Computers & Internet Best Sellers
- The Digital Photography Book, Volume 3
The Digital Photography Book, Volume 3 follows in the footsteps of the wildly successful first and second volumes of this series, giving photographers nearly two hundred more closely guarded photographic tricks of the trade to get them shooting dramatically better-looking, sharper, more colorful, more professional-looking photos with their digital camera every time they press the shutter button.
Here's another thing that makes this book different: like the original, each page covers just one trick, just one single concept. With every page, photographers will learn another pro setting, another pro tool, another pro trick to transform their work from snapshots into gallery prints. 
The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal
Amazon Exclusive: Kevin Spacey on The Accidental Billionaires
Kevin Spacey’s films include Superman Returns, Beyond the Sea, The Usual Suspects, American Beauty, Swimming with Sharks, Seven, L.A. Confidential, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Negotiator, Hurlyburly, K-Pax, and The Shipping News. He will next be seen in Men Who Stare at Goats opposite George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, and Jeff Bridges, as well as Nick Moran’s film Telstar opposite Colm O’Neil and Pam Ferris. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of The Accidental Billionaires:
I first met Ben Mezrich when I produced and starred in 21, the film adaptation of his great bestseller Bringing Down the House. Ben has a gift for finding high-energy, strange-but-true tales and The Accidental Billionaires is no exception.
You may think you know the story of the Facebook phenomenon, but you haven’t heard the whole story and never like this. Recreating the unbelievable rise of the world's biggest social network—not to mention the planet's youngest billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg—Ben tells a captivating story of betrayal, vast amounts of cash, and two friends who revolutionized the way humans connect to one another—only to have an enormous falling out and never speak again.
Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were two geeky, socially awkward Harvard undergrads who wanted nothing more than to be cool. While Eduardo chose the more straightforward path of trying to gain acceptance into one of the school's ultra-posh, semi-secret Final Clubs, Mark used his computer skills by hacking into Harvard's computers, pulling up all the pictures of every girl on campus to create a sort of "hot-or-not" site exclusive to Harvard. Though the prank nearly got Mark kicked out of college, he and Eduardo realized that they were on to something big. Thus, the initial concept of Facebook was born; what happened next, however, was right out of a Hollywood thriller.
The Accidental Billionaires is the perfect pairing of author and subject. It's pure summer fun—a juicy, fast-paced, unputdownable Mezrich tale that adds to his canon of lad lit. And Hollywood has come calling again: I'm currently working with Dana Brunetti, Scott Rudin, Mike Deluca, and Aaron Sorkin on the movie adaptation of The Accidental Billionaires. If the book is any indication, the film is going to be a must see.—Kevin Spacey- Nursing Diagnosis Handbook: An Evidence-Based Guide to Planning Care (Nursing Diagnosis Handbook)
This innovative resource teaches you the critical thinking and assessment skills you need to build customized care plans based on each patient's unique needs. Its step-by-step approach guides you through the process, helping you formulate a nursing diagnosis based on known information and assessment findings; identify the appropriate nursing diagnosis; and create a care plan that includes desired outcomes, interventions, and evidence-based rationales. Nursing Diagnosis Handbook is an essential care planning resource you will turn to again and again throughout your nursing education and career.
- Provides care plans for every NANDA-I approved nursing diagnosis.
- Includes examples of and suggested NIC and NOC interventions and outcomes for each care plan.
- A convenient A-to-Z organization in Sections I and II helps you quickly locate key information.
- Evidence-based practice information is incorporated throughout.
- Includes complete coverage of pediatric, geriatric, and multicultural considerations, as well as home care and client/family teaching guidelines for each condition.
- A Care Plan Constructor on the Evolve website helps you create customized plans of care.
- Features the most up-to-date 2007-2008 NANDA-I approved nursing diagnoses, including approximately 15 new, 20 revised, and 5 replacement diagnoses.
- Provides a more detailed explanation of NIC and NOC taxonomies and their use in care planning.
- Explanations of assessment versus action interventions help guide you to the correct choice of intervention.
- Covers important information on concept mapping.
- Patient/Family Teaching sections offer expanded wellness and health promotion information.
- Clustered wellness nursing diagnoses are quick and easy to locate.
- Includes the latest evidence-based nursing rationales.
- Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera (Updated Edition)
by Bryan Peterson
More than 100 vivid, graphic comparison pictures illustrate every point in this revised classic and can help any photographer maximize the creative impact of his or her exposure decisions. Peterson stresses the importance of metering the subject for a starting exposure.
- MyMathLab: Student Stand Alone Access Kit
MyMathLab Student Stand Alone Access Kit Students: Want to access MyMathLab NOW? To purchase immediate access to MyMathLab using a credit card, go to www.coursecompass.com. Then click the Register button for students and click "Purchase online access." You will need the Course ID provided by your instructor. MyMathLab is an interactive online course that accompanies this textbook. MyMathLab contains an online version of the book as well as learning aids, such review sheets, practice exams, case studies & applications, MATLAB(R) projects, and data in various technology formats. Students can take sample chapter tests in MyMathLab to help identify the topics they need to study. Instructors can use MyMathLab to assign tests and track students' results. Visit www.mymathlab.com for more information.
- The World Is Flat (Updated and Expanded)
Updated Edition: Thomas L. Friedman is not so much a futurist, which he is sometimes called, as a presentist. His aim in The World Is Flat, as in his earlier, influential Lexus and the Olive Tree, is not to give you a speculative preview of the wonders that are sure to come in your lifetime, but rather to get you caught up on the wonders that are already here. The world isn't going to be flat, it is flat, which gives Friedman's breathless narrative much of its urgency, and which also saves it from the Epcot-style polyester sheen that futurists--the optimistic ones at least--are inevitably prey to.
What Friedman means by "flat" is "connected": the lowering of trade and political barriers and the exponential technical advances of the digital revolution that have made it possible to do business, or almost anything else, instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet. This in itself should not be news to anyone. But the news that Friedman has to deliver is that just when we stopped paying attention to these developments--when the dot-com bust turned interest away from the business and technology pages and when 9/11 and the Iraq War turned all eyes toward the Middle East--is when they actually began to accelerate. Globalization 3.0, as he calls it, is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals: desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world (but especially in India and China) who can compete--and win--not just for low-wage manufacturing and information labor but, increasingly, for the highest-end research and design work as well. (He doesn't forget the "mutant supply chains" like Al-Qaeda that let the small act big in more destructive ways.)
Friedman has embraced this flat world in his own work, continuing to report on his story after his book's release and releasing an unprecedented hardcover update of the book a year later with 100 pages of revised and expanded material. What's changed in a year? Some of the sections that opened eyes in the first edition--on China and India, for example, and the global supply chain--are largely unaltered. Instead, Friedman has more to say about what he now calls "uploading," the direct-from-the-bottom creation of culture, knowledge, and innovation through blogging, podcasts, and open-source software. And in response to the pleas of many of his readers about how to survive the new flat world, he makes specific recommendations about the technical and creative training he thinks will be required to compete in the "New Middle" class. As before, Friedman tells his story with the catchy slogans and globe-hopping anecdotes that readers of his earlier books and his New York Times columns know well, and he holds to a stern sort of optimism. He wants to tell you how exciting this new world is, but he also wants you to know you're going to be trampled if you don't keep up with it. A year later, one can sense his rising impatience that our popular culture, and our political leaders, are not helping us keep pace. --Tom Nissley
Where Were You When the World Went Flat?
Thomas L. Friedman's reporter's curiosity and his ability to recognize the patterns behind the most complex global developments have made him one of the most entertaining and authoritative sources for information about the wider world we live in, both as the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times and as the author of landmark books like From Beirut to Jerusalem and The Lexus and the Olive Tree. They also make him an endlessly fascinating conversation partner, and we've now had the chance to talk to him about The World Is Flat twice. Read our original interview with him following the publication of the first edition of The World Is Flat to learn why there's almost no one from Washington, D.C., listed in the index of a book about the global economy, and what his one-plank platform for president would be. (Hint: his bumper stickers would say, "Can You Hear Me Now?") And now you can listen to our second interview, in which he talks about the updates he's made in "The World Is Flat 2.0," including his response to parents who said to him, "Great, Mr. Friedman, I'm glad you told us the world is flat. Now what do I tell my kids?"
The Essential Tom Friedman
More on Globalization and Development
From Beirut to Jerusalem
The Lexus and the Olive Tree
Longitudes and Attitudes
China, Inc. by Ted Fishman
Three Billion New Capitalists by Clyde Prestowitz
The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs
Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz
The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli
The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto - The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Bestselling author Nassim Nicholas Taleb continues his exploration of randomness in his fascinating new book, The Black Swan, in which he examines the influence of highly improbable and unpredictable events that have massive impact. Engaging and enlightening, The Black Swan is a book that may change the way you think about the world, a book that Chris Anderson calls, "a delightful romp through history, economics, and the frailties of human nature." See Anderson's entire guest review below.
Guest Reviewer: Chris Anderson
Chris Anderson is editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and the author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.
Four hundred years ago, Francis Bacon warned that our minds are wired to deceive us. "Beware the fallacies into which undisciplined thinkers most easily fall--they are the real distorting prisms of human nature." Chief among them: "Assuming more order than exists in chaotic nature." Now consider the typical stock market report: "Today investors bid shares down out of concern over Iranian oil production." Sigh. We're still doing it.
Our brains are wired for narrative, not statistical uncertainty. And so we tell ourselves simple stories to explain complex thing we don't--and, most importantly, can't--know. The truth is that we have no idea why stock markets go up or down on any given day, and whatever reason we give is sure to be grossly simplified, if not flat out wrong.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb first made this argument in Fooled by Randomness, an engaging look at the history and reasons for our predilection for self-deception when it comes to statistics. Now, in The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable, he focuses on that most dismal of sciences, predicting the future. Forecasting is not just at the heart of Wall Street, but it’s something each of us does every time we make an insurance payment or strap on a seat belt.
The problem, Nassim explains, is that we place too much weight on the odds that past events will repeat (diligently trying to follow the path of the "millionaire next door," when unrepeatable chance is a better explanation). Instead, the really important events are rare and unpredictable. He calls them Black Swans, which is a reference to a 17th century philosophical thought experiment. In Europe all anyone had ever seen were white swans; indeed, "all swans are white" had long been used as the standard example of a scientific truth. So what was the chance of seeing a black one? Impossible to calculate, or at least they were until 1697, when explorers found Cygnus atratus in Australia.
Nassim argues that most of the really big events in our world are rare and unpredictable, and thus trying to extract generalizable stories to explain them may be emotionally satisfying, but it's practically useless. September 11th is one such example, and stock market crashes are another. Or, as he puts it, "History does not crawl, it jumps." Our assumptions grow out of the bell-curve predictability of what he calls "Mediocristan," while our world is really shaped by the wild powerlaw swings of "Extremistan."
In full disclosure, I'm a long admirer of Taleb's work and a few of my comments on drafts found their way into the book. I, too, look at the world through the powerlaw lens, and I too find that it reveals how many of our assumptions are wrong. But Taleb takes this to a new level with a delightful romp through history, economics, and the frailties of human nature. --Chris Anderson
- The Digital Photography Book
by Scott Kelby
Why are there so many books on digital photography? It seems like a new one comes out every week, and it’s been like that for years. We think it’s because the books that keep coming out miss the mark on what most photographers really want: a book that cuts through all the techno-stuff, and uncovers the secrets the pros use to create amazing photos.
After all, that’s what we all want, right? We want to create photos that make our friends and family say, “Wow, that’s incredible. Did you take that?” But even though we have great digital cameras—in fact, we often have the exact same makes and models that the big pros use—somehow they’re still the ones getting all the “Wows!” Until now.
Scott Kelby, the man who forever changed the “digital darkroom” with his groundbreaking, #1 best-selling, award-winning book “The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers,” now tackles the most important side of digital photography: how to take pro-quality shots using the same tricks that today’s top digital pros use.
This isn’t a book of theory—it isn’t full of jargon and confusing concepts. This is a book that tells you exactly which button to push, which setting to use, and over 100 of the most closely guarded “tricks of the trade” to get you shooting dramatically better looking, sharper, more colorful, professional looking photos with your digital camera every time you push the shutter.
Here’s another thing that makes this book different: each page covers just one trick, just one single concept that makes your photography better. Every time you turn the page, you’ll learn another pro setting, another pro tool, another pro trick to transform your work from snapshots into gallery prints. There’s never been a book like it; if you’re tired of taking shots that just look “OK,” and if you’re tired of looking in photography magazines and thinking, “Why don’t my shots look like that?” then this is the book for you. - The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.
Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.”
For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don’t know. He offers surprisingly simple tricks for dealing with black swans and benefiting from them.
Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world. Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory. The Black Swan is a landmark book–itself a black swan.