Synopses & Reviews
Filled with hundreds of specific examples and organized into a coherent framework of practical concepts that can be applied by managers and entrepreneurs at all levels, Built to Last provides a master blueprint for building organizations that will prosper in the 21st century and beyond. In Good to Great, the most widely anticipated management book of the year, Jim Collins presents nothing less than a recipe book on how to make a good company great. Following the success of his international blockbuster Built to Last, where he and co-author Jerry Porras discovered the secrets of companies that were outstanding at their founding and then sustained greatness, Collins wondered what could be done for the company that is good or mediocre at best? He questioned whether there have been companies that started weak and finished strong, and if so, what can be said about these companies that might help managers turn a mediocre organization into a great one? So Collins and his research team undertook a massive five year study of every company that has made the Fortune 500 since the advent of that listing in 1965, and has crafted a book as practical and insightful as BUILT TO LAST. This exclusive deluxe box set brings together the two most important business books of the last decade from Jim Collins, the leader in modern business theory.
Synopsis
These unique and beautiful lyrics -- over two hundred of them -- were selected by Edna St. Vincent Millay herself and represent the major portion of her lifework.
Their musical perfection, emotional power, and superb, delicate workmanship have made Edna St. Vincent Millay one of America's great poets.
About the Author
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in 1892 in Rockland, Maine, the eldest of three daughters, and was encouraged by her mother to develop her talents for music and poetry. Her long poem "Renascence" won critical attention in an anthology contest in 1912 and secured for her a patron who enabled her to go to Vassar College.
After graduating in 1917 she lived in Greenwich Village in New York for a few years, acting, writing satirical pieces for journals (usually under a pseudonym), and continuing to work at her poetry. She traveled in Europe throughout 1921-22 as a "foreign correspondent" for Vanity Fair. Her collection A Few Figs from Thistles (1920) gained her a reputation for hedonistic wit and cynicism, but her other collections (including the earlier Renascence and Other Poems [1917]) are without exception more seriously passionate or reflective.
In 1923 she married Eugene Boissevain and -- after further travel -- embarked on a series of reading tours which helped to consolidate her nationwide renown. From 1925 onwards she lived at Steepletop, a farmstead in Austerlitz, New York, where her husband protected her from all responsibilities except her creative work. Often involved in feminist or political causes (including the Sacco-Vanzetti case of 1927), she turned to writing anti-fascist propaganda poetry in 1940 and further damaged a reputation already in decline. In her last years of her life she became more withdrawn and isolated, and her health, which had never been robust, became increasingly poor.
She died in 1950.