Books about Predicament from Amazon.com

As a professor of biology and neuroscience at Stanford and a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant," Robert Sapolsky carries impressive credentials. Best of all, he's a gifted writer who possesses a delightfully devilish sense of humor. In these essays, which range widely but mostly focus on the relationships between biology and human behavior, hard and intricate science is handled with a deft touch that makes it accessible to the general reader. In one memorable piece, Sapolsky compares the fascination with tabloid TV to behavior he's observed among wild African baboons. "Rubber necks," notes the professor, "seem to be a common feature of the primate order." In the title essay of The Trouble with Testosterone, Sapolsky ruminates on the links, real or perceived, between that hormone and aggression..
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The Predicament of Culture is a critical ethnography of the West in its changing relations with other societies Analyzing cultural practices such as anthropology, travel writing, collecting, and museum displays of tribal art, Clifford shows authoritative accounts of other ways of life to be contingent fictions, now actively contested in postcolonial contexts. His critique raises questions of global significance: Who has the authority to speak for any group's identity and authenticity? What are the essential elements and boundaries of a culture? How do self and "the other" clash in the encounters of ethnography, travel, and modern interethnic relations? In discussions of ethnography, surrealism, museums, and emergent tribal arts, Clifford probes the late-twentieth century predicament of living simultaneously within, between, and after culture.

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Solving the PowerPoint Predicament

Using Digital Media for Effective Communication

Don’t Just Present: Inspire!

Everyone uses PowerPoint, but how effective is your presentation at meeting the goals you’ve outlined? A great presentation is more than just a slideshow–it’s about using PowerPoint to its maximum potential to get your message across to your audience. That’s the PowerPoint Predicament. Tom Bunzel reveals how to conceive, plan, develop, and deliver truly effective business, academic, and inspirational communications, not just PowerPoint slideshows. Discover how to motivate your audience by:

• Getting beyond bullet points to tell a story that touches your audience at the deepest levels
• Mastering proven principles of effective communication
• Planning, organizing, and designing every presentation for maximum impact
• Making sure every word, image, effect, and slide exists for a good reason
• Creating charts and diagrams that instantly make your point
• Using animation, navigation, video, and audio to drive home your message, not distract from it
• Avoiding mistakes that lead to boring presentations: no more “death by PowerPoint”
• Building Web and self-running kiosk presentations that really work
• Leveraging the rest of Microsoft Office to create even better presentations
• Using third-party add-ons to communicate with PowerPoint even more effectively: video capture, flowcharting, DVD authoring, rehearsal, and more

When you present, you’re on the line: your credibility, your career, your future as a leader. Use your software and imagination to its full potential–with this book!

Covers PowerPoint 2007, 2003, XP, 2000, 99, and 97– for Windows or Mac PowerPoint users

Tom Bunzel is a leading presentation expert. He has appeared on Tech TV’s “Call for Help,” was a featured speaker at InfoComm and PowerPoint LIVE, and has served as a technology coach for companies ranging from Iomega to the Neuroscience Education Institute, where he provided personal PowerPoint instruction to physicians. He offers live seminars via streaming media, and he has been published in Presentations Magazine. His books include Sams Teach Yourself PowerPoint 2003 in 24 Hours and Digital Video on the PC. He updated the Visual QuickStart Guide to PowerPoint 2002/2001 for Windows and Mac.

The book companion CD-ROM contains numerous PowerPoint presentations and other examples from the book, two sample chapters from Cliff Atkinson’s Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire, and trial software from Instant Effects (OfficeFX), Serious Magic (Ovation and Vlog It!), and TechSmith (Camtasia and Snag It).

Developing a compelling PowerPoint presentation involves much more than mastering one program. It involves integrating different programs, third party tools, and hardware resources to convey a message that has been skillfully crafted. From blogs to podcasts to the rise of amateur digital photography and videography, there's ample evidence to the passion among the public for communicating effectively. You crave not a how-to manual but a frame of reference for telling your stories effectively, both in front of a group, online, and across multiple digital platforms and media.

Solving the PowerPoint Predicament will walk your through three fundamental steps: (1) honing (and sticking to!) a compelling message, mastering and applying appropriate technologies, (3) integrating technology with verbal delivery skills needed for a successful presentation. This book really gives you everything you need to deliver a successful presentation that people will remember.

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Mandie and Celia visit Jonathan Guyer in New York. Mysterious people and strange conversations have the girls wondering what's really going on behind the closed doors of the Guyer mansion Ages 8-13. Mandie book 28..
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The doctrine of "Islamic economics" entered debates over the social role of Islam in the mid-twentieth century. Since then it has pursued the goal of restructuring economies according to perceived Islamic teachings. Beyond its most visible practical achievement--the establishment of Islamic banks meant to avoid interest--it has promoted Islamic norms of economic behavior and founded redistribution systems modeled after early Islamic fiscal practices.

In this bold and timely critique, Timur Kuran argues that the doctrine of Islamic economics is simplistic, incoherent, and largely irrelevant to present economic challenges. Observing that few Muslims take it seriously, he also finds that its practical applications have had no discernible effects on efficiency, growth, or poverty reduction. Why, then, has Islamic economics enjoyed any appeal at all? Kuran's answer is that the real purpose of Islamic economics has not been economic improvement but cultivation of a distinct Islamic identity to resist cultural globalization.

The Islamic subeconomies that have sprung up across the Islamic world are commonly viewed as manifestations of Islamic economics. In reality, Kuran demonstrates, they emerged to meet the economic aspirations of socially marginalized groups. The Islamic enterprises that form these subeconomies provide advancement opportunities to the disadvantaged. By enhancing interpersonal trust, they also facilitate intragroup transactions.

These findings raise the question of whether there exist links between Islam and economic performance. Exploring these links in relation to the long-unsettled question of why the Islamic world became underdeveloped, Kuran identifies several pertinent social mechanisms, some beneficial to economic development, others harmful.

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Nations Unbound is a pioneering study of an increasing trend in migration-transnationalism. Immigrants are no longer rooted in one location By building transnational social networks, economic alliances and political ideologies, they are able to cross the geographic and cultural boundaries of both their countries of origin and of settlement. Through ethnographic studies of immigrant populations, the authors demonstrate that transnationalism is something other than expanded nationalism. By placing immigrants in a limbo between settler and visitor, transnationalism challenges the concepts of citizenship and of nationhood itself..
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"Identity" is one of the most hotly debated topics in literary theory and cultural studies. This bold and groundbreaking collection of ten essays argues that identity is not just socially constructed but has real epistemic and political consequences for how people experience the world. Advocating a "postpositivist realist" approach to identity, the essays examine the ways in which theory, politics, and activism clash with or complement each other, providing an alternative to the widely influential postmodernist understandings of identity. Although theoretical in orientation, this dynamic collection deals with specific social groups--Chicanas/os, African Americans, gay men and lesbians, Asian Americans, and others--and concrete social issues directly related to race, ethnicity, sexuality, epistemology, and political resistance.
Satya Mohanty's brilliant exegesis of Toni Morrison's Beloved serves as a launching pad for the collection. The essays that follow, written by prominent and up-and-coming scholars, address a range of topics--from the writings of Cherrie Moraga, Franz Fanon, Joy Kogawa, and Michael Nava to the controversy surrounding racial program housing on college campuses--and work toward a truly interdisciplinary approach to identity.
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