Download or read book Talking It Over written by Julian Barnes and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2012-12-18 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shy, sensible banker Stuart has trouble with women; that is, until a fortuitous singles night, where he meets Gillian, a picture restorer recovering from a destructive affair. Stuart's best friend Oliver is his complete opposite - a language teacher who 'talks like a dictionary', brash and feckless. Soon Stuart and Gillian are married, but it is not long before a tentative friendship between the three evolves into something far different. Talking it Over is a brilliant and intimate account of love's vicissitudes. It begins as a comedy of errors, then slowly darkens and deepens, drawing us compellingly into the quagmires of the heart. “An interplay of serious thought and dazzling wit. . . . It's moving, it's funny, it's frightening . . . fiction at its best.” —New York Times Book Review

Download or read book The Dictionary of Lost Words written by Pip Williams and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “Delightful . . . [a] captivating and slyly subversive fictional paean to the real women whose work on the Oxford English Dictionary went largely unheralded.”—The New York Times Book Review “A marvelous fiction about the power of language to elevate or repress.”—Geraldine Brooks, New York Times bestselling author of People of the Book Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip and, learning that the word means “slave girl,” begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men. As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women’s and common folks’ experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages. Set during the height of the women’s suffrage movement and with the Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. Inspired by actual events, author Pip Williams has delved into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary to tell this highly original story. The Dictionary of Lost Words is a delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world. WINNER OF THE AUSTRALIAN BOOK INDUSTRY AWARD

Download or read book The Magic of Dialogue written by Daniel Yankelovich and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-09-05 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking work, famed social scientist and world-famous public opinion expert Daniel Yankelovich reinvents the ancient art of dialogue. Successful managers have always known how to make decisions and mobilize coworkers. But as our businesses continue to expand, conversations and discussions just aren't enough to bring people and their different agendas together anymore. Dialogue, when properly practiced, will align people with a shared vision, and help them realize their full potential as individuals and as a team. Drawing on decades of research and using real life examples, The Magic of Dialogue outlines specific strategies for maneuvering in a wide range of situations and teaches managers, leaders, business people, and other professionals how to succeed in the new global economy, where more players participate in decision-making than ever before.

Download or read book Understanding Vietnam written by Neil L. Jamieson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American experience in Vietnam divided us as a nation and eroded our confidence in both the morality and the effectiveness of our foreign policy. Yet our understanding of this tragic episode remains superficial because, then and now, we have never grasped the passionate commitment with which the Vietnamese clung to and fought over their own competing visions of what Vietnam was and what it might become. To understand the war, we must understand the Vietnamese, their culture, and their ways of looking at the world. Neil L. Jamieson, after many years of living and working in Vietnam, has written the book that provides this understanding. Jamieson paints a portrait of twentieth-century Vietnam. Against the background of traditional Vietnamese culture, he takes us through the saga of modern Vietnamese history and Western involvement in the country, from the coming of the French in 1858 through the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Throughout his analysis, he allows the Vietnamese—both our friends and foes, and those who wished to be neither—to speak for themselves through poetry, fiction, essays, newspaper editorials and reports of interviews and personal experiences. By putting our old and partial perceptions into this new and broader context, Jamieson provides positive insights that may perhaps ease the lingering pain and doubt resulting from our involvement in Vietnam. As the United States and Vietnam appear poised to embark on a new phase in their relationship, Jamieson's book is particularly timely.

Download or read book Half Empty written by David Rakoff and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-09-06 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this deeply smart and sneakily poignant collection of essays, the bestselling author of Fraud and Don’t Get Too Comfortable makes an inspired case for always assuming the worst—because then you’ll never be disappointed. Whether he’s taking on pop culture phenomena with Oscar Wilde-worthy wit or dealing with personal tragedy, Rakoff’s sharp observations and humorist’s flair for the absurd will have you positively reveling in the untapped power of negativity.

Download or read book Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms written by United States. Joint Chiefs of Staff and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Noteworthy written by Riley Redgate and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Public Library 2017 Best Books for Teens selected title! It’s the start of Jordan Sun’s junior year at the Kensington-Blaine Boarding School for the Performing Arts. Unfortunately, she’s an Alto 2, which—in the musical theatre world—is sort of like being a vulture in the wild: She has a spot in the ecosystem, but nobody’s falling over themselves to express their appreciation. So it’s no surprise when she gets shut out of the fall musical for the third year straight. But then the school gets a mass email: A spot has opened up in the Sharpshooters, Kensington’s elite a cappella octet. Worshiped . . . revered . . . all male. Desperate to prove herself, Jordan auditions in her most convincing drag, and it turns out that Jordan Sun, Tenor 1, is exactly what the Sharps are looking for.

Download or read book Dictionary of Financial Terms written by Virginia B. Morris and published by Lightbulb Press, Inc.. This book was released on 2007 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Streamlined, straightforward, and simple to read guides from Standard & Poor's and Lightbulb Press. The easiest way to get a grip on personal finance, investing, and retirement From the world's leading financial analysts and investor education specialists comes an invaluable foundation of knowledge for every kind of investment you want to make. These guides, a collaboration between Standard & Poor's and Lightbulb Press, use clear language and informative graphics to demystify financial topics. The books make it easy for you to navigate the financial markets and understand the basics of investing and personal finance. Filled with clear, jargon-free definitions of important financial terms, this handy reference gives you the language you need to navigate the world of investing and finance. It also includes common acronyms and extended definitions of more sophisticated investing concepts.

Download or read book The Devil s Financial Dictionary written by Jason Zweig and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Your Survival Guide to the Hades of Wall Street The Devil's Financial Dictionary skewers the plutocrats and bureaucrats who gave us exploding mortgages, freakish risks, and banks too big to fail. And it distills the complexities, absurdities, and pomposities of Wall Street into plain truths and aphorisms anyone can understand. An indispensable survival guide to the hostile wilderness of today's financial markets, The Devil's Financial Dictionary delivers practical insights with a scorpion's sting. It cuts through the fads and fakery of Wall Street and clears a safe path for investors between euphoria and despair. Staying out of financial purgatory has never been this fun.

Download or read book Metaphors We Live By written by George Lakoff and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-12-19 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"—metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them. In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language.

Download or read book The Book of General Ignorance written by John Mitchinson and published by Crown Archetype. This book was released on 2007-08-07 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Misconceptions, misunderstandings, and flawed facts finally get the heave-ho in this humorous, downright humiliating book of reeducation based on the phenomenal British bestseller. Challenging what most of us assume to be verifiable truths in areas like history, literature, science, nature, and more,The Book of General Ignorance is a witty “gotcha” compendium of how little we actually know about anything. It’ll have you scratching your head wondering why we even bother to go to school. Think Magellan was the first man to circumnavigate the globe, baseball was invented in America, Henry VIII had six wives, Mount Everest is the tallest mountain? Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again. You’ll be surprised at how much you don’t know! Check out The Book of General Ignorance for more fun entries and complete answers to the following: How long can a chicken live without its head? About two years. What do chameleons do? They don’t change color to match the background. Never have; never will. Complete myth. Utter fabrication. Total Lie. They change color as a result of different emotional states. How many legs does a centipede have? Not a hundred. How many toes has a two-toed sloth? It’s either six or eight. Who was the first American president? Peyton Randolph. What were George Washington’s false teeth made from? Mostly hippopotamus. What was James Bond’s favorite drink? Not the vodka martini.

Download or read book A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding written by Jackie Copleton and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2015-12 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "First published in Great Britain by Hutchinson, a division of The Random House Group Ltd, 2015."

Download or read book Three Strong Women written by Marie NDiaye and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-08-07 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new novel, the first by a black woman ever to win the coveted Prix Goncourt, Marie NDiaye creates a luminous narrative triptych as harrowing as it is beautiful. This is the story of three women who say no: Norah, a French-born lawyer who finds herself in Senegal, summoned by her estranged, tyrannical father to save another victim of his paternity; Fanta, who leaves a modest but contented life as a teacher in Dakar to follow her white boyfriend back to France, where his delusional depression and sense of failure poison everything; and Khady, a penniless widow put out by her husband’s family with nothing but the name of a distant cousin (the aforementioned Fanta) who lives in France, a place Khady can scarcely conceive of but toward which she must now take desperate flight. With lyrical intensity, Marie NDiaye masterfully evokes the relentless denial of dignity, to say nothing of happiness, in these lives caught between Africa and Europe. We see with stunning emotional exactitude how ordinary women discover unimagined reserves of strength, even as their humanity is chipped away. Three Strong Women admits us to an immigrant experience rarely if ever examined in fiction, but even more into the depths of the suffering heart.

Download or read book Dreyer s English written by Benjamin Dreyer and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A sharp, funny grammar guide they’ll actually want to read, from Random House’s longtime copy chief and one of Twitter’s leading language gurus NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY O: The Oprah Magazine • Paste • Shelf Awareness “Essential (and delightful!)”—People We all write, all the time: books, blogs, emails. Lots and lots of emails. And we all want to write better. Benjamin Dreyer is here to help. As Random House’s copy chief, Dreyer has upheld the standards of the legendary publisher for more than two decades. He is beloved by authors and editors alike—not to mention his followers on social media—for deconstructing the English language with playful erudition. Now he distills everything he has learned from the myriad books he has copyedited and overseen into a useful guide not just for writers but for everyone who wants to put their best prose foot forward. As authoritative as it is amusing, Dreyer’s English offers lessons on punctuation, from the underloved semicolon to the enigmatic en dash; the rules and nonrules of grammar, including why it’s OK to begin a sentence with “And” or “But” and to confidently split an infinitive; and why it’s best to avoid the doldrums of the Wan Intensifiers and Throat Clearers, including “very,” “rather,” “of course,” and the dreaded “actually.” Dreyer will let you know whether “alright” is all right (sometimes) and even help you brush up on your spelling—though, as he notes, “The problem with mnemonic devices is that I can never remember them.” And yes: “Only godless savages eschew the series comma.” Chockful of advice, insider wisdom, and fun facts, this book will prove to be invaluable to everyone who wants to shore up their writing skills, mandatory for people who spend their time editing and shaping other people’s prose, and—perhaps best of all—an utter treat for anyone who simply revels in language. Praise for Dreyer’s English “Playful, smart, self-conscious, and personal . . . One encounters wisdom and good sense on nearly every page of Dreyer’s English.”—The Wall Street Journal “Destined to become a classic.”—The Millions “Dreyer can help you . . . with tips on punctuation and spelling. . . . Even better: He’ll entertain you while he’s at it.”—Newsday

Download or read book Davita s Harp written by Chaim Potok and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2010-03-10 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Davita Chandal, growing up in New York in the 1930s and '40s is an experience of indescribable joy—and unfathomable sadness. Her loving parents, both fervent radicals, fill her with the fiercely bright hope for a new, better world. But the deprivations of war and the Depression take their ruthless toll. And Davita, unexpectedly, finds in the Jewish faith that her mother had long ago abandoned both a solace to her questioning inner pain and a test of her budding spirit of independence. To her, life's elusive possibilities for happiness, for fulfillment, for decency, become as real and resonant as the music of the small harp that hangs on her door, welcoming all guests with its sweet, gentle tones. Praise for Davita's Harp “Rich . . . enchanting . . . [Chaim] Potok's bravest book.”—The New York Times Book Review “It is an enormous pleasure to sink into such a rich . . . solidly written novel. The reader knows from the first few pages that he is in the hands of a sure professional who won't let him down.”—People “Engrossing . . . Filled with a host of richly drawn characters. Potok is a master storyteller.”—Chicago Tribune “Gripping and intriguing . . . A well-told tale that needed telling.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

Download or read book Cloudbursts written by Thomas McGuane and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2018 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR For more than four decades, Thomas McGuane has been heralded as an unrivaled master of the short story. Now the arc of that achievement appears in one definitive volume--forty-five stories, including two new and six previously uncollected pieces. Set in the seedy corners of Key West, the remote shore towns of the Bahamas, and McGuane's hallmark Big Sky country with its vast and unforgiving landscape, these are stories of people on the fringes of society, whose twisted pasts meddle with their chances for companionship. Moving from the hilarious to the tragic and back again, McGuane writes about familial dysfunction, emotional failure, and American loneliness, celebrating the human ability to persist through life's absurdities.

Download or read book Dictionary of the Old Testament Pentateuch written by T. Desmond Alexander and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2002-12-13 with total page 977 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the major themes and issues of the Pentateuch, this encyclopedic work offers authoritative overviews, detailed examinations and new insights from the world of the ancient Near East. Edited by T. Desmond Alexander and David W. Baker.