I've done my best in what follows to put my life dowb with accuracy and without exaggeration, as memory and research have prompted. Yes, Mr. Orwell, even the disgraceful bits-some of them. But as Mr. Dickey notes, memory is notoriously self-serving. Ig you find yourself in these pages and don't like what I have remembered about you, I apologize. I was after the truth of my own life and everything else was subject to that.
If you want to be as successful as Jack Welch, Larry Bossidy, or Michael Dell, read their autobiographical advice books, right? Wrong, says Roger Martin in The Opposable Mind. Though following best practice can help in some ways, it also poses a danger. By emulating what a great leader did in a particular situation, you'll likely be terribly disappointed with your own results. Why? Your situation is different. Instead of focusing on what exceptional leaders do, we need to understand and emulate how they think. Successful businesspeople engage in what Martin calls integrative thinking, creatively resolving the tension in opposing models by forming entirely new and superior ones. Drawing on stories of leaders as diverse as AG Lafley of Procter & Gamble, Meg Whitman of eBay, Victoria Hale of the Institute for One World Health, and Nandan Nilekani of Infosys, Martin shows how integrative thinkers are relentlessly diagnosing and synthesizing by asking probing questions including: What are the causal relationships at work here? and What are the implied trade-offs? Martin also presents a model for strengthening your integrative thinking skills by drawing on different kinds of knowledge including conceptual and experiential knowledge. Integrative thinking can be learned, and The Opposable Mind helps you master this vital skill.
Praise for OPPOSABLE LIVES, Volume One of an Autobiography "I found it fascinating. . . . There are very few people who could write an interesting and entertaining autobiography." Mary Arntfield "A wonderful read!. . . tender and insightful, straight-forward and honest." Bill Guest "What a wonderful gift!. . . it's extremely well written, flows lucidly an easy while highly perceptive read." John Davis "I love your witty title. Opposable thumbs led to curiosity, experimentation, imagining, growth in intellect. Opposable Lives' generates these, and much, much more." Thomas Whitbread "I thoroughly enjoyed it." Brian Carnahan
The first full-scale biography of prolific writer Alice Adams, whose celebrated stories and bestselling novels traced women’s lives and illuminated “an era characterized both by drastic cultural changes and by the persistence of old expectations, conventions, and biases” (The New Yorker). “Nobody writes better about falling in love than Alice Adams,” a New York Times critic said of the prolific writer. Born in 1926, Alice Adams grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, during the Great Depression and came of age during World War II. After college at Radcliffe and a year in Paris, she moved to San Francisco. Always a rebel in good-girl’s clothing, Adams used her education, sexual and emotional curiosity, and uncompromising artistic ambition to break the strictures that bound women in midcentury America. Divorced with a child to raise, she worked at secretarial jobs for two decades before she could earn a living as a writer. One of only four winners of the O. Henry Special Award for Continuing Achievement, Adams wove her life into her fiction and used her writing to understand the changing tides of the 20th century. Her work portrays vibrant characters both young and old who live on the edge of their emotions, absorbed by love affairs yet always determined to be independent and to fulfill their personal destinies. Carol Sklenicka interweaves Adams’s deeply felt, elegantly fierce life with a cascade of events—the civil rights and women’s rights movements, the sixties counterculture, and sexual freedom. Her biography’s revealing analyses of Adams’s stories and novels from Careless Love to Superior Women to The Last Lovely City, and her extensive interviews with Adams’s family and friends, among them Mary Gaitskill, Diane Johnson, Anne Lamott, and Alison Lurie, give us the definitive story of a writer often dubbed “America’s Colette.” Alice Adams: Portrait of a Writer captures not just a beloved woman’s life in full, but a crucial span of American history.
Begun as an audacious experiment, for thirty years the Hedgerow Theatre prospered as America's most successful repertory company. While known for its famous alumnae (Ann Harding and Richard Basehart), Hedgerow's legacy is a living library of over 200 productions created by Jasper Deeter's idealistic and determined pursuit of 'truth and beauty.'
Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, founded in 1987 in Toronto, is one of most innovative architectural offi ces in North America today. They have made a name for themselves both for their integrated design process embodying collaboration with experts, clients and future users as well as the diversity of their aesthetically refined and finely detailed designs. The work ranges from cultural institutions such as the Toronto International Film Festival and Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis to ecologically innovative concepts such as Manitoba Hydro Place in Winnipeg, developed with leading climate engineers Transsolar of Stuttgart. A respectful approach toward the integration of heritage buildings is also a characteristic feature, illustrated by the designs for the Royal Conservatory and the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. Finally, educational and research facilities are also a strong focus in KPMB’s work exemplified by the Centre for Innovation and Governance Campus in Waterloo, Ontario, and the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management in Toronto, as well as future projects for the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT) and Princeton University in the United States.
A Story of a Feline Whistleblower in 33 BC Egypt The Mystery of the Egyptian Mummified Kittens spins a cat tale that takes place in ancient Egypt. Hebony, the protagonist, is a cat that is going on a mission that will take him to places to do things that no other cat has ever done before. Chosen by goddesses and trained from birth by his mother and siblings at the age of four months, he begins an odyssey that, if successful, will save the lives of kittens that might be sacrificed and made into little cat mummies to be sold to people who wish to gain favor with the cat goddess Bastet. But his training to get him into shape for such a mission is augmented by words from his mother who is very concerned about the destruction the people have done and are still doing to a land that all forms of life depend on for their survival. So at times, besides keeping on course with his primary mission, Hebony learns more about the people, their self-destructive natures, their love for war and competition, and their total disregard for any other inhabitants they must share the little land that is known. Follow Hebony as he climbs sandy dunes; trespasses on the land of the priests; jumps into fast-moving chariots; goes to the fair city of Alexandra and finds his first love; attends a chariot race and meets Grosso, a cat who becomes his mentor and foster father. And when he thinks his mission is over, he learns more about the mystery from a retired Egyptian priest who lives in an old fisherman's cabin deep in the woods. When he finally returns home to report his findings, he is arrested and returned to Alexandria where he is and tried by a kangaroo court, convicted of treason, and sentenced to death by mummification. But with a little help from his friends and a nest full of mice, he escapes and lives to tell his tale. Hebony is no ordinary cat. But this story isn't just about a brave little kitten. It is a story that will motivate readers to follow Hebony's example and live their life as he did with a purpose and the determination to reach their goals and make the world a better place than they'd found it. It's something we all need to do.
How do you want to change your life? Every day is a fresh start, just bursting with opportunities. This book will show you how to fire up each day with positivity and passion, and reinvent your downtime to make it work for you. Inject some magic into your mornings, make your days more fulfilling and more productive, and set yourself on course to achieve your dreams - and all in just five minutes! It's everything you need to make your day - and your life - spectacular.
The fascinating evolutionary links between six seemingly unremarkable traits that make us the very remarkable creatures we are. Countless behaviors separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom, but all of them can be traced one way or another to six traits that are unique to the human race-our big toe, our opposable thumb, our oddly shaped pharynx, and our ability to laugh, kiss, and cry. At first glance these may not seem to be connected but they are. Each marks a fork in the evolutionary road where we went one way and the rest of the animal kingdom went another. Each opens small passageways on the peculiar geography of the human heart and mind. Walter weaves together fascinating insights from complexity theory, the latest brain scanning techniques, anthropology, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and robotics to explore how the smallest of changes over the past six million years - all shaped by the forces of evolution -- have enabled a primate once on the brink of extinction to evolve into a creature that would one day create all of the grand and exuberant edifices of human culture. As the story of each trait unfolds, Walter explains why our brains grew so large and complex, why we find one another sexually attractive, how toolmaking laid the mental groundwork for language, why we care about what others think, and how we became the creature that laughs and cries and falls in love. Thumbs, Toes and Tears is original, informative, and delightfully thought-provoking.
This satire is set in an alternate universe bronze age. Todd, its omnipotent god (or so he’s convinced the population) should be enjoying his day off. Instead, he’s having the worst day of his life. His boss is out for his job, a war threatens the balance of power, and long lost, rebellious gods have returned for revenge. Fun and provocative, Todd is guaranteed to challenge the reader’s notions of religion, politics, power and narrative. Characters will appear to be those in the news headlines. Enjoy all the pop culture Easter eggs a long the way!
