The official study text for the Level I Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) examThe Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA)... designation is the financial industry's first and only globally recognized program that prepares professionals to deal with the ever-growing field of alternative investments. The second edition of CAIA Level I: An Introduction to Core Topics in Alternative Investments contains comprehensive insights on the alternative investment issues a potential Level I candidate would need to know about as they prepare for the exam.The information found here will help you build a solid foundation in alternative investment markets—with coverage of everything from the characteristics of various strategies within each alternative asset class to portfolio management concepts central to alternative investments.Uses investment analytics to examine each alternative asset classExamines quantitative techniques used by investment professionalsAddresses the unique attributes associated with the alternative investment spaceOffers an online study guide outlining learning objectives and keywordsThis book is a must-have resource for anyone contemplating taking the CAIA Level I exam. So if you're ready to take your first step toward the CAIA charter, take the time to understand the insights offered here.

“Suitably disturbing—and a pleasure to read.” — The ScotsmanIn this, his last novel, José Saramago daringly reimagines the characters and... narratives of the Old Testament, recalling his provocative The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. His tale runs from the Garden of Eden, when God realizes he has forgotten to give Adam and Eve the gift of speech, to the moment when Noah’s Ark lands on the dry peak of Ararat. Cain, the despised, the murderer, is Saramago’s protagonist. Condemned to wander forever after he kills his brother Abel, Cain makes his way through the world in the company of a personable donkey. He is a witness to and participant in the stories of Isaac and Abraham, the destruction of the Tower of Babel, Moses and the golden calf, the trials of Job. The rapacious Queen Lilith takes him as her lover. An old man with two sheep on a rope crosses his path. And again and again, Cain encounters a God whose actions seem callous, cruel, and unjust. He confronts Him, he argues with Him. “And one thing we know for certain,” Saramago writes, “is that they continued to argue and are arguing still.” A startling book—sensual, funny—in all ways a fitting end to Saramago’s extraordinary career.

Formerly known as America's bloodiest prison, the 18,000 acres that comprise Louisiana's Angola State Penitentiary are now home to 5,000 inmates, a... full range of seasonal crops, a 9-hole golf course, yearly rodeos, a Bible seminary, a museum, and much more. All of this came into being at the behest of Warden Burl Cain, who is now the longest-standing warden in the history of Angola prison. Under his leadership, the inmate population of 5,000 has gone from regular knife fights to Bible studies. Cain is a strong believer in the ability of the gospel to turn the most incorrigible of sinners into productive, moral citizens. Because eight out of ten prisoners are serving life sentences without parole at Angola, Cain has taken upon himself the task of making the lives of these prisoners productive and educational. Through a partnership with New Orleans Baptist Seminary, prisoners have the opportunity to get a bible degree and even be transferred to other prisons as a missionary. The Angola phenomenon has been covered by such media outlets as Time Magazine, Christianity Today, and in the award-winning film documentary, The Farm: Angola, USA. Author Dennis Shere combines his background in journalism and law to bring readers this account of redemption and life change in the most unlikely of places: a maximum security prison.

This cross-disciplinary, ethnographic, contextualized, and empirical volume explores the meaning and significance of urban space, and maps the spatial... inscription of power on the mega-city of Cairo. Suspicious of collective life and averse to power-sharing, Egyptian governance structures weaken but do not stop the public's role in the remaking of their city. What happens to a city where neo-liberalism has scaled back public services and encouraged the privatization of public goods, while the vast majority cannot afford the effects of such policies? Who wins and loses in the march to the modern and the global as the government transforms urban spaces and markets in the name of growth, security, tourism, and modernity? How do Cairenes struggle with an ambiguous and vulnerable legal and bureaucratic environment when legality is a privilege affordable only to the few or the connected? This companion volume to Cairo Cosmopolitan (2006) further develops the central insights of the Cairo School of Urban Studies. Contributors: Khaled Adham, Jennifer Bell, Agnes Deboulet, Taline Djerdjerian, W. J. Dorman, Benedicte Florin, Joerg Gertel, Katarzyna Grabska, Patrick Haenni, Mozn Hassan, Samia Mehrez, Sarah Ben Nefissa, Agnieszka Paczynska, Samuli Schielke, Mulki Al-Sharmani, Diane Singerman, Hania Sobhy, and Malika Zeghal. Contents: Introduction 'Contesting Myths, Critiquing Cosmopolitanism, and Creating the Cairo School of Urban Studies' by Diane Singerman and Paul Amar Cairo: The City Cosmopolitan Cairo Consumer and Investor Geographies Cairo Heritage and Touristic Globalization Cairo Subcultures and Media Contestation Cairo Celebratory Spaces and Vernacular World-Crossing Afterword Whose Cairo?

The novelist's camera pans from the dome of King Fuad University (now Cairo University) to students streaming out of the campus, focusing on four... students in their twenties, each representing a different trend in Egypt in the 1930s. Finally the camera comes to rest on Mahgub Abd al-Da'im. A scamp, he fancies himself a nihilist, a hedonist, an egotist, but his personal vulnerability is soon revealed by a family crisis back home in al-Qanatir, a dusty, provincial town on the Nile that is also a popular destination for Cairene day-trippers. Mahgub, like many characters in works by Naguib Mahfouz, has a hard time finding the correct setting on his ambition gauge. His emotional life also fluctuates between the extremes of a street girl, who makes her living gathering cigarette butts, and his wealthy cousin Tahiya. Since he thinks that virtue is merely a social construct, how far will our would-be nihilist go in trying to fulfill his unbridled ambitions? What if he discovers that high society is more corrupt and cynical than he is? With a wink back at Goethe's Faust and Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews, Mahgub becomes a willing collaborator in his own corruption. Published in Arabic in the 1940s, this cautionary morality tale about self-defeating egoism and ill-digested foreign philosophies comes from the same period as one of the writer's best-known works, Midaq Alley. Both novels are comic and heart-felt indictments not so much of Egyptian society between the world wars as of human nature and our paltry attempts to establish just societies.

In Naguib Mahfouz's suspenseful novel a bitter and ambitious nihilist, a beautiful and impoverished student, and a corrupt official engage in a doomed... ménage à trois.Cairo of the 1930s is a place of vast social and economic inequities. It is also a time of change, when the universities have just opened to women and heady new philosophies imported from Europe are stirring up debates among the young. Mahgub is a fiercely proud student who is determined to keep both his poverty and his lack of principles secret from his idealistic friends. When he finds that there are no jobs for those without connections, out of desperation he agrees to participate in an elaborate deception. But what begins as a mere strategy for survival soon becomes much more for both Mahgub and his partner in crime, an equally desperate young woman named Ihsan. As they make their way through Cairo's lavish high society their precarious charade begins to unravel and the terrible price of Mahgub's Faustian bargain becomes clear. Translated by William M. Hutchins

Cajas de carton is the first title in the literary series Nuestra vision: U.S. Latino Literature, which features original works by Latino authors living... and working in the United States. This work is the Spanish version of the author's award-winning collection of stories, The Circuit. Jimenez' 12 independent but intertwined short stories chronicle the experiences of a Mexican-American family of migrant farm laborers, as narrated by one of the children, Panchito. Unlike many readers for this level, which anthologize standard works, this book presents authentic, outstanding literature and themes that are highly relevant to native Spanish speakers in the U.S.

Francisco Jiménez emigrated from Tlaquepaque, Mexico, to California, where he worked for many years in the fields with his family. He received both his... master’s degree and his Ph.D. from Columbia University and is now chairman of the Modern Languages and Literature Department at Santa Clara University, the setting of much of Reaching Out. He is the award-winning author of The Circuit, Breaking Through, La Mariposa, and his newest novel, Reaching Out. He lives in Santa Clara, California, with his family.

The virtual renaissance of all things Cajun and Creole has captivated enthusiasts throughout America and invigorated the culture back home. Who, just... fifteen years ago, could have predicted that this regional music would become so astonishingly popular throughout the nation and the world? This new edition of a book first published in 1984 celebrates the music makers in the generation most responsible for the survival of Cajun music and zydeco and showcases many of the young performers who have emerged since them to give the music new spark. More than 100 color photographs, show them in their homes, on their front porches, and in their fields, as well as in performance at local clubs and dance halls and on festival stages. In interviews they speak directly about their lives, their music, and the vital tradition from which their rollicking music springs. Many of the legendary performers featured here--Dewey Balfa, Clifton Chenier, Nathan Abshire, Dennis McGee, Canray Fontenot, Varise Connor, Octa Clark, Lula Landry, and Inez Catalon--are no longer alive. Others from the early days continue to perform--Bois-sec Ardoin, Michael Doucet, D. L. Menard, and Zachary Richard. Their grandeur, humor, and humility are precisely the qualities this book captures. Featured too are young musicians who are taking their place in the dance halls, on festival stages, and on the folk music circuit. Cajun and Creole music makers, both young and old, still play in the old ways, but as young musicians--such as Geno Delafose and the French Rockin' Boogie, and Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys-- experiment and enrich the tradition with new sounds of rock, country, rap, and funk, the music evolves and enlivens a whole new audience. Barry Jean Ancelet, a native French-speaking Cajun, is chair of the Department of Modern Languages and director of the Center for Acadian and Creole Folklore at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. Among his many books are Cajun Country and Cajun and Creole Folk Tales (both from the University Press of Mississippi). Elemore Morgan, Jr., is an artist and retired professor of visual art at University of Southwestern Louisiana.

Cajun Women and Mardi Gras is the first book to explore the importance of women's contributions  to the country Cajun Mardi Gras tradition, or Mardi... Gras “run.” Most Mardi Gras runs--masked begging processions through the countryside, led by unmasked capitaines--have customarily excluded women.  Male organizers explain that this rule protects not only the tradition’s integrity but also women themselves from the event’s rowdy, often drunken, play.  Throughout the last century, and especially in the last fifty years, women in some prairie communities have insisted on taking more active and public roles in the festivities. Carolyn E. Ware traces the history of women's participation as it has expanded from supportive roles as cooks and costume makers to increasingly public performances as Mardi Gras clowns and (in at least one community) capitaines. Drawing on more than a decade of fieldwork interviews and observation in Mardi Gras communities, Ware focuses on the festive actions in Tee Mamou and Basile to reveal how women are reshaping the celebration as creative artists and innovative performers. 

Cakes and Ale is a delicious satire of London literary society between the Wars. Social climber Alroy Kear is flattered when he is selected by Edward... Driffield's wife to pen the official biography of her lionized novelist husband, and determined to write a bestseller. But then Kear discovers the great novelist's voluptuous muse (and unlikely first wife), Rosie. The lively, loving heroine once gave Driffield enough material to last a lifetime, but now her memory casts an embarrissing shadow over his career and respectable image.  Wise, witty, deeply satisfying, Cakes and Ale is Maugham at his best.

The expert author provides a detailed treatment of the basic rules, principles, and issues in contracts. Topics covered include offer and acceptance,... parol evidence and interpretation, consideration, promissory estoppel, contracts under seal, capacity of parties, conditions, performance, and breach. The author also discusses damages, avoidance and reformation, third-party beneficiaries, assignments, and the statute of frauds. The discharge of contracts and illegal bargains are also the subject of separate chapters.

"Bernard MacLaverty's powerful novel is a love story as affecting and tragic as you could want."—USA TodayWhen it was first published, Bernard ... MacLaverty's fiction masterpiece was hailed by Michael Gorra in the New York Times Book Review as "a marvel of technical perfection. . . . Cal is a most moving novel whose emotional impact is grounded in a complete avoidance of sentimentality. . . . [It] will become the Passage to India of the Troubles."For Cal, a Belfast teenager who, against his will, is involved in the terrible war between Catholics and Protestants, some of the choices are devastatingly simple: he can work in the slaughterhouse that nauseates him or join the dole queue; he can brood on his past or plan a future with the beautiful, widowed Marcella for whose grief he shares more than a little responsibility.