Wildly Optimistic


Book Description

In her book Wildly Optimistic, Al Carraway offers new methods and perspectives for life's inevitable challenges. With her trademark honesty, optimism, and love for the Lord, she addresses how to stay close to God even when He is silent, how to keep going when too much time passes, and how to be hopeful when it's not what we wanted, when things don't work out, and when we want to give up.




Value-Driven IT Management


Book Description

Value-Driven IT Management explains how huge sums are wasted by companies (and governments) on poorly aligned, poorly justified and poorly managed IT projects based on 'wishful thinking' cost and benefit assumptions and that even 'successful' projects rarely seem to realise the benefits promised. The author contends that the root cause of the disappointment and disillusion often found in senior management with the value extracted from its IT investments is a complacent corporate culture that can actually foster uncommercial behaviours in both users and internal suppliers of IT solutions. The author sets out a detailed, pragmatic framework for commercialising the internal IT Function and measuring its value to the business. This is not to be achieved by deploying conventional IT best practices or by making the IT Function look like an external service provider. Instead the author proposes that the IT Function should transform its value to the business by embracing a small set of best value practices that will engender more commercial behaviours in both IT staff and users and will focus the IT Function's energies on delivering successful business outcomes that will win the respect of senior management.




Wildly Successful Farming


Book Description

Tells the stories of farmers across the American Midwest who are balancing profitability and food production with environmental sustainability and a passion for all things wild. Whether producing grain, vegetables, fruit, meat, or milk, these ecological agrarians see biological activity on the land as a measure of sustainability.




Arik


Book Description

From the former editor in chief of Haaretz, the first in-depth comprehensive biography of Ariel Sharon, the most important Israeli political and military leader of the last forty years. The life of Ariel Sharon spans much of modern Israel's history: A commander in the Israeli Army from its inception in 1948, Sharon participated in the 1948 War of Independence, and played decisive roles in the 1956 Suez War and the six day War of 1967, and most dramatically is largely credited with the shift in the outcome of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. After returning from the army in 1982, Sharon became a political leader and served in numerous governments, most prominently as the defense minister during the 1983 Lebanon War in which he bore "personal responsibility" according to the Kahan Commission for massacres of Palestinian civilians by Lebanese militia, and he championed the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. But as prime minister he performed a dramatic reversal: orchestrating Israel's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Landau brilliantly chronicles and analyzes his surprising about-face. Sharon suffered a stroke in January 2006 and remains in a persistent vegetative state. Considered by many to be Israel's greatest military leader and political statesman, this biography recounts his life and shows how this leadership transformed Israel, and how Sharon's views were shaped by the changing nature of Israeli society.




Nuclear Power's Global Expansion


Book Description




Engineering Project Management


Book Description

A hands-on guide for creating a winning engineering project Engineering Project Management is a practical, step-by-step guide to project management for engineers. The author – a successful, long-time practicing engineering project manager – describes the techniques and strategies for creating a successful engineering project. The book introduces engineering projects and their management, and then proceeds stage-by-stage through the engineering life-cycle project, from requirements, implementation, to phase-out. The book offers information for understanding the needs of the end user of a product and other stakeholders associated with a project, and is full of techniques based on real, hands-on management of engineering projects. The book starts by explaining how we perform the actual engineering on projects; the techniques for project management contained in the rest of the book use those engineering methods to create superior management techniques. Every topic – from developing a work-breakdown structure and an effective project plan, to creating credible predictions for schedules and costs, through monitoring the progress of your engineering project – is infused with actual engineering techniques, thereby vastly increasing the effectivity and credibility of those management techniques. The book also teaches you how to draw the right conclusions from numeric data and calculations, avoiding the mistakes that often cause managers to make incorrect decisions. The book also provides valuable insight about what the author calls the social aspects of engineering project management: aligning and motivating people, interacting successfully with your stakeholders, and many other important people-oriented topics. The book ends with a section on ethics in engineering. This important book: Offers a hands-on guide for developing and implementing a project management plan Includes background information, strategies, and techniques on project management designed for engineers Takes an easy-to-understand, step-by-step approach to project management Contains ideas for launching a project, managing large amount of software, and tips for ending a project Structured to support both undergraduate and graduate courses in engineering project management, Engineering Project Management is an essential guide for managing a successful project from the idea phase to the completion of the project.




Social Security Reform in Transition Economies


Book Description

This book examines social security reform in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan, with a focus on lessons for late reformers such as China and Russia.




The World of Parmenides


Book Description

The World of Parmenides is a brilliant exploration of the complexity of ancient Greek thought and science, that reveals Popper's engagement with Presocratic philosophy and the enlightenment he experienced in reading Parmenides. Including writings on Greek science, philosophy and history Popper demonstrates his lifelong fascination and admiration of the Presocratic philosophers, in particular Parmenides, Xenophanes and Heraclitus.




Alternative Futures For Africa


Book Description

This comprehensive, critical examination of Africa’s future–written by a diverse group of Africans and Africanists–raises many questions and challenges concerning the development and unity of the African continent. Eclectic in range and method, but cohesive in concern, the book identifies and analyzes alternative probabilities in the political, economic, and social spheres and on the national, regional, and international levels. Many of the contributors point toward an unpromising future for Africa unless its development strategy is changed and its inheritance of dependence on the world system overcome.