrison. She is Associate Dean of the College at Brown University and founder of the Toni Morrison Society.
About this product: Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance.
Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, its the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, its the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. Whats more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history.
Through Fergusons expert lens familiar historical landmarks appear in a new and sharper financial focus. Suddenly, the civilization of the Renaissance looks very different: a boom in the market for art and architecture made possible when Italian bankers adopted Arabic mathematics. The rise of the Dutch republic is reinterpreted as the triumph of the worlds first modern bond market over insolvent Habsburg absolutism. And the origins of the French Revolution are traced back to a stock market bubble caused by a convicted Scot murderer.
With the clarity and verve for which he is known, Ferguson elucidates key financial institutions and concepts by showing where they came from. What is money? What do banks do? Whats the difference between a stock and a bond? Why buy insurance or real estate? And what exactly does a hedge fund do?
This is history for the present. Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to ask why the free market cant provide adequate protection against catastrophe. He delves into the origins of the subprime mortgage crisis.
Perhaps most important, The Ascent of Money documents how a new financial revolution is propelling the worlds biggest countries, India and China, from poverty to wealth in the space of a single generationan economic transformation unprecedented in human history.
Yet the central lesson of the financial history is that sooner or later every bubble burstssooner or later the bearish sellers outnumber the bullish buyers, sooner or later greed flips into fear. And thats why, whether youre scraping by or rolling in it, theres never been a better time to understand the ascent of money.
About this product: A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. For millions of years, humans have been seeking out tribes, be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). Its our nature.
Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. All those blogs and social networking sites are helping existing tribes get bigger. But more important, theyre enabling countless new tribes to be borngroups of ten or ten thousand or ten million who care about their iPhones, or a political campaign, or a new way to fight global warming.
And so the key question: Who is going to lead us?
The Web can do amazing things, but it cant provide leadership. That still has to come from individuals people just like you who have passion about something. The explosion in tribes means that anyone who wants to make a difference now has the tools at her fingertips.
If you think leadership is for other people, think againleaders come in surprising packages. Consider Joel Spolsky and his international tribe of scary-smart software engineers. Or Gary Vaynerhuck, a wine expert with a devoted following of enthusiasts. Chris Sharma leads a tribe of rock climbers up impossible cliff faces, while Mich Mathews, a VP at Microsoft, runs her internal tribe of marketers from her cube in Seattle. All they have in common is the desire to change things, the ability to connect a tribe, and the willingness to lead.
If you ignore this opportunity, you risk turning into a sheepwalkersomeone who fights to protect the status quo at all costs, never asking if obedience is doing you (or your organization) any good. Sheepwalkers dont do very well these days.
Tribes will make you think (really think) about the opportunities in leading your fellow employees, customers, investors, believers, hobbyists, or readers. . . . Its not easy, but its easier than you think.
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