James Fowler – författare

''I think this might be the best [money] you could spend on a language course. It is aimed at beginner to intermediate students and... is comprehensive in content and moves along in such a way as to not ''panic'' the student.'' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Praise for Teach Yourself Completes

Complete French from Teach Yourself is the bestselling course designed for the self-learner. Now updated with new content, this still retains all the core elements of the same series with over 1000+ 5* reviews that language learners have come to rely upon for over 85 years.

What You''re Getting Inside:

You might find that reading for pleasure with our Olly Richards Short Stories series is a great place to keep momentum and pick up new vocabulary, or that you prefer a more bite-sized practice option with 50 French Coffee Breaks.

Why do organisations decline, and what happens when they do? Strategy and Managed Decline: London Transport 1948-87 is a historical case study looking at how London Transport, a world beater in 1948, declined from being an international exemplar to dilapidation in 30 years.

Strategy and Managed Decline considers the inheritance left by the founders of London Transport and subjects their legacy to a strategic and political audit. In three sections, the book examines archival data from the Transport for London (TfL) Archive covering the car revolution, strategic political clashes and the performance of the chairmen to challenge existing theory and extant histories. It offers hypotheses situated in management, leadership, politics and strategy which explain the decades of deterioration followed by a dramatic revival in the late 1980s.

Examining the turbulent politics of the long conflict between London Transport, municipal and national government in detail, Strategy and Managed Decline: London Transport 1948-87 offers novel interpretations of events by objectively analysing the strategic stories that politics created about London’s transport. It concludes by asking whether a shift in managerial strategy away from maximising utility and towards cost minimisation caused, or was just coincident with, resurgence and explores what lessons there are for TfL today.

Why do organisations decline, and what happens when they do? Strategy and Managed Decline: London Transport 1948-87 is a historical case study looking at how London Transport, a world beater in 1948, declined from being an international exemplar to dilapidation in 30 years.

Strategy and Managed Decline considers the inheritance left by the founders of London Transport and subjects their legacy to a strategic and political audit. In three sections, the book examines archival data from the Transport for London (TfL) Archive covering the car revolution, strategic political clashes and the performance of the chairmen to challenge existing theory and extant histories. It offers hypotheses situated in management, leadership, politics and strategy which explain the decades of deterioration followed by a dramatic revival in the late 1980s.

Examining the turbulent politics of the long conflict between London Transport, municipal and national government in detail, Strategy and Managed Decline: London Transport 1948-87 offers novel interpretations of events by objectively analysing the strategic stories that politics created about London’s transport. It concludes by asking whether a shift in managerial strategy away from maximising utility and towards cost minimisation caused, or was just coincident with, resurgence and explores what lessons there are for TfL today.

In The Pain Trader, James Fowler creates timeless narratives around the people, history, and landmarks of rural America. Divided into “Hereabouts” (the Ozark region) and “Thereabouts” (a broader area), his 48 poems find meaning and beauty in the seemingly ordinary—from cheap roadside attractions ("IQ Zoo") to an impromptu chivaree. (“Ozark Yarn”), to local resentment of “Mr. [Woodrow] Wilson’s war” (“Over Here”), to a set of “Mountain Airs” documenting a long and mostly uneventful marriage.

The Pain Trader opens with pioneers settling in the Ozarks, aware of the Indian cultures and the (Louisiana) Purchase. Fowler’s quiet, often wry, voice guides readers through Ozark perspectives on the Civil War, the Sultana disaster (“Aftermath”), saltpeter mining (“Below, Above”), and sundowner laws (“Sundown”). Eureka Springs gets an especially memorable treatment in “Eureka,” as a place in which layers of past are still accessible under the current wash of artist colonies and Bible belters.

From the titular poem, “The Pain Trader,” readers feel the ordinary become something to be revered. They watch a peddlar/artist listening to his customers as he carves: “All this while a shape emerges,/carved, etched: creaturely perhaps;/blossoming; stark, like crystals./A thing of power rough hewn.” These lines could describe Fowler’s poetry, “a thing of power” which can make readers feel welcome in the rolling, cavernous hills of the Ozarks: “Setting shrewdness/ aside,” readers may find themselves “surprised what value/ something neither finery nor tool/ can have.”

In the words of Phil Howerton, editor of the 2019 Anthology of Ozark Literature:

Fowler unfolds a many-sided verbal diorama of the history and culture of Arkansas and the South. Observer and participant, he combines wit, irony, acumen, empathy, and a sense of place to salvage the sacred and noble from even the most chaotic remnants of human recklessness. Fowler, like his protagonist in the title poem, absorbs regret, sorrow, guilt, and pain and translates it all into vigorous and vibrant art that humanizes the past and offers redemption.