The 'Father of Greater New York' is dead. Shot outside his Park Avenue mansion in the year of our Lord, 1903. In the hour of his death, will the truth of his life finally break free? Born to a struggling farming family in 1820, Andrew Haswell Green was a self-made man who reshaped Manhattan, built Central Park and turned New York into a modern metropolis. Now, at eighty-three, when he thought the world could hold no more surprises, he is murdered. As the detective assigned to the case traces his ghost across the city, other spectres appear: a wealthy courtesan; a broken-hearted man in a bowler hat; and an ambitious politician, Samuel, whose lifelong friendship was a source of joy and frustration. In a life of industry and restraint, where is the space for love? As restlessly inventive and absorbing as its protagonist, The Great Mistake is the story of a city, and a singular man, transformed by longing.
A remarkable indictment of how misguided business policies have undermined the American higher education system. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Higher education in America, still thought to be the world leader, is in crisis. University students are falling behind their international peers in attainment, while suffering from unprecedented student debt. For over a decade, the realm of American higher education has been wracked with self-doubt and mutual recrimination, with no clear solutions on the horizon. How did this happen? In this stunning new book, Christopher Newfield offers readers an in-depth analysis of the “great mistake” that led to the cycle of decline and dissolution, a mistake that impacts every public college and university in America. What might occur, he asserts, is no less than locked-in economic inequality and the fall of the middle class. In The Great Mistake, Newfield asks how we can fix higher education, given the damage done by private-sector models. The current accepted wisdom—that to succeed, universities should be more like businesses—is dead wrong. Newfield combines firsthand experience with expert analysis to show that private funding and private-sector methods cannot replace public funding or improve efficiency, arguing that business-minded practices have increased costs and gravely damaged the university’s value to society. It is imperative that universities move beyond the destructive policies that have led them to destabilize their finances, raise tuition, overbuild facilities, create a national student debt crisis, and lower educational quality. Laying out an interconnected cycle of mistakes, from subsidizing the private sector to “the poor get poorer” funding policies, Newfield clearly demonstrates how decisions made in government, in the corporate world, and at colleges themselves contribute to the dismantling of once-great public higher education. A powerful, hopeful critique of the unnecessary death spiral of higher education, The Great Mistake is essential reading for those who wonder why students have been paying more to get less and for everyone who cares about the role the higher education system plays in improving the lives of average Americans.
When told to draw a jungle in art class, Regina experiences feelings of failure and creative insecurity, but manages to create a beautiful picture that's all her own.
Widely considered the greatest genius of all time, Albert Einstein revolutionised our understanding of the cosmos with his general theory of relativity and helped to lead us into the atomic age. Yet in the final decades of his life he was also ignored by most working scientists, his ideas opposed by even his closest friends. This stunning downfall can be traced to Einstein's earliest successes and to personal qualities that were at first his best assets. Einstein's imagination and self-confidence served him well as he sought to reveal the universe's structure, but when it came to newer revelations in the field of quantum mechanics, these same traits undermined his quest for the ultimate truth. David Bodanis traces the arc of Einstein's intellectual development across his professional and personal life, showing how Einstein's confidence in his own powers of intuition proved to be both his greatest strength and his ultimate undoing. He was a fallible genius. An intimate and enlightening biography of the celebrated physicist, Einstein's Greatest Mistake reveals how much we owe Einstein today - and how much more he might have achieved if not for his all-too-human flaws.
New York Times columnist Alina Tugend delivers an eye-opening big idea: Embracing mistakes can make us smarter, healthier, and happier in every facet of our lives. In this persuasive book, journalist Alina Tugend examines the delicate tension between what we’re told—we must make mistakes in order to learn—and the reality—we often get punished for them. She shows us that mistakes are everywhere, and when we acknowledge and identify them correctly, we can improve not only ourselves, but our families, our work, and the world around us as well. Bold and dynamic, insightful and provocative, Better by Mistake turns our cultural wisdom on its head to illustrate the downside of striving for perfection and the rewards of acknowledging and accepting mistakes and embracing the imperfection in all of us.
From the New York Times bestselling author of the Hello Sunshine Book Club pick The Other Woman, comes an addictively readable new domestic suspense about a wife, her husband, and the woman who is supposedly her best friend. THE WIFE: For Alice, life has never been better. With her second husband, she has a successful business, two children, and a beautiful house. HER HUSBAND: Alice knows that life could have been different if her first husband had lived, but Nathan’s arrival into her life gave her back the happiness she craved. HER BEST FRIEND: Through the ups and downs of life, from celebratory nights out to comforting each other through loss, Alice knows that with her best friend Beth by her side, they can survive anything together. So when Nathan starts acting strangely, Alice turns to Beth for help. But soon, Alice begins to wonder whether her trust has been misplaced . . . The first mistake could be her last. Praise for The Other Woman: "One of the most twisted and entertaining plots."—Reese Witherspoon "A perfect beach read."—Kristin Hannah "Whiplash-inducing."—New York Times Book Review "Such fun you'll cheer [Emily's] chutzpah."—PEOPLE "This thriller will hit close to home."—Refinery29
Zoom meets Beautiful Oops! in this memorable picture book debut about the creative process, and the way in which "mistakes" can blossom into inspiration One eye was bigger than the other. That was a mistake. The weird frog-cat-cow thing? It made an excellent bush. And the inky smudges… they look as if they were always meant to be leaves floating gently across the sky. As one artist incorporates accidental splotches, spots, and misshapen things into her art, she transforms her piece in quirky and unexpected ways, taking readers on a journey through her process. Told in minimal, playful text, this story shows readers that even the biggest “mistakes” can be the source of the brightest ideas—and that, at the end of the day, we are all works in progress, too. Fans of Peter Reynolds’s Ish and Patrick McDonnell’s A Perfectly Messed-Up Story will love the funny, poignant, completely unique storytelling of The Book of Mistakes. And, like Oh, The Places You’ll Go!, it makes the perfect graduation gift, encouraging readers to have a positive outlook as they learn to face life’s obstacles.
A fancy hotel plays host to homicide in a “jubilant” novel by “a peerless practitioner of the slightly surreal, English-village comedy-mystery” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Sybil Foster lives the sort of little English village that is home mostly to the very rich and the servants who make their lives delightful. But Sybil Foster’s life is not delightful, even if she does have an extremely talented gardener. Exhausted from her various family stresses—a daughter, for instance, who wants to marry a man without a title!—Sybil takes herself off to a local hotel that specializes in soothing shattered nerves. When she’s killed, Inspector Alleyn has a real puzzler on his hands: Yes, she was silly, snobbish, and irritating. But if that were enough motive for murder, half of England would be six feet under . . . “In her ironic and witty hands the mystery novel can be civilized literature.” —The New York Times “The brilliant Ngaio Marsh ranks with Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.” —Times Literary Supplement
When Cinderella's mouse friend Gus picks roses from Lady Tremaine's garden for his dear Cinderelly, Cinderella gets in a lot of trouble. She takes Gus into town to replace the rosebush, but forgets that it's the day of the big village fair. Gus gets so excited that he accidentally knocks over a giant cake prepared for the King!
