Showing results by narrator "Stephen Bowlby" in All Categories

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.

Thomas Tessler, devastated by a tragedy, has cloistered himself in his bedroom and shut out the world for the past three years. His wife, Silke, lives in the next room, but Thomas no longer shares his life with her, leaving his hideout only in the wee hours of the night to buy food at the store around the corner from their Manhattan apartment. Isolated, withdrawn, damaged, Thomas is hikikomori. Desperate to salvage their life together, Silke hires Megumi, a young Japanese woman attuned to the hikikomori phenomenon.

Crusading fervor gripped Europe for over 200 years, creating one of the most extraordinary, vivid episodes in world history. Whether the Crusades are regarded as the most romantic of Christian expeditions, or the last of the barbarian invasions, they have fascinated generations ever since, and their legacy of ideas and imagery has resonated through the centuries, inspiring Hollywood movies and great works of literature. Even today, to invoke the Crusades is to stir deep cultural myths, assumptions and prejudices.

When his mom decided it was time for them to leave for good, Thomas knew they better get far away or he'd come and find them. It was Christmas Day, with Mom sweating in a tiny room over a tiny stove, and Dad watching college basketball and drinking with a vengeance. "Thomas, I want you to get your sister and go out to the car, okay?" Mom had promised them that they would be getting a special Christmas present today. Just the two kids. They couldn’t mention it to Dad. This is her present, Thomas thought....

Once Billy Fox starts looking for trouble, he discovers that in Chicago, trouble's under every footstep. Home from the war, Billy Fox leaves Michigan for Chicago, hoping to find his ex-girlfriend, Rita - now another man's wife. Chicago isn't a town that takes kindly to strangers, and Billy finds himself barely scraping by, working odd jobs and living in squalor among convicts. A chance encounter lands him a job with Harry Strummer, the streetwise owner of the Peerless Detective Agency.

An unnamed spy is dispatched to Shanghai to aid a shadowy U.S. agency known only as HQ. There he meets a mysterious woman named Mei and begins a torrid affair that threatens to expose him to Chinese intelligence, the notorious Guoanbu. As danger waits for him around every corner, and the enigmatic Mei moves into and out of his life, he finds himself drawn further into a deadly cat-and-mouse game between Guoanbu and HQ that threatens not only to end his life but to also dangerously destabilize East/West relations.

When it comes to living life to its fullest, Rosalind Russell's character Auntie Mame is still the silver screen's exemplar. And Mame, the role Russell will always be remembered for, embodies the rich and rewarding life Bernard F. Dick reveals in his biography, Forever Mame: The Life of Rosalind Russell. Drawing on personal interviews and information from the archives of Russell and her producer-husband Frederick Brisson, Dick begins with Russell's childhood in Waterbury, Connecticut.

You can't trust a man who's dressed as Mae West, especially not in Mae West's house. One of Hollywood's earliest sex symbols, the whip-smart blonde's star has fallen since the Hays Code cracked down on the racy repartee that made her famous. Her latest project is a thinly veiled autobiographical novel, whose only copy is stolen just after she finishes her first draft. Tonight she's having a Mae West party, with every guest a man dressed as her. The thief is among those in drag, and P.I. Toby Peters has come to tear off his wig. He's there as a favor to his brother, a brutal cop who had a fling with West when she first moved to Hollywood.

A portrait of a keen social observer at the center of the last 50 years of cultural life, captured through a vivid selection of O’Brien’s own writings on music to fashion to downtown art and, just as importantly and unexpectedly, the political temperature of America. Glenn O’Brien collaborated with visual artists, writers, fashion houses, and musicians throughout his almost 50-year career. Intelligence for Dummies gathers Glenn O’Brien’s essays, aphorisms and tweets, to create a portrait of the artist as cultural bellwether.

From dungeon depths to the spotlight's glare, Luther Miller's rise as the league's new hero is as perilous as it is meteoric. Rookie sensation Luther Miller is disrupting the World Dungeon Exploration Association, vaulting from obscurity to stardom after his staggering win in the Ultimate Four.

America is at a tipping point, and never has this been more apparent than right now. We are in danger of losing our spiritual and moral heritage, making many believe that we have fallen beyond the point of recovery. This book is here to say that yes, we have fallen. In fact fallen much further than we realize, but our country's best days are ahead - with the help of a radical, moral, and cultural revolution, beginning with the church. This book is a manual for the revolution.

Tim Stevens traveled an alternative road—leaving high school and immediately joining a national non-profit organization. He rose quickly through the ranks of leadership, but nine years later left it all behind to help an upstart church get its footing. During the 20 years Stevens served as Executive Pastor at Granger Community Church near South Bend, Indiana, the ministry grew from a congregation of 300 to more than 5,000; from a staff of five to more than 130; with a preschool, restaurant, three campuses and more than 1,800 new churches planted in southern India.

Detective Susan Ford and her new partner, Detective Jack Tomelli, are called to a crime scene at the local summer stock theater where they find the director of Murder on the Orient Express gruesomely murdered—naked, face caked in makeup, pillow at his feet, wrists and ankles bound by rope. When Susan describes the murder to her dad, retired detective Will Ford, he recognizes the MO of a 1969 serial killer . . . a case he worked fifty years ago.

The uniformed man standing before Toby Peters is General Douglas MacArthur, a soldier who considers himself the only man who can defeat the Japanese. But though he may be all-powerful in the South Pacific, today he is in Los Angeles with a problem only a detective can solve. The general has an eye on a postwar promotion to the White House, and an aide has stolen his war chest, his donor list, and a handful of embarrassing private letters. To get them back, Toby may need some help.

With a round, open face and a penchant for tall tales, Matteo de Lorenzo resembled everyone's kindly uncle. But Uncle Marty, as he was known throughout the Genovese crime family, was one of the New York mob's top earners throughout the 1960s and '70s, the mastermind of a billion-dollar trade in stolen and counterfeit securities.

A former CIA spy and author of Overworld recounts the stories of master criminals Robert Sensi and Richard Hirschfeld, describing their ties to the Republican Party and al-Qaeda, their numerous multi-million-dollar investment scams, and the partnership by which they smuggled billionaire Russian mafiosos into the United States.

Why do we do the things we do? The classical view of economics is that we are rational individuals, making decisions with the intention of maximizing our preferences. Behaviorists, on the other hand, see us as relying on mental shortcuts and conforming to preexisting biases. Richard Robb argues that neither explanation accounts for those things that we do for their own sake, and without understanding these sorts of actions, our picture of decision‑making is at best incomplete.

Ben Lopez spends his life travelling the world, bartering with people who value money over life. Working for governments, law enforcement agencies, multinational corporations and private clients, Ben is an expert K&R (Kidnap and Ransom) consultant, supplying professional kidnap-negotiation services. He can be called out to anywhere in the world within 24 hours notice to set up and command the negotiator's cell, bargaining with religious fanatics, hardened criminals, and other desperate people in order to save the lives of their captives.

Throughout history, there are some events that stand out as so groundbreaking that they completely change life as we know it. The Apollo moon landing of 1969 was one of those events - the invention of the Apple personal computer was another. In this book, John Sculley - former CEO of both Pepsi and Apple - claims we are in an era that is giving birth to numerous groundbreaking events and inventions - moonshots - that will change the way we live and work for generations to come.

In The Gift of Jesus, beloved pastor and teacher Dr. Charles Stanley takes a deeply personal and inspiring look at how God gave us Himself through the birth of Christ. Discover that Christmas and Advent can be so much more than a busy season to get through and instead a season of joy and renewal.