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Megaphone Bureaucracy: Speaking Truth to Power in the Age of the New Normal
by Dennis C. GrubeA revealing look at how today’s bureaucrats are finding their public voice in the era of 24-hour mediaOnce relegated to the anonymous back rooms of democratic debate, our bureaucratic leaders are increasingly having to govern under the scrutiny of a 24-hour news cycle, hyperpartisan political oversight, and a restless populace that is increasingly distrustful of the people who govern them. Megaphone Bureaucracy reveals how today’s civil servants are finding a voice of their own as they join elected politicians on the public stage and jockey for advantage in the persuasion game of modern governance.In this timely and incisive book, Dennis Grube draws on in-depth interviews and compelling case studies from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand to describe how senior bureaucrats are finding themselves drawn into political debates they could once avoid. Faced with a political climate where polarization and media spin are at an all-time high, these modern mandarins negotiate blame games and manage contradictory expectations in the glare of an unforgiving spotlight. Grube argues that in this fiercely divided public square a new style of bureaucratic leadership is emerging, one that marries the robust independence of Washington agency heads with the prudent political neutrality of Westminster civil servants. These “Washminster” leaders do not avoid the public gaze, nor do they overtly court political controversy. Rather, they use their increasingly public pulpits to exert their own brand of persuasive power.Megaphone Bureaucracy shows how today’s senior bureaucrats are making their voices heard by embracing a new style of communication that brings with it great danger but also great opportunity.
Memes to Movements: How the World's Most Viral Media Is Changing Social Protest and Power
by An Xiao MinaA global exploration of internet memes as agents of pop culture, politics, protest, and propaganda on- and offline, and how they will save or destroy us all.Memes are the street art of the social web. Using social media-driven movements as her guide, technologist and digital media scholar An Xiao Mina unpacks the mechanics of memes and how they operate to reinforce, amplify, and shape today's politics. She finds that the "silly" stuff of meme culture--the photo remixes, the selfies, the YouTube songs, and the pun-tastic hashtags--are fundamentally intertwined with how we find and affirm one another, direct attention to human rights and social justice issues, build narratives, and make culture. Mina finds parallels, for example, between a photo of Black Lives Matter protestors in Ferguson, Missouri, raising their hands in a gesture of resistance and one from eight thousand miles away, in Hong Kong, of Umbrella Movement activists raising yellow umbrellas as they fight for voting rights. She shows how a viral video of then presidential nominee Donald Trump laid the groundwork for pink pussyhats, a meme come to life as the widely recognized symbol for the international Women's March.Crucially, Mina reveals how, in parts of the world where public dissent is downright dangerous, memes can belie contentious political opinions that would incur drastic consequences if expressed outright. Activists in China evade censorship by critiquing their government with grass mud horse pictures online. Meanwhile, governments and hate groups are also beginning to utilize memes to spread propaganda, xenophobia, and misinformation. Botnets and state-sponsored agents spread them to confuse and distract internet communities. On the long, winding road from innocuous cat photos, internet memes have become a central practice for political contention and civic engagement.Memes to Movements unveils the transformative power of memes, for better and for worse. At a time when our movements are growing more complex and open-ended--when governments are learning to wield the internet as effectively as protestors--Mina brings a fresh and sharply innovative take to the media discourse.
Men in Women’s Worlds: Constructions Of Masculinity in Women's Magazines
by Laura Coffey-GloverThis book presents an analysis of masculinity construction in a large corpus of women’s magazines, adopting a feminist Critical Stylistic approach to reveal how men are talked about and ‘sold’ to women as part of a successful performance of hegemonic femininity. This novel approach identifies women’s magazines as sites of ‘lad culture’ that perpetuate ideologies more commonly associated with the ‘laddism’ of male-targeted media. It examines how stereotypical images of men as naturally aggressive and obsessed with sex are promoted, as well as considering some of the ways in which women’s magazines contribute to the social construction of normative understandings of gender and sexuality more broadly. This engaging work will offer fresh insights to students and scholars of (Critical) Discourse Analysis, Sociolinguistics, Corpus Linguistics, Stylistics, and Gender and Communication Studies.
The Mentor: A Career-Readiness Business Parable
by J.N. WhiddonA student discovers the 12 Keys for Professional Success in this modern business parable by the acclaimed author and entrepreneur.The semester has begun, and Professor Johnathan Daniels welcomes his next batch of students into his classroom. He teaches the capstone Business Communications course at State U, one of the most valuable classes a student can take. As senior Aaron Woods takes his seat, he has no idea the wealth of knowledge, skills, and communication tools he’s about to receive that will help him conquer life after graduation.Dr. Daniels’ curriculum consists of his “12 Keys to Professional Success,” which offer help and guidance through any career-related obstacle one might encounter. As Aaron and his class make their way through the 12 Keys, they’ll gain wisdom and learn how to master essential principles—such as establishing rapport with others, time management, interview skills, dressing professionally, and more.Grab a seat: class is about to begin.
Messengers: Who We Listen To, Who We Don't, and Why
by Stephen Martin Joseph Marks"In the age of fake news, understanding who we trust and why is essential in explaining everything from leadership to power to our daily relationships." -Sinan AralWe live in a world where proven facts and verifiable data are freely and widely available. Why, then, are self-confident ignoramuses so often believed over thoughtful experts? And why do seemingly irrelevant details such as a person's appearance or financial status influence whether or not we trust what they are saying, regardless of their wisdom or foolishness?Stephen Martin and Joseph Marks compellingly explain how in our uncertain and ambiguous world, the messenger is increasingly the message. We frequently fail, they argue, to separate the idea being communicated from the person conveying it, explaining why the status or connectedness of the messenger has become more important than the message itself.Messengers influence business, politics, local communities, and our broader society. And Martin and Marks reveal the forces behind the most infuriating phenomena of our modern era, such as belief in fake news and how presidents can hawk misinformation and flagrant lies yet remain
Methodisches Content Marketing: Erfolgreich durch systematisches Vorgehen, integriertes Arbeiten und klare ROI-Orientierung
by Gerrit GrunertDieses Buch vermittelt, wie Sie Content-Marketing-Strategien Schritt für Schritt in Ihrem Unternehmen implementierenIn seinem Buch „Content Marketing mit System“ vermittelt Autor Gerrit Grunert Unternehmern und Marketern die wichtigsten Strategien und Methoden des Content Marketings. Er widmet sich hierfür allen Dimensionen der Marketing-Disziplin – von der Planung über die Konzeption bis zur Content Distribution. Die übersichtliche Darstellung und konkrete Praxisbeispiele tragen dazu bei, dass der Inhalt leicht verständlich ist.Wichtige Tools und Messgrößen für Ihren UnternehmenserfolgGerrit Grunert gelingt es mit seinem Buch aber nicht nur, die wichtigsten Methoden und Strategien im Content Marketing praxisorientiert zu vermitteln, indem er die verschiedenen Einzeldisziplinen und deren Ziele vorstellt. Mit seinem Werk gibt er Ihnen zusätzlich eine Toolbox voller nützlicher Werkzeuge an die Hand, die Ihnen dabei helfen, Content Marketing in Ihrem Unternehmen effizient umzusetzen. (131)
Microelectronics, Electromagnetics and Telecommunications: Proceedings Of The Fourth Icmeet 2018 (Lecture Notes In Electrical Engineering #521)
by Ganapati Panda Suresh Chandra Satapathy Birendra Biswal Ramesh BansalThe book discusses the latest developments and outlines future trends in the fields of microelectronics, electromagnetics and telecommunication. It contains original research works presented at the International Conference on Microelectronics, Electromagnetics and Telecommunication (ICMEET 2018), organised by GVP College of Engineering (A), Andhra Pradesh, India. The respective papers were written by scientists, research scholars and practitioners from leading universities, engineering colleges and R&D institutes from all over the world, and share the latest breakthroughs in and promising solutions to the most important issues facing today’s society.
Microwave Active Devices and Circuits for Communication (Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering #533)
by Subhash Chandra BeraThe book discusses active devices and circuits for microwave communications. It begins with the basics of device physics and then explores the design of microwave communication systems including analysis and the implementation of different circuits. In addition to classic topics in microwave active devices, such as p-i-n diodes, Schottky diodes, step recovery diodes, BJT, HBT, MESFET, HFET, and various microwave circuits like switch, phase shifter, attenuator, detector, amplifier, multiplier and mixer, the book also covers modern areas such as Class-F power amplifiers, direct frequency modulators, linearizers, and equalizers. Most of the examples are based on practical devices available in commercial markets and the circuits presented are operational. The book uses analytical methods to derive values of circuit components without the need for any circuit design tools, in order to explain the theory of the circuits. All the given analytical expressions are also cross verified using commercially available microwave circuit design tools, and each chapter includes relevant diagrams and solved problems. It is intended for scholars in the field of electronics and communication engineering.
Midnight’s Grandchildren: How Young Indians are Disrupting the World's Largest Democracy
by Mark HannantWhile the west has experienced multiple post-war economic, social and political revolutions, India by contrast has had two distinct moments of transformation in the past century: Independence in 1947 and the economic liberalisation that began in 1991. Midnight’s Grandchildren are the offspring of India’s second social and economic revolution. India’s millennial generation, coming of age post-1991, have grown up in a world of opportunity and relative abundance. Many institutions – family, marriage, workplace, and brands – are being disrupted. Great tension exists as a new generation breaks barriers and seeks to find its place. This book captures an important, transformative moment in India’s development. It includes interviews with young Indians who articulate both their optimism and the struggle to find relevant new identities. Managers and recruiters speak about the changes in the workplace and the challenges and opportunities of harnessing India’s so-called demographic dividend. Entrepreneurs, brand owners and marketers discuss the role of brands in cementing identities in a world changing rapidly where loyalty has little meaning. Midnight’s Grandchildren explains for a business audience the significance of the arrival in the workforce of a generation of millennials as both disruptors of the old order and engine of India’s future economic potential. It is of use for professionals and educators wanting to engage this vitally important group of young people.
Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought
by Barbara TverskyAn eminent psychologist offers a major new theory of human cognition: movement, not language, is the foundation of thoughtWhen we try to think about how we think, we can't help but think of words. Indeed, some have called language the stuff of thought. But pictures are remembered far better than words, and describing faces, scenes, and events defies words. Anytime you take a shortcut or play chess or basketball or rearrange your furniture in your mind, you've done something remarkable: abstract thinking without words. In Mind in Motion, psychologist Barbara Tversky shows that spatial cognition isn't just a peripheral aspect of thought, but its very foundation, enabling us to draw meaning from our bodies and their actions in the world. Our actions in real space get turned into mental actions on thought, often spouting spontaneously from our bodies as gestures. Spatial thinking underlies creating and using maps, assembling furniture, devising football strategies, designing airports, understanding the flow of people, traffic, water, and ideas. Spatial thinking even underlies the structure and meaning of language: why we say we push ideas forward or tear them apart, why we're feeling up or have grown far apart. Like Thinking, Fast and Slow before it, Mind in Motion gives us a new way to think about how--and where--thinking takes place.
Mindf*ck: Inside Cambridge Analytica's Plot to Break the World
by AnonymousWhat if you could peer into the minds of an entire population? What if you could target the weakest with rumours that only they saw?In 2016, an obscure British military contractor turned the world upside down. Funded by a billionaire on a crusade to start his own far-right insurgency, Cambridge Analytica combined psychological research with private Facebook data to make an invisible weapon with the power to change what voters perceived as real.The firm was created to launch the then unknown Steve Bannon's ideological assault on America. But as it honed its dark arts in elections from Trinidad to Nigeria, 24-year-old research director Christopher Wylie began to see what he and his colleagues were unleashing.He had heard the disturbing visions of the investors. He saw what CEO Alexander Nix did behind closed doors. When Britain shocked the world by voting to leave the EU, Wylie realised it was time to expose his old associates. The political crime of the century had just taken place - the weapon had been tested - and nobody knew.
The Mindful Guide to Conflict Resolution: How to Thoughtfully Handle Difficult Situations, Conversations, and Personalities
by Rosalie PuimanSuccessfully handle difficult conversations, remain civil, and end an argument peacefully with this straightforward and mindful guide to conflict resolution. It&’s important to share your thoughts and opinions with others—and even more important to be able to do so without starting an argument or offending someone. Now you can prevent and resolve conflicts with help from this guide covering everything from understanding your own emotions better and learning how to address people in different situations, to getting through a difficult conversation, coming to a positive conclusion, and disengaging yourself when necessary. The Mindful Guide to Conflict Resolution provides the essential tools to mindfully communicate during any challenging situation. With this practical and informative guide in hand, you have the power to transform any difficult exchange or disagreement into a positive, constructive conversation.
Mining Social Media: Finding Stories in Internet Data
by Lam Thuy VoBuzzFeed News Senior Reporter Lam Thuy Vo explains how to mine, process, and analyze data from the social web in meaningful ways with the Python programming language.Did fake Twitter accounts help sway a presidential election? What can Facebook and Reddit archives tell us about human behavior? In Mining Social Media, senior BuzzFeed reporter Lam Thuy Vo shows you how to use Python and key data analysis tools to find the stories buried in social media.Whether you're a professional journalist, an academic researcher, or a citizen investigator, you'll learn how to use technical tools to collect and analyze data from social media sources to build compelling, data-driven stories.Learn how to: • Write Python scripts and use APIs to gather data from the social web • Download data archives and dig through them for insights • Inspect HTML downloaded from websites for useful content • Format, aggregate, sort, and filter your collected data using Google Sheets • Create data visualizations to illustrate your discoveries • Perform advanced data analysis using Python, Jupyter Notebooks, and the pandas library • Apply what you've learned to research topics on your ownSocial media is filled with thousands of hidden stories just waiting to be told. Learn to use the data-sleuthing tools that professionals use to write your own data-driven stories.
The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread
by Cailin O'Connor James Owen Weatherall“Empowering and thoroughly researched, this book offers useful contemporary analysis and possible solutions to one of the greatest threats to democracy.” —Kirkus ReviewsEditors’ choice, The New York Times Book ReviewRecommended reading, Scientific AmericanWhy should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite bad, even fatal, consequences for the people who hold them?Philosophers of science Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false beliefs. It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs matter: false beliefs will hurt you. But if that’s right, then why is it (apparently) irrelevant to many people whether they believe true things or not?The Misinformation Age, written for a political era riven by “fake news,” “alternative facts,” and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, shows convincingly that what you believe depends on who you know. If social forces explain the persistence of false belief, we must understand how those forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively.“[The authors] deftly apply sociological models to examine how misinformation spreads among people and how scientific results get misrepresented in the public sphere.” —Andrea Gawrylewski, Scientific American“A notable new volume . . . The Misinformation Age explains systematically how facts are determined and changed—whether it is concerning the effects of vaccination on children or the Russian attack on the integrity of the electoral process.” —Roger I. Abrams, New York Journal of Books
Mission-Oriented Sensor Networks and Systems: Volume 2: Advances (Studies in Systems, Decision and Control #164)
by Habib M. AmmariThis book presents a broad range of deep-learning applications related to vision, natural language processing, gene expression, arbitrary object recognition, driverless cars, semantic image segmentation, deep visual residual abstraction, brain–computer interfaces, big data processing, hierarchical deep learning networks as game-playing artefacts using regret matching, and building GPU-accelerated deep learning frameworks. Deep learning, an advanced level of machine learning technique that combines class of learning algorithms with the use of many layers of nonlinear units, has gained considerable attention in recent times. Unlike other books on the market, this volume addresses the challenges of deep learning implementation, computation time, and the complexity of reasoning and modeling different type of data. As such, it is a valuable and comprehensive resource for engineers, researchers, graduate students and Ph.D. scholars.
Mission-Oriented Sensor Networks and Systems: Volume 1: Foundations (Studies in Systems, Decision and Control #163)
by Habib M. AmmariThis book discusses topics in mission-oriented sensor networks and systems research and practice, enabling readers to understand the major technical and application challenges of these networks, with respect to their architectures, protocols, algorithms, and application design. It also presents novel theoretical and practical ideas, which have led to the development of solid foundations for the design, analysis, and implementation of energy-efficient, reliable, and secure mission-oriented sensor network applications. Covering various topics, including sensor node architecture, sensor deployment, mobile coverage, mission assignment, detection, localization, tracking, data dissemination, data fusion, topology control, geometric routing, location privacy, secure communication, and cryptograph, it is a valuable resource for computer scientists, researchers, and practitioners in academia and industry.
Mobile and Wireless Technology 2018: International Conference on Mobile and Wireless Technology (ICMWT 2018) (Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering #513)
by Hyuncheol Kim Kuinam J. KimThis book presents peer-reviewed contributions from the 5th International Conference on Mobile and Wireless Technology (ICMWT 2018), held June 25-27, 2018 in Hong Kong. This conference provided researchers and practitioners from both academia and industry with a platform to keep them abreast of cutting-edge developments in the field. The book includes papers on mobile and wireless networks and their applications, the increasingly important security issues relating to mobile and wireless systems, data management, as well as the latest developments in mobile software development, and multimedia and wireless communications.
Mobile Crowd Sensing: Incentive Mechanism Design (SpringerBriefs in Electrical and Computer Engineering)
by Fen Hou Yingying Pei Jingyi SunThis SpringerBrief investigates and reviews the development and various applications of mobile crowd sensing (MCS). With the miniaturization of sensors and the popularity of smart mobile devices, MCS becomes a promising solution to efficiently collect different types of information, such as traffic conditions, air quality, temperature and more, which is covered in this brief. The features, novelty, and applications of MCS are elaborated in detail in this brief. In addition, the basic knowledge about auction theory and incentive mechanism design is introduced.Incentive mechanism design plays a key role in the success of MCS. With an efficient incentive mechanism, it is possible to attract enough mobile users to participate in a MCS system, thus enough high quality sensing data can be collected. Two types of incentive mechanisms with different system models are introduced in this brief. One is the reputation-aware incentive mechanism, and another is the social-aware incentive mechanism.This SpringerBrief covers the significance and the impacts of both reputation and social relationship of smartphone users (SUs) in MCS and presents extensive simulation results to demonstrate the good performance of the proposed incentive mechanisms compared with some existing counterparts.The target audience for this SpringerBrief is researchers and engineers in the area of wireless communication and networking, especially those who are interested in the mobile crowd sensing or incentive mechanism design. Meanwhile, it is also intended as a reference guide for advanced level students in the area of wireless communications and computer networks.
Mobile Data Mining and Applications (Information Fusion and Data Science)
by Hao Jiang Qimei Chen Yuanyuan Zeng Deshi LiThis book focuses on mobile data and its applications in the wireless networks of the future. Several topics form the basis of discussion, from a mobile data mining platform for collecting mobile data, to mobile data processing, and mobile feature discovery. Usage of mobile data mining is addressed in the context of three applications: wireless communication optimization, applications of mobile data mining on the cellular networks of the future, and how mobile data shapes future cities. In the discussion of wireless communication optimization, both licensed and unlicensed spectra are exploited. Advanced topics include mobile offloading, resource sharing, user association, network selection and network coexistence. Mathematical tools, such as traditional convexappl/non-convex, stochastic processing and game theory are used to find objective solutions. Discussion of the applications of mobile data mining to cellular networks of the future includes topics such as green communication networks, 5G networks, and studies of the problems of cell zooming, power control, sleep/wake, and energy saving. The discussion of mobile data mining in the context of smart cities of the future covers applications in urban planning and environmental monitoring: the technologies of deep learning, neural networks, complex networks, and network embedded data mining. Mobile Data Mining and Applications will be of interest to wireless operators, companies, governments as well as interested end users.
Mobile Solutions and Their Usefulness in Everyday Life (EAI/Springer Innovations in Communication and Computing)
by Sara PaivaThis book provides an insight into recent technological trends and innovations in solutions and platforms to improve mobility of visually impaired people. The authors’ goal is to help to contribute to the social and societal inclusion of the visually impaired. The book’s topics include, but are not limited to, obstacle detection systems, indoor and outdoor navigation, transportation sustainability systems, and hardware/devices to aid visually impaired people. The book has a strong focus on practical applications tested in a real environment. Applications include city halls, municipalities, and companies that must keep up to date with recent trends in platforms, methodologies and technologies to promote urban mobility. Also discuss are broader realms including education, health, electronics, tourism, and transportation. Contributors include a variety of researchers and practitioners around the world.
Modeling Communication Networks and Protocols: Implementation via the SMURPH System (Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems #61)
by Paweł GburzyńskiThis book provides an introduction to the software system SMURPH, comprising a programming language, its compiler, and an execution environment, for specifying communication networks and protocols and executing those specifications in virtual worlds mimicking the behavior of real-life implementations. It particularly focuses on SMURPH’s wireless modeling capabilities. Written in a manual-like fashion, it includes a comprehensive description of SMURPH functionality, as well as illustrations and case studies to aid understanding.
Modern Digital Radio Communication Signals and Systems
by Sung-Moon Michael YangThis book serves as an easily accessible reference for wireless digital communication systems. Topics are presented with simple but non-trivial examples and then elaborated with their variations and sophistications. It includes numerous examples and exercises to illustrate key points. The book emphasizes both practical problem solving and a thorough understanding of fundamentals, aiming to realize the complementary relationship between practice and theory. Though the author emphasize wireless radio channels, the fundamentals that are covered are useful to different channels - digital subscriber line, coax, power lines, optical fibers, and even Gigabit serial interconnection. This book is the outgrowth of the author’s hands-on experience in the telecommunication systems industry as a research and development engineer. It is written primarily for practitioners of wireless digital communication systems – engineers and technical leaders and managers – and for digital communication systems in general including new comers like graduate students and upper-division undergraduate students. The material in chapters 5(OFDM), 6(Channel coding), 7(Synchronization) and 8(Transceivers) contains something new, not explicitly available in typical textbooks, and useful in practice. For example, in Chapter 5, all known orthogonal frequency division multiplex signals are formulated based on pulse shape and thus flexible, e.g., unlike currently predominant symbol block transmission, it can be serial transmission. In Chapter 6, we emphasize practical applications of powerful error coding such as LDPC to higher order modulations, fading, and non-linearity problem. In Chapter 7, new digital timing detectors are suggested for small access bandwidth shaping pulse, and a digital quadrature imbalance correction is also included along with digital carrier phase recovery. In Chapter 8, low IF digital image cancelling transceiver is treated in detail so that practical implementation can be readily done with advantages.
Modern Selfhood in Translation: A Study Of Progressive Translation Practices In China (1890s-1920s) (New Frontiers In Translation Studies)
by Limin ChiThis book examines the development of Chinese translation practice in relation to the rise of ideas of modern selfhood in China from the 1890s to the 1920s. The key translations produced by late Qing and early Republican Chinese intellectuals over the three decades in question reflect a preoccupation with new personality ideals informed by foreign models and the healthy development of modern individuality, in the face of crises compounded by feelings of cultural inadequacy. The book clarifies how these translated works supplied the meanings for new terms and concepts that signify modern human experience, and sheds light on the ways in which they taught readers to internalize the idea of the modern as personal experience. Through their selection of source texts and their adoption of different translation strategies, the translators chosen as case studies championed a progressive view of the world: one that was open-minded and humanistic. The late Qing construction of modern Chinese identity, instigated under the imperative of national salvation in the aftermath of the First Sino-Japanese War, wielded a far-reaching influence on the New Culture discourse. This book argues that the New Culture translations, being largely explorations of modern self-consciousness, helped to produce an egalitarian cosmopolitan view of modern being. This was a view favoured by the majority of mainland intellectuals in the post-Maoist 1980s and which has since become an important topic in mainland scholarship.
Modern Sensing Technologies (Smart Sensors, Measurement and Instrumentation #29)
by Octavian Adrian Postolache Krishanthi P. Jayasundera Subhas Chandra MukhopadhyayThis book provides an overview of modern sensing technologies and reflects the remarkable advances that have been made in the field of intelligent and smart sensors, environmental monitoring, health monitoring, and many other sensing and monitoring contexts in today’s world. It addresses a broad range of aspects, from human health monitoring to the monitoring of environmental conditions, from wireless sensor networks and the Internet of Things to structural health monitoring. Given its breadth of scope, the book will benefit researchers, practitioners, technologists and graduate students involved in the monitoring of systems within the human body, functions and activities, healthcare technologies and services, the environment, etc.
The Moth Presents: True Stories About Defying the Impossible (The Moth Presents #2)
by Catherine Burns Meg WolitzerNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From storytelling phenomenon and hit podcast The Moth—and featuring contributions from Meg Wolitzer, Adam Gopnik, Krista Tippett, Andrew Solomon, Rosanne Cash, Ophira Eisenberg, Wang Ping, and more—a new collection of unforgettable true stories about finding the strength to face the impossible, drawn from the very best ever told on its stagesCarefully selected by the creative minds at storytelling phenomenon The Moth, and adapted to the page to preserve the raw energy of stories told live, onstage and without notes, Occasional Magic features voices familiar and new. Inside, storytellers from around the world share times when, in the face of seemingly impossible situations, they found moments of beauty, wonder, and clarity that shed light on their lives and helped them find a path forward. From a fifteen-year-old saving a life in Chicago to a mother of triplets trekking to the North Pole to a ninety-year-old Russian man recalling his standoff with the KGB, these storytellers attest to the variety and richness of the human experience, and the shared threads that connect us all. With honesty and humor, they stare down their fear, embrace uncertainty, and encourage us all to be more authentic, vulnerable, and alive.