Author: George Grossmith File Type: epub `Why should I not publish my diary? I have often seen reminiscences of people I have never even heard of, and I fail to see - because I do not happen to be a `Somebody - why my diary should not be interesting. The Diary of a Nobody (1892) created a cultural icon, an English archetype. Anxious, accident-prone, occasionally waspish, Charles Pooter has come to be seen as the epitome of English suburban life. His diary chronicles encounters with difficult tradesmen, the delights of home improvements, small parties, minor embarrassments, and problems with his troublesome son. The suburban world he inhabits is hilariously and painfully familiar in its small-mindedness and its essential decency. Both celebration and critique, The Diary of a Nobody has often been imitated, but never bettered. This edition features Weedon Grossmiths hilarious illustrations and is complemented by an enjoyable introduction discussing the books social background and suburban fiction as a genre. ABOUT THE SERIES For over 100 years Oxford Worlds Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxfords commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Author: Jim Collins File Type: mobi THE NEW QUESTION Ten years after the worldwide bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins returns with another groundbreaking work, this time to ask Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not? Based on nine years of research, buttressed by rigorous analysis and infused with engaging stories, Collins and his colleague, Morten Hansen, enumerate the principles for building a truly great enterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous, and fast-moving times. THE NEW STUDY Great by Choice distinguishes itself from Collinss prior work by its focus not just on performance, but also on the type of unstable environments faced by leaders today. With a team of more than twenty researchers, Collins and Hansen studied companies that rose to greatness - beating their industry indexes by a minimum of ten times over fifteen years - in environments characterized by big forces and rapid shifts that leaders could not predict or control. The research team then contrasted these 10X companies to a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to achieve greatness in similarly extreme environments. THE NEW FINDINGS The study results were full of provocative surprises. Such as * The best leaders were not more risk taking, more visionary, and more creative than the comparisons they were more disciplined, more empirical, and more paranoid. * Innovation by itself turns out not to be the trump card in a chaotic and uncertain world more important is the ability to scale innovation, to blend creativity with discipline. * Following the belief that leading in a fast world always requires fast decisions and fast action is a good way to get killed. * The great companies changed less in reaction to a radically changing world than the comparison companies. The authors challenge conventional wisdom with thought-provoking, sticky, and supremely practical concepts. They include 10Xers the 20 Mile March Fire Bullets then Cannonballs Leading above the Death Line Zoom Out, Then Zoom In and the SMaC Recipe. Finally, in the last chapter, Collins and Hansen present their most provocative and original analysis defining, quantifying, and studying the role of luck. The great companies and the leaders who built them were not luckier than the comparisons, but they did get a higher Return on Luck. This book is classic Collins contrarian, data driven, and uplifting. He and Hansen show convincingly that, even in a chaotic and uncertain world, greatness happens by choice, not by chance.

Author: Leslie Peirce File Type: pdf In this skillful analysis, Leslie Peirce delves into the life of a sixteenth-century Middle Eastern community, bringing to light the ways that women and men used their local law court to solve personal, family, and community problems. Examining one years proceedings of the court of Aintab, an Anatolian city that had recently been conquered by the Ottoman sultanate, Peirce argues that local residents responded to new opportunities and new constraints by negotiating flexible legal practices. Their actions and the different compromises they reached in court influenced how society viewed gender and also created a dialogue with the ruling regime over mutual rights and obligations. Locating its discussion of gender and legal issues in the context of the changing administrative practices and shifting power relations of the period, Morality Tales argues that it was only in local interpretation that legal rules acquired vitality and meaning. **From the Inside Flap Leslie Peirce has produced a meticulously researched and gloriously imagined work of historical scholarship. Her deep familiarity with the city of Aintab (todays Gaziantep) shines through on every page as she recreates the world of the city and its inhabitants in the middle of the sixteenth century. Using a wide variety of sources, Peirce departs from state-centered approach of much of Ottoman historiography and asks instead how individuals understood themselves and their place in Ottoman society. Her answers take us into areas of Ottoman society that are still obscure. We see Aintabans grappling with issues of class, morality, heresy, and the differences between men and women. Throughout, Peirce excavates the complicated relationship between a society that understands itself as Islamic but whose sources of meaning and order are not confined to the religious tradition.Molly Greene, Princeton University This is another masterpiece that will, like Leslie Peirces first book, become a classic. Once again, she shows a special talent for raising relevant issues that have remained unexplored and shedding light on older issues with illuminating interpretations. . . . The heterogeneity of law and the variability of justice emerge clearly, as do the flexibility and fluidity of legal practices, justice as a process not a structure, and law as a product of debate among providers and users.Lucette Valensi, author of La Fuite en Egypte Histoires dOrient et dOccident, 2002 Leslie Peirce guides the reader through the Anatolian town of Aintab, twenty-five years after its incorporation into the Ottoman Empire. Using the local court records for the year 1540-1541 and the fascinating accounts of women talkingsometimes even shouting and cursingtheir way into court, she reveals the intricacies of the legal system at the crossroads of imperial law and local custom. . . . Morality Tales is a must for Ottomanists, to whom it will offer a truly innovative methodology and a brilliant portrayal and analysis of this complex and fascinating period. More important, however, this book will reveal to a wider audience that Ottoman history has a lot to contribute to the understanding of early modern society and politics.Edhem Eldem, Bogazici University, Istanbul From the Back Cover Leslie Peirce has produced a meticulously researched and gloriously imagined work of historical scholarship. Her deep familiarity with the city of Aintab (todays Gaziantep) shines through on every page as she recreates the world of the city and its inhabitants in the middle of the sixteenth century. Using a wide variety of sources, Peirce departs from state-centered approach of much of Ottoman historiography and asks instead how individuals understood themselves and their place in Ottoman society. Her answers take us into areas of Ottoman society that are still obscure. We see Aintabans grappling with issues of class, morality, heresy, and the differences between men and women. Throughout, Peirce excavates the complicated relationship between a society that understands itself as Islamic but whose sources of meaning and order are not confined to the religious tradition.--Molly Greene, Princeton University This is another masterpiece that will, like Leslie Peirces first book, become a classic. Once again, she shows a special talent for raising relevant issues that have remained unexplored and shedding light on older issues with illuminating interpretations. . . . The heterogeneity of law and the variability of justice emerge clearly, as do the flexibility and fluidity of legal practices, justice as a process not a structure, and law as a product of debate among providers and users.--Lucette Valensi, author of La Fuite en Egypte Histoires dOrient et dOccident, 2002 Leslie Peirce guides the reader through the Anatolian town of Aintab, twenty-five years after its incorporation into the Ottoman Empire. Using the local court records for the year 1540-1541 and the fascinatingaccounts of women talkingaesometimes even shouting and cursingaetheir way into court, she reveals the intricacies of the legal system at the crossroads of imperial law and local custom. . . . Morality Tales is a must for Ottomanists, to whom it will offer a truly innovative methodology and a brilliant portrayal and analysis of this complex and fascinating period. More important, however, this book will reveal to a wider audience that Ottoman history has a lot to contribute to the understanding of early modern society and politics.--Edhem Eldem, Bogazici University, Istanbul

Author: Julie Koser File Type: pdf Armed Ambiguity is a fascinating examination of the tropes of the woman warrior constructed by print cultureincluding press reports, novels, dramatic works, and lyrical textsduring the decades-long conflict in Europe around 1800. In it, Julie Koser sheds new light on how womens bodies became a battleground for competing social, cultural, and political agendas in one of the mostpivotal periods of modern history. She traces the women warriors in thiswork as reflections of the social and political climate in German-speaking lands, and she reveals how literary texts and cultural artifactsthat highlightwomens armed insurrection perpetuated thefalse dichotomy of public versus private spheres along a gendered fault line. Koser illuminates how reactionary visions of ideal femininity competed with subversive fantasies of new femininities in the ideological battle being waged over the restructuring of German society. **