What can you do when database performance doesn't meet expectations? Before you turn to expensive hardware upgrades to solve the problem, reach for this book. Refactoring SQL Applications provides a set of tested options for making code modifications to dramatically improve the way your database app[...]

Happiness today is not just a possibility or an option but a requirement and a duty. To fail to be happy is to fail utterly. Happiness has become a religion - one whose smiley-faced god looks down in rebuke upon everyone who hasn't yet attained the blessed state of perpetual euphoria. How has a libe[...]

Fascism, communism, genocide, slavery, racism, and imperialism - the West has no shortage of reasons for guilt. And, indeed, since the Holocaust and the end of World War II, Europeans in particular have been consumed by remorse. But Pascal Bruckner argues that guilt has now gone too far. It has beco[...]

Pascal Bruckner is a very well known French philosopher who writes forcefully argued essays on topical themes. In this book Bruckner sets out to attack what he calls 'ecological catastrophism' D the idea that, as a result of climate change, we're facing a new kind of apocalypse.[...]

A child prodigy, Pascal made essential additions to Descartes' work at the age of 16. By the age of 19, he had invented the world's first mechanical calculator. But despite his immense contributions to modern science, it is Pascal's wager with God that set him apart as a man fully engaged with both [...]

Armed with the results of critical historical research and a mind free from the shackles of dogma, Paul Tobin dissects the Bible and the historical Jesus in a way only a sceptic can. Tobin shows the bible, with its numerous contradictions, historical errors and scientific inaccuracies, cannot be con[...]

The Weapon Minus Program has been reopened, and Captain America has become unhinged thanks to the mad machinations of the twisted Dr. Mindbubble Jet Black, daughter of criminal mastermind Arnim Zola, allies with the Falcon - but when the mysterious and powerful Iron Nail begins assassinating the he[...]

This is a fresh retelling of the classic mischievous puppet with a good heart-in a graphic chapter book format for young readers. When a woodcutter discovers a piece of wood that speaks, he is quick to sell it to a poor puppet-maker named Gepetto. And Pinocchio, the walking, talking, lying puppet co[...]

An exquisitely illustrated celebration of this influential style that is now at the forefront of interior design. Vintage Industrial covers the period from 1900 to 1950, which produced the raw, functional aesthetic that has become a cornerstone of modern design. The advent of the second industrial r[...]

In a quiet seaside town near Genoa, experts are gathering for a linguistics conference. One speaker, Philipp Perlmann is recently widowed and, struggling to contend with his grief, is unable to complete his keynote address. As the hour approaches, an increasingly desperate Perlmann decides to plagia[...]