Stories always have a lot of names of people and places. I have tried to retain as many original names as I could in the name of realism, but in order to protect identities and reputations, and also to followat least halfwaymy lawyers advice, I had to change about half of them. Wherever possible, I simply avoided names altogether, as in the bass player or the club owner or the town. Whenever there is a remotely negative connotation the names have most definitely been altered. There is also...

Learn Business Intelligence Markup Language (Biml) for automating much of the repetitive, manual labor involved in data integration. We teach you how to build frameworks and use advanced Biml features to get more out of SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), Transact-SQL (T-SQL), and SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) than you ever thought possible.The first part of the book starts with the basics—getting your development environment configured, Biml syntax, and scripting essenti...

For thirty years drummer author and songwriter Neil Peart had wanted to write a book about “the biggest journey of all in my restless existence: the life of a touring musician.” Finally the right time and the right tour . . . In the summer of 2004 after three decades twenty gold albums and thousands of performances spanning four continents the band Rush embarked on a celebratory 30th Anniversary World Tour. The “R30” tour traveled to nine countries where the band performed fifty-seven show...

35 concerts. 17,000 motorcycle miles. Three months. One lifetime.In May 2015, the veteran Canadian rock trio Rush embarked on their 40th anniversary tour, R40. For the band and their fans, R40 was a celebration and, perhaps, a farewell. But for Neil Peart, each tour is more than just a string of concerts, it’s an opportunity to explore backroads near and far on his BMW motorcycle. So if this was to be the last tour and the last great adventure, he...

Whether navigating the backroads of Louisiana or Thuringia, exploring the snowy Quebec woods, or performing onstage at Rush concerts, Neil Peart has stories to tell. His first volume in this series, Far and Away, combined words and images to form an intimate, insightful narrative that won many readers.Now Far and Near brings together reflections from another three years of an artist’s life as he celebrates seasons, landscapes, and characters, travels roads and tra...

"This book, a polished, winding meditation on the theory and fractiousness of motorcycles, celebrates both their eccentric history and the wary pleasures of touring."—The New YorkerIn a book that is "a must for anyone who has loved a motorcycle" (Oliver Sacks), Melissa Pierson captures in vivid, writerly prose the mysterious attractions of motorcycling. She sifts through myth and hyperbole: misrepresentations about danger, about the type of people who ride and why they do ...

A USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHORA SHORT STORYThe Garbage Collector, a Detroit-area private eye/bounty hunter/hired gun is employed by a downtown law firm to retrieve "Lawyer #4" - a partner in the firm who has disappeared with confidential information she is using to blackmail the company's clients.The Garbage Collector picks up the trail in Florida, and soon finds that Lawyer #4 is much more than he bargained for.The Garbage Collecto...

"One is struck . . . by how talented [Oates] was [and] how hard he worked at it. It took lots of effort to look that smooth to the tune of 80 million copies." — Austin American-StatesmanJohn Oates was born at the perfect time, paralleling the birth of rock 'n roll. Raised in a small Pennsylvania town, he was exposed to folk, blues, soul, and R&B. Teaming up with Daryl Hall in the late 1960s, they developed a style of music that was uniquely their own. John ...

This "rollicking newspaperman's memoir" offers a personal tour of Chicago's cultural history and makes "a strong case for Second City exceptionalism" ( The New York Times).In 1952 the New Yorker published a three-part essay by A. J. Liebling in which he dubbed Chicago the "Second City." From the skyline to garbage collection, nothing escaped Liebling's withering gaze. Among the outraged responses from Chicago residents was one that Liebling descri...

Essential reading for every parent, How To Raise A Good Kid is a collection of 23 hilarious, honest and heartfelt stories about growing up and raising children that help parents teach lessons about core values such as faith, honesty, courage, hard work, perseverance and love. Guaranteed to make you laugh, each story is authentic, universal in theme and perfectly suited to serve as a conversation starter for parents trying to instill in their kids the importance of integrity and character a...

Whether he's fighting fires, passing a kidney stone, hammering down I-80 in an 18-wheeler, or meditating on the relationship between cowboys and God, Michael Perry draws on his rural roots and footloose past to write from a perspective that merges the local with the global.Ranging across subjects as diverse as lot lizards, Klan wizards, and small-town funerals, Perry's writing in this wise and witty collection of essays balances earthiness with poetry, kinetics with contemplation, ...

Welcome to Ian Frazier's New York, a city more downtown than up, where every block is an event, and where the denizens are larger than life. Meet landlord extraordinaire Zvi Hugo Segal, and the man who climbed the World Trade Center, and an eighty-three-year-old typewriter repairman whose shop on Fulton Street has drawers full of umlauts. Learn the location of Manhattan's antipodes, and meander the length of Route 3 to New Jersey.Like his literary forbears Joseph Mitchell and A.J. L...