The Best Of 2006

A triumphant tale of a young woman and her difficult childhood, The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience, redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and wonderfully vibrant. Jeannette Walls was the second of four children raised by anti-institutional parents in a household of extremes.

A bestselling, masterful novel about the intersections in the lives of three friends, now on the cusp of their thirties, making their way—and not—in New York City. There is beautiful, sophisticated Marina Thwaite—an “It” girl finishing her first book; the daughter of Murray Thwaite, celebrated intellectual and journalist—and her two closest friends from Brown, Danielle, a quietly appealing television producer, and Julius, a cash-strapped freelance critic. The delicious complications that arise among them become dangerous when Murray’s nephew, Frederick “Bootie” Tubb, an idealistic college dropout determined to make his mark, comes to town. As the skies darken, it is Bootie’s unexpected decisions—and their stunning, heartbreaking outcome—that will change each of their lives forever. A richly drawn, brilliantly observed novel of fate and fortune—of innocence and experience, seduction and self-invention; of ambition, including literary ambition; of glamour, disaster, and promise—The Emperor’s Children is a tour de force that brings to life a city, a generation, and the way we live in this moment. A New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year

In the magazine world, no recognition is more highly coveted than an "Ellie," presentedby the American Society of Magazine Editors. Selected from thousands of submissions, the pieces in this anthology represent the very best of those -- outstanding works by some of the most eminent writers in America: Laura Hillenbrand (Seabiscuit) on living and creating with chronic fatigue syndrome Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) on love and surfing Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down) on modern torture and the "landscape of persuasion" Seymour M. Hersh (Chain of Command) on the "selective intelligence" used by the White House to justify the war in Iraq Calvin Trillin (The Tummy Trilogy) on his favorite force of nature, the newsman R. W. Apple, Jr. Tucker Carlson (CNN's Crossfire), the "whitest man in America," on a peace mission with Rev. Al Sharpton And many more!

Best Hikes Near Seattle is more than a guidebook to trails 60 minutes or 60 miles from Seattle. The book also includes short natural history essays on topics as diverse as the sex life of banana slugs, to how plants get their names, and why you should respect but not fear bears and mountain lions. There is also an extensive section of weather, trail etiquette, hiking with dogs, what constitutes the “Ten Essentials,” why judging trail mileage is an art – not a science, the flora and fauna of the Pacific Northwest, and the value of hikers lobbying for wilderness. The author also presents a history, warts and all, of the drive to operate our hiking trails as profit points for land-use agencies. And of course, as with all of the books in the Best Hikes series, useful trail specs and hike summaries are accompanied by easy-to-read maps and stunning photos.

Optimization methodologies are fundamental instruments to tackle the complexity of today's engineering processes. Engineering Optimization 2014 is dedicated to optimization methods in engineering, and contains the papers presented at the 4th International Conference on Engineering Optimization (ENGOPT2014, Lisbon, Portugal, 8-11 September 2014). The book will be of interest to engineers, applied mathematicians, and computer scientists working on research, development and practical applications of optimization methods in engineering.

Explores the theme of "resources" in entrepreneurship, and examines entrepreneurs that persevere in uncertain times to build new businesses. The different perspectives gathered in this volume present new ways of thinking about how entrepreneurs acquire, borrow, and make use of resources in seemingly impossible environments.

Presents a collection of stories selected from magazines in the United States and Canada.

This textbook approaches second language acquisition from the perspective of generative linguistics. Roumyana Slabakova reviews and discusses paradigms and findings from the last thirty years of research in the field, focussing in particular on how the second or additional language is represented in the mind and how it is used in communication. The adoption and analysis of a specific model of acquisition, the Bottleneck Hypothesis, provides a unifying perspective. The book assumes some non-technical knowledge of linguistics, but important concepts are clearly introduced and defined throughout, making it a valuable resource not only for undergraduate and graduate students of linguistics, but also for researchers in cognitive science and language teachers.