In his second book of humorous tales, Jeffrey Shaffer takes the reader inside a boot camp for laundromat offenders, a right-wing private school, and a cold-cream testing site. He listens in on conversations with an alien, with a general in the midst of a national crisis and, most frightening of all, with an unborn daughter. He considers the what-ifs of catastrophes like an asteroid striking the earth, the collapse of the dollar, and the destruction of television. And he introduces such cha...

A fugitive soda machine, the recovery of a chronic apathetic, a super hero who interviews for a job in a larger city, and the trial of the Cat in the Hat. Food as nuclear material, a black-mailing trick-or-treater, the last comedy club in America. "I'm Right Here, Fish-Cake" is full of the odd and the unexpected.Imagine "The Far Side" in prose as matter-of-fact as James Thurber's and you have some idea what Jeffrey Shaffer's humor pieces are like. Shaffer employs his rich imaginati...

The definitive reference book with real-world solutions you won't find anywhere elseThe Big Book of Dashboards presents a comprehensive reference for those tasked with building or overseeing the development of business dashboards.Comprising dozens of examples that address different industries and departments (healthcare, transportation, finance, human resources, marketing, customer service, sports, etc.) and different platforms (print, des...

The definitive reference book with real-world solutions you won't find anywhere elseThe Big Book of Dashboards presents a comprehensive reference for those tasked with building or overseeing the development of business dashboards.Comprising dozens of examples that address different industries and departments (healthcare, transportation, finance, human resources, marketing, customer service, sports, etc.) and different platforms (print, desktop, tab...

Don't simply show your data—tell a story with it!Storytelling with Data teaches you the fundamentals of data visualization and how to communicate effectively with data. You'll discover the power of storytelling and the way to make data a pivotal point in your story. The lessons in this illuminative text are grounded in theory, but made accessible through numerous real-world examples—ready for immediate application to your next graph or presentation.

Influence action through data!This is not a book. It is a one-of-a-kind immersive learning experience through which you can become—or teach others to be—a powerful data storyteller.Let’s practice! helps you build confidence and credibility to create graphs and visualizations that make sense and weave them into action-inspiring stories. Expanding upon best seller storytelling with data’s foundational lessons, Let’s practice! delive...

Written by renowned data science experts Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett, Data Science for Business introduces the fundamental principles of data science, and walks you through the "data-analytic thinking" necessary for extracting useful knowledge and business value from the data you collect. This guide also helps you understand the many data-mining techniques in use today.Based on an MBA course Provost has taught at New York University over the past ten years, Data Science for ...

Unlike any time before in our lives, we have access to vast amounts of free information. With the right tools, we can start to make sense of all this data to see patterns and trends that would otherwise be invisible to us. By transforming numbers into graphical shapes, we allow readers to understand the stories those numbers hide. In this practical introduction to understanding and using information graphics, you’ll learn how to use data visualizations as tools to see beyo...

Capturing the essence of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Gonzo” style, short story Mescalito details his dark and miserably comic first mescaline drug trip. First published in Songs of the Doomed, Mescalito suggests the nascent ideas and energy of Thompson’s seminal work on the ‘60s experience, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."We live in a jungle of pending disasters," the author warns. Alone in a hotel room in Los Angeles in February, 1969, Thompso...

An almost unnaturally poignant love story from the father of “Gonzo” journalism and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson.What makes the romantic short story Screwjack so touching, for all its queerness, is the aching melancholy in its depiction of the modern man's burden: that "we are doomed. Mama has gone off to Real Estate School...and after that maybe even to Law School. We will never see her again."Hunter S. Thompson’s mos...

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, bestselling author, and Wheel of Fortune contestant Dave Barry exposes the shattering truth. Whether he's splashing with the U.S. sychronized swim team ("Picture a bunch of elegant swans swimming with a flailing sea cow") or reliving the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving ("We've decided to obliterate your culture, but first may we try the stuffing?"), Dave Barry proves that one man can make a difference--by having the guts to answer the questions few people bo...

"Just the ticket for the '90s."SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLEIf you're too young for a nursing home yet too old to be a rock star, if your marriage is as exciting as scraping grass off the lawnmower blades, then this hilarious book by Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist and author is for you. Put on your protective eyewear and take a probing look inside your increasingly Spam-like body at: The Midlife (Yawn) Marriage; Wise Financial Planning for Irresponsible Scum Such as Yourself; Sex...