In the book The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, 12-year-old Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school . . . again. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t seem to stay out of trouble. But can he really be expected to stand by and watch while a bully picks on his scrawny best friend? Or not defend himself against his pre-algebra teacher when she turns into a monster and tries to kill him? Of course, no one believes Percy about the monster incident; he’s not even sure he believes himself, until the Minotaur chases him to summer camp.
Suddenly, mythical creatures seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Percy’s Greek mythology textbook and into his life. The gods of Mount Olympus, he’s coming to realize, are very much alive in the 21st century. And worse, he’s angered a few of them: Zeus’s master lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect.
Now Percy has just 10 days to find and return Zeus’s stolen property, and bring peace to a warring Mount Olympus. On a daring road trip from their summer camp in New York to the gates of the Underworld in Los Angeles, Percy and his friends, one a satyr and the other the demigod daughter of Athena, will face a host of enemies determined to stop them. To succeed on his quest, Percy will have to do more than catch the true thief: he must come to terms with the father who abandoned him; solve the riddle of the Oracle, which warns him of failure and betrayal by a friend; and unravel a treachery more powerful than the gods themselves.
Rick Riordan
Rick Riordan was born in San Antonio, Texas. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin where he double-majored in English and history. For 15 years, he taught in public and private schools in California and in San Antonio. He was awarded St. Mary’s Hall’s first Master Teacher Award in 2002.
Riordan is the multi-award-winning author of the Tres Navarre mystery series for adults; his The Maze of Bones reached number one on the New York Times Best Seller list on September 28, 2008. His Percy Jackson and the Olympians series features a 12-year-old boy who discovers he is the modern-day son of an ancient Greek god. Film rights were purchased by Twentieth Century Fox and a feature film was released on February 12, 2010. Riordan lives in San Antonio with his wife and their two sons. Recently, Riordan has stated that he is working on a new series based upon the Egyptian pantheon, which then turned out to be The Kane Chronicles, with the first book, The Red Pyramid, to be released May 4, 2010.
How did security staff at LA International Airport miss 75 per cent of bomb-making materials that went through screening? Which way should you turn before joining a supermarket queue? Why should a woman hope it was a man who witnessed her bag being snatched? And what possessed Burt Reynolds to punch a guy with no legs? Human beings can be stubbornly irrational and wilfully blind …but at least we’re predictably wrong. From minor lapses (why we’re so likely to forget passwords) to life-threatening blunders (why anaesthetists used to maim their patients), Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Joseph T. Hallinan explains the everyday mistakes that shape our lives, and what we can do to prevent them happening in ERRORNOMICS.
How many of you think the more income you have always equals the wealthier you are? How many of you think the bigger car or house you have always means the wealthier you are?
Well, if your answer to the above questions are YES, you are very WRONG!
I once attended a financial seminar by a financial speaker and during his introduction, he pondered his audiences with his question: “Do you think the more you earn equals the wealthier you are?” and many of his audiences responded with the answer “YES!”. The financial speaker’s “NO!” reply shocked many of his audiences and they started asking questions like “Why not?”
Many of us will think why some rich can become wealthier and some poor can become wealthy? The right answer is that these people are financially well educated. On the other hand, why some rich can become poor overnight and some poor can become even poorer overnight? The right answer is that there are still many people who are not financially educated, regardless of the rich or the poor. It is true the more you earn, the richer you are but it doesn’t necessary mean the wealthier you are. It is really disappointing that financial education is not being taught in schools and to hear that the bankruptcy rate among youngsters is on the sharp rise every year due to the lack of financial education in them.
Some tips to be wealthy is to be able to understand how money works, how to manage them, how to be a smart consumer and how to avoid the deadly pitfalls that leads to bankruptcy.
I had read The Money Book a few years ago and I think this book is a great book to buy for the way it educates us on how hire purchase works, how credit card works, how banks make their profit, and a lot of other stuff. It doesn’t matter whether you are rich or poor, once these are learnt, understood and mastered, you may be building your path to wealth.
“Gladwell, author and journalist, sets out to provide an understanding of success using outliers, men and women with skills, talent, and drive who do things out of the ordinary. He contends that we must look beyond the merits of a successful individual to understand his culture, where he comes from, his friends and family, and the community values he inherits and shares. We learn that society’s rules play a large role in who makes it and who does not. Success is a gift, and when opportunities are presented, some people have the strength and presence of mind to seize them, exhibiting qualities such as persistence and doggedness. Successful people are the products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy, and success ultimately is not exceptional or unattainable, nor does it depend upon innate ability. It is an attitude of willingness to try without regard for the sacrifice required. This is an excellent book for a wide range of library patrons.” (Mary Whaley, The Booklist)
“…The explosively entertaining Outliers might be [Gladwell's] best and most useful work yet…there are both brilliant yarns and life lessons here: Outliers is riveting science, self-help, and entertainment, all in one book.-A.” (Entertainment Weekly Gregory Kirschling )
“In the vast world of nonfiction writing, [Malcolm Gladwell] is as close to a singular talent as exists today…[Outliers] is a pleasure to read and leaves you mulling over its inventive theories for days afterward…Outliers represents a new kind of book for Gladwell…It is almost a manifesto.” (New York Times Book Review David Leonhardt )
“Like his previous work, THE TIPPING POINT, BLINK is a thought-provoking, category-defying book. The audio is read by the author with care and conviction.” (AudioFile Magazine 2009)
“….[Gladwell's] flair for narrative serves him well as a reader. Gladwell builds dramatic tension into his storytelling from the unique childhood of software tycoon Bill Gates to the secrets of success found along the rice fields of ancient China and Japan making for an engaging listening experience….” (Publishers Weekly )
“Malcolm Gladwell reminds us that authors can effectively read their own books by turning in a well-crafted, subtle performance. His slightly husky upper-register voice is calm and assured, and he knows exactly where to pause, provide emphasis, and how to deliver a punch line.” (AudioFile )
“Gladwell pulls double duty as author and narrator…the material is frequently astonishing, and his reading is clear, heartfelt, and makes for genuinely pleasurable listening.” (Publishers Weekly ) –This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
The Talent Management Essentials Series provides a comprehensive and contemporary treatment of approaches, tools, and techniques associated with the practice and application of I/O psychology to work. An excellent modern complement to other more content-based or research-oriented books, this practitioner-oriented series presents “best practices” in the application of Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
Talent Management Essentials Series
Mistreatment in the Workplace
Mistreatment in the Workplace integrates findings from the empirical literature with the practice literature to identify practical, evidence-based recommendations to prevent and address systemic workplace mistreatment.
Real Time Leadership Development
Real Time Leadership Development provides research and practices-based guidance and tools for leaders to use to fully leverage experience-based development for their own growth and to build the next generation of leaders in their organization.
Employee Engagement
Providing both practical advice, tools, and case examples, Employee Engagement translates best practices, ideas, and concepts into concrete and practical steps that will change the level of engagement in any organisation.
Career Paths
Career Pathsoffers a career path model and useful tools and tips for developing, implementing, and integrating career paths into talent management systems.
Designing and Implementing Global Selection Systems
Designing Workplace Mentoring Programs presents an evidence-based best practice approach to the design, development, and operation of formal mentoring programs within organizations. It includes practical tools and resources that organizations can use such as training exercises, sample employee development plans, and mentoring contracts.
Developing Women Leaders
Developing Women Leaders answers the question “How do we best develop women leaders?” with practical solutions drawn from current literature and the author’s personal interviews with high-achievers in major US companies and universities.
Online Recruiting and Selection
In Online Recruiting and Selection, Reynolds and Weiner provide an accessible introduction to implementing and operating Web-based tools for hiring in organisations. They explore the context and foundations for online recruiting and selection and examine a variety of issues that anyone involved with modern staffing processes will encounter.
Performance Management
Performance Management presents an end-to-end practical model of effective performance management that shows how to develop and implement performance management systems that yield bottom line results.
Senior Executive Assessment
Senior Executive Assessment is a concise and practical guide that demystifies assessment that is conducted at the senior-executive level.
About the Talent Management Essentials Series Editor
Steven G. Rogelberg, Ph.D., is Professor and Director of Organizational Science, at the University of North Carolina Charlotte. He is a prolific and nationally recognized scholar. He is the current Editor of Journal of Business and Psychology. Besides his academic work, he founded and/or led three successful talent management consulting organizations/units.
P.S. I Love You is a novel about holding on, letting go, and learning to love again.
Now in paperback, the endearing novel that captured readers’ hearts and introduced a fresh new voice in women’s fiction — Cecelia Ahern.
Holly couldn’t live without her husband Gerry, until the day she had to. They were the kind of young couple who could finish each other’s sentences. When Gerry succumbs to a terminal illness and dies, 30-year-old Holly is set adrift, unable to pick up the pieces. But with the help of a series of letters her husband left her before he died and a little nudging from an eccentric assortment of family and friends, she learns to laugh, overcome her fears, and discover a world she never knew existed.
The kind of enchanting novel with cross-generational appeal that comes along once in a great while, P.S. I Love You is a captivating love letter to the world!
Cecelia Ahern
Cecelia Ahern
Cecelia Ahern (born on September 30, 1981 in Dublin, Ireland) is the daughter of the former Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. Her older sister, Georgina Ahern is married to Nicky Byrne of Irish pop group Westlife.
In 2000, she was part of the Irish pop group Shimma, who finished third in the Irish national final for the Eurovision Song Contest.
Before starting her writing career, she obtained a degree in Journalism and Media Communications from Griffith College Dublin.
In 2002, when Cecelia Ahern was twenty-one, she wrote her first novel, P.S. I Love You, that published in 2004, was the number 1 bestseller in Ireland (for 19 weeks), the United Kingdom, U.S., Germany and Holland. It is sold in over forty countries. The book was adapted as a motion picture directed by Richard LaGravenese and starring Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler. It was released in the USA on December 21, 2007.
Her second book, Where Rainbows End (U.S. Love, Rosie), also reached number 1 in Ireland and the UK, and won the German CORINE Award in 2005.
She has contributed to charity books with short stories such as Irish Girls are Back in Town and Ladies’ Night.
Cecelia is the co-creator (along with Donald Todd) and producer for the ABC comedy Samantha Who? starring Christina Applegate, Jean Smart, Jennifer Esposito, Barry Watson, Kevin Dunn, Melissa McCarthy and Tim Russ.
Her second to latest book is called The Gift and was published just before Christmas 2008 in the UK. Her following book entitled The Book of Tomorrow was published on the 1st of October 2009.
On 14th December 2009 it was announced that Cecelia had given birth to her first child with partner David Keoghan, a girl named Robin.
Jacques Rancière (born Algiers, 1940) is a French philosopher and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris (St. Denis) who came to prominence when he co-authored Reading Capital (1968), with the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser.
Rancière contributed to the influential volume Reading “Capital” (though his contribution is not contained in the partial English translation) before publicly breaking with Althusser over his attitude toward the May 1968 student uprising in Paris.
Since then, Rancière has departed from the path set by his teacher and published a series of works probing the concepts that make up our understanding of political discourse. What is ideology? What is the proletariat? Is there a working class? And how do these masses of workers that thinkers like Althusser referred to continuously enter into a relationship with knowledge? We talk about them but what do we know? An example of this line of thinking is Rancière’s book entitled Le philosophe et ses pauvres (The Philosopher and His Poor, 1983), a book about the role of the poor in the intellectual lives of philosophers.
Most recently Rancière has written on the topic of human rights and specifically the role of international human rights organizations in asserting the authority to determine which groups of people — again the problem of masses — justify human rights interventions, and even war.
One of the few philosophers to write so influentially on a egalitarianism education and pedagogy besides Paulo Freire (see Pedagogy of the Oppressed), Ranciere’s book, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, published in 1991, has earned its reputation as a must-read for educators and educators-to-be. In the text, through the story of Joseph Jacotot, Ranciere challenges his readers to consider equality as a starting point rather than a destination. In doing so, readers are asked to abandon all of the cultural deficiency and salvation themes so pervasive in educational rhetoric today. Rather than requiring informed schoolmasters to guide students towards prescribed and alienating ends, Ranciere argues that educators can channel the equal intelligence in all to facilitate their intellectual growth in virtually unlimited directions. The schoolmaster need not know anything (i.e., s/he may be ignorant). No longer should the oppressed feel bound to experts or reliant on others for their intellectual emancipation. Because all are of equal intelligence, and everything can be found in everything, the poor and disenfranchised should feel perfectly able to teach themselves whatever it is they want to know. Anyone can lead. One need not let one’s ignorance stand in the way of embarking on the journey towards personal and/or collective intellectual emancipation.
In 2003 Rancière co-signed, with other French intellectuals, a letter, addressed to Putin, protesting the illegitimacy of the 2003 Chechen referendum.
In 2006, it was reported that Rancière’s aesthetic theory had become a point of reference in the visual arts, and Rancière has lectured at such art world events as the Frieze Art Fair. Former French presidential candidate Ségolène Royal has cited Rancière as her favourite philosopher.
Aesthetics and Its Discontents
Aesthetics and Its Discontents by Jacques Rancière
Aesthetics is not a politics by accident but in essence. But this politics operates in the unresolved tension between two opposed forms of politics: the first consists in transforming art into forms of collective life, the second in preserving from all forms of militant or commercial compromise the autonomy that makes it a promise of emancipation.
Aesthetics and Its Discontents is translated by Steven Corcoran. Only yesterday aesthetics stood accused of concealing cultural games of social distinction. Now it is considered a parasitic discourse from which artistic practices must be freed. But aesthetics is not a discourse. It is an historical regime of the identification of art. This regime is paradoxical, because it founds the autonomy of art only at the price of suppressing the boundaries separating its practices and its objects from those of everyday life and of making free aesthetic play into the promise of a new revolution. Aesthetics is not a politics by accident but in essence. But this politics operates in the unresolved tension between two opposed forms of politics: the first consists in transforming art into forms of collective life, the second in preserving from all forms of militant or commercial compromise the autonomy that makes it a promise of emancipation. This constitutive tension sheds light on the paradoxes and transformations of critical art. It also makes it possible to understand why today’s calls to free art from aesthetics are misguided and lead to a smothering of both aesthetics and politics in ethics.
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