“I’ve got the name for our publishing operation. We just said we were going to publish a few books on the side at random. Let’s call it Random House.” So recounts Bennett Cerf in this wonderfully amusing memoir of the making of a great publishing house. An incomparable raconteur, possessed of an irrepressible wit and an abiding love of books and authors, Cerf brilliantly evokes the heady days of Random House’s first decades. Part of the vanguard of young New York publishers who revolutionized the book business in the 1920s and ’30s, Cerf helped usher in publishing’s golden age. Cerf was a true personality, whose other pursuits (columnist, anthologist, author, lecturer, radio host, collector of jokes and anecdotes, perennial judge of the Miss America pageant, and panelist on What’s My Line?) helped shape his reputation as a man of boundless energy and enthusiasm and brought unprecedented attention to his company and to his authors. At once a rare behind-the-scenes account of book publishing and a fascinating portrait of four decades’ worth of legendary authors, from James Joyce and William Faulkner to Ralph Ellison and Eudora Welty, At Random is a feast for bibliophiles and anyone who’s ever wondered what goes on inside a publishing house.

Culture.

This short book is about the little things in life that bring out the most in us. The majority of the poems and stories in this book are dedicated to a few special people in my life. Over the years I would write a few poems or stories and the more I wrote the more papers ended up scattered all over the room. I did not know where to put all of my writings. A folder wasnt really doing the trick. So I decide to share my thoughts with other people and place a lot of my work into a small book.

You can be greater than you know how to be. In a world where you are pushed to know more, this book will prove that your greatest asset is often not knowing. In a world where you are told it’s all in the planning, this book will encourage you to keep your cart ahead of your horse and allow your dreams to lead you. In a world where you are told you need to become someone, this book will show you that you already are someone. The author—the foremost accidental expert on this subject—is Talia Leman. A high school student. Runner in the rain. Science enthusiast. World changer. Random kid. Writing with infectious enthusiasm, humor, and resoluteness, she shares her secrets to being more than you know how to be, including Don’t Line Up Your Ducks, Sideways Is a Better Way to Go Forward, and Too Many Cooks Is the Right Number. In this unexpectedly poignant, strikingly honest, and informative guide, Talia Leman shows you how to make room for life’s surprises, demonstrating that everyone has what it takes to make a difference for anything that matters to them. A Random Book about the Power of ANYone will move you to rethink and reimagine what’s possible, one random inspiration, one random idea, one random person at a time.

Who invented the dish Phad Thai and why? What is the prime minister's monthy salary? What are the most common nicknames in Thailand? What is the average IQ of a Thai? How many Thai women smoke tobacco? What will you be fined for the unlawful possession of an elephant? An illustrated collection of Thailand trivia, Thailand at Random is filled with anecdotes, statistics, quotes, idioms, cultural explanations, historical asides, facts, folklore and other unusual and useful tidbits. This veritable treasure trove of information on Thailand is arranged, as the title suggests, randomly, so that readers will come to expect the unexpected on each and every page. Designed in a charmingly classic style, and peppered with original illustrations, Thailand at Random is a quirky and irresistible celebration of everything you didn't know you wanted to know about this diverse and captivating country. ,

The present monograph is a comprehensive summary of the research on visibility in random fields, which I have conducted with the late Professor Micha Yadin for over ten years. This research, which resulted in several published papers and technical reports (see bibliography), was motivated by some military problems, which were brought to our attention by Mr. Pete Shugart of the US Army TRADOC Systems Analysis Activity, presently called US Army TRADOC Analysis Command. The Director ofTRASANA at the time, the late Dr. Wilbur Payne, identified the problems and encouraged the support and funding of this research by the US Army. Research contracts were first administered through the Office of Naval Research, and subsequently by the Army Research Office. We are most grateful to all involved for this support and encouragement. In 1986 I administered a three-day workshop on problem solving in the area of sto chastic visibility. This workshop was held at the White Sands Missile Range facility. A set of notes with some software were written for this workshop. This workshop led to the incorporation of some of the methods discussed in the present book into the Army simulation package CASTFOREM. Several people encouraged me to extend those notes and write the present monograph on the level of those notes, so that the material will be more widely available for applications.