Most Popular Books by Paul HOFFMAN

"By the turn of the century, Santos-Dumont had moved to Paris. Soon, the dashing and impeccably dressed aeronaut was barhopping around the city in a one-man dirigible he invented, circling above crowds and crashing into rooftops. Eventually, he would join the world-wide competition to build the first true airplane. Once he succeeded, the press hailed him as the man who had conquered the air. (Because the Wright brothers worked in near secrecy, word of their first flights had not widely reached Europe when Santos-Dumon took to the skies.) His picture appeared on cigar boxes and dinner plates and he dined regularly with the Cartiers, the Rothschilds, and the Roosevelts, hosting "aerial dinners" in which his guests ate at an elevated table so they could imagine how it felt to be above the world." "But all would change after Santos-Dumont witnessed the destructive capacity of flying machines in World War I."--BOOK JACKET.

"A funny, marvelously readable portrait of one of the most brilliant and eccentric men in history." --The Seattle Times Paul Erdos was an amazing and prolific mathematician whose life as a world-wandering numerical nomad was legendary. He published almost 1500 scholarly papers before his death in 1996, and he probably thought more about math problems than anyone in history. Like a traveling salesman offering his thoughts as wares, Erdos would show up on the doorstep of one mathematician or another and announce, "My brain is open." After working through a problem, he''d move on to the next place, the next solution. Hoffman''s book, like Sylvia Nasar''s biography of John Nash, A Beautiful Mind, reveals a genius''s life that transcended the merely quirky. But Erdos''s brand of madness was joyful, unlike Nash''s despairing schizophrenia. Erdos never tried to dilute his obsessive passion for numbers with ordinary emotional interactions, thus avoiding hurting the people around him, as Nash did. Oliver Sacks writes of Erdos: "A mathematical genius of the first order, Paul Erdos was totally obsessed with his subject--he thought and wrote mathematics for nineteen hours a day until the day he died. He traveled constantly, living out of a plastic bag, and had no interest in food, sex, companionship, art--all that is usually indispensable to a human life." The Man Who Loved Only Numbers is easy to love, despite his strangeness. It''s hard not to have affection for someone who referred to children as "epsilons," from the Greek letter used to represent small quantities in mathematics; a man whose epitaph for himself read, "Finally I am becoming stupider no more"; and whose only really necessary tool to do his work was a quiet and open mind. Hoffman, who followed and spoke with Erdos over the last 10 years of his life, introduces us to an undeniably odd, yet pure and joyful, man who loved numbers more than he loved God--whom he referred to as SF, for Supreme Fascist. He was often misunderstood, and he certainly annoyed people sometimes, but Paul Erdos is no doubt missed. --Therese Littleton

The epic story of Thomas Cale—introduced so memorably in The Left Hand of God—continues as the Redeemers use his prodigious gifts to further their sacred goal: the extinction of humankind and the end of the world... To the warrior-monks known as the Redeemers, “the last four things” represent the culmination of a faithful life. Death. Judgment. Heaven. Hell. The last four things represent eternal bliss—or endless destruction, permanent chaos, and infinite pain. Perhaps nowhere are the competing ideas of heaven and hell exhibited more clearly than in the dark and tormented soul of Thomas Cale. Betrayed by the girl he loves but still marked by a child’s innocence, possessed of a remarkable aptitude for violence but capable of extreme tenderness, Cale will lead the Redeemers into a battle for nothing less than the fate of the human race. And though his broken heart foretells the bloody trail he will leave in pursuit of a personal peace he can never achieve, a glimmer of hope remains—the question even Cale can’t answer: When it comes time to decide the fate of the world, to ensure the extermination of humankind or spare it, what will he choose? To express God’s will on the edge of his sword, or to forgive his fellow man—and himself?

"Writers like Hoffman are too rare. This wonderful book gripped me from the first chapter and dropped me days later, dazed and grinning to myself." -Conn Iggulden, New York Times bestselling author of The Dangerous Book for Boys Raised from early childhood in the Redeemer Sanctuary, the stronghold of a secretive sect of warrior monks, Thomas Cale has known only deprivation, punishment, and grueling training. When he escsapes to the outside world, Cale learns that his embittered heart is still capable of loving- and breaking. But the Redeemers won''t accept the defection of their prized pupil without a fight...

SEEN FROM A DISTANCE is the story of Cusack, an Iraq war veteran now working for a private security firm. Alienated from his past and haunted by it, too, he lives determinedly in the here and now. His assignment is surveillance of an elderly professor, W.S. Tyler, whose dead son-in-law had ties to a shadowy Senegalese rebel army, accused by the U.S. government of being a terrorist organization. Cusack''s preferred method of surveillance - the detached technology of camera and microphone is abruptly abandoned in favor of a role which puts him in Tyler''s classroom and soon thereafter in a complicated relationship with his family. Cusack''s boss, increasingly obsessed with Tyler, drags Cusack into his hidden agenda where deadly unforeseen events occur in rapid succession and the situation spins rapidly out of control. In the end, Cusack is confronted with choices that will change his future as radically as his earlier choices fixed his past. Seen From A Distance can be read as a character study, or a dramatic adventure or considered for its parallels to political events of the recent past. At every level, it is a terrific read.

In the days before personal computers, BASIC was the easy programming language to learn, and serious programmers learned FORTRAN or COBOL to do “real work.” Today, many people have discovered that Perl is both a great beginning programming language and one that enables them to write powerful programs with little effort. If you’re interested in discovering how to program (or how others program), Perl For Dummies, 4th Edition, is for you. If you already know something about programming (but not about Perl), this book is also for you. If you’re already an expert programmer, you’re still welcome to read this book; you can just skip the basic stuff (you never know what kind of new tips and tricks you’ll pick up). This reference guide shows you how to use Perl under many different operating systems, such as UNIX, many flavors of Windows (Windows 95/98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows Me, and Windows XP), and Macintosh OS 9 and OS X; in fact, Perl runs on many more operating systems than these. Here''s a sampling of what Perl For Dummies, 4th Edition, has to offer: Installing Perl on various platforms Nailing down the basics of building Perl programs Working with text and numbers Constructing lists and working with them Creating conditionals and loops Delving into more advanced features such as operators and functions Reading and writing files and directories Using subroutines for modularity Demystifying Web server programs Creating your own Internet clients The Perl programming language enables you to write fully working computer programs with just a few steps. It’s particularly good at common programming tasks, such as reading and writing text files, but it also excels at reducing the work that programmers have to do. Perl For Dummies, 4th Edition, shows you how to do all of that and how to modify programs to your heart’s content. After all, one of the common phrases in the world of Perl programmers is, “There''s more than one way to do it.”

We once believed that as a majority culture in North America everyone knew all there was to know about a church and its surroundings. This certainly is no longer true in a post-Christian North American culture. Most people in our towns and cities, in the neighborhoods and surrounding countryside of our church properties are completely mystified about who we are, what we do, and who is welcome-or not. Hoffman''s inviting prose, which includes many practical proposals, will expand your notions of who hospitality ministers are and why they matter. His own compelling experience suggests that the rewards of our efforts to welcome the stranger will deeply enrich our congregational ministry and our relationships with one another and with God.

THE GRIPPING NEW ADVENTURE FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE LEFT HAND OF GOD SERIES America is on the brink of civil war. Only Thomas Cale can stop it . . . ________ Thomas Cale - the world''s most dangerous yet reluctant hero - has been running from his enemies. Tracked down moments before his execution, Cale is presented with a chance to escape. But it comes at a price: He must murder the American president. The father of modern democracy. The man fighting the south''s attempts to reinstate slavery. Accept, and he risks the fates of millions. Refuse, and he endangers his own life . . . ________ Praise for Paul Hoffman: ''Fiction on a grand and ambitious scale'' Daily Telegraph ''Brooding and magnificent'' Eoin Colfer ''Exhilaratingly engaging writing'' Spectator ''Gripped me from the first chapter'' Conn Iggulden ''A riveting, powerful tale'' Publishers Weekly

In these wide-ranging essays Paul Hoffman argues that Descartes retains three Aristotelian doctrines: soul and body are related as form to matter; an agent''s action is the same as the patient''s passion; cognition is possible because things that exist in the world can exist in the soul in another way.

Now anyone can understand what the mathematical geniuses are thinking . . . . * How topologists figured out the way to turn a smokestack into a bowling ball -- and why. * How game theorists discovered that to elect the candidate of your choice you must sometimes vote for his opponent. * How computer theorists intend to create a robot that will think for itself -- and do all the housework. * How cryptographers have been laboring since 1822 to decipher a map that will lead to a buried treasure worth millions of dollars. Archimedes'' Revenge takes the reader on a guided tour of the world of contemporary mathematics and makes its infinite marvels comprehensible, relevant, and fun. "A breezy and lighthearted account of a number of topics in and around the periphery of mathematics . . . Mr. Hoffman approaches mathematics as a storyteller, and a good one." -- The New York Times Book Review "From the Paperback edition.

The definitive Internet-access guide for inexperienced and first-time computer owners. Historical and educational insight plus practical tips on use make this reference the total resource for Internet newcomers. Readers will learn the most important Internet buzz words and discover how to shop intelligently for Internet services and how to best take advantage of on-line time.

This is the final instalment in the epic Paul Hoffman trilogy following Cale and the Sanctuary of the Redeemers. This climatic ending will bring this narrative to a close, and finally the fate of the angel of death will be revealed.

Paul Hoffman, a former senior censor at the British Board of Film Classification, has written a compelling and captivating novel that challenges our ideas about censorship, prejudice and the fine line between art and exploitation.

“Looks at the twists and turns in the investigation, possible perpetrators . . . as well as some of the good that eventually came out of this tragedy” (Wauwatosa Patch). In 1925, the peaceful Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa found itself involved in mystery and horror. Eight-year-old Arthur ‘Buddy’ Schumacher Jr. was last seen by three of his friends after they hopped off a freight train they’d jumped to get a ride to a nearby swimming hole. For seven weeks, the community and state searched desperately to find the boy until his body was found just a mile from his house with his clothing torn and a handkerchief shoved down his throat. The police pursued several promising leads, but to no avail. Includes photos. “Tosa native Paul Hoffman reconstructs the case . . . and finds it more than cold . . . He conjures up a picture of a much different Wauwatosa than we know today.” —Shepherd Express “More than 85 years later, the murder of Buddy Schumacher remains unsolved. There were suspects at the time and their stories and the cases against them are included in Murder in Wauwatosa.” —OnMilwaukee

How to increase the value of your home and to rehabilitate investment property property for quick profit.

As a young man, Paul Hoffman was a brilliant chess player . . . until the pressures of competition drove him to the brink of madness. In King''s Gambit, he interweaves a gripping overview of the history of the game and an in-depth look at the state of modern chess into the story of his own attempt to get his game back up to master level -- without losing his mind. It''s also a father and son story, as Hoffman grapples with the bizarre legacy of his own dad, who haunts Hoffman''s game and life.

What makes expatriate workplaces challenging? Expatriate environments can be unpredictable, unclear, complex, and confusing. Navigating such an environment effectively can reveal unforeseen difficulties. By addressing these issues, the Author reveals useful insights. Coaching Reflections Within an Expatriate Context: A UAE Business Case to pursue Sustainable Growth provides the building blocks for efficiency and effectiveness in an expatriate environment. It is a practical workbook that focuses on Management Coaching and can apply to develop content and context to combat the vicissitudes of expatriate workplaces. The workbook includes several managerial frameworks that can be applied in conjunction with effective Business and Performance Coaching. Furthermore, the workbook includes an actual Business Case study to highlight key learnings to drive sustainable organizational growth. Two actual coaching cases conducted by the Author supplement the case study. The sixteen coaching sessions demonstrate how coaching can support effectiveness, personal development, and organizational performance in an expatriate setting. As a result, management coaching can provide structure and strategy for both personal and organizational development.

Free Netscape Communicator "Cheat Sheet" Inside! Use Netscape Communicator to Visit Web Sites, Access Newsgroups, and Download Files from FTP Sites The World Wide Web is the hottest place on the Internet. This book shows you how to use Netscape Communicator and its popular Navigator Web browser to find information, download files, send e-mail, read Usenet news, participate in online chats, build Web pages, and much more! Whether you''re a Mac or Windows user, you will find what you need with Netscape Communicator™ 4 For Dummies®. Ask for IDG Books'' …For Dummies® Books, the Fun and Easy Way to Find Out About Computers. Also look for IDG Books'' The Internet For Dummies®, 4th Edition, the fun and easy to find out about the Internet, and Creating Web Pages For Dummies®, 2nd Edition, the fast and friendly way to create your own Web page. Inside, find helpful advice on how to: Get your PC up and running on the Web Create your own Web site using Communicator''s built-in HTML editor: Composer Customize Communicator to look and act how you want Send and receive e-mail using Communicator''s Messenger mail client Visit the best places on the Web today Interact with newsgroups using Netscape Collabra

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