The Forest of Valancourt is the story of young Lucien, who sets out to find his origins and prove himself worthy of the love of the young countess Adelaide. But he gets more than he bargained for when he saves the life of a man who proves to be his father, and who denounces Lucien to the Inquisition! Imprisoned in a dungeon and threatened with horrible torture, can Lucien escape his terrible fate and discover the truth behind his father's past? Only one copy of The Forest of Valancourt has survived; that copy is held in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. The Valancourt Books edition is newly typeset from that copy in an attractive cloth-bound edition with dust jacket, giving modern readers the opportunity to own a copy of this extremely rare work.

Maggie O'Sullivan has been a significant force in the alternative British poetry scene since the 1970s. Her international reputation has continued to grow and she is widely regarded as one of the foremost feminist avant-garde writers working in Britain today. This new volume of essays and interviews locates O'Sullivan in the wider context of contemporary British poetry and draws to light the wide-ranging influences which inform her work and her own influence upon a new generation of feminist avant-garde writing. Tackling textual, visual and sound elements in her work her poetry is complex, challenging and rewarding. O'Sullivan is also a compelling performer of her work. Thematically she is capable of tackling animal vegetable and mineral ideas in her writing, drawing on mythological and even shamanistic components that are provocative and sensual. This volume contains contributions from Charles Bernstein, Mandy Bloomfield, Ken Edwards, Romana Huk, Peter Manson, Nicky Marsh, Peter Middleton, Maggie O'Sullivan, Redell Olsen, Marjorie Perloff, Will Rowe, Robert Sheppard, Scott Thurston and Nerys Williams.

At the close of the Second World War, modernist poets found themselves in an increasingly scientific world, where natural and social sciences claimed exclusive rights to knowledge of both matter and mind. Following the overthrow of the Newtonian worldview and the recent, shocking displays of the power of the atom, physics led the way, with other disciplines often turning to the methods and discoveries of physics for inspiration. In Physics Envy, Peter Middleton examines the influence of science, particularly physics, on American poetry since World War II. He focuses on such diverse poets as Charles Olson, Muriel Rukeyser, Amiri Baraka, and Rae Armantrout, among others, revealing how the methods and language of contemporary natural and social sciences-and even the discourse of the leading popular science magazine Scientific American-shaped their work. The relationship, at times, extended in the other direction as well: leading physicists such as Robert Oppenheimer, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin SchrA dinger were interested in whether poetry might help them explain the strangeness of the new, quantum world. Physics Envy is a history of science and poetry that shows how ultimately each serves to illuminate the other in its quest for the true nature of things.

Expanding Authorship collects Peter Middleton's significant essays exploring how the agency of the disputed figure of the author has increasingly extended beyond an individual, narratable self. In four sections--Sound, Communities, Collaboration, and Complexity--Middleton explores the internal divisions of lyric subjectivity as well as coauthorship, poetry networks, the creative role of editors and anthologists, and the outer limits of authorship revealed in long poems. Readers and scholars of Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, George Oppen, Frank O'Hara, Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, Jerome Rothenberg, Susan Howe, Lyn Hejinian, Nathaniel Mackey, and Rae Armantrout will find much to learn and enjoy in this groundbreaking volume.

In his acclaimed 2008 book Systems Thinking in the Public Sector, John Seddon blew the whistle on public sector 'reform' and the flawed gospel of quasi-markets, competition, targets and inspection. He showed how thousands of people in the UK and elsewhere had been engaged at a cost of millions of pounds, to impose and enforce targets that simply made things worse ...Those people are still there - from the Audit Commission down - and the quasi-market model is still creating waste, driving up costs, damaging services and destroying morale.Now a new book spells out the alternative. Delivering Public Services that Work brings together case studies from 6 different public sector organisations, in the UK and New Zealand, that are using Systems Thinking to bring about rapid and extraordinary change. These Case Studies show: *How they did it, step by step. *How they overcame initial resistance and hostility from staff. *How they rolled-in (rather than rolled-out) the programme across other departments/services. *The astonishing results that have been achieved. *The unexpected benefits that can accrue (a 44% drop in staff illness in one case).

Winner Of The 2007 Shingo Prize For Excellence In Manufacturing Research

Lean production, which has radically benefited traditional manufacturing, can greatly improve the software industry with similar methods and results. This transformation is possible because the same overarching principles that apply in other industries work equally well in software development. The software industry follows the same industrial concepts of production as those applied in manufacturing; however, the software industry perceives itself as being fundamentally different and has largely ignored what other industries have gained through the application of lean techniques.

"Lean Software Strategies: Proven Techniques for Managers and Developers," shows how the most advanced concepts of lean production can be applied to software development and how current software development practices are inadequate.

Written for software engineers, developers, and leaders who need help creating lean software processes and executing genuinely lean projects, this book draws on the personal experiences of the two authors as well as research on various software companies applying lean production to software development programs.