  | Book Details Title: Sky Dragon |
Book DescriptionAbout the Author James Blackburn is an elementary school special education teacher in South Orange County, California. He was born and raised in Laguna Hills with his triplet siblings, Juliana and Justin. James graduated from California State University of Fullerton with a B.S. in Child and Adolescent Development. While in school, James spent many years working as an instructional assistant for students with moderate/severe disabilities. After receiving his Bachelor of Science degree, he pursued a career in law enforcement and became a probation officer for the San Bernardino County Probation Department. He would later return to the field of education and enroll at National University to obtain his master’s in special education, and a moderate/severe education specialist credential. Read more Customers Review: Drake was born with a lame wing, but it doesn’t stop this colorful and playful little dragon from seizing the day and going on a much anticipated adventure in spite of his handicap. He runs into a little trouble along the way, but his courage and determination get him through it all, because he is loved so much!Drake is such an inspiration! He shows that no matter who we are or what disabilities we may have or think we have, can be overcome if we choose to believe in ourselves. We can all accomplish any of our desires!I love this beautifully written sweet story with all of the rhyming and gorgeous illustrations!I highly recommend this for children of all ages (special needs and others) as well as adults who still enjoy the little magical things in life. It will brighten and warm your heart! As an adult, I was delighted by it so much, I purchased 4 copies as gifts! After reading it a second time, I plan to buy more to share and donate. So very pleased!!! ♥️ | |
Minggu, 29 Maret 2020
[PDF] Download Sky Dragon by James Blackburn | Free EBOOK PDF English
7 reviews [PDF] Download The Conference of the Birds (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children) by Ransom Riggs | Free EBOOK PDF English
 | Book Details Title: The Conference of the Birds (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children) |
Book DescriptionAbout the Author Ransom Riggs is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children novels. Riggs was born on a farm in Maryland and grew up in southern Florida. He studied literature at Kenyon College and film at the University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, bestselling author Tahereh Mafi, and their family. Read more Customers Review: I purchased this book from Amazon to read. All opinions are my own. The Conference of the Birds by Ransom Riggs. Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children #5. Ok Riggs, you are killing me! This was an edge of your seat, wait for the next step, separation and reuniting, finding old friends, and new pieces of yourself all about Jacob and his friends. The new loops in America are dangerous and the clue left lead to a path that more perplexing and more dangerous than ever! And then……well wait for book #6………Hurry up Ransom Riggs and finish number 6 NOW!!!!!!! I know this isn’t the best review I’ve ever written, but if I say anymore I will give too much away, you just have to read this series! Other fans will understand what I mean! | |
Sabtu, 28 Maret 2020
[PDF] Download Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World by Marco Iansiti | Free EBOOK PDF English
 | Book Details Title: Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World |
Book DescriptionReview Named one of 16 New Business Books You Need to Read in 2020 by Inc. magazineAdvance Praise for Competing in the Age of AI:”Iansiti and Lakhani have written an important book that explains what’s required to rethink the firm and become an AI-first company. Anyone interested in the impact of AI should read this book.” — Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft“With the rise of our digital economy and artificial intelligence, the landscape of disruption is shifting in remarkable ways. Competing in the Age of AI is a compelling and mandatory read for leaders hoping to survive in the new world of business.” — Clayton Christensen, Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; author, Wall Street Journal and >Businessweek bestseller The Innovator’s Dilemma“Competing in the Age of AI captures the essence of trends we’re seeing across the business landscape: If you’re not leveraging AI and machine learning to guide real-time decision making, you’re on the precipice of disruption from competitors who are.” — Dave Munichiello, General Partner, GV (formerly Google Ventures)“The ethical and business implications of AI are gradually revealing themselves as more and more AIs are plucked from research labs and deployed in the wild. Iansiti and Lakhani’s book is a great foundation for any business professional who hopes to succeed in this evolving environment.” — Tim Brady, Partner, Y Combinator“This book provides insight into working more effectively with AI experts and better equips executives to make important decisions in their AI journeys.” — Abidali Neemuchwala, CEO and Managing Director, Wipro Limited“Competing in the Age of AI provides a road map to some of today’s most important business changes driven by technological advances.” — Heidi Keefe, Partner, Cooley LLP“Competing in the Age of AI is important reading for entrepreneurs, investors, and leaders of all companies who hope to maintain and accelerate technological leadership.” — Jim Breyer, founder and CEO, Breyer Capital; former Member of the Board, Facebook and Walmart“Iansiti and Lakhani do a terrific job of avoiding buzzword pitfalls and focusing on practical advice on what AI can, and cannot, do to augment any business’s competitive strategy.” — Matthew Prince, cofounder and CEO, Cloudflare Read more About the Author Marco Iansiti, the David Sarnoff Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, also heads the school’s Technology and Operations Management Unit and the Digital Initiative. Iansiti is an expert on digital innovation, with a special focus on strategy and business and operating model transformation. He advises Global 1000 companies on digital strategy and transformation and has conducted research on a variety of organizations, including Microsoft, Facebook, IBM, Amazon, Alibaba, and Google, among many others. He is the author of several books, including, with Roy Levien, The Keystone Advantage: What the New Dynamics of Business Ecosystems Mean for Strategy, Innovation, and Sustainability and One Strategy: Organization, Planning, and Decision Making, with Steven Sinofsky. He has authored more than 100 articles, cases, and notes, including “The Ecology of Strategy” (with Roy Levien) and “Digital Ubiquity,” “Managing Our Hub Economy,” and “The Truth About Blockchain” (with Karim Lakhani). Each was published in Harvard Business Review and selected as one of the top ten articles of the year.Karim R. Lakhani is the Charles E. Wilson Professor of Business Administration and the Dorothy and Michael Hintze Fellow at Harvard Business School. He is the founder and codirector of the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard, the principal investigator of the NASA Tournament Laboratory at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and the faculty cofounder of the Digital Initiative at HBS. He is also Chair of the Harvard Business Analytics Program. He specializes in technology management and innovation. He is a coeditor of the books Revolutionizing Innovation: Users, Communities, and Open Innovation and Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software and the author of over 100 articles and case studies on the emerging digital economy and the changing nature of work and companies. His research has been featured in BusinessWeek, the Boston Globe, the Economist, Fast Company, Inc. magazine, the New York Times, the New York Academy of Sciences Magazine, Science, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Wired.You can visit the authors at:Ageof.AIMarco Iansiti: twitter.com/marcoiansiti, linkedin.com/in/marcoiansiti/Karim R. Lakhani: twitter.com/klakhani, linkedin.com/in/ProfessorKL/ Read more Customers Review: Karim and Marco persuasively argue that everything is different in the age of AI. Fortunately, they also provide beautiful roadmaps for how to navigate and thrive in this new world. For everyone contemplating how to optimize machine learning, this is a must read. | |
[PDF] Download The Passion Economy: The New Rules for Thriving in the Twenty-First Century by Adam Davidson | Free EBOOK PDF English
 | Book Details Title: The Passion Economy: The New Rules for Thriving in the Twenty-First Century |
Book DescriptionReview “Adam Davidson is a master storyteller. . . An engaging mix of Michael Lewis-style reporting and a Shark Tank-like focus on how to succeed in business, [The Passion Economy is] an upbeat spin on what’s ahead for us in the new, gig-and-hustle environment.”—Deanna Isaacs, Chicago Reader“Exuberant. . . With his distinctive voice Davidson winningly blends case studies of fervent, enthusiastic believers – creators of amazing ice cream, expensive pencils, menswear – with a set of counterintuitive rules so that work lives and our deepest passions can merge to make people better off financially, and personally.”—National Book Review “Davidson’s case studies are excellent, but the heart of the book is a set of rules worthy of committing to memory. . . Fine inspiration for entrepreneurs that should be required reading in any business school curriculum.”—Kirkus (starred review)“[Davidson’s] anecdotes are captivating with shrewd lessons on management, marketing, and strategy. . . Readers with a start-up yen will find useful and inspiring insights here.”—Publishers Weekly“The Passion Economy is exactly what everyone needs today: examples of how to thrive in an economy that can seem overwhelming, and crystal-clear explanations of how to succeed. The book is an enormously fun, exciting adventure story that takes us from the wineries of Napa to the laboratories of Google to far-off chocolate makers. This is the book about how to live (and work) a more passionate life.”—Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better “Adam Davidson is one of America’s most accomplished business journalists — and this book reminds us why. With a reporter’s eye and a storyteller’s grace, he has traveled the country to find regular people who have cracked the code of the modern economy. Reading their stories will reveal the secrets of successful careers. It might even restore your faith in the American Dream.”—Daniel H. Pink, author of When and Drive “Move over Malcolm Gladwell. In The Passion Economy Adam Davidson upends the conventional thinking about how to succeed in our topsy-turvy, seemingly unforgiving post-industrial economy by sharing the stories of regular people who followed their dreams. You won’t soon forget the wisdom Davidson conveys in these pages.”—William D. Cohan, author of House of Cards“I love Adam Davidson’s book. This is the golden moment for the marriage of passion and excellence, a time for optimism, not pessimism. The opportunity to create great businesses you love and which your customers come to love lies around every corner. The heart of every economy is small enterprise, not large. We have waited a long time for this book, and brother does it deliver. Bravo!” —Tom Peters, author of The Excellence Dividend Read more About the Author ADAM DAVIDSON is the cofounder of NPR’s Planet Money podcast and a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he covers economics and business. Previously he was an economics writer for The New York Times Magazine. He has won many of journalism’s most prestigious awards, including a Peabody for his coverage of the financial crisis. Read more Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. When I think about the change in the economy, the change that has shifted the United States and most of the rest of the world from one sort of economic system to an entirely different one, I think about my dad and my grandfather and how hard it was for them to understand each other. My father’s father, Stanley, was born in 1917 and died a century later, still a tall, proud man with a thick head of hair that was naturally black until his last decade. Stanley looked to me like Superman: strong chin, chest pushed forward, posture erect. He didn’t have time for frivolity. He was a serious man who did serious work. With his young grandchildren, he had a routine: a firm handshake followed by a gift of a twenty-dollar bill and some vague homily about doing good work, after which we were dismissed. I cannot remember ever speaking to him when I was young; I only recall smiling, shaking hands, and rushing off. When I became an adult and, to his surprise and mine, a reporter covering economics, I was able to talk with him about the one topic he truly loved: business. My dad (also named Stanley, though he has always gone by his middle name, Jack) could not be more different. He is an actor who, for as long as I can remember, has told me that the most wonderful part of his profession is that you remain child- like your entire life. As I write this, my dad is eighty-three and has maintained an imaginative, exuberant view of the world. He is riveted by children and loves to hear every word my young son says, after which he calls out, “Did you hear that? He made up an amazing story!” My dad has always been fascinated by pretty much everything—science, the news, art, history, sports. There is only one subject he has always found unbearably boring, perhaps a bit evil, and entirely unworthy of discussion: business. In a sense, this book is a reconciliation of the conflict between these two Stanleys, these two men who lived in the same country at the same time but might as well have been on entirely different planets. For most of the twentieth century, the overwhelming majority of men and women were forced to make a choice when it came to work: follow the money or follow their passion; become like my grandfather or become like my dad. But now, more than ever before, business and art, profit and passion, are linked. They have come together in a way that would have made no sense to either of the Stanleys in the past. To illuminate the transition, I describe and celebrate in this book, let me tell you more about my grandfather, since he is a pretty representative stand-in for the entire twentieth- century economy. Stanley Jacob Davidson, Sr., was born in New England to young parents who were cut off from their own families. His father was a Jewish immigrant whose parents had disowned him—even practiced mourning rituals as if he had died—when he impregnated and then married a Christian dance-hall girl. The dance-hall girl was, herself, alienated from her family—a rough clan barely eking out a living in a remote corner of Maine. The new broke and broken family in Worcester, Massachusetts, faced unending crises, culminating in Stanley’s father’s death of tuberculosis when my grandfather was only five. His mother, overwhelmed, put Stanley and his brother in an orphanage for much of a year before taking them out again with the provision that, even as grade schoolers, they would need to work and bring money to the family. Decades later, Stanley was still prouder of his childhood business (he bought hens, built an incubator, and sold eggs to neighbors) than of anything else he would go on to accomplish in his life. Before he was twenty, while the Great Depression was ravaging the country’s economy, Stanley was married with a young son (my dad), soon to be followed by three more children. He was lucky to get a factory job that paid sixteen dollars a week. The factory made external grinders: large machines that spin two parallel cylinders of metal, coated with an abrasive, sandpaper-like surface. The cylinders could grind a metal cube into a perfectly smooth sphere in seconds. This is how ball bearings are made. It was brutal, dangerous work. This was the era of big men in blue overalls working in hot factories dodging sparks, their bodies covered in a mix of sweat and grease. For those who worked alongside Stanley, the tiny particles of metal dust made coughing and sneezing a sharp, painful, often bloody agony. But overall, the ball bearing business was good for Stanley, especially with the start of World War II. “You can’t fight a war without ball bearings,” Stanley used to say. And it’s true. Every moving piece on every war machine—the tires, the guns, the gun turrets, the tank treads, the tank rifles—moves because it has ball bearings at its joints. Stanley worked two shifts a day, often six days a week. The postwar economic boom was even better for the ball bearing business and for Stanley. America had a lot of building to do—the interstate highway system; suburbs filled with houses, roads, and sewers; cities that grew much bigger; factories getting larger and more efficient—and every bit of building required ball bearings. They were in the wheels and gears of tractors and cranes and the machinery inside the factories and in the elevators and escalators in those tall buildings. Stanley worked hard and was promoted, again and again, and eventually ran the factory. He was smart and good at strategic thinking. But his core management ability was that he was tough. He saw a factory floor as a machine and each man (it was almost entirely men) as a cog in that machinery. They could be annoying cogs, always complaining about this or that, but a strong manager knew how to shut their complaining down and get them back to work. Did Stanley love ball bearings? Did he have a particular passion about them? No, he most certainly did not. He got the job because his father-in-law knew a guy, and he stayed in the job because that’s what you did when you had a job: you stayed and tried to get promoted. He retired after fifty-four years, having worked at the same company his entire adult life. Every moment of his life reinforced the same lesson: hard work is how people take care of their loved ones, how countries stay free, how life improves for everybody. Stop working, even for a moment, and everything will fall apart. He worked. His wife took care of the kids. And those kids barely knew the man who was rarely at home and, when there, was often angry and impatient. My dad says he had no idea what Stanley did for a living, only that whatever it was seemed awful. From an early age, my dad had passions. He loved telling stories; he loved making people laugh; he loved daydreaming about a life much more fun and expansive than the grim, plodding one of his father. In the Worcester of the 1940s, a boy like Jack—a bright but indifferent student who cracked jokes and hung out with friends instead of working—could be assessed only one way: he was trouble. He would either be tamed or become a lifelong loser: broke, drunk, maybe in prison. My father internalized this view. He drank and smoked and got into fights and was suspended a dozen times before the principal expelled him. When Stanley learned of the expulsion, he told my dad that he could no longer live at home. He washed his hands of him. My dad was on his own, working at a shoe factory, at sixteen. It was miserably boring work, nailing heels onto shoes one after the other, all day long. He can remember saying to himself, “My life is over. Already.” His father, it seemed, had been right. Men who follow their passions go nowhere. My dad certainly couldn’t think of any grown man he had met who had successfully built a life of fun and personal expression. That was for wealthy people and drunks. Over the next several years, my dad had a series of unlikely experiences that led to precisely the life he wanted. He joined the marines, thinking it would transform him into the man his father wanted him to be. After his discharge, he managed to get into the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He didn’t do well and was about to flunk out when a friend asked for a favor. The friend was putting on a play in the school’s theater department, and one of the actors had pulled out at the last minute. Could Jack, please, fill in? It was an easy role: my dad just needed to act like he was drunk and lurch across the stage. His first step in front of the curtain drew a huge laugh from the audience, and that was that. My dad had found his life’s work. He would be an actor. He had never met a professional actor. He had never seen a play. But he transferred to Boston University and entered the theater school. For Stanley, the announcement of this career was absurd, enraging. Why not be a butterfly chaser or a unicorn rider? An actor? You’re going to pretend that you are someone else for a living? You’re going to play dress-up as a job? That is not what a man does. A man works, for money, and then uses that money to pay for a home for his wife and children. Who ever told you work was supposed to be fun? Who is going to pay you? Actors make no money. They don’t get regular paychecks. They are not men. My dad nonetheless pursued his dream and has been a working actor for almost sixty years. We were never rich, and there were some worrisome months here and there, but for the most part, he made enough of a living to raise two children in New York City. We understood—because he told us all the time—that he had made a conscious choice to pursue his passion, his dream, instead of pursuing money. And he would say he did that to be a good father, to be a model for his children, to show them that they, too, could pursue their passions and their dreams, even if they were never going to get rich or, at times, maintain financial stability at all. We lived in Westbeth Artists Housing, a building in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. It was created in 1970, the year of my birth, by a group of philanthropists and the federal government to offer subsidized housing for artists. It’s still there—my dad lives in the same apartment I grew up in—and houses about one thousand people: painters and dancers and poets and musicians and actors, other artists and their families who pay rent far below the market rate. It is a special place, a community of people doing, roughly, the very opposite of what Stanley believed was right. When I began my adult life in the 1990s, I believed the stories the two Stanleys told. I believed that I had a choice to make: money or passion, financial comfort or fulfillment. It made sense. That was the economic reality of the previous hundred years and a message I had received over and over. I wanted to be a playwright, but I also wanted more financial stability than that life could offer. So I took what felt like a middle-ground job: I became a journalist. I could write and learn, travel and explore. But I could also get a paycheck and have a retirement account and all those sensible things. Growing up in artists’ housing in the 1970s, I had heard from grown-ups that every- thing is worthy of exploration—sex and drugs and personal expression. There was only one area of inquiry to be avoided: money. Money was the opposite of art, the opposite of passion. So I rebelled in, perhaps, the only way I could. I became an economics reporter, covering business, finance, markets, and other forbidden topics. As I learned how the economy works, I came to under- stand the world of my Stanleys with even more rigor. There is a clear economic logic to the twentieth-century triumph of ball bearings over acting. Ball bearings are a fundamental product, necessary for almost all other economic activity. They don’t require passion or invention. A ball bearing in 1999 had the same essential function as a ball bearing in 1919. The difference was that companies had gotten better at making more of them more quickly and cheaply and reliably. That was the heart of my grandfather’s career: removing inefficiencies so that the same thing could be made more cheaply and overseeing research and development so that the products became ever so slightly better each year. That was, in fact, the heart of the twentieth-century economy. Economists call it production-side growth, which means that most companies, most of the time, made their profit by cutting the cost of production. This efficiency extended to the ways our economic goods spread around the country and the world. At the beginning of the twentieth century, most markets were local; most people bought things made nearby. But with the expansion of rail and then the highway system and then commercial air travel and the hyper efficiency of containerized shipping, markets became national and, eventually, global. Increasing trade across state and then national boundaries meant that one ball bearing maker could sell ball bearings all over the world and would have to compete with other ball bearing makers all over the world, so everybody worked even harder to become even more efficient at making the same thing more quickly and cheaply. If a worker proved an ability to do this routine work and to spot inefficiencies and get rid of them, that worker would make a better living. That’s what my grandfather did. The widget economy excluded people like my dad. A factory can’t be efficient if each worker is pursuing a distinct passionate view of how best to work. The economic logic fed our culture and our educational system. People who followed the rules and accommodated the needs of a large organization thrived; those who didn’t, failed. Of course, there have always been passionate outsiders like my dad. A few of them did remarkably well. Bob Dylan, Diana Ross, Marlon Brando, and Joan Rivers, for instance, were able to pursue their own passions, be unrelentingly themselves, and still thrive economically. But, tellingly, they succeeded through a very widgetized distribution system. The music and television industries had a lot in common with ball bearings. They transformed creative work into mass production, distributing the work to as many people as possible at the lowest production cost. Most creative, passion-fueled people lived lives roughly equivalent to my dad’s. He spent most of his career on the stage, performing roles in relatively small theaters off-Broadway or at various regional stage companies around the country. It is a rough way to make a living, traveling from job to job, going to auditions, getting rejected, hoping a casting person says yes. Even when you get work, it doesn’t pay a lot. Live theater isn’t scalable in the way that a television show is. Performing on a stage in front of real people is intimate, personal, and, at its best, incredibly passionate. But it can reach only those physically present. (His income was sporadic, although there were enough big paydays from movies, commercials, and the occasional Broadway show or guest spot on a television program that, as I said earlier, we never suffered. Still, he was an exception. Few of the actors he started with are acting today. When he went to the fifty-year reunion for the Boston University School of Theatre class of 1963, he learned he was the only graduate there still making his living from acting.) My father and his father had an uneasy relationship for most of my life. Each man looked at the other with pity and disappointment, and they rarely spoke or spent time together. I became a bit of a translator. I understood both worlds— business and art, responsibility and passion—well enough that I could talk with both men and feel proud of both of them, even if they had succeeded in such radically different ways. But they never really understood each other. How could they? Now the era of the warring Stanleys is over. That is what this book is about. Our economy can no longer be described with the simple binary of the twentieth century, where on one side is money, stability, and routinization and on the other is passion, personal expression, and financial uncertainty. The two Stanleys are now one. To succeed financially we must embrace our unique passions. We have to pay close attention to those interests and abilities that make each of us different. Becoming diligent about doing the same thing in the same way as others is the surest path to financial mediocrity or even ruin. That does not mean that this is now the era of my dad, where self- expression is sufficient for a successful career. We need a fair bit of my grandfather’s business sense, too. Simply pursuing one’s passion is not enough. We must pay close attention to the marketplace, seeking out novel ways to match our particular set of passions with those people who most value them. At the core of this book are stories of people who have figured this out and have been able to model an entirely new way of living, one that combines the financial goal of my grandfather’s work with the personal passion and joy of my dad’s. Read more Customers Review: A business/economics journalist, Adam Davidson does a lot of speaking and a lot of writing, but this seems to be his first book. He is the founding cohost of NPR’s Planet Money podcast. He also apparently gives paid speeches and writes for the New Yorker magazine. He’s got enough cachet that Charles Duhigg, Daniel H. Pink and Tom Peters all blurbed his book, and those are pretty good blurbers. And I heard him interviewed today on NPR’s Here and Now where he could describe and plug his book.Adam Davidson’s basic idea is that many of us can find a niche in today’s economy where we can profit from our passion. Unlike a few decades ago, we aren’t limited to an industrial economy of scale where we are just fungible cogs in a giant corporate wheel. Instead we can take advantage of human-scale opportunities where we offer more crafted products or services at a premium price to a discriminating clientele.It’s a good idea, optimistic and inspiring, and Adam Davidson has found plenty of examples to back up his idea. The stories he tells about those exemplary people are compelling. But his approach is a lot like that of Malcolm Gladwell (though his writing style is rather different). That is, he gives his thesis, tells his stories, and thinks the latter adequately support the former. But they don’t.That’s the trouble with stories. You can find stories to support almost any idea. It’s like the stump speeches we hear political candidates give. They will tell stories about voters they talked to who had exactly the problem that the candidate has the perfect solution to. That’s all very fine, but any candidate can find and tell those stories. The stories seem to mean something, but they don’t.If you like to read stories and don’t care much about learning new things and applying them to your life, this book is good for that. Plenty of good stories, told well. It’s a quick and easy read, and I’m glad I read it. I agree with the basic idea — I think the modern economy does give us more of a chance to build a unique career path where we can make money doing things we think are important.Still, that’s a very hard thing to do. Ideas like this one are easy in the abstract but hard in the real world. It’s always that way. Ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s execution that is rare. Getting inspiration from a book like this seems valuable, but what happens when you try to find your niche and you spend all your money and time and find nothing but failure instead? What then?Again, I think of political candidates. Elizabeth Warren, for example, likes to tout her plans. An issue comes up, and “I’ve got a plan for that”, she says. But so what? As boxer Mike Tyson said, “everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the face”. Plans never work — you can’t live your life according to plan. As John Lennon sang, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” (though John Lennon took the quote from someone else).So this book might inspire you to follow your passion and get you going, but when the going gets rough, this book will be little help. The book gives some practical guidance, but the rules are general and amorphous. Like set your prices high. Find a low-competition, high-margin niche market (that rarest of beasts!). Fire bad customers as well as find new ones.Not that that advice is that bad, but for entrepreneurs the main foe to fight is failure. Most new ventures fail. Learning how to overcome difficulties and how to pivot to avoid pitfalls are the best lessons to learn. But nobody wants to read or write stories about failure. Too depressing.Trouble is, reading success stories and rules that blaze a path to success generates unwarranted optimism. This is harder than it looks. Much harder. However strong your passion. | |
[PDF] Download Conflagration: How the Transcendentalists Sparked the American Struggle for Racial, Gender, and Social Justice by John A. Buehrens | Free EBOOK PDF English
 | Book Details Title: Conflagration: How the Transcendentalists Sparked the American Struggle for Racial, Gender, and Social Justice |
Book DescriptionReview “A clear, vibrant picture of the varieties of heroism that appear in battles for human rights.”—Kirkus Reviews“An . . . engaging narrative. Buehrens’s take on Transcendental activism will appeal to scholars interested in exploring antebellum social justice concerns.”—Publishers Weekly“A well-written introduction to the Transcendentalists and a complement to Philip Gura’s more idea-driven American Transcendentalism.”—Library Journal“The book is a historic-biography which also serves as welcome primer on ‘how to become more self-transcendent in these difficult times.’”—The Boston Globe“Buehrens skillfully traces the relationships between the Transcendentalists and other leading activists of the nineteenth century, demonstrating how vital these relationships were in shaping not only the individuals involved but entire reform movements. Conflagration provides one of the most extensive portraits of the Transcendentalists to date and helps explain why they continue to fascinate and inspire us.”—Nicole C. Kirk, Frank and Alice Schulman Professor of Unitarian Universalist History at Meadville Lombard Theological School“Conflagration is brightly written, deftly organized, and strikingly well-informed narrative history. Where many, perhaps most, accounts of the Transcendentalists center on Concord, and on ideas and personal lives and on writing, Buehrens’s focus is sharply on the larger world of Boston and on ‘fervent activists and their work.’ His grasp of narrative is sure, his stories very readable indeed, and he aims not just for the scholars and specialists but for the general reader. Anyone dismayed by America’s current problems can take heart from this passionate examination of some of our better angels.”—Robert D. Richardson, author of Emerson: The Mind on Fire“Transcendentalism was more than Concord! While Thoreau meditated at Walden and Emerson lectured at the lyceum, their spiritual friends fought slavery, created communes, empowered women, and imagined new forms of religious community. The spiritual friendships forged in the early gatherings of the Transcendentalist Club allowed the movement to ripple outward, transforming their own time and our own. Now John Buehrens has told many forgotten Transcendentalist stories in one of the most wide-ranging histories of the movement ever written. Buehrens places Boston’s Church of the Disciples and its pastor, James Freeman Clarke, at the center of his multifaceted story. These ‘Disciples,’ among them women’s rights champion Julia Ward Howe and the Republican politician John Andrew, built bridges between Christian liturgy and post-Christian mysticism, between armed resistance to slavery and the political establishment, and between Boston and the nation. Their legacy challenges us to transform both our understanding of Transcendentalism and our own lives.”—Dan McKanan, author of Prophetic Encounters: Religion and the American Radical Tradition“Conflagration is a fresh and stimulating history of Transcendentalism, the radical religious and political movement that has remained enigmatic over the decades despite volumes of scholarly analysis. Rather than asking what Transcendentalism means, John Buehrens asks instead what did the Transcendentalists do? They led a dramatic shift of the course of American history, he answers, toward an ethos of world-inclusive spirituality and egalitarian social reform. His biographical perspective and his eye for the shared sympathies circulating among Transcendentalist adherents enlarge and enliven our understanding of the movement’s legacy. Conflagration is the book that makes it clear that Transcendentalism was indeed a movement. Its dedication to justice, comprehensive knowledge, and universal compassion are values that now seem of critical importance.”—David M. Robinson, author of Natural Life: Thoreau’s Worldly Transcendentalism Read more About the Author John Buehrens was the president of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations from 1993 to 2001. His previous books include Understanding the Bible: An Introduction for Skeptics, Seekers, and Religious Liberals; with Forrest Church, A Chosen Faith: An Introduction to Unitarian Universalism; and with Rebecca Ann Parker, A House for Hope: The Promise of Progressive Religion for the Twenty-first Century. Read more Customers Review: The history of the Transcendentalist movement in the 19th century lead up to the Civil War is not generally known but is essential to understand the human rights movements of today.I strongly recommend this wonderful book for both history buffs and those who truly want to understand why we have many of our rights today.
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[PDF] Download Absolute Death by Neil Gaiman | Free EBOOK PDF English
 | Book Details Title: Absolute Death |
Book DescriptionAbout the Author Neil Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling author of the Newbery Medal-winning The Graveyard Book and Coraline, the basis for the hit movie. His other books include Anansi Boys, Neverwhere, American Gods, and Stardust, (winner of the American Library Association’s Alex Award as one of 2000’s top novels for young adults) as well as the short story collections M Is for Magic and Smoke and Mirrors. He is also the author of The Wolves in the Walls and The Day I Traded My Dad for Two Goldfish, both written for children. Among his many awards are the Eisner, the Hugo, the Nebula, the World Fantasy, and the Bram Stoker. Originally from England, he now lives in the United States.Chris Bachalo is an artist whose body of comic book work covers a wide spectrum of genres; ranging from fantasy and science fiction to super hero and action-adventure. His work for DC Comics includes stints on the critically acclaimed Sandman series, Death: The High Cost of Living, and Shade: The Changing Man for DC’s Vertigo imprint as well as the creator-owned projects The Witching Hour, with co-creator Jeph Loeb, and Steampunk, with co-creator Joe Kelly. His other comic book work includes among others Wolverine & the X-Men, Captain America, and the quirky Generation X, which he co-created with Scott Lobdell for Marvel Comics. In addition to his comics work, Chris has provided artwork for publications such as MAD Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, and Playstation Magazine, and for companies such as Activision, EA Games and Def Jam Records. Chris is a Canadian citizen and was born in Portage La Prairie, Canada. He currently resides in Southern California with his wife, Helen, his son, Dylan, and his Siamese fighting fish, Spike Four.Born in 1966 in the English seaside town of Clevedon, Mark Buckingham has worked in comics professionally for the past twenty years. In addition to illustrating all of Neil Gaiman’s run on the post-Alan Moore Miracleman in the early 1990s, Buckingham contributed inks to The Sandman and its related miniseries Death: The High Cost of Living and Death: The Time of Your Life as well as working on various other titles for Vertigo and Marvel through the end of the decade. In 2002 he took over as the penciller for Bill Willingham’s Fables, which has gone on to become one of the most popular and critically acclaimed Vertigo titles of the new millennium. When not in Clevedon, Buckingham can be found with his wife Irma in the Asturias region of northern Spain. Read more Customers Review: A gorgeous presentation. Makes a perfect companion to my ABSOLUTE SANDMAN collection. | |
[PDF] Download 5-Minute Easter Stories (5-Minute Stories) by Disney Book Group,Disney Storybook Art Team | Free EBOOK PDF English
 | Book Details Title: 5-Minute Easter Stories (5-Minute Stories) |
Book Descriptionp.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px ‘Helvetica Neue’; color: #454545}Each of the twelve stories in this collection is the perfect length for reading aloud in about five minutes, making them perfect for jam-packed days. This treasury stars beloved characters from the Disney Bunnies and Winnie the Pooh to Monsters, Inc. and Cinderella. With stories about spring-time fun or Easter Egg hunts, every story is a delight, perfect before bedtime, story time, or anytime! Customers Review:We love these 5 minute collections. You can see from my pictures what stories are included and what the copyright dates are. This collection looks like a mix of already published and brand new stories. It includes stories including Snow White, Cinderella, and Frozen, among others. Perfect for bedtime! | |