Made to Break is a history of twentieth-century technology as seen through the prism of obsolescence. Giles Slade explains how disposability was a necessary condition for America's rejection of tradition and our acceptance of change and impermanence. This book gives us a detailed and harrowing picture of how, by choosing to support ever-shorter product lives, we may well be shortening the future of our way of life as well.
Did you know— • It took more than an iceberg to sink the Titanic. • The Challenger disaster was predicted. • Unbreakable glass dinnerware had its origin in railroad lanterns. • A football team cannot lose momentum. • Mercury thermometers are prohibited on airplanes for a crucial reason. • Kryptonite bicycle locks are easily broken. “Things fall apart” is more than a poetic insight—it is a fundamental property of the physical world. Why Things Break explores the fascinating question of what holds things together (for a while), what breaks them apart, and why the answers have a direct bearing on our everyday lives. When Mark Eberhart was growing up in the 1960s, he learned that splitting an atom leads to a terrible explosion—which prompted him to worry that when he cut into a stick of butter, he would inadvertently unleash a nuclear cataclysm. Years later, as a chemistry professor, he remembered this childhood fear when he began to ponder the fact that we know more about how to split an atom than we do about how a pane of glass breaks. In Why Things Break, Eberhart leads us on a remarkable and entertaining exploration of all the cracks, clefts, fissures, and faults examined in the field of materials science and the many astonishing discoveries that have been made about everything from the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger to the crashing of your hard drive. Understanding why things break is crucial to modern life on every level, from personal safety to macroeconomics, but as Eberhart reveals here, it is also an area of cutting-edge science that is as provocative as it is illuminating.
These eleven short fictions evoke the microcosmic worlds every human relationship contains. A woman is captivated by the stories her boyfriend tells about his exes. A faltering artist goes on a date with a married couple. Twin brothers work out their rivalry via the girl next door. In every one of these tales, we meet indelibly real and unforgettable people, a cast of rebels and dreamers trying to transform themselves, forge new destinies, or simply make the moment last.
Culver presents a model for getting to the heart of why people never seem to have enough time --and how to create the time they actually need. A past workaholic, successful business owner, and consultant to large corporations, Culver's solution is to first redefine the beliefs that drive the behavior and from there reset priorities, create better systems, practice better habits, and finally, invest in reflection, review, and renewal.
A Washington Post Bestseller An entirely fresh approach to ending the high school dropout crisis is revealed in this groundbreaking chronicle of unprecedented transformation in a city notorious for its "failing schools" In eighth grade, Eric thought he was going places. But by his second semester of freshman year at Hancock High, his D's in Environmental Science and French, plus an F in Mr. Castillo's Honors Algebra class, might have suggested otherwise. Research shows that students with more than one semester F during their freshman year are very unlikely to graduate. If Eric had attended Hancock—or any number of Chicago's public high schools—just a decade earlier, chances are good he would have dropped out. Instead, Hancock's new way of responding to failing grades, missed homework, and other red flags made it possible for Eric to get back on track. The Make-or-Break Year is the largely untold story of how a simple idea—that reorganizing schools to get students through the treacherous transitions of freshman year greatly increases the odds of those students graduating—changed the course of two Chicago high schools, an entire school system, and thousands of lives. Marshaling groundbreaking research on the teenage brain, peer relationships, and academic performance, journalist turned communications expert Emily Krone Phillips details the emergence of Freshman OnTrack, a program-cum-movement that is translating knowledge into action—and revolutionizing how teachers grade, mete out discipline, and provide social, emotional, and academic support to their students. This vivid description of real change in a faulty system will captivate anyone who cares about improving our nation's schools; it will inspire educators and families to reimagine their relationships with students like Eric, and others whose stories affirm the pivotal nature of ninth grade for all young people. In a moment of relentless focus on what doesn't work in education and the public sphere, Phillips's dramatic account examines what does.
Fake. That's what we are. That's what we agreed to be. So why does it feel so real? I thought it would have been harder, convincing everyone our school's star receiver was mine and mine alone, but I was wrong. We played our parts so well that the lines between us began to blur until they disappeared completely. The thing about pretending, though, someone's always better at it, and by the time I realized my mistake, there was no going back. I fell for our lie. And then everything fell apart. It turned out he and I were never playing the same game. He didn't have to break me to win. But he did it anyway.
"Made to Break, D. Foy's debut novel, snaps. Literary, cinematic... Foy] is a writing school of one, and Made to Break ushers his literary energies into categorical existence." -The Daily Beast "Strange and freewheeling... forsaking plot in favor of something much more cerebral and immediate. Made to Break works its English over, coining fresh and sometimes unapologetically awkward phrases to milk out something strange and animate." -Los Angeles Review of Books " Made to Break] reads like a macabre mumblecore script penned by Jim Thompson. It's one swell medley of mayhem and defeat dashed together by the vitality of D. Foy's prose. Zainy, sly, and darkly comedic." -Entropy Magazine "With influences that range from Jack Kerouac to Tom Waits and a prose that possesses a fast, strange, perennially changing rhythm that's somewhat akin to some of John Coltrane's wildest compositions, this narrative is at once emotionally gritty and surprisingly beautiful even during its darkest moments. Foy has delivered the kind of notable narrative that pulls an author out of the very crowded rookie pool and places him at the top of the list of fresh voices that readers of outstanding fiction should keep on their radar." -HTML Giant Two days before New Years, a pack of five friends--three men and two women--head to a remote cabin near Lake Tahoe to celebrate the holidays. They've been buddies forever, banded together by scrapes and squalor, their relationships defined by these wild times. After a car accident leaves one friend sick and dying, and severe weather traps them at the cabin, there is nowhere to go, forcing them to finally and ultimately take stock and confront their past transgressions, considering what they mean to one another and to themselves. With some of the most luminous and purple prose flexed in recent memory, D. Foy is an incendiary new voice and Made to Break, a grand, episodic debut, redolent of the stark conscience of Denis Johnson and the spellbinding vision of Roberto Bola o. D. Foy has had work published or forthcoming in BOMB, Post Road, the Literary Review, the Georgia Review, Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial, and Laundromat, an homage to photographs of laundromats throughout New York City (powerHouse Books).
7 Rules You Were Born to Break is an exploration of 7 rules we unconsciously obey and the power of breaking them. This book reveals the secrets of a professional misbehaver who turned his passion for mischief into a successful career as an internationally renowned entertainer. In his rise from the streets as a juggler, jester and busker, to the banquet halls of the corporate elite as a headlining comedian, Rick Lewis faced the 7 hidden rules that oppose our fulfillment and success. Lewis guides us through the silent shadows of our rule oriented society through his performing stories, illustrating with warmth, humor and passion the unwritten laws that disempower us and which we must break to claim our birthright to excellence. Celebrities and a break-dancing dwarf, Santa Claus and CEOs, may never have shared a stage so equally as they do in Lewis's inspiring and remarkable tales. From the top of his twelve-foot unicycle Lewis shows us how we can rise above mediocrity in our day to day lives and give our greatest hopes, aims and visions a fighting chance. Today Rick Lewis is a world-class corporate entertainer, comedian and speaker who has appeared at events attended by the Clintons, the Prime Minister of Canada, Bill Gates, the international board of Mastercard and upper management teams for Fortune 500 companies all over North America.
Macy Hines has the perfect marriage, a beautiful, Manga-drawing, teenage daughter and she lives in a town filled the perfect stepford wives‹that is until her life takes on a dramatic turn. Her husband leaves her for a younger woman, her daughter hates her, Macy becomes best friends with vodka and the community she had been so involved with suddenly turns their backs on her. After trying desperately to put her life back together and failing miserably, Macy decides to take her best friend�s offer of an all-expense-paid trip to Italy for all three of them in order to breathe and work out her issues. At this rate, it feels like it will take a miracle to save her. Draco De Luca is at that age where he�s looking for a woman to spend the rest of his life with, and so far he hasn�t been having much luck. That is until he visits his mother�s house for a dinner and meets an ebony goddess with sad brown eyes. But her past demons are getting in the way‹she has been damaged, and now he has to decide if he has to let her go to be whole again, or should he help?
