Christopher Brown - Böcker

"Futurist as provocateur! The world is sheer batshit genius ...a truly hallucinatorily envisioned environment."-William Gibson, New York Times bestselling and award-winning author "Timely, dark, and ultimately hopeful: it might not 'make America great again,' but then again, it just might."-Cory Doctorow, New York Times bestselling and award winning author of Homeland Acclaimed short story writer and editor of the World Fantasy Award-nominee Three Messages and a Warning eerily envisions an American society unraveling and our borders closed off-from the other side-in this haunting and provocative novel that combines Max Barry's Jennifer Government, Philip K. Dick's classic Man in the High Castle, and China Mieville's The City & the City The United States of America is no more. Broken into warring territories, its center has become a wasteland DMZ known as "the Tropic of Kansas." Though this gaping geographic hole has no clear boundaries, everyone knows it's out there-that once-bountiful part of the heartland, broken by greed and exploitation, where neglect now breeds unrest.Two travelers appear in this arid American wilderness: Sig, the fugitive orphan of political dissidents, and his foster sister Tania, a government investigator whose search for Sig leads her into her own past-and towards an unexpected future. Sig promised those he loves that he would make it to the revolutionary redoubt of occupied New Orleans. But first he must survive the wild edgelands of a barren mid-America policed by citizen militias and autonomous drones, where one wrong move can mean capture ...or death. One step behind, undercover in the underground, is Tania. Her infiltration of clandestine networks made of old technology and new politics soon transforms her into the hunted one, and gives her a shot at being the agent of real change-if she is willing to give up the explosive government secrets she has sworn to protect. As brother and sister traverse these vast and dangerous badlands, their paths will eventually intersect on the front lines of a revolution whose fuse they are about to light.

BECOME THE ENVY OF YOUR INDUSTRY WITH A CUSTOMER-CENTRIC CULTURE

Winner of Marketing Book of the Year 2015 by Marketing and Sales Books

For the first time, this groundbreaking guide unlocksthe secrets used by Amazon, Virgin, Apple, Starbucks, and salesforce.com. It creates a guide for success based on three years of scientific study drawing insights from more than 100 businesses to identify seven key factors. When implemented together these factors have been proven to drive superior business performance. Customer culture isas fundamental to business performance as breathing is to living. It is the life force of your business. This applies no matter what your industry sector.

And with the evidence-based methods in this book,you can replicate their success in your business!

The Customer Culture Imperative reveals the keydisciplines of customer culture that consistently predict enhanced, sustainable business results. Each one is linked to a particular strategy and drives predictable and measurable improvements in one or more business performance factors--from innovation and customer satisfaction to growth in sales and profits to higher rates of new-product success. It gives you the tools to:

Inspire everyone in the company to embrace a customer-centric cultureUnify efforts across units by creating a "common language" for changeCollect and measure data from your efforts and benchmark your progressMake change long term so you leave a legacy of an enduring business

Creating a customer-centric company takes more than making an investment in the customer service department and systems. It's about building a culture in which the customer is at the heart of all decisions made within every function and unit. What's best for the customer is what's best for business. Make that a part of the DNA of your organization, and you will lead your company tounprecedented success. Guaranteed.

PRAISE FOR THE CUSTOMER CULTURE IMPERATIVE

"Linden and Chris Brown have written the best book on what it takes to build a genuine customer culture in an organization. Their framework and their stories will inspire you to take the next step." -- Philip Kotler, S. C. Johnson Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University

"A customer-focused culture is a powerful competitive advantage. This book will show you how todiagnose the level of a customer culture and then make the leadership moves to raise this level." -- George Day, Geoffrey T. Boisi Professor of Marketing and Co-Director of the Mack Institute for Innovation Management, Wharton, University of Pennsylvania

"Creating unique customer engagements is an essential ingredient of the 'Starbucks Experience.'Crafting an authentic culture is essential to insuring that all employees consistently execute and innovate the highest quality customer experience. Linden and Chris provide a unique framework and road map to build this culture within large and small organizations." -- Arthur Rubinfeld, chief creative officer and president,Global Innovation and Evolution Fresh Retail, Starbucks

"Smart phones, smart networks, and personalized apps are changing the way people live and work--giving control to an emerging class of globally connected customers that have the power to shift markets. Linden and Chris Brown’s work will help you understand what is happening and what it means to your business.” -- David Thodey, Chief Executive Officer, Telstra

"Over the 40+ years of my life in business I have always known that a customer culture is the key to success. How to achieve it has been a continuous search and challenge. This book is the clearest roadmap I have read to truly achieve a customer culture and all the benefits it brings.” -- John Stanhope, Chairman, Australia Post

"Some books (alas, very rare) summarise well-researched management theory, combined with current best practice, to deliver powerful and pragmatic guidelines for growing shareholder value. This is one such book. Read it. Enjoy it. It is a powerful contribution to best practice.” -- Malcolm MacDonald, Emeritus Professor, Cranfield University School of Management

"Smart phones, smart networks, and personalized apps are changing the way people live and work,giving control to an emerging class of globally connected customers that have the power to shift markets. Linden and Chris Brown’s work will help you understand what is happening and what it means to your business.”--David Thodey, Chief Executive Officer, Telstra

"Over the 40+ years of my life in business I have always known that a customer culture is the key to success. How to achieve it has been a continuous search and challenge. This book is the clearest roadmap I have read to truly achieve a customer culture and all the benefits it brings.”--John Stanhope, Chairman, Australia Post

"Some books, alas very rare, summarise well-researched management theory, combined with current best practice, to deliver powerful and pragmatic guidelines for growing shareholder value. This is one such book. Read it. Enjoy it. It is a powerful contribution to best practice.”--Malcolm MacDonald, Emeritus Professor,Cranfield University School of Management

"This easy to read book provides essential and unique guidance for driving the critical relationship between customer centricity and sustained organisational performance."-—Dr Ramzi Fayed, Executive Dean, Australian Graduate School of Leadership

Contemporary Practice in Studio Art Therapy discovers where studio practice stands in the profession today and reflects on how changing social, political, and economic contexts have influenced its ethos and development. This is the first UK volume devoted to studio art therapy, and the writers explore what is meant by a studio approach and how they are adapting art-based practices in radical new ways and settings. It comprises three parts – Part I: Frames of reference explores how particular social, cultural, and political contexts have led to the discourses within practice; Part II: Models of practice gives accounts of current studio art therapy practice, describing rationale for working methods and providing a resource for practitioners; Part III: Curating, exhibiting and archiving considers how the display and disposal of artworks, particularly relevant to studio approaches, may be thought about and implemented. The book includes chapters from North American authors who illustrate a trajectory of practice that has the potential to point to future developments. The book will be essential reading for practitioners and students who are interested in taking a fresh perspective on art therapy and will be encouraged by new ways of thinking about the studio approach in today’s changing world.

Contemporary Practice in Studio Art Therapy discovers where studio practice stands in the profession today and reflects on how changing social, political, and economic contexts have influenced its ethos and development. This is the first UK volume devoted to studio art therapy, and the writers explore what is meant by a studio approach and how they are adapting art-based practices in radical new ways and settings. It comprises three parts – Part I: Frames of reference explores how particular social, cultural, and political contexts have led to the discourses within practice; Part II: Models of practice gives accounts of current studio art therapy practice, describing rationale for working methods and providing a resource for practitioners; Part III: Curating, exhibiting and archiving considers how the display and disposal of artworks, particularly relevant to studio approaches, may be thought about and implemented. The book includes chapters from North American authors who illustrate a trajectory of practice that has the potential to point to future developments. The book will be essential reading for practitioners and students who are interested in taking a fresh perspective on art therapy and will be encouraged by new ways of thinking about the studio approach in today’s changing world.

Assessment in Art Therapy gives a unique insight into the diverse contemporary practices that constitute assessment in art therapy, providing an overview of the different approaches employed in Britain and the USA today. This professional handbook comprises three parts. 'Sitting Beside' explores the discursive and the relational in art therapy assessments with adults and children in different settings. 'Snapshots from the Field' presents a series of short, practice-based reports which describe art therapists working in private practice, secure settings and community mental health centres. 'A More Distant Calculation' consists of chapters that describe the development and use of different kinds of art-based assessment procedures developed on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as different kinds of research about art therapy assessment.Both students and practitioners alike will benefit from the wealth of experience presented in this book, which demonstrates how art therapists think about assessment; the difficulties that arise in art therapy assessment; and the importance of developing the theory and practice of art therapy assessment, whilst taking into account the changing demands of systems and institutions.

First Published in 1988. The series Advances in Computer Vision has the goal of presenting current approaches to basic problems that arise in the construction of a computer vision system, written by leading researchers and practitioners in the field. In these volumes, computer vision means computer programs analyzing visual input (like a television image of a three-dimensional scene) and deriving from the image some description of the scene that is helpful to further reasoning or action concerning the scene.

First published in 1988. The series Advances in Computer Vision has the goal of presenting current approaches to basic problems that arise in the construction of a computer vision system, written by leading researchers and practitioners in the field. The first two volumes in the series comprise seven chapters, which together cover much of the scope of computer vision. This is Volume I.

In Race and the Senses, Sachi Sekimoto and Christopher Brown explore the sensorial and phenomenological materiality of race as it is felt and sensed by the racialized subjects. Situating the lived body as an active, affective, and sensing participant in racialized realities, they argue that race is not simply marked on our bodies, but rather felt and registered through our senses. They illuminate the sensorial landscape of racialized world by combining the scholarship in sensory studies, phenomenology, and intercultural communication. Each chapter elaborates on the felt bodily sensations of race, racism, and racialization that illuminate how somatic labor plays a significant role in the construction of racialized relations of sensing. Their thought-provoking theorizing about the relationship between race and the senses include race as a sensory assemblage, the phenomenology of the racialized face and tongue, kinesthetic feelings of blackness, as well as the possibility of cross-racial empathy. Race is not merely socially constructed, but multisensorially assembled, engaged, and experienced. Grounded in the authors’ experiences, one as a Japanese woman living in the USA, and the other as an African American man from Chicago, Race and the Senses is a book about how we feel the racialized world into being.

Assessment in Art Therapy gives a unique insight into the diverse contemporary practices that constitute assessment in art therapy, providing an overview of the different approaches employed in Britain and the USA today.This professional handbook comprises three parts. 'Sitting Beside' explores the discursive and the relational in art therapy assessments with adults and children in different settings. 'Snapshots from the Field' presents a series of short, practice-based reports which describe art therapists working in private practice, secure settings and community mental health centres. 'A More Distant Calculation' consists of chapters that describe the development and use of different kinds of art-based assessment procedures developed on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as different kinds of research about art therapy assessment. This classic edition also includes a new preface by the editors.Both students and practitioners alike will benefit from the wealth of experience presented in this book, which demonstrates how art therapists think about assessment; the difficulties that arise in art therapy assessment; and the importance of developing the theory and practice of art therapy assessment, whilst taking into account the changing demands of systems and institutions.

Assessment in Art Therapy gives a unique insight into the diverse contemporary practices that constitute assessment in art therapy, providing an overview of the different approaches employed in Britain and the USA today.This professional handbook comprises three parts. 'Sitting Beside' explores the discursive and the relational in art therapy assessments with adults and children in different settings. 'Snapshots from the Field' presents a series of short, practice-based reports which describe art therapists working in private practice, secure settings and community mental health centres. 'A More Distant Calculation' consists of chapters that describe the development and use of different kinds of art-based assessment procedures developed on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as different kinds of research about art therapy assessment. This classic edition also includes a new preface by the editors.Both students and practitioners alike will benefit from the wealth of experience presented in this book, which demonstrates how art therapists think about assessment; the difficulties that arise in art therapy assessment; and the importance of developing the theory and practice of art therapy assessment, whilst taking into account the changing demands of systems and institutions.

First Published in 1988. The series Advances in Computer Vision has the goal of presenting current approaches to basic problems that arise in the construction of a computer vision system, written by leading researchers and practitioners in the field. In these volumes, computer vision means computer programs analyzing visual input (like a television image of a three-dimensional scene) and deriving from the image some description of the scene that is helpful to further reasoning or action concerning the scene.

In Race and the Senses, Sachi Sekimoto and Christopher Brown explore the sensorial and phenomenological materiality of race as it is felt and sensed by the racialized subjects. Situating the lived body as an active, affective, and sensing participant in racialized realities, they argue that race is not simply marked on our bodies, but rather felt and registered through our senses. They illuminate the sensorial landscape of racialized world by combining the scholarship in sensory studies, phenomenology, and intercultural communication. Each chapter elaborates on the felt bodily sensations of race, racism, and racialization that illuminate how somatic labor plays a significant role in the construction of racialized relations of sensing. Their thought-provoking theorizing about the relationship between race and the senses include race as a sensory assemblage, the phenomenology of the racialized face and tongue, kinesthetic feelings of blackness, as well as the possibility of cross-racial empathy. Race is not merely socially constructed, but multisensorially assembled, engaged, and experienced. Grounded in the authors’ experiences, one as a Japanese woman living in the USA, and the other as an African American man from Chicago, Race and the Senses is a book about how we feel the racialized world into being.