All In This Together

Build trust and achieve high performance in your business by redefining team culture. Have you ever been on a team where the talent was strong, but the team wasn’t very good? On the flip side, have you ever been on a team where not every single member was a rock star, but something about the team just worked? In this book, corporate consultant Mike Robbins dives deep into the ways great businesses build trust, collaborate, and operate at their peak level. As an expert in teamwork, leadership, and emotional intelligence, Mike draws on more than 20 years of experience working with top companies like Google and Microsoft, as well as his baseball career with the Kansas City Royals. And, while each team and organization have their own unique challenges, goals, and dynamics, there are some universal qualities that allow teams to truly come together and thrive. The book’s core principles include facilitating an environment of psychological safety, fostering inclusion and belonging, addressing and navigating conflict, and maintaining a healthy balance of high expectations and empathy. Throughout, Mike shares powerful exercises and tools he’s successfully utilized in the keynote speeches, group sessions, and corporate retreats that he delivers, so that you and your team can communicate more authentically, give and receive feedback with skill, and create deeper connections. “Mike Robbins shares tangible techniques that leaders and teams can use to excel, backs up his ideas with important research, and provides a road map for creating a team environment of personal connection and optimal performance.” — Tom Rath, New York Times best-selling co-author of How Full is Your Bucket?

When the Disney Channel aired its original movie High School Musical in January 2006, they were expecting a solid ratings response. What they got was a cultural phenomenon that not only launched the film into the stratosphere - it also turned its young cast into superstars. With spinoffs multiplying and stage shows poised to rake in yet more cash, Edward Gross takes readers on a comprehensive tour through the creation and making of this landmarkl film. Unmissable.

Brave, bighearted... An absolutely absorbing book of challenging power, a story of almost unbearable tensions. A modern life played out against the chaos of "me" and the divine order of "we." Marie Dadisman The observations made in this work regarding the social impact of our current social strategies are poignant observations that beckon the reader to evaluate whether, or not, they wish to embrace and support our current paradigms for social order.

Imaginative, gripping stories, along with the brilliant title novella set in Maine after the 2000 election, carry the weight of real emotion and revelation and showcase the impressive versatility of a rising talent. Owen King is a writer interested in the choices we make when we're most conflicted. A young husband must decide whether or not to commit a ghoulish crime; a baseball player in a fantastic 1930s Coney Island is assailed by the guilt of an illicit romance; a nineteenth-century itinerant dentist finds himself snowed in with a group of trappers for a long evening of primitive surgery and laughing gas reveries. Whether they're set in the past or the present, tinged with the macabre, the solemn, or the absurd, all of the stories in this collection carry the weight of real emotion and revelation and showcase King's impressive versatility. In his novella, King tells the story of George, the teenage son of a single mother, and the only grandson of a family of union organizers in Maine. George's grandfather Henry, obsessed with the outcome of the 2000 election, has planted a giant billboard of homage to Al Gore in his front yard that he suspects has been defaced by the paperboy, now a sworn enemy. Meanwhile, George's mother is about to marry Dr. Vic, who, besides being possessed of an almost royal obliviousness, may even have voted for George W. Bush. George is a nervous accomplice to his grandfather's increasingly unhinged behavior, and a righteous adversary at war with his mother over her marriage. George's struggle is a funny and moving parallel for our times: How will we fight? All together, or all alone? Funny, insightful, and always entertaining, We're All in This Together launches the career of an extraordinarily talented writer.

n this uproarious collection, Ann Treneman, the caustic and witty parliamentary sketch-writer for The Times, tells the true, unvarnished story of Britain's first coalition government since the Second World War. As well as the headline acts - David Cameron and his Flashman alter ego, Nick Clegg's struggle to stop looking sad, Ed 'Two Kitchens' Miliband's heroic attempts to relaunch himself - she was there to see UKIP shed its fruitcakes, the Speaker be compared to a dwarf, and the Greens go surge-tastic. With an eye for the absurd, an ear always attuned to the jargon junkies of politics, and a nose for what's really going on underneath the talk, Ann Treneman chronicles the events that everyone in Parliament would much rather forget: the AV referendum; the chaos of the tuition-fee vote; the Omnishambles Budget; the train wreck that was Lords reform; the dramatic Syria vote; and, of course, the panic-stricken campaign over the Scottish Neverendum. Floods, horsemeat, badgers and bile, it's all here - a tragicomic coalition tale. 'Gorgeous George' Osborne may have said 'we're all in this together', but now they really are - in this hilarious book.

Winner of Northern Lit Award Finalist for the Leacock Medal for Humour Quill & Quire "Books of the Year 2016" Globe & Mail "Best Canadian Fiction of 2016" A Penguin Book Club Pick A woman goes over a waterfall, a video goes viral, a family goes into meltdown—life is about to get a lot more complicated for the Parker family. Like all families, the Parkers of Thunder Bay have had their share of complications. But when matriarch Kate Parker miraculously survives plummeting over a waterfall in a barrel—a feat captured on a video that goes viral—it's Kate's family who tumbles into chaos under the spotlight. Her prodigal daughter returns to town. Her 16-year-old granddaughter gets caught up in an online relationship with a man she has never met. Her husband sifts through their marriage to search for what sent his wife over the falls. Her adopted son fears losing the only family he's ever known. Then there is Kate, who once made a life-changing choice and now fears her advancing dementia will rob her of memories from when she was most herself. Set over the course of four calamitous days, Amy Jones's big-hearted first novel follows the Parkers' misadventures as catastrophe forces them to do something they never thought possible—act like a family.

This year is a year that will go down in history not only for the election that came up, but also for the worst disease to hit our planet and all the people residing on it in decades. We have all seen the posts and the pod-casts that have shown on commercials and news clips telling us to stay home when possible, and stay safe as often as we can. Who would have ever believed something like a virus that started in Asia back in January of 2020, would cripple us globally and continue to do so to this date and time. I thought a lot about this problem. I miss my family and friends. I know a lot of you have been feeling the same way about being inside for days on end. Feeling concerned about jobs, food, money, disasters from tornadoes, face masks and where to find them. And toilet paper and who has it. I decided to write down my experiences on these topics and see how many of you relate to them, and maybe even laugh about them now. So get ready cause we’re going to talk about it all. The drama, the comedy, and the real reason : We’re All In This Together.

A biting and original history which places culture front and centre to explain how our country went to pieces.