Joy at Work
Imagine a company where people love coming to work and are highly productive on a daily basis. Imagine a company whose top executives, in a quest to create the most «fun» workplace ever, obliterate labor-management divisions and push decision-making responsibility down to the plant floor. Could such a company compete in today's bottom-line corporate world? Could it even turn a profit? Well, imagine no more.In Joy at Work, Dennis W. Bakke tells the true story of this extraordinary company–and how, as its co-founder and longtime CEO, he challenged the business establishment with revolutionary ideas that could remake America's organizations. It is the story of AES, whose business model and operating ethos -"let's have fun"-were conceived during a 90-minute car ride from Annapolis, Maryland, to Washington, D.C. In the next two decades, it became a worldwide energy giant with 40,000 employees in 31 countries and revenues of $8.6 billion. It's a remarkable tale told by a remarkable man: Bakke, a farm boy who was shaped by his religious faith, his years at Harvard Business School, and his experience working for the Federal Energy Administration. He rejects workplace drudgery as a noxious remnant of the Industrial Revolution. He believes work should be fun, and at AES he set out to prove it could be. Bakke sought not the empty «fun» of the Friday beer blast but the joy of a workplace where every person, from custodian to CEO, has the power to use his or her God-given talents free of needless corporate bureaucracy.In Joy at Work, Bakke tells how he helped create a company where every decision made at the top was lamented as a lost chance to delegate responsibility–and where all employees were encouraged to take the «game-winning shot,» even when it wasn't a slam-dunk. Perhaps Bakke's most radical stand was his struggle to break the stranglehold of «creating shareholder value» on the corporate mind-set and replace it with more timeless values: integrity, fairness, social responsibility, and a sense of fun.
Kenneth Chapter
In the quiet, affluent neighborhood of Atherton, California, Charles Gill Jr., a sixteen-year-old teenager lived a comfortable life with his father until his attraction to a beautiful girl from the wrong side of the tracks led to an act of disobedience, which caused his life to spiral out of control.
Now, after making one bad decision after another, can his two best friends help to save him from himself, or will his mistakes drag them all down into a set of circumstances that they will all regret for the rest of their lives?
A World Without You
A man in his early forties is unable to sleep as he contemplates the decision of running for mayor of his small town. While considering his options, his thoughts drift to his wife and their devoted relationship. As he reflects on his good fortune, one fact becomes apparent—his relationship with his wife originated even before it began. In 1992, life is anything but predictable for fifteen-year-old Scott Furman as he comes of age in his Midwestern small lower-class town of South Hillside. An incident that happened when he was born haunts his parents, making his mother’s emotional turmoil a mystery. While dealing delicately with his mother, Scott’s sensation of being an incomplete person also mystifies him. On the first day of summer vacation, Scott meets a girl named Briana from the adjacent wealthy town of North Hillside. Intelligent hardworking Scott and shy reserved Briana quickly realize their true love is authentic. When they learn of their family and friends’ stereotypical feelings of the other one’s town, Scott and Briana wisely keep their relationship a secret. However, when Scott’s best friend, Derek, learns about Briana, the boys’ friendship becomes a battle of wits. Self-centered and competitive, Derek takes pleasure in charming the girls of Scott’s interest. One girl unmoved by Derek’s charm is Scott’s sister-like friend, Felicia. Growing up together, Scott and Felicia have a special bond, but Scott’s overprotectiveness of Felicia causes additional complications, especially when Felicia realizes she has always loved Scott. With the love of two girls, Scott’s life is full of twists and surprises.
Cockfight
This Ecuadorian short story collection explores domestic horrors and everyday violence, a «grotesque, unflinching» portrait of twenty-first-century Latin America ( Publishers Weekly ). “Ampuero’s literary voice is tough and beautiful at once: her stories are exquisite and dangerous objects.” —Yuri Herrera, author of Signs Preceding the End of the World In lucid and compelling prose,María Fernanda Ampuero sheds light on the hidden aspects of home: the grotesque realities of family, coming of age, religion, and class struggle. A family’s maids witness a horrible cycle of abuse, a girl is auctioned off by a gang of criminals, and two sisters find themselves at the mercy of their spiteful brother. With violence masquerading as love, characters spend their lives trapped reenacting their past traumas. Heralding a brutal and singular new voice, Cockfight explores the power of the home to both create and destroy those within it.
Revolutionary Feminisms
In a moment of rising authoritarianism, climate crisis, and ever more exploitative forms of neoliberal capitalism, there is a compelling and urgent need for radical paradigms of thought and action. Through interviews with key revolutionary scholars, Bhandar and Ziadah present a thorough discussion of how anti-racist, anti-capitalist feminisms are crucial to building effective political coalitions. Collectively, these interviews with leading scholars including Angela Y. Davis, Silvia Federici, and many others, trace the ways in which black, indigenous, post-colonial and Marxian feminisms have created new ways of seeing, new theoretical frameworks for analysing political problems, and new ways of relating to one another. Focusing on migration, neo-imperial militarism, the state, the prison industrial complex, social reproduction and many other pressing themes, the range of feminisms traversed in this volume show how freedom requires revolutionary transformation in the organisation of the economy, social relations, political structures, and our psychic and symbolic worlds. The interviews include Avtar Brah, Gail Lewis and Vron Ware on Diaspora, Migration and Empire. Himani Bannerji, Gary Kinsman, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Silvia Federici on Colonialism, Capitalism, and Resistance. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Avery F. Gordon and Angela Y. Davis on Abolition Feminism.
50 Miles
• Opiate overdoses are the leading cause of accidental deaths among those under 50. • Memoirs about substance abuse are overwhelmingly about recovery. It is the rare memoir that ends in death. • There are many books about recovery but there are no literary books that the author knows of that addresses what it is like to lose a family member or other to drugs. • No memoirs or scientific books discuss the possibility of later drug abuse related to the prescribing of Ritalin or Adderall for ADHD. • It includes, as a secondary aspect, the recovery of the mother and her methods of coping and grieving the loss of her son. Video games feature prominently in the longest essay in the book, as a form of connection and solace.
Demonstrategy
Against the busy background of the “information age” and the “anthropocene,” where’s poetry? It might seem invisible, irrelevant, but Demonstrategy proves it as salient as ever, and more urgent. In paired essays about poetry in the world and the world in poetry, Demonstrategy finds poetry’s pulse steady and strong.
Отморозок
Мой сводный брат… Красивый, самовлюбленный и циничный мажор. Он словно играет со мной в игру, в которой нет правил. По глупости я задолжала ему пятьдесят желаний. Любых… Каждое новое желание – еще один шаг к бездне. Он связывает мою волю, проникает под кожу и становится моим наваждением. Я бы хотела разорвать этот порочный круг. Но вряд ли он позволит. Все знают: он настоящий отморозок. В процессе написания называлась «50 твоих желаний». Внимание! Фонограмма содержит нецензурную брань.
Earthing the Myths
In Ireland, the link between place and myth is strong, and there is no more enlightening way to understand the rich tapestry of Irish mythology, and its relationship to our true history, than by reading the landscape. Earthing the Myths is an engaging and exhaustive county-by-county guide to the vast number of fascinating places in Ireland connected to myth, folklore and early history. Covering the period 800 BC to AD 650, this book spans the Late Bronze Age, the Iron Age and the early Christian period, and explores the ways in which the land evolved, and with it our catalogue of myths and legends. Smyth chronicles sites the length and breadth of the country, where druids, fairies, goddesses, warriors and kings all left their mark, in tales both real and imagined. With over one thousand locations recorded, from Rathlin Island to the Beara Peninsula, Earthing the Myths breathes life into places throughout Ireland that find their origins in our pre-Christian and pre-Gaelic past, and shows that they still possess unique wisdom and vibrant energy.