The Closing Door is the first major critique of the effect of conservative policies on urban race and poverty in the 1980s. Atlanta, with its booming economy, strong elected black leadership, and many highly educated blacks, seemed to be the perfect site for those policies and market solutions to prove themselves. Unfortunately, not only did expected economic opportunity fail to materialize but many of the hard-won gains of the civil rights movement were lost. Orfield and Ashkinaze painstakingly analyze the evidence from Atlanta to show why black opportunity deteriorated over the 1980s and outline possible remedies for the damage inflicted by the Reagan and Bush administrations. "The Closing Door is a crucial breath of fresh air . . . an important and timely text which will help to alter the 'underclass' debate in favor of reconsidering race-specific policies. Orfield and Ashkinaze construct a convincing argument with which those who favor 'race-neutrality' will have to contend. In readable prose they make a compelling case that economic growth is not enough."—Preston H. Smith II, Transition

Will You Open Your Heart and Home to Children in Need? As a teenager, Kristin Berry had heard all the horror stories surrounding foster care and adoption—abuse, neglect, rejection, anger, and misunderstandings. But instead of closing her heart, God opened it wide. This is Kristin’s honest, unvarnished story of some of her experiences as a foster parent of twenty-three children over the course of nine years. What she learned is that living in a foster home is like living with a revolving door. You never know who will arrive or who you will have to say goodbye to. Leaving the door open means there will be heartache and pain, but also adventure and unexpected joy. Kristin and her husband, Mike, have been through it all in their unique parenting journey. If you have ever wondered what it’s really like to be a foster parent, this book will help you gain a true understanding of the everyday trials and triumphs these moms and dads face. It will also inspire you to consider opening your door…and to leave it wide open.

From the creator of OPEN THE GARAGE DOOR comes the hit lift-the-flap board book all about your favorite farm animals! Spend a day on the farm and explore all the animal sights and sounds! Featuring 10 lift-the-flaps and a variety of barnyard favorites, including horses, chickens, cows, and pigs, this board book is a fun-filled introduction to life on the farm.

In a crucial shift within posthumanistic media studies, Bernhard Siegert dissolves the concept of media into a network of operations that reproduce, displace, process, and reflect the distinctions fundamental for a given culture. Cultural Techniques aims to forget our traditional understanding of media so as to redefine the concept through something more fundamental than the empiricist study of a medium’s individual or collective uses or of its cultural semantics or aesthetics. Rather, Siegert seeks to relocate media and culture on a level where the distinctions between object and performance, matter and form, human and nonhuman, sign and channel, the symbolic and the real are still in the process of becoming. The result is to turn ontology into a domain of all that is meant in German by the word Kultur. Cultural techniques comprise not only self-referential symbolic practices like reading, writing, counting, or image-making. The analysis of artifacts as cultural techniques emphasizes their ontological status as “in-betweens,” shifting from firstorder to second-order techniques, from the technical to the artistic, from object to sign, from the natural to the cultural, from the operational to the representational. Cultural Techniques ranges from seafaring, drafting, and eating to the production of the sign-signaldistinction in old and new media, to the reproduction of anthropological difference, to the study of trompe-l’oeils, grids, registers, and doors. Throughout, Siegert addresses fundamental questions of how ontological distinctions can be replaced by chains of operations that process those alleged ontological distinctions within the ontic. Grounding posthumanist theory both historically and technically, this book opens up a crucial dialogue between new German media theory and American postcybernetic discourses.

A hands-on, practical survival guide from retired Navy SEAL Clint Emerson, from eluding pursuers, evading capture, and surviving dangerous situations.

Eliminate Telephone terror and turn cold call to cash! Cold calling is a powerful, inexpensive and easy way to develop new contacts and expand resources. In today's market, generating new business requires planning and skill. For over 10 years, Wendy Weiss has been a marketing consultant specializing in cold calling and appointment setting.

“This book will help you own your calendar, block time for what matters most and reclaim your life.” —Paula Rizzo, author of Listful Living: A List-Making Journey to a Less Stressed You You want more time to spend with family, to achieve big goals, and to simply enjoy life. Yet, there seem to be more and more things competing for your time, and more distractions interrupting your day. Craig Jarrow has spent many years testing time management tactics, tools, and systems and written hundreds of articles on productivity, goals, and organization, Through it all he’s learned a simple truth: Time management should be easy, not complicated and unwieldy. And it shouldn’t take up more of your precious time than it gives back! Time Management Ninja offers 21 rules that will show you an easier and more effective way to take control of your time and manage your busy life. Follow these simple principles and get more done with less effort. It’s no-stress, uncomplicated time management that works. “Read this book, apply its rules, and you’ll find freedom.” —Hyrum Smith, bestselling author of Purposeful Retirement

From New York City subway encounters to memories of pickup basketball games on Fourth Street, a love letter to the past, and to all the relationships and memories our homeplaces hold, from the National Book Award finalist. “I will consider a slice of pizza," opens Phillips's poem "Jubilate Civitas." "For rare among pleasures in Gotham, it is both / exquisite and blessedly cheap." Thus, as throughout this collection, he celebrates a simple pleasure that "in a time of deceit . . . is honest and upright, steadfast and good"; even the busted buttons we press when waiting to cross the street make for elegy in a collection that brings us this poet at his burnished best. Phillips finds his love of a complex, vibrant city extends to his dearest people—he writes for his friend Paul, dying of cancer; for his wife’s stormy eyes when they fight; for the baby boy he once woke at night to feed and change. All these and more pass through Phillips's elegant yet colloquial lines, in a book that shines with love and honesty on every page. As he writes, "If you're reading this / we were once friends."