Good to Great Summarized for Busy People

    the three literary mavens on the wildly popular PotterCast of The Leaky Cauldron. Four transcripts of Harry Potter fandom's favorite podcasts along with two talks each from James Thomas, Travis Prinzi, and John Granger make this a reading experience that will delight the casual Hogwarts reader and 'wow' even the most serious Potter maniac. From the secret code of Harry Potter names - why all those doubled letters and initials - to the real world Muggles and Seekers of the English Civil War that are the historical backdrop to Harry's adventures, with sidetrips to discuss Christmas at Hogwarts and the esoteric meaning of Luna Lovegood's lovable lunancy, 'Harry Potter Smart Talk' is a must-have guide to the world's best selling books by three geeks who love to laugh almost as much as they love a great book. The Perfect Gift for your favorite Potter-phile! As Melissa Anelli, author of 'Harry, A History, ' wrote in the Foreword to 'Smart Talk, ' "here is the Ivory Tower in Hagrid's Hut

    Lumped into the burgeoning alt-country movement, the band soon landed a major label deal and recorded an instant classic: Strangers Almanac. That's when tour manager Thomas O'Keefe met the young musician.For the next three years, Thomas was at Ryan's side: on the tour bus, in the hotels, backstage at the venues. Whiskeytown built a reputation for being, as the Detroit Free Press put it, "half band, half soap opera," and Thomas discovered that young Ryan was equal parts songwriting prodigy and drunken buffoon. Ninety percent of the time, Thomas could talk Ryan into doing the right thing. Five percent of the time, he could cover up whatever idiotic thing Ryan had done. But the final five percent? Whiskeytown was screwed.Twenty-plus years later, accounts of Ryan's legendary antics are still passed around in music circles. But only three people on the planet witnessed every Whiskeytown show from the release of Strangers Almanac to the band's eventual breakup: Ryan, fiddle player Caitlin Cary, and Thomas O'Keefe.

    This is edge-of-the-seat, page-turning reading.

    But the historic landfall of October 1492 was only a secondary event of the year. The preceding January, they had accepted the surrender of Muslim Granada, ending centuries of Islamic rule in their peninsula. And later that year, they had ordered the expulsion or forced baptism of Spain's Jewish minority, a cruel crusade undertaken in an excess of zeal for their Catholic faith. Europe, in the century of Ferdinand and Isabella, was also awakening to the glories of a new age, the Renaissance, and the Spain of the "Catholic Kings" - as Ferdinand and Isabella came to be known - was not untouched by this brilliant revival of learning. Here, from the noted historian Malveena McKendrick, is their remarkable story.

    When Syma – a young doctor, an independent woman with a mind of her own, decides to leave home and embark on an adventure in a strange land, she cannot imagine the powerful emotional whirlpool she’ll find herself in.Daily life in Palestine is far from comfortable, replete with obstacles. The conflict between the lure of civilized, bourgeois life in Europe and the option of living the Zionist dream while embarking on a love affair is agonizing.She chooses to leave everything behind, and sails back home, to Poland.When WWII breaks out and the situation of Europe’s Jews goes from bad to worse, Syma’s choice turns out to be unfortunate.November, 1942. In the midst of a harsh winter in Poland, Syma stands waiting at the railway station, on the same platform she was so familiar with in her previous life, a bygone reality.As the train approaches the station, Syma grasps that this voyage will be different. Where is she headed now?

    Maybe you’re frustrated with your writing progress or overwhelmed by creative doubt, burnout, or writer’s block. Maybe you just can’t seem to sit down and write.No matter the roadblock standing between you and writing success, here’s the good news: You’re capable of becoming the writer you want to be—and that work can begin today. In this actionable and empowering guide to personal writing success, Kristen Kieffer shares 25 insightful chapters designed to help you:• Cultivate confidence in your skills and stories• Develop a personal writing habit you can actually sustain• Improve your writing ability with tools for intentional growth• Discover what you (really) want from your writing life—and how to get it! By the end of Build Your Best Writing Life, you’ll know how to harness the simple techniques that can help you win your inner creative battles, finish projects you can be proud to share with the world, and work with focus to turn your writing dreams into reality.

    Almanzo Wilder was 71, Laura 61, and Rose felt obligated to stay and help. To make life easier, she built them a new home, while she and Helen Boylston transformed the farmhouse into a rural writing retreat and filled it with visiting New Yorkers. Rose sold magazine stories to pay the bills for both households, and despite the subterranean tension between mother and daughter, life seemed good.Then came the Crash. Rose’s money vanished, the magazine market dried up, and the Depression darkened the nation. That’s when Laura wrote her autobiography, “Pioneer Girl,” the story of growing up in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, on the Kansas prairie, and by the shores of Silver Lake. The rest—the eight remarkable books that followed—is literary history.But it isn’t the history we thought we knew. For the surprising truth is that Laura’s stories were publishable only with Rose’s expert rewriting. Based on Rose’s unpublished diaries and Laura’s letters, A Wilder Rose tells the true story of the decade-long, intensive, and often troubled collaboration that produced the Little House books—the collaboration that Rose and Laura deliberately hid from their agent, editors, reviewers, and readers.Why did the two women conceal their writing partnership? What made them commit what amounts to one of the longest-running deceptions in American literature? And what happened in those years to change Rose from a left-leaning liberal to a passionate Libertarian?In this impeccably researched novel and with a deep insight into the book-writing business gained from her own experience as an author and coauthor, Susan Wittig Albert follows the clues that take us straight to the heart of this fascinating literary mystery.

    A. Milne. Written for the satire magazine Punch, these brief stories and essays perfectly capture Milne's sly humor, beguiling social insight, and scathing wit. From "Odd Verses" to "War Sketches," "Summer Days" to "Men of Letters," Milne takes his readers from the stiff British drawing room to the irreverent joy of a boy's day at the beach. Ideal for curling up with in the hammock or stretching out by the fire, these tales shine brightly any day of the year.Complete with a series of whimsical illustrations, The Sunny Side offers the perfect chance to rediscover this forgotten classic by one of our most cherished authors.

    From the author of the bestselling true-crime classic 'Fred & Rose', comes the astonishing inside story of the world's biggest cash robbery: the Tonbridge Securitas heist.

    Hidden in the boxes is the story of a lifetime, written on random bits of paper—the hopes and wishes, fears and thoughts of an unassuming but complex woman passing through the seasons of an extraordinary, unsung life filled with journeys of faith, observations on love, and one final lesson that could change everything for Tandi.The Story Keeper (2015 Christy Award winner! 2015 Carol award winner!)When successful New York editor Jen Gibbs discovers a decaying slush-pile manuscript on her desk, she has no idea that the story of Sarra, a young mixed-race woman trapped in Appalachia at the turn of the twentieth century, will both take her on a journey and change her forever. Happy with her life in the city, and at the top of her career with a new job at Vida House Publishing, Jen has left her Appalachian past and twisted family ties far behind. But the search for the rest of the manuscript, and Jen’s suspicions about the identity of its unnamed author, will draw her into a mystery that leads back to the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains . . . and quite possibly through the doors she thought she had closed forever.The Sea Keeper’s Daughters (2016 Christy Award Winner!)From modern-day Roanoke Island to the sweeping backdrop of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains and Roosevelt’s WPA folklore writers, past and present intertwine to create an unexpected destiny.Restaurant owner Whitney Monroe is desperate to save her business from a hostile takeover. The inheritance of a decaying Gilded Age hotel on North Carolina’s Outer Banks may provide just the ray of hope she needs. But things at the Excelsior are more complicated than they seem. Whitney’s estranged stepfather is entrenched on the third floor, and the downstairs tenants are determined to save the historic building. Searching through years of stored family heirlooms may be Whitney’s only hope of quick cash, but will the discovery of an old necklace and a Depression-era love story change everything?

    Excerpt: Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm ;And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands ;Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharfIn cluster ; then a moulder'd church ; and higherA long street climbs to one tall-tower'd mill ;And high in heaven behind it a gray downWith Danish barrows ; and a hazelwood,By autumn nutters haunted, flourishesGreen in a cuplike hollow of the down.[...]

    James's enthusiastic appreciation of the unparalleled aesthetic allure of Venice, the vitality of Rome, and the noisy, sensuous appeal of Naples is everywhere marked by pervasive regret for the disappearance of the past and by ambivalence concerning the transformation of nineteenth-century Europe. John Auchard's lively introduction and extensive notes illuminate the surprising differences between the historical, political, and artistic Italy of James's travels and the metaphoric Italy that became the setting of some of his best-known works of fiction. This edition includes an appendix of James's book reviews on Italian travel-writing.

    Banks (1870–1938) was an ambitious young American journalist (born in New Jersey, raised in Wisconsin) who worked as a typist and reporter in Baltimore, then took the unlikely post of secretary to the American Ambassador in Peru, before coming to London to seek her fortune. She achieved her goal admirably in 1894 with a form of 'stunt journalism' that had first been practised by James Greenwood, who dressed in rags and presented himself as a 'casual' pauper to the parish authorities, writing up his experience in his sensational article 'A Night in a Workhouse'. Banks, very much a late nineteenth-century 'New Woman', likewise decided to go 'undercover' amongst the poor — first as a servant, then in several other positions, masquerading as a crossing sweeper, laundress and, at the opposite end of the social spectrum, pretending to be an heiress, to see how easy it might be to buy one's way into the aristocratic upper echelons of London 'Society'. Banks's ploy was successful and the resulting articles became the talk of the capital — and guaranteed her a future career in journalism. Her own autobiography records the words of the Pall Mall Gazette ... 'Her strange, wild and curious adventures are the common theme of conversation in thousands of English homes ...' and, although Banks's subterfuge may not seem 'wild' to modern readers, it remains striking. It was the impersonation of a servant which caused the greatest furore, not least the fear that the upstart young American was promoting a very un-British egalitarian agenda, one sympathetic to the complaints of servants against mistresses, undermining the normal healthy relations between the classes. In fact, the book provides a rather too convenient comparison of two households — the first where the employer exploits and over-works her staff, the second where the cook and maids have the whip-hand over an overly timid and caring mistress. Banks herself, however, had no great political agenda. She confesses frankly in her autobiography that 'I did it for "copy" ... to earn my living'.Such was the interest in Banks's work, that the press sought out the employers who were fooled by the artful reporter. 'Mrs. Allison' (not her real name) was interviewed by the populist Pick Me Up magazine and declared herself 'completely hoodwinked'. She claimed, however, that she only employed Miss Banks because of the pathetic story she told at interview about her penury, and that — contrary to the impression in the book — the cleanliness of her household suffered a good deal due to the reporter's ignorance. Mrs. Allison recounts how she knew there was trouble when her other maid informed her, 'Ma'am, the new housemaid's sweeping the stairs with a bonnet whisk!' In short, according to Mrs. Allison, her American employee 'did not hesitate to declare herself as competent and reliable, although she entered every house under false pretences without being able to sew on a button, darn a stocking, or scrub a floor'.Banks's success was so great because her deception played on the existing fears of the middle- and upper-classes about servants, i.e. that, when members of the family were not present, staff were incompetent and/or deceptive — traitors beneath one's own roof — even if this only amounted to taking unwarranted 'perquisites' from household groceries, or seeing male 'followers'. Whether Miss Banks provides us with a completely truthful account or 'journalistic gingerbread' (to quote the rather unsympathetic Pick Me Up) I must leave it to the reader to judge — regardless, the book remains a fascinating read.

    Bill James has been called “baseball’s shrewdest analyst” (Slate) and “part of baseball legend” (The New Yorker), and his Baseball Abstract has been acclaimed as the “holy book of baseball” (Chicago Tribune). Thirty years ago, James introduced a new approach to evaluating players and strategies, and now his theories have become indispensable tools for agents, statistics analysts, maverick general managers, and anyone who is serious about understanding the game.James began writing about baseball while working at a factory in his native Kansas. In lively, often acerbic prose, he used statistics to challenge entrenched beliefs and uncover surprising truths about the game. His annual Baseball Abstract captured the attention of fans and front offices and went on to become a bestselling staple of the baseball book category. In 2002, the Boston Red Sox hired James as an advisor. Two years later they achieved their long-awaited World Series triumph.The Mind of Bill James tells the story of how a gifted outsider inspired a new understanding of baseball. It delves deeply into James’s essential wisdom–including his surprising beliefs about pitch counts and the importance of batting-order, thoughts on professionalism and psychology, and why teams tend to develop the characteristics that are least favored by their home parks. It also brings together his best writing, much of it long out of print, as well as insights from new interviews. Written with James’ full cooperation, it is at once an eye-opening portrait of baseball’s virtuoso analyst and a treasury of his idiosyncratic genius.