Margot Livesey's Banishing Verona is the story of two people who enjoy an enchanted evening together, and then spend the next few weeks chasing each other across continents in order to decide if it's the real thing. Zeke Cafarelli is an endearingly timid, rather obsessive-compulsive housepainter who dismantles clocks, "laying out the springs and coils in careful sequence and putting them back together," in order to gain the courage to leave his house. Verona MacIntyre is a seven-months-pregnant radio talk show host who goes back and forth between wanting to rescue her wayward brother and simply wanting to rescue herself. The backdrop for this ethereal novel is London and Boston, and Livesey does a masterful job of creating characters out of the cities and places that house her protagonists.

Banishing Verona is a love story at its core; however, Zeke and Verona are seen together in only a few scenes. Instead, Livesey tells the story from each character's perspective, overlapping time and place yet creating entirely unique situations. Each event is described with such precision that even the most mundane tasks take on a sense of importance that feels almost palpable. ("Then he noticed the red light on the phone, blinking ... He raised the receiver and heard only the usual high-pitched note; he had no idea what to do next.")

While her attention to detail may seem a bit excessive at times, Livesey is undeniably adept at creating a vivid, colorful world whose only purpose is to exist as a backdrop for Zeke and Verona's search for self, and for each other. Even secondary characters, like Zeke's employee Emmanuel and Verona's brother Henry, are only there to accentuate the good (and the bad) in our hero and heroine. Still, the underlying message here is that no one ever really knows anyone else, or as Zeke says, "Only years later ... did he grasp that even at their most vivid ... his thoughts were invisible, not only to teachers and tyrants, but to everyone..." What keeps us reading this dreamy novel until the very last page is the hope that people exist who are willing to take a chance on what can never truly be a sure thing. --Gisele Toueg.
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In this book Michael P. Leiter and Christina Maslach, the leading experts on job burnout prevention and authors of the landmark book The Truth About Burnout, outline their revolutionary new program for helping everyone in the workplace overcome everyday stress and pressures and achieve their career goals. Banishing Burnout includes the authors’ unique and highly effective Work Life self-assessment test and a customized plan for action that will help transform the individual’s relationship with work and overcome job burnout. The authors outline their proven action plan, which shows how to establish core values, set a personal direction, engage other people, initiate a realistic plan of action, make an impact, and achieve career goals. The book is filled with illustrative case examples from a wide variety of organizations, including corporations, health care institutions, universities, and nonprofit organizations. Each case demonstrates how the use of the Work Life self-survey and the individualized action plan can result in dramatic changes in the daily workplace experience and advance career development.  

 

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Price: $10.73 [Notify me when price goes down.]

As a culture we are driven--driven to acquire, amass, get, use, devour, taste, and try.

And of course it is never enough. Until we figure out that enough is enough, we will never lead a fulfilling life. Unless we let go of possessions, attitudes, emotions, old lovers, or old ideas, we'll never be able to make true changes in our lives. We are very good at taking, consuming, hoarding, devouring, overworking, and inputting more and more and more . . . but we have forgotten how to let go, how to eliminate We need to remember the basic concept of releasing and renewing that is imprinted in every cell of our bodies.

We need to relearn what our ancestors knew: how to banish.

"Banishing," Denny Sargent writes, "is the identification and naming of people, things, forces, feelings, thoughts, or ideas that are negative or harmful in one's life and, through the strength of will and positive power, i.e. love, taking command over these negatives and tossing them OUT!"

Sargent, an eclectic ritualist, interweaves his personal testimonial with the theory of banishing harmful factors from our physical environment and from our bodies, our hearts and emotional lives, our minds, and our spirits--through the elements of air, fire, water, earth, and spirit. In the second part of the book he provides more than 100 banishing exercises and rituals based on traditional practices performed throughout time and around the world.

* Everyone wants to get rid of something--bad luck, emotional pain, illness, weight, guilt, clutter, dependency, bad habits, an ex-lover, or just the blues.

* More than 100 simple exercises and rituals to get rid of anything..
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This book represents a selection of spells and potions using only your cauldron This is a 35-year collection that has been worked by me, gleaned from working in various covens, or given to me by friends.

There are spells, potions, various magical recipes, and the like. You will find a list of items in the back of this book to help you in creating your own spells. No matter what your belief - Pagan, Wiccan, Kitchen Witch, etc. - there is something here for you. Locate a spell that best suits your present needs, and let the cauldron bubble!.
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David Osborne's 1992 bestseller, Reinventing Government, was a landmark book that identified ten principles characteristic of innovative, entrepreneurial, 21st century public organizations and governance. This essential sequel goes one step further, outlining five strategies that have the power to transform public systems and organizations into such organizations, thereby achieving dramatic increases in effectiveness, efficiency, adaptability, and capacity to innovate. In an age of disillusionment with public service, Banishing Bureaucracy offers inspiring stories of organizations that really work and provides specific recipes for effective change. Here is a road map by which reinventors can actually make "reinvention" work.

From Publishers Weekly Osborne, a consultant to local, state and foreign governments, virtually started a national movement with his 1992 bestseller, Reinventing Government (coauthored with Ted Gaebler). Expanding on that handbook's prescriptions for decentralizing authority, benchmarking performance and competitive public-versus-private bidding on government services, he and Plastrik, a Michigan public-sector consultant, have produced an immensely useful manual for transforming unresponsive government bureaucracies-local, state or national-into entrepreneurial systems open to innovation and change. They amplify their five core strategies-clarifying purpose; creating incentives through markets and competition; improving accountability via customer involvement; redistributing power through the hierarchy; nurturing a new culture-with a wealth of case material ranging from Indianapolis's saving of more than $100 million over seven years to Margaret Thatcher's overhaul of Britain's education, health care, unions and public agencies to kindred programs in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. More ambitiously, the authors set forth a heady vision of community empowerment, whereby citizens organize as residents, neighborhood associations, nonprofits and business groups to run schools, housing developments and planning functions.

From Library Journal In this volume, Osborne, coauthor of Reinventing Government (Addison-Wesley, 1992), and Plastrik, a Michigan political strategist, assess the "reinvention" movement and recommend five strategies to institutionalize the process. Using examples from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, they recommend clarifying organizational purposes, creating consequences for organizational performance, becoming customer-driven, empowering workers and communities, and developing an "entrepreneurial culture." The authors also respond to the growing criticism of the "reinvention" movement, acknowledging that the term has often been misunderstood and misapplied. Like Reinventing Government, this volume will fuel the debate over government reform. Essential for specialists in public administration, government officials, and informed lay readers. William L. Waugh, Georgia State Univ., Atlanta

** David Osborne, recognized as the pre-eminent public sector reformer, has an intensive speaking schedule throughout the country.
** Named one of the Best Business Books of 1997 by Soundview Executive Book Summaries.
** Over 200,000 copies of Reinventing Government sold in Plume, with backlist pace of 10,000 per year.
** Reinventing Government was hailed by Business Week as "the new gospel of government," and was embraced by the Clinton-Gore administration as their blueprint for streamlining government..
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An unparalleled and unique opportunity to hear Dr. Regardie's own voice providing instructions on magical methods and the Golden Dawn on two compact disks. The first CD contains: Introduction by Lon Milo DuQuette; Introduction by Israel Regardie; The Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram; The Bornless Ritual; The Invocation of Thoth. The second CD contains: Awareness; Relaxation.
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