"I hate to lose. And what I really hate about it is that it takes exactly the same effort to lose as it does to win. So, if you're going to make that effort, why not make the effort to win?" --Tom Whidden, three-time America's Cup winner, president of North Marine Group America's Cup winner Peter Isler shows how the skills and strategies used in professional sailing apply equally well to competition, teamwork, and success in the world of business. Some of the most prominent and successful CEOs and executives in America are sailors--and with good reason. In both business and sailing, only the best-led, best-trained, most highly motivated teams win. In At the Helm, two-time America's Cup winner Peter Isler translates the secrets of success in the fast-paced world of grand-prix sailboat racing into a series of specific lessons that managers and businesspeople can apply to their day-to-day jobs. In the world of business and sailing, building a successful "team" takes years of planning, training, practice, and cooperation, with an absolute commitment to winning. Liberally sprinkled with entertaining, insightful, and cautionary stories from the worlds of sailing and business, At the Helm shows why it is essential to be able to change course quickly; how to "stack the deck" in your favor; how to plan for the unexpected. In addition, Peter includes a section on assessing your strengths and weaknesses, and offers suggestions on how to become a better "sailor." The first book to apply the strategies required for putting together a world-class sailing crew to the world of business, At the Helm is the perfect mix of business and pleasure. Liberally sprinkled withentertaining, insightful, and cautionary stories from the world of sailing and business, AT THE HELM shows why it is essential to be able to change course quickly, how to "stack the deck" in your favor, and how to plan for the unexpected. In addition, Isler includes a section on assessing strengths and weaknesses, and offers suggestions on how to become a better "sailor." The first book to apply the strategies required in putting together a world-class sailing crew to the world of business, AT THE HELM is the perfect mix of business and pleasure. -->

What if you had a magical superpower, and it hated your guts? Matt Blurdy's day has gone from crap to worse. Not only did his girlfriend break his heart at workand in front of all of the video-store patronsbut he just got fired. All that's left to do is minibike his sorry, thirty-year-old (and freshly unemployed!) butt back home to his mom's basement and drown his sorrows in a bucket of extra-crispy chicken while contemplating where his life went wrong. On the way home, Matt decides to quiet his aching heart with a brief detour to a garage sale. When an ancient-looking helmet calls him "the Chosen One," exhorting him to don the mantle of the "Valhalladrim," Matt touches it with trembling fingersand is jolted by raw magical power. Holy crap! Is he going to be a superhero? Is this why he always felt special even when everyone else thought he was a loser? Then the Helm gets a sense of whom it's dealing with. Suddenly, it changes its tune: "I was mistaken. You are not the Chosen One. Good day." But for once in his life, Matt's not taking no for an answer. Not today. A high-spirited new spin on the "destiny" genre, teaming artist Bart Sears (_Captain America_, _Batman_) with comics newcomer Jim Hardison!

Has Matt Blurdy's luck run out? His emergence as the new Valhalladrim has enraged the dark force responsible for keeping the Helm dormant for nearly a hundred years. This tremendous evil has sent a powerful necromancera familiar face!to bend the previous Valhalladrim's ghost to his will and reveal Matt's location. As if that's not enough to worry about, Matt's on-again girlfriend, Jill, discovers his connection to recently reported murders and thinks he's gone crazy. This Chosen One stuff is a lot more complicated than it's cracked up to be, and fate is closing in_

Professional baseball is full of arcane team names. The Los Angeles Dodgers, for instance, owe their nickname to the trolley tracks that honeycombed Brooklyn in the early 1880s. (Residents were "trolley dodgers.") From the Negro Leagues, there were the Pittsburgh Crawfords (sponsored early by the Crawford Bath House and Recreation Center); from the minors, the Tucson Waddies (slang for cowboy) and, later, the Montgomery Biscuits (for the would-be concessions staple); from overseas, the Adelaide, Australia, Bite (a shark reference but also a pun for bight) and the Bussum, Netherlands, Mr. Cocker HCAW (the sponsoring restaurant chain, followed by the acronym for the official team name, Honkbalclub Allan Weerbaar). This comprehensive reference book explains the nicknames of thousands of major and minor league franchises, Negro League and early independent black clubs, and international teams--from 1869 through 2011.