NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An extraordinary, harrowing, endlessly surprising novel set in 1946, starring two brothers and a Jewish girl who fall into alignment in pogrom-poised Moscow—from "one of the most gifted novelists of his generation” (Time). “A bullet train of a novel that barrels deep into the heart of darkness that was the Soviet gulag and takes the reader along on an unnerving journey into one of history’s most harrowing chapters.” —The New York Times The brothers' fraternal conflict then marinates in Norlag, a slave-labor camp above the Arctic Circle, where a tryst will haunt all three lovers long after the brothers are released. And for the narrator, the sole survivor, the reverberations continue into the new century.

This practical, comprehensive guide to designing and running more effective meetings will result in less time wasted, more collaborative decision-making, and measurably improved business outcomes. There's nothing more frustrating than an unproductive meeting—except when it leads to another unproductive meeting. Yet every day millions of people conduct meetings—in person or online—without the critical understanding or formal training on how to plan and lead them effectively. This book offers a structured method to ensure that meetings will produce clear and actionable results. Meetings that are profitable and productive ultimately lead to fewer meetings. This book offers leaders a significant edge by • Empowering readers to help their groups create, innovate, and break through the barriers of miscommunication, politics, and intolerance • Making it easier for them to help others forge consensus and shared understanding • Providing them with proven agenda steps, tools, and detailed procedures Readers will learn how to resolve or manage common problems, inspire creativity, and transfer ownership to their meeting participants while managing interpersonal conflicts and other disruptions that arise. In a world of back-to-back meetings, this book explains the how-to details behind game-changing tools and techniques.

Every young grad needs this fun, snarky primer for the real world. You’ll meet the world’s brightest, you’ll hang with the best! And now that you’ve met them, you’ll work with the rest! If you’re looking for an inspirational book for young people starting life’s great adventure, you probably want to read Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go! But before your first day of actual work, you need to meet Dr. Suits for a dose of reality. You won’t learn this stuff in high school, college, or gift books by world-famous authors. But fear not! With his unique blend of hilarious verse and images, Dr. Suits can help young grads get a handle on what’s really about to hit them. Oh, the Meetings You’ll Go To! is a brutally honest, and ultimately uplifting, take on the struggles of post-grad life that every 20-something will relate to. Tough love never made you laugh so hard.

"Hosts of all kinds, this is a must-read!" --Chris Anderson, owner and curator of TED From the host of the New York Times podcast Together Apart, an exciting new approach to how we gather that will transform the ways we spend our time together—at home, at work, in our communities, and beyond. In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive--which they don't have to be. We rely too much on routine and the conventions of gatherings when we should focus on distinctiveness and the people involved. At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Parker sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play. Drawing on her expertise as a facilitator of high-powered gatherings around the world, Parker takes us inside events of all kinds to show what works, what doesn't, and why. She investigates a wide array of gatherings--conferences, meetings, a courtroom, a flash-mob party, an Arab-Israeli summer camp--and explains how simple, specific changes can invigorate any group experience. The result is a book that's both journey and guide, full of exciting ideas with real-world applications. The Art of Gathering will forever alter the way you look at your next meeting, industry conference, dinner party, and backyard barbecue--and how you host and attend them.

EXACTLY A MONTH HAS ELAPSED since I finished the first series of my writings—just that period of the flow of time which I intended to devote exclusively to resting the parts of my common presence subordinate to my pure reason. As I wrote in the last chapter of the first series, I had given myself my word that during the whole of this time I would do no writing whatsoever, but would only, for the well-being of the most deserving of these subordinate parts, slowly and gently drink down all the bottles of old calvados now at my disposal by the will of fate in the wine-cellar of the Prieuré, and specially provided the century before last by people who understood the true sense of life. Today I have decided, and now I wish—without forcing myself at all, but on the contrary with great pleasure—to set to work at my writing again, of course with the help of all the corresponding forces and also, this time, with the help of the law-conformable cosmic results flowing in from all sides upon my person from the good wishes of the readers of the first series. I now propose to give a form understandable for everyone to everything I have written down for the second series, in the hope that these ideas may serve as preparatory constructive material for setting up in the consciousness of creatures similar to myself a new world—a world in my opinion real, or at least one that can be perceived as real by all degrees of human thinking without the All and Everything: Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, p. 1236 slightest impulse of doubt, instead of the illusory world which contemporary people picture to themselves. And indeed, the mind of contemporary man, of whatever level of intellectuality, is only able to take cognizance of the world by means of data which, whenever accidentally or intentionally activated, arouse in him all sorts of fantastic impulses. And these impulses, by constantly affecting the tempo of all the associations flowing in him, gradually disharmonize the whole of his functioning, with such sorrowful results that it is impossible for any man, if he is able to isolate himself even a little from the influences of the established abnormal conditions of our ordinary life and is willing to think about it seriously, not to be terrified—as, for example, by the shortening of our life with each decade. First of all, for the ‘swing of thought’, that is, for establishing a corresponding rhythm for my thinking and also for yours, I wish to follow somewhat the example of the Great Beelzebub and imitate the form of thinking of one highly respected by him and by me, and perhaps already, brave reader of my writings, by you, if of course you have had the daring to read through to the end all of the first series. That is to say, I wish to introduce at the very beginning of this writing of mine what our dear-to-all Mullah Nassr Eddin1 would call a ‘subtly philosophical question.’ I wish to do this at the very beginning because I intend to use freely, both here and in my later expositions, the wisdom of this sage, who is now recognized almost everywhere and upon whom, it is rumoured, the title of ‘The One and Only’ is soon to be officially conferred by the proper person. And this subtly philosophical question may already be sensed in that sort of perplexity which is bound to arise in the consciousness of every reader of even the very first paragraph of this chapter, if he compares the many data on which his firm convictions about medical matters are based with the fact that I, the author of Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, after the accident which nearly cost me my life, with the functioning of my organism not yet fully re-established owing to the incessant active effort Mullah Nassr Eddin, a legendary figure in numerous countries of the Near East, is an embodiment of popular wisdom.

This practical guide to facilitating planning meetings will enable you to effectively jump-start your projects and lead to success. Rigorous planning is vital to your project execution and success. Projects are often multifunctional, requiring input from various stakeholders. Project planning often tends to be done piecemeal or not at all, often leading to missing and/or incomplete information and correspondingly poor results. This book will show you how to do it right. How to Facilitate Productive Project Planning Meetings is a guide to help you plan your projects by showing you how to effectively facilitate productive face-to-face kickoff sessions (both in person and virtual) and ongoing planning meetings. Effective planning meetings will help you not only develop key artifacts but also provide continuous team building. You’ll also learn about the impacts of culture (organizational and global) on team dynamics and discover methods to ameliorate these impacts. A case study of building a sustainable house will help you understand the concepts and grasp the terminology. The book will also feature dozens of illustrative stories (from the authors as well as other practicing project managers) that will illustrate meeting techniques that went well (or not so well). Numerous templates, sample schedules, and checklists round out the value of this book in helping you facilitate effective meetings.

Nobody at The Eyrie is quite like Red Dora - in her early nineties, she's a Scots ex-Communist, ex-Trotskyite who fought in the Spanish Civil War. With her fiery brand of radical anticapitalism, she conjures plans of political sabotage and computer hacking. Eirlys is a madly patriotic Welsh woman who is the 'mother' of the The Eyrie's little clan. Little do the other residents suspect that Eirlys was once in prison. Hannah, born in a commune, is a young woman in flight from the tedium of a middle-class marriage. Seeking roots but reveling in her new found freedom, she finds that life at The Eyrie offers surprising new opportunities, and an unlikely co-conspirator.

Winner of the Man Booker Prize Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction Winner of the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature New York Times Bestseller Los Angeles Times Bestseller Named One of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review Named a Best Book of the Year by Newsweek, The Denver Post, BuzzFeed, Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly Named a "Must-Read" by Flavorwire and New York Magazine's "Vulture" Blog A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality—the black Chinese restaurant. Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens—on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles—the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral. Fueled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident—the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins—he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.

Most couples — because they watch so many of their peers divorce and are themselves the products of failed marriages — don't have many successful long-term-relationship role models. Parenting and communication issues are perennial, while some challenges, like increasingly 24-7 work lives and economic hardships, mark the current decade. Despite all this, psychotherapist and clinical social worker Marcia Naomi Berger asserts that most couples can make love last — they just need to learn how. Berger answers this need with a deceptively simple prescription: have an interruption-free thirty-minute (or even shorter) meeting each week and follow an agenda that includes the kind of appreciation and planning for fun that foster intimacy and pave the way for collaborative conflict resolution. Berger has refined these techniques while working with hundreds of couples — with results that are both practical and profound.

'An endlessly fascinating and enjoyable book' Neil MacGregor 'Full of delights' Tom Stoppard An extraordinary exploration of the medieval world - the most beguiling history book of the year This is a book about why medieval manuscripts matter. Coming face to face with an important illuminated manuscript in the original is like meeting a very famous person. We may all pretend that a well-known celebrity is no different from anyone else, and yet there is an undeniable thrill in actually meeting and talking to a person of world stature. The idea for the book, which is entirely new, is to invite the reader into intimate conversations with twelve of the most famous manuscripts in existence and to explore with the author what they tell us about nearly a thousand years of medieval history - and sometimes about the modern world too. Christopher de Hamel introduces us to kings, queens, saints, scribes, artists, librarians, thieves, dealers, collectors and the international community of manuscript scholars, showing us how he and his fellows piece together evidence to reach unexpected conclusions. He traces the elaborate journeys which these exceptionally precious artefacts have made through time and space, shows us how they have been copied, who has owned them or lusted after them (and how we can tell), how they have been embroiled in politics and scholarly disputes, how they have been regarded as objects of supreme beauty and luxury and as symbols of national identity. The book touches on religion, art, literature, music, science and the history of taste. Part travel book, part detective story, part conversation with the reader, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts conveys the fascination and excitement of encountering some of the greatest works of art in our culture which, in the originals, are to most people completely inaccessible. At the end, we have a slightly different perspective on history and how we come by knowledge. It is a most unusual book.