During World War II Nathalie "Lily" Sergueiew, a woman of mystery, confidently seduced the German Intelligence Service into employing her as a spy against their British enemy. Little did they know that this striking woman--who turned heads when she walked into a room with her little dog Babs--would work with their enemy against them. Her diary chronicles her months-long journey to becoming a double agent for the British under the code name Treasure. From the moment she conceived the idea of becoming a double agent, Lily faced challenges on two fronts: first, she had to convince the Germans to ask her to spy for them; second, she needed the British to believe her story. Only then could she begin the perilous work of helping free her homeland--France--from the German occupier.
“Kind, realistic, and genuinely helpful...Install a copy on whatever surface is functioning as your desk, and you may even feel a little bit less alone.” —The Observer (London) A practical, accessible, and charming guide for finding joy while navigating your professional life working remotely from home—without losing your mind. Like it or not, working alone is now the new normal. The COVID-19 pandemic may have accelerated the process, but the trend is clear—making a living outside the confines of a public workplace is here to stay. For anyone who needs guidance on how to navigate working from a home office—or a home sofa—here is a charming, expert, and genuinely helpful guide to managing a productive career without impromptu hallway conversations or on-call IT support, but with more joy—and, for most of us, better coffee. Written by a dedicated work-from-home expert, Solo culls wisdom from the latest research in psychology, economics, and social science and explores what we gain, or lose, in the shift to solo work. In chapters like “Loneliness and Solitude,” “The Power of Planning,” and “The Curse of Comparison (and Why Social Media Sucks),” it picks up where the bibles for freelancers stop, offering practical, inspiring, and uniquely reassuring advice culled from a range of influences, from Aesop’s fables to medical journals, and explaining what helps us stay resilient, productive, and focused in a company of one.
If your'e working alone, this book will be your second set of hands. You won't have to wait for a helper or pass up a job that seems too difficult to do alone. And if youre a homeowner working on your own house, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish. Written by a builder with 30 years' experience, Working Alone is packed with more than 50 innovative tips and techniques. You'll learn how to handle nearly every aspect of home construction alone, from foundation layout to raising walls to building decks. This book, the only one of its kind, offers a myriad of unique solo solutions. A perfect example is the problem of bringing a large sheet of plywood up a ladder. Even with a helper, this is a difficult and dangerous task. But if a large C-clamp is fastened to one end of the plywood, it's easy to pull the sheet up the ladder from behind. Clever techniques like this will have you solving common problems safely and efficiently.
During World War II Nathalie "Lily" Sergueiew, a woman of mystery, confidently seduced the German Intelligence Service into employing her as a spy against their British enemy. Little did they know that this striking woman--who turned heads when she walked into a room with her little dog Babs--would work with their enemy against them. Her diary chronicles her months-long journey to becoming a double agent for the British under the code name Treasure. From the moment she conceived the idea of becoming a double agent, Lily faced challenges on two fronts: first, she had to convince the Germans to ask her to spy for them; second, she needed the British to believe her story. Only then could she begin the perilous work of helping free her homeland--France--from the German occupier.
A deeply-reported examination of why "doing what you love" is a recipe for exploitation, creating a new tyranny of work in which we cheerily acquiesce to doing jobs that take over our lives. You're told that if you "do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life." Whether it's working for "exposure" and "experience," or enduring poor treatment in the name of "being part of the family," all employees are pushed to make sacrifices for the privilege of being able to do what we love. In Work Won't Love You Back, Sarah Jaffe, a preeminent voice on labor, inequality, and social movements, examines this "labor of love" myth—the idea that certain work is not really work, and therefore should be done out of passion instead of pay. Told through the lives and experiences of workers in various industries—from the unpaid intern, to the overworked teacher, to the nonprofit worker and even the professional athlete—Jaffe reveals how all of us have been tricked into buying into a new tyranny of work. As Jaffe argues, understanding the trap of the labor of love will empower us to work less and demand what our work is worth. And once freed from those binds, we can finally figure out what actually gives us joy, pleasure, and satisfaction.
A wise, passionate account of the pleasures of traveling solo In our hectic, hyperconnected lives, many people are uncomfortable with the prospect of solitude. Yet a little time to ourselves can be an opportunity to slow down, savor, and try new things, especially when traveling. Through on-the-ground reporting, insights from social science, and recounting the experiences of artists, writers, and innovators who cherished solitude, Stephanie Rosenbloom considers how traveling alone deepens appreciation for everyday beauty, bringing into sharp relief the sights, sounds, and smells that one isn't necessarily attuned to in the presence of company. Walking through four cities--Paris, Florence, Istanbul, and New York--and four seasons, Alone Time gives us permission to pause, to relish the sensual details of the world rather than hurtling through museums and uploading photos to Instagram. In chapters about dining out, visiting museums, and pursuing knowledge, we begin to see how the moments we have to ourselves--on the road or at home--can be used to enrich our lives. Rosenbloom's engaging and elegant prose makes Alone Time as warmly intimate an account as the details of a trip shared by a beloved friend--and will have its many readers eager to set off on their own solo adventures.
The previously-untold story of the life and tragic early death of John Curry, one of the most famous ice skaters in history. The book that inspired new film The Ice King, the story of John Curry's life. One winter's night in 1976, over 20 million people in Britain watched John Curry skate to Olympic gold on an ice rink in Austria. Many millions more watched around the world. Overnight he became one of the most famous men on the planet. He was awarded an OBE. He was chosen as BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Curry changed ice skating from marginal sport to high art. And yet the man was a mystery to a world that had been dazzled by his gift. Surely, men's skating was supposed to be Cossack-muscular, not sensual and ambiguous like this? Curry himself was a complex, tortured man. For the first time, Alone untangles the extraordinary web of his toxic, troubled, brilliant and short life. It is a story of childhood nightmares, furious ambition, sporting genius, lifelong rivalries, homophobia, Cold War politics, financial ruin and deep personal tragedy. So much more than a sports biography, Alone reveals the restless, impatient, often dark soul of a man whose words could lacerate, whose skating invariably moved audiences to tears, and who after succumbing to AIDS, as so many of his fellow artists and friends did, died of a heart attack aged just 44.
"Plain talk for restorers, from soup to nuts (and bolts). Here's thorough, practical advice that's sensitive to both history and budget".--The Old House Journal.
"Most people in organizations tend to manage projects either as realists or humanists. You Don't Have to Do It Alone brings together the practical view of the realist and the people-oriented view of the humanist, combining the best of both approaches into one role: the 'Pragmatic Involver.' Covering everything from solving a nagging long-term problem at work that could save a company millions of dollars, to launching a community movement to improve local schools, the book shows how involving others in a project while maintaining one's focus on the nuts-and-bolts details can make big things happen. Using the authors' six major questions--each of which is explored in detail--You Don't Have to Do It Alone shows how success can be attained in a project on any scale, from redesigning a manufacturing process at a paper mill to creating an effective youth center"--Publisher's description.
A “thought-provoking” one-volume distillation of the author’s powerful trilogy in praise of the middle class’s role in creating a better, and richer, world (Library Journal). The economist and historian Deirdre Nansen McCloskey has been best known recently for her Bourgeois Era trilogy, a vigorous defense, unrivaled in scope, of commercially tested betterment. Its massive volumes, The Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity, and Bourgeois Equality, solve Adam Smith’s puzzle of the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, and of the moral sentiments of modernity. The world got rich, she argues, not chiefly by material causes but by an idea and a sentiment, a new admiration for the middle class and its egalitarian liberalism. For readers looking for a distillation of McCloskey’s magisterial work, Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich is what you’ve been waiting for. In this lively volume, McCloskey and the economist and journalist Art Carden bring together the trilogy’s key ideas and its most provocative arguments. The rise of the west, and now the rest, is the story of the rise of ordinary people to a dignity and liberty inspiring them to have a go. The outcome was an explosion of innovation after 1800, and a rise of real income by an astounding 3,000 percent. The Great Enrichment, well beyond the conventional Industrial Revolution, did not, McCloskey and Carden show, come from the usual suspects, capital accumulation or class struggle. It came from the idea of economic liberty in Holland and the Anglosphere, then Sweden and Japan, then Italy and Israel and China and India, an idea that bids fair in the next few generations to raise up the wretched of the earth. The original shift to liberalism arose from 1517 to 1789 from theological and political revolutions in northwest Europe, upending ancient hierarchies. McCloskey and Carden contend further that liberalism and “innovism” made us better humans as well as richer ones. Not matter but ideas. Not corruption but improvement. Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich draws in entertaining fashion on history, economics, literature, philosophy, and popular culture, from growth theory to the Simpsons. It is the perfect introduction for a broad audience to McCloskey’s influential explanation of how we got rich. At a time when confidence in the economic system is under challenge, this book mounts an optimistic and persuasive defense of liberal innovism, and of the modern world it has wrought. Praise for the Bourgeois Era Trilogy “A contender for the great book of our age.” —The Times, Book of the Week “Persuasive . . . richly detailed and erudite.” —Financial Times
