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After nearly a decade of bull markets, Americans have come to equate free markets with democracy. Never one for mincing words, social critic Thomas Frank, editor of The Baffler and author of The Conquest of Cool, challenges this myth. With his acerbic wit and contempt for sophistry, he declares the New Economy a fraud. Frank scours business literature, management theory, and marketing and advertising to expose the elaborate fantasies that have inoculated business against opposition. This public relations campaign joins an almost mystical belief in markets, a contempt for government in any form, and an "ecstatic" confusion of markets with democracy. Frank traces the roots of this movement from the 1920s, and sees its culmination in market populism as a fusion of the rebellious '60s with the greedy '80s. The overarching irony is the swapping of roles--suddenly Wall Street is no longer full of stodgy moneygrubbers, but cool entrepreneurs "leaping on their trampolines, typing out a few last lines on the laptop before paragliding, riding their bicycles to work, listening to Steppenwolf while they traded." Meanwhile, "Americans traded their long tradition of electoral democracy for the democracy of the supermarket, where all brands are created equal and endowed by their creators with all sorts of extremeness and diversity." Frank's close reading of the salesmen of market populism nails such financial gurus as George Gilder, Joseph Nocera, Kevin Kelly, and Thomas Friedman. Their writings, he contends, have served to make "the world safe for billionaires" by winning the cultural and political battle--legitimizing the corporate culture and its demands for privatization, deregulation, and non-interference. Frank's incisive prose verges on brilliant at times, though his yen for repetition can be exasperating. In either case, his boisterous reminder that markets are fundamentally not democracies is worth repeating as the level of wealth polarization in America reaches heights not seen since the 1920s. --Lesley Reed
Book Description
In a book that has been raising hackles far and wide, the social critic Thomas Frank skewers one of the most sacred cows of the go-go '90s: the idea that the new free-market economy is good for everyone.
Frank's target is "market populism"--the widely held belief that markets are a more democratic form of organization than democratically elected governments. Refuting the idea that billionaire CEOs are looking out for the interests of the little guy, he argues that "the great euphoria of the late nineties was never as much about the return of good times as it was the giddy triumph of one America over another." Frank is a latter-day Mencken, as readers of his journal The Baffler and his book The Conquest of Cool know. With incisive analysis, passionate advocacy, and razor-sharp wit, he asks where we?re headed-and whether we're going to like it when we get there.
Customer Reviews:
revealing.......2007-01-06
although it seemed a bit repetetive at times, this book was right on. i guess it seemed that way to me because everything was so intertwined. Many thanks to pbs for bringing this author to my attention.
Very Worthwhile.......2006-08-14
If you want to know how the economy really works and who is really in charge, read this book. You don't need to agree with all of the author's conclusions, but the the facts and arguments presented are very compelling.
Solid thoughtful, nails our national policy failures in a big way.......2006-08-02
This is a very serious book, one that any candidate for President would do well to read, especially so the centrist candidates willing to announce that both the Democratic and Republican parties have sold the public into slavery to corporate fascism.
In summary, the author documents in detail how the Reagan Revolution, and especially the firing of the air traffic controllers and the wrongful use of military air traffic controllers as "union busting" scabs, eliminated the counter-vailing force of labor unions, at the same time that government deregulated and abdicated its responsibility for a social safety net, the media converted into advertising with a "news hole," and corporations lost all moral and social standards.
He deconstructs the "New Economy" in persuasive detail and caused me to re-evaluate some of my earlier readings, especially of Kevin Kelly and others in the WIRED generation who articulate with blind faith the democratic value of the network, but fail to see, as Robert Samuelson and this author would have us understand, that outsourcing is union busting, and the actual effect of the network has been to make it possible for corporations to outsource middle class jobs while importing poverty through illegal immigration. The net loser is the Nation, because one of its most important sources of national power, an educated engaged citizenry, is being sold short.
The author is brutally on target when he points out that corporations have achieved a slight of hand in disconnecting labor from the value of created wealth, claiming much more management value (to the point that CEOs make 400 to 1000 times what their workers make, up from 25 times long ago). He also points out that the democratization of the stock market is code for what Mark Lewis called, in "Liar's Poker," "exploding the client. The smart money rides the early surge and then sells out to the middle class dreamers, who end up losing 80-90% of their value over time.
I have a note in the flyleaf that this book is "quite extraordinary, almost breathtaking in scope, with a compelling array of well-ordered facts."
Overall, while many will not like the term "corporate fascism" and the author prefers to use "extreme capitalism" while others discuss immoral and predatory capitalism, or "class war" (see my review of Faux's "The Global Class War" and, somewhat less solid but still good, Pabast's "Armed Madhouse" (dispatches from the front lines of the global class war). The sorry reality is that Americans have been lulled to sleep like sheep for a slaughter, and do not seem to appreciate the fact that there has been a MASSIVE theft of public capital through what this author calls "the Wall Street tax" on America.
The greatest strength of the book is how the author documents the calculated and comprehensive manner in which Wall Street and the evangelical right came together to turn reality on its head, and persuade everyone including blue collar workers that it was okay to break the social contract with labor, and that what is good for Wall Street is good for America and its workers. In fact, as the author points out repeatedly, when workers get laid off, Wall Street stocks go up. His entire review reminds one of Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's classic "Manufacturing Consent." Public relations has been used in a classic manner by American corporations, to include penetration of teen-age sub-cultures and the manipulation of teen-age desires. In Europe they consider public relations to be, according to this author, advanced corporate lying.
The author draws an excellent connection between the "blind faith" that keeps the corporate illusion of free trade on the table, and the "blind faith" that led Dick Cheney to depose George Bush and invade Iraq without regard to the policy process, accountability, or reality. America is in the grip of a very destructive combination of corporate ideology, religious ideology, and political ideology.
The author is properly and comprehensively critical of the media for failing to do its job. Journalists, a few exceptions aside, have become "filler." The author excels at picking Tom Friedman apart, and at mocking the Wall Street Journal for idiocy in print.
The book ends on a sobering note, where the author points out that reality has a way of unmasking ideological pretensions in a most painful manner. He specifically suggests that George Bush Junior (he does not mention Cheney) will go the way of Herbert Hoover in the history books. Reality--that's what one White House staffer is reported to have said had no relevance, because this White House "creates its own reality." Yes it does--a reality of greed and theft and immorality at the top, poverty and disease at the bottom, and a loss of American honor around the world.
First class thinking and writing. A really strong book.
Enlightening romp through a decade of idiocy.......2006-05-07
From John Perry Barlow to Virginia Postrel, from _Liberation Management_ to _Who Moved My Cheese?_, from dot-com millionaires to cult stud academics, Thomas Frank summarizes, contextualizes, and debunks a decade's worth of pro-business propaganda. The major theme, he argues, was the concept of "market populism", the notion that The Market was far more democratic than actual democracies, doing whatever their copious focus groups had determined the people wanted. Frank, a serious supporter of genuine democracy, skewers their absurd myths and provides some insight into the harm they did to working people.
The Democracy Bubble.......2006-01-17
If there were two overall themes guiding this book, I'd say it was these:
During the late 1990s, it was pretty obvious that a rising tide was not lifting all boats. And for a very long time now, conservative and many liberal economists, business owners, investors, business writers and assorted pundits have equated democracy with the ebbs and flows of the free market.
I've never read What's The Matter With Kansas or The Baffler before. My introducation to Frank came through this book with it's marathon chapters, sometimes repetative thesis', and thoroughly damning evidence of our nation's continuing problems with a form of tulip mania and the delusion that a janitor/schoolteacher/truck driver playing the stock market with a few shares has economic parity with someone like Warren Buffett.
The title itself is an interesting look at the subject matter here: free market economics has long been a dogma among Americans. We are told time and time again that collective bargaining, state investment, and regulations over wages will lead us down the path to destruction. Also, supposedly, if we allow the foxes to guard the henhouse, someday we can all be rich.
Frank points out that this isn't a new ideology but it has become more and less popular over time. The end of the 20th century resembled the beginning more than any other time; the middle class was slowly eroding and obscene wealth consoled obscene lack of wealth with idea that even if you're living in poverty, you can just make a couple of smart investments, spend wisely, and the idea of the American Dream will be fulfilled and you'll get wealthy.
This might all seem painfully obvious, but Frank deserves credit for actually documenting it.
Book Description
The qualities that come to mind when we think of soul - meaning, memory, wildness, beauty, divinity - are necessary elements for navigating today's organizations into the future. But even with all the talk of empowerment, self-managing teams, flat organizations, and hundreds of other programs that promise more autonomy and more fulfillment, managers and employees are experiencing a disillusioning gap between what organizations say and what they do. Evocatively written, with real-life cases and stories and intriguing historical perspectives, Alan Briskin offers a way to understand that gap - its origins and the ways it may be bridged. The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace is an inspiring and provocative alternative to the flood of management books that suggest ways to shift your paradigm and get you home in time for dinner. Briskin embarks on an exploration of soul, including its often neglected shadow side, and the consequences of ignoring it in the workplace. He examines the historical forces that have - brutally at times - subordinated the soul to the needs of efficiency and productivity. And he suggests a more active way of taking up our work roles that can help us bring more of our experience and imagination into play. Briskin shows that when we learn to honor the contradictions, uncertainties, and interconnectivity inherent in the workplace, the energies of the soul stir into being, with revitalizing results.
Customer Reviews:
A Brilliant Read.......2002-06-25
A philospher recently wrote "the art of the future will be the work of the collective." It's clear that today's corporate structure has a long way to go before it could be called art. The typical company is not a particularly meaningful, soulful, or enduring place. Somehow there has to be a merging of the corporate need for profit with the individual need for meaning. In The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace, Alan Briskin takes on the often contradictary nature of these twin needs. It raises a deep and difficult set of questions. Briskin doesn't minimize them by offering quick technical fixes, but rather he offers something far more important: the insight and understanding needed to begin honestly approaching them. As a result, Briskin may have also begun the long process of elevating corporate structure to that of collective art form.
Parts of this book are as well written and as insightful as anything I've ever read. If you've spent any time in a corporate structure, you will see a reflection of your own situation in these pages. Layered on top of that reflection are insights from the fields of philosophy, literature, psychology, physics, management and the wisdom traditions of the world. All of which help us to understand, and to live with, the ambiguities we all face. This book will challenge you to ask yourself some important questions. I highly recommend it.
Dean Ottati - Author of The Runner and the Path
Great ground work but little take home.......2002-03-08
The book has three main sections: Defining the concept and history of Soul; Highlighted history on our work culture; and, how we deal with Soul to make our working world better. The first section was interesting, but perhaps a little philosophical for me. He did use some nice personal story examples to make his points. By itself, the second section would score a 7-star. For this section alone, I would recommend the book. He starts his history trek in the mid 1800's with the advent of the railroad, which presents the first introduction of strict time and scheduling on our society. He continues by discussing the industrial revolution and focusing on important figures such as Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, and Fredrick Taylor, the `Father of Scientific Management'. Additionally, he discusses the works of Elton Mayo and how his finding in human resources ultimately resulted in another control factor for companies. In his final section, Briskin discusses how we as individuals and organizations can learn from our history and begin our journey towards coherence and wholeness. He believes that concerns with communication are often used to describe various barriers within organizations. He is trying to tie the book together and help us pave new ground, but his attempt is too typical and idealistic. Like many 'change' books, he focuses too much on idealistic and not enough on realistic, which renders his suggestions as weak, or even naive. I would have been happier if he left out his attempts to make this a complete book ("we can change by understanding our past") and stuck with his great historical facts and philosophical factors in defining organizational life.
Great ground work but little take home.......2002-03-08
The book has three main sections: Defining the concept and history of Soul; Highlighted history on our work culture; and, how we deal with Soul to make our working world better. The first section was interesting, but perhaps a little philosophical for me. He did use some nice personal story examples to make his points. By itself, the second section would score a 7-star. For this section alone, I would recommend the book. He starts his history trek in the mid 1800's with the advent of the railroad, which presents the first introduction of strict time and scheduling on our society. He continues by discussing the industrial revolution and focusing on important figures such as Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, and Fredrick Taylor, the `Father of Scientific Management'. Additionally, he discusses the works of Elton Mayo and how his finding in human resources ultimately resulted in another control factor for companies. In his final section, Briskin discusses how we as individuals and organizations can learn from our history and begin our journey towards coherence and wholeness. He believes that concerns with communication are often used to describe various barriers within organizations. He is trying to tie the book together and help us pave new ground, but his attempt is too typical and idealistic. Like many 'change' books, he focuses too much on idealistic and not enough on realistic, which renders his suggestions as weak, or even naive. I would have been happier if he left out his attempts to make this a complete book ("we can change by understanding our past") and stuck with his great historical facts and philosophical factors in defining organizational life.
A Solid Effort!.......2001-09-21
People need creativity, fantasy, passion and caring, argues Alan Briskin, and when they're deprived of those things at work, there's trouble ahead. Briskin's book works well as a study in modern-day alienation. Tracing the loss of soul at work to scientific engineering, he summarizes various research findings that will seem like old college friends to those with business degrees. But the book sags when it sets forth into the land of the soul, where Briskin gets fuzzy, unfocused, repetitious and just plain hard to understand. In addition, he never actually gets around to telling us how to get soul back at work. Nevertheless, we [...] recommend this book to managers, employees and students with a desire to look deeper into the balance of hard work and personal satisfaction, and the patience to wade through the sometimes trite.
Managerial Elite Oriented--Typical New Age Business Book.......2000-09-14
This is a typical New Age business book. It has a high spiritual gloss, is individualistically oriented (overlooking truly workable ways of changing organizations and essentially blaming individual workers for not being able to accomodate abusive systems personally by developing soul).
This book is a fooler for the average working person. By this I mean that it sounds great but leads nowhere for the average worker. It may even make you feel inadequate.
There are very specific ways to change organizations to result in shared power for all workers. These social technologies are well known, difficult to install, and deprive top managers of power they crave---that's why these technologies are seldom used...because they are effective! Top managers don't want to give up power or take responsibility for creating collaborative systems. So books like this one which confuse the issues that are really involved in changing organizations are typical of New Age managerial manuals.
Publishers of these kinds of management books make big bucks at the expense of the average worker. Such management books assure managers that the problems in the organization don't require rigorous, disciplined behavioral change. Worker dissatisfaction (and 80% of workers are dissatisfied in poll after poll) can be attributed to "loss of soul"....yet one more mystification.
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Biotechnology and Plant Protection: Bacterial Pathogenesis & Disease Resistance Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium
Donald D. Bills , and
Shain-Dow Kung
Manufacturer: World Scientific Publishing Company
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ASIN: 9810218338 |
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Fungal Pathogenesis in Plants and Crops (Books in Soils, Plants, and the Environment)
Vidhyasekaran
Manufacturer: CRC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Molecular Biology
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Flowers
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ASIN: 0824700392 |
Book Description
From the molecular basis of host defense mechanisms and molecular events leading to the suppression of defense mechanisms by fungal pathogens to fungal infection processes, this work covers various aspects of molecular plant pathology. It includes initial contact, penetration and subsequent evasion of post-penetration defense mechanisms. It documents and illustrates up-to-date experimental results and hypotheses.
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Plant Pathogenesis and Disease Control
Hachiro Oku
Manufacturer: CRC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0873717279 |
Book Description
Environmental pollution resulting from widespread pesticide application has become a serious worldwide problem. Plant Pathogenesis and Disease Control is an important new reference that addresses this problem by exploring the biochemical and molecular mechanisms of plant pathogenesis and emphasizing the use of "pest control agents" rather than "pesticides" for plant disease control. Topics examined include pathogenicity, the resistance of plants against pathogens, the offensive and defensive struggle between hosts and parasites, methods for using natural defense mechanisms to develop environmentally sound disease control agents, and the use of modern biotechnology for plant disease control. The book will be an essential reference for phytopathologists, plant biochemists, pesticide chemists, mycologists, plant cell technologists, and agricultural researchers.
Book Description
Electron Microscopy covers all of the important aspects of electron microscopy for biologists, including theory of scanning and transmission, specimen preparation, digital imaging and image analysis, laboratory safety and interpretation of images. The text also contains a complete atlas of ultrastructure.
Customer Reviews:
Electron microscopy for biologists.......2007-05-14
This book is a very good technical introduction to the electron microscopy of biological samples. Good figures and schemes help to understand the text. Photos of different types of samples are also adequate to illustrate the methods. The book is an excellent manual for beginners and biologists find it useful and easy to read.
Excellent Book.......2006-04-06
This book is excellent for beginners and advanced microscopists. It offers fine details and tricks about techniques as well as the theory behind it. There are lots of pictures and schematics for each descriptions. It is also useful for microscopist that want to learn more about different methods. I definitively recommend it!
Excellent EM primer.......2001-06-26
I actually had the opportunity to receive instruction from Prof. Bozzola in both Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), and acquired the book for those reasons. It is not common to find even a textbook with such well-detailed instructions from beginning level to advanced for a myriad of topics in the field. Of course, there is a very significant focus on biological applications, so some portions of the book are not entirely relevant to materials science folks like myself. This book covers the basics of optics, sample preparation, imaging, photography and film developing, and specifics about both TEMs and SEMs. This book is a very good investment for anyone intending to perform work with such instruments.
If you are learning EM you must have this book..........2000-05-11
This is a great book for those entering the field of EM study. It takes you step by step through both SEM and TEM sample prep and analysis. It is packed with helpful pictures and diagrams. It will be a book you will refer to for methodology and protocal from fixation to sectioning...I really love this book.
Book Description
Hiking the Southwest's Geology: Four Corners Region takes curious hikers on a journey through time that explores the Colorado Plateau-an immense land of canyons, mesas, and isolated mountain ranges in the American Southwest.
Divided into representative geologic provinces/areas, Hopkins specifies distinct geologic or scenic features and provides information about what makes each province unique. He describes each hike from the perspective of the geologic evolution of the landscape while exploring basic geologic concepts and providing a framework for understanding the major forces that have shaped the land. Hopkins' stunning color photography brings the Four Corners Region to life in dazzling detail.
Book Description
Praised for its practical strategies, real-world emphasis and focus on critical thinking, this successful 4-in-1-- handbook, reader, rhetoric, and research guide-- text incorporates electronic writing and visual rhetoric.
Book Description
Praised for its practical strategies, real-world emphasis and focus on critical thinking, this successful 4-in-1 text now emphasizes electronic writing and visual rhetoric.
Book Description
As new towns and cities spread across the American frontier in the nineteenth century, itinerant artists soon followed, documenting these growing urban centers by drawing aerial perspectives, also known as bird's eye views. Commissioned by land speculators, local businesses, civic organizations, and individual citizens, these renderings fostered both civic pride and local commerce. The use of color lithography, a recent invention popularized by such prominent publishers as Currier & Ives, allowed the inexpensive reproduction of the highest-quality drawings, so that a bird's eye view was within the financial budget of even the smallest towns. These extraordinarily detailed lithographs eventually numbered in the thousands and now serve as a rich pictorial record of North America as it stood a century ago.
This sequel to our highly acclaimed title An Atlas of Rare City Maps collects over 100 views dating between 1835 and 1902, showing the streets, buildings, churches, bridges, waterways, and surrounding countryside of North American towns, ranging from burgeoning metropolitan centers to small logging towns and mining camps. Baltimore, Brooklyn, Denver, Indianapolis, Memphis, Montreal, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Syracuse, and Washington are just a few of the cities presented in this collection. The exquisite color and fine detail of these bird's eye views have been reproduced in all their original glory; also included is an introduction by John W. Reps providing a background on the artistic process and on urban development in the nineteenth century.
Customer Reviews:
Both Relevant and Beautiful.......2007-01-17
This is a book of graphics. In fact, I would use it as a coffee table book if it were not so precious to me.
It is an archive of drawn, etched and printed aerial perspectives.
It is great for design and compositional predecence in both urban and small town planning. If you are designing a small town and you wish for it to grow, this book would be an useful reference, as it graphically depicts the beginnings of many major U.S. cities.
Books:
- Place, Space and the New Labour Internationalisms (Antipode Book Series)
- Science Bought and Sold: Essays in the Economics of Science
- Selling China: Foreign Direct Investment During the Reform Era (Cambridge Modern China Series)
- Shanghai and the Yangtze Delta: A City Reborn (Regional Development in China, Vol 3)
- State and Local Taxation and Finance in a Nutshell (Nutshell Series.)
- Successful Fisheries Management: Issues, Case Studies, Perspectives
- Supply Chain Management with APO: Structures, Modelling Approaches and Implementation of mySAP SCM 4.1
- Surviving Energy Prices
- Telecourse Study Guide for Economics USA
- Ten Steps to Fundraising Success: Choosing the Right Strategy for Your Organization (With CD-ROM)
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