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  PySpark Algorithms

  Mahmoud Parsian

  This is an introductory book on PySpark.

  This book is about PySpark: Python API for Spark.
  Apache Spark is an analytics engine for large-scale
  data processing. Spark is the open source cluster
  computing system that makes data analytics fast
  to write and fast to run. This book provides a
  large set of recipes for implementing big data
  processing and analytics using Spark and Python.
  The goal of this book is to show working examples
  in PySpark so that you can do your ETL and
  analytics easier. You may cut and paste examples to
  deliver your applications in PySpark.

  This book introduces PySpark (Python API for Spark).
  You can use PySpark to tackle big datasets quickly
  through simple APIs in Python. You will learn how to
  express parallel tasks and computations with just a
  few lines of code, and cover applications from ETL,
  simple batch jobs to stream processing and machine
  learning.

  With this book, you may dive into Spark capabilities
  such as RDDs (resilient distributed datasets),
  DataFrames (data as a table of rows and columns),
  in memory caching, and the interactive PySpark
  shell, where you may leverage Spark's powerful built
  in libraries, including Spark SQL, Spark Streaming,
  and MLlib.

  In this book, you will learn Spark's transformations
  and actions by a set of well-defined and working
  examples. All examples are tested and working: this
  means that you can copy-cut-paste to your desired
  PySpark applications. Writing PySpark is much easier
  than writing Spark applications in Java and PySpark
  applications are not bulky at all when compared to
  Java Spark.

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  Real-World Couple Counseling and Therapy: An Introductory Guide (First Edition)

  Jerrold Lee Shapiro and Terence Patterson

  Real-World Couple Counseling and Therapy: An Introductory Guide provides practitioners with an inclusive exploration of the unique features, challenges, and opportunities of contemporary couple counseling. Integrating CBT, existential, and systems approaches, and based on best available research, the text offers guidelines for beginning couple therapists along with breadth and depth of coverage. Comprehensive and pragmatic, it examines the essence of the field: assessment, ethics, treatment planning, effective interventions, pitfalls, and best practices.

  Rich with lively examples, vignettes, and dialogues throughout, several unique features are synthesized throughout the text: a perspective from almost a century of experience doing and teaching graduate-level couple therapy, a unique connection between stages of development and appropriate interventions, an integrated exploration of the effects of culture and gender, a unique focus on male clients in couple work, and the “point-counterpoint” perspectives of CBT and existential approaches. Real-World Couple Counseling and Therapy contains essential information for 21st century practitioners and is ideal for graduate courses and practitioners in counseling, therapy, and social work.

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  Sacrificing the Church: Mass, Mission, and Ecumenism

  Eugene R. Schlesinger

  In a context of scandal and decline, the Christian church cannot afford to do business as usual. It must regain its bearings and clarify its nature and purpose. Sacrificing the Church provides this clarity by returning to the church’s foundation: Jesus Christ and him crucified. It presents an ecclesiological vision in which every aspect of the church’s life flows from and expresses the one sacrifice of Christ. This sacrifice is the basis of every ecclesial experience, the form and content of the church’s life, a life which shares in the eternal Trinitarian life of God. By and as Christ’s sacrifice we are introduced into the divine life. This participation plays out in three key areas, which set the church’s agenda in the contemporary world: its worship of God (Mass), mission to the world (mission), and efforts toward the unity of all people, beginning with divided Christians (ecumenism).

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  Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around the Globe Really Think about Religion

  Elaine Howard Ecklund, David R. Johnson, Brandon Vaidyanathan, Kirstin R.W. Matthews, Steven W. Lewis, Robert A. Thomson Jr., and Di Di

  Do scientists see conflict between science and faith? Which cultural factors shape the attitudes of scientists toward religion? Can scientists help show us a way to build collaboration between scientific and religious communities, if such collaborations are even possible?

  To answer these questions and more, the authors of Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around the World Really Think About Religion completed the most comprehensive international study of scientists' attitudes toward religion ever undertaken, surveying more than 20,000 scientists and conducting in-depth interviews with over 600 of them. From this wealth of data, the authors extract the real story of the relationship between science and religion in the lives of scientists around the world. The book makes four key claims: there are more religious scientists than we might think; religion and science overlap in scientific work; scientists - even atheist scientists - see spirituality in science; and finally, the idea that religion and science must conflict is primarily an invention of the West. Throughout, the book couples nationally representative survey data with captivating stories of individual scientists, whose experiences highlight these important themes in the data. Secularity and Science leaves inaccurate assumptions about science and religion behind, offering a new, more nuanced understanding of how science and religion interact and how they can be integrated for the common good.

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  Self-Service Analytics Simplified

  Arshad Khan

  Self-Service Analytics Simplified: How to Plan and Implement will introduce you to self-service analytics (SSA), which aims to make business users less dependent on IT for their reporting and analytics needs. This book, which teaches how to plan and implement an SSA project, will appeal to a broad range of users including senior executives, business and IT managers, project managers, data analysts, business analysts, developers, casual users, as well as IT professionals. The topics covered in Self-Service Analytics Simplified: How to Plan and Implement include an introduction to self-service analytics, relationship with BI, benefits for different types of users, readiness assessment, planning, data-related topics including metadata and data pipelining, architecture, tools, requirements, implementation, data governance, security, training, data and user onboarding, and barriers to adoption, as well as challenges, best practices, lessons, and tips.

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  Sexuality Law, Third Edition

  Arthur S. Leonard and Patricia A. Cain

  Legal issues arising from the sexual diversity of our society are front and center in many legal fields. The Supreme Court, which selectively controls its docket, now considers sexuality-related cases almost every term, and the pace of litigation in lower courts keeps increasing. Responding to the surge of new developments, the authors have reorganized the front end of the book to emphasize the diversity of issues by providing a chronological journey through the Supreme Court’s treatment of sexuality law issues from the middle of the twentieth century to the present. Chapters on sexual orientation and gender identity issues in the lower courts follow. The family law chapters have been reworked to account for the decisions in Windsor and Obergefell and the numerous issues that have arisen since implementation of these cases began. The final chapter concludes with selected topics on subjects yet to receive Supreme Court review.

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  Shifting Grounds: Landscape in Contemporary Native American Art

  Kate Morris

  A distinctly Indigenous form of landscape representation is emerging in the creations of contemporary Indigenous artists from North America. For centuries, landscape painting in European art typically used representational strategies such as single-point perspective to lure viewers―and settlers―into the territories of the old and new worlds. In the twentieth century, abstract expressionism transformed painting to encompass something beyond the visual world, and later, minimalism and the Land Art movement broadened the genre of landscape art to include sculptural forms and site-specific installations.

  In Shifting Grounds, art historian Kate Morris argues that Indigenous artists are expanding, reconceptualizing, and remaking the forms of the genre still further, expressing Indigenous attitudes toward land and belonging even as they draw upon mainstream art practices. The resulting works are rarely if ever primarily visual representations, but instead evoke all five senses: from the overt sensuality of Kay WalkingStick's tactile paintings to the eerie soundscapes of Alan Michelson's videos and Postcommodity's installations to the immersive environments of Kent Monkman's dioramas, this landscape art resonates with a fully embodied and embedded subjectivity.

  In the works of these and many other Native artists, Shifting Grounds explores themes of presence and absence, connection and dislocation, survival and vulnerability, memory and commemoration, and power and resistance, illuminating the artists' sustained engagement not only with land and landscape but also with the history of representation itself.

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  Socrates (Classic Thinkers)

  William J. Prior

  Socrates is one the most important thinkers in western philosophy, yet he remains enigmatic, having left behind no works of his own. Instead, his thought is understood primarily through the work of his followers, particularly Plato. Yet Plato's dialogues can offer conflicting portraits of Socrates. On the one hand, he is portrayed as “barren of wisdom”: he has questions but no answers. On the other, he appears to be “fertile”: he has important things to say about those questions. Can he be both?
  
  Although Plato’s works focus on Socrates' questions, not his answers, a careful reading can reveal many of Socrates’ likely views. In this accessible introduction, William Prior assesses Socrates the man, his famous trial, and the nature of his philosophy. He explores Socrates' intellectualism, conception of the good life, his religious views and his thoughts concerning justice. All the way through, Prior reflects on Socrates’ distinctive method of asking questions, and the enormous influence he has had on philosophy to this day.

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  Spectral Mexico - special issue of iMex. Interdisciplinary Mexico

  Alberto Ribas-Casasayas

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  Tableau Step by Step for Beginners

  Arshad Khan

  Tableau Step-by-Step for Beginners provides an introduction to Tableau, which is the leading data visualization software. The exercises contained in it cover the functions most widely used by business users. After completing these exercises, you will be able to develop simple reports and dashboards and, also, perform basic analysis. The skills developed through these exercises will become the foundation for those who want to become experts in the use of Tableau software for reporting, analysis and data visualization.Tableau Step-by-Step for Beginners contains 35 exercises, which demonstrate, in a step-by-step manner, various functions such as filtering, drilldown, sorting, swapping, aggregating, trending, and formatting. These exercises show how to work with and manage workbooks, export results to Excel or PDF, and also display, download and export data. Also covered are various analysis functions such as Top N and forecasting. Tableau Step-by-Step for Beginners also demonstrates how to develop a dashboard and customize it by incorporating quick filters and layout formatting.

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  Tales from the Crust: An Anthology of Pizza Horror

  David James Keaton and Max Booth III

  The toppings: Terror and torment.

  The crust: Stuffed with dread and despair.

  And the sauce: Well, the sauce is always red.

  Whether you're in the mood for a Chicago-style deep dish of darkness, or prefer a New York wide slice of thin-crusted carnage, or if you just have a hankering for the cheap, cheesy charms of cardboard-crusted, delivered-to-your-door devilry; we have just the slice for you.

  Bring your most monstrous of appetites, because we're serving suspense and horrors both chillingly cosmic and morbidly mundane from acclaimed horror authors such as Brian Evenson, Jessica McHugh, and Cody Goodfellow, as well as up-and-coming literary threats like Craig Wallwork, Sheri White, and Tony McMillen.

  Tales From the Crust, stories you can devour in thirty minutes or less or the next one's free. Whatever that means.

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  Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Postwar Sri Lanka

  Mythri Jegathesan

  Beyond nostalgic tea industry ads romanticizing colonial Ceylon and the impoverished conditions that beleaguer Tamil tea workers are the stories of the women, men, and children who have built their families and lives in line houses on tea plantations since the nineteenth century. The tea industry's economic crisis and Sri Lanka's twenty-six year long civil war have ushered in changes to life and work on the plantations, where family members now migrate from plucking tea to performing domestic work in the capital city of Colombo or farther afield in the Middle East. Using feminist ethnographic methods in research that spans the transitional time between 2008 and 2017, Mythri Jegathesan presents the lived experience of these women and men working in agricultural, migrant, and intimate labor sectors.

  In Tea and Solidarity, Jegathesan seeks to expand anthropological understandings of dispossession, drawing attention to the political significance of gender as a key feature in investment and place making in Sri Lanka specifically, and South Asia more broadly. This vivid and engaging ethnography sheds light on an otherwise marginalized and often invisible minority whose labor and collective heritage of dispossession as "coolies" in colonial Ceylon are central to Sri Lanka's global recognition, economic growth, and history as a postcolonial nation.

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  The Contemporary Hindu Temple: Fragments for a History

  Annapurna Garimella, Shriya Sridharan, and A. Srivathsan

  Contemporary Hindu temples raise aesthetic, economic, political and philosophical questions about the role of architecture in making a place for the sacred in society. This book presents the Hindu temple from the perspectives of institutions and individuals, including priests, building practitioners and worshippers, to consider what it means when the temple is no longer at the centre of Indic life, but has instead become one among several important sites of social praxis. The Contemporary Hindu Temple takes as its subject the multiple forms of architecture, design and sociability that Hindu spaces of worship encompass today. The essays cover shrines located in urban and rururban India, where Hindu temples are being maintained, resuscitated or newly constructed at a rapid pace. The authors of the essays in this volume take the contemporary as a moment in which historic structures, modern renovations, evolving religiosities and new design and construction practices intersect and converge. This centres the temple in a landscape of automobility, wireless connectivity and economic reformation, at the crossroads of informal acts of insertion, formal planning and governmentality, or as an architect-designed structure consciously being pushed toward the fresh horizons that a changing society offers. By focusing on a variety of structures, large and small, on expansive forms of encroachment, and on incremental acts of negotiation and seemingly insignificant processes, small feelings and pieties, this book nuances and expands our understanding of the Hindu temple today.

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  The History of Spain (2nd Edition)

  Peter Pierson

  This updated and expanded edition of The History of Spain offers an in-depth examination of Europe's fifth largest economy, providing important coverage on the last two decades of Spanish history in particular. Following a general introduction to Spain, its government, and the diversity of its people and geography, this volume follows Spain's unique history chronologically from the earliest archeological evidence.

  Starting with Spain's incorporation into the Roman Empire, subsequent chapters cover Spain's medieval experience of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism; its unification; its "Golden Age" of world empire and cultural splendor; Napoleon's invasion of Spain; and its troubled period that lasted for more than a century. The volume examines why, in 1936, Spain exploded into civil war followed by three dozen years of dictatorship. It also gives extended treatment to Spain's successful transition to democracy since 1975. Ideal for a general reader, student, or traveler, The History of Spain provides a concise and lively introduction to Spain, its people, and traditions.

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  The Varieties of Nonreligious Experience: Atheism in American Culture

  Jerome Baggett

  A fascinating exploration of the breadth of social, emotional, and spiritual experiences of atheists in America

  Self-identified atheists make up roughly 5 percent of the American religious landscape, comprising a larger population than Jehovah’s Witnesses, Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus combined. In spite of their relatively significant presence in society, atheists are one of the most stigmatized groups in the United States, frequently portrayed as immoral, unhappy, or even outright angry. Yet we know very little about what their lives are actually like as they live among their largely religious, and sometimes hostile, fellow citizens.

  In this book, Jerome P. Baggett listens to what atheists have to say about their own lives and viewpoints. Drawing on questionnaires and interviews with more than five hundred American atheists scattered across the country, The Varieties of Nonreligious Experience uncovers what they think about morality, what gives meaning to their lives, how they feel about religious people, and what they think and know about religion itself.

  hough the wider public routinely understands atheists in negative terms, as people who do not believe in God, Baggett pushes readers to view them in a different light. Rather than simply rejecting God and religion, atheists actually embrace something much more substantive—lives marked by greater integrity, open-mindedness, and progress.

  Beyond just talking about or to American atheists, the time is overdue to let them speak for themselves. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in joining the conversation.

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  The Virtual Hindu Rashtra: Saffron Nationalism and New Media

  Rohit Chopra

  From websites devoted to battling a Left-liberal media ecosystem to the formidable internet army of Hindu Right volunteers, from online narratives of Hindu valour to Narendra Modi s impeccably-managed social media presence, new media is an integral part of present-day Hindu nationalism. The Virtual Hindu Rashtra examines the relationship of Hindu nationalism and new media as manifested across a range of internet spaces, including Twitter trends in support of the Bharatiya Janata Party s government policies, Facebook pages dedicated to the cultural project of establishing a Hindu state, and WhatsApp groups circulating jokes about Modi s critics. Situating online Hindu nationalism in a historical context, this book analyses the movement with respect to national and global political trends, such as the ascendancy of authoritarian political personalities worldwide and the phenomenon of fake news. Parsing the many expressions of online Hindu nationalism, the book concludes with a reflection on the implications of the relationship of Hindu nationalism and new media for democracy in India.

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  Yao Bai and the Egg Pirates

  Tim J. Myers and Bonnie Pang

  Inspired by the 1863 Egg War and the mad rush for murre eggs on the Farallon Islands near San Francisco, Yao Bai and the Egg Pirates is a high-seas adventure story celebrating the courage and history of Chinese immigrants in America through a fascinating yet little-known event during the California Gold Rush era.

  Yao Bai is finally old enough to sail with his father and uncle to the Farallon Islands, to gather the precious eggs seabirds lay there. But on their way home they encounter trouble on the sea―pirates! Just when Yao’s father and uncle believe their hard day’s work would all be gone, Yao comes up with a clever plan. But will it be enough to save all the eggs?

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  Adonai - essai de Mythocritique sur les Traditions Phoeniciennes

  Clovis Y. Karam

  Tout au long de sa carrière de chercheur en matière de Mythologie Phénicienne, Dr. Karam n'a jamais cessé de donner à tous ses travaux une authentique universalité. Dans ce travail approfondi, sur l'analyse bien fouillée du Mythe d'Adonis et de son retentissement culturel en Orient et en Occident, l'auteur a fait preuve d'une véritable maîtrise tant de la recherche académique de haut niveau que de la technique du décodage de la Mythologie Phénicienne. Dans ce très savant ouvrage consacré au mythe d'Adonaï à travers les siècles, notre auteur a démontré une érudition inégale, et a pu ouvrir une page fondatrice pour une nouvelle exégèse et herméneutique biblique pour le déchiffrement des forces créatives du génie Sémitique.

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  Anthropologie Du Génie Phoenicien

  Karam Clovis

  Si nous n'avions craint d'afficher trop d'ambition, nous aurions donné à notre troisième livre sur la trilogie Phoenicienne pour second sous-titre : Introduction à une philosophie de l'histoire. Car tel est, en définitive le sens du présent essai. En interrogeant les mythes du Phoenix, d'El, du Baal, Adonai, Moloch, conceptions fondamentales du Liban historique, on a été particulièrement frappé par leur antagonisme et leur complémentarité suivis d'une dynamique antihistorique manifeste. Attitude très fèrme ainsi qu'une volonté de refus de l'histoire d'une "race abattue" par les plus grands malheurs que jamais nation ait supportés. Notre sociocritique s'inscrit dans ce cadre d'analyse; tout en dépassant les modèles d'analyse structurales ou autre. Il ne serait jamais possible de faire abstraction d'un tel fait: ici plus qu'ailleurs les hommes subissent les conséquences fâcheuses des combats des Dieux. Entre la terreur de Moloch dévorateur des humains et les forces rédemptrices du Phoenix, le destin du Liban semble être à jamais rejoué.

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  ARM Assembly for Embedded Applications, 4th Edition

  Daniel Lewis

  ARM Assembly for Embedded Applications is a text for a sophomore-level course in computer science, computer engineering, or electrical engineering that teaches students how to write functions in ARM assembly called by a C program. The C/Assembly interface (i.e., function call, parameter passing, return values, register conventions) is presented early so that students can write simple functions in assembly as soon as possible. The text then covers the details of arithmetic, bit manipulation, making decisions, loops, integer arithmetic, real arithmetic floating-point and fixed-point representations, inline coding and I/O programming.

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  Basics of Group Counseling and Psychotherapy: An Introductory Guide

  Jerrold Lee Shapiro, Lawrence Stephen Peltz, and Susan Bernadett-Shapiro

  Basics of Group Counseling and Psychotherapy: An Introductory Guide provides a unique combination of step-by-step basics of group counseling and psychotherapy and considerable depth of understanding of the intricacies of group process. Students learn how to identify what is going on in their groups, what interventions are most likely to be effective, and when to make those interventions. The text provides readers a competent and effective foundation for their study and practice in group work.
  
  The text is divided into three parts: The Core of Group process and Leadership, Pragmatic Considerations, and The Future. Part I offers a thorough introduction to brief, closed groups, guidance through four key phases of group counseling and psychotherapy—preparation, transition, treatment, and termination—and practical advice regarding leadership, therapeutic interventions, the essentials of training, ethical practices, and co-therapy. In Part II, the book dives into more advanced material, specifically addressing how to work with clients with difficult behaviors and offering the reader structured exercises and techniques they can apply in groups. Part III provides a perspective on the current state of group work and its future, touching on diversity, training, research, and more.
  
  Written by counselors and therapists who have conducted group counseling and psychotherapy sessions for decades, Basics of Group Counseling and Psychotherapy is an invaluable resource for individuals who are new to group treatment and for those experienced group therapists looking for a review.

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  Building a Successful Social Venture: A Guide for Social Entrepreneurs

  James Koch and Eric Carlson

  This is the first book on creating and running a social enterprise to combine theoretical discussions with current cases from around the world, filling a huge gap in the literature. It serves as an eminently practical blueprint for those who wish to build, sustain, and grow social ventures.
  
  Building a Successful Social Venture draws on Eric Carlson's and James Koch's pioneering work with the Global Social Benefit Institute, cofounded by Koch at Santa Clara University's Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship. Since 2003, over 200 Silicon Valley executives have mentored more than 800 aspiring social entrepreneurs at the GSBI. It is this unparalleled real-world foundation that truly sets the book apart. Early versions of the book were used in both undergraduate and MBA classes.
  
  Part 1 of the book describes the assumptions that the GSBI model is based on: a bottom-up approach to social change, a focus on base-of-the-pyramid markets, and a specific approach to business planning developed by the GSBI. Part 2 presents the seven elements of the GSBI business planning process, and Part 3 lays out the keys to executing it. The book includes "Social Venture Snapshots" illustrating how different organizations have realized elements of the plan, as well as a wealth of checklists and exercises.
  
  Social ventures hold enormous promise to solve some of the world's most intractable problems. This book offers a tested framework for students, social entrepreneurs, and field researchers who wish to learn more about the application of business principles and theories of change for advancing social progress and creating a more just world.

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  Central and East European Politics: From Communism to Democracy, 4th ed.

  Jane L. Curry and Sharon L. Wolchik

  Now in a fully updated edition, this essential text explores the other half of Europe—the new and future members of the European Union along with the problems and potential they bring to the region and to the world stage. Clear and comprehensive, it offers an authoritative and up-to-date analysis of the transformations and realities in Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltics, and Ukraine. Divided into two parts, the book presents a set of comparative country case studies as well as thematic chapters on key issues, including EU and NATO expansion, the economic transition and its social ramifications, the role of women, persistent problems of ethnicity and nationalism, and political reform.

  
  Leading scholars provide the historical context for the current situation of each country in the region. They explain how communism ended and how democratic politics has emerged or is struggling to emerge in its wake, how individual countries have transformed their economies, how their populations have been affected by rapid and wrenching change, and how foreign policy making has evolved. New to this edition are chapters on social issues and transitional justice. For students and specialists alike, this book will be an invaluable resource on the newly democratizing states of Europe.

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  Commercial Real Estate Investment for Pros (and Dummies Too!)

  Joseph Ori

  Commercial Real Estate Investment for Pros (and Dummies Too!) is a book I have wanted to write for a number of years. The information in this book is derived from my thirty-five years of experience in the commercial real estate industry and the completion of more than $4 billion in commercial real estate transactions, including; acquisitions, finanings, sales, equity raises, advisory assigments, property and asset management.
  The information contained in this book is for both seasoned real estate pros and those who are just starting out in the commercial real estate industry. This easy-to-read manual should be on the desk of every experienced real estate professional as well as first-year real estate analysts in his or her first job with a commercial real estate brokerage, development, service or investment firm.
  The areas that are covered include commercial real estate investment, finance, development, capital markets, valuation strategies, institutional investment, leasing, financial analysis and discussion of legal aspects. The primary industry property types are analyzed including apartments, office buildings, shopping centers, industrial warehouses, lodging properties, and senior-housing properties. Modern portfolio theory, real estate risk, diversification, capitalization rates and calculation of real estate returns are also discussed and analyzed.

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  Corporate Friction: How Corporate Law Impedes American Progress and What to Do about It

  David Yosifon

  Corporate law in the United States requires directors to manage firms in the interests of shareholders, which means never sacrificing profits in service of other stakeholders or interests. In this timely, groundbreaking book, David Yosifon argues that this rule of 'shareholder primacy' is logically, ethically, and practically unsound, and should be replaced by a new standard that compels directors of our largest corporations to manage firms in a socially responsible way. In addition to summarizing existing debates on the issue - and giving special attention to the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United - Yosifon explores the problem of corporate patriotism and develops a novel approach to the relationship between corporate law and consumer culture. The book's technical acumen will appeal to experts, while its engaging prose will satisfy anyone interested in what our corporate law does, and what it should do better.

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  Dirty Boulevard: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Lou Reed

  David James Keaton

  Inspired by the outcasts, outlaws, and other outré inhabitants of rock legend Lou Reed’s songbook, Dirty Boulevard traffics in crime fiction that’s sometimes velvety and sometimes vicious, but always, absolutely, rock & roll. Inside, you’ll find stories from the fire escapes to the underground, stories filled with metal machine music, stories for gender-bending, rule-breaking, mind-blasting midnight revelries and drunken, dangerous, dark nights of the heart.
  
  Upcoming genre stars like Alison Gaylin team up with crime fiction legends such as Reed Farrel Coleman, along with Cate Holahan, Gabino Iglesias, Tony McMillen, and many of the most exciting new names in crime and horror fiction, who teach us that a perfect day is often anything but, that the power of positive drinking is a destructive force rarely contained, and that knock-down-drag-out drag queens are probably way tougher than you.
  
  Dedicated to the memory and works of Jonathan Ashley.
  
  Proceeds will benefit National Suicide Prevention Lifeline—1-800-273-8255.
  
  Edited by David James Keaton.
  
  Contributors: Jonathan Ashley, Rusty Barnes, Reed Farrel Coleman, Alison Gaylin, Lee Matthew Goldberg, Cate Holahan, Gabino Iglesias, David James Keaton, Erin Keaton, Ross E. Lockhart, Tony McMillen, Richard Neer, Chris Orlet, J. David Osborne, Rob Pierce, Eryk Pruitt and Patrick Wensink.

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  Down in the White of the Tree: Spiritual Poems

  Tim J. Myers

  The marriage of poetry and spirituality is of course an ancient one, and in Down in the White of the Tree, Tim J. Myers works in that tradition. But his isn’t conventional religious poetry, some of which, he believes, is either inadequate for genuine spiritual seeking or antithetical to it. Myers works from the larger tradition, in which Rilke speaks of God as the profoundly distant Center on whose outermost periphery we reside—and from which Hafiz can assert that the universe is “just a tambourine” for us to play against our “warm thigh[s].” These are poems of doubt, of faith, and of a profound love for the radiance we can encounter in the world.

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  Enhanced Beings: Human Germline Modification and the Law

  Kerry Lynn Macintosh

  Today, scientists are using CRISPR/Cas9 and other molecular editing tools to alter human gametes and embryos, a practice known as human germline modification. In the near future, these efforts may lead to the birth of children with better health, improved memories, and extended lifespans. However, critics claim that human germline modification exceeds divine and natural boundaries, transforms reproduction into manufacture, and yields apocalyptic outcomes such as the collapse of democracy. Enhanced Beings: Human Germline Modification and the Law analyzes and critiques these objections on both biological and political grounds. Professor Kerry Lynn Macintosh discusses the hidden psychology behind the objections, and describes the laws that affect this new technology. Provocative and timely, Enhanced Beings argues that bans on human germline modification pose a threat to scientists and science, parents, children, foreigners, and society.