Bad Company

Each had what the others wanted, and before Roy Radin's decomposed body was found in a dry creek, Laney Jacobs, Robert Evans, and Radin, seemed destined for a successful partnership.

Jack Higgins's previous novels Edge of Danger and Midnight Runner put British intelligence agent Sean Dillon through "a lot of thrills [and] wild action" (Los Angeles Times). Now a new enemy has emerged with a dark secret from World War II--and a score to settle with agent Dillon.

Over the course of 2003 the post of Chief Executive Officer or CEO - effectively, the person at the top of the company - has become a notorious poisoned chalice for many incumbents, from Glaxo's Jean Paul Garnier to Marconi's Lord Morrison and Vodafone's Chris Gent. New government legislation offering shareholders the chance to vote on top people's remuneration packages has exposed some extraordinarily generous, even downright incredible, terms of employment, and triggered storms of protest. badly; bonuses triggered even when the company makes a loss; salaries that shoot up as fast as the share price plummets; vast share options, millions paid into pension plans, free dental care for your wife for life. All this plus a basic income into the high six figures for starters: being a CEO, it would seem, is nice work if you can get it. CEO. Why do we need him (almost always him)? What does he actually do? How did he come to be paid more even when the rest of the workforce is having to swallow a pay-cut and the closure of the final-salary pension scheme? Why, whatever the company's fortunes, does he always just get more? Would a company actually miss the CEO if it didn't have him at all?

Republishes profiles of Joaquin Murieta, Tom Bell, Rattlesnake Dick, Black Bart, Dick Fellows, and Tiburcio Vasquez

In this 40 page celebration, take a look into the never-before-seen history of one of the most beloved Firefly characters in the ’Verse—SAFFRON! Journey through the early days of Saffron’s life, from before her fateful meeting/marriage to Mal. This is an origin story no Firefly fan is sure to forget!

In Bad Company Gideon Haigh scrutinises the way we have turned CEOs into tin gods. Is moral outrage the appropriate response to the collapses of Enron or HIH or are we all implicated in a crazy system? Haigh argues that the attempt to create great entrepreneurs of the new caste of CEOs by giving them shares is doomed to failure and inherently absurd. In a tough-minded, vigorous demolition job on the culture that produced the cult of the CEO, Haigh writes a mini-history of business and shows how the classic traditions of capitalism are mocked by the managerialism of the present. ‘The making of the modern CEO has been a story of more: more power, more discretion, more ownership, more money, more demands, more expectations and, above all, more illusions. More, as so often, has brought less ...’ —Gideon Haigh, Bad Company ‘The world where the CEO is deemed to be a 'genius' at least equal to a great actor or a great sportsman is a world in which ... Gideon Haigh refuses to believe.’ —Peter Craven ‘Of all the extraordinary corporate stories of the 1990s, none has been more powerful than what Gideon Haigh wants to call the cult of the CEO.’ —Sydney Morning Herald ‘Haigh should be showered with blessings for producing a book which not only says boo to these geese, but has the figures and the historical perspective to back itself up. There’s even some good business advise in there.’ —Nicholas Lezard, the Guardian ‘A cogent and elegant argument.’ —Business Review Weekly Gideon Haigh has worked as a journalist for the Bulletin, the Guardian, the Australian, the Times and the Monthly. As an author he has written books on business, including Quarterly Essay 10: Bad Company – The Cult of the CEO, The Battle for BHP and One of a Kind: The Story of Bankers Trust Australia 1969–1999, and on cricket: Silent Revolutions, Game for Anything, The Green and Golden Age.

Bad Company and Burnt Powder is a collection of twelve stories of when things turned "Western" in the nineteenth-century Southwest. Each chapter deals with a different character or episode in the Wild West involving various lawmen, Texas Rangers, outlaws, feudists, vigilantes, lawyers, and judges. Covered herein are the stories of Cal Aten, John Hittson, the Millican boys, Gid Taylor and Jim and Tom Murphy, Alf Rushing, Bob Meldrum and Noah Wilkerson, P. C. Baird, Gus Chenowth, Jim Dunaway, John Kinney, Elbert Hanks and Boyd White, and Eddie Aten. Within these pages the reader will meet a nineteen-year-old Texas Ranger figuratively dying to shoot his gun. He does get to shoot at people, but soon realizes what he thought was a bargain exacted a steep price. Another tale is of an old-school cowman who shut down illicit traffic in stolen livestock that had existed for years on the Llano Estacado. He was tough, salty, and had no quarter for cow-thieves or sympathy for any mealy-mouthed politicians. He cleaned house, maybe not too nicely, but unarguably successful he was. Then there is the tale of an accomplished and unbeaten fugitive, well known and identified for murder of a Texas peace officer. But the Texas Rangers couldn't find him. County sheriffs wouldn't hold him. Slipping away from bounty hunters, he hit Owlhoot Trail.