Is your leadership a competitive advantage, or is it costing you? How do you know?

For most leaders today, complexity is outpacing their personal and collective development. Most leaders arein over their heads, whether they know it or not. Since the most successful organizations over time are the best led, escalating global complexity puts leadership effectiveness at a premium. Mastering Leadership involves developing the effectiveness of leaders—individually and collectively—and turning the leadership into a competitive advantage. This comprehensive roadmap features:

• Breakthrough research connecting increased leadership effectiveness with enhanced business performance
• The first fully integrated Universal Model of Leadership—one that integrates the best theory and research in the fields of Leadership and Organizational Development over the last half century
• An assessment of your own leadership effectiveness, using the Leadership Circle Profile, visibly outlining your leadership progress and performance
• A robust approach to developing your leadership capability at a faster pace
• The four stages in the evolution of leadership—Reactive, Creative, Integral, and Unitive—along with the organizational structures and cultures that develop at each of these stages
• A map of the optimal developmental path to greater leadership effectiveness
• Case stories to facilitate pragmatic application of the Leadership Development System to your particular situation

This timeless, authoritative text takes systemic approach for developing your senior leaders and the leadership system of your organization. It does not recommend quick fixes, but argues that real development requires a strategic, long-term, and integrated approach in order to forge more effective leaders and enhanced business performance. Mastering Leadership presents pathways to bring forth the highest and best use of yourself, your life, and your leadership—helping you more fully and meaningfully deploy all of who you are while achieving a leadership legacy consistent with your highest aspirations.

In recent decades urban regions around the world have engaged in a new process of development based on the creation of new knowledge. Amidst the globalization of economic activities and the arrival of transformative technologies, knowledge has become the key driver of competitiveness and is profoundly reshaping the patterns of economic growth and activity. This book offers a comprehensive new model of the rise of a Knowledge Economy and its evolutionary development in the Megalopolis.

These regions are developing new institutions and governance mechanisms to adapt, disseminate, and utilize available knowledge to promote continuing development of their Knowledge Economies. However, such developments are accompanied by increasing inequalities in incomes and in urban services. This book examines the resilience of some urban regions and their recent emergence as vibrant Knowledge Economies. It also reviews the recent renewal and growth in the Megalopolis-- stretching along the Atlantic Seaboard along the metropolitan areas of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC.

This book will appeal to researchers and professionals interested in urban and regional development, and to business groups interested in economic development.

ESL Readers and Writers in Higher Education describes the challenges that studying in a second language pose for ESL students in U.S. post-secondary institutions, and offers suggestions for how teachers, advisors, tutors, and institutions might provide support that meets the reading and writing needs of this very important student population.

Because the ESL profession as a whole, including what professionals are doing in the classroom, sits under the umbrella of an institutional response to a language-related challenge, some solutions aimed at helping students achieve optimal proficiency lie outside of the classroom. As such, this book is based on the assertion that language development support is not the sole responsibility of language teachers. Everyone on campuses that hosts ESL students bears some responsibility for these students' language development. Chapters are therefore, intentionally adapted to appeal to a wide variety of readers from classroom teachers, and teachers in training, to admissions officers, academic advisors, and international student advisors.

The Big Lebowski is a razor-sharp comedy thriller of mistaken identity, gangsters, bowling, kidnapping, and money gone astray, written by the Coens, directed by Joel Coen, and produced by Ethan Coen. In addition to Jeff Bridges, whose portrayal of The Dude has become iconic, and John Goodman, his bowling buddy, the film stars Steve Buscemi, Julianne Moore, John Turturro, Willem Dafoe, Sam Elliot, and Ben Gazzara. Not given to talking publicly about their work, the Coens gave access to Tricia Cooke and William Preston Robertson to interview the cast and crew. In a prose style that complements the Coens’ filmic one, the book discusses the Coens’ oeuvre, the themes of their films, their atypical brand of humor, their craft, and their artistic vision. Several scenes of The Big Lebowski are examined closely to see how the movie goes from idea to reality, making this an ideal book for fans, filmmakers, and filmmaking students.

Matt Reddy?s old Asiatic Fleet destroyer USS Walker has been mysteriously transported to an alternate version of earth. Here WWII is no longer raging, and Reddy and his crew have been trying to find a new place for themselves in this strange new world.

Now, along with the felinoid Lemurians and Imperial allies, they fight to keep the reptilian Grik, a race growing in supremacy, from reconquering the Lemurians? ancestral home on Madagascar. Reddy and his crew are exhausted, far from reinforcements, and wildly outnumbered. As for the fate of the Americas, Don Hernan and the evil Dominion have gathered to annihilate the forces behind the walls of Fort Defiance as a shadowy power with an agenda all its own rises with chilling resolve.

As the war teeters on a knife-edge, a tipping point may have been reached at last—and cold steel and hot-blooded valor will remain the ultimate weapons.

Matt Reddy?s old Asiatic Fleet destroyer USS Walker has been mysteriously transported to an alternate version of earth. Here WWII is no longer raging, and Reddy and his crew have been trying to find a new place for themselves in this strange new world.

Now, along with the felinoid Lemurians and Imperial allies, they fight to keep the reptilian Grik, a race growing in supremacy, from reconquering the Lemurians? ancestral home on Madagascar. Reddy and his crew are exhausted, far from reinforcements, and wildly outnumbered. As for the fate of the Americas, Don Hernan and the evil Dominion have gathered to annihilate the forces behind the walls of Fort Defiance as a shadowy power with an agenda all its own rises with chilling resolve.

As the war teeters on a knife-edge, a tipping point may have been reached at last—and cold steel and hot-blooded valor will remain the ultimate weapons.

Welcome to the wide world of paranormal pastimes, where striking out might strike you dead. Editors Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner are your announcers for this all-new story collection of the most peculiar plays ever made.…

Sports fans live and die by their teams’ successes and failures—though not literally. But these fourteen authors have written spirited—in more ways than one—new tales of killer competitions that would make even the most die-hard players ask to be benched.

In #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris’s “The Blue Hereafter,” Manfred Bernardo learns about softball from a certain blond barmaid in Louisiana.

Life-and-death stakes make the competition get serious in New York Times bestseller William Kent Krueger’s “Hide and Seek.”

New York Times bestselling author Mercedes Lackey’s “False Knight on the Road” features a high-stakes drag race on a foggy mountain road between a clever young bootlegger and a mysterious stranger.

In New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman’s “Ice,” a young girl learns the true story behind a bit of neighborhood folklore.

New York Times bestseller Seanan McGuire presents “Jammed,” in which a chimera loose during the Roller Derby makes it anyone’s guess as to who will still be skating by the time the buzzer sounds.

In #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson’s “Dreamer,” a game of cops and robbers is a new challenge when the players are able to switch bodies at will.

And New York Times bestselling author Scott Sigler follows ghost stomper Hunter Hunterson as he investigates a haunted, never-ending baseball game in “The Case of the Haunted Safeway.”

These and eight more supernatural sporting stories are guaranteed to have you rooting for the home team…or else.…