The Wheel

A visually rich, analytical history of the key cycles in a revolutionary technology.

Do you ever find that the earth stills and you suddenly feel acutely alive? Have you ever looked into an animal's eyes and felt the pull of a more primal world? Do you sometimes feel panic rise, or isolation sink upon you, or simply feel out of kilter with the modern world? 'Inside my cauldron is a thick fistful of paper, old diary entries, work "to do" lists, notes I wrote while I was in a bad place and feeling trapped in a life that was keeping my mind small and narrow; thoughts and feelings that are holding me back, keeping me tied to a time I want to let go of. These papers are flashes of lightning across a darkened room and I want them gone. As they curl and burn, twisting in their black spirals like the farewell flourish of a travelling cloak, a sense of calm sweeps through my chest and shoulders. I feel it so strongly, like a blast of ice to my system, shivering out the old thoughts. I'm burning a path for something new to come in.' One winter, Jennifer Lane reached breaking point in her fast-paced office life. In the year that followed her stress-related illness, she set out to rediscover the solace and purpose that witchcraft had given her as a teenager. The Wheel is an immersive, engaging read - exploring the life-long draw of witchcraft and our vulnerability to toxic working environments and digital demands. In her year-long journey Jennifer explores ancient festivals and rituals, and visits fellow pagans and wild landscapes, in search of wisdom and peace. For those who are sick at heart of noise, anger and disconnection, The Wheel is full of wise words, crackling rituals and natural beauty. This is a quest to discover how to live fully connected to the natural world while firmly in the twenty-first century.

The country's leading transport expert describes how the driverless vehicle revolution will transform highways, cities, workplaces and laws not just here, but across the globe. Our time at the wheel is done. Driving will become illegal, as human drivers will be demonstrably more dangerous than cars that pilot themselves. Is this an impossible future, or a revolution just around the corner? Sam Schwartz, America's most celebrated transportation guru, describes in this book the revolution in self-driving cars. The ramifications will be dramatic, and the transition will be far from seamless. It will overturn the job market for the one in seven Americans who work in the trucking industry. It will cause us to grapple with new ethical dilemmas-if a car will hit a person or a building, endangering the lives of its passengers, who will decide what it does? It will further erode our privacy, since the vehicle can relay our location at any moment. And, like every other computer-controlled device, it can be vulnerable to hacking. Right now, every major car maker here and abroad is working on bringing autonomous vehicles to consumers. The fleets are getting ready to roll and nothing will ever be the same, and this book shows us what the future has in store.

A delightful look at the history of the information wheel

Why, for many centuries, was the wheel abandoned in the Middle East in favor of the camel as a means of transport? This richly illustrated study explains this anomaly. Drawing on archaeology, art, technology, anthropology, linguistics, and camel husbandry, Bulliet explores the implications for the region's economic and social development during the Middle Ages and into modern times.

When Chris Zane bought his bicycle shop at age 16, his business struggled until he discovered the secret that catapulted his store into one of the largest in the country. His secret? Provide unbelievable, over the top, excessively generous customer service. Chris Zane isn't a management consultant or professor preaching a theory of customer service; he's a hands-on entrepreneur whose customer service approach has yielded enormous success. Zane has become a business celebrity, including being featured in the most recent round of American Express television ads. Featured in the New York Times and in Associated Press articles and bestowed numerous awards for its unique business practices and outstanding customer relations, Zane's Cycles has produced ideas thought by many to be pie-in-the-sky. But these counterintuitive concepts have proven to be hard-headed and effective. For example, Zane's offers a trade-in program for families who can turn in bicycles their kids have outgrown for a 100 percent credit toward new ones. Initially thought impossibly generous, this program has proven to be good business. Experience and a clear understanding of the lifetime value of a customer makes this program, and many others Zane's implements, work. In Reinventing the Wheel, commonly overlooked elements that make a business exceptional are revealed. Zane produces a case study unlike any other—one that shows the importance of investing in customers and employees and how businesses are really selling experiences, not products. His philosophies and tried-and-true methods of guerilla marketing will show entrepreneurs and business owners how to knock out the competition while thriving in any kind of economy and doing good for the community along the way.

"India's social structure is so entwined with religion, Jacobsohn emphasizes, that meaningful social reform presupposes state intervention in the spiritual domain. Hence India's "ameliorative" model of secular constitutionalism, designed to ameliorate the disabling effects of the caste system and other religiously based practices. Jacobsohn contrasts this with the "visionary" secularism of Israel, where the state identifies itself with a particular religion, and with America's "assimilative" secularism."--BOOK JACKET.

Hubert, a creative fifteen-year-old boy in ancient Sumeria invents the wheel, resulting in many adventures, both humorous and threatening.