The Brand New Catastrophe

The Brand New Catastrophe PDF Author: Mike Scalise
Publisher: Sarabande Books
ISBN: 1941411347
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
“A very funny [memoir] about the frailties of the flesh, the absurdities of modern medicine, and how to stay sane amid it all” (Dave Eggers). Raucous family memoir meets medical adventure in this “winning literary debut” that explores the public and private theaters of illness (The New York Times Book Review). After a pituitary tumor bursts in Mike Scalise’s brain (diagnosed, by of all people a physician named Dr. Sunshine), it leaves him with a hole in head, and the hormone disorder acromegaly at age twenty-four. He also faces the exasperating challenge of navigating a new, alien world of illness maintenance among family, friends, and spouse. However, it’s his mother, who has a chronic heart condition and a flair for drama, who becomes a complicated model as she competes with her son for the status of “best sick person.” “Captur[ing] all the fright of a medical calamity and the humor and grace necessary to survive it (Kirkus Reviews), “Mike Scalise’s startling and slyly hilarious memoir is a heartfelt reminder of how astonishing, how terrifying, how absurd it is to be a body. An essential book for those who’ve lived through catastrophe, or only imagined it” (Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine).

The Brand New Catastrophe

The Brand New Catastrophe PDF Author: Mike Scalise
Publisher: Sarabande Books
ISBN: 1941411347
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
“A very funny [memoir] about the frailties of the flesh, the absurdities of modern medicine, and how to stay sane amid it all” (Dave Eggers). Raucous family memoir meets medical adventure in this “winning literary debut” that explores the public and private theaters of illness (The New York Times Book Review). After a pituitary tumor bursts in Mike Scalise’s brain (diagnosed, by of all people a physician named Dr. Sunshine), it leaves him with a hole in head, and the hormone disorder acromegaly at age twenty-four. He also faces the exasperating challenge of navigating a new, alien world of illness maintenance among family, friends, and spouse. However, it’s his mother, who has a chronic heart condition and a flair for drama, who becomes a complicated model as she competes with her son for the status of “best sick person.” “Captur[ing] all the fright of a medical calamity and the humor and grace necessary to survive it (Kirkus Reviews), “Mike Scalise’s startling and slyly hilarious memoir is a heartfelt reminder of how astonishing, how terrifying, how absurd it is to be a body. An essential book for those who’ve lived through catastrophe, or only imagined it” (Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine).

Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe

Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe PDF Author: Mike O'Connor
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0307555437
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Throughout his childhood, Mike O’Connor’s family pretended to be normal. But Mike and his two younger sisters knew that their parents were hiding something–a secret they didn’t dare talk about. The family appeared to be no different from any of their small-town Texas neighbors–that is, until suddenly, the O’Connor’s would flee, leaving with only a few hours’ notice, abandoning houses and pets and possessions and running across the border to Mexico. For all of Mike’s adolescence, O’Connor family life alternated between relative comfort and abject poverty–sometimes within a matter of days. From living in a Texas ranch house to living in two rented rooms in an impoverished Mexican village, the O’Connors never knew what lay ahead–only that they must not draw attention to themselves. Though their parents steadfastly denied it, the children knew that something was chasing them–a past that hovered like an invisible enemy, always waiting to strike, always in pursuit. But it was not until much later, after his parents’ deaths, that Mike O’Connor, now an investigative reporter, was able to uncover the truth about his family’s past. As the secrets were unlocked one by one and the long trail of deception unfurled, Mike faced the heart-wrenching ramifications of his parents’ actions–and made a discovery that shook his family loyalty to its core. Full of incredible details of a life lived on both sides of the border, in near-poverty and near-wealth, Mike O’Connor’s account is a real-life suspense story of childhood mysteries and strange circumstances that will enthrall readers to its very end.

Confronting Catastrophe

Confronting Catastrophe PDF Author: R. W. Greene
Publisher: ESRI, Inc.
ISBN: 9781589480407
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
This handbook explains the importance and practice of using a geographic information system (GIS) in designing and implementing an effective response to large-scale disasters, including wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes, and terrorist attacks. The handbook is organized according to the accepted methodology of disaster management, which involves planning and identification, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. The first three stages involve tasks that an organization or community can perform before a disaster occurs. The latter two tasks focus on postdisaster efforts. The spatial display and analysis tools of GIS are ideal for assessing disaster risks, consequences, and responses. GIS can display the location, size, value, and significance of assets that may be impacted by disasters. It can show the kinds of environmental, atmospheric, and other conditions that contribute to particular kinds of natural disasters. GIS can also juxtapose a particular kind of asset with specific hazardous conditions over a wide geographic area, thus allowing a precise calculation of potential loss in the immediate area. With this kind of graphic depiction, the choices about what to do and where to do it are clarified for those charged with making fast, cost-effective decisions. This handbook details how GIS software features can be used at each stage of planning and response. The use of GIS in a disaster is illustrated by its application in New York City in the days after September 11, where it was used to provide assistance to rescue and recovery teams. The manual also profiles GIS-based disaster modeling software packages now available at no cost to local communities.

Ultimate Risk

Ultimate Risk PDF Author: Adam Raphael
Publisher: Corgi
ISBN:
Category : Commercial crimes
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description


Against All Odds

Against All Odds PDF Author: Jorma Ollila
Publisher: Maven House
ISBN: 193854871X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
In this compelling memoir, Nokia's legendary CEO Jorma Ollila presents a riveting account of the inner workings of the company that created the global mobile revolution. CEO from 1992 to 2006, Ollila led Nokia from near catastrophe to become the world's leading mobile phone manufacturer. He built a company where visionary thinking and courageous decisions were combined with exceptional creativity and first-rate engineering, leading to phenomenal growth. Follow Ollila's personal and professional journey, where you'll learn about the fine line between stratospheric success and disastrous failure. His stories are filled with lessons about the nature of leadership, the importance of shared values, and the need for strategic thinking. Ollila offers a uniquely clear picture of life as a CEO, with many insights into how business is conducted at the highest levels. He is especially upfront about working with his executive and management teams as well as encounters with figures such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and George Soros. He offers poignant as well as illuminating stories of hair-raising risks and huge successes, but also of poor judgment and bad decision-making.

A First-Class Catastrophe

A First-Class Catastrophe PDF Author: Diana B. Henriques
Publisher: Henry Holt
ISBN: 1627791647
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
"The definitive account of the crash of 1987, a cautionary tale of how the U.S. financial system nearly collapsed ... Monday, October 19, 1987, was by far the worst day in Wall Street history. The market fell 22.6 percent--almost twice as bad as the worst day of 1929--equal to a loss of nearly 5,000 points today. But Black Monday was more than just a one-day market crash; it was seven years in the making and threatened the entire U.S. financial system. Drawing on superlative archival research and dozens of original interviews, the award-winning financial journalist Diana B. Henriques weaves a tale of ignored warnings, market delusions, and destructive decisions, a drama that stretches from New York and Washington to Chicago and California. Among the central characters are pension fund managers, bank presidents, government regulators, exchange executives, and a pair of university professors whose bright idea for reducing risk backfires with devastating consequences. As the story hurtles toward a terrible reckoning, the players struggle to avoid a national panic, and unexpected heroes step in to avert total disaster. For thirty years, investors, bankers, and regulators have failed to heed the lessons of Black Monday. But with uncanny precision, all the key fault lines of the devastating crisis of 2008--breakneck automation, poorly understood financial products fueled by vast amounts of borrowed money, fragmented regulation, gigantic herdlike investors--were first exposed as hazards in 1987. A First-Class Catastrophe offers a new way of looking not only at the past but at our financial future as well."--Dust jacket.

Fortune Smiles

Fortune Smiles PDF Author: Adam Johnson
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812997484
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
The National Book Award–winning story collection from the author of The Orphan Master’s Son offers something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world. “MASTERFUL.”—The Washington Post “ENTRANCING.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “PERCEPTIVE AND BRAVE.”—The New York Times Throughout these six stories, Pulitzer Prize winner Adam Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal, giving voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear. In “Nirvana,” a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finds solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In “Hurricanes Anonymous,” a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. “George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine” follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind. WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Miami Herald • San Francisco Chronicle • USA Today AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • NPR • Marie Claire • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • BuzzFeed • The Daily Beast • Los Angeles Magazine • The Independent • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews “Remarkable . . . Adam Johnson is one of America’s greatest living writers.”—The Huffington Post “Haunting, harrowing . . . Johnson’s writing is as rich in compassion as it is in invention, and that rare combination makes Fortune Smiles worth treasuring.”—USA Today “Fortune Smiles [blends] exotic scenarios, morally compromised characters, high-wire action, rigorously limber prose, dense thickets of emotion, and, most critically, our current techno-moment.”—The Boston Globe “Johnson’s boundary-pushing stories make for exhilarating reading.”—San Francisco Chronicle

The End of October

The End of October PDF Author: Lawrence Wright
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0593081145
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower—a riveting thriller and “all-too-convincing chronicle of science, espionage, action and speculation” (The Wall Street Journal). At an internment camp in Indonesia, forty-seven people are pronounced dead with acute hemorrhagic fever. When epidemiologist Henry Parsons travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will have staggering repercussions. Halfway across the globe, the deputy director of U.S. Homeland Security scrambles to mount a response to the rapidly spreading pandemic leapfrogging around the world, which she believes may be the result of an act of biowarfare. And a rogue experimenter in man-made diseases is preparing his own terrifying solution. As already-fraying global relations begin to snap, the virus slashes across the United States, dismantling institutions and decimating the population. With his own wife and children facing diminishing odds of survival, Henry travels from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia to his home base at the CDC in Atlanta, searching for a cure and for the origins of this seemingly unknowable disease. The End of October is a one-of-a-kind thriller steeped in real-life political and scientific implications, filled with the insight that has been the hallmark of Wright’s acclaimed nonfiction and the full-tilt narrative suspense that only the best fiction can offer.

A Catalogue of Catastrophe

A Catalogue of Catastrophe PDF Author: Jodi Taylor
Publisher: Chronicles of St. Mary's
ISBN: 9781472286895
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
'Jodi Taylor is quite simply the Queen of Time. Her books are a swashbuckling joyride through History' C. K. MCDONNELL BOOK 13 IN THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING CHRONICLES OF ST MARY'S SERIES For fans of Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club series, Jasper Fforde and Doctor Who. --- Finally - finally! - Max has that nice office job she's always wanted. The one with no heavy lifting and no one tries to kill her. Well, one out of two's not bad... Punching well above their weight, Max and Markham set out to bring down a sinister organisation founded in the future - with a suspicious focus on the past. Max's focus is staying alive long enough to reunite with Leon and Matthew, alternately helped and hindered by St Mary's. Who aren't always the blessing they like to think they are. But non-stop leaping around the timeline - from witnessing Magna Carta to disturbing a certain young man with a penchant for gunpowder - is beginning to take its toll. Is Max going mad? Or are the ghosts of the past finally catching up with her? What people are saying about Jodi Taylor: 'Once in a while, I discover an author who changes everything... Jodi Taylor and her protagonista Madeleine Max Maxwell have seduced me' 'This amazing series is anything but formulaic. Just when you think you've got to grips with everything, out comes the rug from under your feet' 'Addictive. I wish St Mary's was real and I was a part of it' 'St Mary's stories are the much-anticipated highlight of my year' 'Jodi Taylor has an imagination that gets me completely hooked' 'A tour de force'

A Magnificent Catastrophe

A Magnificent Catastrophe PDF Author: Edward J. Larson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416568409
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title "They could write like angels and scheme like demons." So begins Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward Larson's masterful account of the wild ride that was the 1800 presidential election—an election so convulsive and so momentous to the future of American democracy that Thomas Jefferson would later dub it "America's second revolution." This was America's first true presidential campaign, giving birth to our two-party system and indelibly etching the lines of partisanship that have so profoundly shaped American politics ever since. The contest featured two of our most beloved Founding Fathers, once warm friends, facing off as the heads of their two still-forming parties—the hot-tempered but sharp-minded John Adams, and the eloquent yet enigmatic Thomas Jefferson—flanked by the brilliant tacticians Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, who later settled their own differences in a duel. The country was descending into turmoil, reeling from the terrors of the French Revolution, and on the brink of war with France. Blistering accusations flew as our young nation was torn apart along party lines: Adams and his elitist Federalists would squelch liberty and impose a British-style monarchy; Jefferson and his radically democratizing Republicans would throw the country into chaos and debase the role of religion in American life. The stakes could not have been higher. As the competition heated up, other founders joined the fray—James Madison, John Jay, James Monroe, Gouverneur Morris, George Clinton, John Marshall, Horatio Gates, and even George Washington—some of them emerging from retirement to respond to the political crisis gripping the nation and threatening its future. Drawing on unprecedented, meticulous research of the day-to-day unfolding drama, from diaries and letters of the principal players as well as accounts in the fast-evolving partisan press, Larson vividly re-creates the mounting tension as one state after another voted and the press had the lead passing back and forth. The outcome remained shrouded in doubt long after the voting ended, and as Inauguration Day approached, Congress met in closed session to resolve the crisis. In its first great electoral challenge, our fragile experiment in constitutional democracy hung in the balance. A Magnificent Catastrophe is history writing at its evocative best: the riveting story of the last great contest of the founding period.