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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Catastrophe by Dick Morris,Eileen Mcgann


A hot books for conservatisms.

Product Description
It's time to take back our country. Now. It's that simple. It's that urgent. So begins Dick Morris and Eileen McGann's latest and most important book. They say that we must act before President Barack Obama fully implements his radical political agenda. Because after Obama has won his war on prosperity and canceled the war on terror, it will be too late to regain our liberty or our security. At a time when we needed a pragmatic centrist to lead us out of recession, we got a doctrinaire socialist who wants to use the crisis to put the government in charge of the economy and enact European socialism here in the United States. Cars, banks-what's next? He will keep at it until Washington governs every major business in America and sets all our salaries. It's a catastrophe. Dick Morris and Eileen McGann saw the meltdown coming. In their book Outrage, they called out the house of cards that was Fannie Mae. In Fleeced, they went after the credit card companies, the subprime mortgage lenders, and the hedge fund billionaires who conspired to wreck the economy-and Barack Obama, whose policies, they predicted last summer, would "trigger a stock market crash." Now, in Catastrophe, Morris and McGann take a hard look at America in free fall-and at how Obama is transforming a vulnerable America into a socialist state. They tell the truth about Obama and his radical policies: He will destroy our health care system so that no one gets adequate care. He designed his bank rescue plan to pave the way for nation-alization of the banks and socialization of the economy. He firmly believes in government control of our major industries-he's already commandeered the banks and the automobile industry. He plans to reshape the political landscape to keep the left in power for decades by cooking the census, enfranchising illegal immigrants, muzzling talk radio, and coercing workers into unions. He is attacking those who fight terrorism while letting the terrorists go free. He gives aid to Hamas while Shariah Law threatens to take over America. He has repealed the Declaration of Independence and put us under a worldwide, European-dominated financial regulatory system. But Obama is not working alone. Morris and McGann spell out how Congress is complicit: How Senator Chris Dodd and Congressman Charlie Rangel use special interests and special friends for their own enrichment and glorification. How Ted Kennedy Jr. is exploiting his father's health care power. "This is no time for apathy or alienation or hopelessness," Morris and McGann remind us. "It's a time for action." And that action must begin now-before it's too late.

More of Dick Morris books here


Black Hills by Nora Roberts




From Publishers Weekly
It's not just a sure-fire formula that's kept the crown atop the queen of romance, as this thriller proves. The gushy love-conquers-all story of South Dakota wildlife biologist Lil Chance and ex-cop/PI Coop Sullivan takes a back seat to the taut, gritty chase of a serial killer. There's never a doubt that Lil and Coop—childhood sweethearts who fall in love, drift apart and then reconnect—will help each other mend their wounded hearts: It was a good day, she thought, when you opened yourself to both the joys and the risks of love, Lil discovers. Nor is it surprising that a crazed killer will meet his match in feisty Lil. But this premier storyteller proves an ordinary love story can still win your heart, and even an inevitable confrontation may scare you silly. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


Product Description
#1 New York Times–bestselling author Nora Roberts takes us deep into the rugged Black Hills of South Dakota, where the shadows keep secrets, hunters stalk the land, and a childhood friendship matures into an adult passion.

Asummer at his grandparents’ South Dakota ranch is not eleven-year-old Cooper Sullivan’s idea of a good time. But things are a bit more bearable now that he’s discovered the neighbor girl, Lil Chance, and her homemade batting cage. Even horseback riding isn’t as awful as Coop thought it would be. Each year, with Coop’s annual summer visit, their friendship deepens from innocent games to stolen kisses, but there is one shared experience that will forever haunt them: the terrifying discovery of a hiker’s body.

As the seasons change and the years roll, Lil stays steadfast to her dreams of becoming a wildlife biologist and protecting her family land, while Coop struggles with his father’s demand that he attend law school and join the family firm. Twelve years after they last walked together hand in hand, fate has brought them back to the Black Hills when the people and things they hold most dear need them most.

An investigator in New York, Coop recently left his fastpaced life to care for his aging grandparents and the ranch he has come to call home. Though the memory of his touch still haunts her, Lil has let nothing stop her dream of opening the Chance Wildlife Refuge, but something . . . or someone . . . has been keeping a close watch. When small pranks and acts of destruction escalate into the heartless killing of Lil’s beloved cougar, recollections of an unsolved murder in these very hills have Coop springing to action to keep Lil safe.

Lil and Coop both know the natural dangers that lurk in the wild landscape of the Black Hills. But now they must work together to unearth a killer of twisted and unnatural instincts who has singled them out as prey.

About the Author
Nora Roberts is the number-one New York Times– bestselling author of more than 150 novels, including Tribute, High Noon, Angels Fall, Blue Smoke, Northern Lights, and many more. She is also the author of the bestselling futuristic suspense series written under the pen name J. D. Robb. Roberts has more than 280 million copies of her books in print.

More books of Nora Roberts here

Michael Jackson Thriller 25th Anniversary: The Book, Celebrating the Biggest Selling Album of All Time



Product Description
MICHAEL JACKSON THRILLER 25TH ANNIVERSARY!

The party ain't over yet! Michael Jackson celebrates the 25th anniversary of Thriller, the world's largest selling album of all time, and the biggest milestone in pop music ever. THRILLER - the music, the videos, the looks and the dance moves that changed music forever.

February 12th, 2008 saw the release of Michael Jackson's Thriller album in a special 25th anniversary edition featuring all classic Thriller hits digitally remastered, a bonus DVD with Jackson's electrifying appearances and dance moves from the Thriller era PLUS brand-new tracks and remixes of Thriller's biggest hits with guest stars such as Akon, Fergie, Kanye West, and will.i.am.

Now, the party continues: THRILLER 25th Anniversary - The Book celebrates the iconic King of Pop and the world's biggest selling album of all time. More than 180 exclusive, high quality, digitally remastered and glossy photographs make this book a visual journey back to the iconic times of Thriller: Behind the scenes in the studio recording THRILLER, making the revolutionary short films, being on a victorious tour, Grammy's most glorious night, and much more.

FEAT. EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS: Quincy Jones (Executive Producer, Thriller); Rod Temperton (Songwriter, Thriller); John Landis (Director, Thriller - The Short Film); Tamara Conniff (Editiorial Director, BILLBOARD); Matt Forger (Sound Engineer, Thriller); Bruce Swedien (Sound Engineer, Thriller); Bob Giraldi (Director, Beat It); and many more.

ALSO: The stories behind the Thriller songs, unreleased songs from the Thriller recording sessions, hand-written lyrics by Michael Jackson, hand-written notes from the studio sessions, poems by Michael Jackson, and much more.

About the Author
Named the "Most Successful Entertainer of All Time" by the Guinness Book of World Records, Michael Jackson is among the most highly acclaimed and influential artists in pop culture. He was named the World Music Award's Best-Selling Pop Male Artist of the Millennium and received the American Music Award's Artist of the Century Award.

Jackson, known as the King of Pop, has been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice: in 1997 as a member of the Jackson 5 and as a solo artist in 2001.

Michael Jackson: For The Record by Chris Cadman,Craig Halstead



A very good about Michael Jackson biography.

A man in the mirror.

Product Description
Michael Jackson first entered a recording studio in November 1967, just three months after his ninth birthday. Two years later he and his older brothers scored their first hit, 'I Want You Back' - and, despite set-backs that would have ended the career of a lesser man, Michael's legion of fans remain as loyal today as they have ever been. This is the story of the man and his music...

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Michael Jackson Conspiracy by Aphrodite Jones



Product Description
He was the pop icon the media loved to hate. Tremendously wealthy, inarguably eccentric, and one of the most famous people in the world, Michael Jackson was the unenviable target of constant public humiliation. The media poked fun at his skin, his features, his sexuality, and his lifestyle.Here, seasoned crime reporter Aphrodite Jones condemns the media for perpetuating hateful rumors and innuendoes, recounting just the sordid details, and reporting only the most despicable accusations and grisly charges made against Michael Jackson during his criminal trial. They had built a highly profitable industry around the superstar's "freaky life" and banked on his conviction. And, it turns out, they got it all wrong.In their efforts to make money and win ratings, the media missed the truth. It wasn't until after the "not guilty" verdict that Jones had the insight and courage to admit her own unintentional role in the frenzy surrounding the shocking testimony, high drama, and countless celebrities in Michael Jackson's high-profile criminal trial. Here, she makes amends with what is not only a truthful, well-documented chronicle of the entire trial but a powerful indictment against the media for conspiring to distort, dehumanize, and destroy Michael Jackson. Jones argues convincingly that the case against Jackson amounted to nothing more than a media-made, tax-paid scandal, and she makes an impassioned call to action for the public-at-large to think critically, question the integrity, and demand the truth in "the news".
--This text is on the cover of the book

About the Author
With five bestselling crime books under her belt, Aphrodite Jones has become a highly recognized authority on true crime. Jones has made more than one hundred television and radio appearances and has been quoted in articles that have appeared in the "Los Angeles Times", "New York Post", "Daily News", "The Hollywood Reporter", and "USA Today". She is the author of the "New York Times" bestseller "Cruel Sacrifice", and her account of the Brandon Teena story, "All She Wanted", became an international bestseller and was transformed into the film "Boys Don't Cry".

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

And Then the Roof Caved In: How Wall Street Greed and Stupidity Brought Capitalism to Its Knees by David Faber



Product Description

CNBC's David Faber takes an in-depth look at the causes and consequences of the recent financial collapse

And Then the Roof Caved In lays bare the truth of the credit crisis, whose defining emotion at every turn has been greed, and whose defining failure is the complicity of the U.S. government in letting that greed rule the day. Written by CNBC's David Faber, this book painstakingly details the truth of what really happened with compelling characters who offer their first-hand accounts of what they did and why they did it.

Page by page, Faber explains the events of the previous seven years that planted the seeds for the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. He begins in 2001, when the Federal Reserve embarked on an unprecedented effort to help the economy recover from the attacks of 9/11 by sending interest rates to all time lows. Faber also gives you an up-close look at where the crisis was incubated and unleashed upon the world-Wall Street-and introduces you to insiders from investment banks and mortgage lenders to ratings agencies, that unwittingly conspired to insure lending standards were abandoned in the head long rush for profits.

Based on two years of research, this book provides deep background into the current credit crisis
Offers the insights of experienced professionals-from Alan Greenspan to prominent bankers and regulators-who were on the front lines


Created by David Faber, the face of morning business news on CNBC, and host of the network's award winning documentaries
From regulators who tried to stop this problem before it swung out of control to hedge fund managers who correctly foresaw the coming housing crash and profited from it, And Then the Roof Caved In shows you how the crisis we currently face came to be.

From the Inside Flap
CNBC's David Faber unmasks the truth behind the economic crisis, whose defining theme at every turn has been greed. Greed that, when coupled with the regulatory failure of the U.S. government, was allowed to rule the day.

And Then the Roof Caved In painstakingly details what really happened to cause the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression. Written by David Faber—the award-winning correspondent who has covered Wall Street for more than two decades—this compelling story is filled with the firsthand accounts of the bankers and regulators who unleashed this crisis on the world. They tell Faber what they did and why they did it.

Faber traces the lineage of the subprime industry and takes you back to the attacks of 9/11, after which Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan embarked on an unprecedented effort to help the economy recover by sending interest rates to all-time lows. Faber details the precipitous drop in lending standards, which allowed people with marginal incomes to take on mortgages they could not afford, and explains how those mortgages came back to wreck the financial system.

And Then the Roof Caved In also reveals where this crisis was incubated—Wall Street—and introduces you to insiders from investment banks and mortgage lenders who fostered the boom and, in doing so, planted the seeds for such an astonishing economic collapse. Throughout the book, Faber weaves a narrative that takes you from subprime lenders like Quick Loan Funding and big investment banks like Merrill Lynch to regulators who tried to stop the crisis before it spiraled out of control and hedge fund managers who correctly foresaw the coming housing crash and profited from it.

Engaging and informative, And Then the Roof Caved In offers a definitive, up-close and personal analysis of the roots of this stunning worldwide economic failure.

From the Back Cover


And Then the Roof Caved In skillfully explores the causes and consequences of the recent financial collapse. Written by David Faber—the award-winning CNBC correspondent—this compelling account is filled with the candid reflections of the people who brought the crisis to life. Expanded from the CNBC documentary that the New York Times called "broad, comprehensive, and compelling," and that Frank Rich noted as "superbly done," this book is a must-read.

"Historians investigating the financial collapse of '08/'09 must begin by reading this book. This is close-range reporting . . . the work of a veteran financial journalist who was 'present at the creation' of this crisis. Faber has it all, up close¿the people, failures, and greed. He tells us what it was like to be on the inside when the roof caved in."
—Brian Williams, Anchor and Managing Editor, NBC Nightly News

"Faber has written a masterful insider's guide to the implosion of the American financial system. He takes you as close as Greenspan's early worries and then shows you how the disastrous hair-triggers built into the system fired off—and how a few bright minds turned disaster into great fortunes. Faber brings readers right inside his notebook—long regarded as the best in financial news—and emerges with a story that is breathtaking."
—Joshua Ramo, author, The Age of the Unthinkable and Managing Director, Kissinger Associates


"There is no one better than David Faber when it comes to following the financial services business. His incredible access and valuable insights make his reporting a 'must-see' for millions of viewers around the world. Now, he's written a book that is a 'must-read' for anyone who wants to understand how a housing bubble turned into a worldwide economic crisis."
—Joe Kernen, Anchor, CNBC's Squawk Box

About the Author
David Faber, an Emmy, Peabody, and duPont Award winner, is the anchor and coproducer of CNBC's acclaimed original documentaries and long-form programming as well as a contributor to CNBC's Squawk on the Street. He has been reporting on Wall Street and corporate America for over twenty-two years, sixteen of them as the foremost reporter at CNBC. Faber has broken numerous stories including the massive fraud at WorldCom and News Corp.'s hostile bid for Dow Jones. He was a founding member of CNBC's signature morning show, Squawk Box. Faber also blogs at FaberReport.cnbc.com.

The State of Jones by Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer





A very good book for American Civil War history

Review
Praise for THE STATE OF JONES


“Just when you thought you had heard it all about the Civil War, along comes The State of Jones, an astonishing tale of rebellion within the heart of rebel territory. This is a riveting and memorable read about resistance, courage, love and, most of all, the long trail of justice and injustice in the American South. I couldn’t put it down.”
–Tom Brokaw



“The State of Jones is history at its finest and most captivating. The documentation is meticulous, yet this gem of a book reads like a novel, with a revelation at every turn. Jenkins and Stauffer have proved once again that the real history of this country is far more complex and fascinating than the prevailing mythology.”
–David Maraniss, author of They Marched Into Sunlight and When Pride Still Mattered


"In The State of Jones, Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer locate the real Civil War–and the story of our greatest national trial–in all of its specificity and moral complexity. Their research is meticulous and transparent; their writing is evocative and clear; their use of source materials and authentic voices is arresting; and their intuition about why history of this kind matters is unfailing."
–Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars


"Highly readable and informative." --Chicago Sun-Times

“Jones and Stauffer tell this story with verve and insight, providing a richly detailed, dramatic narrative that is a valuable contribution to the historical literature.”
–James Simon, author of Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney


"Here is the Civil War as it really was. You can't fully know America's epic until you've read this powerful book."
–David Von Drehle, author of Triangle: The Fire That Changed America


“A marvelous story of loyalty and treason, race and blood, war and peace. The State of Jones is as compelling as it is unlikely, a tale of insurrection that illuminates the larger insurrection of our Civil War.”
–Rick Atkinson, author of An Army at Dawn


“Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer tell the fascinating tale of an unforgettable figure–6’4” Mississippi yeoman farmer Newton Knight, and his beguiling “second wife” and former slave, Rachel. The authors follow the Knight family’s extraordinary lives over the course of six decades and in the process open a window onto a forgotten corner of the American landscape.”
–Philip B. Kunhardt III, co-author of Looking for Lincoln

Product Description

New York Times bestselling author Sally Jenkins and distinguished Harvard professor John Stauffer mine a nearly forgotten piece of Civil War history and strike gold in this surprising account of the only Southern county to secede from the Confederacy.

The State of Jones is a true story about the South during the Civil War—the real South. Not the South that has been mythologized in novels and movies, but an authentic, hardscrabble place where poor men were forced to fight a rich man’s war for slavery and cotton. In Jones County, Mississippi, a farmer named Newton Knight led his neighbors, white and black alike, in an insurrection against the Confederacy at the height of the Civil War. Knight’s life story mirrors the little-known story of class struggle in the South—and it shatters the image of the Confederacy as a unified front against the Union.
This riveting investigative account takes us inside the battle of Corinth, where thousands lost their lives over less than a quarter mile of land, and to the dreadful siege of Vicksburg, presenting a gritty picture of a war in which generals sacrificed thousands through their arrogance and ignorance. Off the battlefield, the Newton Knight story is rich in drama as well. He was a man with two loves: his wife, who was forced to flee her home simply to survive, and an ex-slave named Rachel, who, in effect, became his second wife. It was Rachel who cared for Knight during the war when he was hunted by the Confederates, and, later, when members of the Knight clan sought revenge for the disgrace he had brought upon the family name.
Working hand in hand with John Stauffer, distinguished chair and professor of the History of American Civilization at Harvard University, Sally Jenkins has made the leap from preeminent sportswriter to a historical writer endowed with the accuracy, drive, and passion of Doris Kearns Goodwin. The result is Civil War history at its finest.



About the Author

JOHN STAUFFER is chair and professor of the History of American Civilization at Harvard University and the award-winning author of The Black Hearts of Men and other books on the Civil War era, including GIANTS: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.


Sunday, June 14, 2009

Principles of Marketing, 12th Edition by Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong



One of the best textbooks of marketing used in business schools

Product Description

The 12th edition of this popular text continues to build on four major marketing themes: building and managing profitable customer relationships, building and managing strong brands to create brand equity, harnessing new marketing technologies in the digital age, and marketing in a socially responsible way around the globe. Thoroughly updated and streamlined, Principles of Marketing tells the stories that reveal the drama of modern marketing, reflecting the major trends and forces that are impacting this dynamic and ever-changing field. Topics include: the marketing environment, managing information, consumer & business buyer behavior, segmentation, targeting, and positioning, branding strategies, distribution channels, advertising and sales promotion, direct marketing, and the global marketplace. An excellent tool for anyone in marketing and sales, whether self- or corporate- employed.



About the Author

As a team, Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong provide a blend of skills uniquely suited to writing an introductory marketing text. Professor Kotler is one of the world’s leading authorities on marketing. Professor Armstrong is an award-winning teacher of undergraduate business students. Together they make the complex world of marketing practical, approachable, and enjoyable.



Philip Kotler is S. C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University. He received his master’s degree at the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. at M.I.T., both in economics. Dr. Kotler is author of Marketing Management (Prentice'Hall), now in its twelfth edition and the world’s most widely used marketing text book in graduate schools of business worldwide. He has authored dozens of other successful books and has written more than 100 articles in leading journals. He is the only three-time winner of the coveted Alpha Kappa Psi award for the best annual article in the Journal of Marketing.



Professor Kotler was named the first recipient of two major awards: the Distinguished Marketing Educator of the Year Award given by the American Marketing Association and the Philip Kotler Award for Excellence in Health Care Marketing presented by the Academy for Health Care Services Marketing. His numerous other major honors include the Sales and Marketing Executives International Marketing Educator of the Year Award; The European Association of Marketing Consultants and Trainers Marketing Excellence Award; the Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Research Award; and the Paul D. Converse Award, given by the American Marketing Association to honor “outstanding contributions to science in marketing. In a recent Financial Times poll of 1,000 senior executives across the world, Professor Kotler was ranked as the fourth “most influential business writer/guru” of the twenty-first century.



Dr. Kotler has served as chairman of the College on Marketing of the Institute of Management Sciences, a director of the American Marketing Association, and a trustee of the Marketing Science Institute. He has consulted with many major U.S. and international companies in the areas of marketing strategy and planning, marketing organization, and international marketing. He has traveled extensively throughout Europe, Asia, and South America, advising companies and governments about global marketing practices and opportunities.



Gary Armstrong is Crist W. Blackwell Distinguished Professor of Undergraduate Education in the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He holds undergraduate and masters degrees in business from Wayne State University in Detroit, and he received his Ph.D. in marketing from Northwestern University. Dr. Armstrong has contributed numerous articles to leading business journals. As a consultant and researcher, he has worked with many companies on marketing research, sales management, and marketing strategy.

But Professor Armstrong’s first love is teaching. His Blackwell Distinguished Professorship is the only permanent endowed professorship for distinguished undergraduate teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has been very active in the teaching and administration of Kenan-Flagler’s undergraduate program. His administrative posts have included Chair of Marketing, Associate Director of the Undergraduate Business Program, Director of the Business Honors Program, and many others. He works closely with business student groups and has received several campus'wide and Business School teaching awards. He is the only repeat recipient of school’s highly regarded Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, which he has received three times. Professor Armstrong recently received the UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest teaching honor bestowed by the sixteen-campus University of North Carolina system.


Managed by the Markets: How Finance Re-Shaped America by Gerald F. Davis



Review

"A compelling read...offers provocative clues for anyone seeking to understand the current financial crisis and Americans' financial security."
--Publisher's Weekly

"The meltdown of American financial markets has been catastrophic but the cause elusive. In Managed by the Markets, Gerald Davis offers a compelling explanation for it and so much more. To understand the disintegration of big corporations, securitization of just about everything, and transformation of our zeitgeist from producing products to making money, this is the book, a gripping portrait of the triumph of financial markets over all else."
--Michael Useem, Professor of Management and Director of the Leadership Center at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

"In this intellectual tour de force, Jerry Davis describes the evolution of the American economy to where we are now-where everything is a security or an option and, therefore, tradable in some sort of market. He also details the profound costs we have paid for this evolution. Timely, engaging, and filled with facts and analysis, Managed by the Markets explains how we got to where we are and maybe, just maybe, where we need to go next."
--Jeffrey Pfeffer, Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University and author of What Were They Thinking? Unconventional Wisdom About Management


Product Description
In recent years, we've been rocked by a series of economic jolts, and all of them seemed to revolve around finance. And the most recent, the American mortgage meltdown, has sent shock waves around the world. Managed by the Markets offers an illuminating account of how finance has replaced manufacturing at the center of the American economy over the past three decades, explaining how the new finance-centered system works, how we got here, and what challenges lay ahead.

Since the early 1980s, Gerald F. Davis shows, finance and financial considerations have increasingly taken center stage, dramatically reshaping American society. Corporations now have an overriding focus on creating shareholder value, while their personnel practices no longer provide secure employment, economic mobility, health insurance, or retirement benefits. Instead, employees must become shareholding free-agents, left to their own fate. Banking has shifted from the traditional role of taking in deposits and making loans to the widespread use of "securitization," turning loans (such as mortgages or corporate debt) into bonds owned by institutional investors. The financial services industry is both more concentrated among large banks and mutual funds, yet more spread out among under-regulated specialists such as mortgage finance companies and hedge funds. And states increasingly act as "vendors" in a global marketplace of law, emulating firms such as Nike, hiring contractors to do much of the work of government.

As a result, individuals and households find their welfare tied to the stock market and the mortgage market as never before. And the turbulence of recent years starkly underscores the dangers of depending too much on financial markets. Written in the spirit of C. Wright Mills' penetrating The Power Elite and White Collar, this brilliant study provides an invaluable map of the finance-driven American society.

About the Author

Gerald F. Davis is the Wilbur K. Pierpont Collegiate Professor of Management at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. He has published widely in management, sociology, and finance. Recent books include Social Movements and Organization Theory (with Doug McAdam, W. Richard Scott, and Mayer N. Zald) and Organizations and Organizing: Rational, Natural, and Open System Perspectives (with W. Richard Scott). He is currently Associate Editor of Administrative Science Quarterly and Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Committee on Organization Studies (ICOS) at the University of Michigan.

Let'see how Gerald Davis comment about the financial breakdown here




Saturday, June 13, 2009

Winning by Jack Welch and Suzy Welch


"When you talk with Jack about management, his energy and passion fill the room."
WARREN E. BUFFETT, chairman, Berkshire Hathaway

Amazon.com Review
If you judge books by their covers, Jack Welch's Winning certainly grabs your attention. Testimonials on the back come from none other than Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rudy Giuliani, and Tom Brokaw, and other praise comes from Fortune, Business Week, and Financial Times. As the legendary retired CEO of General Electric, Welch has won many friends and admirers in high places. In this latest book, he strives to show why. Winning describes the management wisdom that Welch built up through four and a half decades of work at GE, as he transformed the industrial giant from a sleepy "Old Economy" company with a market capitalization of $4 billion to a dynamic new one worth nearly half a trillion dollars.
Welch's first book, Jack: Straight from the Gut, was structured more as a conventional CEO memoir, with stories of early career adventures, deals won and lost, boardroom encounters, and Welch's process and philosophy that helped propel his success as a manager. In Winning, Welch focuses on his actual management techniques. He starts with an overview of cultural values such as candor, differentiation among employees, and inclusion of all voices in decision-making. In the second section he covers issues around one's own company or organization: the importance of hiring, firing, the people management in between, and a few other juicy topics like crisis management. From there, Welch moves into a discussion of competition, and the external factors that can influence a company's success: strategy, budgeting, and mergers and acquisitions. Welch takes a more personal turn later with a focus on individual career issues--how to find the right job, get promoted, and deal with a bad boss--and then a final section on what he calls "Tying Up Loose Ends." Those interested in the human side of great leaders will find this last section especially appealing. In it, Welch answers the most interesting questions that he's received in the last several years while traveling the globe addressing audiences of executives and business-school students. Perhaps the funniest question in this section comes at the very end, posed originally by a businessman in Frankfurt, who queried Welch on whether he thought he'd go to heaven (we won't give away the ending).

While different from the steadier stream of war stories and real-life examples of Welch's first book, Winning is a very worthwhile addition to any management bookshelf. It's not often that a CEO described as the century's best retires, and then chooses to expound on such a wide range of management topics. Also, aside from the commentary on always-relevant issues like employee performance reviews and quality control, Welch suffuses this book with his pugnacious spirit. The Massachusetts native who fought his way to the top of the world's most valuable company was in many ways the embodiment of "Winning," and this spirit alone will provide readers an enjoyable read. --Peter Han

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. One oft-heard comment about Welch's generally praised (and bestselling) 2001 memoir, Jack: Straight from the Gut, was that the book skimped on useful business advice. The respected but controversial former chief of General Electric pays readers back double here. Written with Welch's wife, a onetime editor of Harvard Business Review , the book delivers a brilliant career's worth of consistently astute (and often iconoclastic) business wisdom and knowledge from the man Fortune magazine called "the manager of the century." Welch knows what he's talking about, and here offers an admirably concise primer on how to do business that's a paragon of tough common sense. From practices he employed at GE (e.g., the much-debated differentiation, which includes winnowing 10% of the workforce at regular intervals), to the personal qualities that lead to success (to Welch, candor is essential), to advice on job hunting and how to work with a bad boss, to ways to maximize the budget process (divorce it from performance rewards), Welch comments frankly and by myriad example, with a common touch that will draw readers in ("that was hardly the first time I'd gotten my clock cleaned by the press"). He explains upfront that the book arose as an attempt to codify his beliefs, in response to the many questions he's received at numerous public appearances since he retired from GE in 2001; as such the book has a somewhat lumpy feel, like an overstuffed bag of presents. But the writing, full of personality and ideas, is a model of clarity and insight, even on such dense subjects as the quality control program Six Sigma. It's difficult to think of anyone in business who wouldn't benefit from reading this savvy, engaging cubicle-to-boardroom guide to success; and it's likely, given Welch's reputation and the massive ad/promo HarperCollins is putting behind the book, that enough business people will want to read it to push it toward the top of the charts. (Apr. 5)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"It’s difficult to think of anyone in business who wouldn’t benefit from reading this savvy, engaging cubicle-to-boardroom guide to success." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Manager of the Century" -- Fortune

"Now is the time." -- New York Times

"When you talk with Jack about management, his energy and passion fill the room." -- WARREN E. BUFFETT, chairman, Berkshire Hathaway


Product Description
WINNING is destined to become the bible of business for generations to come. It clearly and succinctly lays out the answers to the most difficult, important questions people face both on and off the job. Welch's objective is to speak to people at every level of the organization, in companies large and small. His audience is everyone from line workers to college students and MBAs, from project managers to senior executives. He describes his core business principles and devotes most of WINNING to the real "stuff" of work. Welch's optimistic, no excuses, get-it-done mind set is riveting. His goal is to help anyone and everyone who has a passion for success.

About the Author


Jack Welch began his career with the General Electric Company in 1960, and in 1981 became the company's eighth Chairman and CEO. During his tenure, GE's market capitalization increased by $400 billion, making it the world's most valuable corporation. In 1999, Fortune named him the "manager of the century," and the Financial Times recently named him one of the three most admired business leaders in the world today. Upon retiring from GE in 2001, Mr. Welch published his internationally best-selling autobiography Jack: Straight from the Gut. He now teaches at MIT's Sloan School of Management and speaks to business leaders and students around the world.


One Up On Wall Street : How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In The Market by Peter Lynch



"People who want to know how stocks fared on any given day ask, Where did the Dow close?..."
Find out more what is inside here.

From Publishers Weekly
The authors argue that average investors can beat Wall Street professionals by using the information gleaned from everyday life. "Investors will be able to put the shrewd insights presented to good use," remarked PW. 200,000 first printing.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.


Review

Anise C. WallaceThe New York TimesMr. Lynch's investment record puts him in a league by himself.

Product Description

THE NATIONAL BESTSELLING BOOK THAT EVERY INVESTOR SHOULD OWN

Peter Lynch is America's number-one money manager. His mantra: Average investors can become experts in their own field and can pick winning stocks as effectively as Wall Street professionals by doing just a little research.

Now, in a new introduction written specifically for this edition of One Up on Wall Street, Lynch gives his take on the incredible rise of Internet stocks, as well as a list of twenty winning companies of high-tech '90s. That many of these winners are low-tech supports his thesis that amateur investors can continue to reap exceptional rewards from mundane, easy-to-understand companies they encounter in their daily lives.

Investment opportunities abound for the layperson, Lynch says. By simply observing business developments and taking notice of your immediate world -- from the mall to the workplace -- you can discover potentially successful companies before professional analysts do. This jump on the experts is what produces "tenbaggers," the stocks that appreciate tenfold or more and turn an average stock portfolio into a star performer.

The former star manager of Fidelity's multibillion-dollar Magellan Fund, Lynch reveals how he achieved his spectacular record. Writing with John Rothchild, Lynch offers easy-to-follow directions for sorting out the long shots from the no shots by reviewing a company's financial statements and by identifying which numbers really count. He explains how to stalk tenbaggers and lays out the guidelines for investing in cyclical, turnaround, and fast-growing companies.

Lynch promises that if you ignore the ups and downs of the market and the endless speculation about interest rates, in the long term (anywhere from five to fifteen years) your portfolio will reward you. This advice has proved to be timeless and has made One Up on Wall Street a number-one bestseller. And now this classic is as valuable in the new millennium as ever.

About the Author
Peter Lynch is vice chairman of Fidelity Management & Research Company -- the investment advisor arm of Fidelity Investments -- and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Fidelity funds. Mr. Lynch was portfolio manager of Fidelity Magellan Fund, which was the best performing fund in the world under his leadership from May 1977 to May 1990. He is the co-author of the bestselling Beating the Street and Learn to Earn, a beginner's guide to the basics of investing and business. He lives in the Boston area.


Friday, June 12, 2009

Skyscrapers: A History of the World's Most Extraordinary Buildings by Judith Dupre



Review
"An eye-popping shelf-scraper...an elevating experience." (Gene Shalit, Today )

Product Description
At a stunning 18 inches tall and celebrating all of today's most significant superstructures, this all-new edition of Skyscrapers features 15 exciting new buildings and a brand-new interview with Adrian Smith, the world's foremost architect of supertall buildings.

Retaining all of the qualities that made it a major bestseller—informative commentary, historic facts and architectural information, and glorious photography— this groundbreaking, shelf-scraping international bestseller is a Skyscrapers for the new millennium.

Unique in scale and design, the book has been expanded to 160 pages and features more than 60 buildings by such well-known architects as Santiago Calatrava, Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Philip Johnson, Morphosis, Jean Nouvel, Renzo Piano, Cesar Pelli, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Arranged chronologically, it includes features on such topics as the ancient roots of skyscrapers and visionary cities of the future-as well as a fascinating interview with Adrian Smith, designer of the Burj Dubai, the tallest structure in the world. Each informative spread includes photos, plans, diagrams, background, technological information, and more, all in an elegant design.

From the Inside Flap
Rising majestically above the hubbub of crowded cities or standing in solitude against a natural backdrop, skyscrapers captivate the eye, excite the imagination, and inspire awe. Wonders of creativity and ingenuity, they embody the best of our practical achievements and reflect our highest aspirations.

This magnificent chronological tour of the world’s tallest buildings—thoroughly revised and updated since its initial publication, and featuring cutting edge work by today’s international superstars of architecture—stands as the most thorough, authoritative, and eye-popping book on the subject, as dramatic in presentation as the structures it celebrates. Breathtaking photographs capture the buildings’ details as well as their monumental scale; architectural drawings and plans invite you behind the scenes as new buildings take shape; and lively commentary on each building explores its particular significance and provides historic context. Throughout, informative profiles, features, and statistics make Skyscrapers an invaluable reference as well as a visual feast.

From a church built to the glory of God to monuments that symbolize national or civic pride, to buildings so forward thinking that they contribute to the betterment of the environment, the 62 structures included here encompass the very best and most ingenious of our history, spanning some 125 years and circling the globe. The 15 astonishing “supertalls” that have been added to this edition represent flights of imagination and feats of engineering that the skyscraper’s earliest pioneers could never have dreamed of.

“To say that the megatall landscape has changed since this book was first published in 1996 is an understatement,” comments the author in her forward. “We are in the midst of a new skyscraper boom…Skyscraper design, now embraced by the global community, has entered a flamboyant, no-holds-barred era of exhilarating, highly personal exploration of the extreme frontiers of structural and creative possibility.”

Every civilization has expressed in buildings both sacred and secular the eternal quest to reach ever upward toward the sky. Skyscrapers invites you to relish in the stunning works born of that quest.




About the Author

Judith Dupré
writes about art, architecture, and engineering in ways that delight and educate. She has written six award-winning books of illustrated nonfiction that have been translated into ten languages, including Skyscrapers, Bridges, Churches, and Monuments: America’s History in Art and Memory. She holds degrees from Brown University in English literature and studio art, and did postgraduate work at Hunter College and the Open Atelier of Design and Architecture, both in Manhattan. Currently, she is at Yale Divinity School doing advanced studies on the impact of time, memory, and ritual on architecture. She lives outside New York City.

Monday, June 8, 2009

How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines


May 2009
Bestselling Literature books on amazon.com

Product Description

What does it mean when a fictional hero takes a journey?. Shares a meal? Gets drenched in a sudden rain shower? Often, there is much more going on in a novel or poem than is readily visible on the surface -- a symbol, maybe, that remains elusive, or an unexpected twist on a character -- and there's that sneaking suspicion that the deeper meaning of a literary text keeps escaping you.

In this practical and amusing guide to literature, Thomas C. Foster shows how easy and gratifying it is to unlock those hidden truths, and to discover a world where a road leads to a quest; a shared meal may signify a communion; and rain, whether cleansing or destructive, is never just rain. Ranging from major themes to literary models, narrative devices, and form, How to Read Literature Like a Professor is the perfect companion for making your reading experience more enriching, satisfying, and fun.



About the Author
Tom Foster
is Professor of English at the University of Michigan, Flint, where he teaches classes in contemporary fiction, drama and poetry as well as creative writing and composition. He has written several books on twentieth-century British and Irish literature and poetry and lives in East Lansing, Michigan.


Saturday, June 6, 2009

Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie T. Chang



From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Chang, a former Beijing correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, explores the urban realities and rural roots of a community, until now, as unacknowledged as it is massive—China's 130 million workers whose exodus from villages to factory and city life is the largest migration in history. Chang spent three years following the successes, hardships and heartbreaks of two teenage girls, Min and Chunming, migrants working the assembly lines in Dongguan, one of the new factory cities that have sprung up all over China. The author's incorporation of their diaries, e-mails and text messages into the narrative allows the girls—with their incredible ambition and youth—to emerge powerfully upon the page. Dongguan city is itself a character, with talent markets where migrants talk their way into their next big break, a lively if not always romantic online dating community and a computerized English language school where students shave their heads like monks to show commitment to their studies. A first generation Chinese-American, Chang uses details of her own family's immigration to provide a vivid personal framework for her contemporary observations. A gifted storyteller, Chang plumbs these private narratives to craft a work of universal relevance. (Oct. 7)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
China is in the midst of history is largest human migration, a hundred and thirty million of its citizens having left their home villages in search of urban employment. Chang, an American of Chinese descent, explores the migrant experience and the burden of being Chinese through the lives of several young women in the industrial city of Dongguan. Their Sisyphean attempts at self-reinvention are both entertaining and poignant; the most ambitious of them achieves modest success selling dubious health products, before falling under the spell of an American raw-food guru. In her diary, she reminds herself, We can be ordinary but we must not be vulgar. Chang is fine prose and her keen sense of detail more than compensate for the occasional digression, and her book is an intimate portrait of a strange and hidden landscape, a universe of relentless motion.
Copyright ©2008 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker

From Bookmarks Magazine
When it comes to global economics, Leslie T. Chang knows both sides of the equation well—that is, from the vastly different perspectives of East and West. Her readable, compelling account of human migration in Factory Girls will open many eyes, particularly in her in-depth profiles of young women who face nearly intolerable working conditions and ruthless competition ("People who are too honest in this society will lose out," the instructor of a turnkey school told Chang) as they struggle to make their way. Chang's own ancestors are on the periphery, and the author ably recounts her family's varied, tragic past in the context of a story whose ripples will surely have global repercussions in the coming years. The only complaint? Chang's own family story is worthy of its own book.
Copyright 2008 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

From Booklist
To American girls, the term “going out” means dating; to their Chinese counterparts, however, it means leaving their remote villages and migrating hundreds of miles to industrial cities to find work within the closed societies of assembly-line factories. Of Chinese ancestry herself, Wall Street Journal reporter Chang was allowed nearly unprecedented access to the sweatshops where the majority of the world’s consumer goods are produced. Following several young women as they move from job to job, Chang reveals a world of naked ambition and abject loneliness, of grueling hours and spartan living conditions, of moral compromise and ethical ambiguity. In spite of such harsh conditions, however, these young women prefer the freedom factory life provides, and fail to return to their villages to fulfill their traditional roles as wives and mothers. Making it nearly impossible to blithely use a mobile phone or strap on a pair of running shoes ever again, Chang’s portrait underscores the reality that the global economy rests on some very slender shoulders. --Carol Haggas

Review
“Engrossing. . . an exceptionally vivid and compassionate depiction of the day-to-day dramas, and the fears and aspirations, of the real people who are powering China’s economic boom.”
–The New York Times Book Review

“Chang delves deeply into the world of migrant workers to find out who these people are and what their collective dislocation means for China. Chang skillfully sketches migrants as individuals with their own small victories and bitter tragedies, and she captures the surprising dynamics of this enormous but ill-understood subculture.”
–The Washington Post

“Chang’s deeply affecting book tells the story of the invisible foot soldiers who made China’s stirring rise possible.”
–The New York Times

“This is an irresistible book.”
–People

“Excellent.”
Chicago Tribune

“Fascinating. . . Chang powerfully conveys the individual reality behind China’s 130 million migrant workers, the largest migration in human history.”
–The Boston Globe

“Chang reveals a world staggering in its dimensions, unprecedented in its topsy-turvy effects on China’s conservative culture, and frenetic in its pace. . . Chang deftly weaves her own family’s story of migrations within China, and finally to the West, into her fascinating portrait. . . Factory Girls is a keen-eyed look at contemporary Chinese life composed of equal parts of new global realties, timeless stories of human striving, and intelligent storytelling at its best.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“Both entertaining and poignant. . . Chang’s fine prose and her keen sense of detail more than compensate for the occasional digression, and her book is an intimate portrait of a strange and hidden landscape.”
–The New Yorker--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.


“A compelling, atmospheric look at seldom-seen China.”
–BusinessWeek

“Chang, a journalist at the Wall Street Journal, spent two years reporting in the gritty southern boomtown of Dongguan trying to put human faces on these workers, and the ones she finds are extraordinary. They are, more than anything else, the face of modern China: a country increasingly turning away from its rural roots and turbulent past and embracing a promising but uncertain future. . . The painstaking work Chang put into befriending these girls and drawing out their stories is evident, as is the genuine affection she has for them and their spirit.”
–Time

“In her impressive new book, Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, former Wall Street Journal reporter Leslie T. Chang explores this boom that's simultaneously emptying China's villages of young people and fueling its economic growth. . . To be sure, this mass migration is a big and well-told story. But Chang brings to it a personal touch: her own forebears were migrants, and she skillfully weaves through the narrative tales of their border crossings. She also succeeds in grounding the trend in wider social context, suggesting that the aspirations of these factory girls signal a growing individualism in China's socialist culture.”
–Newsweek

“Elegant. . . Chang is less interested in exposĂ© than in getting to know the young women of Dongguan’s assembly lines. Factory Girls reveals the workplace through the workers’ eyes.”
–Financial Times

“A real coup. . . Chang, a former Beijing correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, does more than describe harsh factory conditions. She writes about the way the workers themselves see migration, bringing us views that are rarely heard. Factory Girls is highly readable and even amusing in many places, despite the seriousness of the subject. In the pages of this book, these factory girls come to life.”
–Christian Science Monitor

“Amazing. . . a fascinating ethnography of the young women who labor in the factories of Guangdong, China’s richest province, a land of boomtowns where wealth and scams and exploitation and warmth and courage all abound. . . I must have read fifty books about China this year, but this stands out as one of the best.”
–Boingboing.net

“A gifted storyteller, Chang crafts a work of universal relevance.”
–Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“In-depth reporting [that] contributes significantly to our knowledge about China’s development.”
–Kirkus Reviews

“Rising head and shoulders above almost all other new books about China, this unflinching and yearningly compassionate portrait of the lives and loves of ordinary Chinese workers is quite unforgettable: it presents the first long, hard look we have ever taken at the people who are due to become, before very much longer, the new masters of the world.”
–Simon Winchester, author of The Man Who Loved China

“Often people ask me, ‘What’s it like for women in China today?’ From now on I'll recommend Leslie Chang’s Factory Girls, which is brilliant, thoughtful, and insightful. This book is also for anyone who's ever wondered how their sneakers, Christmas ornaments, toys, designer clothes, or computers are made. The stories of these factory girls are not only mesmerizing, tragic, and inspiring -- true examples of persistence, endurance, and loneliness -- but Chang has also woven in her own family’s history, shuttling north and south through China to examine this complicated country’s past, present, and future.”
–Lisa See, author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan



Product Description

An eye-opening and previously untold story, Factory Girls is the first look into the everyday lives of the migrant factory population in China.


China has 130 million migrant workers—the largest migration in human history. In Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang, a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women, whom she follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines of Dongguan, an industrial city in China’s Pearl River Delta.

As she tracks their lives, Chang paints a never-before-seen picture of migrant life—a world where nearly everyone is under thirty; where you can lose your boyfriend and your friends with the loss of a mobile phone; where a few computer or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class. Chang takes us inside a sneaker factory so large that it has its own hospital, movie theater, and fire department; to posh karaoke bars that are fronts for prostitution; to makeshift English classes where students shave their heads in monklike devotion and sit day after day in front of machines watching English words flash by; and back to a farming village for the Chinese New Year, revealing the poverty and idleness of rural life that drive young girls to leave home in the first place. Throughout this riveting portrait, Chang also interweaves the story of her own family’s migrations, within China and to the West, providing historical and personal frames of reference for her investigation.

A book of global significance that provides new insight into China, Factory Girls demonstrates how the mass movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and transforming Chinese society, much as immigration to America’s shores remade our own country a century ago.



About the Author

Leslie T. Chang lived in China for a decade as a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. She is married to Peter Hessler, who also writes about China. She lives in Colorado.



Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1 Going Out


When you met a girl from another factory, you quickly took her measure. What year are you? you asked each other, as if speaking not of human beings but of the makes of cars. How much a month? Including room and board? How much for overtime? Then you might ask what province she was from. You never asked her name.

To have a true friend inside the factory was not easy. Girls slept twelve to a room, and in the tight confines of the dorm it was better to keep your secrets. Some girls joined the factory with borrowed ID cards and never told anyone their real names. Some spoke only to those from their home provinces, but that had risks: Gossip traveled quickly from factory to village, and when you went home every auntie and granny would know how much you made and how much you saved and whether you went out with boys.

When you did make a friend, you did everything for her. If a friend quit her job and had nowhere to stay, you shared your bunk despite the risk of a ten-yuan fine, about $1.25, if you got caught. If she worked far away, you would get up early on a rare day off and ride hours on the bus, and at the other end your friend would take leave from work--this time, the fine one hundred yuan--to spend the day with you. You might stay at a factory you didn't like, or quit one you did, because a friend asked you to. Friends wrote letters every week, although the girls who had been out longer considered that childish. They sent messages by mobile phone instead.

Friends fell out often because life was changing so fast. The easiest thing in the world was to lose touch with someone.

The best day of the month was payday. But in a way it was the worst day, too. After you had worked hard for so long, it was infuriating to see how much money had been docked for silly things: being a few minutes late one morning, or taking a half day off for feeling sick, or having to pay extra when the winter uniforms switched to summer ones. On payday, everyone crowded the post office to wire money to their families. Girls who had just come out from home were crazy about sending money back, but the ones who had been out longer laughed at them. Some girls set up savings accounts for themselves, especially if they already had boyfriends. Everyone knew which girls were the best savers and how many thousands they had saved. Everyone knew the worst savers, too, with their lip gloss and silver mobile phones and heart-shaped lockets and their many pairs of high-heeled shoes.


The girls talked constantly of leaving. Workers were required to stay six months, and even then permission to quit was not always granted. The factory held the first two months of every worker's pay; leaving without approval meant losing that money and starting all over somewhere else. That was a fact of factory life you couldn't know from the outside: Getting into a factory was easy. The hard part was getting out.

The only way to find a better job was to quit the one you had. Interviews took time away from work, and a new hire was expected to start right away. Leaving a job was also the best guarantee of getting a new one: The pressing need for a place to eat and sleep was incentive to find work fast. Girls often quit a factory in groups, finding courage in numbers and pledging to join a new factory together, although that usually turned out to be impossible. The easiest thing in the world was to lose touch with someone.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Excuses Begone!: How to Change Lifelong, Self-Defeating Thinking Habits by Wayne W. Dyer




Product Description

Within the pages of this transformational book, Dr. Wayne W. Dyer reveals how to change the self-defeating thinking patterns that have prevented you from living at the highest levels of success, happiness, and health. Even though you may know what to think, actually changing those thinking habits that have been with you since childhood might be somewhat challenging.

If I changed, it would create family dramas . . . I’m too old or too young . . . I’m far too busy and tired . . . I can’t afford the things I truly want . . . It would be very difficult for me to do things differently . . . and I’ve always been this way . . . may all seem to be true, but they’re in fact just excuses. So the business of modifying habituated thinking patterns really comes down to tossing out the same tired old excuses and examining your beliefs in a new and truthful light.

In this groundbreaking work, Wayne presents a compendium of conscious and subconscious crutches employed by virtually everyone, along with ways to cast them aside once and for all. You’ll learn to apply specific questions to any excuse, and then proceed through the steps of a new paradigm. The old, habituated ways of thinking will melt away as you experience the absurdity of hanging on to them.

You’ll ultimately realize that there are no excuses worth defending, ever, even if they’ve always been part of your life—and the joy of releasing them will resonate throughout your very being. When you eliminate the need to explain your shortcomings or failures, you’ll awaken to the life of your dreams.



Excuses . . . Begone!



About the Author

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer is an internationally renowned author and speaker in the field of self-development. He is the author of more than 30 books, has created numerous audio programs and videos, and has appeared on thousands of television and radio shows. Wayne holds a doctorate in educational counseling from Wayne State University and was an associate professor at St. John’s University in New York.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Bailout Riches!: How Everyday Investors Can Make a Fortune Buying Bad Loans for Pennies on the Dollar by Bill Bartmann,Jonathan Rozek



Product Description
What is the investment opportunity from America's financial crisis? Somewhere north of one trillion dollars of debt--mortgages, credit cards, and other forms--will be written off and sold to buyers at pennies on the dollar. It gets even better: There are ways to buy that debt with no money of your own.
Society's collective pain from this crisis means that it's unlikely to occur ever again on this scale. Investors with the right roadmap are poised to profit spectacularly. Bartmann lays out a step by step plan on how to find the best deals from the federal government, local Financial Institutions, and loan brokers. The spectrum of loans that are available include: credit card debt, consumer loans, business loans, commercial loans, and real estate loans.

You’ve heard about the massive government bailout of the financial sector and its cost to taxpayers. Couple that with skyrocketing unemployment and a shrinking stock market and you might think this is a terrible time to invest in anything. But you’d be wrong.


In Bailout Riches!, Bill Bartmann shows you how to invest in the bailout itself and take your own cut of the trillion-dollar pie. What does Bartmann know about bailouts? Only that the last big-time government bailout-involving the savings and loan crisis and the government’s Resolution Trust Corporation- made him a billionaire. This time around, the bailout is much bigger and opportunities for profit are much greater.

"Who better to teach you how to prosper from this economic chaos than a man who actually took himself from ‘bankruptcy to billionaire’ during the last crisis."--Ken Blanchard, coauthor, The One Minute Entrepreneur

"Bill Bartmann is more than a great financial success story; he is a phenomenal teacher who has helped thousands of my students achieve success. Bailout Riches will show you how you can prosper during these tumultuous times." --T. Harv Eker, author, New York Times #1 bestseller, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

"When the economy is in crisis, Bill Bartmann finds the diamond in the rough. The information in this book made him a billionaire fourteen years ago during the S&L crisis. Now the economy is cratering again and his methods are working better than ever. Read this book and discover a hidden source of wealth all around you."--David Lindahl, author of Emerging Real Estate Markets and Multi-Family Millions

From the Inside Flap


In the current bailout, billions of taxpayer dollars are being used to buy bad debts from banks in order to keep those banks solvent as borrowers default on loans. These bad debts are being sold for pennies on the dollar to anyone willing to buy them. But just because these are bad debts doesn't mean they're worthless investments. Imagine this: you buy a $5,000 bad loan for just $250. You approach the borrower in default and offer them a chance to settle that $5,000 debt for just $500. If they agree, you've made a one hundred percent profit on your investment, the bank has the loan off their books, and the borrower is out of debt. It's a win-win-win situation!

If that sounds like fantasy, it's not; it's how Bartmann made his fortune and how you can make yours, too. But if his ideas worked so well, why would Bartmann share them? Simple—there's plenty to go around.

In fact, over the next year or two, somewhere around $1 trillion of debt will be written down and sold to buyers at ridiculously cheap prices. Now is the time to get your share.

Bailout Riches! lays out a step-by-step plan for finding the best deals on loan packages, building a valuable debt portfolio, and collecting from debtors with little hassle. It's simple, it's practical, and it's cheap to get started. If you're looking for a new way to make real money, Bailout Riches! will show you how to jump on the biggest gravy train in recent history.

From the Back Cover


Praise for Bailout Riches

"Who better to teach you how to prosper from this economic chaos than a man who actually took himself from 'bankruptcy to billionaire' during the last crisis."
—Ken Blanchard, coauthor, The One Minute Entrepreneur


"Bill Bartmann is more than a great financial success story; he is a phenomenal teacher who has helped thousands of my students achieve success. Bailout Riches will show you how you can prosper during these tumultuous times."
—T. Harv Eker, author, New York Times #1 bestseller, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind


"When the economy is in crisis, Bill Bartmann finds the diamond in the rough. The information in this book made him a billionaire fourteen years ago during the S&L crisis. Now the economy is cratering again and his methods are working better than ever. Read this book and discover a hidden source of wealth all around you."
—David Lindahl, author of Emerging Real Estate Markets and Multi-Family Millions

You've heard about the massive government bailout of the financial sector and its cost to taxpayers. Couple that with skyrocketing unemployment and a shrinking stock market and you might think this a terrible time to invest in anything. But you'd be wrong.

In Bailout Riches!, Bill Bartmann shows you how to invest in the bailout itself and take your own cut of the trillion-dollar pie. What does Bartmann know about bailouts? Only that the last big-time government bailout—involving the savings and loan crisis and the government's Resolution Trust Corporation—made him a billionaire. This time around, the bailout is much bigger and opportunities for profit are much greater.

About the Author


Bill Bartmann created America's largest debt-buying and debt-collection company. Formerly a homeless high-school dropout, he has been listed among Forbes magazine's 400 wealthiest Americans and has twice been named National Entrepreneur of the Year by USA Today, NASDAQ, Inc. magazine, Ernst & Young, and The Kauffman Foundation.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Up Till Now: The Autobiography ( William Shatner's Biography )




From Publishers Weekly
Working with various collaborators, Shatner has previously written science fiction (the TekWar series) and science fact (I'm Working on That), and ventured into memoir with Star Trek Memories. Embarking on a full-scale autobiography, he begins with his Montreal childhood doing children's theater, then covers comedies with the Canadian National Repertory Theatre, lead roles with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and live TV in New York City in 1956: I became one of the busiest actors in the city. At that point Shatner opens a Pandora's box of self-deprecating humor and fascinating anecdotes about the hilarious goofs, on-camera accidents and stage fright during the live TV era. Obsessed with work, Shatner took any job that came his way, from dog shows to reality TV. Some of his tales are quite funny, such as doing an entire feature film, Incubus (1965), in Esperanto: No one understood their lines. Covering his multiple careers of acting, writing and directing, he never pulls his punches, describing humiliations as well as triumphs. Shatner's sincerity, honesty and heightened sense of humor all come across at warp speed in this entertaining memoir. (May 13)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
The Autobiography seems a rather ponderous label for an impish book. On the other hand, maybe it notifies us that this is all Shatner, possessor of one of the most recognizable faces on the planet, intends to give us in the way of a primary source about his life. In any event, this is such an entertaining book, so full of baggy-pants foolery and general lightheartness, that not a word of it should be changed. The personifier of Star Trek’s Captain James T. Kirk, reactionary cop T. J. Hooker, and Boston Legal’s pompous Denny Crane is a terrific storyteller, who confesses to believing that truth in particulars must give way to telling a good tale. While proceeding basically chronologically from his 1930s Montreal childhood to his current home on the West Coast, Shatner makes decade-hopping feints back and forth as the spirit moves him, freely plugs merchandise obtainable through his Web sites, and pretends to use his cell phone now and then. The book comes across as a lightly edited transcript of a torrent of dictation. Shatner waxes somber very infrequently, at greatest length for the account of his alcoholic third wife’s accidental death, for which scandalmongers briefly suggested he might be responsible. The rest is an old-style entertainer’s spiel and delightful “lite” reading. --Ray Olson --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“Shatner’s sincerity, honesty, and heightened sense of humor all come across at warp speed in this entertaining memoir.” —Publishers Weekly



“Shatner makes you feel like he’s sitting out on the balcony with you, sharing a cigar and waxing nostalgic.” —The Oregonian



“That rare celebrity autobiography that’s as entertaining as it is self-revealing, a genuinely fun read.” —The Dallas Morning News

“It is now Bill Shatner’s universe—we just live in it.” —New York Daily News



Product Description

The New York Times bestseller


After almost sixty years as an actor, William Shatner has become one of the most beloved entertainers in the world. It was the original Star Trek series, and later its films, that made Shatner an internationally known figure, but he neither began nor ended his career with Captain Kirk. He straddled the classic world of the theater and the new world of television. He stepped in for Christopher Plummer in Shakespeare’s Henry V and stared at “something on the wing” in a classic episode of The Twilight Zone. And since then, he’s gone on to star in numerous successful shows, including T. J. Hooker, Rescue 911, and most recently, Boston Legal.

In this touching and very funny autobiography, William Shatner reveals the man behind these unforgettable moments and tells us how he’s become the worldwide star and acclaimed actor he is today.



About the Author

William Shatner has worked as a musician, producer, director, and celebrity pitchman, and notably played Captain Kirk on Star Trek from 1966 to 1969 and in seven Star Trek films. He has won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his role as attorney Denny Crane on the TV drama Boston Legal. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Elizabeth.

David Fisher is the author of more than fifteen New York Times bestsellers. He is the only writer ever to have works of fiction, nonfiction, and reference offered simultaneously by the Book of the Month Club. He lives in New York with his wife, two teenagers, one dog, and one cat.