Back in 1983 I was chatting with Dick Coleman, publisher of Traffic World magazine, when he unexpectedly proposed that I write a column for the magazine on computer applications in the transportation/physical distribution industry. "But, Dick, I don't know all that much about computers," I protested. "You use one, don't you?" he asked logically. Yes, I did; I'd been running my consulting business with it for two years. But that didn't, I explained, make me an expert. "Think about it," he said. That's typical Coleman; he drops these studiedly casual ideas and just lets them lay there until you...

In the time-worn traditions of the transportation industry, ship pers and carriers regard one another as enemies. There is, to be sure, a certain degree of validity to such a viewpoint. An element of conflict will naturally be present in any vendor-purchaser relationship. The two, after all, are seeking distinctly different things from that relationship; and to a con siderable extent each party's success in realizing its own goals must be achieved at the expense of the other. At the same time, however, viewing that relationship as strictly zero-sum-a gain by one side always resulting in an...

A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree
Winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the "Guardian" First Book Award, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature
Enter the small, rural town of Glanbeigh, a place whose fate took a downturn with the Celtic Tiger, a desolate spot where buffoonery and tension simmer and erupt, and booze-sodden boredom fills the corners of every pub and nightclub. Here, and in the towns beyond, the young live hard and wear the scars. Amongst them, there s jilted Jimmy, whose best friend Tug is the terror of the town and Jimmy s sole...