[publisher: Actes Sud] 336pp. "Ch. b. à tt f. pour petit ménage, logée, sach. cuisiner. " Saffie a vingt ans. Elle est allemande. À peine arrivée... à Paris, elle répond à l'annonce du jeune musicien, Raphaël. Celui-là même qui lui ouvre la porte et qui reste médusé devant ces yeux de silence et cette présence-absence de la jeune femme. Amoureux, oui, déjà. Il lui propose le mariage quelques semaines plus tard. Elle accepte comme elle le fait de tout le reste: passivement. Son mutisme sec, pierreux, ne s'ébranle pas même à la naissance de leur fils. Il faut attendre LA rencontre, avec András, le luthier. Lui sait dialoguer avec le silence. En elle alors tombe la peur, comme une pluie; se lève l'amour, comme le soleil. et fond le secret. Nancy Huston aime ses personnages. C'est pour cela sans doute que dès les premières lignes, on s'y attache avec une telle force. Comme dans Trois fois septembre (1989) ou La Virevolte (1994), elle rend admirablement dans L'Empreinte de l'ange (Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle en 1998), et sans jamais juger, les passions, parfois dévastatrices, des êtres authentiques. -Laure Anciel poche Poche [paris, FR, France]

¿Qué es lo que hace a las compañías verdaderamente excepcionales distintas de las demás? Contestando éste y otros interrogantes, los autores... descubren los principios administrativos perdurables que siempre han distinguido a las compañías visionarias, desbaratan mitos, presentan nuevos conceptos y ofrecen una guía práctica para quienes buscan crear compañías de avanzada que resistan la prueba del tiempo.

Empresas que perduran, el libro definitorio de administración de los años 90, mostró cómo triunfan a la larga las grandes compañías y cómo se... preparan para producir resultados sostenidos. Pero, ¿qué pasa con las compañías que no tienen esa disposición innata? ¿Cómo pueden las compañías buenas, las mediocres, o aun las malas, alcanzar grandeza perdurable? Durante varios años estos interrogantes preocuparon a Jim Collins. ¿Hay en efecto compañías capaces de salirse de la norma y convertir la mediocridad en superioridad? Si es así, ¿qué es lo que las caracteriza? Valiéndose de rígidas normas de comparación, Collins y su equipo de investigadores identificaron un grupo de compañías que dieron el salto a grandes resultados y los sostuvieron por lo menos 15 años. Después del salto generaron rendimientos siete veces superiores al mercado bursátil general y el doble de un índice compuesto de las mayores compañías del mundo como Coca-Cola, Merck, Intel y General Electric. El equipo de investigación comparó las compañías que pasaron de buenas a sobresalientes con un grupo cuidadosamente seleccionado de compañías que no dieron el salto. ¿Qué distinguía las unas de las otras? ¿Por qué unas se volvieron grandes rendidoras mientras que otras no pasaron de ser buenas?

The Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) brought destruction to the Qing Dynasty, the last feudal dynasty in the long history of China. Written with... remarkable charm and verve, this book is a delightful exploration of the history of her extraordinary life and long reign, relating both historical facts and apocryphal anecdotes about her private affairs. How did she climb from the bottom rung of the ladder as an ordinary ambitious girl to the top rung of power as an empress dowager? How did she grow from an inexperienced girl to a mature politician who managed to maintain her sovereign status for 48 years? In all the history of China, only two women ever conquered and held the heights of power. Both enjoyed long reigns characterized by ruthless intrigue; they maintained an iron grip at the center while the vast country was torn by rebellions and caught up in foreign wars. Through their policy decisions as well as their personal foibles, both left a deep imprint in history and in the minds of the Chinese people, fueling literature and legend. Fighting to maintain her power base, Empress Cixi struggled with the need to modernize the painfully backward empire she had inherited while honoring age-old traditions. She studied previous rulers' failures and achievements, and especially followed the example of Wu-Hou, who had elevated herself from concubine to empress some 1200 years earlier, showing that a woman could be a successful ruler. The stories that follow, some legendary, offer a glimpse of life during the declining days of the last Chinese dynasty. Popular rebellions, foreign wars, devastating floods and drought-induced famines killed tens of millions in the 19th century. Cixi learned her lessons well. She fended off every adversary, prolonging her reign for 48 years. But all her craft and guile were not enough to repair the internal divisions and preserve traditional China against the onslaught of modernity, of Europe, and of her Asian neighbors.

Nicola Lancaster is spending her summer at the Siegel Institute, a hothouse of smart, intense teenagers. She soon falls in with Katrina (Manic Computer... Chick), Isaac (Nice-Guy-Despite-Himself), Kevin (Inarticulate Composer) . . . and Battle, a beautiful blond dancer. The two become friends--and then, startlingly, more than friends. What do you do when you think you're attracted to guys, and then you meet a girl who steals your heart? A trailblazing debut, reissued with an introduction by acclaimed author David Levithan, and copious back matter, including three graphic novel stories by Sara Ryan (and artists Steve Leiber, Dylan Meconis, and Natalie Nourigat) about the characters.

From a master of the historical novel, Empress Orchid sweeps readers into the heart of the Forbidden City to tell the fascinating story of a young... concubine who becomes China’s last empress. Min introduces the beautiful Tzu Hsi, known as Orchid, and weaves an epic of a country girl who seized power through seduction, murder, and endless intrigue. When China is threatened by enemies, she alone seems capable of holding the country together. In this “absorbing companion piece to her novel Becoming Madame Mao” (New York Times), readers and reading groups will once again be transported by Min’s lavish evocation of the Forbidden City in its last days of imperial glory and by her brilliant portrait of a flawed yet utterly compelling woman who survived, and ultimately dominated, a male world.

Emptiness tackles an oft-misunderstood topic in the Buddhist religion. Here, emptiness does not imply a nihilistic worldview but rather the idea that a... permanent entity doesn’t exist in any single phenomenon or being. Everything exists in dependence on an immeasurable quantity of causes and conditions. An understanding of emptiness allows us to see the world as a realm of infinite possibility, instead of a static system. Just like a table consists of wooden parts, and the wood is from a tree, and the tree depends on air, water, and soil, so is the world filled with a wondrous coexistence that extends to our own mind and awareness. In lucid, accessible language, Geshe Tashi Tsering guides the reader to the realization of this infinite possibility.

Described by Jeffrey Masson as 'the single best introduction to animal rights ever written,' this new book by Tom Regan will structure the animal rights... debate for generations to come. In a style at once simple and elegant, Regan dispels the negative image of animal rights advocates perpetrated by the mass media, unmasks the fraudulent rhetoric of 'humane treatment' favored by animal exploiters, and explains why existing laws function to legitimize institutional cruelty. Written by the leading philosophical spokesperson for animal rights, Tom Regan's shocking exposZ of animal abuse makes an essential and lasting contribution that will significantly impact the history of animal rights advocacy in America.

According to the dominant tradition of literary criticism, the novel is the form par excellence of the private individual. Empty Houses challenges this... consensus by reexamining the genre's development from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century and exploring what has until now seemed an anomaly--the frustrated theatrical ambitions of major novelists. Offering new interpretations of the careers of William Makepeace Thackeray, George Eliot, Henry James, James Joyce, and James Baldwin--writers known for mapping ever-narrower interior geographies--this book argues that the genre's inward-looking tendency has been misunderstood. Delving into the critical role of the theater in the origins of the novel of interiority, David Kurnick reinterprets the novel as a record of dissatisfaction with inwardness and an injunction to rethink human identity in radically collective and social terms. Exploring neglected texts in order to reread canonical ones, Kurnick shows that the theatrical ambitions of major novelists had crucial formal and ideological effects on their masterworks. Investigating a key stretch of each of these novelistic careers, he establishes the theatrical genealogy of some of the signal techniques of narrative interiority. In the process he illustrates how the novel is marked by a hunger for palpable collectivity, and argues that the genre's discontents have been a shaping force in its evolution. A groundbreaking rereading of the novel, Empty Houses provides new ways to consider the novelistic imagination.

The work of inner-city emergency psychiatric units might best be described as "medicine under siege." Emptying Beds is the result of the author's... two-year immersion in one such unit and its work. It is an account of the strategies developed by a staff of psychiatrists, social workers, nurses, and other mental health workers to deal with the dilemmas they face every day.

Sugar substitutes have been a part of American life since saccharin was introduced at the 1893 World's Fair. In Empty Pleasures, the first history of... artificial sweeteners in America, Carolyn de la Pena blends popular culture with business and women's history, examining the invention, production, marketing, regulation, and consumption of sugar substitutes such as saccharin, Sucaryl, NutraSweet, and Splenda. She describes how saccharin, an accidental laboratory by-product, was transformed from a perceived adulterant into a healthy ingredient. As food producers and pharmaceutical companies worked together to create diet products, savvy women's magazine writers and editors promoted artificially sweetened foods as ideal, modern weight-loss aids, and early diet-plan entrepreneurs built menus and fortunes around pleasurable dieting made possible by artificial sweeteners. NutraSweet, Splenda, and their predecessors have enjoyed enormous success by promising that Americans, especially women, can "have their cake and eat it too," but Empty Pleasures argues that these "sweet cheats" have fostered troubling and unsustainable eating habits and that the promises of artificial sweeteners are ultimately too good to be true.

EMR Complete: A Worktext is Brady’s first EMR offering that meets the National EMS Education Standards. This worktext is a combination text/workbook... that reinforces student learning by enabling students to instantly apply knowledge throughout a chapter, not just at the end. In addition to the worktext format of the book, several pedagogical components have been integrated to ensure optimal student learning, including: a Navigation Guide, Objectives, Key Terms, Media Resources, “Stop, Review, Remember” exercises, and “Big Picture” scene illustrations. Review, Practice Examinations, Critical Thinking sections, and Case Studies reinforce key concepts and require the student to apply what they have learned, making this a true worktext. The knowledge and skills presented in this text maintain the perspective of the most important person in the EMS System—the one who arrives first.

For all responders preparing for EMT-Basic certification, as well as EMT-Basic responders that are preparing for re-certification. Practice Online!... This new test preparation system allows users to practice exam-style questions in the same manner that they will take their actual certification exam. Four 150-question tests contain questions across the major content areas found in state and national exams including: airway & breathing, cardiology, trauma, medical, obstetrics & pediatrics, and operations. In addition, each of the 6 content areas provide 2 25-question tests. All tests have rationales and are re-inforced with text, photos, illustrations, or video clips.

Now completely updated, this best-selling guide offers test takers the advantage they need to ace the EMT exam, including: —ELEVEN practice exams... based on the most recent DOT/NHTSA curriculum-PLUS a free online link to an additional test —Strategies to help test takers score their best, from reducing test anxiety to understanding how standardized tests work —Information on how to pinpoint and fill in the gaps in areas where more study is needed