Most Popular Books by John May

In 1577, John Dee, a scientist who served as an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, proposed to her the creation of colonies in the New World. Neither Elizabeth nor Walter Raleigh imagined the task would be so difficult or take more than 30 years. The effort started with an exploration of the coast of today''s North Carolina and the settlement of a colony on Roanoke Island in 1585. This ended tragically and became known as The Lost Colony, its fate a mystery to this day. James I resumed the effort with the founding of Jamestown in 1607 on an island in the James River in today''s Virginia. This book relates the histories of the Roanoke and Jamestown colonies to enable a full understanding of the founding of English America. Important events in America''s beginnings, including the wreck of the Sea Venture (which inspired William Shakespeare''s The Tempest), the Algonquin chief Powhatan''s plans to make the newcomers useful to him, and the relationship between Pocahontas and English Captain John Smith are highlighted.

What’s the biggest problem most entrepreneurs face? Raising money: Without cash, you can’t get a business off the ground or keep it running. However, many entrepreneurs have a problem. On one hand, the traditional sources of financing—family, friends, personal savings, the local bank—are often inadequate. On the other, the venture capitalists who have played such an important role in the high-tech industry are interested only in investing much higher sums than most entrepreneurs need. Enter angels: a new type of investor looking to invest between $100,000 and $1,000,000 in a company. There are about three million angel investors, and there’s a huge market of entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs who want to learn how to attract angels’ interest—and their money. John May and Cal Simmons are at the forefront of this trend. Not only do they have years of experience in advising, managing, and investing in early-stage companies, they are also the originators of The Dinner Club, a Washington, D.C.–based group of successful businesspeople who hear pitches by entrepreneurs seeking funding and then decide whether to invest their own or the club’s money in those entrepreneurial ideas. Every Business Needs an Angel offers a fly-on-the-wall look at how angel investors evaluate new entrepreneurial ideas, and provides a wealth of practical advice and insight for the countless entrepreneurs seeking help in their quest to find investors for their businesses. The book covers all phases of the process of finding angels and persuading them to invest, drawing on many examples of real-world companies that have pitched angels successfully—as well as unsuccessfully. These entrepreneurs are in a broad range of industries—from high-technology companies to more traditional businesses as diverse as breweries and concierge services—some quite well-known, like Nantucket Nectars and Preview Travel, whose founders had their own guardian angels. For entrepreneurs who need money and advice on how to find it, the authors offer enormous insight into this new breed of investor. As the title says, every business needs an angel; this book tells you how to find one.

Presents a fictionalized account of a possible love affair between Edgar Poe and the poet Fanny Osgood.

Examines accidents and risk, the nature of chance and the oppressive weight of secrecy, official lies, and the true cost of atomic energy.

Includes material on the Antarctic Treaty.

"This popular and successful text was originally written for a one-semester course in linear algebra at the sophomore undergraduate level. Students at this level generally have had little contact with complex numbers or abstract mathematics, so the book deals almost exclusively with real finite dimensional vector spaces, but in a setting and formulation that permit easy generalization to abstract vector spaces. The goal of the first two editions was the principal axis theorem for real symmetric linear transformation. The principal axis theorem becomes the first of two goals for this new edition, which follows a straight path to its solution."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This is a story about a young woman who is victimized by a brutal incident of government-sponsored terrorism. She evolves into a highly professional rebel fighter and executioner, reminiscent of the beauty and deadly efficiency of “La Coralia”, the Coral serpent native to her homeland of “San Andres”—a Central American country undergoing the violent political and social changes so familiar to any dozens of similar Latin American countries. Her life merges with that of an American, James Weston, traveling to her country on a mission for his U.S. Company. These two human beings, brought together by the most unlikely of circumstances, are forced to survive rapidly escalating troubles. They find themselves wanted by local authorities and pursued by Cuban and East German mercenaries. They escape through the cities, lakes, and mountains of San Andres on their way to a remote hideout. Their adventure becomes a whirlpool of ever escalating terror. The conclusion of their journey transforms their lives and their future.

This book is a blackjack nuclear bomb. There is information in it that has never appeared anywhere except in the secret world inhabited by a handful of elite professional blackjack players. Learn real strategies that not only the casinos don''t want you to know, but that many of the greatest blackjack players would prefer to keep all to themselves.

A richly imagined debut novel, Poe & Fanny brings New York''s giddy pre-Civil War social scene into brilliant focus as it explores the tragic life and loves of one of America''s great literary figures.