Outsmart your competitors, leap to the head of the pack, and become an alpha dog! How does an average company distinguish itself in the... marketplace, generate higher sales than its competitors, and earn the lasting loyalty of customers and employees? Alpha Dogs tells the inspiring stories of savvy entrepreneurs who discovered the perfect formula and rose to the top. In her personal and probing style, Donna Fenn, a twenty-year veteran of Inc. magazine, introduces eight men and women who share their hard-earned insights and practical tips—from Chris Zane, whose retail bike shop has perfected the art of customer service, to Deb Weidenhamer, who transformed a sleepy auction house with her innovative use of technology. Alpha Dogs is a practical guidebook for every current and aspiring self-starter who wants to stand out and succeed.

Alpha Dogs is the story of the men behind an enormously influential campaign business called the Sawyer Miller Group, men who served as backroom... strategists on every presidential contest from Richard M. Nixon’s to Barack Obama’s. David Sawyer was a New England aristocrat with dreams of a career as a filmmaker, and Scott Miller, the son of an Ohio shoe salesman, had a knack for copywriting. Unlikely partners, they became a political powerhouse, directing democratic revolutions from the Philippines to Chile, steering a dozen presidents and prime ministers into office, and instilling the campaign ethic in corporate giants such as Coca-Cola and Apple. Long after their firm, Sawyer Miller, had broken up and sold out, its alumni had moved into the White House, to dozens of foreign countries, and into the offices of America’s blue-chip chief executives. The men of Sawyer Miller were the Manhattan Project of spin politics: a small but extraordinary group who invented American-style political campaigning and exported it around the world.In this lively and engaging narrative, James Harding tells the story of a few men whose marketing savvy, entrepreneurial drive, and sheer greed would alter the landscape of global politics. It is a story full of office intrigue, fierce rivalries, and disastrous miscalculations. And it is the tale of how world politics became American and how American business became political.

Poetry. ALPHA DONUT: The Selected Shorter Works of Matvei Yankelevich collects poems and prose texts written over the course of the first eleven years... of the millennium. Alpha Donut rolls out a pastiche of works from several serial projects (such as Writing in the Margin or The Bar Poems) and unpublished fragments that thread together swaths of stand-alone poems. Many of these pieces have appeared in progressive literary journals and little magazines. They are now, for the first time, gathered together in a practical volume for fans and newcomers alike."Matvei Yankelevich is a wonderful poet—wonderful in the sense that he is not, to the least degree, enigmatic but always simply and humanly mysterious.... One of my favorite younger poets, he deserves a wide and generous readership in this land fitfully struggling for some sort of smart redemption."—Anselm Hollo"I feel incredibly close to this book because, in picturing a life lived through writing, it never abdicates the knot of ambivalence & ecstasy such a life necessarily entails. So much of what I love lives here—Mandelstam's ghost, the doomsday clock cigarette that burns throughout the book, cities & friends, drinks & readings. Yet ALPHA DONUT's poems are so prepossessing exactly because they're so restless where affinity is concerned. Matvei registers all the ways in which our affection for anything is often mystifyingly the ground of our trouble. The idea that we seem to be getting from culture, that liking things is somehow equivalent to knowing them, is in every way refuted by the humor, inquiry, & love this book manifests over & over. While the language is clear, its clarity is turned to sing through something elementally illegible foundering in the depths of our feeling: 'This text is written on buttons / so tightly sewn / to each other that no one / can read it.' That's really why I feel so bonded to this book, & why now I can't imagine life without it."—Dana Ward

An updated guide to learning the most popular foreign language in the United States. Revised and expanded, this new edition from the Alpha Teach... Yourself series offers an innovative approach to picking up the grammar, syntax, and speech patterns used in everyday Spanish. This essential guide features new sections on shopping, cooking, technology, travel, medical and business communication as well as important dialect differences of vocabulary.• A structured, tutorial approach—24 one-hour lessons• Includes new quizzes and answer keys• With the immigrant boom, U.S. proximity to several Spanish-speaking countries, and popular travel destinations, more Americans than ever are learning the language.

In this dazzling play for the solo performer, Wajdi Mouawad had imagined a meeting between the grown-up Alphonse and the child Alphonse on a journey... that provokes reflection on the loss of freedom and imagination for the sake of reason.

The July 2005 London bombings are yet another example of how Europe has emerged as one of the key battlegrounds in the global War on Terror. The region... has become a critical 'ground zero' for Islamist terrorists, not only as a target but as a base of operations. The implications for the United States are tremendous: under existing law, for example, terrorists carrying European passports could easily enter the country. It is not a coincidence, in fact, that every attack planned or executed against the United States, including 9/11, has had strong European ties. This is the first book in English that dissects Islamic terrorism in Europe. The book fills a critical gap in the understanding of the new threats posed by Islamist terrorism. Vidino analyses the causes of this dangerous situation while providing an extensive historical overview of Islamic terrorist activities in Europe. The book shows how terrorists - most of them native to the Continent - raise money, communicate, and hide in plain sight in the suburbs of London, Paris, and Amsterdam. It presents with painful clarity the difficulties that law enforcement agencies world-wide have had in shutting terror cells down. Finally, the book describes three of the most important networks operating in Europe. Vidino analyses events such as the Madrid train bombings, the thwarted plot to attack various European capitals with chemical weapons, and the movements of hundreds of European Muslims who are joining terrorist groups in Iraq to fight U.S. forces. Vidino includes fascinating information taken from a dozen countries' original documentation (intelligence reports, indictments, court transcripts), plus transcripts of conversations among al Qaeda operatives that have been intercepted by intelligence agencies. "Al Qaeda in Europe" is authoritative, informative and written in a lively narrative that will captivate general readers, and become a valuable new resource for scholars and government officials.

Despite the frequent appearances of Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri on television screens worldwide, Al Qaeda remains an elusive entity. As the... world has grown increasingly familiar with the spectacle of Islamist terrorism, Al Qaeda’s essential worldview has remained bewilderingly opaque. To reveal its inner workings, Gilles Kepel and his collaborators, all scholars of Arabic and Islam, have collected and brilliantly annotated key texts of the major figures from whom the movement has drawn its beliefs and direction. The resulting volume offers an unprecedented glimpse into the assumptions of the salafist jihadists who have reshaped political life at the beginning of the third millennium. Excerpts from the work of Azzabdallah Azzam, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—drawn from speeches, internet postings, and published writings—tell the story of Al Qaeda’s evolution, from its origins in the Afghan war through the war in Iraq. These texts reveal the rational, discursive mode used to persuade and to justify violent armed struggle in a universe defined by militant Islam. Substantial interpretive introductions to each leader’s work and extensive critical commentary provide unparalleled access to the intellectual and doctrinal context of Al Qaeda in which these radical ideas have taken shape. By viewing Al Qaeda from within, this indispensable volume reveals the terrorist network’s insidious role in the global web culture of today and the full dimensions of its frightening threat to world stability and security.

This bilingual edition of the Qur'an, the Holy Book of Islam, was first published in the United States in 1988. Ahmed Ali, the distinguished Pakistani... novelist, poet, critic, and diplomat, presents this elegant and poetic translation in a contemporary and living voice. On each page, the original Arabic and the translated English sit side by side, encouraging the reader to draw from both texts. Professor Ali also includes notes where necessary, providing the full meaning of each word and phrase. This accessible volume is truly essential for both scholars and followers of Islam.

Those stories you hear? The ones about things that only come out at night? Things that feed on blood, feed on us? Got news for you: they’re true. Only... it’s not like the movies or old man Stoker’s storybook. It’s worse. Especially if you happen to be one of them. Just ask Joe Pitt.There’s a shambler on the loose. Some fool who got himself infected with a flesh-eating bacteria is lurching around, trying to munch on folks’ brains. Joe hates shamblers, but he’s still the one who has to deal with them. That’s just the kind of life he has. Except afterlife might be better word.From the Battery to the Bronx, and from river to river, Manhattan is crawling with Vampyres. Joe is one of them, and he’s not happy about it. Yeah, he gets to be stronger and faster than you, and he’s tough as nails and hard to kill. But spending his nights trying to score a pint of blood to feed the Vyrus that’s eating at him isn’t his idea of a good time. And Joe doesn’t make it any easier on himself. Going his own way, refusing to ally with the Clans that run the undead underside of Manhattan–it ain’t easy. It’s worse once he gets mixed up with the Coalition–the city’s most powerful Clan–and finds himself searching for a poor little rich girl who’s gone missing in Alphabet City.Now the Coalition and the girl’s high-society parents are breathing down his neck, anarchist Vampyres are pushing him around, and a crazy Vampyre cult is stalking him. No time to complain, though. Got to find that girl and kill that shambler before the whip comes down . . . and before the sun comes up.

If you look around in your church today, two-thirds of the young people who are sitting among us have already left in their hearts; soon they will be... gone for good.This is the alarming conclusion from a study Answers in Genesis commissioned from America's Research Group, led by respected researcher Britt Beemer. The results may unnerve you - they may shake long-held assumptions to the core-but these results need to be taken seriously by the church. Already Gone reveals:Why America's churches have lost an entire generation of believersThe views of 1,000 twenty-somethings, solidly raised in the church but no longer attending-and their reasons whyRelevant statistical data effectively teamed with powerful apologeticsThe study found that we are losing our kids in elementary, middle school, and high school rather than college, and the Sunday school syndrome is contributing to the epidemic, rather than helping alleviate it. This is an alarming wake-up call for the church, showing how our programs and our children are paying the price. Though the statistics reveal a huge disconnect taking place between our children and their church experience, Already Gone shows how to fight back for our families, our churches, and our world. We can make a difference today that will affect the statistics of tomorrow in a positive and Christ-focused way!

  From the very first chapter of this informative and inspiring book, a clear picture emerges of how even three- and four-year-olds' capacities for... serious authorship can and should be supported. - Lillian G. Katz Coauthor of Young Investigators: The Project Approach in the Early Years   By the time they reach preschool or kindergarten, young children are already writers. They don't have much experience, but they're filled with stories to tell and ideas to express - they want to show the world what they know and see. All they need is a nurturing teacher like you to recognize the writer at work within them. All you need to help them is Already Ready.   Taking an exciting, new approach to working with our youngest students, Already Ready shows you how, by respecting children as writers, engaged in bookmaking, you can gently  nudge them toward a lifetime of joyful writing. Katie Wood Ray and Matt Glover guide you through fundamental concepts of early writing. Providing numerous, helpful examples of early writing - complete with transcriptions - they demonstrate how to: make sense of children's writing and interpret how they represent sounds, ideas, and images see important developmental signs in writers that you can use to help them grow further recognize the thinking young children engage in and discover that it's the same  thinking more experienced writers use to craft purposeful, thoughtful pieces.   Then Ray and Glover show you how little ones can develop powerful understandings about: texts and their characteristics the writing process what it means to be a writer. You'll learn how to support your writers' quest to make meaning, as they grow their abilities and refine their thinking about writing through teaching strategies such as: reading aloud working side by side with writers sharing children's writing.   Writing is just one part of a busy early childhood classroom, but even in little doses, a nurturing approach can work wonders and help children connect the natural writer inside them to a life of expressing themselves on paper. Find that approach, share it with your students, and you'll discover that you don't have to get students ready to write - they're Already Ready. 

If you are young (or young only in heart!) and attempting to discover who you are meant to be, Fr. Mark Mossa can help you find the ways God is already... in your life. Mossa provides an honest and entertaining account of how he, as a younger adult, now a Jesuit priest, attempts to find God's will for his life. Mossa's friends tell him that he has a talent for making weird (they politely say different) connections. He responds that images, lyrics, and repeatedly quoted lines from popular culture stick with us because they connect with something deep down inside of us and say something meaningful about our human experience. We need only take some time to reflect on our experience--and that is what Mark Mossa helps us to do--and we'll see that God has already been trying to communicate with us in unexpected and surprising ways.

ALS Skills Review provides detailed step-by-step instruction for every psychomotor skill presented in the Paramedic National Standard Curriculum. This... resource teaches ALS students and providers how to perform each skill correctly and offers helpful information, tips, and pointers designed to facilitate progression through practical examinations or real-life emergencies.