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books tagged “culture”
books tagged “culture”
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Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Businessby Neil PostmanISBN 014303653X (0-14-303653-X)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business'Book summary:A brilliant powerful and important book....This is a brutal indictment Postman has laid down and, so far as I can see, an irrefutable one. --Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World. [via]
More editions of Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business:
- Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business: ISBN 0140094385 (0-14-009438-5)
Softcover, Viking Pr - Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business: ISBN 0670804541 (0-670-80454-1)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA - Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business: ISBN 014303653X (0-14-303653-X)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
- Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business: ISBN 0140094385 (0-14-009438-5)
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Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinkingby Malcolm GladwellISBN 0316010669 (0-316-01066-9)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking'Book summary:Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of "thin slices" of behavior. The key is to rely on our "adaptive unconscious"--a 24/7 mental valet--that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea.
Gladwell includes caveats about leaping to conclusions: marketers can manipulate our first impressions, high arousal moments make us "mind blind," focusing on the wrong cue leaves us vulnerable to "the Warren Harding Effect" (i.e., voting for a handsome but hapless president). In a provocative chapter that exposes the "dark side of blink," he illuminates the failure of rapid cognition in the tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. He underlines studies about autism, facial reading and cardio uptick to urge training that enhances high-stakes decision-making. In this brilliant, cage-rattling book, one can only wish for a thicker slice of Gladwell's ideas about what Blink Camp might look like. --Barbara Mackoff [via]
More editions of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking:
- Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking: ISBN 0316011789 (0-316-01178-9)
Hardcover, Little Brown & Company - Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking: ISBN 0316172324 (0-316-17232-4)
Hardcover, Little Brown & Company - Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking: ISBN 0316010669 (0-316-01066-9)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co
- Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking: ISBN 0316011789 (0-316-01178-9)
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Christ and Cultureby H. Richard NiebuhrISBN 0061300039 (0-06-130003-9)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Christ and Culture'Book summary:Being fully God and fully human, Jesus raised an enduring question for his followers: what exactly was His place in this world? In the classic Christ and Culture, H. Richard Niebuhr crafted a magisterial survey of the many ways of answering that question--and the related question of how Christ's followers understand their own place in the world. Niebuhr called the subject of this book "the double wrestle of the church with its Lord and with the cultural society with which it lives in symbiosis." And he described various understandings of Christ "against," "of," and "above" culture, as well as Christ "transforming" culture, and Christ in "paradoxical" relation to it. This 50th anniversary edition of Christ and Culture, with a foreword by theologian Martin E. Marty, is not easy reading. But it remains among the most gripping articulations of what is arguably the most basic ethical question of the Christian faith: how is Christ relevant to the world in which we live now? --Michael Joseph Gross [via]
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The Closing of the American Mindby Allan BloomISBN 0671657151 (0-671-65715-1)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Closing of the American Mind'Book summary:THE BRILLIANT AND CONTROVERSIAL CRITIQUE OF AMERICAN CULTURE WITH NEARLY A MILLION COPIES IN PRINT
In 1987, eminent political philosopher Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind, an appraisal of contemporary America that hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy (The New York Times) and has not only been vindicated, but has also become more urgent today. In clear, spirited prose, Bloom argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are part of a larger intellectual crisis: the result of a dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites.
Now, in this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, acclaimed author and journalist Andrew Ferguson contributes a new essay that describes why Blooms argument caused such a furor at publication and why our culture so deeply resists its truths today. [via]
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The Closing of the American Mind/How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Studentsby Allan BloomISBN 0671479903 (0-671-47990-3)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Closing of the American Mind/How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students'Book summary:THE BRILLIANT AND CONTROVERSIAL CRITIQUE OF AMERICAN CULTURE WITH NEARLY A MILLION COPIES IN PRINT In 1987, eminent political philosopher Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind , an appraisal of contemporary America that "hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy" ( The New York Times ) and has not only been vindicated, but has also become more urgent today. In clear, spirited prose, Bloom argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are part of a larger intellectual crisis: the result of a dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites. Now, in this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, acclaimed author and journalist Andrew Ferguson contributes a new essay that describes why Bloom's argument caused such a furor at publication and why our culture so deeply resists its truths today. [via]
More editions of The Closing of the American Mind/How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students:
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Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeedby Jared DiamondISBN 0143036556 (0-14-303655-6)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed'Book summary:Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is the glass-half-empty follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel. While Guns, Germs, and Steel explained the geographic and environmental reasons why some human populations have flourished, Collapse uses the same factors to examine why ancient societies, including the Anasazi of the American Southwest and the Viking colonies of Greenland, as well as modern ones such as Rwanda, have fallen apart. Not every collapse has an environmental origin, but an eco-meltdown is often the main catalyst, he argues, particularly when combined with society's response to (or disregard for) the coming disaster. Still, right from the outset of Collapse, the author makes clear that this is not a mere environmentalist's diatribe. He begins by setting the book's main question in the small communities of present-day Montana as they face a decline in living standards and a depletion of natural resources. Once-vital mines now leak toxins into the soil, while prion diseases infect some deer and elk and older hydroelectric dams have become decrepit. On all these issues, and particularly with the hot-button topic of logging and wildfires, Diamond writes with equanimity.
Because he's addressing such significant issues within a vast span of time, Diamond can occasionally speak too briefly and assume too much, and at times his shorthand remarks may cause careful readers to raise an eyebrow. But in general, Diamond provides fine and well-reasoned historical examples, making the case that many times, economic and environmental concerns are one and the same. With Collapse, Diamond hopes to jog our collective memory to keep us from falling for false analogies or forgetting prior experiences, and thereby save us from potential devastations to come. While it might seem a stretch to use medieval Greenland and the Maya to convince a skeptic about the seriousness of global warming, it's exactly this type of cross-referencing that makes Collapse so compelling. --Jennifer Buckendorff [via]
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Consider Phlebasby Iain M. BanksISBN 0553292811 (0-553-29281-1)
Softcover, Bantam Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Consider Phlebas'Book summary:The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction. Consider Phlebas - a space opera of stunning power and awesome imagination. [via]
Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Knowby E.D. HirschISBN 1569562199 (1-56956-219-9)
Softcover, William a Thomas Braille
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know'Book summary:read this book in 1995 and found it fundamentally correct with respect to two ideas: 1) that a core of knowledge is necessary to infer, read-between-the-lines, and to understand wholly much written material; 2) that *content* is vital in education - the mental organization of which (though association and other means) is essential to becoming educated. To demonstrate another assertion, namely that public education is largely failing, Hirsch claims that a majority of high school seniors can not correctly answer this question: in what decades did the Civil War, World War I, and World War II occur? I was 35 when I read this and asked it of a 25-year-old architect - who would not even attempt it. [via]
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Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Knowby Joseph F. Kett, E.D. Hirsch, James S. TrefilISBN 0394758439 (0-394-75843-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know'Book summary:This book has soft covers.Ex-library,With usual stamps and markings,In good all round condition.No dust jacket. [via]
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The Dictionary of Cultural Literacyby James Trefil, Joseph F. Kett, E.D. HirschISBN 0395437482 (0-395-43748-2)
Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy'Book summary:"The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, 2nd edition" is a compendium of the words, phrases, names, places, events and other items, familiar to most Americans, which combines our common knowledge as a 'collective memory' and informs our late 20th Century discourse; allows us to comprehend daily newspapers, magazines, news reports, to understand our peers, leaders and even jokes; and colors the sound of our national culture. This is not 'expert' knowledge but rather the shared 'common' knowledge which allows people to communicate, forms the basis of communities, and distinguishes our national culture as unique. [via]
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Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Pop Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarterby Steven JohnsonISBN 1594481946 (1-59448-194-6)
Softcover, Riverhead Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter'Book summary:In his fourth book, Everything Bad Is Good for You, iconoclastic science writer Steven Johnson (who used himself as a test subject for the latest neurological technology in his last book, Mind Wide Open) takes on one of the most widely held preconceptions of the postmodern world--the belief that video games, television shows, and other forms of popular entertainment are detrimental to Americans' cognitive and moral development. Everything Good builds a case to the contrary that is engaging, thorough, and ultimately convincing.
The heart of Johnson's argument is something called the Sleeper Curve--a universe of popular entertainment that trends, intellectually speaking, ever upward, so that today's pop-culture consumer has to do more "cognitive work"--making snap decisions and coming up with long-term strategies in role-playing video games, for example, or mastering new virtual environments on the Internet-- than ever before. Johnson makes a compelling case that even today's least nutritional TV junk foodthe Joe Millionaires and Survivors so commonly derided as evidence of America's cultural decline--is more complex and stimulating, in terms of plot complexity and the amount of external information viewers need to understand them, than the Love Boats and I Love Lucys that preceded it. When it comes to television, even (perhaps especially) crappy television, Johnson argues, "the content is less interesting than the cognitive work the show elicits from your mind."
Johnson's work has been controversial, as befits a writer willing to challenge wisdom so conventional it has ossified into accepted truth. But even the most skeptical readers should be captivated by the intriguing questions Johnson raises, whether or not they choose to accept his answers. --Erica C. Barnett [via]More editions of Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Pop Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter:
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Excessionby Iain BanksISBN 0553575376 (0-553-57537-6)
Softcover, Bantam Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Excession'Book summary:Iain M. Banks is a true original, an author whose brilliant speculative fiction has transported us into worlds of unbounded imagination and inimitable revelatory power. Now he takes us on the ultimate trip: to the edge of possibility and to the heart of a cosmic puzzle....
Diplomat Byr Genar-Hofoen has been selected by the Culture to undertake a delicate and dangerous mission. The Department of Special Circumstances--the Culture's espionage and dirty tricks section--has sent him off to investigate a 2,500-year-old mystery: the sudden disappearance of a star fifty times older than the universe itself. But in seeking the secret of the lost sun, Byr risks losing himself.
There is only one way to break the silence of millennia: steal the soul of the long-dead starship captain who first encountered the star, and convince her to be reborn. And in accepting this mission, Byr will be swept into a vast conspiracy that could lead the universe into an age of peace...or to the brink of annihilation.
From the Paperback edition. [via] -
Fast Food Nationby Eric SchlosserISBN 0618130977 (0-618-13097-7)
Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin College Div
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fast Food Nation'Book summary:On any given day, one out of four Americans opts for a quick and cheap meal at a fast-food restaurant, without giving either its speed or its thriftiness a second thought. Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems as American, and harmless, as apple pie. But the industry's drive for consolidation, homogenization, and speed has radically transformed America's diet, landscape, economy, and workforce, often in insidiously destructive ways. Eric Schlosser, an award-winning journalist, opens his ambitious and ultimately devastating exposé with an introduction to the iconoclasts and high school dropouts, such as Harlan Sanders and the McDonald brothers, who first applied the principles of a factory assembly line to a commercial kitchen. Quickly, however, he moves behind the counter with the overworked and underpaid teenage workers, onto the factory farms where the potatoes and beef are grown, and into the slaughterhouses run by giant meatpacking corporations. Schlosser wants you to know why those French fries taste so good (with a visit to the world's largest flavor company) and "what really lurks between those sesame-seed buns." Eater beware: forget your concerns about cholesterol, there is--literally--feces in your meat.
Schlosser's investigation reaches its frightening peak in the meatpacking plants as he reveals the almost complete lack of federal oversight of a seemingly lawless industry. His searing portrayal of the industry is disturbingly similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, written in 1906: nightmare working conditions, union busting, and unsanitary practices that introduce E. coli and other pathogens into restaurants, public schools, and homes. Almost as disturbing is his description of how the industry "both feeds and feeds off the young," insinuating itself into all aspects of children's lives, even the pages of their school books, while leaving them prone to obesity and disease. Fortunately, Schlosser offers some eminently practical remedies. "Eating in the United States should no longer be a form of high-risk behavior," he writes. Where to begin? Ask yourself, is the true cost of having it "your way" really worth it? --Lesley Reed [via]
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Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Mealby Eric SchlosserISBN 0060838582 (0-06-083858-2)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal'Book summary:On any given day, one out of four Americans opts for a quick and cheap meal at a fast-food restaurant, without giving either its speed or its thriftiness a second thought. Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems as American, and harmless, as apple pie. But the industry's drive for consolidation, homogenization, and speed has radically transformed America's diet, landscape, economy, and workforce, often in insidiously destructive ways. Eric Schlosser, an award-winning journalist, opens his ambitious and ultimately devastating exposé with an introduction to the iconoclasts and high school dropouts, such as Harlan Sanders and the McDonald brothers, who first applied the principles of a factory assembly line to a commercial kitchen. Quickly, however, he moves behind the counter with the overworked and underpaid teenage workers, onto the factory farms where the potatoes and beef are grown, and into the slaughterhouses run by giant meatpacking corporations. Schlosser wants you to know why those French fries taste so good (with a visit to the world's largest flavor company) and "what really lurks between those sesame-seed buns." Eater beware: forget your concerns about cholesterol, there is--literally--feces in your meat.
Schlosser's investigation reaches its frightening peak in the meatpacking plants as he reveals the almost complete lack of federal oversight of a seemingly lawless industry. His searing portrayal of the industry is disturbingly similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, written in 1906: nightmare working conditions, union busting, and unsanitary practices that introduce E. coli and other pathogens into restaurants, public schools, and homes. Almost as disturbing is his description of how the industry "both feeds and feeds off the young," insinuating itself into all aspects of children's lives, even the pages of their school books, while leaving them prone to obesity and disease. Fortunately, Schlosser offers some eminently practical remedies. "Eating in the United States should no longer be a form of high-risk behavior," he writes. Where to begin? Ask yourself, is the true cost of having it "your way" really worth it? --Lesley Reed [via]
More editions of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal:
- Fast Food Nation Tie-in: The Dark Side of the All-american Meal: ISBN 006116139X (0-06-116139-X)
Softcover, Harpercollins - Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal: ISBN 0395977894 (0-395-97789-4)
Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin - Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal: ISBN 0060938455 (0-06-093845-5)
Softcover, Harpercollins - Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal: ISBN 0060838582 (0-06-083858-2)
Softcover, Harpercollins
- Fast Food Nation Tie-in: The Dark Side of the All-american Meal: ISBN 006116139X (0-06-116139-X)
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Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everythingby Stephen J. Dubner, Steven D. LevittISBN 0061245135 (0-06-124513-5)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything'Book summary:Economics is not widely considered to be one of the sexier sciences. The annual Nobel Prize winner in that field never receives as much publicity as his or her compatriots in peace, literature, or physics. But if such slights are based on the notion that economics is dull, or that economists are concerned only with finance itself, Steven D. Levitt will change some minds. In Freakonomics (written with Stephen J. Dubner), Levitt argues that many apparent mysteries of everyday life don't need to be so mysterious: they could be illuminated and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and drawing connections. For example, Levitt traces the drop in violent crime rates to a drop in violent criminals and, digging further, to the Roe v. Wade decision that preempted the existence of some people who would be born to poverty and hardship. Elsewhere, by analyzing data gathered from inner-city Chicago drug-dealing gangs, Levitt outlines a corporate structure much like McDonald's, where the top bosses make great money while scores of underlings make something below minimum wage. And in a section that may alarm or relieve worried parents, Levitt argues that parenting methods don't really matter much and that a backyard swimming pool is much more dangerous than a gun. These enlightening chapters are separated by effusive passages from Dubner's 2003 profile of Levitt in The New York Times Magazine, which led to the book being written. In a book filled with bold logic, such back-patting veers Freakonomics, however briefly, away from what Levitt actually has to say. Although maybe there's a good economic reason for that too, and we're just not getting it yet. --John Moe [via]
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Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everythingby Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. DubnerISBN 006089637X (0-06-089637-X)
Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything'Book summary:Economics is not widely considered to be one of the sexier sciences. The annual Nobel Prize winner in that field never receives as much publicity as his or her compatriots in peace, literature, or physics. But if such slights are based on the notion that economics is dull, or that economists are concerned only with finance itself, Steven D. Levitt will change some minds. In Freakonomics (written with Stephen J. Dubner), Levitt argues that many apparent mysteries of everyday life don't need to be so mysterious: they could be illuminated and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and drawing connections. For example, Levitt traces the drop in violent crime rates to a drop in violent criminals and, digging further, to the Roe v. Wade decision that preempted the existence of some people who would be born to poverty and hardship. Elsewhere, by analyzing data gathered from inner-city Chicago drug-dealing gangs, Levitt outlines a corporate structure much like McDonald's, where the top bosses make great money while scores of underlings make something below minimum wage. And in a section that may alarm or relieve worried parents, Levitt argues that parenting methods don't really matter much and that a backyard swimming pool is much more dangerous than a gun. These enlightening chapters are separated by effusive passages from Dubner's 2003 profile of Levitt in The New York Times Magazine, which led to the book being written. In a book filled with bold logic, such back-patting veers Freakonomics, however briefly, away from what Levitt actually has to say. Although maybe there's a good economic reason for that too, and we're just not getting it yet. --John Moe [via]
More editions of Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything:
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Freakonomics Intl Pb: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everythingby Stephen J. Dubner, Steven D. LevittISBN 0061131326 (0-06-113132-6)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Freakonomics Intl Pb: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything'More editions of Freakonomics Intl Pb: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything:
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Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock down Culture and Control Creativityby Lawrence LessigISBN 1594200068 (1-59420-006-8)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock down Culture and Control Creativity'Book summary:From "the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era" ("The New Yorker"), a landmark manifesto about the genuine closing of the American mind.
Lawrence Lessig could be called a cultural environmentalist. One of America's most original and influential public intellectuals, his focus is the social dimension of creativity: how creative work builds on the past and how society encourages or inhibits that building with laws and technologies. In his two previous books, Code and The Future of Ideas, Lessig concentrated on the destruction of much of the original promise of the Internet. Now, in Free Culture, he widens his focus to consider the diminishment of the larger public domain of ideas. In this powerful wake-up call he shows how short-sighted interests blind to the long-term damage they're inflicting are poisoning the ecosystem that fosters innovation.
All creative works-books, movies, records, software, and so on-are a compromise between what can be imagined and what is possible-technologically and legally. For more than two hundred years, laws in America have sought a balance between rewarding creativity and allowing the borrowing from which new creativity springs. The original term of copyright set by the Constitution in 1787 was seventeen years. Now it is closer to two hundred. Thomas Jefferson considered protecting the public against overly long monopolies on creative works an essential government role. What did he know that we've forgotten?
Lawrence Lessig shows us that while new technologies always lead to new laws, never before have the big cultural monopolists used the fear created by new technologies, specifically the Internet, to shrink the public domain of ideas, even as the same corporations use the same technologies to control more and more what we can and can't do with culture. As more and more culture becomes digitized, more and more becomes controllable, even as laws are being toughened at the behest of the big media groups. What's at stake is our freedom-freedom to create, freedom to build, and ultimately, freedom to imagine. [via]More editions of Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock down Culture and Control Creativity:
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Free Culture: The Nature And Future Of Creativityby Lawrence LessigISBN 0143034650 (0-14-303465-0)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Free Culture: The Nature And Future Of Creativity'Book summary:[via]Lawrence Lessig, the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era (The New Yorker), masterfully argues that never before in human history has the power to control creative progress been so concentrated in the hands of the powerful few, the so-called Big Media. Never before have the cultural powers- that-be been able to exert such control over what we can and cant do with the culture around us. Our society defends free markets and free speech; why then does it permit such top-down control? To lose our long tradition of free culture, Lawrence Lessig shows us, is to lose our freedom to create, our freedom to build, and, ultimately, our freedom to imagine.
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From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Lifeby Jacques BarzunISBN 0060928832 (0-06-092883-2)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life'Book summary:At the outset of Jacques Barzun's colossal book From Dawn to Decadence 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, the author admits that when asked by friends how long he has been writing his book, he can only answer--a lifetime. The book is worth the wait for its extraordinary energy and intellectual range. Barzun begins by arguing that "by tracing in broad outline the evolution of art, science, religion, philosophy and social though during the last 500 years, I hope to show that during this span the peoples of the West offered the world a set of ideas and institutions not found earlier elsewhere." In the process Barzun adroitly guides the reader from Luther's Ninety-five Theses and the religious revolution of the 16th century, through what he calls "the monarchical, liberal and social" revolutions of the subsequent 400 years that have shaped the culture of the modern Western world. All of Western life and thought can be found somewhere in From Dawn to Decadence. Portraits of Martin Luther, Shakespeare, Descartes, Florence Nightingale and James Joyce jostle alongside snapshots of cities at turning points in history--"The View from Venice Around 1650", "The View from Paris Around 1830", and finally "A View from New York Around 1995". Barzun's central argument is that "after a time, the Western mind was set upon by a blight: it was Boredom." This does lead Barzun to some more curmudgeonly comments towards the end of the book, where he deals with the cultural exhaustion of the last decades of the 20th century, but over 800 pages he offers more than enough insight into an incredible sweep of history to make this a riveting and rewarding book. --Jerry Brotton [via]
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From Dawn to Decadence : 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Presentby Jacques BarzunISBN 0060175869 (0-06-017586-9)
Hardcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited
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› Find signed collectible books: 'From Dawn to Decadence : 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present'Book summary:In the last half-millennium, as the noted cultural critic and historian Jacques Barzun observes, great revolutions have swept the Western world. Each has brought profound change--for instance, the remaking of the commercial and social worlds wrought by the rise of Protestantism and by the decline of hereditary monarchies. And each, Barzun hints, is too little studied or appreciated today, in a time he does not hesitate to label as decadent.
To leaf through Barzun's sweeping, densely detailed but lightly written survey of the last 500 years is to ride a whirlwind of world-changing events. Barzun ponders, for instance, the tumultuous political climate of Renaissance Italy, which yielded mayhem and chaos, but also the work of Michelangelo and Leonardo--and, he adds, the scientific foundations for today's consumer culture of boom boxes and rollerblades. He considers the 16th-century varieties of religious experimentation that arose in the wake of Martin Luther's 95 theses, some of which led to the repression of individual personality, others of which might easily have come from the "Me Decade." Along the way, he offers a miniature history of the detective novel, defends Surrealism from its detractors, and derides the rise of professional sports, packing in a wealth of learned and often barbed asides.
Never shy of controversy, Barzun writes from a generally conservative position; he insists on the importance of moral values, celebrates the historical contributions of Christopher Columbus, and twits the academic practitioners of political correctness. Whether accepting of those views or not, even the most casual reader will find much that is new or little-explored in this attractive venture into cultural history. --Gregory McNamee [via]
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Golden/GeishaISBN 2253117951 (2-253-11795-1)
Hardcover, Librairie Generale Francaise, LGF
Find This BookBook summary:604pages. poche. broché. [via]
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Guns, Germs & Steel: The Fates of Human Societiesby Jared DiamondISBN 0393317552 (0-393-31755-2)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Guns, Germs & Steel: The Fates of Human Societies'Book summary:Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the other eye--and his heart--belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he has done field work for more than 30 years. [via]
More editions of Guns, Germs & Steel: The Fates of Human Societies:
- Guns, Germs, And Steel: The Fates of Human Societies: ISBN 0393061310 (0-393-06131-0)
Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc - Guns, Germs & Steel: The Fates of Human Societies: ISBN 061318114X (0-613-18114-X)
Hardcover, Bt Bound - Guns, Germs, and Steel : The Fates of Human Societies: ISBN 0393038912 (0-393-03891-2)
Hardcover, Norton & Company, Incorporated, W. W. - Guns, Germs & Steel: The Fates of Human Societies: ISBN 0393973867 (0-393-97386-7)
Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc - Guns, Germs & Steel: The Fates of Human Societies: ISBN 0393317552 (0-393-31755-2)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
- Guns, Germs, And Steel: The Fates of Human Societies: ISBN 0393061310 (0-393-06131-0)
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Guns, Germs, and Steel Reader's Companionby Jared DiamondISBN 1586638637 (1-58663-863-7)
Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Guns, Germs, and Steel Reader's Companion'Book summary:Scholar and professor Jared Diamond made a huge splash with this fascinating but controversial book, which argues that geography and environment have almost singlehandedly determined the course of human history. Dig deeper into his contentions with the information inside this invaluable reader's handbook:- Why did Europe colonize Africa and Asia rather than the other way around?
- Why is geography the most important factor in human history?
- How has the rest of the scientific community received Diamond's theory?
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How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Cultureby Francis SchaefferISBN 1581345364 (1-58134-536-4)
Softcover, Crossway Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture'Book summary:Drawing upon forty years of study in theology, philosophy, history, sociology and the arts, Dr. Schaeffer contemplates the reasons for modern society's sorry state of affairs and argues for total affirmation of the Bible's morals, values, and meaning. [via]
More editions of How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture:
- How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture: ISBN 0891072926 (0-89107-292-6)
Softcover, Good News Pub - How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture: ISBN 0800708199 (0-8007-0819-9)
Hardcover, F. H. Revell Co - How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture: ISBN 1581345364 (1-58134-536-4)
Softcover, Crossway Books
- How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture: ISBN 0891072926 (0-89107-292-6)
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Ishmaelby Daniel QuinnISBN 0553375407 (0-553-37540-7)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ishmael'Book summary:FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. Ishmael follows what happens when a man answers an ad in a local newspaper placed by a telepathic gorilla. [via]
More editions of Ishmael:
- Ishmael: ISBN 0613080939 (0-613-08093-9)
Hardcover, Bt Bound - Ishmael : An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit: ISBN 0553561669 (0-553-56166-9)
Softcover, Bantam Books - Ishmael: ISBN 0553078755 (0-553-07875-5)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group - Ishmael: ISBN 0553375407 (0-553-37540-7)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
- Ishmael: ISBN 0613080939 (0-613-08093-9)
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Look to Windwardby Iain M. BanksISBN 0743421922 (0-7434-2192-2)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Look to Windward'Book summary:A classic in science fiction, Banks's novel is about a war so powerful it destroyed two suns and the billions of lives they supported. [via]
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Memoirs of a Geishaby Arthur GoldenISBN 1400096898 (1-4000-9689-8)
Softcover, Bantam Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Memoirs of a Geisha'Book summary:The first thing you notice about the audio version of Memoirs of a Geisha is that Arthur Golden's 428-page novel has been reduced to a scant two cassettes. But dismay quickly gives way to mounting pleasure as Elaina Erika Davis (Contact, As the World Turns) begins her delicate rendering of geisha culture in the years before World War II. Davis reads the abbreviated story of Sayuri with an authentic-sounding Japanese accent--one mixed with a magical combination of Asian reserve and theatrical energy. As Sayuri ages from a 9-year-old peasant girl to a popular geisha in her late 20s, Davis directs her voice gently away from curious youth to a tone that reflects Sayuri's uphill life.
From start to finish, the listener is absorbed in the elegant spirit of Davis's performance, eager to hear the next chapter of Sayuri's transformation into one of the most famous geishas of the century. How unfortunate, then, to learn that book readers not only get the basic story, but a fascinating look at the intricate rules and rituals of geisha culture. Here, for example, is one of the many revelations omitted from the cassette: "Japanese men, as a rule, feel about a woman's neck and throat the same way that men in the West might feel about a woman's legs.... In fact, a geisha leaves a tiny margin of skin bare all around the hairline, causing her makeup to look even more artificial.... When a man sits beside her, he becomes that much more aware of the bare skin beneath."
We're also denied several subplots--the aborted friendship between Sayuri and a geisha named Pumpkin, for example, or much of the story involving the man Sayuri is secretly in love with. But what remains is as precious as a traditional Japanese kimono--at once artistic, suggestive, and moving. --Ann Senechal [via]
More editions of Memoirs of a Geisha:
- Memoirs of a Geisha: ISBN 0679781587 (0-679-78158-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc - Memoirs of a Geisha: ISBN 0739326872 (0-7393-2687-2)
Softcover, Random House Large Print - Memoirs of a Geisha: ISBN 0375400117 (0-375-40011-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc - Memoirs of a Geisha: ISBN 0739326228 (0-7393-2622-8)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print - Memoirs of a Geisha: ISBN 037570440X (0-375-70440-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc - Memoirs of a Geisha: ISBN 0606222049 (0-606-22204-9)
Hardcover, Demco Media - Memoirs of a Geisha: ISBN 0783801459 (0-7838-0145-9)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr - Memoirs of a Geisha: ISBN 1400096898 (1-4000-9689-8)
Softcover, Bantam Books
- Memoirs of a Geisha: ISBN 0679781587 (0-679-78158-7)
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Memoirs of a Geisha: Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack, Piano Soloby John WilliamsISBN 1423412206 (1-4234-1220-6)
Softcover, Hal Leonard Corp
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Memoirs of a Geisha: Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack, Piano Solo'Book summary:(Piano Solo Songbook). Six instrumental themes by John Williams from this Oscar-winning film, arranged for piano solo. Includes: As the Water * Becoming a Geisha * The Chairman's Waltz * Going to School * Sayuri's Theme * Sayuri's Theme and End Credits. [via]
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Memorias De Una Geisha / Memoirs of a Geishaby Arthur GoldenISBN 9681905849 (968-19-0584-9)
Softcover, Santillana USA Pub Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Memorias De Una Geisha / Memoirs of a Geisha'Book summary:En Memorias de una geisha, Arthur Golden abre una ventana al misterioso mundo del erotismo en Japón y describe con fidelidad la delicada fortaleza de la cultura de las geishas de Kioto a lo largo del siglo. [via]
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Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in Americaby Barbara EhrenreichISBN 1587243687 (1-58724-368-7)
Hardcover, Wheeler Pub Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America'Book summary:Essayist and cultural critic Barbara Ehrenreich has always specialized in turning received wisdom on its head with intelligence, clarity, and verve. With some 12 million women being pushed into the labor market by welfare reform, she decided to do some good old-fashioned journalism and find out just how they were going to survive on the wages of the unskilled--at $6 to $7 an hour, only half of what is considered a living wage. So she did what millions of Americans do, she looked for a job and a place to live, worked that job, and tried to make ends meet.
As a waitress in Florida, where her name is suddenly transposed to "girl," trailer trash becomes a demographic category to aspire to with rent at $675 per month. In Maine, where she ends up working as both a cleaning woman and a nursing home assistant, she must first fill out endless pre-employment tests with trick questions such as "Some people work better when they're a little bit high." In Minnesota, she works at Wal-Mart under the repressive surveillance of men and women whose job it is to monitor her behavior for signs of sloth, theft, drug abuse, or worse. She even gets to experience the humiliation of the urine test.
So, do the poor have survival strategies unknown to the middle class? And did Ehrenreich feel the "bracing psychological effects of getting out of the house, as promised by the wonks who brought us welfare reform?" Nah. Even in her best-case scenario, with all the advantages of education, health, a car, and money for first month's rent, she has to work two jobs, seven days a week, and still almost winds up in a shelter. As Ehrenreich points out with her potent combination of humor and outrage, the laws of supply and demand have been reversed. Rental prices skyrocket, but wages never rise. Rather, jobs are so cheap as measured by the pay that workers are encouraged to take as many as they can. Behind those trademark Wal-Mart vests, it turns out, are the borderline homeless. With her characteristic wry wit and her unabashedly liberal bent, Ehrenreich brings the invisible poor out of hiding and, in the process, the world they inhabit--where civil liberties are often ignored and hard work fails to live up to its reputation as the ticket out of poverty. --Lesley Reed [via]
More editions of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America:
- Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America: ISBN 0805063897 (0-8050-6389-7)
Softcover, Henry Holt & Co - Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America: ISBN 0805063889 (0-8050-6388-9)
Hardcover, Henry Holt & Co - Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America: ISBN 1587243687 (1-58724-368-7)
Hardcover, Wheeler Pub Inc
- Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America: ISBN 0805063897 (0-8050-6389-7)
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No Logo: El Poder De Las Marcasby Naomi KleinISBN 8449312485 (84-493-1248-5)
Softcover, Paidos Iberica Ediciones S A
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› Find signed collectible books: 'No Logo: El Poder De Las Marcas'More editions of No Logo: El Poder De Las Marcas:
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No Logo: No Space No Choice No Jobsby Naomi KleinISBN 0312421435 (0-312-42143-5)
Softcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'No Logo: No Space No Choice No Jobs'Book summary: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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No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bulliesby Naomi KleinISBN 0312271921 (0-312-27192-1)
Softcover, Picador
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› Find signed collectible books: 'No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies'Book summary: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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Orientalismby Edward W. SaidISBN 039474067X (0-394-74067-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Orientalism'Book summary:For generations now, Edward W. Said's "Orientalism" has defined our understanding of colonialism and empire, and this "Penguin Modern Classics" edition contains a preface written by Said shortly before his death in 2003. In this highly-acclaimed work, Edward Said surveys the history and nature of Western attitudes towards the East, considering orientalism as a powerful European ideological creation - a way for writers, philosophers and colonial administrators to deal with the 'otherness' of eastern culture, customs and beliefs. He traces this view through the writings of Homer, Nerval and Flaubert, Disraeli and Kipling, whose imaginative depictions have greatly contributed to the West's romantic and exotic picture of the Orient. Drawing on his own experiences as an Arab Palestinian living in the West, Said examines how these ideas can be a reflection of European imperialism and racism. Edward W. Said (1935-2003) was a Palestinian-American cultural critic and author, born in Jerusalem and educated in Egypt and the United States. His other books include "The Question of Palestine", "Culture and Imperialism" and "Out of Place: A Memoir". If you enjoyed "Orientalism", you might like Frantz Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth", also available in "Penguin Modern Classics". "Stimulating, elegant and pugnacious". ("Observer"). "Beautifully patterned and passionately argued". ("New Statesman"). "Very exciting ...his case is not merely persuasive, but conclusive". (John Leonard, "New York Times"). "Magisterial". (Terry Eagleton). [via]
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The Player of Gamesby Iain M. BanksISBN 0061000981 (0-06-100098-1)
Softcover, HarperCollins Publishers Limited
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Player of Games'Book summary:In The Player of Games, Iain M. Banks presents a distant future that could almost be called the end of history. Humanity has filled the galaxy, and thanks to ultra-high technology everyone has everything they want, no one gets sick, and no one dies. It's a playground society of sports, stellar cruises, parties, and festivals. Jernau Gurgeh, a famed master game player, is looking for something more and finds it when he's invited to a game tournament at a small alien empire. Abruptly Banks veers into different territory. The Empire of Azad is exotic, sensual, and vibrant. It has space battle cruisers, a glowing court--all the stuff of good old science fiction--which appears old-fashioned in contrast to Gurgeh's home. At first it's a relief, but further exploration reveals the empire to be depraved and terrifically unjust. Its defects are gross exaggerations of our own, yet they indict us all the same. Clearly Banks is interested in the idea of a future where everyone can be mature and happy. Yet it's interesting to note that in order to give us this compelling adventure story, he has to return to a more traditional setting. Thoughtful science fiction readers will appreciate the cultural comparisons, and fans of big ideas and action will also be rewarded. --Brooks Peck [via]
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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Culturesby Anne FadimanISBN 0374525641 (0-374-52564-1)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures'Book summary:Lia Lee was born in 1981 to a family of recent Hmong immigrants, and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy. By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, overmedication, and culture clash: "What the doctors viewed as clinical efficiency the Hmong viewed as frosty arrogance." The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, written with the deepest of human feeling. Sherwin Nuland said of the account, "There are no villains in Fadiman's tale, just as there are no heroes. People are presented as she saw them, in their humility and their frailty--and their nobility." [via]
More editions of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures:
- The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures: ISBN 0374975809 (0-374-97580-9)
Softcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux - The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures: ISBN 0374267812 (0-374-26781-2)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux - The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures: ISBN 0374525641 (0-374-52564-1)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
- The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures: ISBN 0374975809 (0-374-97580-9)
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Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technologyby Neil PostmanISBN 0679745408 (0-679-74540-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology'Book summary:Neil Postman is one of the most level-headed analysts of education, media, and technology, and in this book he spells out the increasing dependence upon technology, numerical quantification, and misappropriation of "Scientism" to all human affairs. No simple technophobe, Postman argues insightfully and writes with a stylistic flair, profound sense of humor, and love of language increasingly rare in our hastily scribbled e-mail-saturated world. [via]
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Television and the Teaching of Englishby Neil PostmanISBN 0891974458 (0-89197-445-8)
Softcover, Ardent Media Inc
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The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Differenceby Malcolm GladwellISBN 0316346624 (0-316-34662-4)
Softcover, Back Bay Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference'Book summary:"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]
More editions of The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference:
- The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference: ISBN 0316316962 (0-316-31696-2)
Hardcover, Little Brown & Co - The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference: ISBN 0316679070 (0-316-67907-0)
Softcover, Warner Books Inc - The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference: ISBN 0316648523 (0-316-64852-3)
Hardcover, Little Brown & Co - The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference: ISBN 0316346624 (0-316-34662-4)
Softcover, Back Bay Books
- The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference: ISBN 0316316962 (0-316-31696-2)
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Use of Weaponsby Iain M. BanksISBN 0553292242 (0-553-29224-2)
Softcover, Bantam Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Use of Weapons'Book summary:Called back from early retirement by Special Circumstances, the elite weapon of the Culture's policy of moral espionage, Cheradenine Zakalwe reluctantly returns to work, but his fatal flaw could cost them the battle. Reprint. [via]
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The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Centuryby Thomas L. FriedmanISBN 0374292795 (0-374-29279-5)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century'Book summary:Thomas L. Friedman is not so much a futurist, which he is sometimes called, as a presentist. His aim, in his new book, The World Is Flat, as in his earlier, influential Lexus and the Olive Tree, is not to give you a speculative preview of the wonders that are sure to come in your lifetime, but rather to get you caught up on the wonders that are already here. The world isn't going to be flat, it is flat, which gives Friedman's breathless narrative much of its urgency, and which also saves it from the Epcot-style polyester sheen that futurists--the optimistic ones at least--are inevitably prey to.
What Friedman means by "flat" is "connected": the lowering of trade and political barriers and the exponential technical advances of the digital revolution have made it possible to do business, or almost anything else, instantaneously with billions of other people across the planet. This in itself should not be news to anyone. But the news that Friedman has to deliver is that just when we stopped paying attention to these developments--when the dot-com bust turned interest away from the business and technology pages and when 9/11 and the Iraq War turned all eyes toward the Middle East--is when they actually began to accelerate. Globalization 3.0, as he calls it, is driven not by major corporations or giant trade organizations like the World Bank, but by individuals: desktop freelancers and innovative startups all over the world (but especially in India and China) who can compete--and win--not just for low-wage manufacturing and information labor but, increasingly, for the highest-end research and design work as well. (He doesn't forget the "mutant supply chains" like Al-Qaeda that let the small act big in more destructive ways.) Friedman tells his eye-opening story with the catchy slogans and globe-hopping anecdotes that readers of his earlier books and his New York Times columns will know well, and also with a stern sort of optimism. He wants to tell you how exciting this new world is, but he also wants you to know you're going to be trampled if you don't keep up with it. His book is an excellent place to begin. --Tom Nissley
Where Were You When the World Went Flat?
Thomas L. Friedman's reporter's curiosity and his ability to recognize the patterns behind the most complex global developments have made him one of the most entertaining and authoritative sources for information about the wider world we live in, both as the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times and as the author of landmark books like From Beirut to Jerusalem and The Lexus and the Olive Tree. They also make him an endlessly fascinating conversation partner, and we'd happily have peppered him with questions about The World Is Flat for hours. Read our interview to learn why there's almost no one from Washington, D.C., listed in the index of a book about the global economy, and what his one-plank platform for president would be. (Hint: his bumper stickers would say, "Can You Hear Me Now?") The Essential Tom Friedman
From Beirut to Jerusalem
The Lexus and the Olive Tree
Longitudes and AttitudesMore on Globalization and Development
China, Inc. by Ted Fishman
Three Billion New Capitalists by Clyde Prestowitz
The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs
Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz
The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli
The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de SotoMore editions of The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century:
- The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century: ISBN 0374292884 (0-374-29288-4)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux - The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century: ISBN 078627722X (0-7862-7722-X)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr - The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century: ISBN 0374292795 (0-374-29279-5)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
- The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century: ISBN 0374292884 (0-374-29288-4)
![Golden/Geisha (2253117951) by [???]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31uk9NZf24L._SL160_.jpg "Golden/Geisha (2253117951) by [???]")
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Armas, germenes y acero/ Guns, Germs and Steelby Jared DiamondISBN 848306667X (84-8306-667-X)
Hardcover, Debate Editorial
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Armas, germenes y acero/ Guns, Germs and Steel'More editions of Armas, germenes y acero/ Guns, Germs and Steel:
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Blink Inteligencia Intuitiva?/blink.: Por Que Sabemos La Verdad En Dos Segundos/ the Power of Thinking Without Thinkingby Malcolm GladwellISBN 1598200879 (1-59820-087-9)
Softcover, Santillana USA Pub Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Blink Inteligencia Intuitiva?/blink.: Por Que Sabemos La Verdad En Dos Segundos/ the Power of Thinking Without Thinking'Book summary:In Blink, bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant ¯in the blink of an eye¯ that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? How do our brains really work - in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others? [via]
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Freakonomics: Un Economista Polfticamente Incorrecto Explora El Lado Oculta De Lo Que Nos Afectaby Stephen J. Dubner, Steven D. LevittISBN 8466625127 (84-666-2512-7)
Softcover, Ediciones B
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Freakonomics: Un Economista Polfticamente Incorrecto Explora El Lado Oculta De Lo Que Nos Afecta'Book summary:[via]Presenting economics as the underlying connection between seemingly unrelated events or phenomena, this international bestseller establishes a new way of looking at the world. The authors explain the hidden side of everything, from violent crime, parenting, and baby names to the Ku Klux Klan and real estate, demonstrating how economics isn't just about numbers, but a study of incentiveshow people get what they need and want when others need and want the same thing.Comprobando que el estudio de la economía puede explicar como se relacionan fenómenos distintos, este bestseller internacional establece una nueva manera de ver al mundo. Los autores explican el lado escondido de todo, desde crímenes violentos y nombres de bebes hasta el Ku Klux Klan y bienes raíces, demostrando que el estudio de la economía es un estudio de los incentivos: el modo en que las personas obtienen lo que desean o necesitan, especialmente cuando otras personas desean o necesitan lo mismo.More editions of Freakonomics: Un Economista Polfticamente Incorrecto Explora El Lado Oculta De Lo Que Nos Afecta:
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Memorias De Una Geisha / Memoirs of a Geishaby Arthur GoldenISBN 8495501198 (84-95501-19-8)
Softcover, Santillana USA Pub Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Memorias De Una Geisha / Memoirs of a Geisha'Book summary:Poco antes de su muerte, Sayuri, una anciana japonesa afincada en Nueva York, cuenta la historia de su vida a un joven amigo americano. El poder de seducción de la voz narrativa de esta geisha legendaria transporta al lector a un Japón de entre guerras, lleno todavía de ecos feudales, y a una de las tradiciones japonesas que más curiosidad inspiran en el mundo occidental: la de la geisha, una peculiar práctica cultural a la que están ligadas artes tales como la seducción, la danza, la pintura o la clásica ceremonia del té. [via]
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No Logo: El Poder de Las Marcasby Naomi KleinISBN 8449310741 (84-493-1074-1)
Hardcover, Ediciones Paidos Iberica, S.A.
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La Tierra Es Plana / The World Is Flat: Breve Historia del Mundo Globalizado del Siglo XXI / A Brief History of the Twenty-first Centuryby Thomas FriedmanISBN 8427032226 (84-270-3222-6)
Softcover, Planeta Pub Corp
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› Find signed collectible books: 'La Tierra Es Plana / The World Is Flat: Breve Historia del Mundo Globalizado del Siglo XXI / A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century'Book summary:Edicion en español [via]
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French
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Geishaby Arthur GoldenISBN 225314794X (2-253-14794-X)
Softcover, Le Livre de poche
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Geisha'Book summary:574pages. poche. broché. A neuf ans, dans le Japon d'avant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Sayuri est vendue par son père, un modeste pêcheur, à une maison de plaisir de Kyoto. Dotée d'extraordinaires yeux bleus, la petite fille comprend vite qu'il faut mettre à profit la chance qui est la sienne. Elle se plie avec docilité à l'initiation difficile qui en fera une vraie geisha. Art de la toilette et de la coiffure, rituel du thé, science du chant, de la danse et de l'amour: Sayuri va peu à peu se hisser au rang des geishas les plus convoitées de la ville. Les riches, les puissants se disputeront ses faveurs. Elle triomphera des pièges que lui tend la haine d'une rivale. Elle rencontrera finalement l'amour. Ecrit sous la forme de mémoires, ce récit a la véracité d'un exceptionnel document et le souffle d'un grand roman. Il nous entraîne au coeur d'un univers exotique où se mêlent érotisme et perversité, cruauté et raffinement, séduction et mystère. [via]
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L'homme Des Jeuxby Iain Banks, Helene CollonISBN 2253071854 (2-253-07185-4)
Hardcover, Robert Laffont
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German
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Die Geishaby Arthur GoldenISBN 3442726328 (3-442-72632-8)
Softcover
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Die Geisha'Book summary:Nach dem Tod ihrer Mutter wird Chiyo in ein Geisha-Haus verkauft. Nachleidvollen Lehrjahren wird sie die begehrteste und mächtigste von allenGeishas. Doch ihr Traum vom privaten Glück erfüllt sich erst nach dem Untergangder alten Geisha-Kultur. [via]
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