12: The Elements of Great Managing is the long-awaited sequel to the 1999 runaway bestseller First, Break All the Rules. Grounded in Gallup's 10 million... employee and manager interviews spanning 114 countries, 12 follows great managers as they harness employee engagement to turn around a failing call center, save a struggling hotel, improve patient care in a hospital, maintain production through power outages, and successfully face a host of other challenges in settings around the world.Authors Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter weave the latest Gallup insights with recent discoveries in the fields of neuroscience, game theory, psychology, sociology, and economics. Written for managers and employees of companies large and small, 12 explains what every company needs to know about creating and sustaining employee engagement

Fascination with the end times is not just a recent phenomenon. The young church at Thessalonica, having taken root during Paul's brief stay there,... pondered when the end might come as well. Paul, in order to instruct them more fully, wrote them two letters, which taken together expound the "already-and-not-yet" character of the end times. His instruction and counsel can serve us well today. Throughout this commentary, G. K. Beale explains what each letter meant to its original hearers and its application for us today.

As 2012 looms with its promise of radical cultural and spiritual change, humankind is increasingly seeking strategies to survive and thrive. In 13... B’aktun, Gaspar Pedro González turns to the traditional Mayan belief system to navigate this uncertain future. The term 13 B’aktun refers to the thirteenth cycle of 144,000 days in the Mayan Long Count Calendar. Many scholars believe that this cycle is set to end on December 21, 2012. Framed as a fictional dialogue between a contemporary Mayan father and son, the book explores such questions as “Will life continue on Earth?” and “Will there be another creation at the end of this era?” The father imparts the knowledge of his ancestors and shares his direct mystical experiences that bring alive traditional beliefs about creation and the divine purpose of humanity, the Earth, and the universe. Through the father’s poetic words, the author helps us to critically reflect on our existence, the state of the modern world, and human destiny. In addition to ancient Mayan wisdom, 13 B’aktun incorporates the insights of modern philosophers, scientists, and religious texts concerning consciousness, human behavior, and predictions for the future. What unifies all of these sources is the message that despite our existing world dilemmas, there is still time to change our ways. The only book on 2012 by a Mayan author, 13 B’aktun draws on the storytelling experiences of the author’s childhood and his academic research as an adult. Countering the widespread hype and misinformation surrounding 2012, González blends past and present thought into a persuasive plan for moving into the new era.

In spite of its key role in creating the ruinous financial crisis of 2008, the American banking industry has grown bigger, more profitable, and more... resistant to regulation than ever. Anchored by six megabanks whose assets amount to more than 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, this oligarchy proved it could first hold the global economy hostage and then use its political muscle to fight off meaningful reform. 13 Bankers brilliantly charts the rise to power of the financial sector and forcefully argues that we must break up the big banks if we want to avoid future financial catastrophes.  Updated, with new analysis of the government’s recent attempt to reform the banking industry, this is a timely and expert account of our troubled political economy.

Even after the ruinous financial crisis of 2008, America is still beset by the depredations of an oligarchy that is now bigger, more profitable, and... more resistant to regulation than ever. Anchored by six megabanks—Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley—which together control assets amounting, astonishingly, to more than 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, these financial institutions (now more emphatically “too big to fail”) continue to hold the global economy hostage, threatening yet another financial meltdown with their excessive risk-taking and toxic “business as usual” practices. How did this come to be—and what is to be done? These are the central concerns of 13 Bankers, a brilliant, historically informed account of our troubled political economy. In 13 Bankers, Simon Johnson—one of the most prominent and frequently cited economists in America (former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT, and author of the controversial “The Quiet Coup” in The Atlantic)—and James Kwak give a wide-ranging, meticulous, and bracing account of recent U.S. financial history within the context of previous showdowns between American democracy and Big Finance: from Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson, from Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They convincingly show why our future is imperiled by the ideology of finance (finance is good, unregulated finance is better, unfettered finance run amok is best) and by Wall Street’s political control of government policy pertaining to it. As the authors insist, the choice that America faces is stark: whether Washington will accede to the vested interests of an unbridled financial sector that runs up profits in good years and dumps its losses on taxpayers in lean years, or reform through stringent regulation the banking system as first and foremost an engine of economic growth. To restore health and balance to our economy, Johnson and Kwak make a radical yet feasible and focused proposal: reconfigure the megabanks to be “small enough to fail.” Lucid, authoritative, crucial for its timeliness, 13 Bankers is certain to be one of the most discussed and debated books of 2010.

(Applause Books). Thirteen plays by the Oscar-winning author of Moonstruck . Includes: "The Big Funk," "Savage in Limbo," "Danny & The Deep Blue... Sea," "Welcome to the Moon," "The Red Coat," "Down & Out," "Let Us Go Out Into the Starry Night," "Out West," "A Lonely Impulse of Delight," "Women of Manhattan," "The Dreamer Examines His Pillow," "Italian-American Reconciliation," and "Beggars in the House of Plenty." Also includes an introduction by the author.

'Trollope did not write for posterity,' observed Henry James. 'He wrote for the day, the moment; but these are just the writers whom posterity is apt to... put into its pocket.' Considered by contemporary critics to be Trollope's greatest novel, The Way We Live Now is a satire of the literary world of London in the 1870s and a bold indictment of the new power of speculative finance in English life. 'I was instigated by what I conceived to be the commercial profligacy of the age,' Trollope said. His story concerns Augustus Melmotte, a French swindler and scoundrel, and his daughter, to whom Felix Carbury, adored son of the authoress Lady Carbury, is induced to propose marriage for the sake of securing a fortune. Trollope knew well the difficulties of dealing with editors, publishers, reviewers, and the public; his portrait of Lady Carbury, impetuous, unprincipled, and unswervingly devoted to her own self-promotion, is one of his finest satirical achievements. His picture of late-nineteenth-century England is a portrait of a society on the verge of moral bankruptcy. In The Way We Live Now Trollope combines his talents as a portraitist and his skills as a storyteller to give us life as it was lived more than a hundred years ago.

Inside little blue envelope 1 are $1,000 and instructions to buy a plane ticket. In envelope 2 are directions to a specific London flat. The note in... envelope 3 tells Ginny: Find a starving artist. Because of envelope 4, Ginny and a playwright/thief/ bloke–about–town called Keith go to Scotland together, with somewhat disastrous–though utterly romantic–results. But will she ever see him again? Everything about Ginny will change this summer, and it's all because of the 13 little blue envelopes. Ages 12+

"If thirteen is supposed to be an unlucky number...you would think a civilized society could come up with a way for us to skip it." -- from "What's... the Worst That Could Happen?" by Bruce Coville No one will want to skip any of the twelve short stories and one poem that make up this collection by some of the most celebrated contemporary writers of teen fiction. The big bar mitzvah that goes suddenly, wildly, hilariously out of control. A first kiss -- and a realization about one's sexual orientation. A crush on a girl that ends up putting the boy who likes her in the hospital. A pair of sneakers a kid has to have. By turns funny and sad, wrenching and poignant, the moments large and small described in these stories capture perfectly the agony and ecstasy of being thirteen.

Imagine "Dear Abby" is a guy. He's a survivor of student teaching. He's also the survivor of 20 years teaching in the public schools, the last 17 at... one of the premier alternative high schools in the country. As a graduate student he recently had the guidance of an expert supervisor of English teachers in training. Now, they've joined forces. The result: an indispensable handbook for those about to embark on their first experience teaching English. The book is a collection of real-life letters to veteran teacher Mike Rychlik along with his responses. His university mentor Pamela Carroll adds her own thoughts "From Another Angle" - substantial commentary that mixes educational theory with experience-based self-reflection. Their letters and commentary are grouped into 13 chapters, each covering a thematic aspect of teaching English, each incorporating the points of view of a student teacher, the classroom veteran, and the education professor. Dip into any chapter or read the book cover to cover as it addresses the very scenarios and situations student teachers yearn to explore, such as classroom management strategies tackles the specifics of teaching English (grammar, writing, literature, and more) discusses the broader topics of professionalism, testing, and grading aids further exploration of specific topics with annotated reading lists. Spirited, theoretically sound, and practical, 13 Ways of Looking at Student Teaching is the perfect primer for preservice and beginning teachers, for those involved in their preparation to teach, or for teaching veterans looking for inspiration.

With this brilliantly innovative book, Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker have shown that the Great War was the matrix on which all subsequent... disasters of the twentieth century were formed. Three elements of the conflict, all too often neglected or denied, are identified as those that must be grasped if we are to understand the war: First, what inspired its unprecedented physical brutality, and what were the effects of tolerating such violence? Second, how did citizens of the belligerent states come to be driven by vehement nationalistic and racist impulses? Third, how did the tens of millions bereaved by the war come to terms with the agonizing pain? With its strikingly original interpretative strength and its wealth of compelling documentary evidence drawn from all sides in the conflict, 14-18: Understanding the Great War has quickly established itself as a classic in the history of modern warfare.

On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China to "proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to collect tribute... from the barbarians beyond the seas." When the fleet returned home in October 1423, the emperor had fallen, leaving China in political and economic chaos. The great ships were left to rot at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost in the long, self-imposed isolation that followed was the knowledge that Chinese ships had reached America seventy years before Columbus and had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan. And they colonized America before the Europeans, transplanting the principal economic crops that have since fed and clothed the world.