"Translations from the Japanese by Robert Epp"--p. 445.

New York Public Library Book for the Teenager New York Public Library Book to Remember PSLA Young Adult Top 40 Nonfiction Titles of the Year "Engaging...a lively, informative compendium of facts, theories, and musings."-Michiko Kakutani, New York Times Behold the rat, dirty and disgusting! Robert Sullivan turns the lowly rat into the star of this most perversely intriguing, remarkable, and unexpectedly elegant New York Times bestseller. Love them or loathe them, rats are here to stay-they are city dwellers as much as (or more than) we are, surviving on the effluvia of our society. In Rats, the critically acclaimed bestseller, Robert Sullivan spends a year investigating a rat-infested alley just a few blocks away from Wall Street. Sullivan gets to know not just the beast but its friends and foes: the exterminators, the sanitation workers, the agitators and activists who have played their part in the centuries-old war between human city dweller and wild city rat. Sullivan looks deep into the largely unrecorded history of the city and its masses-its herds-of-rats-like mob. Funny, wise, sometimes disgusting but always compulsively readable, Rats earns its unlikely place alongside the great classics of nature writing. With an all-new Afterword by the author

How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business "The real value of this book is that it makes SOA and Webservices, which are critical and business-transforming,crystal-clear to the layman, both business and IT leaders. The bookstays focused on the real-world issues facing business andgovernment institutions today. In an industry full of experts ofmany stripes, Ron and Jason are the real thing: savvy, experienced,and realistic. They have produced a must-read book formanagement." —Paul Lipton, Senior Architect, Unicenter Web Services andApplication Management Computer Associates "This is by far the finest publication on SOA of our time. Fromcover to back, Service Orient or Be Doomed! strips away thelayers of confusion most IT stakeholders face when confronted withenterprise architecture, and illustrates pragmatic and practicalpaths towards a sustainable and efficient enterprise architecture.Both the technically savvy and the bean counters will enjoy thisbook that speaks to the critical points they need tounderstand." —Duane A. Nickull Senior Standards Strategist, Adobe Systems,Inc. Chair, OASIS SOA Reference Model Technical Committee Vicechair, United Nations CEFACT (UN/CEFACT) "If you're looking for a guide that's based on reality, this isit. These guys know how you can service-orient your enterprise andhave the best chance of success. This book is the best SOA tool youcan buy. I'm recommending it to everyone." —Dave Linthicum, CEO, BRIDGEWERX "Jason and Ron are experts on Service-Oriented Architecture(SOA) and have written the first book that is aimed at helping anontechnical businessperson understand why the SOA computingrevolution is critical to business. Rather than provide a nerdydeath via buzzword book, Jason and Ron take a humorous, clever, andinsightful romp through this new technology and how it impactsbusiness in general." —Brad Feld, Mobius Venture Capital Authors Jason Bloomberg and Ronald Schmelzer-senior analysts forhighly respected IT advisory and analysis firm ZapThink-say it allin the title of their new book, Service Orient or Be Doomed!:How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business. That is, ifyou fail to service orient your company, you will fail in competingwith the organizations that do. This provocative new book takes service orientation out of itsmore familiar technological surroundings within service-orientedarchitecture and introduces it as a philosophy that advocates itsrightful place within a business context, redefining it as a newway of thinking about organizing your business and itsprocesses. Informal, challenging, and intelligent in style, ServiceOrient or Be Doomed!: How Service Orientation Will Change YourBusiness shows you how you can best use technology resources tomeet your company's business goals and empower your company to gofrom "stuck" to "competitive."