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After-sales Service of Engineering Industrial Assets: A Reference Framework for Warranty Management
by Adolfo Crespo Márquez Vicente González-Prida DíazThis book explores the practical implementation of an advanced after-sales management framework devoted to warranty management. The framework is intended for companies producing either standardized or customized products and such a management tool will facilitate organizational improvement and support innovative decision making processes for technical assistance in after-sales services. "After-sales Service of Engineering Industrial Assets" comprises a proposal for a warranty management framework, with an account of the different methods that can be used to improve decision making in the different stages of the after-sales service management process, and strategies for strengthening the structure and foundations of the framework. A review of the fundamental issues and current research topics in warranty management and after sales services is also provided, which is exemplified by a case study. This book is intended for postgraduates, researchers and engineers who are interested in after sales management, assets engineering and warranty management.
After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul
by Tripp MickleFrom the Wall Street Journal’s Tripp Mickle, the dramatic, untold story inside Apple after the passing of Steve Jobs by following his top lieutenants—Jony Ive, the Chief Design Officer, and Tim Cook, the COO-turned-CEO—and how the fading of the former and the rise of the latter led to Apple losing its soul.Steve Jobs called Jony Ive his “spiritual partner at Apple.” The London-born genius was the second-most powerful person at Apple and the creative force who most embodies Jobs’s spirit, the man who designed the products adopted by hundreds of millions the world over: the iPod, iPad, MacBook Air, the iMac G3, and the iPhone. In the wake of his close collaborator’s death, the chief designer wrestled with grief and initially threw himself into his work designing the new Apple headquarters and the Watch before losing his motivation in a company increasingly devoted more to margins than to inspiration.In many ways, Cook was Ive’s opposite. The product of a small Alabama town, he had risen through the ranks from the supply side of the company. His gift was not the creation of new products. Instead, he had invented countless ways to maximize a margin, squeezing some suppliers, persuading others to build factories the size of cities to churn out more units. He considered inventory evil. He knew how to make subordinates sweat with withering questions.Jobs selected Cook as his successor, and Cook oversaw a period of tremendous revenue growth that has lifted Apple’s valuation to $2 trillion. He built a commanding business in China and rapidly distinguished himself as a master politician who could forge global alliances and send the world’s stock market into freefall with a single sentence.Author Tripp Mickle spoke with more than 200 current and former Apple executives, as well as figures key to this period of Apple’s history, including Trump administration officials and fashion luminaries such as Anna Wintour while writing After Steve. His research shows the company’s success came at a cost. Apple lost its innovative spirit and has not designed a new category of device in years. Ive’s departure in 2019 marked a culmination in Apple’s shift from a company of innovation to one of operational excellence, and the price is a company that has lost its soul.
After Sustainability: Denial, Hope, Retrieval
by John FosterDangerous climate change is coming. Some people still deny that it is happening. Others refuse to recognise that it is now too late to prevent it. But both these reactions spring from the same source: our pathological attachment to ‘progress’, of which sustainability has been one more version. After Sustainability traces that attachment to its roots in the ways we make sense of ourselves. Original and accessible, this is philosophy on the edge, written for anyone who glimpses our environmental tragedy and cares about our future. Does the challenge to stop pretending offer our only remaining chance? Read this book and make up your own mind.
After Taxes: Managing Personal Wealth 8th Edition
by Geoff StevensMaximizing one’s savings is the surest way to guarantee that there is life after taxes. The truly successful investor begins with careful tax planning, which must never be a last-minute scramble in the dreadful month of March or worse still, April! We all know that few of us actually plan well ahead, as we ought to, to protect ourselves and our hard-earned money. This book may well be the answer. Based on The Gasletter Collection, the author’s successful primer on sheltering your income, After Taxes is designed to help the working individual put in place a long-term strategy. An easy-to-understand handbook, it helps the reader wrestle with the implications of retirement funds, savings, off-shore shelters, investments, mutual funds, real estate, buyouts, separation allowances, and golden (or not-so-golden) handshakes. A must for those who wish to make informed financial decisions and better choices to guarantee a secure future.
After the Accord: A History of Federal Reserve Open Market Operations, the US Government Securities Market, and Treasury Debt Management from 1951 to 1979 (Studies in Macroeconomic History)
by Kenneth D. GarbadeIn this book Garbade, a former analyst at a primary dealer and researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, traces the evolution of open market operations, Treasury debt management, and the microstructure of the US government securities markets following the 1951 Treasury-Federal Reserve. This volume examines how these operations evolved, responding both to external forces and to one another. Utilising a vast scope of primary material, the work provides insight into how officials fashioned the instruments, facilities, and procedures needed to advance their policy objectives in light of their novel freedoms and responsibilities. Students and scholars of macroeconomics, financial regulation, and the history of central banking and the Federal Reserve will find this volume a welcome addition to Garbade's earlier studies of Treasury debt operations during World War I, the 1920s, and the Great Depression and since 1983.
After the Ball
by Patricia BeardAfter the Ball is that rare true story that reads like an epic novel, a sweeping chronicle of an era, and an intimate account of the hope and betrayal of a son whose father gave him everything--except the training to find his way in territory ruled by the rapacious.James Hazen Hyde was twenty-three in 1899 when he inherited the majority shares in the billion-dollar Equitable Life Assurance Society. Only five years later, he fell from grace in a Wall Street scandal that obsessed the nation and commanded 115 front-page articles in the New York Times.Hyde was intelligent, cultured, and ambitious, but he was no match for an older generation that had mapped the backstreets of high finance. Vying to control the Equitable's vast investment pool, the most famous financiers and industrialists of the era--among them E.H. Harriman, Henry Clay Frick, and J.P. Morgan--put Hyde on forty-eight boards and included him in deals that shook Wall Street. And then, at the pinnacle of social success, he made a fatal miscalculation.On the last night of January 1905, James Hyde held a fabulously flamboyant, eighteenth-century Versailles-themed costume ball. His enemies used the party as the hook to hang him on, claiming that he was too frivolous to run a company dedicated to protecting widows and orphans; and spread the rumor that he had spent two hundred thousand dollars to Equitable money on a night's entertainment. By the time a government investigation established that Hyde had paid the bills himself, his reputation was ruined.The bitter campaign to wrest control of the Equitable and its vast investment capacity from Hyde followed on the heels of the ball. As the fight escalated, clandestine alliance between insurers and Wall Street burst to the surface, exposing techniques that are the stuff of twenty-first-century scandals: self-dealing, insider trading, accounting malpractice, and corporate funding of private pleasure.After the Ball tells a tale that riveted millions of Americans a century ago. Its themes are as fresh today as they were in 1905: greed and chicanery, the flawed love between fathers and sons, and contradictory American attitudes about wealth--all unfolding against a setting of magnificence, excess, and corrupting glamour.Patricia Beard is the author of nine nonfiction books, one novel and hundreds of nationally published magazine articles. She has been an editor at Elle, Town & Country, and Mirabella magazines.An absorbing book about the financial scandal that consumed New York and the nation a century ago, AFTER THE BALL evokes a time of glamorous carelessness in life, love, and high finance.--Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Pulitzer Prize Winning author and historianPatricia Beard's glittering...social history proves that "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." The hubris, extravagance, greed, and social ambitions of the 1990s are perfectly mirrored in this tale of the early 1900s, which reads like a novel...Great fun, but with a sting in the tail--Michael Korda, author of Ike, An American HeroSuperbly researched and suspenseful...a tale of jealousy, greed, and conflicts of interest...reminds us that America's business scandals of the early twenty-first century are hardly unprecedented.--Richard H. Jenrette,Equitable Lie Assurance Society 1987-1996
After the Bell: Family Background, Public Policy and Educational Success (Routledge Advances In Sociology Ser. #Vol. 12)
by Dalton Conley Karen AlbrightSince the publication of the Coleman report in the US many decades ago, it has been widely accepted that the evidence that schools are marginal in the grand scheme of academic achievement is conclusive. Despite this, educational policy across the world remains focused almost exclusively on schools.With contributions from such figures as Jeanne Broo
After the Crash: Understanding the Social, Economic and Technological Consequences of the 2008 Crisis
by Orhan ErdemThis book seeks to diagnose and analyze the social, economic and technological consequences of the 2008 financial crisis, which brought epochal changes to our lives. First and foremost, a paradigm shift arose in economic theories that fail to predict or explain the crisis. On the governmental side, we have been observing a natural parallel between authoritarianism and the way many democratic countries are being governed. Liberalism seems to have failed. Driven by the anger over the crisis and its heavy burden, a variety of technological innovations were birthed and gained momentum. Bitcoin was a manifesto to the monetary system; sharing economy was a rebellion to the consumerist lifestyle; and subscriptions were a threat to ownership. This books ties each of these events to the 2008 crisis and explains the connection.
After the Crash: Financial Crises and Regulatory Responses
by O’Halloran Sharyn Groll ThomasThe 2008 crash was the worst financial crisis and the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression. It triggered a complete overhaul of the global regulatory environment, ushering in a stream of new rules and laws to combat the perceived weakness of the financial system. While the global economy came back from the brink, the continuing effects of the crisis include increasing economic inequality and political polarization. <P><P>After the Crash is an innovative analysis of the crisis and its ongoing influence on the global regulatory, financial, and political landscape, with timely discussions of the key issues for our economic future. It brings together a range of experts and practitioners, including Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner; former congressman Barney Frank; former treasury secretary Jacob Lew; Paul Tucker, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England; and Steve Cutler, general counsel of JP Morgan Chase during the financial crisis. Each poses crucial questions: What were the origins of the crisis? How effective were international and domestic regulatory responses? Have we addressed the roots of the crisis through reform and regulation? Are our financial systems and the global economy better able to withstand another crash? After the Crash is vital reading as both a retrospective on the last crisis and an analysis of possible sources of the next one.
After the Crisis: Lower Consumption Growth but Narrower Global Imbalances?
by Ashoka Mody Franziska OhnsorgeWe estimate consumption dynamics in the G-7 economies, paying particular attention to the possibility of precautionary behavior in the face of uncertainty. We find that in the short run, continued income uncertainty will significantly dampen consumption growth. As such, consumption in the G-7 economies is unlikely to be the engine that revives global growth. Differences in the pace and timing of consumption moderation have implications for the evolution of global imbalances. With the U.S. experiencing a sharper rise in unemployment and, perhaps, more widespread loss of financial wealth than elsewhere in the G-7, the relative rise of the U.S. savings rate is helping narrow global imbalances. But with a likely earlier recovery in the U.S., this narrowing could be short-lived. Moreover, long-term differences- in economic and financial volatility and in demographic structures-have been an important source of the imbalances and could soon reassert their prominence.
After the Crisis: Assessing the Damage in Italy
by Hanan Morsy Silvia SgherriFinancial report from the IMF
After the Fall: Opportunities and Strategies for Real Estate Investing in the Coming Decade
by Steve BergsmanPraise for After The Fall"Steve Bergsman provides his readers with one of the most comprehensive, yet concise overviews of real estate and all its property types."--Christopher Macke, Vice President, GE Real Estate"This is an extraordinary work of detailed research and compelling writing. I've never seen the subject presented in such a cogent and skillful manner."--Phil Hall, editor, Secondary Marketing Executive"The way out of the financial crash of 2007/2008 will come through skilled operations, astute investing, and the ability of real estate practitioners to give up their mental memory of the future! The heated success of ten-year, unprecedented growth in the real estate industry has somehow atrophied the industry's application of knowledge. What we need is a fresh look at opportunities and strategies for real estate investing. We are lucky that Bergsman's book has fit the bill--just in time."--Jack M. Cohen, CEO, Cohen Financial"Insightful and informative; connects all the dots, providing the basis and foundation for making strategic decisions about real estate."--Stephen Blank, Senior Fellow, Finance, The Urban Land Institute
After the Fall
by Nicole GelinasRobust financial markets support capitalism, they don't imperil it. But in 2008, Washington policymakers were compelled to replace private risk-takers in the financial system with government capital so that money and credit flows wouldn't stop, precipitating a depression.Washington's actions weren't the start of government distortions in the financial industry, Nicole Gelinas writes, but the natural result of 25 years' worth of such distortions.In the early eighties, modern finance began to escape reasonable regulations, including the most important regulation of all, that of the marketplace. The government gradually adopted a "too big to fail" policy for the largest or most complex financial companies, saving lenders to failing firms from losses. As a result, these companies became impervious to the vital market discipline that the threat of loss provides.Adding to the problem, Wall Street created financial instruments that escaped other reasonable limits, including gentle constraints on speculative borrowing and requirements for the disclosure of important facts.The financial industry eventually posed an untenable risk to the economy -- a risk that culminated in the trillions of dollars' worth of government bailouts and guarantees that Washington scrambled starting in late 2008.Even as banks and markets seem to heal, lenders to financial companies continue to understand that the government would protect them in the future if necessary. This implicit guarantee harms economic growth, because it forces good companies to compete against bad.History and recent events make clear what Washington must do.First, policymakers must reintroduce market discipline to the financial world. They can do so by re-creating a credible, consistent way in which big financial companies can fail, with lenders taking their warranted losses. Second, policymakers can reapply prudent financial regulations so that markets, and the economy, can better withstand inevitable excesses of optimism and pessimism. Sensible regulations have worked well in the past and can work well again.As Gelinas explains in this richly detailed book, adequate regulation of financial firms and markets is a prerequisite for free-market capitalism -- not a barrier to it.
After the Fall: The Inexcusable Failure of American Finance
by Kevin PhillipsA fascinating up-to-date look at the roots of our financial crisis from the New York Times bestselling author Kevin Phillips Kevin Phillips’s Bad Money revealed the roots of the financial malignance that led to 2008’s devastating market meltdown, explaining how the financial sector hijacked the American economy and put our very global future at risk. In this substantial and thought-provoking update, he refocuses his arguments through the lens of the real losses and reverses that have befallen us since the book’s publication. Drawing on the latest developments on Wall Street and the response from the Obama White House, After the Fall provides a sobering yet illuminating postmortem of how we got ourselves into this crisis, and what we must do going forward if we hope to emerge from it.
After the Financial Crisis: Shifting Legal, Economic and Political Paradigms (Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology)
by Pablo Iglesias-Rodríguez Anna Triandafyllidou Ruby GropasThis international collection studies how the financial crisis of 2007 and the ensuing economicand political crises in Europe and North America have triggered a process ofchange in the field of economics, law andpolitics. Contributors to this book argue that both elites and citizens havehad to rethink the nature of the market, the role of the state as a marketregulator and as a provider of welfare, the role of political parties inrepresenting society's main political and social cleavages, the role of civilsociety in voicing the concerns of citizens, and the role of the citizen as theultimate source of power in a democracy but also as a fundamentally powerlesssubject in a global economy. The book studies the actors, the areas and the processesthat have carried forward the change and proposes the notion of 'incompleteparadigm shift' to analyse this change. Its authors explore the multipledimensions of paradigm shifts and their differentiated evolution, arguing thattoday we witness an incomplete paradigm shift of financial regulations,economic models and welfare systems, but a stillbirth of a new political andeconomic paradigm.
After the Flood: How the Great Recession Changed Economic Thought
by E. Glen Weyl Edward L. Glaeser Tano SantosThe past three decades have been characterized by vast change and crises in global financial markets—and not in politically unstable countries but in the heart of the developed world, from the Great Recession in the United States to the banking crises in Japan and the Eurozone. As we try to make sense of what caused these crises and how we might reduce risk factors and prevent recurrence, the fields of finance and economics have also seen vast change, as scholars and researchers have advanced their thinking to better respond to the recent crises. A momentous collection of the best recent scholarship, After the Flood illustrates both the scope of the crises’ impact on our understanding of global financial markets and the innovative processes whereby scholars have adapted their research to gain a greater understanding of them. Among the contributors are José Scheinkman and Lars Peter Hansen, who bring up to date decades of collaborative research on the mechanisms that tie financial markets to the broader economy; Patrick Bolton, who argues that limiting bankers’ pay may be more effective than limiting the activities they can undertake; Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote, who study the social dynamics of markets; and E. Glen Weyl, who argues that economists are influenced by the incentives their consulting opportunities create.
After the Game: Bridging the Gap from Winning Athlete to Thriving Entrepreneur
by Jay DixonWhat if you could harness the many invaluable lessons you learned as a college or professional athlete and apply them to your professional and personal life? In After the Game, former D1 college football player turned successful business leader Jay Dixon shows you how.Crafted in the tradition of wisdom-rich business fables, After the Game combines a page-turning fictional narrative with a wealth of real-life lessons and insights designed to inform, advise, and inspire budding entrepreneurs and future CEOs. You&’ll discover: research that proves athletes are perfectly suited to own and lead businesses ten mindset elements that are crucial to your success at work and in life seven hands-on lessons that will accelerate your journey from idea to ownership a proven playbook to become a CEO eleven years faster than typical routes how self-awareness and emotional intelligence are vital on your path to CEO how to build a successful independent enterprise and achieve substantial personal growth . . . and much more. With billions of dollars&’ worth of small businesses set to be sold or passed down as baby boomers move into their retirement years, opportunities abound for savvy entrepreneurs to learn to acquire, lead, and sell those businesses—and no demographic is more poised and prepared to do so than former athletes. This is your time. Don&’t stand on the sidelines another minute. Get up, get ready, and get back in the action. A glorious new future awaits.
After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back
by Juliet SchorHow to make the sharing economy work for everyone When the "sharing economy" launched a decade ago, proponents claimed that it would transform the experience of work—giving earners flexibility, autonomy, and a decent income. It was touted as a cure for social isolation and rampant ecological degradation. But this novel form of work soon sprouted a dark side: exploited Uber drivers, neighborhoods ruined by Airbnb, racial discrimination, and rising carbon emissions. Several of the most prominent platforms are now faced with existential crises as they prioritize growth over fairness and long-term viability. Nevertheless, the basic model—a peer-to-peer structure augmented by digital tech—holds the potential to meet its original promises. Based on nearly a decade of pioneering research, After the Gig dives into what went wrong with this contemporary reimagining of labor. The book examines multiple types of data from thirteen cases to identify the unique features and potential of sharing platforms that prior research has failed to pinpoint. Juliet B. Schor presents a compelling argument that we can engineer a reboot: through regulatory reforms and cooperative platforms owned and controlled by users, an equitable and truly shared economy is still possible.
After the Great Recession
by Barry Z. Cynamon Steven M. Fazzari Mark SetterfieldThe severity of the Great Recession and the subsequent stagnation caught many economists by surprise. But a group of Keynesian scholars warned for some years that strong forces were leading the US toward a deep, persistent downturn. This book collects essays about these events from prominent macroeconomists who developed a perspective that predicted the broad outline and many specific aspects of the crisis. From this point of view, the recovery of employment and revival of strong growth requires more than short-term monetary easing and temporary fiscal stimulus. Economists and policy makers need to explore how the process of demand formation failed after 2007 and where demand will come from going forward. Successive chapters address the sources and dynamics of demand, the distribution and growth of wages, the structure of finance and challenges from globalization, and inform recommendations for monetary and fiscal policies to achieve a more efficient and equitable society.
After the Layoffs, What Next? (HBR Case Study and Commentary)
by Gun Denhart Suzy Wetlaufer Jim Emshoff Richard Manning Saul Gellerman Bob PeixottoHarry Denton, the CEO in this fictional case study, has been caught off guard. As the head of Delarks, a venerable department-store chain in the Midwest, he has engineered a remarkable turnaround in only a year. Sales have rebounded, and Wall Street is applauding. But when Delarks's head of merchandising defects to a competitor, Denton is shocked to realize that many of the layoff survivors, in fact, have had it with him and with the company. The last straw was the recent closing of the Madison store, which Denton announced without warning to anyone--not even the company's head of HR, Thomas Wazinsky, a supposedly trusted adviser. The rumor mill says that many employees are considering leaving before Denton can inflict the next blow. And senior managers are not immune to the fear and anger. Even Wazinsky, one of the few links to Delarks's proud past, confesses to Denton, "I'll bet you're thinking of firing me." Denton has to act--and fast. He calls a "town meeting" for the 600 employees of the St. Paul store. The plan: rally the troops. Instead, Denton is routed. Angry questions are hurled at the CEO, and he is forced to beat a hasty retreat through the back door. In 98510A and 98510Z, Bob Peixotto, Jim Emshoff, Richard Manning, Gun Denhart, and Saul Gellerman offer advice on how to revive morale at the successful but troubled company.
After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead
by Alan S. BlinderNew York Times BestsellerOne of our wisest and most clear-eyed economic thinkers offers a masterful narrative of the crisis and its lessons.Many fine books on the financial crisis were first drafts of history—books written to fill the need for immediate understanding. Alan S. Blinder, esteemed Princeton professor, Wall Street Journal columnist, and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, held off, taking the time to understand the crisis and to think his way through to a truly comprehensive and coherent narrative of how the worst economic crisis in postwar American history happened, what the government did to fight it, and what we can do from here—mired as we still are in its wreckage.With bracing clarity, Blinder shows us how the U.S. financial system, which had grown far too complex for its own good—and too unregulated for the public good—experienced a perfect storm beginning in 2007. Things started unraveling when the much-chronicled housing bubble burst, but the ensuing implosion of what Blinder calls the “bond bubble” was larger and more devastating. Some people think of the financial industry as a sideshow with little relevance to the real economy—where the jobs, factories, and shops are. But finance is more like the circulatory system of the economic body: if the blood stops flowing, the body goes into cardiac arrest. When America’s financial structure crumbled, the damage proved to be not only deep, but wide. It took the crisis for the world to discover, to its horror, just how truly interconnected—and fragile—the global financial system is. Some observers argue that large global forces were the major culprits of the crisis. Blinder disagrees, arguing that the problem started in the U.S. and was pushed abroad, as complex, opaque, and overrated investment products were exported to a hungry world, which was nearly poisoned by them.The second part of the story explains how American and international government intervention kept us from a total meltdown. Many of the U.S. government’s actions, particularly the Fed’s, were previously unimaginable. And to an amazing—and certainly misunderstood—extent, they worked. The worst did not happen. Blinder offers clear-eyed answers to the questions still before us, even if some of the choices ahead are as divisive as they are unavoidable. After the Music Stopped is an essential history that we cannot afford to forget, because one thing history teaches is that it will happen again.
After the Music Stopped
by Alan S. BlinderNamed one of the Ten Best Books of 2013 by Michiko Kakutani and the New York Times Book Review "Blinder is a master storyteller . . . one of the best books yet about the financial crisis." --The Wall Street Journal Alan S. Blinder--esteemed Princeton professor, Wall Street Journal columnist, and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board under Alan Greenspan--is one of our wisest and most clear-eyed economic thinkers. In After the Music Stopped, he delivers a masterful narrative of how the worst economic crisis in postwar American history happened, what the government did to fight it, and what we must do to recover from it. With bracing clarity, Blinder chronicles the perfect storm of events beginning in 2007, from the bursting of the housing bubble to the implosion of the bond bubble, and how events in the U.S. spread throughout the interconnected global economy. Truly comprehensive and eminently readable, After the Music Stopped is the essential book about the financial crisis.
After the Nazi Racial State: Difference and Democracy in Germany and Europe
by Rita Chin Heide Fehrenbach Geoff Eley Atina GrossmannWhat happened to "race," race thinking, and racial distinctions in Germany, and Europe more broadly, after the demise of the Nazi racial state? This book investigates the afterlife of "race" since 1945 and challenges the long-dominant assumption among historians that it disappeared from public discourse and policy-making with the defeat of the Third Reich and its genocidal European empire. Drawing on case studies of Afro-Germans, Jews, and Turks---arguably the three most important minority communities in postwar Germany---the authors detail continuities and change across the 1945 divide and offer the beginnings of a history of race and racialization after Hitler. A final chapter moves beyond the German context to consider the postwar engagement with "race" in France, Britain, Sweden, and the Netherlands, where waves of postwar, postcolonial, and labor migration troubled nativist notions of national and European identity. After the Nazi Racial State poses interpretative questions for the historical understanding of postwar societies and democratic transformation, both in Germany and throughout Europe. It elucidates key analytical categories, historicizes current discourse, and demonstrates how contemporary debates about immigration and integration---and about just how much "difference" a democracy can accommodate---are implicated in a longer history of "race." This book explores why the concept of "race" became taboo as a tool for understanding German society after 1945. Most crucially, it suggests the social and epistemic consequences of this determined retreat from "race" for Germany and Europe as a whole.
After the Rain: how the West lost the East
by Samuel VakninAn anthology of more than 50 articles regarding the politics, economics, geopolitics and history of countries in central and eastern Europe and the Balkans.
After the Roof Caved In: An Immigrant's Journey from Ireland to America
by Michael J. Dowling Charles KenneyThe moving story of an Irish immigrant's life, from a poverty-stricken childhood in Ireland to becoming a captain of industry, After the Roof Caved In is a powerful, poignant look at how hard work and education enabled one young man to change his life and circumstances completely. Today, Michael J. Dowling is president and CEO of Northwell Health, New York state's largest healthcare provider and private employer, with over 68,000 employees and over 700 facilities. But he grew up in deep poverty in the village of Knockaderry in rural Ireland, in a small home without running water or a stable roof, in a family with little hope for improvement and a place with little opportunity—and he overcame it all to become wildly successful. After the Roof Caved In is Dowling's rags-to-riches story of his life and journey from his destitute youth to his realization of the power of education and his eventual departure from his home to attend university in Cork, and onward through his life as he gradually improved himself and his circumstances. Full of memories both fond and painful, this powerful memoir examines the family dynamics of his childhood—including the lives of his deaf mother and arthritic father—as well as the social systems of the time, the politics and concerns of the day, and the way a variety of disparate events came together to help Dowling change his life completely. Most importantly, it chronicles his lifelong effort to rise above the circumstances into which he was born and to create the sort of life he dreamed possible. For anyone interested in the stories of immigrants, the experiences of the Irish in the mid-20th century, or the value of hard work and education in changing one's life, After the Roof Caved In is an essential read, and a heartfelt, deeply moving meditation on an extraordinary life.