Books about Big time from Amazon.com

As a boy, Brian Greene read Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus and was transformed Camus, in Greene's paraphrase, insisted that the hero triumphs "by relinquishing everything beyond immediate experience." After wrestling with this idea, however, Greene rejected Camus and realized that his true idols were physicists; scientists who struggled "to assess life and to experience the universe at all possible levels, not just those that happened to be accessible to our frail human senses." His driving question in The Fabric of the Cosmos, then, is fundamental: "What is reality?" Over sixteen chapters, he traces the evolving human understanding of the substrate of the universe, from classical physics to ten-dimensional M-Theory.

Assuming an audience of non-specialists, Greene has set himself a daunting task: to explain non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and Inflationary Cosmology with analogies drawn from common experience. For the most part, he succeeds. His language reflects a deep passion for science and a gift for translating concepts into poetic images. When explaining, for example, the inability to see the higher dimensions inherent in string theory, Greene writes: "We don't see them because of the way we see…like an ant walking along a lily pad…we could be floating within a grand, expansive, higher-dimensional space."

For Greene, Rhodes Scholar and professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, speculative science is not always as thorough and successful. His discussion of teleportation, for example, introduces and then quickly tables a valuable philosophical probing of identity. The paradoxes of time travel, however, are treated with greater depth, and his vision of life in a three-brane universe is compelling and--to use his description for quantum reality--"weird."

In the final pages Greene turns from science fiction back to the fringes of science fact, and he returns with rigor to frame discoveries likely to be made in the coming decades. "We are, most definitely, still wandering in the jungle," he concludes. Thanks to Greene, though, some of the underbrush has been cleared. --Patrick O'Kelley.
Price: $8.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

If a picture speaks a thousand words, a love letter speaks a thousand more . . .

Even in this age of e-mail, faxes, and instant messaging, nothing has ever replaced the power of a love letter. Much the way light displays every color when passed through a prism, love letters express the spectrum of our emotions, offering a colorful glimpse into the soul of the writer, and of the writer’s beloved. For passionate readers and lovers of words, a letter is irresistible.

Internationally renowned collector David Lowenherz sifted through hundreds and hundreds of historical and contemporary epistles and selected the most ardent, witty, whimsical, sexy, clever, and touching letters for this inspiring collection. Unlike interviews or biographies, these letters give us marvelous insight into the lives of some of history’s most famous lovers and provide intimate glimpses into the hearts of some whose fervent or amusing expressions of devotion will come as a great surprise.

Zelda Fitzgerald to Scott Fitzgerald
Michelangelo Buonarroti to Vittoria Colonna
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart toConstanze Mozart
Harry Truman to Bess Wallace
Khalil Gibran to Mary Haskell
Benjamin Franklin to Madame Brillon
Horatio Nelson to Emma Hamilton
George Bush to Barbara Pierce
Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to George Barrett
Jack London to Anna Strunsky
Marc Chagall to Bella Chagall
Ernest Hemingway to Mary Welsh
Jack Kerouac to Sebastian Sampas
Alfred Dreyfus to Lucie Dreyfus
Marjorie Fossa to Elvis Presley
Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West
Ludwig van Beethoven to the “Immortal Beloved”
Emma Goldman to Ben Reitman
Frida Kahlo to Diego Rivera
Dylan Thomas to Caitlin Thomas
Franz Kafka to Felice Bauer
Napoleon Bonaparte to Josephine Bonaparte
Abigail Smith to John Adams
John Ruskin to Euphemia Ruskin
George Sand to Gustave Flaubert
Simone de Beauvoir to Nelson Algren
Anaïs Nin to Henry Miller
Voltaire to Marie Louise Denis
James Thurber to Eva Prout
George Bernard Shaw to Stella Campbell
Sarah Bernhardt to Jean Richepin
Marcel Proust to Daniel Halevy
Frank Lloyd Wright to Maude Miriam Noel
Anne Sexton to Philip Legler
Elizabeth I to Thomas Seymour
Oscar Wilde to Constance Lloyd
Katherine Mansfield to John Middleton Maury
Charles Parnell to Katherine O’Shea
Lewis Carroll to Clara Cunnyngham.
Price: $7.19 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Big Squeeze takes a fresh, probing, and often shocking look at the stresses and strains faced by tens of millions of American workers as wages have stagnated, health and pension benefits have grown stingier, and job security has shriveled.

Going behind the scenes, Steven Greenhouse tells the stories of software engineers in Seattle, hotel housekeepers in Chicago, call center workers in New York, and janitors in Houston, as he explores why, in the world’s most affluent nation, so many corporations are intent on squeezing their workers dry. We meet all kinds of workers: white collar and blue collar, high tech and low tech, middle income and low income; employees who stock shelves during a hurricane while locked inside their store, get fired after suffering debilitating injuries on the job, face egregious sexual harassment, and get laid off when their companies move high-tech operations abroad. We also meet young workers having a hard time starting out and seventy-year-old workers with too little money saved up to retire.

The book explains how economic, business, political, and social trends—among them globalization, the influx of immigrants, and the Wal-Mart effect—have fueled the squeeze. We see how the social contract between employers and employees, guaranteeing steady work and good pensions, has eroded over the last three decades, damaged by massive layoffs of factory and office workers and Wall Street’s demands for ever-higher profits. In short, the post–World War II social contract that helped build the world’s largest and most prosperous middle class has been replaced by a startling contradiction: corporate profits, economic growth, and worker productivity have grown strongly while worker pay has languished and Americans face ever-greater pressures to work harder and longer.

Greenhouse also examines companies that are generous to their workers and can serve as models for all of corporate America: Costco, Patagonia, and the casino-hotels of Las Vegas among them. Finally, he presents a series of pragmatic, ready-to-be-implemented suggestions on what government, business, and labor should do to alleviate the squeeze.

A balanced, consistently revealing exploration of a major American crisis.

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Price: $14.60 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Bigger in size, longer in length, broader in scope, and even more useful than our original Mac OS X Hacks, the new Big Book of Apple Hacks offers a grab bag of tips, tricks and hacks to get the most out of Mac OS X Leopard, as well as the new line of iPods, iPhone, and Apple TV.

With 125 entirely new hacks presented in step-by-step fashion, this practical book is for serious Apple computer and gadget users who really want to take control of these systems. Many of the hacks take you under the hood and show you how to tweak system preferences, alter or add keyboard shortcuts, mount drives and devices, and generally do things with your operating system and gadgets that Apple doesn't expect you to do. The Big Book of Apple Hacks gives you:

• Hacks for both Mac OS X Leopard and Tiger, their related applications, and the hardware they run on or connect to
• Expanded tutorials and lots of background material, including informative sidebars
• "Quick Hacks" for tweaking system and gadget settings in minutes
• Full-blown hacks for adjusting Mac OS X applications such as Mail, Safari, iCal, Front Row, or the iLife suite
• Plenty of hacks and tips for the Mac mini, the MacBook laptops, and new Intel desktops
• Tricks for running Windows on the Mac, under emulation in Parallels or as a standalone OS with Bootcamp

The Big Book of Apple Hacks is not only perfect for Mac fans and power users, but also for recent -- and aspiring -- "switchers" new to the Apple experience. Hacks are arranged by topic for quick and easy lookup, and each one stands on its own so you can jump around and tweak whatever system or gadget strikes your fancy. Pick up this book and take control of Mac OS X and your favorite Apple gadget today!

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Price: $19.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Stephanie Plum, girl bounty hunter, the terror of Trenton, the bane of her boyfriend Joe Morelli's existence, and the delight of her crazy grandma's heart, is in the wrong place at the wrong time--as usual. Just happening to be indulging her nachos jones at a local deli when it's robbed by the notorious Red Devils, Plum is the eye witness who could put the gang leader, known as the Junkman, behind bars... if he just lets her live long enough. Looking for a place to hide out from the killer until the cops catch up with him, Stephanie sneaks into her fellow bounty hunter Ranger's apartment without telling Morelli, who's not overly fond of him. All the usual suspects in this long-running series are along for a wilder than ever ride, including Lula the gun-toting ex-hooker, Grandma Mazur, Stephanie's pregnant sister Valerie and her fiancé, as well as a host of minor characters who bring Trenton's seedier environs to life. Ten Big Ones is another madcap caper by a writer whose fans will doubtless catapult this easy beach read to the top of the bestseller list. --Jane Adams.
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This best-selling book captures the dynamics of business communication as no other on the market does. It presents the subject in a fascinating way, powerfully stimulating and motivating readers; this book gives the foundation for excellent, effective, and practical business communication. By offering “On the Job” simulations that feature actual companies, readers apply business communication concepts to real situations and sharpen their problem-solving skills. Incorporating a three-step approach to writing (planning, writing, and completing business messages), Excellence in Business Communication covers letters, memos, e-mail and other brief messages, reports and oral presentations, and employment messages (including resumes and application letters). With its helpful appendices and a “Handbook of Grammar, Mechanics, and Usage,” this a must-have desk reference for anyone responsible for writing business letters, e-mail, memos, and reports.

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Price: $25.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Strategies for creating real estate wealth by star ting small--and always making the right moves

Nationally known real estate expert John Schaub learned his craft in the best way possible--on the job, and through every kind of market. Over three decades, he learned to bank consistent profits as he built an impressive real estate mini-empire. Building Wealth One House at a Time reveals how virtually anyone can accumulate one million dollars worth of houses debtfree and earn a steady cash flow for life.

Unique in that it focuses on buying houses in good-quality neighborhoods, Schaub's nine-step program includes:

• Renting to long-term tenants, with financial incentives to pay on time
• Avoiding the temptation of bigger deals, which invariably include bigger problems
• A 10-year plan to pay off debt and own houses free and clear

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Price: $6.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]