Once a New York City cop, John McCormack made his first million on Wall Street in his twenties, and lost it before he was thirty. He went to work for—and learned from—savvy businessmen who had made it from the ground up. Blending their wisdom with his own entrepreneurial gifts, McCormack made a stunningly successful comeback. Here he shares his inspiring story as well as the lessons he's learned about motivation, setting goals, and how creative companies can bring the American dream to those born without a silver spoon.
An account of the Swiss soldiers of fortune who plied their trade in the foreign regiments of European militaries and even the American Civil War. The white mercenaries who attracted the world’s attention in the Congo during the early 1960s were never more than a few hundred in number. In contrast, no fewer than a million Swiss troops served as mercenaries in the armies of Europe during the preceding 500 years. Swiss mercenaries form a significant strand in the rope of European military history, and this book draws on many French and German-language sources to describe how the Swiss emerged from the isolated valleys of the Alps with a new method of warfare. Their massed columns of pike-carrying infantry were the first foot-soldiers since Roman times who could hold their own against the cavalry. For a brief period at the end of the fifteenth century the Swiss army appeared unbeatable, and after Swiss independence had been ensured they were hired out as mercenaries throughout Europe. Kings and generals competed to hire these elite combat troops. Nearly half of the million served with the French, their centuries of loyal service culminating with the massacre of the Swiss Guards during the French Revolution. Marlborough, Frederick the Great and Napoleon all hired large numbers of Swiss troops, and three Swiss regiments served in the British Army.
Get heard by being clear and concise The only way to survive in business today is to be a lean communicator. Busy executives expect you to respect and manage their time more effectively than ever. You need to do the groundwork to make your message tight and to the point. The average professional receives 304 emails per week and checks their smartphones 36 times an hour and 38 hours a week. This inattention has spread to every part of life. The average attention span has shrunk from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight in 2012. So, throw them a lifeline and be brief. Author Joe McCormack tackles the challenges of inattention, interruptions, and impatience that every professional faces. His proven B.R.I.E.F. approach, which stands for Background, Relevance, Information, Ending, and Follow up, helps simplify and clarify complex communication. BRIEF will help you summarize lengthy information, tell a short story, harness the power of infographics and videos, and turn monologue presentations into controlled conversations. Details the B.R.I.E.F. approach to distilling your message into a brief presentation Written by the founder and CEO of Sheffield Marketing Partners, which specializes in message and narrative development, who is also a recognized expert in Narrative Mapping, a technique that helps clients achieve a clearer and more concise message Long story short: BRIEF will help you gain the muscle you need to eliminate wasteful words and stand out from the rest. Be better. Be brief.
The Straightforward Business Plan, Revised Edition , is a comprehensive guide to all aspects of the formation of a viable business plan and also to the ongoing development of a company. The book has been updated taking into account the current difficult business climate and incorporates current business planning models. It will prove invaluable to all those who are either involved in business and wish to adopt a more structured approach to planning the future or to those new to business who wish to enhance their knowledge of this area.
Nine revolutionary algorithms that power our computers and smartphones Every day, we use our computers to perform remarkable feats. A simple web search picks out a handful of relevant needles from the world's biggest haystack. Uploading a photo to Facebook transmits millions of pieces of information over numerous error-prone network links, yet somehow a perfect copy of the photo arrives intact. Without even knowing it, we use public-key cryptography to transmit secret information like credit card numbers, and we use digital signatures to verify the identity of the websites we visit. How do our computers perform these tasks with such ease? John MacCormick answers this question in language anyone can understand, using vivid examples to explain the fundamental tricks behind nine computer algorithms that power our PCs, tablets, and smartphones.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism—or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.” As acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. Many of today’s evangelicals might not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they’ve read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex—and they have a silver ring to prove it. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. And evangelical culture is teeming with muscular heroes—mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.” Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.
Worth and Cartwright have compiled a comprehensive discography documenting this exceedingly long career. In a chapter devoted to `The Art of John McCormack and the Phonograph,' McCormack's vocal technique is examined, and his artistic development chronicled. His talent for blending the intellectual and the intuitive in his musical interpretation is pointed out. An account of the events of his career adds to the history of singing. Recordings are listed chronologically by recording session, and a useful alphabetic listing by song title is provided. . . . The authors carefully acknowledge indebtedness to a number of McCormack discography researchers. A bibliography and artist index conclude the volume, which is sturdily bound. All undergraduate and graduate music libraries with McCormack recordings will want this book. Choice
The warm and gently humorous memoir of a young veterinarian's first year of practice in Choctaw County, Alabama, in the early 1960s. "I can relate to Dr. McCormack on page after page of this book. In his writing he beguilingly captures the laughter and tears of the veterinary scene. A heartwarming read for the animal lover."--James Herriot.
John McCormack was born in Athlone, Co. Westmeath, in 1884. By his late twenties, he was a world-famous opera singer and, at the height of his popularity, was as famous, flamboyant and well-paid as rock stars of today. In this biography, Gordon T. Ledbetter brings together a wealth of biographical detail and visual material, weaving words, images, photographs, letters, playbills and news clippings into a picture of McCormack's fascinating home life and professional career.
