Books about Waltzing from Amazon.com

Any software project that's worth starting will be vulnerable to risk. Since greater risks bring greater rewards, a company that runs away from risk will soon find itself lagging behind its more adventurous competition.

By ignoring the threat of negative outcomes—in the name of positive thinking or a Can-Do attitude—software managers drive their organizations into the ground.

In Waltzing with Bears, Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister—the best-selling authors of Peopleware—show readers how to identify and embrace worthwhile risks. Developers are then set free to push the limits.

You'll find that risk management

* makes aggressive risk-taking possible
* protects management from getting blindsided
* provides minimum-cost downside protection
* reveals invisible transfers of responsibility
* isolates the failure of a subproject.

Readers are taught to identify the most common risks faced by software projects:

* schedule flaws
* requirements inflation
* turnover
* specification breakdown
* and under-performance.

Packed with provocative insights, real-world examples, and project-saving tips, Waltzing with Bears is your guide to mitigating the risks—before they turn into problems..
Price: $21.38 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Two-Step right up to "a delightful story of new loves, old loves and reclaimed love."*

The Piggly Wiggly has been the hub of the community of Second Creek, Mississippi, but now it may be forced to shut down. Determined to keep her favorite market open, Laurie Lepanto enlists the help of her fellow "Nitwitts." They are influential widows who love to socialize-and remain true to their beloved store. With the help of handsome widower and former ballroom dancer Powell Hampton, they have the ladies of Second Creek foxtrotting back into the market. It's become the town's most festive event: waltzing at the Piggly Wiggly (while someone else takes care of the shopping). But it's Laurie who's thrown for a whirl when the dancing sparks an unpredictable romance. It may be the best deal she's ever gotten at the Piggly Wiggly..
Price: $0.90 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Relationships and extreme adventures collide with deadpan humor and female wisdom in Pam Houston's transcendent follow-up to her bestselling Cowboys Are My Weakness. Through eleven interlinked stories, we follow roving photographer Lucy O'Rourke as she survives a home life where her parents engage in rather peculiar feeding rites for the family cat in a "title story that deserves to be anthologized into eternity" (The Washington Post Book World), a near-drowning on a white water rafting trip, and a grand cayman attack in the Amazon. All the while her search for love continues with a string of rugged, exciting, and usually, it seems, inappropriate men. While it's not always easy for Lucy to find success in either the great outdoors or love, she rolls with the punches, never losing her sassy wit. When a surprise encounter with Carlos Castaneda at an airport boarding gate sets off a series of synchronistic events that lead Lucy to Hope, Colorado, and the life she has been searching for, we know that "Houston's triumph is that she has come to know the quieter adventures of the heart" (Arizona Republic)..
Price: $0.89 [Notify me when price goes down.]

First crush, first passion, first love.

Trying to fill the empty places left by children going to college, Jean Davis decides to get out of the house and volunteer in the local mayoral campaign. It soon becomes obvious - though not to Jean - that she has a major crush on the candidate, Rosie Monroe.

Thrilled by the excitement of politics and strangely flustered every time Rosie calls on her for help, Jean has never felt more alive. Rising to every challenge with newfound passion, she surprises everyone, including her husband, by flourishing under the stress of the hard-fought campaign.

When dirty tricks by the other side damage Rosie's reputation at the worst possible moment, Jean finally realizes that her feelings are not entirely about the thrill of the job. Two decades of doing what was expected of her are abruptly turned upside down, and she realizes she may just be in love - for the first time in her life.

Newcomer Robbi McCoy tells a passionate coming-of-age story about a mature woman whose life is only beginning. Full of surprises and difficult choices, Waltzing at Midnight is a heartfelt, endearing story about a woman we all know and the love that transforms her life..
Price: $10.17 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In these 14 poems, David Bottoms waltzes through the "Christ-haunted South" and highlights how and where the afterlife intersects our daily lives. In a strong and musical voice, Bottoms, the poet laureate of Georgia, modernizes the narrative traditions of the American South. He encounters the ghosts of musicians and recounts strange instances of religious visitation:

From "Vigilance":

Like my neighbor again who grew a yellow rose
wilted with the sign of the cross, or his sister in Biloxi
who once saw the virgin swimming
in a bowl of vegetable soup.
Accolades, yes, to Ramona Barreras
of Phoenix, Arizona, who pulled from her oven
in 1977
a tortilla scorched with the face of Christ,
which may or may not
have been the face that appeared
some ten years later in Bras D'Or
on an outside wall of a Tim Horton's Restaurant,
though both made the papers
and drew their share of pilgrims.

"What does it mean," Bottoms asks, "that God keeps stamping his image on pastry and French toast, on biscuits lightly burned around the edges?" At the core of this book is a seeker, a person trying to make sense out of an unintelligible world, confronting the darkest dimensions of human nature, and writing a gorgeous, meta-physically charged poetry.

David Bottoms, the Poet Laureate of Georgia, teaches at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He is the author of four books of poems and founding editor of Five Points magazine. His work has been featured on National Public Radio and on The Southern Voice, a television series profiling Southern writers.

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Price: $8.11 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Waltzing Australia was born out of a dream--and a journey After walking away from her corporate career, Cynthia Clampitt headed to Australia, to start over, to write, and to test the limits of what she could do. Waltzing Australia recounts that joyous adventure. It is a story about change and about making dreams come true. But more than that, it is about Australia: the history, legends and art, both European and Aboriginal; the beauty, the challenge, the people, the land. From Sydney to Perth, Tasmania to Darwin, tropics to desert, city to wilderness, Clampitt carries the reader along on an exhilarating grand tour of a fascinating country. With a writing style reminiscent of Annie Dillard, she captures the essence of the land Down Under and invites others to fall in love with Australia..
Price: $19.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In Oklahoma, eighth-poorest state in the nation, poverty is a pressing social problem Even so, Robert Lee Maril's Waltzing with the Ghost of Tom Joad is the first comprehensive analysis of poverty in the state.

Skillfully combining ethnography with statistical analysis, Maril portrays the lives of poverty-stricken Oklahomans, many of them children, minorities, and the elderly. Exploring myths about the poor and discussing the facts behind these myths, Maril discusses the real causes of poverty in the state, especially low-wage labor. He concludes by presenting a public-policy agenda that would benefit the poor directly and, in so doing, improve the lives of all Oklahomans..
Price: $13.06 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $21.90 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"I don't mind being 'interviewed' any more than I mind Viennese waltzing—that is, my response will depend on the agility and grace and attitude and intelligence of the other person. Some do it well, some clumsily, some step on your toes by accident, and some aim for them."—Margaret Atwood

This gathering of 21 interviews with Margaret Atwood covers a broad spectrum of topics. Beginning with Graeme Gibson's "Dissecting the Way a Writer Works" (1972), the conversations provide a forum for Atwood to talk about her own work, her career as a writer, feminism, and Canadian cultural nationalism, and to refute the autobiographical fallacy. These conversations offer what Earl Ingersoll calls "a kind of 'biography' of Margaret Atwood—the only kind of biography she is likely to sanction." Enlivened by Atwood's unfailing sense of humor, the interviews present an invaluable view of a distinguished contemporary writer at work.

From the Interviews:
"Let's not pretend that the interview will necessarily result in any absolute and blinding revelations. Interviews too are an art form; that is to say, they indulge in the science of illusion."
"I don't think you ever know how to write a book. You never know ahead of time. You start every time at zero. A former success doesn't mean that you're not going to make the most colossal failure the next time.".
Price: $9.87 [Notify me when price goes down.]