The Flight of Icarus is Raymond Queneau's only novel written in the form of a play: seventy-four short scenes, complete with stage directions. Consciously parodying Pirandello and Robbe-Grillet, it begins with a novelist's discovery that his principal character, Icarus by name, has vanished. This in turn, sets off a rash of other such disappearances.

In late 19th-century Paris, the writer Hubert is shocked to discover that Icarus, the protagonist of the new novel he's working on, has vanished. Looking for him among the manuscripts of his rivals does not solve the mystery, so a detective is hired to find the runaway character.

James Ellsworth is a bit jaded, especially for his young age. He hates school and longs for his parents' estate, where life is far more pleasant. Meeting new schoolmate Daniel Courtney is a much-needed distraction, one that will prove more and more engrossing as James and Daniel grow older. When his father dies, James is thrust into a position of responsibility, not just to his estate, but to his mother and sisters as well. He leans as much as he can on his friendship with Daniel, but young Courtney has his own problems. His brother, George, is all Daniel has left in the world, and when he loses his brother to a freak accident, Daniel is left alone and without prospects. All the while, the two young men are discovering a relationship that their Victorian world will never approve of. Trying to deal with their loss and their love for each other drives them apart -- James to a life of debauchery, Daniel to a life of study and work. As they grow older, James and Daniel discover that life is not what they thought it would be when they were schoolboys together, and that, even as they try to make their own way, they will always come back to one another.

In The Icarus Deception, Seth Godin's most inspiring book, he challenges readers to find the courage to treat their work as a form of art Everyone knows that Icarus's father made him wings and told him not to fly too close to the sun; he ignored the warning and plunged to his doom. The lesson: Play it safe. Listen to the experts. It was the perfect propaganda for the industrial economy. What boss wouldn't want employees to believe that obedience and conformity are the keys to success? But we tend to forget that Icarus was also warned not to fly too low, because seawater would ruin the lift in his wings. Flying too low is even more dangerous than flying too high, because it feels deceptively safe. The safety zone has moved. Conformity no longer leads to comfort. But the good news is that creativity is scarce and more valuable than ever. So is choosing to do something unpredictable and brave: Make art. Being an artist isn't a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It's an attitude we can all adopt. It's a hunger to seize new ground, make connections, and work without a map. If you do those things you're an artist, no matter what it says on your business card. Godin shows us how it's possible and convinces us why it's essential. 'If Seth Godin didn't exist, we'd need to invent him' Fast Company 'Seth Godin is a demigod on the web, a bestselling author, highly sought-after lecturer, successful entrepreneur, respected pundit and high-profile blogger' Forbes Seth Godin is the author of thirteen international bestsellers that have changed the way people think about marketing, the ways ideas spread, leadership and change including Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, All Marketers are Liars, The Dip and Tribes. He is the CEO of Squidoo.com and a very popular lecturer. His blog, www.sethgodin.typepad.com, is the most influential business blog in the world, and consistently one of the 100 most popular blogs on any subject..

This book provides a detailed analysis of the institutional transformations brought about by the financial crisis, focusing on the institution-building course of Europe and the Constitution-bending course in several Member States. It discusses the seemingly contradictory interplay between national and European institutions and the law resulting from the crisis, arguing that the anti-crisis exceptionality constitutes the matrix of the new normality of the reformed European economic governance. The author carries out a critical analysis of the new economic governance and its case-law with regular reference to relevant political episodes, key economic figures and to the hitherto lax modes and rules. The author also offers deep insights into the Greek adjustment programme and the crisis-related Greek and Portuguese constitutional case-law, presented in comparison with the German and French case-law. The book concludes with a critical overview of the profound mutations in the role of national Constitutions, instigated by the new European economic governance, and the emergence of a democratically deficient meta-constitutional mode of functioning of both the European institutions and national Constitutions.

On a windy afternoon in early spring Rory MacLean fell to earth in Anissari, a village surrounded by white mountains in an ancient corner of Crete. MacLean's mother had died only a few months earlier and he had been engulfed by grief. But an old desire had also taken hold to build and fly an aeroplane. And so he set off to the land where Daedalus and Icarus had made their maiden flight and settled in to days of eating lamb and drinking wine with his Cretan neighbours and, with their help, attempting to build a Woodhopper from scratch and make it fly.

At the end of the Reagan era, many in the U.S. Air Force began to express their concerns about the health of their institution. They questioned whether the Air Force had lost its sense of direction, its confidence, its values, even its future. For some, these concerns reflected nothing more than the maturation of the most youthful of America's military institutions. For others it was a crisis of spirit that threatened the hard-won independence of the Air Force. Although the diagnoses for this malaise are as numerous as its symptoms, The Icarus Syndrome points a finger at the abandonment of air power theory sometime in the late 1950s to early 1960s as the single, taproot cause of the problems. That provocative diagnosis is followed by an equally provocative prescription the Air Force must follow to regain its institutional health. Author Carl H. Builder begins with an overview of this crisis of values within the Air Force, along with a litany of concerns about what seems to have gone wrong within that institution. The history of the U.S. Air Force, along with the role played in it by air power theory, is explored and is used to support Builder's thesis. The remainder of the book is an analysis of what went wrong and when, how these wrongs might be corrected, and the challenges for Air Force leadership in the future. Now available in paperback, The Icarus Syndrome will be of great interest to U.S. Air Force professionals, military and aviation historians, and institutional psychologists.