The chafing restrictions of a typical upbringing in upper-class, small town Alabama simply did not apply to Zelda, who was described as an unusual child and permitted to roam the streets with little supervision. Zelda refused to blossom into a typical 'Southern belle' on anyone's terms but her own and while still in high school enjoyed the status of a local celebrity for her shocking behavior. Everybody in town knew the name Zelda Sayre. Queen of the Montgomery social scene, Zelda had a different beau ready and willing to show her a good time for every day of the week. Before meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda's life was a constant pursuit of pleasure. With little thought for the future and no responsibilities to speak of, Zelda committed herself fully to the mantra that accompanied her photo in her high school graduation book: "Why should all life be work, when we all can borrow. Let's think only of today, and not worry about tomorrow." But for now Zelda was still in rehearsal for her real life to begin, a life she was sure would be absolutely extraordinary. Zelda Sayre married F. Scott Fitzgerald on the 3rd of April 1920 and left sleepy Montgomery behind in order to dive headfirst into the shimmering, glamourous life of a New York socialite. With the publication of Scott's first novel, This Side of Paradise, Zelda found herself thrust into the limelight as the very epitome of the Flapper lifestyle. Concerned chiefly with fashion, wild parties and flouting social expectations, Zelda and Scott became icons of the Jazz Age, the personification of beauty and success. What Zelda and Scott shared was a romantic sense of self-importance that assured them that their life of carefree leisure and excess was the only life really worth living. Deeply in love, the Fitzgeralds were like to sides of the same coin, each reflecting the very best and worst of each other. While the world fell in love with the image of the Fitzgeralds they saw on the cover of magazines, behind the scenes the Fitzgerald's marriage could not withstand the tension of their creative arrangement. Zelda was Scott's muse and he mercilessly mined the events of their life for material for his books. Scott claimed Zelda's memories, things she said, experiences she had and even passages from her diary as his possessions and used them to form the basis of his fictional works. Zelda had a child but the domestic sphere offered no comfort or purpose for her. The Flapper lifestyle was not simply a phase she lived through, it formed the very basis of her character and once the parties grew dull, the Fitzgeralds' drinking became destructive and Zelda's beauty began to fade, the world held little allure for her. Zelda sought reprieve in work and tried to build a career as a ballet dancer. When that didn't work out she turned to writing but was forbidden by Scott from using her own life as material. Convinced that she would never leave her mark on the world as deeply or expressively as Scott had, Zelda retreated into herself and withdrew from the people she knew in happier times. The later years of Zelda's life were marred by her detachment from reality as, diagnosed with schizophrenia, Zelda spent the last eighteen years of her life living in and out of psychiatric hospitals. As Scott's life unraveled due to alcohol abuse, Zelda looked back on the years they had spent together, young and wild and beautiful, as the best of her life. She may have been right but she was wrong about one thing, Zelda did leave her mark on the world and it was a deep and expressive mark that no one could have left but her. Zelda Fitzgerald: The Biography

    The letter was both a confession and an invitation for public scrutiny. “No matter where I was,” he recalls, “there was always a chance that someone had read my post and was waiting to catch me with a drink in my hand.” To help keep himself on the straight and narrow, Carr still has a counter at the top of his site, ticking off the number of days he’s gone without a drink.In this bracing (but zero-proof) tale of recovery, Carr delivers his own twelve steps to building a life without booze. His hard-earned advice, punctuated with anecdotes that are both cautionary and comic (a bender once took him to Iceland, where he drunkenly believed he’d get better Wi-Fi) is given with humility and goodwill. Along the way, Carr celebrates the simple yet overlooked pleasures of sobriety—weight loss, a renewed love life, the ability to buy a phone or laptop without promptly losing it in a bar. As he slowly discovers, a sober life actually CAN be fun. What’s more, he’ll remember it.

    And Mother Teresa was its leader.How did this nun with no formal business training create a global brand, become a powerful fund-raising and public relations magnet, and lead a worldwide organization through every phase of growth over the course of forty-seven years? What were her secrets?When we shift our lens and view Mother Teresa from a leadership perspective, a wonderful success story emerges, one filled with inspiration, life lessons, and impact.Ruma Bose spent time in Calcutta working as a volunteer with Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity in 1992. Over time, she discovered that Mother Teresa’s success resulted from the careful application of eight simple and unexpected principles.Through the pages of this book you will have the unique opportunity to learn these principles, share Bose’s experience with Mother Teresa, and discover how to apply Mother Teresa’s principles whether on a single project, throughout an organization, or in your life.Modern, well-timed, and humane, Mother Teresa, CEO helps you discover how you don’t have to be a saint to be a great leader!

    Presenting the one and only Mr Paul Keating – at his straight-shooting, scumbag-calling, merciless best.Paul lets rip – on John Howard: “The little desiccated coconut is under pressure and he is attacking anything he can get his hands on.”On Peter Costello: “The thing about poor old Costello is he is all tip and no iceberg.”On John Hewson: “[His performance] is like being flogged with a warm lettuce.”On Andrew Peacock: “...what we have here is an intellectual rust bucket.”On Wilson Tuckey: “...you stupid foul-mouthed grub.”On Tony Abbott: “If Tony Abbott ends up the prime minister of Australia, you’ve got to say, God help us.”And that’s just a taste.

    This is her true story. During a terrifying journey that began as a 14-year-old armed robber, she has been shot four times, tasered three times by police and served three jail terms. Convicted for armed robbery she was released from prison only to go out and attempt to murder four people. Gypsy Jane has led a life packed with crime, betrayal, drugs and murder but she classes herself as a woman of principles: she values loyalty and honour, and has only ever wanted a 'normal' life.

    For a young man who began studying for the priesthood at a seminary, the journey to halls of Imagineering has truly been a magical one. A master storyteller, Kevin chronicles his unimaginable career with great humor, honesty, and heart.

    "Coaching for Breakthrough Success" introduces the groundbreaking Situational Coaching Model, which provides coaches the flexibility they need to navigate seamlessly from one coaching paradigm to another.Jack Canfield is one of the world's leading experts in personal effectiveness and the bestselling author or coauthor of "Chicken Soup for the Soul," "The Success Principles," "Key to Living the Law of Attraction," and "The Power of Focus." Dr. Peter Chee is President and CEO of global learning solutions firm ITD World.

    Today's customers are a hard bunch to crack. Time-strapped, screen-addicted, value-savvy, and socially engaged, their expectations are tougher than ever for a business to keep up with. They are empowered like never before and expect businesses to respect that sense of empowerment--lashing out at those that don't.  Take heart: Old-fashioned customer service, fully retooled for today's blistering pace and digitally connected reality, is what you need to build the kind loyal customer base that allows you to survive--and thrive. And  High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service  spells out surefire strategies for success in a clear, entertaining, and practical way. Discover:  * Six major customer trends and what they mean for your business  * Eight unbreakable rules for social media customer service  * How to effectively address online complainers and saboteurs on Yelp, Twitter, TripAdvisor, and other forums for user generated content  * The rising power of self-service--and how to design it properly  * How to build a company culture that breeds stellar customer service ? High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service reveals inside secrets of wildly successful customer service initiatives, from Internet startups to venerable brands, and shows how companies of every stripe can turn casual customers into fervent supporters who will spread the word far and wide--online and off.

    

    Some of his tales will seem far fetched, unless you're a cop and then you know that anything can happen - and just when you think you've seen it all, someone will surprise you.

    An unpopular war. A military and diplomatic team in disarray. Those are the challenges President Obama has faced as he attempts to make a success of U.S involvement in Afghanistan. They are also the challenges President Truman surmounted in the winter of 1950 as he began managing a war in Korea that risked becoming bigger and more costly. It was the first significant armed conflict of the Cold War: United States troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur came to the aid of the South Koreans after North Korea invaded. When Communist China entered the conflict on the side of the North Koreans, the crisis seemed on the verge of flaring into a world war. Truman was determined not to let that happen. MacArthur kept urging a widening of the war into China itself and ignoring his Commander in Chief. On April 11, 1951, after MacArthur had “shot his mouth off,” as one diplomat put it, one too many times, Truman fired him. The story of their showdown—one of the most dramatic in U.S. history between a Commander in Chief and his top soldier in the field—is captured in all its detail by David McCullough in his biography Truman, and presented here in a e-book called Truman Fires MacArthur (an excerpt of Truman, McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography), which was the headline carried in many newspapers around the country the next day. Truman Fires MacArthur will continue to ride the headlines. It will go on sale as an ebook just as the Rolling Stone profile that exposed General Stanley McChrystal’s insurrection and forced his resignation hits newsstands, and media coverage of the showdown continues to draw historical analogies between Truman and Obama.

    This book will show you what successful early risers do once they are up and teach you step-by-step how you can become an early riser.

    It has led nothing short of a revolution in the entertainment industries, generating billions of dollars in annual revenue while capturing the imaginations of hundreds of millions of people in over 190 countries. But to reach these great heights, Netflix, which launched in 1998 as an online DVD rental service, has had to reinvent itself over and over again. This type of unprecedented flexibility would have been impossible without the counterintuitive and radical management principles that cofounder Reed Hastings established from the very beginning. Hastings rejected the conventional wisdom under which other companies operate and defied tradition to instead build a culture focused on freedom and responsibility, one that has allowed Netflix to adapt and innovate as the needs of its members and the world have simultaneously transformed.Hastings set new standards, valuing people over process, emphasizing innovation over efficiency, and giving employees context, not controls. At Netflix, there are no vacation or expense policies. At Netflix, adequate performance gets a generous severance, and hard work is irrel-evant. At Netflix, you don't try to please your boss, you give candid feedback instead. At Netflix, employees don't need approval, and the company pays top of market. When Hastings and his team first devised these unorthodox principles, the implications were unknown and untested. But in just a short period, their methods led to unparalleled speed and boldness, as Netflix quickly became one of the most loved brands in the world.Here for the first time, Hastings and Erin Meyer, bestselling author of The Culture Map and one of the world's most influential business thinkers, dive deep into the controversial ideologies at the heart of the Netflix psyche, which have generated results that are the envy of the business world. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with current and past Netflix employees from around the globe and never-before-told stories of trial and error from Hastings's own career, No Rules Rules is the fascinating and untold account of the philosophy behind one of the world's most innovative, imaginative, and successful companies.

    You will read her stories about working with Walt’s nephew, Roy E. Disney, her front-line role in the opening of theme parks around the world and her own journey to discovering how to bring some Disney magic into every day.The wish for happy endings is written in our hearts. Every park guest or movie watcher is looking for their own “happily ever after,” as they ask the questions: What’s my story? Does it matter? Will the story end well for me? Jody’s personal experiences and her underpinning faith help her to offer practical and sometimes unexpected principles to better appreciate and navigate our own stories.Jody’s entertaining storytelling will satisfy a reader's desire to open the doors and peek inside the castle – and more, to unlock and illuminate life’s true treasure.

    Navy Commander Michael Abrashoff attracted worldwide media attention for his success in turning around a struggling ship, the USS "Benfold"--the subject of his acclaimed bestseller, "It's Your Ship." Since then, he's been a fixture on the business lecture circuit, spreading an empowering message that any organization can be turned around with compassionate but firm leadership. Abrashoff never claimed to have all the answers. He also knew that there were plenty of other creative leaders in the navy, army, air force, marine corps, and even the coast guard who could teach businesspeople how to motivate, inspire, and get great results under pressure. So he asked around, found some fascinating people in every branch of the U.S. military and the business world, and interviewed them about leadership and teambuilding. The result is "Get Your Ship Together"--a book that will be just as valuable as "It's Your Ship." For example, Abrashoff introduces us to a working-class enlisted man who rose rapidly in the navy for his creative leadership under fire; an army platoon leader who fought in Afghanistan; the first woman to fly an Apache helicopter in combat; a former commander of the air force's elite Blue Angels; and many other unsung heroes. Abrashoff distills their stories into fresh lessons that can be applied in the business world, such as: Make a contract with your people and honor it Develop your subordinates better so you can buy back a little quality of life Conduct the battle on your terms, not those of your adversary