Books about Communities from Amazon.com

The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the TalibanÂ’s backyard

Anyone who despairs of the individual’s power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan’s treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build them a school. Over the next decade he built fifty-five schools—especially for girls—that offer a balanced education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth. As it chronicles Mortenson’s quest, which has brought him into conflict with both enraged Islamists and uncomprehending Americans, Three Cups of Tea combines adventure with a celebration of the humanitarian spirit..
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With all of the pressures successful business leaders have today, none is more urgent or challenging than learning the ability to execute strategy.

While larger businesses have the luxury of budgets and resources to meet this challenge, it's the small and midsized businesses that now have a tremendous opportunity to level the playing field, leapfrog the expensive, outdated approaches of the past, and attack the challenge of execution in a revolutionary way. The key insights are:

• Excellence is the enduring pursuit of balanced strategy and execution
• Planning and executing, while at the same time dealing with the inevitable surprises, is the biggest challenge in business
• Overcoming this challenge is what we mean by solving the one problem that makes all others easier
• Failing to solve the problem destines your organization to a reactive, fire-fighting future.

Based on breakthrough research, field testing and proven best-practices, the thought-leading vision described by Gary Harpst in Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution sets a new course for how small and midsized businesses can finally confront the never-ending challenge of executing strategy.

As a follow-up to the success of Six Disciplines for Excellence, Harpst's new book, Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution, details the elements of a complete strategy execution program, clarifies how it could only have happened now, and explains why such a program will soon become a mainstream requirement for your business..
Price: $8.28 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A new edition of the definitive book on nationalism—over a quarter of a million copies sold worldwide

Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson's brilliant book on nationalism, forged a new field of study when it first appeared in 1983. Since then it has sold over a quarter of a million copies and is widely considered the most important book on the subject. In this greatly anticipated revised edition, Anderson updates and elaborates on the core question: what makes people live, die and kill in the name of nations? He shows how an originary nationalism born in the Americas was adopted by popular movements in Europe, by imperialist powers, and by the anti-imperialist resistances in Asia and Africa, and explores the way communities were created by the growth of the nation-state, the interaction between capitalism and printing, and the birth of vernacular languages-of-state. Anderson revisits these fundamental ideas, showing how their relevance has been tested by the events of the past two decades..
Price: $11.24 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The "gold standard" text in community health nursing is now available in an updated, 7th edition! This respected text gives you a solid foundation in community and public health nursing concepts and interventions for individuals, families, and communities. Throughout, health promotion and disease prevention concepts are integrated into the multifaceted role of population-focused, community-oriented nursing practice. You'll find timely coverage of topics such as nursing roles following terrorist attacks and during infectious disease outbreaks; parish nursing; nurse-managed centers; and important client populations such as clients with AIDS, pregnant teens, and the homeless. Student-friendly features provide an accessible and challenging learning experience, and new content throughout keeps you up to date with this fast-changing field.

• Comprehensive coverage addresses the multiple roles of public health nurses, the varied clients they care for, and the different settings where they practice.
• Full-color design, photos, and illustrations are visually appealing and useful for effective study and real-world representations.
• Varied client focus addresses nursing care for individuals, families, and communities, giving you the information you need to care for each type of client group.
• An entire unit is devoted to vulnerable populations, so you can better serve such high-risk clients as the homeless, clients with substance abuse problems, and victims of domestic violence.
• Important chapter concepts and terminology (Objectives, Key Terms, Chapter Outline, and Chapter Review) are highlighted for quick reference.
• Numerous appendixes offer additional resources and key information, such as screening and assessment tools and clinical practice guidelines.
• Discussion-generating features such as Did You Know?, What Do You Think?, The Cutting Edge, Nursing Tip, How-To..., Evidence-Based Practice, Practice Application questions and answers, and Levels of Prevention boxes.
• Separate chapters provide thorough coverage of significant community and public health initiatives: Healthy Cities program, nursing centers, and a community health promotion integrated model.
• Critical-thinking and problem-solving skills are encouraged with Practice Applications Clinical Decision-Making Activities.
• Evolve web site for students includes Community Assessment Applied (exercises focused on community assessment), case studies with questions and answers, NCLEX exam style review questions with answers and correct answer rationales, a glossary, answers to Practice Applications, WebLinks, and content updates.
• Evolve web site for instructors includes an Instructor's Manual, Test Bank, Image Collection, PowerPoint Slides, and tips on using Hale: Real World Community Health Nursing, 2nd Edition CD-ROM with this book.

• An entire chapter on the Minnesota Public Health Interventions Wheel explains the interventions in detail, providing a mechanism for applying this new and innovative model to practice.
• Community Assessment Applied, a FREE online resource that accompanies the text, offers tools and opportunities to practice community assessment.
• Chapter on surveillance describes monitoring health events through collection, analysis, and interpretation of health data, a key aspect of the protection of the public's health.
• Expanded content on forensic nursing in the chapter on violence, giving you detailed knowledge on this new and growing nursing specialty.
• Revised international health chapter focuses on worldwide health issues so you develop a global health perspective.
• Health education and group practices chapter encourages you to focus on community/population-level education and emphasizes family, group, and community education.
• Healthy People 2010 boxes contain objectives and data from the most recent version of this federal government health promotion initiative, relating them to the practice of community and public health nursing.
• Timely new information on disaster management addresses this complex issue in light of its implications for today's public health nurses.

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Price: $62.33 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This primers tells the "have-nots" how they can organize to achieve real political power for the practice of true democracy .
Price: $8.33 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Alcohol Can Be a Gas! is the only comprehensive book ever written on alcohol fuel production and use for home and farm. Until now, it has been very difficult for farmers, contractors, alternative energy aficionados, those concerned about Peak Oil, and small-scale entrepreneurs to obtain good, accurate information on producing alcohol, or on converting vehicles to run on alcohol fuel. And with all the conflicting news stories about ethanol, the public finds it difficult to sort fact from fiction. This text, which has been reviewed by scientists around the world, is the definitive reference work on alcohol fuel.

Alcohol Can Be A Gas! contains 640 8-1/2 by 11 pages, with 514 charts, photos, and illustrations to reinforce the information-dense text. The book is geared for the nonscientific reader, but its 473 endnotes provide the technical foundation behind the accessible prose. A 700-word glossary and a 6300-entry index extend the book's usefulness.

This book is the distilled essence of the most pertinent information ever assembled in one place on alcohol fuel, the technology that can help us finally become producers of almost limitless energy, instead of extractors of finite resources. How we produce our energy from here on out will determine how we govern ourselves and how we relate to nature and the environment; it will also create a sea change in where wealth concentrates. It will determine if the future is ruled by a small number of armed dictatorships backed by military and industrial interests (a cabal author David Blume likes to refer to as MegaOilron or the Oilygarchy), or if energy, and therefore power, is held by a diffusion of democratic entities, based on their ingenuity and ability to gather a portion of their daily solar income.

As Blume writes in the Introduction to Alcohol Can Be a Gas!: "Various prospective publishers argued that putting all of this material into one large volume might scare off readers who just want a recipe book of how to make alcohol. They said, 'All this history and politics is fascinating, but aren't you afraid that including it in your how-to book would scare away some buyers?' 'Put it in a separate publication,' their marketing experts said. But in the final analysis, I decided that this book should be a complete tool kit to revolutionize our transportation energy system, combining a broad, sweeping vision with intricate detail.

"I spent four years working on this book with a small team of researchers. I traveled all over the United States in search of the most up-to-date information. In frozen South Dakota, I talked to Orrie Swayze and his farmer and VFW buddies who are taking on the oil companies, and to alcohol combustion engineer and alcohol aviation expert, Jim Behnken. I went to Decatur, Illinois, to see the largest alcohol plant in the U.S., Archer Daniels Midland's 200-million-gallon-per-year plant. My travels also took me to Brazil to document the world's largest alcohol fuel program.

"It took over 25 years to finally get this book to you. It represents the confidence of almost 30 people who collectively loaned more than $250,000 to see this project through. It's the most comprehensive book ever written about alcohol fuel. Its production has been a massive effort that has depended on the cooperation of hundreds of people who contributed both their knowledge and, more importantly, their experiences.".
Price: $32.24 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Few people outside certain scholarly circles had heard the name Robert D. Putnam before 1995. But then this self-described "obscure academic" hit a nerve with a journal article called "Bowling Alone." Suddenly he found himself invited to Camp David, his picture in People magazine, and his thesis at the center of a raging debate. In a nutshell, he argued that civil society was breaking down as Americans became more disconnected from their families, neighbors, communities, and the republic itself. The organizations that gave life to democracy were fraying. Bowling became his driving metaphor. Years ago, he wrote, thousands of people belonged to bowling leagues. Today, however, they're more likely to bowl alone:

Television, two-career families, suburban sprawl, generational changes in values--these and other changes in American society have meant that fewer and fewer of us find that the League of Women Voters, or the United Way, or the Shriners, or the monthly bridge club, or even a Sunday picnic with friends fits the way we have come to live. Our growing social-capital deficit threatens educational performance, safe neighborhoods, equitable tax collection, democratic responsiveness, everyday honesty, and even our health and happiness.

The conclusions reached in the book Bowling Alone rest on a mountain of data gathered by Putnam and a team of researchers since his original essay appeared. Its breadth of information is astounding--yes, he really has statistics showing people are less likely to take Sunday picnics nowadays. Dozens of charts and graphs track everything from trends in PTA participation to the number of times Americans say they give "the finger" to other drivers each year. If nothing else, Bowling Alone is a fascinating collection of factoids. Yet it does seem to provide an explanation for why "we tell pollsters that we wish we lived in a more civil, more trustworthy, more collectively caring community." What's more, writes Putnam, "Americans are right that the bonds of our communities have withered, and we are right to fear that this transformation has very real costs." Putnam takes a stab at suggesting how things might change, but the book's real strength is in its diagnosis rather than its proposed solutions. Bowling Alone won't make Putnam any less controversial, but it may come to be known as a path-breaking work of scholarship, one whose influence has a long reach into the 21st century. --John J. Miller.
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