Gjør som tusenvis av andre bokelskere
Abonner på vårt nyhetsbrev og få rabatter og inspirasjon til din neste leseopplevelse.
Ved å abonnere godtar du vår personvernerklæring.Du kan når som helst melde deg av våre nyhetsbrev.
Innovation is synonymous with problem solving, and the basic elements of innovation apply to any business, says Robert M. Price in this essential guide for managers of organizations large or small. Distilling a set of practical principles from his forty years of experience as a pioneer in the computer industry, the author shows that innovation can be learned and practiced by everyone, that it can offer solutions to everyday problems as well as high-profile ones, and that it provides opportunities to solve business problems while meeting a variety of human needs.Former CEO of Control Data, Price weaves the history of this uniquely innovative company with fresh thinking about innovation itselfwhat it means to the people in an organization, the products, and the processes. He avoids simplistic prescriptions and clearly explains seven fundamental principles of innovation beginning with innovators are made, not born. He illustrates these principles with fascinating real-life examples. His book offers both the practical tools and the inspiration to everyone with an interest in effective management practice and in building organizations that creatively and continuously respond to ever-changing social and market needs.
A prominent Russian politician who served as prime minister, foreign minister, and head of foreign intelligence during the 1990s, Yevgeny Primakov has been part of all vital decisions on Russian domestic and foreign policy for the past two decades. His memoir is both an insider’s account of post-perestroika Russian politics and a statement from a representative of the enlightened Russian establishment on their nation’s relationship with America and the world.Primakov is a specialist in the Middle East, and his personal involvement in the problems of that region make his commentary particularly valuable as he articulates Russia’s view of the conflicts there and its stance toward Iraq, Israel, and Palestine. Primakov also offers pertinent opinions on the Gulf War, NATO enlargement, spying, and other aspects of contemporary international relations, and he gives personal assessments of a wide variety of major players, from Saddam Hussein and Yassir Arafat to Madeleine Albright and Bill Clinton.Providing behind-the-scenes information about government shake-ups in Moscow, the history of speculative privatizations, the formation of the new political and economic oligarchy, and much more, this book will be an invaluable aid to political analysts, historians, and anyone interested in Russia’s recent past and future plans.
For Americans entering the twenty-first century, it is the best of times and the worst of times. Material wealth is at record levels, yet disturbing social problems reflect a deep spiritual poverty. In this compelling book, well-known social psychologist David G. Myers asks how this paradox has come to be and, more important, how we can spark social renewal and dream a new American dream.Myers explores the research on social ills from the 1960s through the 1990s and concludes that the materialism and radical individualism of this period have cost us dearly, imperiling our children, corroding general civility, and diminishing our happiness. However, in the voices of public figures and ordinary citizens he now hears a spirit of optimism. The national dialogue is shiftingaway from the expansion of personal rights and toward enhancement of communal civility, away from efforts to raise self-esteem and toward attempts to arouse social responsibility, away from whose values?” and toward our values.” Myers analyzes in detail the research on educational and other programs that deal with social problems, explaining which seem to work and why. He then offers positive and well-reasoned advice, suggesting that a renewed social ecology for America will rest on policies that balance me thinking” with we thinking.”
Igor Stravinsky and George Balanchine, among the most influential artists of the twentieth century, together created the music and movement for many ballet masterpieces. This engrossing book is the first full-length study of one of the greatest artistic collaborations in history.Drawing on extensive new research, Charles M. Joseph discusses the Stravinsky-Balanchine ballets against a rich contextual backdrop. He explores the background and psychology of the two men, the dynamics of their interactions, their personal and professional similarities and differences, and the political and historical circumstances that conditioned their work. He describes the dancers, designers, and sponsors with whom they worked. He explains the two men’s approach to the creative process and the genesis of each of the collaborative ballets, demolishing much received wisdom on the subject. And he analyzes selected sections of music and dance, providing examples of Stravinsky’s working sketches and other helpful illustrative materials. Engagingly written, the book will be of great interest not only to music and dance historians but also to ballet lovers everywhere.
This biography probes the unusual mind, the dramatic life, and the outstanding scientific work of Danish-born immunologist Niels Jerne (19111994). Jerne’s Nobel Prize-winning achievements in the field of immunology place him in the pantheon of great twentieth-century biomedical theorists, yet his life is perhaps even more interesting than his science. Science as Autobiography tells Jerne’s story, weaving together a narrative of his life experiences, emotional life, and extraordinarily creative scientific work.A legendary figure who preferred an afternoon of conversation in a Paris wine bar to work in the laboratory, Jerne was renowned for his unparalleled powers of concentration and analytical keenness as well as his dissonant personal life. The book explores Jerne the man and scientist, making the fascinating argument that his life experience and view of himself became a metaphorical resource for the construction of his theories. The book also probes the moral issues that surrounded Jerne’s choice to sacrifice his family in favor of scientific goals and the pursuit of excellence.
This book is the first comprehensive history of the development of child study during the early part of the twentieth century. Most nineteenth-century scientists deemed children unsuitable subjects for study, and parents were hostile to the idea. But by 1935, the study of the child was a thriving scientific and professional field. Here, Alice Boardman Smuts shows how interrelated movementssocial and scientificcombined to transform the study of the child.Drawing on nationwide archives and extensive interviews with child study pioneers, Smuts recounts the role of social reformers, philanthropists, and progressive scientists who established new institutions with new ways of studying children. Part history of science and part social history, this book describes a fascinating era when the normal child was studied for the first time, a child guidance movement emerged, and the newly created federal Children’s Bureau conducted pathbreaking sociological studies of children.
Richard Rodgers was an icon of the musical theater, a prolific composer whose career spanned six decades and who wrote more than a thousand songs and forty shows for the American stage. In this absorbing book, Geoffrey Block examines Rodgers’s entire career, providing rich details about the creation, staging, and critical reception of some of his most popular musicals.Block traces Rodgers’s musical education, early work, and the development of his musical and dramatic language. He focuses on two shows by Rodgers and Hart (A Connecticut Yankee and The Boys from Syracuse) and two by Rodgers and Hammerstein (South Pacific and Cinderella), offering new insights into each one. He concludes with the first serious look at the five neglected and often maligned musicals that Rodgers composed in the 1960s and 1970s, after the death of Hammerstein.
In the wake of the monstrous projects of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and others in the twentieth century, the idea of utopia has been discredited. Yet, historian Jay Winter suggests, alongside the major utopians” who murdered millions in their attempts to transform the world were disparate groups of people trying in their own separate ways to imagine a radically better world. This original book focuses on some of the twentieth-century’s minor utopias” whose stories, overshadowed by the horrors of the Holocaust and the Gulag, suggest that the future need not be as catastrophic as the past.The book is organized around six key moments when utopian ideas and projects flourished in Europe: 1900 (the Paris World's Fair), 1919 (the Paris Peace Conference), 1937 (the Paris exhibition celebrating science and light), 1948 (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), 1968 (moral indictments and student revolt), and 1992 (the emergence of visions of global citizenship). Winter considers the dreamers and the nature of their dreams as well as their connections to one another and to the history of utopian thought. By restoring minor utopias to their rightful place in the recent past, Winter fills an important gap in the history of social thought and action in the twentieth century.
A fascinating collective biography of six female scientists in eighteenth-century France, whose stories were largely written out of history
The wartime adventures of the legendary SOE agent Harry Ree, told in his own words
This book is the first in English to explore both Belaruss complicated road to nationhood and to examine in detail its politics and economics since 1991, the nations first year of true independence. Andrew Wilson focuses particular attention on Aliaksandr Lukashenkas surprising longevity as president, despite human rights abuses and involvement in yet another rigged election in December 2010.Wilson looks at Belarusian history as a series of false starts in the medieval and pre-modern periods, and at the many rival versions of Belarusian identity, culminating with the Soviet Belarusian project and the establishment of Belaruss current borders during World War II. He also addresses Belaruss on-off relationship with Russia, its simultaneous attempts to play a game of balance in the no-mans-land between Russia and the West, and how, paradoxically, Belarus is at last becoming a true nation under the rule of Europes last dictator.
An introduction to the long-standing and often ambivalent relationship between African Americans and the African continent
One of the world's most celebrated theologians argues for a Protestant anti-work ethic In his classic The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber famously showed how Christian beliefs and practices could shape persons in line with capitalism. In this significant reimagining of Weber's work, Kathryn Tanner provocatively reverses this thesis, arguing that Christianity can offer a direct challenge to the largely uncontested growth of capitalism. Exploring the cultural forms typical of the current finance-dominated system of capitalism, Tanner shows how they can be countered by Christian beliefs and practices with a comparable person-shaping capacity. Addressing head-on the issues of economic inequality, structural under- and unemployment, and capitalism's unstable boom/bust cycles, she draws deeply on the theological resources within Christianity to imagine anew a world of human flourishing. This book promises to be one of the most important theological books in recent years.
Which books did the British working classes read--and how did they read them? How did they respond to canonical authors, penny dreadfuls, classical music, school stories, Shakespeare, Marx, Hollywood movies, imperialist propaganda, the Bible, the BBC, the Bloomsbury Group? What was the quality of their classroom education? How did they educate themselves? What was their level of cultural literacy: how much did they know about politics, science, history, philosophy, poetry, and sexuality? Who were the proletarian intellectuals, and why did they pursue the life of the mind?These intriguing questions, which until recently historians considered unanswerable, are addressed in this book. Using innovative research techniques and a vast range of unexpected sources, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes tracks the rise and decline of the British autodidact from the pre-industrial era to the twentieth century. It offers a new method for cultural historians--an "e;audience history"e; that recovers the responses of readers, students, theatergoers, filmgoers, and radio listeners. Jonathan Rose provides an intellectual history of people who were not expected to think for themselves, told from their perspective. He draws on workers’ memoirs, oral history, social surveys, opinion polls, school records, library registers, and newspapers. Through its novel and challenging approach to literary history, the book gains access to politics, ideology, popular culture, and social relationships across two centuries of British working-class experience.
The extraordinary life of a captivating American artist, beautifully illustrated with his dreamlike drawings
Abonner på vårt nyhetsbrev og få rabatter og inspirasjon til din neste leseopplevelse.
Ved å abonnere godtar du vår personvernerklæring.