Books about Fischer from Amazon.com

Homer's Odyssey has a timeless allure. It is an ancient story that is significant for every generation: the struggle of a homesick, battle-weary man longing to return to love and family. Odysseus's strivings to overcome divine and earthly obstacles and to control his own impulsive nature hold valuable lessons for people facing their own metaphorical battles and everyday conflicts -- people who are, like Odysseus, "heartsick on the open sea," whether from dealing with daily skirmishes at the office or from fighting in an international war. Sailing Home breathes fresh air into a classic we thought we knew, revealing its profound guidance for navigating life's pitfalls, perils, and spiritual challenges.

Norman Fischer deftly incorporates Buddhist, Judaic, Christian, and popular thought, as well as his own unique and sympathetic understanding of life, in his reinterpretation of Odysseus's familiar wanderings as lessons that everyone can use. We see how to resist the seduction of the Sirens' song to stop sailing and give up; how to bide our time in a situation and wait for the right opportunity -- as Odysseus does when faced with the murderous, one-eyed Cyclops; and how to reassess our story and rediscover our purpose and identity if, like the Lotus-Eaters, we have forgotten the past.

With meditations that yield personal revelations, illuminating anecdotes from Fischer's and his students' lives, and stories from many wisdom traditions, Sailing Home shows the way to greater purpose in your own life.You will learn a new way to view your path, when to wait and when to act, when to speak your mind and when to exercise discretion, how to draw on your innate strength and distinguish between truth and deception, and how to deal with aging and changing relationships. Sailing Home provides the courage you need for your journey, to renew bonds with your loved ones, and to make the latter portion of life a heartfelt time of spirit and love, so that -- just as Odysseus does -- you can defeat the forces of entropy and death..
Price: $15.11 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In this sweeping, enthralling biography, acclaimed historian David Hackett Fischer brings to life the remarkable Samuel de Champlain -- soldier, spy, master mariner, explorer, cartographer, artist, and Father of New France.

Born on France's Atlantic coast, Champlain grew to manhood in a country riven by religious warfare. The historical record is unclear on whether Champlain was baptized Protestant or Catholic, but he fought in France's religious wars for the man who would become Henri IV, one of France's greatest kings, and like Henri, he was religiously tolerant in an age of murderous sectarianism. Champlain was also a brilliant navigator. He went to sea as a boy and over time acquired the skills that allowed him to make twenty-seven Atlantic crossings without losing a ship.

But we remember Champlain mainly as a great explorer. On foot and by ship and canoe, he traveled through what are now six Canadian provinces and five American states. Over more than thirty years he founded, colonized, and administered French settlements in North America. Sailing frequently between France and Canada, he maneuvered through court intrigue in Paris and negotiated among more than a dozen Indian nations in North America to establish New France. Champlain had early support from Henri IV and later Louis XIII, but the Queen Regent Marie de Medici and Cardinal Richelieu opposed his efforts. Despite much resistance and many defeats, Champlain, by his astonishing dedication and stamina, finally established France's New World colony. He tried constantly to maintain peace among Indian nations that were sometimes at war with one another, but when he had to, he took up arms and forcefully imposed a new balance of power, proving himself a formidable strategist and warrior.

Throughout his three decades in North America, Champlain remained committed to a remarkable vision, a Grand Design for France's colony. He encouraged intermarriage among the French colonists and the natives, and he insisted on tolerance for Protestants. He was a visionary leader, especially when compared to his English and Spanish contemporaries -- a man who dreamed of humanity and peace in a world of cruelty and violence.

This superb biography, the first in decades, is as dramatic and exciting as the life it portrays. Deeply researched, it is illustrated throughout with many contemporary images and maps, including several drawn by Champlain himself..
Price: $26.40 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Janice Tucker Rhoda's phenomenally successful series, The ABCs of Strings owes much of its success to the wonderful original material for players of all ages and to the sensitive arrangements of familiar classical selections, folk songs and fiddle tunes. The ABCs of Violin for the Absolute Beginner, Book 1 is the first in a series of five excellent violin instruction books that complement the Suzuki books very well. In the ABCs series there are beautiful melodies, short warm-up exercises and study pieces which advance students technically in an easy and enjoyable way. Simple duets, scales, a note-reading worksheet, glossary and practice chart are also included in ABCs of Violin Book 1 along with many graphs to show left-hand finger placement. Complementary materials sold separately are the ABCs of Violin DVD, ABCs of Violin CD, ABCs of Violin Easy Piano Accompaniment and ABCs of Duets..
Price: $8.48 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Maximize your chance of recovery from cancer - and learn how to prevent it - with this down-to-earth, practical guide that has saved and improved lives since its first publishing in 1992. This accessible book presents scientific guidelines and documented facts for the successful treatment and prevention of cancer and other health problems, and is a must-read for everyone, from those looking for a cure for cancer to those looking for a roadmap to surefire prevention..
Price: $10.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]

An Affair with a House continues to be a top seller for STC, with more than 45,000 copies in print
Shows readers how to realize their own taste and design preferences

You learn from people with great taste,” says Bunny Williams She should know. As a novice, Williams worked for legendary decorators Sister Parish and Albert Hadley, absorbing everything she could of their peerless design sense. Striking out on her own, she rose to the top rank of the interior design profession, where she has stylishly remained for the last 30 years. Now, it’s our turn to learn from her.

Part memoir and part how-to manual, Bunny Williams’ Point of View showcases many of the drop-dead chic but always cozily comfortable residences whose interiors Williams has designed during her astounding career. As Williams tells it, every design decision she makes is based on a bedrock principle: “Knowing what you value is essential.” Her conviction that every person’s home should manifest their personality guides her as she creates environments that fit each client precisely, “like a couture suit.”

By showing you how to plan and then accomplish that plan for each room of your house, Williams inspires you to take account of your own values—and to realize your personal vision of how you want to live. As she says about the book: “My point of view will help you discover yours.”.
Price: $24.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

It's a fact of life: birds flock, fish school, people "tribe."

Every company, indeed every organization, is a tribe, or if it's large enough, a network of tribes—groups of 20 to 150 people in which everyone knows everyone else, or at least knows of everyone else. Tribes are more powerful than teams, companies, or even CEOs, and yet their key leverage points have not been mapped—until now. In Tribal Leadership, Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright show leaders how to assess their organization's tribal culture on a scale from one to five and then implement specific tools to elevate the stage to the next. The result is unprecedented success.

In a rigorous eight-year study of approximately 24,000 people in over two dozen corporations, Logan, King, and Fischer-Wright refine and define a common theme: the success of a company depends on its tribes, the strength of its tribes is determined by the tribal culture, and a thriving corporate culture can be established by an effective tribal leader. Tribal Leadership will show leaders how to employ their companies' tribes to maximize productivity and profit: the authors' research, backed up with interviews ranging from Brian France (CEO of NASCAR) to "Dilbert" creator Scott Adams, shows that over three quarters of the organizations they've studied have tribal cultures that are merely adequate, no better than the third of five tribal stages.

Leaders, managers, and organizations that fail to understand, motivate, and grow their tribes will find it impossible to succeed in an increasingly fragmented world of business. The often counterintuitive findings of Tribal Leadership will help leaders at today's major corporations, small businesses, and nonprofits learn how to take the people in their organization from adequate to outstanding, to discover the secrets that have led the highest-level tribes (like the team at Apple that designed the iPod) to remarkable heights, and to find new ways to succeed where others have failed.

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Price: $14.25 [Notify me when price goes down.]

BPMN Modeling and Reference Guide
Understanding and Using BPMN

Develop rigorous yet understandable graphical representations of business processes

Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is a standard, graphical modeling representation for business processes. It provides an easy to use, flow-charting notation that is independent of the implementation environment. An underlying rigor supports the notation - facilitating the translation of business level models into executable models that BPM Suites and workflow engines can understand. Over recent years, BPMN has been widely adopted by Business Process Management (BPM) related products - both the Business Process Analysis and Modeling tool vendors and the BPM Suites.

This book is for both business users and process modeling practitioners alike. Part I provides an easily understood introduction to the key components of BPMN (put forward in a user-friendly fashion). Starting off with simple models, it progresses into more sophisticated patterns. Exercises help cement comprehension and understanding (with answers available online). Part II provides a detailed and authoritative reference on the precise semantics and capabilities of the standard.

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Price: $39.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Mohandas K. Gandhi, called Mahatma (“great soul”), was the father of modern India, but his influence has spread well beyond the subcontinent and is as important today as it was in the first part of the twentieth century and during this nation’s own civil rights movement Taken from Gandhi’s writings throughout his life, The Essential Gandhi introduces us to his thoughts on politics, spirituality, poverty, suffering, love, non-violence, civil disobedience, and his own life. The pieces collected here, with explanatory head notes by Gandhi biographer Louis Fischer, offer the clearest, most thorough portrait of one of the greatest spiritual leaders the world has known.
“Gandhi was inevitable. If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable. . . . We may ignore him at our own risk.” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

With a new Preface drawn from the writings of Eknath Easwaran

In the annals of spirituality certain books stand out both for their historical importance and for their continued relevance. The Vintage Spiritual Classics series offers the greatest of these works in authoritative new editions, with specially commissioned essays by noted contemporary commentators. Filled with eloquence and fresh insight, encouragement and solace, Vintage Spiritual Classics are incomparable resources for all readers who seek a more substantive understanding of mankind's relation to the divine..
Price: $8.19 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins.
While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations..
Price: $16.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]