Author: Sheila Fitzpatrick File Type: pdf Stalin was the unchallenged dictator of the Soviet Union for so long that most historians have dismissed the officials surrounding him as mere yes-men and political window dressing. On Stalins Team overturns this view, revealing that behind Stalin were a group of loyal men who formed a remarkably effective team with him from the late 1920s until his death in 1953. Drawing on extensive original research, Sheila Fitzpatrick provides the first in-depth account of this inner circle and their families, vividly describing how these dedicated comrades-in-arms not only worked closely with Stalin, whom they both feared and admired, but also constituted his social circle. Readers meet the wily security chief Beria, whom the rest of the team quickly had executed following Stalins death Stalins number-two man, Molotov, who continued on the team even after his wife was arrested and exiled the charismatic Ordzhonikidze, who ran the countrys industry with entrepreneurial flair Andreev, who traveled to provincial purges while listening to Beethoven on a portable gramophone and Khrushchev, who finally disbanded the team four years after Stalins death. Among the books surprising findings is that Stalin almost always worked with the team on important issues, and after his death the team managed a brilliant transition to a reforming collective leadership. Taking readers from the cataclysms of the Great Purges and World War II to the paranoia of Stalins final years, On Stalins Team paints an entirely new picture of Stalin within his milieu--one that transforms our understanding of how the Soviet Union was ruled during much of its existence--

Author: Bernard Friedman File Type: pdf Home is an idea, Meghan Daum writes in her foreword, a story we tell ourselves about who we are and who and what we want closest in our midst. In The American Idea of Home, documentary filmmaker Bernard Friedman interviews more than thirty leaders in the field of architecture about a constellation of ideas relating to housing and home. The interviewees include Pritzker Prize winners Thom Mayne, Richard Meier, and Robert Venturi Pulitzer Prize winners Paul Goldberger and Tracy Kidder American Institute of Architects head Robert Ivy and legendary architects such as Denise Scott Brown, Charles Gwathmey, Kenneth Frampton, and Robert A. M. Stern. The American idea of home and the many types of housing that embody it launch lively, wide-ranging conversations about some of the most vital and important issues in architecture today. The topics that Friedman and his interviewees discuss illuminate five overarching themes the functions and meanings of home history, tradition, and change in residential architecture activism, sustainability, and the environment cities, suburbs, and regions and technology, innovation, and materials. Friedman frames the interviews with an extended introduction that highlights these themes and helps readers appreciate the common concerns that underlie projects as disparate as Katrina cottages and Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian houses. Readers will come away from these thought-provoking interviews with an enhanced awareness of the under the hood kinds of design decisions that fundamentally shape our ideas of home and the dwellings in which we live. **

Author: Gilbert Claflin File Type: epub In 2002, Judy Cook discovered a packet of letters written by her great-great-grandparents, Gilbert and Esther Claflin, during the American Civil War. An unexpected bounty, these letters from 186263 offer visceral witness to the war, recounting the trials of a family separated. Gilbert, an articulate and cheerful forty-year-old farmer, was drafted into the Union Army and served in the Thirty-Fourth Wisconsin Infantry garrisoned in western Kentucky along the Mississippi. Esther had married Gilbert when she was fifteen now a woman with two teenage sons, she ran the family farm near Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, in Gilberts absence.In his letters, Gilbert writes about food, hygiene, rampant desertions by drafted men, rebel guerrilla raids, and pastimes in the daily life of a soldier. His comments on interactions with Confederate prisoners and ex-slaves before and after the Emancipation Proclamation reveal his personal views on monumental events. Esther shares in her letters the challenges and joys of maintaining the farm, accounts of their boys Elton and Price, concerns about finances and health, and news of their local community and extended family. Esthers experiences provide insight into family, farm, and village life in the wartime North, an often overlooked aspect of Civil War history.Judy Cook has made the letters accessible to a wider audience by providing historical context with notes and appendixes. The volume includes a foreword by Civil War historian Keith S. Bohannon.**

Author: David Shipley File Type: pdf Sendthe classic guide to email for office and homehas become indispensable for readers navigating the impersonal, and at times overwhelming, world of electronic communication. Filled with real-life email success (and horror) stories and a wealth of useful and entertaining examples, Send dissects all the major minefields and pitfalls of email. It provides clear rules for constructing effective emails, for handheld etiquette, for handling the emotional email, and for navigating all of todays hot-button issues. It offers essential strategies to help you both better manage the ever-increasing number of emails you receive and improve the ones you send. Send is now more than ever the essential book about email for businesspeople and professionals everywhere.**Amazon.com ReviewAn April 2007 Significant 7 Editors Pick Funny, engaging, and oh-so-practical, Send is the ultimate etiquette handbook for email, making David Shipley and Will Schwalbe the Miss Manners resource for the digital age. Full of practical insights, Send is an invaluable resource for anyone who uses email, and is guaranteed to help you think before you click. We are not the only fans of this important book. We asked psychologist, science journalist, and bestselling author Daniel Goleman to read Send and give us his take. Check out his exclusive guest review below. --Daphne Durham hrGuest Reviewer Daniel Goleman Daniel Goleman is an internationally known psychologist who lectures frequently to professional groups, business audiences, and on college campuses, and is the author of many bestselling books, including Emotional Intelligence and most recently, Social Intelligence. Poor Michael Brown. During the darkest days of the Hurricane Katrina debacle, Brown, then director of FEMA, the agency that so badly bungled the rescue efforts, sent this email Are you proud of me? Can I quit now? Can I go home? Emails can come back to haunt us--any of us. Few among us have mastered this medium, and only slowly are we realizing its dangers. From the earliest days of email people flamed, sending off irritating or otherwise annoying messages. One explanation for the failure to inhibit our more unruly impulses online is a mismatch between the screen we stare at as we email, and the cues the social circuits of the brain use to navigate us through an interaction effectively on email there is no tone of voice, no facial expression. When we talk to someone on the phone or face-to-face these circuits would ordinarily squelch impulses that will seem off. Lacking these crucial cues, flaming occurs. Its not just flaming--Ive sent my fair share of emails that were, in retrospect, embarrassing, too familiar or formal, or otherwise wrong in tone. Email invites these lapses in social intelligence in part because the social brain flies blind. In the absence of the other persons real-time emotional signals we need to take a moment to shift from focusing on our own feelings and thoughts, and intentionally focus on the other person, even in absentia, and consider, How might this message come across? The peril of being off-key is amplified by the temptation to hit SEND prematurely before weve thought it over and had a chance to ease up on that too-stiff tone, drop that bit of sarcasm, and remember to ask about the kids. In the old days of letter writing--a dying art--we had plenty of time to rewrite before sealing the envelope, and so flaming letters were far more rare than red-hot emails. And so the brave new world of email could benefit from a civilizing force, a voice that articulates the ground rules online. Enter Send The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home, a new book by David Shipley (an old friend of mine) and Will Schwalbe. Send not only articulates the way to win--or keep--friends online, but offers practical tips on both email etiquette and on the writing style most suitable. In this witty and wise book Shipley and Schwalbe give essential guidance on vital matters like the politics of using Cc (nobody likes to be left out) when to just reply and when to Reply All the danger of the URGENT subject (too many and you cry wolf) fine-tuning your greetings to fit the relationship (if you use the wrong one, you can lose them at hello) how best to apologize online (put the word sorry in the subject or else the email may never be read). But Send is far more than Miss Manners for the Web its brimming with fascinating insights. For example, now that email has become the way we talk, showing up in person has added impact as the ultimate compliment, signifying that the person, meeting or project has special importance for you. Years ago a slim volume by Strunk and White, The Elements of Style, laid out the ground rules for good writing the book became a bible for authors, widely known just as Strunk and White. Send should make Shipley and Schwalbe the Strunk and White for the Web. --Daniel Goleman (www.danielgoleman.info) hrFrom Publishers Weeklyp itemprop=description Despite a subtitle indicating both workplace and domestic e-mail solutions, veteran editors Shipley and Schwalbe get right down to business in the audio edition of their book, shining a bright light on the pitfalls of cyberspace that sabotage careers. Given the brevity of their recording, such focus is practical. Shipley and Schwalbe present their material in an easy conversational style, invoking just enough self-deprecating humor to keep listeners relaxed and grounded without getting off track. They cover a myriad of large and small electronic sins improper uses of the CC and BCC fields lack of decorum and deference appropriate to professional relationships delicate revelations that should only be tackled in a face-to-face encounter and potentially threatening or offensive language. This is a well-organized defensive driving course for beginners-or recent offenders-traveling the information superhighway in a contemporary office setting. This audiobook belongs on the shelves of resources at college job-placement offices and in corporate training or professional development departments. Simultaneous release with the Knopf hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 26). Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.