The Unexpected Professor

Download or read book The Unexpected Professor written by John Carey and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2014-03-18 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best known for his provocative take on cultural issues in The Intellectuals and the Masses and What Good Are the Arts?, John Carey describes in this warm and funny memoir the events that formed him - an escape from the London blitz to an idyllic rural village, army service in Egypt, an open scholarship to Oxford and an academic career that saw him elected, age 40, to Oxford's oldest English Literature professorship. He frankly portrays the snobberies and rituals of 1950s Oxford, but also his inspiring meetings with writers and poets - Auden, Graves, Larkin, Heaney - and his forty-year stint as a lead book-reviewer for the Sunday Times. This is a book about the joys of reading - in effect, an informal introduction to the great works of English literature. But it is also about war and family, and how an unexpected background can give you the insight and the courage to say the unexpected thing.

Download or read book Managing the Unexpected written by Karl E. Weick and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Improve your company's ability to avoid or manage crises Managing the Unexpected, Third Edition is a thoroughly revised text that offers an updated look at the groundbreaking ideas explored in the first and second editions. Revised to reflect events emblematic of the unique challenges that organizations have faced in recent years, including bank failures, intelligence failures, quality failures, and other organizational misfortunes, often sparked by organizational actions, this critical book focuses on why some organizations are better able to sustain high performance in the face of unanticipated change. High reliability organizations (HROs), including commercial aviation, emergency rooms, aircraft carrier flight operations, and firefighting units, are looked to as models of exceptional organizational preparedness. This essential text explains the development of unexpected events and guides you in improving your organization for more reliable performance. "Expect the unexpected" is a popular mantra for a reason: it's rooted in experience. Since the dawn of civilization, organizations have been rocked by natural disasters, civil unrest, international conflict, and other unexpected crises that impact their ability to function. Understanding how to maintain function when catastrophe strikes is key to keeping your organization afloat. Explore the many different kinds of unexpected events that your organization may face Consider updated case studies and research Discuss how highly reliable organizations are able to maintain control during unexpected events Discover tactics that may bolster your organization's ability to face the unexpected with confidence Managing the Unexpected, Third Edition offers updated, valuable content to professionals who want to strengthen the preparedness of their organizations—and confidently face unexpected challenges.

Download or read book Energy and the Unexpected written by Keith James Laidler and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the steam engine to e-mc2 and beyond, the concept of energy offers an essential key to our understanding of the Universe. In this entertaining and highly readable book, Professor Laidler explains the concept of energy and its characteristics as they have been discovered over the past two centuries. Having looked at energy on a small scale and then on the scale of the Universe itself, he shows the link with chaos theory, according to which the unexpected is inevitable.

Download or read book The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected written by Marcelo Gleiser and published by Brandeis University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-26 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Personal and engaging, The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected is a scientist's tribute to nature, an affirmation of humanity's deep connection with and debt to Earth, and an exploration of the meaning of existence, from atom to trout to cosmos"--

Download or read book A Little History of Poetry written by John Carey and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vital, engaging, and hugely enjoyable guide to poetry, from ancient times to the present, by one of our greatest champions of literature The Times and Sunday Times, Best Books of 2020 “[A] fizzing, exhilarating book.”—Sebastian Faulks, Sunday Times What is poetry? If music is sound organized in a particular way, poetry is a way of organizing language. It is language made special so that it will be remembered and valued. It does not always work—over the centuries countless thousands of poems have been forgotten. But this Little History is about some that have not. John Carey tells the stories behind the world’s greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly four thousand years ago to those being written today. Carey looks at poets whose works shape our views of the world, such as Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Whitman, and Yeats. He also looks at more recent poets, like Derek Walcott, Marianne Moore, and Maya Angelou, who have started to question what makes a poem “great” in the first place. For readers both young and old, this little history shines a light for readers on the richness of the world’s poems—and the elusive quality that makes them all the more enticing.

Download or read book The Unexpected Son written by Shobhan Bantwal and published by Kensington Books. This book was released on 2010-08-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when a woman who's realized her dreams wakes up to a shocking truth? Shobhan Bantwal's poignant new novel weaves a captivating tale of one woman's return to India: the place where she lost everything--and now has everything to gain... It is a morning like any other in suburban New Jersey when Vinita Patil opens the battered envelope postmarked "Mumbai." But the letter inside turns her comfortable world upside down. It tells Vinita an impossible story: she has a grown son in India whose life may depend on her... Once upon a time, a naïve young college girl fell for a wealthy boy whose primary interests were cricket and womanizing. Vinita knew, even then, that a secret affair with a man whose language and values were different from her own was a mistake. He finished with her soon enough--leaving her to birth a baby that was stillborn. Or so Vinita was told... Now, that child is a grown man in desperate need. To help her son, to know him, Vinita must revisit her darkest hours by returning to her battle-scarred homeland--and pray for the faith of the family she leaves behind... Praise for Shobhan Bantwal and her novels... "Dazzles you with a taste of Desi culture in America." --Caridad Piñeiro, New York Times bestselling author on The Sari Shop Widow "Compelling and memorable." --Mary Jo Putney, New York Times bestselling author on The Forbidden Daughter "Vivid, rich...expertly portrays a young woman caught between love and duty, hope and despair." --Anjali Banerjee on The Dowry Bride

Download or read book Professor Andersen's Night written by Dag Solstad and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dark and moving examination of one man’s derailed life, by the Norwegian master who is “without question, Norway’s bravest, most intelligent novelist” (Per Petterson) In this existential murder mystery, it is Christmas Eve, and fifty-five-year-old professor Pal Andersen is alone, drinking coffee and cognac in his living room. Lost in thought, he looks out the window and sees a man strangle a woman in the apartment across the street. Failing to report the crime, he becomes paralyzed by his indecision. Professor Andersen’s Night is an unsettling yet highly entertaining novel, written in Dag Solstad’s signature concise, dark, and witty prose. "He’s a kind of surrealistic writer, of very strange novels," Haruki Murakami wrote. "I think he is serious literature".