Schuh-Shopping

Kurzbeschreibung

264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox: potter Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in the Tokyo apartment of his great uncle Iggie. Later, when Edmund inherited the ?netsuke?, they unlocked a story far larger than he could ever have imagined?The Ephrussis came from Odessa, and at one time were the largest grain exporters in the world; in the 1870s, Charles Ephrussi was part of a wealthy new generation settling in Paris. Charles?s passion was collecting; the netsuke, bought when Japanese objets were all the rage in the salons, were sent as a wedding present to his banker cousin in Vienna.Later, three children ? including a young Ignace ? would play with the netsuke as history reverberated around them. The Anschluss and Second World War swept the Ephrussis to the brink of oblivion. Almost all that remained of their vast empire was the netsuke collection, dramatically saved by a loyal maid when their huge Viennese palace was occupied.In this stunningly original memoir, Edmund de Waal travels the world to stand in the great buildings his forebears once inhabited. He traces the network of a remarkable family against the backdrop of a tumultuous century and tells the story of a unique collection.

Produktbeschreibung

Book Description

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."
--Randy Pausch

A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave--"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"--wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.

Questions for Randy Pausch

We were shy about barging in on Randy Pausch's valuable time to ask him a few questions about his expansion of his famous Last Lecture into the book by the same name, but he was gracious enough to take a moment to answer. (See Randy to the right with his kids, Dylan, Logan, and Chloe.) As anyone who has watched the lecture or read the book will understand, the really crucial question is the last one, and we weren't surprised to learn that the "secret" to winning giant stuffed animals on the midway, like most anything else, is sheer persistence.

Amazon.com: I apologize for asking a question you must get far more often than you'd like, but how are you feeling?

Pausch: The tumors are not yet large enough to affect my health, so all the problems are related to the chemotherapy. I have neuropathy (numbness in fingers and toes), and varying degrees of GI discomfort, mild nausea, and fatigue. Occasionally I have an unusually bad reaction to a chemo infusion (last week, I spiked a 103 fever), but all of this is a small price to pay for walkin' around.

Amazon.com: Your lecture at Carnegie Mellon has reached millions of people, but even with the short time you apparently have, you wanted to write a book. What did you want to say in a book that you weren't able to say in the lecture?

Pausch: Well, the lecture was written quickly--in under a week. And it was time-limited. I had a great six-hour lecture I could give, but I suspect it would have been less popular at that length ;-).

A book allows me to cover many, many more stories from my life and the attendant lessons I hope my kids can take from them. Also, much of my lecture at Carnegie Mellon focused on the professional side of my life--my students, colleagues and career. The book is a far more personal look at my childhood dreams and all the lessons I've learned. Putting words on paper, I've found, was a better way for me to share all the yearnings I have regarding my wife, children and other loved ones. I knew I couldn't have gone into those subjects on stage without getting emotional.

Amazon.com: You talk about the importance--and the possibility!--of following your childhood dreams, and of keeping that childlike sense of wonder. But are there things you didn't learn until you were a grownup that helped you do that?

Pausch: That's a great question. I think the most important thing I learned as I grew older was that you can't get anywhere without help. That means people have to want to help you, and that begs the question: What kind of person do other people seem to want to help? That strikes me as a pretty good operational answer to the existential question: "What kind of person should you try to be?"

Amazon.com: One of the things that struck me most about your talk was how many other people you talked about. You made me want to meet them and work with them--and believe me, I wouldn't make much of a computer scientist. Do you think the people you've brought together will be your legacy as well?

Pausch: Like any teacher, my students are my biggest professional legacy. I'd like to think that the people I've crossed paths with have learned something from me, and I know I learned a great deal from them, for which I am very grateful. Certainly, I've dedicated a lot of my teaching to helping young folks realize how they need to be able to work with other people--especially other people who are very different from themselves.

Amazon.com: And last, the most important question: What's the secret for knocking down those milk bottles on the midway?

Pausch: Two-part answer:
     1) long arms
     2) discretionary income / persistence

Actually, I was never good at the milk bottles. I'm more of a ring toss and softball-in-milk-can guy, myself. More seriously, though, most people try these games once, don't win immediately, and then give up. I've won *lots* of midway stuffed animals, but I don't ever recall winning one on the very first try. Nor did I expect to. That's why I think midway games are a great metaphor for life.

Kurzbeschreibung

Supposedly written by an AI program mimicking human creativity, this humorous autobiography of an adventurous young man describes his journey through the Hi Tech world across USA--a journey which starts at the University of California and takes him through the technology worlds of Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Seattle (after a detour through Nashville, the Music City) and ending at beautiful San Diego.

The book starts in the middle with Kalpanik, a technologist in the Software industry moving from Silicon Valley to Seattle via Nashville to work for the internet leader Amazon.com.

We read one lively story after another about their interesting experiences in the Northwest.

In the end, we travel back in time to the University of California, and learn how/where Artificial Imagination was born!


----------------------------------------------------
Book Review by John Lehman,the author of Everything is changing

I was half way through this book when I realized it is almost poetry in the form of prose. I am not just referring to the short paragraphs, but the imaginative leaps, stunning imagery and most importantly, words which hook us in, make us think this is our story . . . . We see them on the page but live them in the theater of our imagination.

This book reminds us that we share the mysteries of the human mind and soul, no matter what our occupation, no matter where we were born. "Why I am here may appear to be a simple question, but . . . is there a deeper purpose of being where we are?" We know that the question applies not only to the location where we spend our lives, but also to overall existence, and our place in the time continuum.

Just as the author who traveled from New Delhi to Silicon Valley felt he has traveled forty years into the future, so do I, sitting in the agricultural landscape of Wisconsin felt that I have had a glimpse into the vitality of the Hi-Tech worlds of California and Seattle.

I feel I am in the hands of a good guide. Here is what it means to do research in Computers: "Rip apart an electronic system and you see nothing moving, nothing vibrating, it's almost a make-believe world, a child's fantasy, a writer's imagination.",

and what it means to yearn for acceptance:

"I looked at Seattle's glistening skyline on one side and its beautiful waterfront on the other and asked it the same questions I had asked San Francisco 16 years ago: will it accept me? Or will its people treat me as someone different, not one of the? And will I accept it, call it my home? Right then, she appeared from no where, as if the city had sent her to answer my questions . . ."

I loved the section addressing Seattle's slacker sun, that comes late to work, like at 9 AM and goes back home at 4, the observation that for males, until the age eight, we want every young woman to be our mother, then for the next thirty years our friend and when we have daughters, we feel like bringing every young woman a glass of warm milk and cookies.

His first day in Nashville, the author looks out of his window and sees snow. The conclusion he draws about the snow flakes very fittingly describhis life and the message we can take with us from this hip, funny, poignant, beautiful book: "the snowflakes descend slowly, floating in the air, allowing the current to carry them with it, letting it change their paths. They have chosen not to confront their destiny, choosing instead to enjoy every second of their short lives, their journey to the ground."

Welcome home, Kalpanik!

Kurzbeschreibung

Supposedly written by an AI program mimicking human creativity, this humorous autobiography of an adventurous young man describes his journey through the Hi Tech world across USA--a journey which starts at the University of California and takes him through the technology worlds of Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Seattle (after a detour through Nashville, the Music City) and ending at beautiful San Diego.

The book starts in the middle with Kalpanik, a technologist in the Software industry moving from Silicon Valley to Seattle via Nashville to work for the internet leader Amazon.com.

We read one lively story after another about their interesting experiences in the Northwest.

In the end, we travel back in time to the University of California, and learn how/where Artificial Imagination was born!


----------------------------------------------------
Book Review by John Lehman,the author of Everything is changing

I was half way through this book when I realized it is almost poetry in the form of prose. I am not just referring to the short paragraphs, but the imaginative leaps, stunning imagery and most importantly, words which hook us in, make us think this is our story . . . . We see them on the page but live them in the theater of our imagination.

This book reminds us that we share the mysteries of the human mind and soul, no matter what our occupation, no matter where we were born. "Why I am here may appear to be a simple question, but . . . is there a deeper purpose of being where we are?" We know that the question applies not only to the location where we spend our lives, but also to overall existence, and our place in the time continuum.

Just as the author who traveled from New Delhi to Silicon Valley felt he has traveled forty years into the future, so do I, sitting in the agricultural landscape of Wisconsin felt that I have had a glimpse into the vitality of the Hi-Tech worlds of California and Seattle.

I feel I am in the hands of a good guide. Here is what it means to do research in Computers: "Rip apart an electronic system and you see nothing moving, nothing vibrating, it's almost a make-believe world, a child's fantasy, a writer's imagination.",

and what it means to yearn for acceptance:

"I looked at Seattle's glistening skyline on one side and its beautiful waterfront on the other and asked it the same questions I had asked San Francisco 16 years ago: will it accept me? Or will its people treat me as someone different, not one of the? And will I accept it, call it my home? Right then, she appeared from no where, as if the city had sent her to answer my questions . . ."

I loved the section addressing Seattle's slacker sun, that comes late to work, like at 9 AM and goes back home at 4, the observation that for males, until the age eight, we want every young woman to be our mother, then for the next thirty years our friend and when we have daughters, we feel like bringing every young woman a glass of warm milk and cookies.

His first day in Nashville, the author looks out of his window and sees snow. The conclusion he draws about the snow flakes very fittingly describhis life and the message we can take with us from this hip, funny, poignant, beautiful book: "the snowflakes descend slowly, floating in the air, allowing the current to carry them with it, letting it change their paths. They have chosen not to confront their destiny, choosing instead to enjoy every second of their short lives, their journey to the ground."

Welcome home, Kalpanik!

Produktbeschreibung

Amazon.co.uk

In Ronnie O'Sullivan's autobiography, Ronnie, the language is uncompromising, the subject matter challenging and the approach unflinching. Even in an age when inner demons are considered to be an essential part of a star's entourage, Ronnie O'Sullivan's autobiography is a class apart. Undisputedly the most charismatic talent in the game of snooker, the public's successor to Alex Higgins and Jimmy White in the lineage of gunslinger, wide-boy heroes, O'Sullivan began rewriting the record books as a child prodigy, and reached the summit of his game as world champion in 2001--but all along, his life was falling apart.

Ronnie (written with Guardian journalist Simon Hattenstone) is a stark affirmation for those of us who would believe that there must be more to being a top professional sportsman than simply working hard to develop talent--that there are often dark, elemental forces driving achievers to go beyond the point where most of us would cease to care. Ronnie's relationship with his parents is at the heart of the story, underpinning his struggle for contentment, his descent into depression and addiction. We learn that the tabloid facts--his father ran a string of sex shops, was convicted of killing a man in a fight and sentenced to life imprisonment; later his mother was also imprisoned, for tax evasion--are just the half of it.

The style is confessional without being mawkish, and thankfully, O'Sullivan's brand of openness, particularly when chronicling his periods in therapy (including with former England cricket captain turned psychiatrist Mike Brearley) and at the Priory, is free of the awful self-aggrandisement and "me-isms" that blight the official public accounts of many celebrities.

Ultimately this is a tale of redemption, of a young man dismantled by experience, now putting himself back together. O'Sullivan closes the book looking back to the beginning of his public life, his mid-teens, when he first tied his fortunes to professional snooker. He sees it as a golden era, off and on the baize, a period of personal happiness and sporting success the like of which he at last believes has not been lost forever. --Alex Hankin

Amazon.co.uk

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl is among the most influential works of psychiatric literature since Freud. The book begins with a lengthy, austere and deeply moving personal essay about Frankl's imprisonment in Auschwitz and other concentration camps for five years and his struggle during this time to find reasons to live. The second part of the book, called "Logotherapy in a Nutshell" describes the psychotherapeutic method that Frankl pioneered as a result of his experiences in the concentration camps. Freud believed that sexual instincts and urges were the driving force of humanity's life; Frankl, by contrast, believes that man's deepest desire is to search for meaning and purpose. Therefore, Frankl's logotherapy is much more compatible with western religions than Freudian psychotherapy. This is a fascinating, sophisticated and very human book. At times, Frankl's personal and professional discourses merge into a style of tremendous power. "Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is", Frankl writes. "After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips." --Christine Buttery

Amazon.com

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl is among the most influential works of psychiatric literature since Freud. The book begins with a lengthy, austere, and deeply moving personal essay about Frankl's imprisonment in Auschwitz and other concentration camps for five years, and his struggle during this time to find reasons to live. The second part of the book, called "Logotherapy in a Nutshell," describes the psychotherapeutic method that Frankl pioneered as a result of his experiences in the concentration camps. Freud believed that sexual instincts and urges were the driving force of humanity's life; Frankl, by contrast, believes that man's deepest desire is to search for meaning and purpose. Frankl's logotherapy, therefore, is much more compatible with Western religions than Freudian psychotherapy. This is a fascinating, sophisticated, and very human book. At times, Frankl's personal and professional discourses merge into a style of tremendous power. "Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is," Frankl writes. "After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."