Most Popular Books by Paul Kennedy

He’s quite good at climbing. He knows how to swing. But sleeping’s his favourite, favourite thing!

A gas-station attendant waits wistfully for a mysterious young woman in a Mustang; astronauts find a promising, but curiously empty, planet; a modern corporation enjoys an eye-opening transformation; and an Irish lass gains enduring fame in post-colonial Pennsylvania: These and other "preposterous accounts" await readers who appreciate a wry angle and a wicked wit in this eclectic collection of stories....

These "troublesome tales" take place in territories where the familiar and the expected quickly evolve into quirky, humorous, and sometimes dark variations. From a John Doe who discovers a scrap of extraterrestrial clothing to a Godfrey Daniel doomed to inhabit an assortment of hells, the characters and landscapes of this "unfortunate collection" will challenge and charm the adventurous reader....

Forty-six full-page black-and-white drawings of popular American wildflowers, with scientific and common names. Color illustrations of each flower included on the covers.

Tinny Tim sets out on an adventure to return a lost button. Along the way he goes exploring, has a miraculous escape, and makes new friends.

Paul Kennedy Mueller is the author of The Pandemonium Bar & Grill (and Other Stories), Pretty Bad Stories (An Unfortunate Collection of Troublesome Tales), Mostly True Tales (and Otherwise Preposterous Accounts), The Satisfaction of Revenge and Other Poems, and other works of fiction, journalism, and poetry. An Army brat and Vietnam veteran, he now works as a senior public information officer for the University of California at San Diego.

The sinking of the Process in catastrophically rough seas off Victoria''s Mornington Peninsular in 1892, with the loss of all on board - including three popular brothers, Hugh, Willie and Jim Caldwell, sons of the Presbyterian minister - horrified Australia. ''Such an accident has no parallel in our land''s history'', reported the Argus. Yet somehow, for more than a century, this heartbreaking event slipped from Australia''s consciousness.

A fundamental look at the basic reasons why most individual fitness programs fail or lose their effectiveness over time. Dr Paul Kennedy reveals the basic reasons for lack of success in typical, well-intentioned programs and the simple adjustments that can correct those problems. In many cases, these adjustments, while uncomplicated and easily implemented, are often overlooked or not perceived as the ''critical little things'' that are the difference between long-term fitness goal achievement and the nagging frustration of a programme doomed to failure. With dozens of photographs, charts, illustrations, several easy-to-use personal training logs and diaries, plus a questionnaire to assist in establishing individual fitness readiness, this easy-to-read and entertaining book has everything you need to make your fitness program REALLY work in the REAL world.

Soldier I, so named to preserve his anonymity at the coroner''s inquiry into the Iranian Embassy siege, spent a remarkable 18 years in the SAS, becoming a legend within that legendary force. This book tells the full story of those years, including accounts of operations with which he was involved.

This book argues that in recent decades an unrestrained vampire-capitalism has emerged, disengaged from the needs of citizens and workers, leading to a deepening of social class, generational, gender, educational and ethnic divisions. The author explores how our cultural obsession with self-realization undermines our capacity for collective action and ability to confront threats such as climate change and the impact of the rapid advance of technology on labour. Drawing on sociology and political economy as well as worldwide case studies, the chapters interrogate how we arrived at these dilemmas and how we might escape them through establishing alternative social economies. Vampire Capitalism will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, social theory, globalisation studies, development studies, political economy, geography, politics and social policy.

Offering an innovative new approach to sociology that takes the global dimensions of the contemporary world as its overarching framework, Global Sociology is written in a style that is relevant and fresh for the undergraduate reader whether they have studied sociology before or approaching the subject for the first time. Carefully balancing contemporary sociological theory and concepts with arguments and concrete examples drawn from around the globe, Global Sociology highlights the scope and the importance of sociology for understanding the complex and fast-changing world in which we live. In twenty chapters, the authors consider an immensely rich and diverse range of material, from the emergence of global society and debates surrounding its social, political and economic structure, to topics such as migration, tourism, crime, drugs, famine, mass media, feminism and the environmental movement. The text includes an extensive glossary, boxed case studies, suggestions for classroom projects and seminar activities, and numerous graphs and illustrations. Accessibly written and jargon-free, Global Sociology is the ideal introduction to the topic for students.

There are few more moving experiences than for the silenced to be heard. Chrissie Foster is the mother who brought the rich and powerful Catholic Church to its knees over its global abuse of children, including two of her daughters, Emma and Katie. Like the Boston Globe''s Spotlight team, she built an undeniable case in her first book, Hell on the Way to Heaven, which helped inspire Australian governments to hold world-leading inquiries. This is what happened next. Grieving the death of Emma and the catastrophic accident that left Katie largely using a wheelchair and unable to care for herself, and bullied by the Catholic Church, Chrissie Foster somehow found the strength to win and bring about changes in child safety that she hopes will last forever. From the cities and towns of Australia all the way to Rome, her tenacity and bravery to see justice delivered are unequalled. In this confronting account she explains the incredible battle she fought together with her husband, Anthony, and how she found the strength to continue even after his tragic and untimely death. Her ongoing activism inspires others to challenge once-powerful male-dominated institutions. In the face of horrifying adversity, Chrissie Foster has come through it to a place of peace.

Chrissie and Anthony Foster were like any other young family, raising their three daughters in suburban Melbourne with what they hoped were the right values. Chrissie could not have known that the stranger-danger she feared actually lurked in the presbytery attached to the girls'' Catholic primary school. Father Kevin O''Donnell, a long-term paedophile, lived and worked there. Two of their young daughters became victims of O''Donnell. And once the truth was revealed, the Fosters began a battle to find out how this could have happened. The Church offered silence, lies, denials and threats. Meanwhile, their daughters tried to piece together their fractured lives. This is the chilling true story that made national and international headlines. Chrissie Foster''s heartbreaking account of her family''s suffering, and their determination to stand up for themselves against the might of the Catholic Church, is testament to the strength of a mother''s love, and the resilience of the human spirit.

''This history of the Waterhouse dynasty is a cut above the field of racing books that burst from the barriers this time of year'' - Sydney Morning Herald Drama, glamour, scandal, success - and very high stakes. The story of Australia''s best known horse racing family has it all. When it comes to racing, the name most Australians associate with the racetrack is Waterhouse. This is their compelling story. High Stakes takes us from Bill Waterhouse''s introduction to the world as a sixteen-year-old, working as a bookmaker for his father in the late thirties - going on to make money both on and off the track - to the headlines caused by his involvement in the notorious Fine Cotton affair in the eighties. It examines his son Robbie''s rise as a respected bookie and a knowledgeable judge of horses, to his spectacular fall, as a result of that same Fine Cotton affair, which led to a life ban from involvement in the racing industry. While the ban was lifted in 2001, he keeps a low profile these days. As Kennedy reveals, the same cannot be said of Robbie''s wife, Gai, daughter of the legendary horse trainer TJ Smith. In a male-dominated world, she has gone on to rival her father as one of Australia''s best trainers, training horses for a star-studded clientele that has ranged from John Singleton to the Queen of England. Yet as High Stakes shows, the scandal aside, the marriage between Gai and Robbie was always going to be problematic. As the Sydney Morning Herald put it: ''It''s not that the Smiths and the Waterhouses were necessarily the Capulets and the Montagues but the country''s leading trainer and the world''s biggest bookmaker were hardly natural kinsfolk either.'' Despite an already colourful history, when their son, Tom, stepped into the family business and became one of the best-known and most controversial bookies the country had ever seen, Kennedy describes how the dramas for the Waterhouse dynasty were only just beginning... This is the book for anyone who wants to know the inside story of contemporary Australian horse racing, a world where premiers and millionaires rub shoulders with gangsters and girls with fancy hats. It''s a world of passion, action - and very high stakes.

Melbourne Storm was created in 1998 and situated in the heartland of a rival football code, it won three NRL premierships from five Grand Finals in its first twelve seasons and produced the best players in the game. It was the envy of clubs everywhere. But in 2010 Storm''s famed winning culture was exposed as a fraud. The club had cheated. The club had consistently rorted the NRL''s salary cap. Justice seemed hard and fast. They were fined and stripped of their trophies. A few in club management were fired, some club directors left and player managers were given suspensions. That was it. No-one was charged. Storm played out that season with admirable resolve, despite playing for no reward. In the following two seasons Melbourne Storm fought back and in 2012 won the Grand Final. The rise, fall and rise of Melbourne Storm happened in a heartbeat, yet what actually took place? Stormcloud answers the question as it reveals the hidden story, with much untold to be revealed.

Here is the astonishing true story of an 18-year-old veteran of one of the world''s fiercest counterterrorist forces, the SAS. Crawl inside the mind of this legendary British rogue warrior, and live the kind of adventures most can only dream about. 8-page insert.

Kennedy''s groundbreaking book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers helped to reorder the current priorities of the United States. Now, he synthesizes extensive research on fields ranging from demography to robotics to draw a detailed, persuasive, and often sobering map of the very near future--a bold work that bridges the gap between history, prophecy, and policy.

Soldier I, so named to preserve his anonymity at the coroner''s inquiry into the Iranian Embassy siege, spent a remarkable 18 years in the SAS, becoming a legend within that legendary force. This book tells the full story of those years, including accounts of operations with which he was involved.

Presents a new and unified, view of carbocationic polymers, demonstrating the prodigious promise and unexploited possibilities in the field. Clarifies the tremendous advances made in the past decade in the elucidation of cationic polymerization, and the exploitation of new mechanistic information in terms of new products and processes in the laboratory.