The Open Book

A senior editor of Inc. magazine explains the concept of "open-book management"--the powerful management tool that is revolutionizing American business--describing how and why it works and illustrating how all companies can utilize it to realize higher profits. magazine.

New York City in the 1960s is the humming backdrop for this poignant, gritty story about a girl who sees her parents as flawed human beings for the first time, and finds the courage to make a fresh start. Missy’s mother has gone back to school to pursue her dream of becoming an artist. Missy’s father works in advertising and takes Missy on secret midnight excursions to Harlem and the Village so she can share his love of jazz. The two write poems for each other — poems that gradually become an exchange of apologies as Missy’s father’s alcohol and drug addiction begins to take over their lives. When Missy’s mother finally decides that she and her daughter must make a fresh start, Missy has to leave her old apartment, her school, her best friend and her cats and become a latchkey kid while her mother gets a job. But she won’t give up on trying to save her family, even though this will involve a hard journey from innocence to action, and finally acceptance. Based on the events and people of her own childhood, Amanda Lewis’s gorgeous novel is driven by Missy’s irresistible, optimistic voice, buoyed by the undercurrents of poetry and music. Key Text Features poems dialogue literary references epigraph vignettes

Open Book: The Inside Track to Law School Success, 2E is a book that every JD and LLM law student needs to read, either before classes start or as they get going in their 1L year. Now in an expanded second edition, the book explains in a clear and easygoing, conversational manner what law professors expect from their students both in classes and exams. The authors, award-winning teachers with a wealth of classroom experience, give students an inside look at law school by explaining how, despite appearances to the contrary, classes connect to exams and exams connect to the practice of law. Open Book introduces them to the basic structure of our legal system and to the distinctive features of legal reasoning. To prepare students for exams, the book explains in clear and careful detail what exams are designed to test. It then devotes a single, clearly written chapter to each step of the process of answering exams. It also contains a wealth of material, both in the book and digitally, on preparing for exams. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Open Book comes with a free suite of 18 actual law school exams in Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Criminal Law, Property and Torts, written and administered by law professors. These exams include not only questions, but: (1) annotations from the professors explaining what they were looking for; (2) model answers written by the professors themselves; and (3) actual student answers, with professor comments that explain why certain answers were stronger of weaker. As Open Book explains, there is no better way to prepare for exams than by practicing, and these unique materials will enable students to get the most out of their pre-exam practice.

Over the last decade companies have struggled to balance the human dimension of business with the need to be aggressive, competitive, and profitable. Of all the management solutions considered, one philosophy, open-book management, has proven its power to transform organizations and enhance morale and productivity again and again.But what was it about a seemingly risky philosophy, in which all of a company's financial numbers are revealed to every employee, that compelled companies as dissimilar as multibillion-dollar RR Donnelley and modest-sized Crisp publications, to undertake such a drastic rethinking of company management? Was it the increased profits other companies, such as Amoco Canada, were experiencing due to their employees' new financial involvement in the company? Or was it he improved production that Bagel Works, Inc., and Dixie Ironworks, Inc., realized through employee joint accountability? Perhaps it was the enhanced employee morale that still other companies were achieving now that their employees were partners who designed their own bonus packages. Likely, it was all these reasons and dozens more that convinced hundreds of companies to adopt open-book management to help reduce costs, improve quality, and boost sales, all while creating an environment that reinvented and revitalized the role of the employee.In this practical and highly accessible book, John Case, the leading authority and foremost chronicler of open-book management, shows how to put the open-book philosophy to work. The Open-Book Experience explains how to identify critical numbers, how to bring the corporate financials down to earth, and how to set up a system that gets everyone in the business working to improve performance. It describes how companies both large and small have actually implemented open-book management—how they got started, how they overcame obstacles, and how they taught employees to understand the business. Using a step-by-step methodology gleaned from the experiences of more than 100 successful companies, and revealing tools and techniques such as electronic scoreboards and collaborative “games,” Case shows how open-book management can work for any company wanting to bridge the age-old gap between concern for people and the need for rigorous performance measurement and improvement.

The Open Book is a radical genre blend: it is an experimental co-memoir exploring the role of writing in academia. It contains stories about life without censoring and without distinguishing between traditional work/life domains and academic/non-academic ways of writing. This is done through discussions of conferences, research collaborations, supervision, taboo pleasures of 'fun' writing projects, the temptations of other work, and the everyday life encounters and experiences that stimulate academic thought and writing. Some of the main characters you will meet are researchers, their colleagues and students, sons and daughters, mothers and grandmothers, husbands (past and present), supervisors, pets, old and new friends, and creatures from myths and dreams. Some of the settings include kitchens, fireplaces, couches, gardens, universities, cars, and trains. These characters and places are all there to help examine what the above elements of an ordinary human life might mean in research and for research. Thus, it becomes possible for you as a reader to recognize the stories as both truly human and genuinely academic. This is the first book in a series of publications and projects from the Open Writing Community: a collaboration of academics from different disciplines and countries that seeks to push the boundaries of how we understand and practice academic work and writing.

Grace Porter is reeling from grief after her partner of seven years unexpectedly leaves. Amidst her heartache, the 30 year-old library tech is tasked with reading newly discovered letters that Amelia Earhart wrote to her lover, Gene Vidal. She becomes captivated by the famous pilot who disappeared in 1937. Letter by letter, she understands more about the aviation hero while piecing her own life back together. When Grace discovers she is pregnant, her life becomes more intertwined with the mysterious pilot and Grace begins to write her own letters to Amelia. While navigating her third trimester, amidst new conspiracy theories about Amelia's disappearance, the search for her remains, and the impending publication of her private letters, Grace goes on a pilgrimage of her own. Letters to Amelia is a stunning, contemporary epistolary novel from the creator of the internationally acclaimed Love Lettering Project. It underscores the power of reading and writing letters for both connection and self-discovery, and celebrates the unwritten, undocumented parts of our lives. Above all, Letters to Amelia is a story of the essential need for connection--and our universal ability to find hope in the face of fear. Praise for Letters to Amelia: "Brimming over with Lindsay Zier-Vogel's obvious love for the story of Amelia Earhart, Letters to Amelia is a wonderful novel about flight and passion, about love-letters and reaching out; a novel about how we never know quite what's coming next, but still keep launching ourselves into the blue tomorrow."--Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13 "A tender portrait of heartbreak and a thoughtful ode to new motherhood. Letters to Amelia is an endorsement of finding our own ways to heal, and a celebration of that big, messy, wonderful journey of coming into one's own. Charming and beautifully rendered, this is a big-hearted hopeful novel, full of life and love." --Stacey May Fowles, author of Baseball Life Advice: Loving the Game that Saved Me "When we think of Amelia Earhart, we think enigmatic adventurer and feminist pioneer--and, of course, of her mysterious disappearance. But in Letters to Amelia, we meet a different Amelia Earhart, as seen through the eyes of Grace, the novel's protagonist, a young library tech tasked with reading her letters: an Amelia who is funny, charming, joyful, sad, and most of all, full of life. Zier-Vogel writes with uncanny empathy about heartbreak, friendship, motherhood, and the common threads that connect women across time, geography, and even between earth and sky. Letters to Amelia is a gorgeous, big-hearted debut that will make you feel like you are flying, and Zier-Vogel is a writer whose career is about to soar." --Amy Jones, author of Every Little Piece of Me "Letters to Amelia invites us to hold our heroines close and to take heart - it is gentle and joyous, full of tenderness, alive and sturdy with hope." --Anne Michaels, author of Fugitive Pieces and The Winter Vault

A concise, highly accessible guide to exam success. Provides an insider s view of what professors look for in exam answers, and how exam-taking connects to good lawyering. Accompanied by a Web site with content that is both free (e.g., sample outlines, class notes, case briefs) and for-sale (e.g., sample exams and memos written by professors giving feedback on the answers). Features: High-profile, experienced authors from elite schools with hands-on experience teaching the majority of the courses in the traditional 1L curriculum Distinctive central pedagogy: the pinball method of exam-taking Accompanied by Web site with content that is both free (e.g., sample outlines, class notes, case briefs) and for-sale (e.g., sample exams and memos written by professors giving feedback on the answers). Explains to students not just the how but the why of law school exams what makes law school exams different from exams students have encountered in other settings Detailed examples provide concrete demonstrations of exam-taking techniques Highly readable: prose is straightforward and humorous; key points accented with memorably amusing illustrations Not just an exam prep book; students are offered guidance on getting the most out of classes, and law school more generally