A People Magazine Top 10 Best Books of the Year • The New York Times best-selling author of Maine returns with an exhilarating novel about Frances Gerety, the real pioneering ad woman who coined the famous slogan “A Diamond is Forever,” and four unique marriages that will test how true—or not—those words might be. "Sullivan is a born storyteller. Like its mineral muse, Engagements shines."—Entertainment Weekly Evelyn has been married to her husband for forty years, but their son’s messy divorce has put them at rare odds; James, a beleaguered paramedic, has spent most of his marriage haunted by his wife’s family’s expectations; Delphine has thrown caution to the wind and left a peaceful French life for an exciting but rocky romance in America; and Kate, partnered with Dan for a decade, has seen every kind of wedding and has vowed never, ever, to have one of her own. As the stories connect to each other and to Frances’s legacy in surprising ways, The Engagements explores the complicated ins and outs of relationships, then, now, and forever.

This volume, first published in 1999, examines children's development and education within a social and cultural context.

The Engaged University is a comprehensive empirical account of the global civic engagement movement in higher education. In universities around the world, something extraordinary is underway. Mobilizing their human and intellectual resources, institutions of higher education are directly tackling community problems – combating poverty, improving public health, and restoring environmental quality. This book documents and analyzes this exciting trend through studies of civic engagement and social responsibility at twenty institutions worldwide. This timely volume offers three special contributions to the literature on higher education policy and practice: a historical overview of the founding purposes of universities, which almost invariably included a context-specific element of social purpose, together with a survey of how these "founding" intentions have fared in different systems of higher education; a contemporary account of the policy and practice of universities – all over the world – seeking to re-engage with this social purpose; and an overview of generic issues which emerge for the "engaged university."

The United States faces an increasingly turbulent world. The risk of violent conflict and other threats to international order presents a vexing dilemma: should the United States remain the principal guarantor of global peace and security with all its considerable commitments and potential pitfalls––not least new and costly military entanglements––that over time diminish its capacity and commitment to play this vital role or, alternatively, should it pull back from the world in the interests of conserving U.S. power, but at the possible cost of even greater threats emerging in the future? Paul B. Stares proposes an innovative and timely strategy—“preventive engagement”—to resolve America’s predicament. This approach entails pursuing three complementary courses of action: promoting policies known to lessen the risk of violent conflict over the long term; anticipating and averting those crises likely to lead to costly military commitments in the medium term; and managing ongoing conflicts in the short term before they escalate further and exert pressure on the United States to intervene. In each of these efforts, forging “preventive partnerships” with a variety of international actors, including the United Nations, regional organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and the business community, is essential. The need to think and act ahead that lies at the heart of a preventive engagement strategy requires the United States to become less shortsighted and reactive. Drawing on successful strategies in other areas, Preventive Engagement provides a detailed and comprehensive blueprint for the United States to shape the future and reduce the potential dangers ahead.

A definitive guide to growing your small business through "Engagement Marketing" As a small business owner, you've always relied on word-of-mouth referrals to grow your business. Thanks to social media—and its nimble partner, mobile technology—it's now easier than ever to turn customers and clients into engaged fans who spread the word about your business across a variety of online platforms. And that's what Engagement Marketing is all about. Written for anyone who owns or manages a small business or non-profit, this book is filled with practical, hands-on advice based on the author's experience of working with thousands of small businesses for over a decade. You'll learn how to attract new prospects—as well as how to increase repeat sales—using your existing customers and social networks. Learn how to create customer experiences that increase positive customer reviews and endorsements Get practical advice on how to entice people to join your social networks and run engagement campaigns that increase visibility—and endorsements—for your business Understand why engagement is so important—and how you can use it to turn passionate fans in your social networks into tomorrow's new business Author Gail Goodman is CEO of Constant Contact, America's leading email and social media marketing company for small businesses Engagement Marketing will help you make a bigger name for your company, build your network, and reach your goals.

Employee engagement, or more specifically how to obtain more engagement and what to do with the disengaged, preoccupies C-level executives, human resources professionals, and consultants. Factiva, a global database of more than 33,000 national and international publications indexed by Dow Jones, registered a near-continuous double-digit growth in interest in the topic since 1994. COVID-19 appears to be straining work systems, and employee engagement may be suffering. Interestingly, the American preoccupation with employee engagement, as evidenced by the tens of thousands press mentions indexed by Factiva and the over 38,000 website hits for the search term "employee engagement tools", does not appear shared by the rest of the world. International Perspectives on Employee Engagement offers a predominately non-American view of employee engagement. The authors address employee engagement from a variety of perspectives. They represent both empirical research and theoretical discussions. The chapters have a distinctly international viewpoint with authors hailing from Europe, Middle East, Africa, and North America. Given the cultural diversity of the authors, this book offers a unique, non-American perspective on employee engagement. With a new introduction that specifically examines the possible key performance indicators (KPIs) for the annual executive performance appraisal process resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, the chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of International Studies of Management & Organization.

West looks at the process from which coffee is grown, gathered, sorted, shipped, and served from the highlands of Papua New Guinea to coffee shops in far away places. She shows how coffee becomes a commodity, the different forms of labor involved, and the way that coffee shapes the lives and understandings of those who grow, process, export, sell and consume coffee.