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› Find signed collectible books: 'Absinthe Sip of Seduction: A Contemporary Guide'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Advertising Today'
› Find signed collectible books: 'American Psycho'
Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
Blurb in Spanish: Mucho se ha hablado de American Psycho. Y lo cierto es que había razón para tanta polémica, pues esta novela de Bret Easton Ellis constituye una de las críticas más feroces que un escritor norteamericano ha hecho a su propio país: una sociedad autocomplaciente y orgullosa de si misma. Para su denuncia, el autor ha escogido un camino arriesgado: Patrick Bateman, el protagonista, no es un rebelde ni un paria; Patrick es un joven de éxito que, sin embargo, también es capaz de violar, torturar y asesinar. Como dijo Fay Weldom, American Psycho es de alguna forma el oscuro complemento de La hoguera de las vanidades, por cuanto descubre aquellos puntos negros de la vida de los supuestos triunfadores que la novela de Tom Wolfe quiso obviar. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Apple Way'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Best Recipes from the Backs of Boxes, Bottles, Cans, and Jars'
Here is a cookbook filled with all of those wonderful recipes that you meant to clip and save from that jar, can or box--America's best-loved favorites from the test kitchens of the finest food manufacturers. These popular recipes are fast and easy, with detailed instructions for perfect results every time. 6" x 9". [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Big Moo: Stop Trying to Be Perfect And Start Being Remarkable'
Most organizations are stuck in a rut. On one hand, they understand all the good things that will come with growth. On the other, theyre petrified that growth means change, and change means risk, and risk means death. Nobody wants to screw up and ruin a good thing, so most companies (and individuals) just keep trying to be perfect at the things theyve always done.
In 2003, Seth Godins Purple Cow challenged organizations to become remarkableto drive growth by standing out in a world full of brown cows. It struck a huge chord and stayed on the Business-Week bestseller list for nearly two years. You can hear countless brainstorming meetings where people refer to purple cows and say things like, Thats not good enough. We need to create a big moo!
But how do you create a big mooan insight so astounding that people cant help but remark on it, like digital TV recording (TiVo) or overnight shipping (FedEx), or the worlds best vacuum cleaner (Dyson)? Godin worked with thirty-two of the worlds smartest thinkers to answer this critical question. And the teamwith the likes of Tom Peters, Malcolm Gladwell, Guy Kawasaki, Mark Cuban, Robyn Waters, Dave Balter, Red Maxwell, and Randall Rothenberg on boardcreated an incredibly useful book thats fun to read and perfect for groups to share, discuss, and apply.
The Big Moo is a simple book in the tradition of Fish and Dont Sweat the Small Stuff. Instead of lecturing you, it tells stories that stick to your ribs and light your fire. It will help you to create a culture that consistently delivers remarkable innovations.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Book of Chocolate'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Book Of Chocolate'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brand Culture'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brand Failures: The Truth About the 100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Time'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Brand Innovation Manifesto: How To Build Brands, Redefine Markets And Defy Conventions'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brand Warfare: 10 Rules for Building the Killer Brand'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brand Warfare: 10 Rules for Building the Killer Brand Lessons for New and Old Economy Players'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brandsimple: How the Best Brands Keep It Simple and Succeed'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Building Strong Brands'
As industries turn increasingly hostile, it is clear that strong brand-building skills are needed to survive and prosper. In David Aaker's pathbreaking book, Managing Brand Equity, managers discovered the value of a brand as a strategic asset and a company's primary source of competitive advantage. Now, in this compelling new work, Aaker uses real brand-building cases from Saturn, General Electric, Kodak, Healthy Choice, McDonald's, and others to demonstrate how strong brands have been created and managed.
A common pitfall of brand strategists is to focus on brand attributes. Aaker shows how to break out of the box by considering emotional and self-expressive benefits and by introducing the brand-as-person, brand-as-organization, and brand-as-symbol perspectives. The twin concepts of brand identity (the brand image that brand strategists aspire to create or maintain) and brand position (that part of the brand identity that is to be actively communicated) play a key role in managing the "out-of-the-box" brand.
A second pitfall is to ignore the fact that individual brands are part of a larger system consisting of many intertwined and overlapping brands and subbrands. Aaker shows how to manage the "brand system" to achieve clarity and synergy, to adapt to a changing environment, and to leverage brand assets into new markets and products.
Aaker also addresses practical management issues, introducing a set of brand equity measures, termed the brand equity ten, to help those who measure and track brand equity across products and markets. He presents and analyzes brand-nurturing organizational forms that are responsive to the challenges of coordinated brands across markets, products, roles, and contexts. Potentially destructive organizational pressures to change a brand's identity and position are also discussed.
As executives in a wide range of industries seek to prevent their products and services from becoming commodities, they are recommitting themselves to brands as a foundation of business strategy. This new work will be essential reading for the battle-ready. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Book of Food Counts'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dr. Knowledge Presents Strange & Fascinating Facts About Famous Brands'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Food Finds: Americas Best Local Foods and the People Who Produce Them'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'From Altoids To Zima: The Surprising Stories Behind 125 Brand Names'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Going, Going, Gone : Vanishing Americana'
A pre-millennium catalogue to the vanished treasures of the century. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How Do You Spell Haagen-Dazs? : A Unique Spelling Reference to the Ubiquitous World of Trademark Names'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy'
Illicit activities are exploding worldwide. The onslaught of globalization has unleashed a tidal wave of bad stuff--everything from arms trafficking, human smuggling, and money laundering to music bootlegging. Here is the dark side of globalization: the mushrooming underground economy. Moisés Naím explores this murky world in his book Illicit. Naím is the editor of the relaunched magazine Foreign Policy and a former executive director of the World Bank and Minister of Trade and Industry of Venezuela. In Illicit, he unties the connections between the Colombian cocaine dealer, the New York banker steering money to offshore tax havens, the Albanian forcing women into prostitution, and the Chinese market stall-holder selling counterfeit DVDs.
Naím reports that legitimate global trade has doubled since 1990 from $5 to $10 trillion. Meanwhile, money laundering has gone up tenfold, exceeding $1 trillion a year. Smuggling and money laundering have always existed, but Naím shows how they have increased at a staggering pace in the wake of globalization, despite new government controls since 9/11. The main culprits are the collapse of the Iron Curtain and state deregulation. As the reach of organized crime has expanded, governments have failed to keep up. Naím illustrates the problems with stories about A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb who sold nuclear technology to North Korea and Libya; Walter C. Anderson, an American who was accused of hiding $450 million in offshore accounts to evade taxes; and Vladimir Montesinos, the Peruvian intelligence czar who is on trial for trafficking drugs and arms. The book, while a little dry, will be interesting to policy buffs and aspiring crooks alike. --Alex Roslin [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be'
It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be is a handbook of how to succeed in the world - a pocket 'bible' for the talented and timid to make the unthinkable thinkable and the impossible possible. The world's top advertising guru, Paul Arden, offers up his wisdom on issues as diverse as problem solving, responding to a brief, communicating, playing your cards right, making mistakes and creativity, all notions that can be applied to aspects of modern life. This book provides a unique insight into the world of advertising and is a quirky compilation of quotes, facts, pictures, wit and wisdom, packed into easy-to-digest, bite-sized spreads. If you want to succeed in life or business, this is a must!
Paul Arden began his career in advertising at the age of 16. For 14 years he was Executive Creative Director at Saatchi and Saatchi, where he was responsible for some of Britain's best known campaigns including British Airways, Silk Cut, Anchor Butter, InterCity and Fuji. His famous slogans include 'The Car in front is a Toyota' and 'The Independent - It is - Are You?'. In 1993 he set up the London-based production company Arden Sutherland-Dodd where he is now a commercials director for clients such as BT, BMW, Ford, Nestle and Levis. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands'
Sellout "Brand" or just plain "Bland"? In Lovemarks, advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts delves deep into what mysteries lie behind the long-term success and unwavering customer loyalty for a can of Coke or a pair of Levi's, ultimately concluding that Love is the answer, and without some emotional connection to a product, it will dry up like a generic raisin in the sun. Enter Lovemarks, the new marketing buzzword, which will likely be bandied about at board meetings as vigorously as The Tipping Point.
But before Roberts can get to what in fact a Lovemark means in the worlds of advertising and marketing, he takes us on a virtual tour of his CV. There was his first post at Mary Quant in London, then the gig as New Products Manager of Gillette International in the Middle East, on to CEO of Pepsi in Canada, and later the same role at Lion Nathan in New Zealand. The list goes on, and so does Roberts--on and on--about his achievements and experience building brand awareness and shaking things up (he famously machine-gunned a vending machine at a presentation for a spot on the evening news). More importantly, he succeeds at blasting away the smoke and mirrors that might prevent a creative genius (or an ordinary consumer) from seeing what makes Superman the most beloved super-hero of all time.
Despite the somewhat egocentric approach to taking us there (he is, after-all, a pretty smart guy), we arrive at Roberts's point beautifully, and see what he sees: "That human attention has become our principle currency." And that, in these times, forming long-term emotionally charged relationships with customers is the only way to make a product weather the long haul. And while Roberts speaks to us in a spirited, conversational manner (that makes Lovemarks a pleasure to read), the design of the book seems to work against him, as convoluted typography and a general lack of layout consistency give the book a visually amateurish look. --Christene Barberich [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Managing Brand Equity: Capitalizing on the Value of a Brand Name'
The most important assets of any business are intangible: its company name, brands, symbols, and slogans, and their underlying associations, perceived quality, name awareness, customer base, and proprietary resources such as patents, trademarks, and channel relationships. These assets, which comprise brand equity, are a primary source of competitive advantage and future earnings, contends David Aaker, a national authority on branding. Yet, research shows that managers cannot identify with confidence their brand associations, levels of consumer awareness, or degree of customer loyalty. Moreover in the last decade, managers desperate for short-term financial results have often unwittingly damaged their brands through price promotions and unwise brand extensions, causing irreversible deterioration of the value of the brand name. Although several companies, such as Canada Dry and Colgate-Palmolive, have recently created an equity management position to be guardian of the value of brand names, far too few managers, Aaker concludes, really understand the concept of brand equity and how it must be implemented.
In a fascinating and insightful examination of the phenomenon of brand equity, Aaker provides a clear and well-defined structure of the relationship between a brand and its symbol and slogan, as well as each of the five underlying assets, which will clarify for managers exactly how brand equity does contribute value. The author opens each chapter with a historical analysis of either the success or failure of a particular company's attempt at building brand equity: the fascinating Ivory soap story; the transformation of Datsun to Nissan; the decline of Schlitz beer; the making of the Ford Taurus; and others. Finally, citing examples from many other companies, Aaker shows how to avoid the temptation to place short-term performance before the health of the brand and, instead, to manage brands strategically by creating, developing, and exploiting each of the five assets in turn
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Marketing by Design: Design-Driven Merchandising'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Marks of Excellence: The History and Taxonomy of Trademarks'
Finding the roots of trademarks in heraldry, potter's marks, monograms, and other such ancient devices, this book traces the history of the corporate visual lexicon and produces a taxonomy of the commercial age. An alphabetical section covers motifs from animals to waves, with short definitions and analyses beautifully complemented by daringly cropped and crisply photographed images. Pictures of this quality and interest would steal the show in most volumes, but the text stands up well to the challenge of images that gain force because of the familiarity of their subjects (corporate trademarks), and the unusual sense that the book's context lends to them. Marks of Excellence is a worthwhile exploration at the modern language of ownership. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The New Big Book of Logos'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A New Brand World: 8 Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A New Brand World : Ten Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The New Marketing Manifesto: The 12 Rules for Building Successful Brands in the 21st Century'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'No Logo: El Poder De Las Marcas'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'No Logo: No Space No Choice No Jobs'
With a new Afterword to the 2002 edition, No Logo employs journalistic savvy and personal testament to detail the insidious practices and far-reaching effects of corporate marketing-and the powerful potential of a growing activist sect that will surely alter the course of the 21st century. First published before the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, this is an infuriating, inspiring, and altogether pioneering work of cultural criticism that investigates money, marketing, and the anti-corporate movement. As global corporations compete for the hearts and wallets of consumers who not only buy their products but willingly advertise them from head to toe-witness today's schoolbooks, superstores, sporting arenas, and brand-name synergy-a new generation has begun to battle consumerism with its own best weapons. In this provocative, well-written study, a front-line report on that battle, we learn how the Nike swoosh has changed from an athletic status-symbol to a metaphor for sweatshop labor, how teenaged McDonald's workers are risking their jobs to join the Teamsters, and how "culture jammers" utilize spray paint, computer-hacking acumen, and anti-propagandist wordplay to undercut the slogans and meanings of billboard ads (as in "Joe Chemo" for "Joe Camel"). No Logo will challenge and enlighten students of sociology, economics, popular culture, international affairs, and marketing. "This book is not another account of the power of the select group of corporate Goliaths that have gathered to form our de facto global government. Rather, it is an attempt to analyze and document the forces opposing corporate rule, and to lay out the particular set of cultural and economic conditions that made the emergence of that opposition inevitable."-Naomi Klein, from her Introduction [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies'
We live in an era where image is nearly everything, where the proliferation of brand-name culture has created, to take one hyperbolic example from Naomi Klein's No Logo, "walking, talking, life-sized Tommy [Hilfiger] dolls, mummified in fully branded Tommy worlds." Brand identities are even flourishing online, she notes--and for some retailers, perhaps best of all online: "Liberated from the real-world burdens of stores and product manufacturing, these brands are free to soar, less as the disseminators of goods or services than as collective hallucinations."
In No Logo, Klein patiently demonstrates, step by step, how brands have become ubiquitous, not just in media and on the street but increasingly in the schools as well. (The controversy over advertiser-sponsored Channel One may be old hat, but many readers will be surprised to learn about ads in school lavatories and exclusive concessions in school cafeterias.) The global companies claim to support diversity, but their version of "corporate multiculturalism" is merely intended to create more buying options for consumers. When Klein talks about how easy it is for retailers like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster to "censor" the contents of videotapes and albums, she also considers the role corporate conglomeration plays in the process. How much would one expect Paramount Pictures, for example, to protest against Blockbuster's policies, given that they're both divisions of Viacom?
Klein also looks at the workers who keep these companies running, most of whom never share in any of the great rewards. The president of Borders, when asked whether the bookstore chain could pay its clerks a "living wage," wrote that "while the concept is romantically appealing, it ignores the practicalities and realities of our business environment." Those clerks should probably just be grateful they're not stuck in an Asian sweatshop, making pennies an hour to produce Nike sneakers or other must-have fashion items. Klein also discusses at some length the tactic of hiring "permatemps" who can do most of the work and receive few, if any, benefits like health care, paid vacations, or stock options. While many workers are glad to be part of the "Free Agent Nation," observers note that, particularly in the high-tech industry, such policies make it increasingly difficult to organize workers and advocate for change.
But resistance is growing, and the backlash against the brands has set in. Street-level education programs have taught kids in the inner cities, for example, not only about Nike's abusive labor practices but about the astronomical markup in their prices. Boycotts have commenced: as one urban teen put it, "Nike, we made you. We can break you." But there's more to the revolution, as Klein optimistically recounts: "Ethical shareholders, culture jammers, street reclaimers, McUnion organizers, human-rights hacktivists, school-logo fighters and Internet corporate watchdogs are at the early stages of demanding a citizen-centered alternative to the international rule of the brands ... as global, and as capable of coordinated action, as the multinational corporations it seeks to subvert." No Logo is a comprehensive account of what the global economy has wrought and the actions taking place to thwart it. --Ron Hogan [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing the Marketing of Culture'
John Seabrook, The New Yorker's "Buzz Studies" writer, deftly conveys the hubbub of modern pop culture, the blending of highbrow and lowbrow tastes, into a new sensibility he dubs "Nobrow." In Nobrowland, nobody can sell out, because art and commerce have fused like colliding electrons. America used to be split between "stark intellectuality and the plane of stark business," but now, as Puff Daddy observes, "It's all about the Benjamins [$100 bills]." It's not just that an Oxford-bred guy like Seabrook is a connoisseur of Biggie Smalls, it's that everyone, high and low, wants to feel part of the Buzz, to soak up the power of celebrity success. Puffy's rap hit constitutes "merchandising, advertising, salary-boasting, and art all at once," says Seabrook. Nowadays, "commercial culture has to do the work that both high and folk culture used to do--not only enlighten and teach but bond families and communities."
Nobrow is itself a work of Nobrow art, shape-shifting like a Beck tune: it's art appreciation, memoir, social history, high-altitude academic theory, and shoe-leather reporting all at once. Seabrook captures world-historical figures in action: George Lucas, MTV's Judy McGrath, music exec Danny "Nirvana" Goldberg, and kabillionaire David Geffen, who helped bring you Tom Cruise and DreamWorks. The big book on Geffen may be The Operator, but Seabrook can nail him in a phrase: "The boredom in his eyes, which seemed on the verge of spilling over into other parts of his face, was held in check by his lively eyebrows." And no one has outdone Seabrook's jaunty account of his elite magazine's Nobrowification by Tina Brown, who established "a hierarchy of hotness."
Seabrook doesn't score on every shot, but it's fun to watch him play. He's like a kid brother to his cult idol, George W.S. Trow, author of the prescient 1978 classic Within the Context of No Context. If Eustace Tilley, The New Yorker's famous monocled snob icon, got zonked on "chronic bubonic" pot and gangsta rap, he might have written this dizzy yet erudite book. Indeed, one might not be altogether amiss in calling it "da bomb." --Tim Appelo [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'One Hundred and One Things to Do'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pattern Recognition'
With Pattern Recognition, William Gibson, the man who introduced cyberpunk to the world, gives us his first novel set in the present. But as Gibson's imagination makes clear, our corporation-dominated, technologically advanced reality doesn't need much tweaking to take on the aura of science fiction.
If there's a fantastical element to this, the author's eighth book, it's in protagonist Cayce Pollard's special talent. Here, Gibson takes some of No Logo author Naomi Klein's ideas about branding to a logical extreme: Pollard has an instinctual, often violently intense reaction to logos, a condition that makes her valuable to advertising agencies looking for the most effective way to brand a product. This talent, however, makes a trip to a department store potentially lethal, as when she visits a London shopping emporium and is inundated by "a mountainside of Tommy [Hilfiger] coming down in her head." "Some people ingest a single peanut and their head swells like a basketball," writes Gibson. "When it happens to Cayce, it's her psyche.... When it starts, it's pure reaction, like biting down hard on a piece of foil." Pollard is also a "coolhunter" of the first order, which means she can sniff out a trend before it's even begun to be commodified. She's so good, in fact, that "she's met the very Mexican who first wore his baseball cap backwards."
With such sensitivity to our over-branded world, it's completely natural that our heroine would become fascinated by Internet footage of a film in which characters, setting, and time are completely generic--unbranded, unfixed, free. But Pollard isn't the only one obsessed by "the footage," as it's referred to, and this is where Gibson's masterful storytelling comes to the fore. Who will be the first to solve the mystery of the film's origin? Who else is trying, and for what potentially nefarious purpose? As usual the author proves adept at weaving a suspenseful narrative out of humdrum elements, such as e-mail exchanges. If there's a caveat, it's that, as with literary forefather Philip K. Dick, the Vancouver-based author's prose veers wildly from the poetic to the clunky. And his supporting characters often amount to nothing more than a combination of an unusual name and shadowy motive. But the continual barrage of ideas, and the way Gibson arranges them for maximum impact, make for a gripping and insightful glimpse into our hyperdriven consumer culture. --Shawn Conner [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Poplorica: A Popular History of the Fads, Mavericks, Inventions, and Lore that Shaped Modern America'
Pop culture meets pop reference in this irreverent tour of twenty unlikely events, innovations, and individuals that forever changed how we live today -- the food we eat, the places we live, the love we make, the fads we follow, the clothes we wear, the products we buy, and much more.
Veteran journalists Martin J. Smith and Patrick J. Kiger make the offbeat their beat, revealing the odd, surprising, and amusing origins of inexplicable cultural phenomena. From slam dunks to rock 'n' roll punks, permanent press to pantyhose, black velvet painting to point-click culture, high-tech diapers to low-brow entertainment -- they cover sports, business, music, media, film, fashion, and science, and explain a lot about why life today is so weird:
The untold, unexpected, sometimes unholy stories are here, providing instant inside knowledge and richly entertaining insights into how and why we live as we do.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Products of Our Time'
Die neonfarbenen iMacs von Apple, der dem Käfer nachempfundene Beetle, das Nokia-Handy und Kosmetik von Philosophy gehören genauso zu den typischen Produkten der 90er-Jahre wie eine neue Generation von Landminen und die Potenzpille Viagra. David Redhead, Kurator am Designmuseum "The Lighthouse" in Glasgow, hat sie gesammelt und für die Ausstellung Products of our Time eine repräsentative Auswahl zusammengestellt. Die Fülle der Objekte von Caterpillar-Schuhen bis zur virtuellen Heldin Lara Croft, von den Lavalampen bis zu den Tamagotchis präsentierte Redhead in fünf Gruppen: "Basics", "More", "Controll", "Identity" und "Crises". So lauten auch die Kapitel, in dem begleitend zur Ausstellung erschienen Band.
In diesem innovativ gestalteten Katalog gelingt es Redhead, in knappem, pointiertem Stil eine überaus treffende Kulturgeschichte der 90er-Jahre zu schreiben. Ein Porträt, das die Trends von der "Neuen Bescheidenheit" über den Technologie-Hype bis zur Vorbereitung auf die "finale Krise" beschreibt und mit subtiler britischer Ironie kommentiert. Dass es nicht besonders schmeichelhaft ausfällt, liegt daran, dass Redhead unsere postmodernen Paradoxien nicht übersieht, sondern genau benennt. Zum Beispiel die Widersprüchlichkeit zwischen der Faszination für futuristisches Designs und nostalgischen Sehnsüchten oder das typisch moderne Dilemma der Unvereinbarkeit von Individualimus und Massenkonsum. Die Designer spielen mit. Sie entwerfen Modelle wie den Audi TT und ihre Werbeslogans lauten "Don't imitate, innovate". Damit, und Redhead demonstriert das geschickt an vielen Beispielen, spiegelt die Art und Weise, wie die Dinge gestaltet sind, den Zeitgeist wider: unsere Wünsche, Hoffnungen, Sehnsüchte und Ängste. Products of our Time bietet deshalb viel mehr als einen Überblick über die Entwicklung des Designs in den letzten zehn Jahren. Dieser handliche Band, der Abbildungen und Text vorbildlich integriert, ist ein intelligenter und spritziger Essay über die vielfältigen Fassetten unserer Waren- und Gefühlswelt. Nicht nur ein visuelles Vergnügen, sondern auch höchster Lesegenuss! --Doris Lösch [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shelf Life'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'So Yesterday'
Ever wonder who was the first kid to keep a wallet on a big chunky chain, or wear way-too-big pants on purpose? What about the mythical first guy who wore his baseball cap backwards? These are the Innovators, the people on the very cusp of cool. Seventeen-year-old Hunter Braque's job is finding them for the retail market.
But when a big-money client disappears, Hunter must use all his cool-hunting talents to find her. Along the way he's drawn into a web of brand-name intrigue-a missing cargo of the coolest shoes he's ever seen, ads for products that don't exist, and a shadowy group dedicated to the downfall of consumerism as we know it.
› Find signed collectible books: 'Swoosh: The Unauthorized Story of Nike and the Men Who Played There'
The unauthorized national-bestselling sensation revealing the absorbing story of the rise, fall, and recovery of Nike, by a former employee and a Los Angeles Times reporter. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference'
"The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life," writes Malcolm Gladwell, "is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do." Although anyone familiar with the theory of memetics will recognize this concept, Gladwell's The Tipping Point has quite a few interesting twists on the subject.
For example, Paul Revere was able to galvanize the forces of resistance so effectively in part because he was what Gladwell calls a "Connector": he knew just about everybody, particularly the revolutionary leaders in each of the towns that he rode through. But Revere "wasn't just the man with the biggest Rolodex in colonial Boston," he was also a "Maven" who gathered extensive information about the British. He knew what was going on and he knew exactly whom to tell. The phenomenon continues to this day--think of how often you've received information in an e-mail message that had been forwarded at least half a dozen times before reaching you.
Gladwell develops these and other concepts (such as the "stickiness" of ideas or the effect of population size on information dispersal) through simple, clear explanations and entertainingly illustrative anecdotes, such as comparing the pedagogical methods of Sesame Street and Blue's Clues, or explaining why it would be even easier to play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with the actor Rod Steiger. Although some readers may find the transitional passages between chapters hold their hands a little too tightly, and Gladwell's closing invocation of the possibilities of social engineering sketchy, even chilling, The Tipping Point is one of the most effective books on science for a general audience in ages. It seems inevitable that "tipping point," like "future shock" or "chaos theory," will soon become one of those ideas that everybody knows--or at least knows by name. --Ron Hogan [via]
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The history of whiskey is shrouded in some mystery. First produced in the Middle Ages, it has gained a worldwide audience and is produced from Ireland to India. For the whiskey connoisseur, no library would be complete without this fascinating look at the world of whiskey (as it is spelled in Ireland and the United States--Scotland and Canada spell it "whisky"). With more than 1,000 entries on everything from individual brands to the history of single-malt scotch, Whisk(e)y will appeal to aficionados and novices alike. [via]
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Using his own experience at P&G and incorporating the perspectives of dozens of former employees, former brand manager Charles Decker presents the time-tested strategies that have kept the company on top -- practical insights for anyone managing a business, a career, or striving for a personal best. [via]
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Patrick Bateman est un jeune homme riche, beau et intelligent. Un golden boy de Wall Street à qui tout réussit. Il est par ailleurs parfaitement au fait des techniques de nettoyage et désincrustage de la peau les plus efficaces, il s'applique les meilleures crèmes pour le visage, ne porte que des vêtements de grands couturiers, utilise les derniers gadgets technologiques et passe ses soirées au Tunnel, la boîte branchée du moment. Bien sûr, tous ses amis sont comme lui.
La seule différence, c'est qu'en plus Patrick Bateman viole, torture et tue. Mais il ne ressent jamais rien. Juste une légère contrariété lorsque ses scénarii ne se déroulent pas exactement comme prévu. À sa sortie en 1991, le roman d'Ellis suscita une vive émotion, aussi bien à cause de ses scènes d'horreur décrites quasi cliniquement que de son principal personnage, Bateman, symbole de la réussite économique, enfant prodige travesti en tueur sadique et immoral. Il faut dire qu'Ellis s'attaque de front à tous les excès de superficialité de l'Occident contemporain : sexe, culte du corps, de la richesse et de la jeunesse. Une entreprise de destruction commencée très tôt avec son premier roman Moins que zéro écrit alors qu'il avait 22 ans et que l'on retrouve dans Glamorama. Bret Easton Ellis ou l'art de mettre de l'acide sur les plaies béantes de la société. --Stellio Paris [via]
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