A novel set in the magical offices of The Portable Door, now a majorly fantastical film starring Christoph Waltz, Sam Neill, and Miranda Otto. “Tom Holt may be the most imaginative satirist to land on our shores since Douglas Adams.” — Christopher Moore, New York Times bestselling author It touches all our lives – our triumphs and tragedies, our proudest achievements, our most traumatic disasters. Alloyed of love and fear, death and fire, and the inscrutable acts of the gods, insurance is indeed the force that binds the universe together. Hardly surprising, therefore, that Frank Carpenter, one of the foremost magical practitioners of our age, felt himself irresistibly drawn to it. Until, that is, he met Jane, a high-flying corporate heroine with an annoying habit of falling out of trees and getting killed. Repeatedly. It's not long before Frank and Jane find themselves face to face with the greatest enigma of our times: When is a door not a door? When it's a mousetrap. The J.W. Wells & Co. Series: The Portable Door In Your Dreams Earth, Air, Fire and Custard You Don't Have to Be Evil to Work Here, But It Helps The Better Mousetrap May Contain Traces of Magic Other titles from Tom Holt: Doughnut When It's A Jar The Outsorcerer's Apprentice The Good, the Bad and the Smug The Management Style of the Supreme Beings An Orc on the Wild Side Holt Writing as K. J. Parker: Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City How To Rule An Empire and Get Away With It A Practical Guide to Conquering the World

Learn about the role that patent models played in American history--and even learn to build your own replica! Patent models, working models required for US patent filings from 1790 to 1880, offer insight into--and inspiration from--a period of intense technological advancement, the Industrial Revolution. The Rothschild Patent Model Collection consists of thousands of patent models, many from the 19th century. This book features the most outstanding of these patent models, and offers deep insight into the cultural, economic, and political history of the United States. This book not only catalogs hundreds of the most compelling models from the collection, but shows you how to build your own replicas of several selected models using Lego, 3D printing, and other materials and techniques.

Simon Pont, Chief Strategy Officer at Vizeum, sets out to decode brand charisma, taking readers on a provocative and insightful journey through the brand and advertising strategies behind some of the world's leading companies.

The publishing industry has responded to the emergence of digital technologies with many useful and innovative products, but the business of publishing has not yet reinvented itself for this new era—old, outdated models prevail, limiting both vision and opportunity. Every Book Is a Startup provides a roadmap for publishing professionals interested in bringing a fresh, entrepreneurial approach to the business of book publishing, based on techniques proven effective in the world of tech startups. This book shows you how to apply tech industry concepts such as customer development, validated learning, and pivots to create publishing business practices that are agile, flexible, and highly profitable. Here at O'Reilly Media, we've incorporated many of these techniques into our own publishing business, including "release early, release often." With that in mind, the initial release of this project discusses two core ideas for how this new way of thinking can be applied to book publishing, and solicits your ideas about what we might include in future releases of this book. What do you want to know more about? Would a variety of case studies be helpful? Let us know! The current ebook release of Every Book Is a Startup is priced at $7.99; subsequent releases will be priced higher. Buy the current release now and you'll receive all updates at no additional cost. A print edition will be available for purchase when the book is complete.

Advertising can be great. Great advertising, that is. Brands live or die on the power of their advertising and the advertiser's role is to build better mousetraps. But why do we love certain brands and passionately or indifferently reject the rest? What do our brands say about us? And why do we feel so compelled to use digital brands to say even more? Advertising has always been the hard sell and subtle hustle that piques our interest and gets us thinking I WANT that, but in a world that now moves with binary speed, the Brand Game is taking ever-new and remarkable turns in its pursuit of better and faster mice. A provocative and insightful look at the chase, The Better Mousetrap lifts the lid on the brand and advertising strategies of leading companies who, in a world redefined by digital media, are setting the best traps for these ever quicker mice.

How to get past the most common myths about creativity to design truly innovative strategies We tend to think of creativity in terms reminiscent of the ancient muses: divinely-inspired, unpredictable, and bestowed upon a lucky few. But when our jobs challenge us to be creative on demand, we must develop novel, useful ideas that will keep our organizations competitive. The Myths of Creativity demystifies the processes that drive innovation. Based on the latest research into how creative individuals and firms succeed, David Burkus highlights the mistaken ideas that hold us back and shows us how anyone can embrace a practical approach, grounded in reality, to finding the best new ideas, projects, processes, and programs. Answers questions such as: What causes us to be creative in one moment and void in the next? What makes someone more or less creative than his or her peers? Where do our flashes of creative insight come from, and how can we generate more of them? Debunks 10 common myths, including: the Eureka Myth; the Lone Creator Myth; the Incentive Myth; and The Brainstorming Myth Written by David Burkus, founder of popular leadership blog LDRLB For anyone who struggles with creativity, or who makes excuses for delaying the work of innovation, The Myths of Creativity will help you overcome your obstacles to finding new ideas.

Melodrama; 5 male roles, 3 female roles.

In this revelatory book, Sudhir Venkatesh takes us into Maquis Park, a poor black neighborhood on Chicago's Southside, to explore the desperate and remarkable ways in which a community survives. The result is a dramatic narrative of individuals at work, and a rich portrait of a community. But while excavating the efforts of men and women to generate a basic livelihood for themselves and their families, Off the Books offers a devastating critique of the entrenched poverty that we so often ignore in America, and reveals how the underground economy is an inevitable response to the ghetto's appalling isolation from the rest of the country.

New college graduate Nick Adano doesn’t realize it, but he’s about to move from the frustration of unemployment into the despair of being a vital cog in a morally dubious invention-marketing company. And when Nick and his boss find themselves with a problem on their hands—a client with a good idea who’s being railroaded—will Nick have the courage to confront himself? Set against the backdrop of the early nineties’ recession, Mousetrap, Inc. explores a world before email and social media, when people relied on newspapers as a pivotal way to get information. To buoy the spirits of his equally despairing coworkers, Nick pens tales featuring an antihero named Chapel Fox, by day a respected divorce attorney, but by night a madman bringing his version of justice to his beloved hometown. Nick’s coworkers take pleasure—and maybe derive a hint of self-recognition—from these morally ambiguous stories. Capturing the essence of the awkward early twenties, when we’re adults . . . but not quite, this work speaks to anyone who’s endured a less-than-ideal work situation.