Books by Michael Jones

"e;As an accomplished musician and composer, Michael Jones brings a unique sensibility to the subject of leadership. While other writers address style, process ands leadership issues, Michael illuminates the deep parallels between leadership and the creative process."e;Peter M Senge author of The 5th DisciplineFounding Chair, SoL (The Society for Organizational Learning) Senior Lecturer, and MIT Sloan School of Management.In the future we need to envision a new leadership story - one that involves a transformation in awareness from performance to presence, from uniformity to uniqueness, from abstraction to beauty, from efficiency to improvisation and from instrumentality to the expressive power of story and voice. Together they awaken a commons of the imagination - a collective field of possibility that transforms our mechanistic view of the world to a more sustainable and transcendent vision that is creative, organic and whole. The primary purpose of Artful Leadership is to explore these fundamental shifts in awareness in the context of cultivating a mind that is more subtle, refined, undefinable, and free flowing - a mind that can perceive underlying patterns of meaning and therefore offer a portal for creating new understandings in an interconnected world. Michael Jones explores this journey of awakening in the form of a series of conversations with John, a successful senior leader who is searching for greater meaning and purpose in his work. As the conversation unfolds it becomes clear that this journey cannot be achieved alone. Instead leaders will need to come together to reclaim the commons - a space of wholeness and possibility in the personal and public imagination - in order to explore the less tangible dimensions of leadership as preparation for engaging a more complex and changeable world. In this original and thought - provoking book, Michael Jones foresees a renaissance in leadership practice, one based upon mindful attention, authentic inquiry, an aliveness to the artistic creation and an abundant curiosity for exploring whatever is fresh and new.

'I understand myself much better now. I understand my true nature. I know who I am and I know what I am. And I'm glad of who I am and what I am. I don't feel shame. I don't feel guilty. I feel proud.' He said, 'My daughter is a mute. She is obsessed with nakedness. You and your friend have told her things that no child of her age should know. She...' He lowered his voice, but we could just about hear him. 'She is exposed to your true nature every day.' It's 1961. Pippa is four, and already showing her extraordinary artistic talent. She is living in virtual isolation with her troubled mother, in a village in Northumberland. Pippa starts school, but discovers that life outside her house can be as complex and dangerous as life at home. Through Pippa's eyes, we explore the adult world, and how the boundaries between imagination, sensation and reality can become blurred. Around Pippa, we feel the destructive influence of religious bigotry and sexual intolerance. And, over everything, hangs the smell of the lingering smoke of events in The War. In The Angel and the Iceberg, we follow Pippa up to the age of nine. It is the first in the My True Nature series of novels, exploring Pippa's world as a child and teenager, growing up in Britain in the 1960s and '70s.

"e;Michael's stories have the same combination of clarity and intuitive richness as his music. A fine,contemplative guide to the artist's dedicated life."e;David Whyte poet,lecturerauthor of The Heart Aroused and Crossing the Unknown SeaMichael Jones' inspiring and award winning book about his life at the piano offers many rich insights to help the reader find this story for themselves. "e;Who will play your music if you don't?"e; He asks. "e;What is emerging at the periphery of your awareness now? When do you feel that you are fully living your own 'signature in creation' - a place to which you often long to return?"e;Too often we focus on building our careers, based upon an identity crafted from our trained skills and abilities - an identity that does not accurately reflect our primary strengths, wants or needs. Michael suggests an alternative - through personal narratives that burst with wonder and magic - he offers vivid portrayals of how, through seemingly ordinary people and events, we can discover clues for living a fulfilling and imaginative life. Each story builds upon another as Michael reveals his journey toward creating a life that feels whole and complete. Throughout he offers others an invitation to reconnect with the essence of who they truly are. To begin he suggests that we learn to trust that there is a dimension of life behind life, one that lives through us and brings with it a renewed sense of dignity and grace each time we do what we love, feel what we feel and simply be ourselves. Virtually every page of this truly beautiful book provides wise and wonderful clues for allowing the creative impulse within us to emerge. Throw out your books of creativity exercises and read this book instead!

Evidence from more than fifty archives in western Europe offers factual detail on du Guesclin, the most famous soldier of fourteenth-century France, and glamorised subject of a contemporary chivalric verse-life.

This book might disturb you. These are not poems meant to sooth you or sing you to sleep. This is a book about revolution.The Enemy of Everything is a poetic and visual assault on Reality itself. This radical collection of poems and illustrations forces the reader to evaluate shared life perceptions from an extreme and unusual—yet somehow familiar—point of view. On these pages are ideas that live at the innermost core of the human experience. These are the quintessential questions that we all ask, but ultimately turn away from, as we bury ourselves in the distractions of everyday survival.As a connected poetic journey, the collection plunges the reader deep into the mysterious facets of being, examining why we exist, what we all face as conscious beings, and what we can do to realize our own collective human power. Within the rhythm and rhyme of its language is embedded an exploration of all that should matter most. These are poems aimed at the greatest enemy humanity has ever known.The Enemy of Everything is who we all fight…from our first earthly gasp to our last dying breath.

First complete edition of an invaluable and extensive collection of medieval documents.

A major new biography of the Black Prince: hero of the battles of Crecy and Poitiers and England's greatest medieval warrior.

Ducal charters illuminate politics, external relations, and the conduct of government, and also Breton society and institutions.

With real examples and case studies from the author's own experience, this book explores how children learn to communicate using language, how they use language to learn and the role of adults in the process.

On 30 April 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide. The following day, his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels also killed himself and the crumbling Third Reich passed to Admiral Karl D nitz. The Nazis' position seemed hopeless. Yet remarkably, the war in the rest of Europe went on for another ten days. After Hitler looks at these days as a narrative day-by-day countdown but also as a broader global history of a European war that had seen some of the most savage battles in history. Relations between the 'Big Three' - the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union - suddenly plunged to near breaking point. This book reveals that tumultuous story.After Hitler also looks at the wider canvas of the war and the terrible humanitarian catastrophe uncovered in Europe. It describes those who felt the joy of freedom, but also those who faced a highly uncertain future. As Red Army soldiers joined forces with their British and American allies, Stalin's East finally came face to face with Churchill's and Truman's West. After Hitler tells of their growing mistrust, but also of moments of remarkable goodwill and co-operation - the brief but poignant hope that these great nations could together fashion a new and safer future. This is a fascinating exploration of the brief but crucial period that shaped the emerging post-war world.

In 1485 the Battle of Bosworth marked an epoch in the lives of two great houses: the house of York fell to the ground when Richard III died on the field of battle; and the house of Tudor rose from the massacre to reign for the next hundred years. Michael Jones co-author of The King's Grave: The Search for Richard III rewrites this landmark event in English history. He shifts our perspective of its heroes and villains and puts Richard firmly back into the context of his family and his times.

Presents a comprehensive synchronic description of Sardinian syntax and provides an extensive grammar and a source of information for all linguists.

These essays explore political and institutional aspects of the changing relationship between France and Brittany, within the context of Anglo-French relations, as well as social consequences of the development of a largely autonomous state within the larger French kingdom.

In February 1943, German forces surrendered to the Red Army at Stalingrad and the tide of war turned. By May 1945 Soviet soldiers had stormed Berlin and brought down Hitler's regime.Total War follows the fortunes of these fighters as they liberated Russia and the Ukraine from the Nazi invader and fought their way into the heart of the Reich. It reveals the horrors they experienced - the Holocaust, genocide and the mass murder of Soviet POWs - and shows the Red Army, brutalized by war, taking its terrible revenge on the German civilian population. For the first time Russian veterans are candid about the terrible atrocities their own army committed. But they also describe their struggle to raise themselves from the abyss of hatred. Their war against the Nazis - which in large part brought the Second World War in Europe to an end - is a tarnished but deeply moving story of sacrifice and redemption.

At the moment of crisis in 1941 on the Eastern front, with the forces of Hitler massing on the outskirts of Moscow, the miraculous occurred: Moscow was saved. Yet this turning point was followed by a long retreat, in which Russian forces, inspired by old beliefs in the sacred motherland, pushed back German forces steeled by the vision of the ubermensch, the iron-willed fighter. Many of Russia's 27 million military and civilian deaths occurred in this desperate struggle.In THE RETREAT, Michael Jones, acclaimed author of LENINGRAD, draws upon a mass of new eye-witness testimony from both sides of the conflict to tell, with matchless vividness and comprehensiveness, of the crucial turning point of the Second World War - the moment when the armies of Hitler could go no further - and of the titanic and cruel struggle of two mighty empires.

When the German High Command encircled Leningrad it was a deliberate policy to eradicate the city s civilian population by starving them to death. As winter set in and food supplies dwindled, starvation and panic set in. A specialist in battle psychology and the vital role of morale in desperate circumstances, Michael Jones tells the human story of Leningrad. Drawing on newly available eyewitness accounts and diaries, he shows Leningrad in its every dimension including taboo truths, long-suppressed by the Soviets, such as looting, criminal gangs and cannibalism. But, for many ordinary citizens, Leningrad marked the triumph of the human spirit. They drew deeply on their inner resources to inspire, comfort and help one another. At the height of the siege an extraordinary live performance of Shostakovich s Seventh Symphony profoundly strengthened the city's will to resist. When German troops heard it in their trenches one remarked: We began to understand we would never take Leningrad. Yet, Leningrad s self-defence came at a huge price. When the 900-day siege ended in 1944 almost a million people had died and those who survived would be permanently marked by what they had endured, as this superbly insightful and moving history shows.

Michael Jones is recognised on both sides of the Channel as an authority on late medieval Breton history. In this book he brings together much of his work on the subject, examining not only the administration of the duchy but also more intangible questions about the identity of a late medieval state.