Trade and Tax Policy, Inflation and Exchange Rates: A Modern View (Studies in International Economics and Institutions)

Book Description

Outrageous Ted recounts his junior-high years in the hands of a merciless bully who just wouldn¹t let up. Ted, now a strapping fella over 6 feet happily lost in the Big Apple, was at the time a wimp egghead lost in the middle of Nowheresville, Heartland, USA, and hated it with a passion. This no-holds-barred recollection begs the question: was his attitude such that maybe he deserved it?

Customer Reviews:

1979 in "the village of the damned".......2006-08-22

A short graphic novel about parents and school personnel too lazy enforce, let alone teach, basic standards of civilization. Somewhat based on real life, Rall casts himself as an outsider in a bland late 1970s Midwestern suburb. A small kid, "too smart" and ethnically different, he was not considered important by either the adults or kids, and soon becomes the constant target of one angry and very violent kid.

That there are bullies and nasty people is never unusual, but this book is unusually telling in that it exposes succinctly the blasé nihilism of late-`70s middle America. Early on, Rall responds to another bully in a history class by sneaking up on the cretin and cracking him over the head with a desk. "Mr Bradford took the roll call, marking the unconscious student absent." (p.9) Rall shows how the unmotivated, middleclass school teachers cared not about violence, learning, nothing...just getting by. The administration, the community just saw extreme violence and intimidation as "what boys do". Rall aptly calls this "a Darwinian nightmare of benign neglect."

I can testify that Rall's vision of that time and place is the correct one, and further that Rall's illustration of the consequences of adult nihilism is spot on. For 40 or so pages Rall shows how violence, vandalism, and youthful fighting are the ultimate effect of adults brushing their charges off with a stupid "you just have to learn to handle yourself". Like any war or feud, the battles escalate into something with little relation to the initial "cause", all because no one wanted to be responsible or be blessed as a peacemaker.

Like many a Rall cartoon, the "background" comments are brilliant. In BRIAN the kids who witness the violents offer only a mind-numbed "oh, cool"; the attempt by kids to be in control is contrasted nicely to the stone indifference of adults.

In the end of the tale, Rall allows people to escape death so he can show how the kids grow up to carry resentments and hate all their lives. (Rall says the kid who inspired the book actually killed himself.)

This book is yet another part of Rall's general theme found in all his work: the indictment of today's institutions as cover for the most short-sighted and stupid bureaucratic mindset possible. It therefore fits Rall's jarring cartooning.

personal tale of woe.......2006-05-22

Ted Rall is nothing if not a masterful teller of his own story. If you've suffered from bullying, pick it up - worth the green.

True enough to be theologically astounding.......2005-07-17

Ted Rall is so outrageous that I would consider him the political writer whose comic supernatural powers allow him to do things that I can only talk about. Until we get to philosophy, of course, where the intellectual death wish sweepstakes rears its ugly head in ways that are as intense as the feelings described in the 66 pages of MY WAR WITH BRIAN, an episode in junior high school that reflects American politics so well, you can forget the adults. They haven't got a clue about anything.

The theme is MY WAR WITH BRIAN is bullies, but Ted Rall seems outraged that Americans live in a society in which others rarely have the opportunity to do anything to help victims. Close to the end of the book, Rall summarizes the situation with, "Actually, most conflicts are stupid and pointless, but they're impossible to avoid. Given that hard reality, I figure that pacifism is impossible." And on the next page, "I guess I still believe in God." It establishes his opposition to hyper-masculinity so effectively, that his young age hardly subtracts from the wisdom of a supreme being allowing the right people to get revenge on the haughty, which might be the highest ideal our society will ever achieve.

One of the characters who was under the most pressure is only in the introduction, shortly before Rall admits "reading the newspaper at age 5, Sartre at 8":

"He had troubles with bullies, but his biggest problem in life was his father. Dad was a Protestant minister, and he insisted that Bill follow in his footsteps. Unfortunately, Bill thought . . ."

You really don't want to know that part, and the most exciting part of the intellectual death wish sweepstakes was the awareness on the side of young people who have questions that no one can answer of all the things Bill and Ted Rall would be willing to put down on paper and publish, especially after Bill ends up in the one dead buddy category, which certainly seemed queer to people who thought that killing other people made more sense than self-destruction. My dad was also a Protestant minister, but American society had made that such a simpleton's role that being "doomed to a life in the clergy" seemed a bit lame for anyone who was capable of accomplishing anything. Like most intellectual death wish sweepstakes observations, this attempt to clarify the nature of American society is unlikely to be considered a major accomplishment, but it magnifies my admiration for Ted Rall. He has paid his dues at the hemlock for Socrates altar, and all you have to do, to see how he did it, is to buy this book.

Shocking and savage yet rings with truth.......2004-11-04

Just when you think Ted Rall's, "My War with Brian," is going to be another run-of-the-mill victim story about bullying, this autobiographic tale takes a surprising shift when the misfit geek decides to fight back in shockingly savage fashion. And thus begins a full fledged war spanning the eternal length of time during Junior High and High School where Ted Rall learns to be a man, standing up for himself and exacting due punishment to those who strike at him, consequences be damned. At times, laugh out loud funny, this book will also shock in reminding you how brutal kids/teens can be to one another - the physical cruelty that Ted and Brian exact on one another is frightening in its murderous intent but just past that initial layer of shock comes a somewhat disturbing reminder of the cruelties adolescents face as they transition to adulthood.

Revenge of the Cartoonist: Ted Rall explained.......2003-09-13

Although Ted Rall "draws like he's using a Sharpie stuck in his armpit," I still have to admit his graphic novel is still very interesting despite the amateurish illustrations.

Rall's recollections of his encounters with the Brian ring true to me. High school bullies can attack without rhyme or reason. They may be provoked by the appearance alone of their target. Their abuse can go on for as long as the bully cares to indulge his hatred - or until he learns their are costs to his actions.

My War With Brian is an interesting novel for creating discussion
on bullies; but I wouldn't recommend any of Rall's methods - though I suspect much of Rall's "revenge" isn't as sweet as he would like it to be.

Off topic: having seen and read Ted Rall's political cartoons and books, I am compelled to say that if the adult Rall is anything like the boy Rall, then maybe Brian did have a reason for his actions. The ugliness of Rall's personality as expressed in his cartoons, tv appearances, and books is disgusting. So much so, that if I could go back in time, I might hold Brian's jacket while he pummelled Rall - and I fought bullies!

Rall states that Brian "made me what I am today" so in that sense, if you want to know who made the monster that Ted Rall is today - and I've rarely met an uglier one - read My War With Brian. Maybe Rall was paying in advance for the "sins" of his adult life. Read the book.

Book Description

From the author of the acclaimed Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy Encyclopedias, here is the ultimate A-Z guide to the cinema's greatest comedian. Featuring scores of entries and 250 photos and illustrations. This outstanding A-Z reference offers rare treasures for all Charlie Chaplin fans, from seldom-seen film footage to a wealth of previously unpublished anecdotes. As well as intriguing esoterica, the Encyclopedia presents a full account, with detailed credits, of all of Chaplin's films, from the earliest silents to ``The Great Dictator,'' ``Limelight,'' and other classics. There is also in-depth information on Chaplin's ``lost'' movies, newsreels, stage work, collaborators, and much, much more. Glenn Mitchell is an internationally recognized authority on early 20th-century cinema comedy. His Laurel and Hardy Encyclopedia was hailed by Choice as: ``Almost everything anyone could want to know...insightful, succinct....highly recommended''; in praise of his Marx Brothers Encyclopedia, Parade observed: ``Not many reference books make you laugh out loud, but [this book] does just that, page after page.'' 256 pp 7 x 10 250 b/w photos & illustrations

Customer Reviews:

This is a terrific reference book for all Chaplin fans!.......1998-11-21

For any lover of Chaplin and his films, this is a marvelous "must" book to own. It offers an incredibly comprehensive analysis of every one of his pictures, fascinating bios of many of his cinematic contemporaries and supporting cast menbers, as well as interesting critical judgments regarding his work. Again, anyone who is truly interested in Chaplin should buy this book. It's quite simply one of the best!!

Book Description

Alan Nadel's provocative new book reminds us that most of the images on early TV were decidedly Caucasian and directed at predominantly white audiences. Television did not invent whiteness for America, but it did reinforce it as the norm-particularly during the Cold War years. Nadel now shows just how instrumental it was in constructing a narrow, conservative, and very white vision of America.

Nadel depicts a time when television effectively hijacked and monopolized the nation's vision of itself to create a virtual but severely distorted civic space. On Cold War TV's three channels there were no double beds, no liberated housewives, no social criticism, and no homosexuality. And the few available black faces overwhelmingly belonged to athletes, musical entertainers, and actors playing menial roles. Even America's beloved Walt Disney promoted his highly popular TV and theme-park versions of society as utterly homogeneous representations of reality.

During this era, prime-time TV was dominated by "adult westerns," with heroes like The Rebel's Johnny Yuma reincarnating southern values and Bonanza's Cartwright family reinforcing the notion of white patriarchy--programs that, Nadel shows, bristled with Cold War messages even as they spoke to the nation's mythology. America had become visually reconfigured as a vast Ponderosa, crisscrossed by concrete highways designed to carry suburban white drivers beyond the moral challenge of racism and racial poverty and increasingly vocal civil rights demands.

Television in Black-and-White America revisits a time and space that some might miss for its simplicity and relative innocence. Nadel, however, entreats us to look beyond such nostalgia to see how, even in its earliest days, television had already become a powerful mediator of social norms that both controlled and warped our sense of reality.

This book is part of the CultureAmerica series.

Average customer rating:
Neo-Anarchists the Guide to North America (Shadowrun RPG)

Manufacturer: Fasa
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 1555601359

Average customer rating:

This book is a must Buy/Read

Reason not to avoid using AutoCad any Longer.................

The Best AutoCAD Reference Book Around

A Great CAD Resource!

Great book for both novice and experienced users..

AutoCAD 2005 and AutoCAD LT 2005 Bible
Ellen Finkelstein
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

CAD | Graphic Design | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
General | Graphic Design | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
General | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
General | Software | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

AutoCAD 2005 For Dummies

AutoCAD 2005 and AutoCAD LT 2005: No Experience Required

Mastering AutoCAD 2005 and AutoCAD LT 2005

Exercise Workbook for Beginning AutoCAD 2005 (AutoCAD 2005 Exercise Workbooks)

The Illustrated AutoCAD 2005 Quick Reference Guide (Illustrated AutoCAD Quick Reference)

ASIN: 0764569899

Book Description

Now revised and updated for the latest program versions, this bestseller is a comprehensive reference and tutorial for architects, engineers, drafters, and others using the leading computer-assisted design software, AutoCAD, or its "lite" version, AutoCAD LT
Begins with AutoCAD basics, including the AutoCAD interface and commands, and progresses to complex topics such as programming and customization
No AutoCAD experience is required to use this book, and a Quick Start guide shows beginning AutoCAD users how to create a technical drawing their very first day
More than 150 tutorials use drawings collected from AutoCAD pros, giving readers valuable, real-world experience
Includes coverage of AutoCAD LT, the world's most popular inexpensive 2D technical drawing program
The CD-ROM contains before and after real-world drawings, bonus appendices, freeware and shareware programs, the book in searchable PDF format, and a 30-day trial version of AutoCAD software

System requirements: For Windows 2000 or XP - PC with Pentium processor running at 200 MHz or faster; at least 64MB of total RAM installed; recommend at least 128MB; Ethernet network interface card (NIC) or modem with speed of at least 28,800 bps; a CD-ROM drive. CD includes real-world drawings for the exercises; bonus chapters, freeware & shareware programs, a 30-day trial version of AutoCAD software, and more.

Customer Reviews:

This book is a must Buy/Read.......2007-09-28

I got this book to refresh myself and the Dummies book for a quick reference.
I highly reccommend that.
This book walks you through step by step the entire process and well over 90% of the entire program.
The examples are very easy and the text is spot on accurate.
The only complaint I have is that I wish that the information that we hagve to enter was all in bold text.
Some is and some isn't, but this is a minor complaint compared to quality of the training you get from the material.

Reason not to avoid using AutoCad any Longer........................2007-02-04

I've been a long time CAD user experienced in almost everything but "AutoCad". Always seemed to find a way around using this industry standard (eg: .dxf or other file translator to bring into your CAD app). Well, after alot of digging my heels into the ground to avoid AutoCad, due to it's unfamiliar CAD interface and menu nomenclature, I decided to give this book a try. WOW, what an eye opener for me! Absolutely the best. Spend the time to do all of the excercises in this book and you'll no longer dread the unfamiliar GUI (graphical user interface) of ACAD. In a matter of approx. 40 hours of study, I feel relatively comfortable using ACAD, along with our other CAD programs. Do yourself a favor and get this book if you have any interest in learning ACAD, you won't regret it. Ellen Finkelstein and crew did an absolutely fabulous job!

The Best AutoCAD Reference Book Around.......2006-07-20

The Finkelstein Bible series -as reference books for AutoCAD- stand head and shoulder above the others, the depth, the accuracy and the conscientious effort is unmatched. If a supplement book for exercises at the same technical level is published, we will definitely have an undisputed knock out.

A Great CAD Resource!.......2004-10-12

This book is clear, concise, and well-written. It covers everything I've needed to know about AutoCAD, and probably everything I'll ever want to know. Explanation of the more difficult concepts is thorough and complete, and the exercises are very helpful, keyed as they are to practice drawings on the included CD-ROM. A great reference...structured by topic, so it's easy to find what you need.

Great book for both novice and experienced users.........2004-08-04

If you are using AutoCAD 2005 or LT 2005 as a beginner who needs step by step instruction or a seasoned AutoCAD user who can use a good reference manual - this book is well worth owning. It is a very thorough and clearly written book. No new or old AutoCAD feature is left unturned.

Average customer rating:

Autocad 2005 and Autocad LT 2005 Bible
Ellen Finkelstein
Manufacturer: Wiley-Dreamtech India Pvt. Ltd.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 8126505419

Book Description

Is the country that produced The Book of Kells the same one that built Georgian Dublin or gave birth to the poetry of Yeats? All too often the great periods of Irish achievement have been presented as fragments, unrelated to a continuing tradition. Yet no other country has been so obsessed with its own past as Ireland, or more tenacious of its own unity. This book presents the whole of Ireland--the dark side as well as the light, the greatness as well as the suffering, the enduring victories as well as the humiliating defeats. Eleven leading scholars and writers trace the story of Ireland, beginning with prehistoric Ireland and its stupendous megalithic monuments. In the first millennium, the early Irish Church outshone the rest of Europe, creating masterpieces of manuscript illumination and metalwork. This was followed by the Viking invasions, the turbulent Middle Ages, and the brutal struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, out of which a new society arose, the Protestant Ascendancy, imposed from outside but still essentially Irish. The last two centuries have been years of slow advance to independent nationhood, beset with tragedy but including the important lyrical episode of the Celtic Revival in art, poetry, and drama. The final chapters are devoted to the Irish in America and modern Ireland. A wealth of superb illustrations combined with a superior degree of scholarship make this an essential overview and reference for anyone interested in Ireland. 340 illustrations, 62 in color.

With contributions by:
Brian de Breffny
Anne Crookshank
E. Estyn Evans
Rosemary ffolliott
Kathleen Hughes
Phillip L. Marcus
Kevin B. Nowlan
William V. Shannon
Jeanne Sheehy
Roger Stalley
Gearoid O Tuathaigh

Average customer rating:
Fighting Slave Trade: West African Strategies (Western African Studies)
Sylviane A. Diouf
Manufacturer: Ohio University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | World | History | Subjects | Books
West Africa | Africa | History | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Ouidah: Social History Of West African (Western African Studies)

Slave Ship Sailors and Their Captive Cargoes, 1730-1807

African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond the Silence and the Shame

The British Slave Trade and Public Memory (none)

Slavery, Atlantic Trade And The British Economy, 1660-1800 (New Studies in Economic and Social History)

ASIN: 0821415174

Book Description

While most studies of the slave trade focus on the volume of captives and on their ethnic origins, the question of how the Africans organized their familial and communal lives to resist and assail it has not received adequate attention. But our picture of the slave trade is incomplete without an examination of the ways in which men and women responded to the threat and reality of enslavement and deportation. Fighting the Slave Trade is the first book to explore in a systematic manner the strategies Africans used to protect and defend themselves and their communities from the onslaught of the Atlantic slave trade a nd how they assaulted it. It challenges widely held myths of African passivity and general complicity in the trade and shows that resistance to enslavement and to involvement in the slave trade was much more pervasive than has been acknowledged by the orthodox interpretation of historical literature. Focused on West Africa, the essays collected here examine in detail the defensive, protective, and offensive strategies of individuals, families, communities, and states. In ch apters discussing the manipulation of the environment, resettlement, the redemption of captives, the transformation of social relations, political centralization, marronage, violent assaults on ships and ports, shipboard revolts, and controlled participation in the slave trade as a way to procure the means to attack it, Fighting the Slave Trade presents a much more complete picture of the West African slave trade than has previously been available.

Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies.(Book Review): An article from: Canadian Journal of History

Average customer rating:

Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies.(Book Review): An article from: Canadian Journal of History
Olatunji Ojo
Manufacturer: University of Saskatchewan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Canadian Journal of History, published by University of Saskatchewan on December 1, 2004. The length of the article is 1110 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies.(Book Review)
Author: Olatunji Ojo
Publication: Canadian Journal of History (Refereed)
Date: December 1, 2004
Publisher: University of Saskatchewan
Volume: 39 Issue: 3 Page: 637(3)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Customer Reviews:

Review on "A Catalog of Special Plane Curves".......2001-08-25

This book presented information regarding plane curves in a clear, concise manner. The illustrations add to the book's quality. This is a good reference for people who work with plane curves.

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