On Company Time

American novelists and poets who came of age in the early twentieth century were taught to avoid journalism "like wet sox and gin before breakfast." It dulled creativity, rewarded sensationalist content, and stole time from "serious" writing. Yet Willa Cather, W. E. B. Du Bois, Jessie Fauset, James Agee, T. S. Eliot, and Ernest Hemingway all worked in the editorial offices of groundbreaking popular magazines and helped to invent the house styles that defined McClure's, The Crisis, Time, Life, Esquire, and others. On Company Time tells the story of American modernism from inside the offices and on the pages of the most successful and stylish magazines of the twentieth century. Working across the borders of media history, the sociology of literature, print culture, and literary studies, Donal Harris draws out the profound institutional, economic, and aesthetic affiliations between modernism and American magazine culture. Starting in the 1890s, a growing number of writers found steady paychecks and regular publishing opportunities as editors and reporters at big magazines. Often privileging innovative style over late-breaking content, these magazines prized novelists and poets for their innovation and attention to literary craft. In recounting this history, On Company Time challenges the narrative of decline that often accompanies modernism's incorporation into midcentury middlebrow culture. Its integrated account of literary and journalistic form shows American modernism evolving within as opposed to against mass print culture. Harris's work also provides an understanding of modernism that extends beyond narratives centered on little magazines and other "institutions of modernism" that served narrow audiences. And for the writers, the "double life" of working for these magazines shaped modernism's literary form and created new models of authorship.

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together

A traitor is unmasked and the gloves come off in the fasten-your-seatbelts season finale of The Witch Who Came in from the Cold, Serial Box's alternate Cold War series that expertly mashes up magic and espionage. When a long-buried mole comes to light, sending Operation ANCHISES off the rails, rival agents Gabe and Tanya are forced to take drastic action. Now KGB and CIA alike will find themselves little more than pawns in an older and deadlier game between the ancient adversaries of Ice and Flame. This episode, brought to you by series co-creators Max Gladstone and Lindsay Smith, brings our witch in from the cold. Praise for The Witch Who Came in from the Cold: "Those who like to mix magic, spycraft, and secret history should enjoy this—it may please fans of Stross’s Laundry series." —Locus Magazine "Full of fast-paced, high-intensity action paired with magic at a level that has not been seen until now, with a cliff-hanger that lets readers know that the game is not over and has only just begun." —The San Francisco Book Review "The Witch Who Came in from the Cold is a chilly evocation of a different kind of Cold War." —Charles Stross, author of the Laundry Files series “Take a double shot of Le Carré, a dash of Deighton, a twist of Quiller, a splash of Al Stewart’s The Year of the Cat, throw in a jigger full of elemental magic, mix well ... and voilà! The Witch Who Came In From The Cold.” —Victor Milán, author of The Dinosaur Lords "The occult love child of John le Carre and The Sandbaggers." —Marie Brennan, author of A Natural History of Dragons "As soon as I saw that, I was instantly hooked, and the pilot jacked the intrigue to the max. Two female Soviet spy witches, an American spy with something weird drilling magical holes in his head, and a world of secrets within secrets in a locale where old-world myth and the Cold War face off, pedal to the metal . . . it’s awesome. Or as we said in 1970, Far out. " —Sherwood Smith, author of Crown Duel "The installments are easy to read one at a time, but the tangles of alliances, secrets, and shocking double-crosses will have readers up all night mumbling, “Just one more.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Do you have an employee whose performance keeps deteriorating—despite your close monitoring? Brace yourself: You may be at fault—by unknowingly triggering the set-up-to-fail syndrome. Perhaps things started off swimmingly. But then something--a missed deadline, a lost client—made you question the person's performance. You began micromanaging him. Suspecting your reduced confidence, he started doubting himself—and stopped giving his best. You viewed his new behavior as additional proof of mediocrity, and tightened the screws further. In The Set-Up-to-Fail Syndrome, Jean-Francois Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux show how this insidious cycle hurts everyone: employees stop volunteering ideas, preventing your organization from getting the most from them; you lose energy to attend to other activities; and your reputation suffers as other employees deem you unfair. Team spirit wilts as targeted performers are alienated. But the set-up-to-fail syndrome doesn't have to happen. The authors provide preventive measures, such as loosening the reins as new employees master their jobs. If the syndrome has already erupted, Manzoni and Barsoux explain how to discuss the dynamic with your employee and reverse the cycle.

Managing Your Scarcest Resources Business leaders know that the key to competitive success is smart management of scarce resources. That's why companies allocate their financial capital so carefully. But capital today is cheap and abundant, no longer a source of advantage. The truly scarce resources now are the time, the talent, and the energy of the people in your organization--resources that are too often squandered. There's plenty of advice about how to manage them, but most of it focuses on individual actions. What's really needed are organizational solutions that can unleash a company's full productive power and enable it to outpace competitors. Building off of the popular Harvard Business Review article "Your Scarcest Resource," Michael Mankins and Eric Garton, Bain & Company experts in organizational design and effectiveness, present new research into how you can liberate people's time, talent, and energy and unleash your organization's productive power. They identify the specific causes of organizational drag--the collection of institutional factors that slow things down, decrease output, and drain people's energy--and then offer a pragmatic framework for how managers can overcome it. With practical advice for using the framework and in-depth examples of how the best companies manage their people's time, talent, and energy with as much discipline as they do their financial capital, this book shows managers how to create a virtuous circle of high performance.