Something seems to be pushing our world into a new era. People sense that something monumental is about to take place. The book of Revelation describes a time of great upheavals and terrible events that will rock and shake planet earth. This writing is designed to provide insights into the nature of those last days and how to survive in the midst of them.

Something seems to be pushing our world into a new era. People sense that something monumental is about to take place. The book of Revelation describes a time of great upheavals and terrible events that will rock and shake planet earth. This writing is designed to provide insights into the nature of those last days and how to survive in the midst of them.

In this fictional account of Stewart Bicycle Manufacturing, Sauder and Porter explore the working relationship between a successful baby boomer business owner and his Generation Y employee. A self-made man, Roger created his mountain biking business without the help of social networking. Phil, a recent college graduate, has grown up with the Internet and all its related technologies his whole life. Roger doesn't understand the point of "fads" such as Facebook and Twitter accounts; Phil doesn't understand why Roger doesn't want to do more to advance his business into the twenty-first century. Roger assumes he can mentor Phil on the finer points of budgets and spreadsheets but is surprised to learn that Phil can mentor him on a few things as well. The traditional approach to mentoring was for the older, more-experienced workers to mentor the younger, greener workers, handing their knowledge down to the next generation. However, the current young generation, Generation Y, is much more unique than their preceding generations and can teach baby boomers how to adjust their business to the newest trends and technology. The term many people use for this concept is reverse mentoring, but Sauder and Porter believe the optimal solution is multi-generational mentoring--each generation sharing knowledge with the other for better leadership development, better inter-generational relationships, higher employee retention rates, and higher organizational-wide knowledge of technology.

From Archibald MacLeish to David Sedaris, radio storytelling has long borrowed from the world of literature, yet the narrative radio work of well-known writers and others is a story that has not been told before. And when the literary aspects of specific programs such as The War of the Worlds or Sorry, Wrong Number were considered, scrutiny was superficial. In Lost Sound, Jeff Porter examines the vital interplay between acoustic techniques and modernist practices in the growth of radio. Concentrating on the 1930s through the 1970s, but also speaking to the rising popularity of today's narrative broadcasts such as This American Life,Radiolab, Serial, and The Organicist, Porter's close readings of key radio programs show how writers adapted literary techniques to an acoustic medium with great effect. Addressing avant-garde sound poetry and experimental literature on the air, alongside industry policy and network economics, Porter identifies the ways radio challenged the conventional distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow cultural content to produce a dynamic popular culture.

This is a book on how to read the essay, one that demonstrates how reading is inextricably tied to the art of writing. It aims to treat the essay with the close literary attention that has been given to other literary forms. Patricia Hampl explores F. Scott Fitzgerald's famously confessional "The Crack-Up" from what was once his grandmother's house in St. Paul, Minnesota; Sven Birkerts compares the power of Cynthia Ozick's brief essay "A Drugstore in Winter" to "watching an enormous jet achieve lift-off from the shortest little patch of tarmac;" and Gayle Pemberton turns to Ralph Ellison for a "bracing blast of air" when the racism in contemporary American culture seems inescapable. At once personal appreciation's and acute critical assessments, these pieces broaden our perspective on the essay as a literary art form.