As an organization, you set your profit objectives but the customer sets the price. Most organizations battle customer requests or demands for price reductions. The successful ones develop and propose cost cuts before the customer can ask. Join Brad Hart, the CEO of Roberts Tool Company, as he and Jim Hull explain the essence of his company's transformation. The approach taken by RTC allowed them not just to get more work, but to build a continual flow of the right work to build the business, increase sales and ensure both customer satisfaction and profit. You'll learn the essential steps to improve sales, marketing and operations. Recognize the true value of your human assets and increase the effectiveness of collaboration both within your organization and with your peers and suppliers. Become a competitive leader in your industry. The choice of a successful transformation is up to you.

In the realm of vampire fiction, we meet dangerous, romantic, exotic beings - in a word, they're extraordinary. But what if a perfectly ordinary person became a vampire? Would his undead existence be ... ordinary? Hardly. THE VAMPIRE IN FREE FALL takes us on a roller-coaster ride of adventure as our "ordinary" night stalker finds himself caught up in espionage, murder for hire, grand theft and bloody revenge. The dangers of his tour as a soldier in Vietnam quickly pale against the car chases, street fights, burglaries and contract killings of his new life as a blood-drinking assassin-spy. Whether he can escape his human handlers and attain freedom, peace of mind and the love he craves is another matter. But never is this vampire's life merely ordinary. Jim Hull - author of Are Humans Obsolete? - brings a unique approach to the vampire thriller, taking us from Saigon to the outer planets, from the 1960s to the twenty-third century, from a war in the jungle to battles in space. It's part hard-boiled, part sci-fi, part dark comedy and all excitement, a tale that'll keep you in its grip. "It will appeal to anybody who enjoys vampire books . . . I'm gonna hate myself in the morning but I need to keep reading "

Today machines can outplay us at chess, perform surgeries, manage airports, design buildings, act in films. Soon they'll compete with us in nearly every field. Will this cause mass layoffs and riots? Or will these robotic workers usher in a paradise of wealth and leisure for us all? "Are Humans Obsolete?" takes you on a witty, no-holds-barred tour of the next few decades, when machines will do everything we can, and do it better, yet we can gain the advantage Part One takes a brisk march through this strange future, with insights on ways we can stay in control and not get left behind. Part Two offers a clear-eyed look at our high-tech culture of adolescence and how to outgrow it, shines a spotlight on the jumble of modern media and how we can make sense of all the shouting, and does color commentary on the turf war between science and religion -- with a surprising twist on who may win. Jim Hull is an author and lecturer with a degree in philosophy from UC Santa Cruz.