Glitter Stucco and Dumpster Diving: Reflections on Building Production in the Vernacular City (Haymarket)

Book Description

In this free-wheeling guided tour to the cityscape of Southern California, from movie-star mansions to the alleys of the homeless, urban planner John Chase combines gossip, anecdote, archival research and tabloid-worthy self-revelation, grounding architecture as a multi-disciplinary art. Speeding across the California landscape, Chase pauses frequently to see what's really there: not just what the movies have taught us to expect, but the range and variation of the built environment that occupies what he calls 'everyday space'. A practising architect and urban planner, as well as an important architectural critic, Chase explores a myriad of locales and examines their architectural features--from the gay community space of West Hollywood, to the stucco box apartment complexes of the 1950s, to the truly weird mix of domestic arrangements in Venice Beach, to gated communities, to some of the historic houses of Hollywood and Beverly Hills and to the most recent transformations of the casino architecture in Las Vegas. At once learned, witty and ironic, Chase makes the mundane world of Southern California vistas come alive on the page.

Glitter Stucco and Dumpster Diving: Reflections on Building Production in the Vernacular City (Haymarket (Hardcover))

Average customer rating:

Glitter Stucco and Dumpster Diving: Reflections on Building Production in the Vernacular City (Haymarket (Hardcover))
John Chase
Manufacturer: NY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MUI9RE

Book Description

Cy Twombly: New Sculptures 1998-2005

Primarily known for his paintings and drawings, Cy Twombly has been creating sculpture during his entire career. His characteristic use of poetic and mythic elements is also evident in this field. Out of "mundane" objects such as crates, broomsticks, paper napkins, mashers, stools, string and paper he composes white-painted sculptures. Retaining their everyday identity and materiality the constituent objects take on a condition oblivious to time and change and a life of their own. Fanciful, witty, and at times sarcastic, Twombly transforms his objects, lending them a mythic meaningfulness and a whole new beauty. This publication is the catalog to an exhibition at Munich's Alte Pinakothek in spring 2006 presenting 33 new sculptures created between 1998 and 2005.

Edited by Reinhold Baumstark and Carla Schulz-Hoffmann

Texts by Edward Albee, Giorgio Agamben, Carla Schulz-Hoffmann and others

Customer Reviews:

Cy Twombly- New Sculptures 1992 - 2005.......2007-07-26

This is an execallent publication with good essays and images , giving an in depth view of these poignant works and the pulse behind them, and of the Artist Cy Twombly who has captured the human spirit in the most eloquent way possible .
I am thrilled to have this book, another to my collection from Amazon.
Great service and prompt delivery.

An unusual Twombly.......2007-04-18

A beautiful book on an interesting recent development in Cy Twombly's career. Even though his earliest known sculptures date back to the late fifties, he really concentrated on the medium after 1990, producing a serene body of works marked by a thick white impasto covering common objects, found here and there, mounted together to form elegant and sometimes majestic sculptures. A good supplement to the Catalogue Raisonné (which stops in 1995). My only criticism would be on the text, which sometimes tends to be a bit too hagiographic; the admiration professed by the authors towards the artist seems almost religious, however,like every great artist, Twombly has produced masterpieces, but also some minor works...

Average customer rating:

Cy Twombly: New Sculptures 1998-2005
Cy Twombly
Manufacturer: Schirmer/Mosel
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000N646L0

Book Description

An important title for all young aspiring artists. Following the advice of renowned Spanish comic artist Daniel Torres, readers will learn step by step the path to becoming an artist. This book teaches everything from how to properly sit when you draw, to what types of pencils to use, to how to create a complex composition.

Book Description

Kleinwort Benson is one of the most distinguished international investment banks in the City of London, becoming part of the Dresdner Bank Group in 1995. This is the story of how two families, the Kleinworts and the Bensons, emerged from medieval beginnings in Holstein and the Lake District to seek their fortunes in Hamburg, Cuba, and Liverpool, before arriving in the 1850s in London. There they founded two very different merchant banks, which merged in 1967 to create Kleinwort Benson Lonsdale, later Kleinwort Benson. The Kleinwort Benson story mirrors both the spectacular growth of English capital and its often turbulent side-effects. It shows how the two families survived the collapse of the Benson bank in 1875, the freezing of Kleinwort assets and business by the European financial crisis of 1931, and two World Wars, and how they established their banks as powerful City players in the postwar period. Their story is as much a human drama as a financial history. Brimming with generations of Kleinworts, Bensons, and the families with whom they married and formed partnerships, the book evokes their feuds and friendships, their successes and failures, set against the background of more than two hundred years of social and business history. This is the first full history of Kleinwort Benson. It contributes to our understanding of the way in which business is carried out in the City of London, and provides fascinating insights into the lives of those concerned. Jehanne Wake was given unrestricted access to the bank's archives and staff and has drawn upon a wealth of original sources to furnish this lively and readable history of the members of two banking dynasties and their boardroom successors.

Customer Reviews:

Kleinwort Benson: An Advantageous Union.......2004-05-01

A veritable microcosm of financial and economic history, this book details the rise of the acceptance house of Kleinwort and the private banking house of Benson from humble beginnings in Germany and the UK and how their destinies intertwined in the 1960s after their amalgamation. As described by Wake in this highly colorful, anecdote-filled book, the metaphor of merchant banking's three-legged stool-one leg for corporate finance, one leg for private banking and investments, and one leg for wholesale banking-was a particularly compelling argument in favor of the Kleinwort-Benson merger, which eventually led to the creation of an investment banking powerhouse. "Kleinwort Benson" will enthrall those who are interested in how the formerly genteel world of merchant banking, wherein client poaching was an unforgivable transgression and bankers kept banker's hours, was transformed into the extirpative business it is today.

Excellent & detailed insider's view of leading UK house.......1998-01-22

Wake has taken the opportunity to provide an unparalleled insight into the development of Kleinwort & Sons and Robert Benson & Co., tracing the former from its roots as a gun-running operation in Cuba, and the latter from a Quaker family in Lancashire.

Unlike many similar books, however, Wake goes beyond looking at the firms involved as her subtitle 'Two families in banking' implies. Consequently her work is packed with the stories, family anecdotes and gossip that really bring such a book to life.

An excellent and very enjoyable read which I would highly recommend to anyone remotely interested in the subject.

Book Description

A subjective list of the 50 Companies that had the msot profound impact on the world around them. The firms included are ranked by the author according to their influence and contributions. International in scope, the selections range from obvious choices like Microsoft, AT&T, Toyota, and McDonald's, to more provocative selections like CNN, The Walt Disney Company, and Ben & Jerry's Homemade. For each company, the author presents a lively, historical sketch and discusses its strengths and weaknesses in the context of each company's individual operation, historical context, and specific industry. Each sketch also entertainingly and informatively spotlights the distinctive personalities, along with the unique products or services, that set it apart from its competitors.

Customer Reviews:

Not very enlighting.......2005-12-03

Book is well written but some profiles lacks insight. In many cases historical info is really shallow, you get only dates and facts and no explanation why and how something was achieved, ie. profiles of Coca Cola and General Motors. Slightly better are biographies of IT companies, but sometimes they're drowning in the tangle of details. When I read profile of Apple I got impression that it's more about company failures and weaknesses than about what they really brought into the world. If they were and still are so bad then why to give them no.4 on this (artificial) list ?

Solid, Sensible, and Open to Disagreement.......2003-07-14

The total number of companies on a list such as this need not be 50. Moreover, there can be (and is) honest disagreement about the inclusion of some companies and not others. My own opinion is that all of the 50 companies which Rothman selected are worthy of inclusion...as are several others. The great value of this book is that Rothman is more than a list maker and a writer of mini-profiles. As he explains in the Introduction, his purpose is to examine 50 companies "that have dramatically and permanently altered us. In the process, you will also see how the general structure of business -- and along with it, our society -- has evolved over the past few centuries. You will meet with some individuals with extraordinary vision, courage, and commitment who struggled to realize their ideas and drive their companies to success. n a very real sense, they are the true forces that have changed our world."

According to criteria which are unclear to me, Rothman ranks the 50 in terms of their relative impact: Microsoft is #1 and H.J. Heinz is #50. In doing so, Rothman also invites honest disagreement about his ranking decisions. I certainly disagree with the ranking of Wal-Mart at #10. Oh well. He devotes about four pages to each of the 50 companies, with a "Fact File" preceding his brief commentary. He also includes a section called "Honorable Mentions" following by an extensive Bibliography.

This is a solid and sensible but not especially thought-provoking book, except to those who disagree with Rothman's selections and ranking of them, one which provides quite a bit of information on companies which have obviously made significant contributions to our society and, in most instances, to the global marketplace in which they have competed. To his Bibliography, I presume to add H.W. Brands's Masters of Enterprise, Stuart Crainer's The Management Century, the Forbes Greatest Business Stories of All Time, and John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge's The Company.

You won't be disappointed.......2001-08-15

After hearing Rothman on NPR's Marketplace I wanted to read more and was not disappointed. "50 Companies" is positioned as a kind of encyclopedic guide to the top businesses of our time, and it certainly is that. But even more so, I believe, it's about the reciprocal relationships between all of business and all of society and individual businesses with each other. And in this it succeeds even more. Rothman mentions in the beginning how many of these companies touched his life as he was writing the book, and I found even more connections with my own life.

Insightful!.......2001-06-11

Howard Rothman, a writer who specializes in technology and management, profiles the 50 companies that had the strongest impact on the development of modern business. He sought input from high-tech executives, teachers, public relations professionals, engineers, business writers, shopkeepers, salespeople and managers in selecting the top 50, which he ranks in the order of their influence. While many of the stories in these four-page portraits are familiar, the book presents helpful historical profiles of how each company developed and influenced the business world and society. While some readers may like tackling all these capsule bios as a collection, many may prefer to regard the book more as an encyclopedia or directory and draw on the corporate information as needed. We [...] appreciate the solid work here, although the result may be more interesting as a reference book than as a cover-to-cover page-turner.

Good for younger readers, too.......2001-06-05

I am a high school social studies teacher. I found this book when I was searching for something I could assign to my students next fall that would show them how corporations have impacted our world. I particularly wanted one that contained stories about companies with which my kids could relate. This really fills the bill, especially with its short but complete profiles of Microsoft, American Online, McDonald's, Ben & Jerry's, and others that shape their lives every day. Even those that will be unfamiliar to many of them should hold their interest and teach them something at the same time. I can't wait to use it with them and see how they react.

Book Description

Employing both large-scale surveys and in-depth interviews, the authors document the mental health effects on workers caused by the closure of four General Motor plants. They paint a portrait of how the social context in which these workers lived played a critical role in their experiences of unemployment or of keeping their jobs when others around them lost theirs. More than simply a study of unemployment and mental health, this book is also a story of coping and resilience.

Stress and Distress Among the Unemployed: Hard Times and Vulnerable People (Springer Studies in Work and Industry)

Average customer rating:

Stress and Distress Among the Unemployed: Hard Times and Vulnerable People (Springer Studies in Work and Industry)
Clifford L. Broman
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OSY18A

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books