8.5 x 11 Hardcover with Dust Jacket256 pages including 32 color pagesAt 5:12 on the morning of April 18, 1906, a mild foreshock shook San Francisco. Twenty-five seconds later, the Great Earthquake, lasting almost a minute, devastated the City. In San Francisco, this historic event is more often referred to as the Great Fire.Within the first hours, 52 fires spread across the City. The quake destroyed the central fire alarm and telephone systems; thus, no alarms sounded to the 584 members of the Fire Department. The department was without any means of communication; every company was on its own.The engine companies responded to visible fires but discovered the quake had broken most of the water mains. As firefighters searched desperately for working hydrants, small-unchecked building fires merged into large, uncontrolled fires. Before long, the conflagration engulfed 4.7 square miles of the City.Despite these setbacks and challenges, the San Francisco Fire Department fought on, day and night until, late in the evening on April 20th, they extinguished the fire and saved the City.Everything Took Time transports you to those three eventful days in April 1906 to experience the heroic battle of the San Francisco firefighters. Author Bill Koenig gives the events immediacy citing contemporary newspaper articles and takes you behind the scenes with previously unpublished officers' reports. Leave your 21st-century viewpoints behind and read how the department managed a disaster of this magnitude without the tools we have today.

A radical new history of a dangerous idea Post-Modernity is the creative destruction that has shattered our present times into fragments. It dynamited modernism which had dominated the western world for most of the 20th century. Post-modernism stood for everything modernism rejected: fun, exuberance, irresponsibility. But beneath its glitzy surface, post-modernism had a dirty secret: it was the fig leaf for a rapacious new kind of capitalism. It was also the forcing ground of the 'post truth', by means of which western values got turned upside down. But where do these ideas come from and how have they impacted on the world? In his brilliant history of a dangerous idea, Stuart Jeffries tells a narrative that starts in the early 1970s and continue to today. He tells this history through a riotous gallery that includes David Bowie, the Ipod, Frederic Jameson, the demolition of Pruit-Igoe, Madonna, Post-Fordism, Jeff Koon's 'Rabbit', Deleuze and Guattari, the Nixon Shock, The Bowery series, Judith Butler, Las Vegas, Margaret Thatcher, Grand Master Flash, I Love Dick, the RAND Corporation, the Sex Pistols, Princess Diana, the Musee D'Orsay, Grand Theft Auto, Perry Anderson, Netflix, 9/11 We are today scarcely capable of conceiving politics as a communal activity because we have become habituated to being consumers rather than citizens. Politicians treat us as consumers to whom they must deliver. Can we do anything else than suffer from buyer's remorse?

Forget the 10,000 hour rule— what if it’s possible to learn the basics of any new skill in 20 hours or less? Take a moment to consider how many things you want to learn to do. What’s on your list? What’s holding you back from getting started? Are you worried about the time and effort it takes to acquire new skills—time you don’t have and effort you can’t spare? Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill. In this nonstop world when will you ever find that much time and energy? To make matters worse, the early hours of prac­ticing something new are always the most frustrating. That’s why it’s difficult to learn how to speak a new language, play an instrument, hit a golf ball, or shoot great photos. It’s so much easier to watch TV or surf the web . . . In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition— how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct com­plex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By complet­ing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you’ll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. Kaufman personally field-tested the meth­ods in this book. You’ll have a front row seat as he develops a personal yoga practice, writes his own web-based computer programs, teaches himself to touch type on a nonstandard key­board, explores the oldest and most complex board game in history, picks up the ukulele, and learns how to windsurf. Here are a few of the sim­ple techniques he teaches: Define your target performance level: Fig­ure out what your desired level of skill looks like, what you’re trying to achieve, and what you’ll be able to do when you’re done. The more specific, the better. Deconstruct the skill: Most of the things we think of as skills are actually bundles of smaller subskills. If you break down the subcompo­nents, it’s easier to figure out which ones are most important and practice those first. Eliminate barriers to practice: Removing common distractions and unnecessary effort makes it much easier to sit down and focus on deliberate practice. Create fast feedback loops: Getting accu­rate, real-time information about how well you’re performing during practice makes it much easier to improve. Whether you want to paint a portrait, launch a start-up, fly an airplane, or juggle flaming chain­saws, The First 20 Hours will help you pick up the basics of any skill in record time . . . and have more fun along the way.

A “big-hearted” (The Daily Beast), “LOL-worthy” (Cosmopolitan) debut about a down-on-his-luck gay man working out how he fits into the world, making up for lost time, and opening himself up to life’s possibilities “Part of a new wave of authors releasing uplifting queer literature that casts its characters as the heroes of their lives . . . crammed with blossoming romances and glittery escapism.”—The Guardian Danny Scudd is absolutely fine. He always dreamed of escaping the small-town life of his parents’ fish-and-chip shop, moving to London, and becoming a journalist. And, after five years in the city, his career isn’t exactly awful, and his relationship with pretentious Tobbs isn’t exactly unfulfilling. Certainly his limited-edition Dolly Parton vinyls and many (maybe too many) house plants are hitting the spot. But his world is flipped upside down when a visit to the local clinic reveals that Tobbs might not have been exactly faithful. In fact, Tobbs claims they were never operating under the “heteronormative paradigm” of monogamy to begin with. Oh, and Danny’s flatmates are unceremoniously evicting him because they want to start a family. It’s all going quite well. Newly single and with nowhere to live, Danny is forced to move in with his best friend, Jacob, a flamboyant nonbinary artist whom he’s known since childhood, and their eccentric group of friends living in an East London “commune.” What follows is a colorful voyage of discovery through modern queer life, dating, work, and lots of therapy—all places Danny has always been too afraid to fully explore. Upon realizing just how little he knows about himself and his sexuality, he careens from one questionable decision (and man) to another, relying on his inscrutable new therapist and housemates to help him face the demons he’s spent his entire life trying to repress. Is he really fine, after all?

Time is what our lives are made of. Failure to use it properly is disastrous. Yet most books on time management don't work because they take little account of human psychology or the unexpected. This book, written for everyone who has to juggle different demands in a busy schedule, includes lots of help and advice in finding a system that works effectively and leads to more enjoyment of work and leisure. 'I left Mark Forster's time management workshop a changed woman. Yesterday I used his system for a whole day. It was stress-free and fun. I felt energised and satisfied at the end of it.' Sarah Litvinoff

The New York Times best-seller Many changes are occurring now in the lives of all of us, but does "change" have to equal "crisis"? No. Not if you have the means with which you can change your experience of change – and that is what you are holding in your hand. This is more than a book about change. It’s about how life itself works. It is about the very nature of change – why it happens, how to deal with it, and how to make it be "for the better." On these pages are Nine Changes That Can Change Everything. Is it possible that what you are about to read has come to you at the right and perfect time . . . ?

Super Mad at Everything All the Time explores the polarization of American politics through the collapse of the space between politics and culture, as bolstered by omnipresent media. It seeks to explain this perfect storm of money, technology, and partisanship that has created two entirely separate news spheres: a small, enclosed circle for the right wing and a sprawling expanse for everyone else. This leads to two sets of facts, two narratives, and two loudly divergent political sides with extraordinary anger all around. Based on extensive interviews with leading media figures and politicos, this book traces the development of the media machine, giving suggestions on how to restore our national dialogue while defending our right to disagree agreeably.