Getting to the top can seem like an impossible mission to those in junior and middle manager ranks. Sometimes it can feel like top leadership is an exclusively male club, only accessible to those already highly networked via family and private schooling.

Stepping Up debunks the notion of what a typical leader should look like, or where they are from Leadership is an option for anyone with leadership ambition. Forget climbing the corporate ladder, nowadays success is more about criss-crossingacross multiple roles and companies, and possessing a continuous learning appetite for new opportunities and welcoming new responsibilities.

Follow the practical five point framework on how to step up and get to the top:

1.Vision - How to set out a clear and compelling vision of the future of the organization
2.Votes - How to create networks of followership, and alliances of equals, so that others rise with you and shore up a consensus/buy-in to your vision
3.Victories - How to establish a track record of wins with your teams to demonstrate success
4.Values - How to be authentic, how to bring out your key talents and strengths for benefit of all
5.Velocity - How to bring energy to every situation, and how to energize and enthuse those around you

"Writing and Difference" is widely perceived to be an excellent starting place for those new to Derrida and this "Reader's Guide" is the perfect accompaniment to the study of one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th Century."Writing and Difference" is one of Jacques Derrida's most widely read and studied books. In a collection of essays that engage with literature, history, poetry, dramaturgy, psychoanalysis, ethnology and structuralism, Derrida demonstrates how philosophy and literature might be read, and revolutionises our understanding of writing, difference and life itself.This introduction is the ideal companion to an unprecedented and influential group of texts. Sarah Wood reengages with the original French text and offers guidance on: philosophical and historical context; key themes; reading the text; reception and influence; and, further reading."Continuum Reader's Guides" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to key texts in literature and philosophy. Each book explores the themes, context, criticism and influence of key works, providing a practical introduction to close reading, guiding students towards a thorough understanding of the text. They provide an essential, up-to-date resource, ideal for undergraduate students.

In four short stories, fusions of fiction, biography, autobiography and poetry, Ali Smith pays tribute to the sources, the people and the places which produce and nurture life and art.

The first full survey of crucial witnesses to the reception of Piers Plowman. The fifty-plus surviving manuscripts of William Langland's Piers Plowman cast important light on the early public life of this central Middle English work, but they have been relatively neglected by scholarship. This first full study of the subject examines the textual variants, marginal rubrics and companion texts in the manuscripts. It illuminates a reception quite distinct from the reformist poems written by Langland's imitators in "the Piers Plowman tradition". It reveals how the earliest scribes devised various traditional forms of presentation that proved remarkably durable in the poem's subsequent reception, even surviving into the age of print. Exploring Piers Plowman's appearances in the manuscripts, paired unexpectedly with such genres as romance, hagiography and travel literature, the book demonstrates the surprisingly affective responses of medieval readers to the represented lives of the narrator Will and the title figure Piers the Plowman. At the same time, it shows that the evidence for individual scribal agendas in particular copies is more ambiguous than often assumed, with each book reflecting the activities of an unknown number of hands and an uncertain mixture of design and accident. By drawing on evidence from textual scholarship as well as codicological and literary approaches, the author offers fresh insight into Piers Plowman's place in literary history and proposes new ways of understanding the late medieval manuscript as a multi-layered, collaborative product. Sarah Wood is Associate Professor of Medieval English Literature at the University of Warwick

Case Studies in Couple and Family Therapy is one of the first casebooks to have been written from the perspective of the early career therapist and demonstrates how key issues in therapy occur for both clients and supervisees. The book brings together chapters from trainee therapists alongside expert commentary from the editors who have extensive experience in supervising new therapists. Covering a range of self-of-the-therapist issues, these case studies navigate the complexities of presenting problems, multiple systems involvement, the complication of past traumas, and working in a medical environment, all of which beginning therapists are often unprepared to face. The editors provide introductions to each case study, as well as clinical suggestions and topics for discussion in supervision. Foregrounding the issues and challenges of the therapist-in-training, Case Studies in Couple and Family Therapy is a valuable resource to developing couple and family therapists, as well as supervisors and educators in the field.

Case Studies in Couple and Family Therapy is one of the first casebooks to have been written from the perspective of the early career therapist and demonstrates how key issues in therapy occur for both clients and supervisees. The book brings together chapters from trainee therapists alongside expert commentary from the editors who have extensive experience in supervising new therapists. Covering a range of self-of-the-therapist issues, these case studies navigate the complexities of presenting problems, multiple systems involvement, the complication of past traumas, and working in a medical environment, all of which beginning therapists are often unprepared to face. The editors provide introductions to each case study, as well as clinical suggestions and topics for discussion in supervision. Foregrounding the issues and challenges of the therapist-in-training, Case Studies in Couple and Family Therapy is a valuable resource to developing couple and family therapists, as well as supervisors and educators in the field.

Conscience and the Composition of Piers Plowman provides a detailed account of one of the central personified figures in William Langland's Piers Plowman. Previous critical accounts of Conscience either focus on discussions of the faculty conscience in scholastic discourse, or eschew personification allegory as a useful category in order to argue for the figure's development or education as a character during the poem. But Conscience only appears to develop as he is re-presented, in the course of Piers Plowman, within a series of different literary modes. And he changes not only during the composition of the various episodes in different modes that make up the single version, but also during the composition of the poem as a series of three different versions. The versions of Piers Plowman form, this book argues, a single continuous narrative or argument, in which revisions to Conscience's role in one version are predicated upon his cumulative 'experiences' in the earlier versions. Drawing on a variety of materials in both Middle English and Latin, Sarah Wood illustrates the wide range of contemporary discourses Langland employed as he composed Conscience in the three versions of the poem. By showing how Langland transformed Conscience as he composed the A, B and C texts, Conscience and the Composition of Piers Plowman offers a new approach to reading the serial versions of the poem. While the versions of Piers Plowman have customarily been presented and read in parallel-text formats, Wood shows that Langland's revisions are newly comprehensible if the three versions are read in sequence.

With its jagged, volcanic peaks; sands of gold, black and silver; palm-trimmed Pacific and Caribbean coastlines; tufted fields of coffee; dense jungles, snow-capped mountains and idyllic islands; numerous indigenous cultures and exciting buzzing cities, Colombia is 'ten countries in one': a diverse and little-explored succession of eye-popping geological highlights on one of Latin America's most varied terrains. Now in its third edition Bradt's Colombia enchants wildlife fanatics and provides plenty of first-hand insight into striking colonial cities, rainforests, beaches, historic villages and secret gems.

This is an exploration of the possibilities of letting go of our inner desire for control. Without Mastery constantly engages the pleasure, rigour and strangeness of reading, invoking the forcefulness of the Weird Sisters, Plato's Lady Necessity and assorted literary animals, angels, ghosts and children to explore the inner workings of our desire for mastery, and especially the omnipotence of thoughts. For Sarah Wood the thought of Derrida, Freud, Cixous, Plato and others is a kind of dramatic interaction, a message to be received emotionally and responded to inventively in writing that is both critical and creative. The destructiveness of masterful thinking has brought the planet into environmental crisis and continues to deny the facts. Reading, this book makes clear, teaches us to engage with the unthinkable. It provides a challenge and an alternative to 'masterful' or technical approaches to theory. It demonstrates that writing and power can work productively together. It draws on the power of poetry and fiction to help us think and puts this to work in the book's own practice of creative critical writing. It presents original new readings of canonical literary writers.

A trip around the world, played out to the most eclectic soundtrack, discovering hidden musical gems along the way. From mosh pits to cabarets, Berlin's beatnik band haunts to Korea's peppy k-pop clubs, from visiting the infamous Dollywood, to tracing Freddie Mercury's childhood in Zanzibar, The 50 Greatest Musical Places of the World has something for music fans of all genres. Discover the places where iconic songs were written, groups were formed, music legends were born and extraordinary talent is celebrated.