A deep and timely account of how American newspapers were produced and distributed on paper. Winner of the Best Book in Canadian Business History by the Canadian Business History Association Popular assessments of printed newspapers have become so grim that some have taken to calling them “dead tree media” as a way of invoking the medium’s imminent demise. There is a literal truth hidden in this dismissive expression: printed newspapers really are material goods made from trees. And, throughout the twentieth century, the overwhelming majority of trees cut down in the service of printing newspapers in the United States came from Canada. In Dead Tree Media, Michael Stamm reveals the international history of the commodity chains connecting Canadian trees and US readers. Drawing on newly available corporate documents and research in archives across North America, Stamm offers a sophisticated rethinking of the material history of the printed newspaper. Tracing its industrial production from the forest to the newsstand, he provides an account of the obscure and often hidden labor involved in this manufacturing process by showing how it was driven by not only publishers and journalists but also lumberjacks, paper mill workers, policymakers, chemists, and urban and regional planners. Stamm describes the 1911 shift in tariff policy that gave US publishers duty-free access to Canadian newsprint, providing a tremendous boost to Canadian paper manufacturers and a significant subsidy to American newspaper publishers. He also explains how Canada attracted massive American foreign investment in paper mills around the same time that US publishers were able to gain greater access to Canada’s vast spruce forests. Focusing particularly on the Chicago Tribune, Stamm provides a new history of the rise and fall of both the mass circulation printed newspaper and the particular kind of corporation in the newspaper business that had shaped many aspects of the cultural, political, and even physical landscape of North America. For those seeking to understand the travails of the contemporary newspaper business, Dead Tree Media is essential reading.

Following the publication of the widely acclaimed novel Seven Years comes a trove of stories from the Swiss master Peter Stamm. They all possess the traits that have built Stamm’s reputation: the directness of the prose, the deceptive surface simplicity of the narratives, and deep psychological insight into the existential dilemmas of contemporary life. Stamm does not waste a word, nor does he spare the reader’s feelings. These stories are a superb introduction to his work and a gift for all those who have come to regard his fiction as a precise rendering of the contemporary human psyche.

A new story collection from “one of Europe’s most exciting writers” (New York Times Book Review) deftly evokes and explores the shifts that occur when the world grows dark. Snowed in at a remote artists’ residency in Vermont, Peter recalls another Christmas some thirty years earlier, when he met Marcia by chance on a trip to New York City. Only now, in this eerie, isolated place, does he begin to see the consequences of their brief affair through a series of connections. When Hubert asks Sabrina to model for a sculpture, she’s flattered and happy to help. But facing the finished product, looking at herself from previously hidden angles, disturbs her, and she becomes determined to follow her double after it’s sold to a collector. Uneasy in his own skin and with the humdrum life set out for him, David decides to rob a bank. He already has a mask for the purpose, but won’t be using it today. He’s heard that bank robbers often study the scene for weeks before they strike. So he’s started to lurk. We think we know our world, but then the familiar suddenly turns strange, and even frightening. In these powerfully affecting, minutely constructed stories, Peter Stamm illustrates how fragile our reality really is, how susceptible to tricks of the heart and mind.

Innovation is the major driving force in organisations today. With the rise of truly global markets and the intensifying competition for customers, employees and other critical resources, the ability to continuously develop successful innovative products, services, processes and strategies is essential. While creativity is the starting point for any kind of innovation, design is the process through which a creative idea or concept is translated into reality. Managing Innovation, Design and Creativity, 2nd Edition brings these three strands together in a discussion built around a collection of up-to-date case studies.