In Finding the Target, Frederick W. Kagan describes the three basic transformations within the U.S. military since Vietnam. First was the move to an all-volunteer force and a new generation of weapons systems in the 1970s. Second was the emergence of stealth technology and precision-guided munitions in the 1980s. Third was the information technology that followed the fall of the Soviet Union and the first Gulf War. This last could have insured the U.S. continuing military preeminence, but this goal was compromised by Clinton's drawing down of our armed forces in the 1990s and Bush's response to 9/11 and the global war on terror. The issue of transformation leads Kagan to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's vision of a ''new ''military; the conduct of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; and the disconnect between grand strategic visions such as the Bush Doctrine's idea of ''preemption ''and the underfunding of military force structures that are supposed to achieve such goals.

The Snowflake Method-ten battle-tested steps that jump-start your creativity and help you quickly map out your story.

Whether a side-street skirmish or an all-out war, fight scenes bring action to the pages of every kind of fiction. But a poorly done or unbelievable fight scene can ruin a great book in an instant. In Fight Write you'll learn practical tips, terminology, and the science behind crafting realistic fight scenes for your fiction. Broken up into "Rounds," trained fighter and writer Carla Hoch guides you through the many factors you'll need to consider when developing battles and brawls. • In Round 1, you will consider how the Who, When, Where, and Why questions affect what type of fight scene you want to craft. • Round 2 delves into the human factors of biology (think fight or flight and adrenaline) and psychology (aggression and response to injuring or killing another person). • Round 3 explores different fighting styles that are appropriate for different situations: How would a character fight from a prone position versus being attacked in the street? What is the vocabulary used to describe these styles? • Round 4 considers weaponry and will guide you to select the best weapon for your characters, including nontraditional weapons of opportunity, while also thinking about the nitty-gritty details of using them. • In Round 5, you'll learn how to accurately describe realistic injuries sustained from the fights and certain weapons, and what kind of injuries will kill a character or render them unable to fight further. By taking into account where your character is in the world, when in history the fight is happening, what the character's motivation for fighting is, and much more, you'll be able write fight scenes unique to your plot and characters, all while satisfying your reader's discerning eye.

Yet, most small business owners have little or no marketing background and are intimidated by the thought of putting a plan to paper. This step-by-step guide takes the mystery out of marketing and shows reader how to test the market, determine buying trends and build customer loyalty.

This concise monograph introduces and examines social influence from the perspective of the so-called target, rather than from the source, thus providing for the first time a bidirectional account of this pervasive social phenomenon, further bridging simple micro-level dyadic interaction rules with macro-level properties of the (social) system. This integrative approach allows for advanced models of influence to be developed in both the social and natural sciences (e.g. social animals). In particular, when used to investigate emergent properties of social change, this approach shows that social transitions occur as “bubbles of new” in the “sea of old.” While in the traditional view influence is synonymous with achieving power and control over others, the present approach to social influence puts the emphasis on the target’s motives and strategies. Here, the target may actively seek out influence to help forge opinions and achieve guidance regarding courses of action. In this process, the target observes others, models their thought and behavior, and asks for information and opinions. In this broadened perspective, the processes of social influence enables those being influenced (the targets) to use the knowledge and processing capacity of influence sources to maximize their access to information, minimize their processing effort, while optimizing their own functioning and that of the social system in which they evolve. This short text addresses above all scientists interested in social influence in the fields of psychology, sociology, economy, marketing, and biology. However, also researchers interested in modeling social processes, especially opinion dynamics and social change, such as computer scientists, physicists and applied mathematicians will benefit from the insights provided.