Big If

Mark Costello's kaleidoscopic novel weaves together the stories of three people who multiply when their chief, Felker, realizes that he is better at planning attacks than foiling them, and disappears. While the team struggles to protect the V.P. and discover the whereabouts of their most dangerous threat, they must also contend with their unravelling personal lives. With Felker on the loose, the election just days away and family traumas abounding Costello seamlessly interlaces the team's burgeoning troubles. Big If juggles assassination threats with school runs and political victories with growing personal crises. It is a gripping, giddying, utterly original novel that will exhilarate and unnerve its readers in equal measure.

The Big IF By: B. L. Buehler The Big IF pertains to a righteous relationship with God in the light of truth and reality. Having served the Lord for 30 years at his own expense, B. L. Buehler was anointed to write the book for the spiritual edification of others. The emphasis of The Big IF is upon God first and foremost, sincere and devotional faith, truth, discipline, and reverence for the Lord. Buehler’s experiences, failures, and devotion unto the Lord, and the truth of the spiritual relational reality, which is all about the Lord, are all depicted in the pages within.

A scary, funny novel—a riff on recent history and the American obsession with assassination. It's winter in New Hampshire, the economy is booming, the vice president is running for president, and his Secret Service people are very, very tense. Meet Vi Asplund, a young Secret Service agent mourning her dead father. She goes home to New Hampshire to see her brother Jens, a computer genius who just might be going mad—and is poised to make a fortune on Big If, a viciously nihilistic computer game aimed at teenagers. Vi's America, as she sees it in the crowds, in her brother, and in her fellow agents, is affluent, anxious, and abuzz with vague fantasies of violence. Through a gallery of vivid characters—heroic, ignoble, or desperate—Mark Costello's hilarious novel limns the strategies, both sound and absurd, that we conjure to survive in daily life.

Johnny Owen, the Matchstick Man from Wales, and Lupe Pintor, El Indio from Mexico, met for less than 60 minutes on September 19, 1980. It was Owen's chance to become the world bantam-weight champion, but the Matchstick Man was knocked out in the 12th round, spending 46 days in a coma before he died. The parallel lives of Owen and Pintor form the heart of this incredible story. Extensive interviews with the Owen and Pintor families have resulted in a moving, visceral book that resonates well beyond the boxing ring. Bonded by a shared dream, this story charts the lives of two boxers and two families, and reveals how, 20 years later, Owen's grieving father was reunited with the man who killed his son. Despite its running theme of loss, the tale of these two fighters is ultimately an uplifting story of forgiveness, and how the human spirit can overcome the most terrible troubles.

Discusses activities astronauts do while they're in space.

Imagine if you could condense all 3.5 billion years of life on Earth into just one hour. If you did, the dinosaurs wouldn?t show up until 56 minutes into the hour, and they?d be gone three minutes later. Modern humans (the ones we are related to) would amble into view at the very end of the hour, with just 0.2 seconds to spare.

Why small business is not the basis of American prosperity, not the foundation of American democracy, and not the champion of job creation. In this provocative book, Robert Atkinson and Michael Lind argue that small business is not, as is widely claimed, the basis of American prosperity. Small business is not responsible for most of the country's job creation and innovation. American democracy does not depend on the existence of brave bands of self-employed citizens. Small businesses are not systematically discriminated against by government policy makers. Rather, Atkinson and Lind argue, small businesses are not the font of jobs, because most small businesses fail. The only kind of small firm that contributes to technological innovation is the technological start-up, and its success depends on scaling up. The idea that self-employed citizens are the foundation of democracy is a relic of Jeffersonian dreams of an agrarian society. And governments, motivated by a confused mix of populist and free market ideology, in fact go out of their way to promote small business. Every modern president has sung the praises of small business, and every modern president, according to Atkinson and Lind, has been wrong. Pointing to the advantages of scale for job creation, productivity, innovation, and virtually all other economic benefits, Atkinson and Lind argue for a “size neutral” policy approach both in the United States and around the world that would encourage growth rather than enshrine an anachronism. If we overthrow the “small is beautiful” ideology, we will be able to recognize large firms as the engines of progress and prosperity that they are.