Books about Visions from Amazon.com

For more than twenty years, millions of managers in Fortune 500 companies and small businesses nationwide have followed The One Minute Manager's techniques, thus increasing their productivity, job satisfaction, and personal prosperity. These very real results were achieved through learning the management techniques that spell profitability for the organization and its employees.

The One Minute Manager is a concise, easily read story that reveals three very practical secrets: One Minute Goals, One Minute Praisings, and One Minute Reprimands.

The book also presents several studies in medicine and the behavioral sciences that clearly explain why these apparently simple methods work so well with so many people. By the book's end you will know how to apply them to your own situation and enjoy the benefits.

That's why The One Minute Manager has continued to appear on business bestseller lists for more than two decades, and has become an international sensation.

.
Price: $9.55 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Part melodrama and part parable, Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven weaves together three stories, all told about the same man: 83-year-old Eddie, the head maintenance person at Ruby Point Amusement Park. As the novel opens, readers are told that Eddie, unsuspecting, is only minutes away from death as he goes about his typical business at the park. Albom then traces Eddie's world through his tragic final moments, his funeral, and the ensuing days as friends clean out his apartment and adjust to life without him. In alternating sections, Albom flashes back to Eddie's birthdays, telling his life story as a kind of progress report over candles and cake each year. And in the third and last thread of the novel, Albom follows Eddie into heaven where the maintenance man sequentially encounters five pivotal figures from his life (a la A Christmas Carol). Each person has been waiting for him in heaven, and, as Albom reveals, each life (and death) was woven into Eddie's own in ways he never suspected. Each soul has a story to tell, a secret to reveal, and a lesson to share. Through them Eddie understands the meaning of his own life even as his arrival brings closure to theirs.

Albom takes a big risk with the novel; such a story can easily veer into the saccharine and preachy, and this one does in moments. But, for the most part, Albom's telling remains poignant and is occasionally profound. Even with its flaws, The Five People You Meet in Heaven is a small, pure, and simple book that will find good company on a shelf next to It's A Wonderful Life. --Patrick O'Kelley.
Price: $2.25 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Design Patterns is a modern classic in the literature of object-oriented development, offering timeless and elegant solutions to common problems in software design. It describes patterns for managing object creation, composing objects into larger structures, and coordinating control flow between objects. The book provides numerous examples where using composition rather than inheritance can improve the reusability and flexibility of code. Note, though, that it's not a tutorial but a catalog that you can use to find an object-oriented design pattern that's appropriate for the needs of your particular application--a selection for virtuoso programmers who appreciate (or require) consistent, well-engineered object-oriented designs..
Price: $39.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Christmas in bounty hunter Stephanie Plum's world isn't quite like Christmas in Whoville With only four days to go before December 25, she doesn't have a decorated tree in her apartment or any presents bought. Plus she's chasing an elusive bail-jumper named Sandy Claws; a hunky guy named Diesel is literally popping in and out of her apartment; and a mob of manic elves is threatening to assault her with cookies. The end result is that Stephanie is feeling a tad stressed over the holiday season. Life isn't any calmer over at her parents' home in the Burg, where Grandma Mazur is dating a new octogenarian stud muffin; sister Valerie is wailing over some unwelcome news; and Stephanie's mother is coping by belting back tumblers of Red Roses in the kitchen. Just where is the elusive Mr. Claws hiding, and why? What's causing the power blackouts all over Trenton? And what about the mysterious villain, Mr. Ring? Is all of this real, or is Stephanie just having a very bad dream?

Janet Evanovich's mysteries are eagerly awaited by fans everywhere and this holiday installment won't disappoint. With a returning cast of entertaining, quirky characters and a rock-solid setting in New Jersey wrapped around an intriguing mystery, Evanovich delivers yet another hilarious adventure featuring irrepressible bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. --Lois Faye Dyer.
Price: $5.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Already devastated by loss, Bourne is shattered by a report that his last friend in the world, Martin Lindros, has gone missing A CI deputy director, Lindros was in Ethiopia tracking suspicious shipments of yellowcake uranium and atomic bomb weaponry. His last lifeline to humanity, Bourne will not let Lindros go. Despite his hatred for CI, Bourne sets out to rescue his friend and finish the job: dismantling a terrorist network determined to build nuclear armaments by cutting off their source of money. But Bourne doesn't realize that these men, Islamic supremacists, are leaders of an incredibly dangerous, technologically savvy group with ties from Africa, across the Middle East, and into Eastern Europe and Russia. They have predicted Bourne's every move, and are counting on his unwitting help in their plans to destroy America..
Price: $3.49 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"Adventure, fighting, backstabbing and love abound" (VOYA) in this action-packed follow-up to the #1 New York Times blockbuster MAXIMUM RIDE: THE ANGEL EXPERIMENT, now available in paperback The heart-stopping quest of six winged kids--led by fourteen-year-old Max--to find their parents and investigate the mind-blowing mystery of their ultimate destiny continues when they're taken under the wing of an FBI agent and attempt, for the first time, to live "normal" lives. But going to school and making friends doesn't stop them from being relentlessly hunted by sinister spies, who lead Max to face her most frightening match yet: a new and better version of herself..
Price: $2.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The dramatic growth in practical applications for machine learning over the last ten years has been accompanied by many important developments in the underlying algorithms and techniques. For example, Bayesian methods have grown from a specialist niche to become mainstream, while graphical models have emerged as a general framework for describing and applying probabilistic techniques. The practical applicability of Bayesian methods has been greatly enhanced by the development of a range of approximate inference algorithms such as variational Bayes and expectation propagation, while new models based on kernels have had a significant impact on both algorithms and applications.

This completely new textbook reflects these recent developments while providing a comprehensive introduction to the fields of pattern recognition and machine learning. It is aimed at advanced undergraduates or first-year PhD students, as well as researchers and practitioners. No previous knowledge of pattern recognition or machine learning concepts is assumed. Familiarity with multivariate calculus and basic linear algebra is required, and some experience in the use of probabilities would be helpful though not essential as the book includes a self-contained introduction to basic probability theory.

The book is suitable for courses on machine learning, statistics, computer science, signal processing, computer vision, data mining, and bioinformatics. Extensive support is provided for course instructors, including more than 400 exercises, graded according to difficulty. Example solutions for a subset of the exercises are available from the book web site, while solutions for the remainder can be obtained by instructors from the publisher. The book is supported by a great deal of additional material, and the reader is encouraged to visit the book web site for the latest information.

Coming soon:

*For students, worked solutions to a subset of exercises available on a public web site (for exercises marked "www" in the text)

*For instructors, worked solutions to remaining exercises from the Springer web site

*Lecture slides to accompany each chapter

*Data sets available for download

.
Price: $63.68 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In his first case since he left the LAPD's Open Unsolved Unit for the prestigious Homicide Special squad, Harry Bosch is called out to investigate a murder that may have chilling consequences for national security. A doctor with access to a dangerous radioactive substance is found murdered in the trunk of his car. Retracing his steps, Harry learns that a large quantity of radioactive cesium was stolen shortly before the doctor's death. With the cesium in unknown hands, Harry fears the murder could be part of a terrorist plot to poison a major American city.
Soon, Bosch is in a race against time, not only against the culprits, but also against the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI (in the form of Harry's one-time lover Rachel Walling), who are convinced that this case is too important for the likes of the LAPD. It is Bosch's job to prove all of them wrong..
Price: $1.74 [Notify me when price goes down.]

She is 20, beautiful, dirt-poor, and hoping for a better life for her infant daughter when LuAnn Tyler is offered the gift of a lifetime, a $100 million lottery jackpot. All she has to do is change her identity and leave the U.S. forever. It's an offer she dares to refuse....until violence forces her hand and thrusts her into a harrowing game of high stakes, big money subterfuge. It's a price she won't fully pay....until she does the unthinkable and breaks the promise that made her rich. For if LuAnn Tyler comes home, she will be pitted against the deadliest contestant of all: the chameleon-like financial mastermind who changed her life. And who can take it away at will....The Winner.
Price: $4.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]