Download or read book The Triumph of Emptiness written by Mats Alvesson and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-05-30 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Mats Alvesson aims to demystify some popular and upbeat claims about a range of phenomena, including the knowledge society, consumption, branding, higher education, organizational change, professionalization, and leadership. He contends that a culture of grandiosity is leading to numerous inflated claims. We no longer talk about plans but 'strategies'. Supervisors have been replaced by 'managers', managers are referred to as executives. Management is about 'leadership'. Giving advice is 'coaching'. Companies become 'knowledge-intensive firms'. The book views the contemporary economy as an economy of persuasion, where firms and other institutions increasingly assign talent, energy, and resources to rhetoric, image, branding, reputation, and visibility. Using a wide range of empirical examples to illuminate the realms of consumption, higher education, organization, and leadership, this provocative and engaging book challenges established assumptions and contributes to a critical understanding of society as a whole.
Download or read book The Book of Form and Emptiness written by Ruth Ozeki and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “No one writes like Ruth Ozeki—a triumph.” —Matt Haig, New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library “Inventive, vivid, and propelled by a sense of wonder.” —TIME “If you’ve lost your way with fiction over the last year or two, let The Book of Form and Emptiness light your way home.” —David Mitchell, Booker Prize-finalist author of Cloud Atlas A boy who hears the voices of objects all around him; a mother drowning in her possessions; and a Book that might hold the secret to saving them both—the brilliantly inventive new novel from the Booker Prize-finalist Ruth Ozeki One year after the death of his beloved musician father, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house—a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous. At first, Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world. He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many. And he meets his very own Book—a talking thing—who narrates Benny’s life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter. With its blend of sympathetic characters, riveting plot, and vibrant engagement with everything from jazz, to climate change, to our attachment to material possessions, The Book of Form and Emptiness is classic Ruth Ozeki—bold, wise, poignant, playful, humane and heartbreaking.
Download or read book Alvesson M 2013 The Triumph of Emptiness Oxford Oxford University Press 243 P Book Review written by Ziva Kos Kecojevic and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Video Green written by Chris Kraus and published by Semiotext(e). This book was released on 2004-08-27 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Video Green examines the explosion of late 1990s art produced by high-profile graduate programs that catapulted Los Angeles into the epicenter of the international art world. Probing the programs' own art-critical buzzwords, Chris Kraus asks how LA art came to be so completely divorced from the city's other realities. Radicalized beyond belief, Video Green does for contemporary art what Greil Marcus's Lipstick Traces did for the 20th century, mapping the persistence of peripheral culture."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Stupidity Paradox written by Mats Alvesson and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2016-06-02 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Functional stupidity can be catastrophic. It can cause organisational collapse, financial meltdown and technical disaster. And there are countless, more everyday examples of organisations accepting the dubious, the absurd and the downright idiotic, from unsustainable management fads to the cult of leadership or an over-reliance on brand and image. And yet a dose of stupidity can be useful and produce good, short-term results: it can nurture harmony, encourage people to get on with the job and drive success. This is the stupidity paradox. The Stupidity Paradox tackles head-on the pros and cons of functional stupidity. You'll discover what makes a workplace mindless, why being stupid might be a good thing in the short term but a disaster in the longer term, and how to make your workplace a little less stupid by challenging thoughtless conformity. It shows how harmony and action in the workplace can be balanced with a culture of questioning and challenge. The book is a wake-up call for smart organisations and smarter people. It encourages us to use our intelligence fully for the sake of personal satisfaction, organisational success and the flourishing of society as a whole.
Download or read book Return to Meaning written by Mats Alvesson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that we are currently witnessing not merely a decline in the quality of social science research, but the proliferation of meaningless research, of no value to society, and modest value to its authors - apart from securing employment and promotion. The explosion of published outputs, at least in social science, creates a noisy, cluttered environment which makes meaningful research difficult, as different voices compete to capture the limelight even briefly. Older, more significant contributions are easily neglected, as the premium is to write and publish, not read and learn. The result is a widespread cynicism among academics on the value of academic research, sometimes including their own. Publishing comes to be seen as a game of hits and misses, devoid of intrinsic meaning and value, and of no wider social uses whatsoever. Academics do research in order to get published, not to say something socially meaningful. This is what we view as the rise of nonsense in academic research, which represents a serious social problem. It undermines the very point of social science. This problem is far from 'academic'. It affects many areas of social and political life entailing extensive waste of resources and inflated student fees as well as costs to tax-payers. Part two of the book offers a range of proposals aimed at restoring meaning at the heart of social research and drawing social science back address the major problems and issues that face our societies.
Download or read book the emptiness of our hands written by phyllis cole-dai; james murray and published by Author House. This book was released on 2004-09-15 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During Lent and Holy Week, 1999, Phyllis Cole-Dai and James Murray lived voluntarily on the streets of Columbus, Ohio, the nation’s fifteenth largest city. They didn’t go out on the streets to satisfy idle curiosity, or to experience a strange new world. They didn’t go out to find answers to questions, solutions to problems. They didn’t go out to save anyone, or to hand out donations of food and blankets. They went out with one primary aim: to be as present as possible to everyone they met—to love their neighbor as themselves. Doing so, they were reminded just how difficult the practice of compassion can be, especially because of personal judgments, assumptions, fears and desires, all habits of mind that harden one’s regard for and behavior toward other people. The Emptiness of Our Hands: A Lent Lived on the Streets is a meditative narrative accompanied by nearly thirty black and white photographs, most of them shot by James using crude pinhole cameras that he constructed from trash. This book will thrust you out the door of your comfortable life, straight into the unknown. What can happen to a person without a home? Indeed, what might happen to you?
Download or read book The Face written by Ruth Ozeki and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-03 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory short memoir from the author and Zen Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki about how her face has shaped and been shaped by her life
Download or read book Empty Shield written by Giacomo Donis and published by eBook Partnership. This book was released on 2021-05-20 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A people's history and the horror of war: Howard Zinn meets Apocalypse Now. Political autobiography. March 1972, about to graduate from NYU. A journey: two days and nights in the New York subway. Love it or leave it. A decision: become a Great Academic Marxist; blow up the Williamsburg Bridge; go into exile. Vietnam Veterans with placards, for and against the war. Seven placard-men at the seven gates of Thebes, brandishing their shields. A decision. Political or personal? Or pure Zen? Mind or no-mind? Kill for peace! Dylan, Hendrix, or the Fugs. The two Suzukis, or Dogen. Monk and Coltrane! The relation between Hegel's logic of thinking as such and his logic of practice, which does not exist. The screech of the subway stops. A fork where three roads cross, the realm of shadows, what is to be done? A Chinese menu? Stab it! Stab it with your fork! But what I, myself, decide is not the point. The point is the question of 'what a decision is and what making a decision means.' The answer is 'never stop asking.' Ask yourself. Ask FDR, JFK, LBJ, McNamara and his band, John Kerry, or a Vietnam War veteran of your choice. Ask Nixon, Kissinger-Trump! Ask Trump! Ye great decision-makers, have you ever asked yourselves what a decision is and what making a decision means! That is the question. The Empty Shield asks it. Repeatedly, repetitiously, abysally, and, possibly, once and for all.
Download or read book A Thousand Small Sanities written by Adam Gopnik and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stirring defense of liberalism against the dogmatisms of our time from an award-winning and New York Times bestselling author. Not since the early twentieth century has liberalism, and liberals, been under such relentless attack, from both right and left. The crisis of democracy in our era has produced a crisis of faith in liberal institutions and, even worse, in liberal thought. A Thousand Small Sanities is a manifesto rooted in the lives of people who invented and extended the liberal tradition. Taking us from Montaigne to Mill, and from Middlemarch to the civil rights movement, Adam Gopnik argues that liberalism is not a form of centrism, nor simply another word for free markets, nor merely a term denoting a set of rights. It is something far more ambitious: the search for radical change by humane measures. Gopnik shows us why liberalism is one of the great moral adventures in human history -- and why, in an age of autocracy, our lives may depend on its continuation.
Download or read book The Recovering written by Leslie Jamison and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 539 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy Exams comes this transformative work showing that sometimes the recovery is more gripping than the addiction. With its deeply personal and seamless blend of memoir, cultural history, literary criticism, and reportage, The Recovering turns our understanding of the traditional addiction narrative on its head, demonstrating that the story of recovery can be every bit as electrifying as the train wreck itself. Leslie Jamison deftly excavates the stories we tell about addiction -- both her own and others' -- and examines what we want these stories to do and what happens when they fail us. All the while, she offers a fascinating look at the larger history of the recovery movement, and at the complicated bearing that race and class have on our understanding of who is criminal and who is ill. At the heart of the book is Jamison's ongoing conversation with literary and artistic geniuses whose lives and works were shaped by alcoholism and substance dependence, including John Berryman, Jean Rhys, Billie Holiday, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson, and David Foster Wallace, as well as brilliant lesser-known figures such as George Cain, lost to obscurity but newly illuminated here. Through its unvarnished relation of Jamison's own ordeals, The Recovering also becomes a book about a different kind of dependency: the way our desires can make us all, as she puts it, "broken spigots of need." It's about the particular loneliness of the human experience-the craving for love that both devours us and shapes who we are. For her striking language and piercing observations, Jamison has been compared to such iconic writers as Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, yet her utterly singular voice also offers something new. With enormous empathy and wisdom, Jamison has given us nothing less than the story of addiction and recovery in America writ large, a definitive and revelatory account that will resonate for years to come.
Download or read book Running on Empty written by Marshall Ulrich and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-04-14 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 117 marathons, 52 days, 32 pairs of shoes, 57 years old: A fascinating glimpse inside the mind of an ultramarathon runner and the inspirational saga of his phenomenal journey running across America. The ultimate endurance athlete, Marshall Ulrich has run more than 100 foot races averaging over 100 miles each, completed 12 expedition-length adventure races, and ascended the Seven Summits - including Mount Everest - all on his first attempt. Yet his run from California to New York- the equivalent of running two marathons and a 10K every day for nearly two months straight - proved to be his most challenging effort yet. Featured in the recent documentary film, Running America, Ulrich clocked the 3rd fastest transcontinental crossing to date and set new records in multiple divisions. In Running on Empty, he shares the gritty backstory, including brushes with death, run-ins with the police, and the excruciating punishments he endured at the mercy of his maxed-out body. Ulrich also reached back nearly 30 years to when the death of the woman he loved drove him to begin running - and his dawning realization that he felt truly alive only when pushed to the limits. Filled with mind-blowing stories from the road and his sensational career, Ulrich's memoir imbues an incredible read with a universal message for athletes and nonathletes alike: face the toughest challenges, overcome debilitating setbacks, and find deep fulfillment in something greater than achievement Watch a Video
Download or read book Bright Scythe written by Tomas Tranströmer and published by Sarabande Books. This book was released on 2015-10-26 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and Sweden’s most acclaimed poet. “Readers new to Tranströmer should bundle up and dive in” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Known for sharp imagery, startling metaphors and deceptively simple diction, Tomas Tranströmer’s luminous poems offer mysterious glimpses into the deepest facets of humanity, often through the lens of the natural world. These new translations by Patty Crane, presented side by side with the original Swedish, are tautly rendered and elegantly cadenced. They are also deeply informed by Crane’s personal relationship with the poet and his wife during the years she lived in Sweden, where she was afforded greater insight into the nuances of his poetics and the man himself. A New York TimesBook Review Editors’ Choice A Los Angeles Times Fabulous Holiday Book “Immediate, bodily . . . vivid . . . Full of intent and personality. To my ear, Crane has so far made the best English version of Tranströmer.” —The New York Times Book Review “Patty [Crane]’s book has such transparency and illumination and candor. . . . For me, this is the finest translation since Bly’s.” —Teju Cole “Sometimes a new piece of shared cultural heritage seems to click into place; the appearance of Bright Scythe—selected poems by Swedish Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Patty Crane—feels like such an occasion . . . A lasting tribute to the poet’s passing.” —World Literature Today “Quietly revelatory . . . A haunting, mysterious, but ultimately warm and humanistic work, and a welcome introduction both to Tranströmer’s poetry and in the debates over how best to translate it into another tongue.” —Biographile
Download or read book The Northern Lights written by Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Empty Casing written by Fred Doucette and published by D & M Publishers. This book was released on 2012-01-06 with total page 1 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Canadian soldier Fred Doucette went to Bosnia-Herzegovina as a peacekeeper in 1995, he had a premonition that this tour of duty would be different from anything he had previously experienced. And it was. Doucette's tour quickly became an impossible task that took a huge toll on both the residents and his fellow peacekeepers. Trapped in thier beloved city, thousands of Sarajevans, perished, and yet, Doucette found a home in the midst of this hell. Billeted with a Bosnian family, he was offered a window into a Sarajevo that few outsiders saw. When the war ended, Doucette returned to Canada to face another battle, this one characterized by nightmares and brutal flashbacks. Traumatized, he had to face himself, his family, and his army once again, but now there was no turning away, no diversion in another foreign posting. Empty Casing is the riveting story of the making and unmaking of a soldier, and the growth of a man.
Download or read book The Sense of an Ending written by Julian Barnes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-10-05 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.
Download or read book Knowledge Work and Knowledge intensive Firms written by Mats Alvesson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a critical understanding of some basic aspects of knowledge-intensive work and organizations. The author adopts a social constructivist approach and explores the management and analytical challenges of knowledge-intensive firms. It will be key reading for academics, researchers and advanced students in organization studies, knowledge management and innovation.
