Best Selling Books by Erik Larson

Not long ago project management was perceived as a highly technical endeavor with applications to highly specialized industries. Times have changed-and so have the collective perceptions about project management. Today project management skills are applied throughout a wide range of businesses and industries. Successful project managers are defined now not only by their skill in dealing with issues of planning, scheduling, and budgeting, but also by their ability to manage people. Clifford Gray and Erik Larson, both of Oregon State University, are aware of this evolution and have used the Third Edition of Project Management: The Managerial Process to address these shifts. This highly-qualified author team provides readers with a complete picture of project management. Technical issues are addressed thoroughly, but unlike similar books on this subject, Project Management: The Managerial Process presents them in context, demonstrating how project management techniques can be applied in a wide variety of businesses, while emphasizing the importance of accounting for the human element in the successful management of all types of projects. Case studies and "Snapshot from Practice" boxes are among the ways readers learn throughout this text. A pedagogically rich CD-ROM, and a second CD-ROM containing a trial version of Microsoft Project, are also available with all new copies of this text. Once again, the authors have succeeded in providing readers with a complete picture of project management: not only "what to do" and "how to do it," but also why it is done. Book jacket.

As the market-leading textbook on the subject, Project Management: The Managerial Process, 5e is distinguished by its balanced treatment of both the technical and behavioral issues in project management as well as by its coverage of a broad range of industries to which project management principles can be applied. It focuses on how project management is integral to the organization as a whole. The 5th edition reflects the latest changes found in the practice. Other texts discuss the topics covered in this text but they do not view oversight as the project manager's operating environment, as does Larson/Gray. Resumes of managers will soon be primarily a description of participation in and contributions to projects.

"This paper considers issues relating to the segmentation or grouping of credit exposures and the potential impact upon economic capital allocation and attribution. When discussing capital allocation, we refer to the assessment of total capital at the portfolio level, while our discussion of capital attribution focuses on getting capital assigned appropriately at the bucket level. We emphasize that a loss or value function must be specified so as to quantify the gains and losses from choosing a more or less granular asset segmentation scheme. Our chosen loss function considers the trade-off between the decrease in sampling variance obtained by combining data to increase sample size and the bias resulting from characterizing unlike assets with the same default probability. The implications are illustrated with several numerical examples that consider accuracy in the estimation of both portfolio-level and asset-level capital requirements. The suggested technique can be used to quantify whether a loss in accuracy from grouping or segmentation is outweighed by the decrease in variance of estimated capital. That is, the "loss" from grouping is small when the evaluation criterion is the accuracy of estimation of the required total capital; grouping is of more concern when we are interested in getting capital attributed correctly at the bucket level"--Office of the Comptroller of the Currency web site.

"The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers a fresh and compelling portrait of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold the country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally-and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it's also an intimate domestic drama set against the backdrop of Churchill's prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports-some released only recently-Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela's illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the cadre of close advisers who comprised Churchill's "Secret Circle," including his lovestruck private secretary, John Colville; newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook; and the Rasputin-like Frederick Lindemann. The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today's political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when-in the face of unrelenting horror-Churchill's eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together."--

"Synaptic neurotransmission is a fundamental process which enables signaling between neurons. All voluntary animal behaviour relies on proper synaptic function, and many neurological diseases have their origins in synaptic disruptions. In particular, the neurodevelopmental disease fragile-X syndrome (FXS) has notable defects in synaptic transmission across the brain. FXS is the most common single gene cause of intellectual disability and autism, and is caused by interruptions in the expression or function of the protein FMRP. Like many neurodevelopmental diseases, FXS is characterized in part by an imbalance in excitation and inhibition in the brain. While there is a general consensus regarding the defects in FXS excitatory signaling, there is considerably less known about defects to inhibitory neurotransmission. In particular, there has been no comprehensive study on the synapses of the inhibitory cerebellar molecular layer interneurons (MLIs) in the pathophysiology of FXS. Accordingly, this thesis addresses this gap in our understanding FXS, while also uncovering novel plasticity mechanisms in MLI inhibitory neurotransmission. Neurotransmission is very dynamic and synapses regularly change their efficacy in a process known as synaptic plasticity. Most research into synaptic plasticity has focused on excitatory synapses, but there is a new interest in studying the mechanisms that lead to long term changes of inhibitory synaptic signaling. One of these mechanisms includes a novel role for reactive oxygen species (ROS) to potentiate inhibitory GABAergic signaling of MLIs. Given this, the first objective of this thesis was to identify the physiological signaling pathways of ROS-dependent inhibitory plasticity using an approach involving both pharmacological and genetic manipulations. I found that NMDA receptor activation generates physiological ROS through a nNOS-cGMP-NOX2 pathway. Furthermore, this pathway recruited [alpha]3-containing GABAA receptors to the synapse following PKC activation and GABARAP trafficking. The second half of this thesis was a study on the role of MLIs in the neurodevelopmental disease, FXS. In these chapters, I start by describing a novel defect in MLI NMDA receptor signaling. Consequently, this impacts multiple plasticity mechanisms which regulate inhibition in the CNS. First, MLIs are unable to modulate their firing properties in response to NMDA receptor activation. Second, there is an inability to potentiate inhibitory signaling onto MLIs. Inhibitory plasticity can be restored by the inclusion of a small molecule which potentiates the intracellular signaling pathway. Third, there is a significant impact on the regulation of blood flow through the cerebellum. Together, the lack of these plasticity mechanisms likely impacts the cerebellar circuit which I predict would have downstream consequences on motor learning. Finally, I have also found a defect in dendritic filtering of cerebellar MLIs in FXS. MLIs from FXS mice fire more action potentials following afferent stimulation, which is linked to a larger evoked postsynaptic potential (ePSP) amplitude. Moreover, acute reintroduction of the N-terminal fragment of FMRP reduces the ePSP amplitude in FXS mice. Taken together, this thesis presents original findings on GABAergic plasticity and multiple defects in inhibitory signaling of FXS mice in the cerebellum. Based on our new understanding of inhibitory signaling, this thesis also demonstrates mechanisms to overcome these defects in FXS which could lead to therapeutics in a future clinical setting"--