When Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil's Workers' Party soared to power in 2003, he promised to end hunger in the nation. In a vivid ethnography with an innovative approach to Brazilian politics, Aaron Ansell assesses President Lula's flagship antipoverty program, Zero Hunger (Fome Zero), focusing on its rollout among agricultural workers in the poor northeastern state of Piaui. Linking the administration's fight against poverty to a more subtle effort to change the region's political culture, Ansell rethinks the nature of patronage and provides a novel perspective on the state under Workers' Party rule. Aiming to strengthen democratic processes, frontline officials attempted to dismantle the long-standing patron-client relationships--Ansell identifies them as "intimate hierarchies--that bound poor people to local elites. Illuminating the symbolic techniques by which officials attempted to influence Zero Hunger beneficiaries' attitudes toward power, class, history, and ethnic identity, Ansell shows how the assault on patronage increased political awareness but also confused and alienated the program's participants. He suggests that, instead of condemning patronage, policymakers should harness the emotional energy of intimate hierarchies to better facilitate the participation of all citizens in political and economic development.

As leaders increasingly understand the importance of good safety practice to support their business objectives, safety and health practitioners develop better tools and solutions. However, there is still a gulf between these two groups where engagement, communication and shared understanding can be found lacking. From Accidents to Zero opens up the field of safety culture and breaks it down into bite-sized pieces to facilitate new, critical thought and inspire practical action. Based on the concept of creating safety, as opposed to just preventing accidents, each of the 26 chapters in this user-friendly book includes explanation, commentary, reflections and practical activities designed to systematically and sustainably improve workplace safety culture. Core topics range from behaviour to values, daily rituals to unsafe acts, felt leadership to trust. Andrew Sharman's practical guide blends current academic thinking with authoritative guidance and sets up the opportunity for all parts of the organization to close the gap by providing very clear steps to thinking and acting differently. It sparks insight into how both traditional methods and novel approaches can be brought to life in real world situations. From Accidents to Zero offers a clear route to culture change through over one hundred pragmatic ideas to motivate and lead people, influence behaviour and drive a positive evolution in workplace safety.

Discover why and how schools must become places where thinking is valued, visible, and actively promoted As educators, parents, and citizens, we must settle for nothing less than environments that bring out the best in people, take learning to the next level, allow for great discoveries, and propel both the individual and the group forward into a lifetime of learning. This is something all teachers want and all students deserve. In Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools, Ron Ritchhart, author of Making Thinking Visible, explains how creating a culture of thinking is more important to learning than any particular curriculum and he outlines how any school or teacher can accomplish this by leveraging 8 cultural forces: expectations, language, time, modeling, opportunities, routines, interactions, and environment. With the techniques and rich classroom vignettes throughout this book, Ritchhart shows that creating a culture of thinking is not about just adhering to a particular set of practices or a general expectation that people should be involved in thinking. A culture of thinking produces the feelings, energy, and even joy that can propel learning forward and motivate us to do what at times can be hard and challenging mental work.

Creating a Zero-Incident Culture presents a new twist on developing a sustainable safety process in a manufacturing environment. Quite simply, it's about my endeavor to keep employees out of the hospital. My desire is to see each and every employee go home to their families the way each one of them came to work: alive and with all their limbs. So I developed an approach to safety that's simple, straightforward, costs nothing, saves companies millions of dollars, and has been proven to work in various industries. The system is realistic and so easy to implement that anyone can do it.

In Zero Comments, internationally renowned media theorist and 'net critic' Geert Lovink revitalizes worn out concepts about the Internet and interrogates the latest hype surrounding blogs and social network sites. In this third volume of his studies into critical Internet culture, following the influential Dark Fiber and My First Recession, Lovink develops a 'general theory of blogging.' He unpacks the ways that blogs exhibit a 'nihilist impulse' to empty out established meaning structures. Blogs, Lovink argues, are bringing about the decay of traditional broadcast media, and they are driven by an in-crowd dynamic in which social ranking is a primary concern. The lowest rung of the new Internet hierarchy are those blogs and sites that receive no user feedback or 'zero comments'. Zero Comments also explores other important changes to Internet culture, as well, including the silent globalization of the Net in which the West is no longer the main influence behind new media culture, as countries like India, China and Brazil expand their influence and looks forward to speculate on the Net impact of organized networks, free cooperation and distributed aesthetics.

From bestselling author of Stop the Coming Civil War, Michael Savage reveals the massive dangers currently leading to the demise of our government. Michael Savage has been warning Americans for decades and now it's here. In GOVERNMENT ZERO: No Borders, No Language, No Culture, Savage sounds the alarm about how progressives and radical Islamists are each unwittingly working towards similar ends: to destroy Western Civilization and remake it in their own respective images. These two dark forces are transforming our once-free republic into a socialist, Third World dictatorship ruled by Government Zero: absolute government and zero representation. Combining in-depth analysis with biting commentary, Savage cuts through mainstream media propaganda to reveal an all-out attack on our borders, language and culture by progressive travelers who have hijacked public policy from national defense to immigration to public education. Find out everything you need to know about this terrifying agenda to weaken the U.S. military, cripple the American economy, subvert basic American liberties such as freedom of speech, and destroy the international world order. There is no time to lose. The Progressive-Islamist agenda has advanced into every public space, from the White House to the military to your local public school. If America is to survive, it has to be stopped. Michael Savage has a plan. Get the inside story before it's too late.

When you’re a new parent, the miracle of life might not always feel so miraculous. Maybe your latest 2:00 a.m., 2:45 a.m., and 3:30 a.m. wake-up calls have left you wondering how “sleep like a baby” ever became a figure of speech—and what the options are for restoring your sanity. Or your child just left bite marks on someone, and you’re wondering how to handle it. First-time mom Tracy Cutchlow knows what you’re going through. In Zero to Five: 70 Essential Parenting Tips Based on Science (and What I’ve Learned So Far), she takes dozens of parenting tips based on scientific research and distills them into something you can easily digest during one of your two-minute-long breaks in the day. The pages are beautifully illustrated by award-winning photojournalist Betty Udesen. Combining the warmth of a best friend with a straightforward style, Tracy addresses questions such as: Should I talk to my pregnant belly / newborn? Is that going to feel weird? (Yes, and absolutely.) How do I help baby sleep well? (Start with the 45-minute rule.) How can I instill a love of learning in my child? (By using specific types of praise and criticism.) What will boost my child’s success in school? (Play that requires self-control, like make-believe.) My baby loves videos and cell-phone games. That’s cool, right? (If you play, too.) What tamps down temper tantrums? (Naming emotions out loud.) My sweet baby just hit a playmate / lied to me about un-potting the plant / talked back. Now what? (Choose one of three logical consequences.) How do I get through an entire day of this? (With help. Lots of help.) Who knew babies were so funny? (They are!) Whether you read the book front to back or skip around, Zero to Five will help you make the best of the tantrums (yours and baby’s), moments of pure joy, and other surprises along the totally-worth-it journey of parenting.