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  The Art of Reading, Hörbuch, Digital, 757min

  Artful reading - the way we read novels and short stories - is less about reading for specific information and more about reading to revel in the literary experience. Learning the skills and techniques of artful reading can improve your life in many ways, whether you're a fiction reader, an aspiring writer, a book club member, or a student. And the best part: These skills are not difficult or unwieldy; rather, they are well within your reach. This entertaining, 24-lecture course gives you a veritable toolbox of knowledge and methods to approach even the most daunting reading experience with increased confidence. You'll learn the definitions and characteristics of terms such as authorship, master plot, and genre. While some of these nuts-and-bolts concepts may be familiar to you, Professor Spurgin examines them from multiple angles, revealing hidden meanings that can escape even experienced readers. Practical tips and techniques will maximize your effectiveness as an artful reader. You'll see why holding an initial reading session will acquaint you with the author's writing style and the characters, making the book easy to return to even if you take a few days off. You'll also discover the benefits of "pre-reading" - exploring a book's organization and structure - and how to constantly ask questions to become more deeply involved with the characters and their stories. Throughout the course, a host of literary "case studies" will refine and elaborate on the concepts of artful reading. Literary examples show how you can finally approach works that, in the past, might have seemed intimidating - making your future reading experiences both more engaging and more enlightening. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio. Language: English. Narrator: Timothy Spurgin. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/tcco/000285/bk_tcco_000285_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  The Fountain of Latona (eBook, ePUB)

  Ovid tells the story of Latona, the mother by Jupiter of Apollo and Diana. In her flight from the jealous Juno, she arrives faint and parched on the coast of Asia Minor. Kneeling to sip from a pond, Latona is met by the local peasants, who not only deny her effort but muddy the water in pure malice. Enraged, Latona calls a curse down upon the stingy peasants, turning them to frogs.In his masterful study, Thomas F. Hedin reveals how and why a fountain of this strange legend was installed in the heart of Versailles in the 1660s, the inaugural decade of Louis XIV's patronage there. The natural supply of water was scarce and unwieldy, and it took the genius of the king's hydraulic engineers, working in partnership with the landscape architect André Le Nôtre, to exploit it. If Ovid's peasants were punished for their stubborn denial of water, so too the obstacles of coarse nature at Versailles were conquered; the aquatic iconography of the fountain was equivalent to the aquatic reality of the gardens.Latona was designed by Charles Le Brun, the most powerful artist at the court of Louis XIV, and carried out by Gaspard and Balthazar Marsy. The 1660s were rich in artistic theory in France, and the artists of the fountain delivered substantial lectures at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture on subjects of central concern to their current work. What they professed was what they were visualizing in the gardens. As such, the fountain is an insider's guide to the leading artistic ideals of the moment.Louis XIV was viewed as the reincarnation of Apollo, the god of creativity, the inspiration of artists and scientists. Hedin's original argument is that Latona was a double declaration: a glorification of the king and a proud manifesto by artists.

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  • Price: 54.95 EUR excl. shipping
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  The Oracle of Stamboul: A Novel , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 462min

  An elegantly crafted, utterly enchanting debut novel set in a mystical, exotic world, in which a gifted young girl charms a sultan and changes the course of an empire's history. Late in the summer of 1877, a flock of purple-and-white hoopoes suddenly appears over the town of Constanta on the Black Sea, and Eleonora Cohen is ushered into the world by a mysterious pair of Tartar midwives who arrive just minutes before her birth. "They had read the signs, they said: a sea of horses, a conference of birds, the North Star in alignment with the moon. It was a prophecy that their last king had given on his deathwatch." But joy is mixed with tragedy, for Eleonora's mother dies soon after the birth. Raised by her doting father, Yakob, a carpet merchant, and her stern, resentful stepmother, Ruxandra, Eleonora spends her early years daydreaming and doing housework—until the moment she teaches herself to read, and her father recognizes that she is an extraordinarily gifted child, a prodigy. When Yakob sets off by boat for Stamboul on business, eight-year-old Eleonora, unable to bear the separation, stows away in one of his trunks. On the shores of the Bosporus, in the house of her father's business partner, Moncef Bey, a new life awaits. Books, backgammon, beautiful dresses and shoes, markets swarming with color and life—the imperial capital overflows with elegance, and mystery. For in the narrow streets of Stamboul—a city at the crossroads of the world—intrigue and gossip are currency, and people are not always what they seem. Eleonora's tutor, an American minister and educator, may be a spy. The kindly though elusive Moncef Bey has a past history of secret societies and political maneuvering. And what is to be made of the eccentric, charming Sultan Abdulhamid II himself, beleaguered by friend and foe alike as his unwieldy, multiethnic empire crumbles? ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Mozhan Marno. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/harp/002412/bk_harp_002412_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  • Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping
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  Leveraged Learning: How the Disruption of Education Helps Lifelong Learners, and Experts with Something to Teach , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 484min

  The road map to success as a knowledge worker, professional, and expert has changed.Gone are the days when education was something that happened only at the start of your career. The name of today's game, both personally and professionally, is to be constantly learning: just enough, just in time, and never stopping. But where can knowledge workers, professionals, and lifelong learners go to find the training and education they need to stay current and thrive?It's no secret that universities and colleges are struggling to keep pace and stay current. Often out of touch, exorbitantly overpriced, and slowed by unwieldy infrastructures, bureaucracies, and tenure, these institutions are fundamentally designed to deliver a mode of education that still serves an important purpose but leaves many of our individual and collective needs for learning and growth sorely unmet.This crisis is an opportunity for the experts and professionals who possess the knowledge and skills that are so sorely needed by so many. The solution is to package their expertise into leveraged learning programs that create transformation for the lifelong learners who need them and profit for the experts who create them.Danny Iny, a successful educator entrepreneur, has been leading the charge on this growing movement. And in Leveraged Learning he lays out the guidebook for navigating and thriving in this new world - both as a lifelong learner and as an expert with something to teach.As a lifelong learner, you'll gain the skills and acquire the tools that you need to grow and thrive:How education has changed and the implications for knowledge workers and professionals.Why the education system is failing you and what alternatives to consider.How to hack your patterns of behavior to support and accelerate your learning.The two layers of learning that you must stack together to achieve mastery. ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: David H. Lawrence XVII. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/133539/bk_acx0_133539_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  • Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping
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  The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 438min

  From the best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, and Krakatoa comes a truly wonderful celebration of the English language and of its unrivaled treasure house, the Oxford English Dictionary. Writing with marvelous brio, Winchester first serves up a lightning history of the English language - "so vast, so sprawling, so wonderfully unwieldy" - and pays homage to the great dictionary makers, from "the irredeemably famous" Samuel Johnson to the "short, pale, smug and boastful" schoolmaster from New Hartford, Noah Webster. He then turns his unmatched talent for story-telling to the making of this most venerable of dictionaries. In this fast-paced narrative, the reader will discover lively portraits of such key figures as the brilliant but tubercular first editor Herbert Coleridge (grandson of the poet), the colorful, boisterous Frederick Furnivall (who left the project in a shambles), and James Augustus Henry Murray, who spent a half-century bringing the project to fruition. Winchester lovingly describes the nuts-and-bolts of dictionary making - how unexpectedly tricky the dictionary entry for marzipan was, or how fraternity turned out so much longer and monkey so much more ancient than anticipated - and how bondmaid was left out completely, its slips found lurking under a pile of books long after the B-volume had gone to press. We visit the ugly corrugated iron structure that Murray grandly dubbed the Scriptorium - the Scrippy or the Shed, as locals called it - and meet some of the legion of volunteers, from Fitzedward Hall, a bitter hermit obsessively devoted to the OED, to W. C. Minor, whose story is one of dangerous madness, ineluctable sadness, and ultimate redemption.The Meaning of Everything is a scintillating account of the creation of the greatest monument ever erected to a living language. Simon Winchester's supple, vi ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Simon Winchester. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/harp/000734/bk_harp_000734_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  • Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping
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  The Nest , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 666min

  A warm, funny and acutely perceptive debut novel about four adult siblings and the fate of the shared inheritance that has shaped their choices and their lives. Every family has its problems. But even among the most troubled, the Plumb family stands out as spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of simmering tensions finally reach a breaking point on an unseasonably cold afternoon in New York City as Melody, Beatrice, and Jack Plumb gather to confront their charismatic and reckless older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. Months earlier, an inebriated Leo got behind the wheel of a car with a 19-year-old waitress as his passenger. The ensuing accident has endangered the Plumbs' joint trust fund, "The Nest", which they are months away from finally receiving. Meant by their deceased father to be a modest midlife supplement, the Plumb siblings have watched The Nest's value soar along with the stock market and have been counting on the money to solve a number of self-inflicted problems. Melody, a wife and mother in an upscale suburb, has an unwieldy mortgage and looming college tuition for her twin teenage daughters. Jack, an antiques dealer, has secretly borrowed against the beach cottage he shares with his husband, Walker, to keep his store open. And Bea, a once-promising short-story writer, just can't seem to finish her overdue novel. Can Leo rescue his siblings and, by extension, the people they love? Or will everyone need to reimagine the futures they've envisioned? Brought together as never before, Leo, Melody, Jack, and Beatrice must grapple with old resentments, present-day truths, and the significant emotional and financial toll of the accident as well as finally acknowledge the choices they have made in their own lives. This is a story about the power of family, the possibilities of friendship, the ways we depend upon one another and the ways we let one another down. In this tender, entertaining, and deftly written debut, Cynthi ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Mia Barron. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/harp/005048/bk_harp_005048_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  • Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping
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  The Laments: A Novel, Hörbuch, Digital, 367min

  Meet the Laments, the affably dysfunctional globetrotting family at the center of George Hagen's exuberant debut novel.Howard, an engineer, dreams of irrigating the Sahara and lives by the motto "Laments move!" His wife Julia is a fiery spirit who must balance her husband's oddly peripatetic nature with unexpected aspirations of her own. Will is the "waif with a paper-thin heart" who is given to Howard and Julia in return for their own child who has been lost in a bizarre maternity ward mishap. As Will grows up in a family that careens from continent to continent, one wonders where the Laments will ever belong.In Bahrain, Howard works at an oil company and Will makes his first friend. But in short order he is wrenched off to another land, his mother's complicated friendship with American siren Trixie Howitzer causing the family to bolt. In Northern Rhodesia, during its last days as a white colony, the twin enfants terribles Marcus and Julius are born, and Will falls for the gardener's daughter, a girl so vain that she admires her image in the lid of a biscuit tin. Soon the family's life is upturned again, this time by their neighbor Major Buck Quinn, with his suburban tirades against black self-rule. Envisioning a more civilized life on "the sceptered isle," the Laments head to England. Alas, poor Will is greeted by the tribal ferocity of his schoolmates and a society fixated on the Blitz. No sooner has he succumbed to British pop culture in the guise of mop-top Sally Byrd and her stacks of 45s, than the Laments uproot themselves once again, and it's off to New Jersey, where life deals crisis and opportunity in equal measure.Undeniably eccentric, the Laments are also universal. Every family moves on in life. Children grow up, things are left behind; there is always something to lament. Through the Laments' restlessness and unwieldy love for one another, George Hagen gives us a portrait of every family that is funny, tragic, and improba Language: English. Narrator: Clare Higgins. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/rand/000438/bk_rand_000438_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  • Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping
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  Why Leadership Sucks(tm), Volume 2: The Pain, Pitfalls, and Challenges of Servant Leadership Fundamentals , Hörbuch, Digital, ungekürzt, 233min

  Leadership is a hot topic, as more and more books are available on the subject than ever before. The single keyword leadership offers up more than 640 million search results on Google alone, and via the Internet we can access leadership courses (like mine on Udemy.com) and online information more quickly and easily than ever before. Yet we have a severe lack of leadership in most areas of government, business, and even nonprofit organizations. So why is that? It is a lack of follow-through, plain and simple. This book is about putting what we learn into practice, and that is a hallmark of leadership fundamentals. Whenever we feel frustrated or life seems to be spinning out of control, we need to get back to the basics of why we're living. Is it based on the fundamentals of living a selfless life as a service-minded person? "Life and people aren't out to get you, but your approach to life and approach to people are." We can get so distracted by things in life that we forget about what is seminally true. It is always about the fundamentals in work, life, sports, faith, and relationships. We can easily allow ourselves to become distracted by all kinds of things that really don't matter, and most of the time a return to the fundamentals brings us back into balance and peace in our lives. The book is divided into four parts: Part 1: To serve or not to serve. The choice is indeed a tough one. Part 2: Leggo my ego. Addresses the challenge of needing an ego to lead but having that harnessed so it is not unwieldy. Part 3: The danger of persona non grata. You don't want to be the unwelcome person, do you? Part 4: Fierce competition steamrolls ahead. Organization competition is heating up and shows no signs of slowing. Will you ride the wave or be pulled under by the currents? To discover why servant leadership is frustrating and learn practical principles for your leadership journey, listen t ungekürzt. Language: English. Narrator: Miles Anthony Smith. Audio sample: https://samples.audible.de/bk/acx0/071539/bk_acx0_071539_sample.mp3. Digital audiobook in aax.

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  • Price: 9.95 EUR excl. shipping
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  Unwieldy American State

  Unwieldy American State - Administrative Politics since the New Deal: ab 27.99 €

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  • Price: 27.99 EUR excl. shipping
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  Unwieldy American State

  Unwieldy American State - Administrative Politics since the New Deal: ab 36.49 €

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  • Price: 36.49 EUR excl. shipping

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